The Winners' Circle Read online

  Other Joanne Kilbourn Mysteries

  by Gail Bowen

  What’s Left Behind

  12 Rose Street

  The Gifted

  Kaleidoscope

  The Nesting Dolls

  The Brutal Heart

  The Endless Knot

  The Last Good Day

  The Glass Coffin

  Burying Ariel

  Verdict in Blood

  A Killing Spring

  A Colder Kind of Death

  The Wandering Soul Murders

  Murder at the Mendel

  Deadly Appearances

  Copyright © 2017 by Gail Bowen

  All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the publisher – or, in case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency – is an infringement of the copyright law.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication information available upon request

  ISBN 9780771024061

  Ebook ISBN 9780771024085

  Published simultaneously in the United States of America by McClelland & Stewart, a division of Random House of Canada Limited, a Penguin Random House Company

  Library of Congress Control Number is available upon request

  Cover design: Leah Springate

  Cover image: © Yvette/Getty Images

  McClelland & Stewart,

  a division of Random House of Canada Limited,

  a Penguin Random House Company

  www.penguinrandomhouse.ca

  v4.1

  a

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Joanne Kilbourn Mysteries by Gail Bowen

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Acknowledgements

  For Mike Sinclair,

  Dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral,

  with gratitude and great affection

  CHAPTER

  1

  In the dark days after the tragedy that had ripped apart our lives, words lost their meanings. Desperate to find the key to understanding a loss that still seemed unimaginable, I searched for answers, but even sources that had always brought me solace offered nothing. In the end I clung to a remark made by a stranger as we were leaving one of the funerals that, during that bleak month, recurred with the solemn regularity of passing bells.

  “Maybe life’s greatest gift is that we don’t know what’s ahead,” he said.

  The stranger’s words were cold comfort but I held them close. They were all I had.

  —

  Three weeks earlier, I had no need of comfort. I was blessed, and I knew it. My husband, Zack, our soon-to-be seventeen-year-old daughter, Taylor, and I spent Thanksgiving at the lake with Zack’s law partners and their families. Friends since law school, the partners at Falconer Shreve Altieri Wainberg and Hynd owned the cottages on Lawyers’ Bay, a horseshoe of waterfront property on one of a quartet of lakes that wound through the Qu’Appelle Valley, forty-five kilometres east of Regina.

  Many years before Zack and I were married, his partners had convinced him to build a cottage there. When the construction was completed, he met with a decorator, explained that he was a guy in a wheelchair who lived alone, handed her a blank cheque, and asked her to call him when the cottage was finished. Every time I walked through the bright, uncluttered, spacious rooms of our cottage, I was grateful to that decorator. She had chosen a simple neutral palette that, in the folder of information she left for Zack, she had identified as driftwood grey and creamy latte. With one notable exception, the furnishings were sleek and contemporary. The notable exception had been the decorator’s find at a country estate auction: an oak partners’ table from a long-defunct law firm. Our dining room overlooked the lake, and the sizeable table and its twenty-four matching chairs made us the hosts of choice when all the partners and their families came together for a meal.

  My husband was happiest when every chair at the table was filled. That Thanksgiving Sunday, eighteen of us celebrated the harvest together. Eleven were from our family: Taylor, Zack, and me; our daughter, Mieka, and her young daughters, Madeleine and Lena; our son Peter, his wife, Maisie, and their two-week-old twins; and our younger son, Angus.

  Zack’s partners and their families made up the rest of the party: Blake Falconer and his eighteen-year-old daughter, Gracie; Kevin Hynd, who had brought Zack and me together; and the firm’s managing partner, Delia Wainberg, along with her husband, Noah, their eighteen-year-old daughter, Isobel, and her nephew, the Wainbergs’ three-year-old grandson, Jacob.

  When our families were together, we ate at five o’clock. If the weather gods were benevolent, an early dinner meant we had time afterwards to go for a paddle in the canoes or just position the lazy lounges so we could watch the sun set over the lake. But Sunday was cold and windy. After we’d eaten dinner and cleaned up, Peter, Maisie, and the twins headed home to their farm; Mieka took the girls back to the city so she could pick up an old high-school friend at the airport; and Angus slipped away to meet the mysterious new woman in his life.

  The rest of us took our coffee into the family room. Noah lit a fire, and we played games: Charades, Pictionary, Heads Up!, and a game called How’s Yours? that Taylor said had been a blast when she played it at a party but that fell flat on Thanksgiving. When How’s Yours? left us yawning, I gave Zack the high sign. He wheeled over to the piano and announced that he was taking requests.

  Zack had a good ear and a theatrical flair that buoyed up his performances during the odd musical stumble, so listening to him play was always a pleasure. As we gathered together around the piano, humming along with songs we half-knew, our private concerns faded and we became part of something larger than our individual selves. We were a community.

  When Jacob Wainberg requested “Let It Go,” Princess Elsa’s song from the movie Frozen, and began to sing the words in his piping little-boy voice, Taylor, Gracie, and Isobel helped him with the lyrics; then the rest of us joined in. Zack and his friends were all in their early fifties. Too often, their faces were tense and careworn, but the music and the firelight softened the marks of the years, and they seemed young and easy again.

  Zack felt the vibe too. He turned to Kevin Hynd. “You’re the music man, Kev. What are some songs everybody can sing?”

  Kevin shrugged. “Anything by the Beatles,” he said. “ ‘Yellow Submarine,’ ‘Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da,’ ‘Twist and Shout,’ ‘Good Day Sunshine.’ ” As Zack played the first upbeat chords of “Good Day Sunshine,” a smile lit up Delia Wainberg’s face, and it transformed her. For the first time in the years since I’d met Delia, a tightly wound perfectionist with an enviable record of wins before the Supreme Court, she seemed, in my grandmother’s phrase, to be “comfortable in her own skin.” As Dee sang along, she was playful and unguarded. Her exuberance was contagious.

  Physically, Isobel Wainberg was uncannily like her mother: fine-boned and narrow-faced, with a milky-white complexion and wiry hair. In temperament too, Isobel was her mother�
�s child, private and seemingly self-contained. Always particularly tense in her mother’s presence, she had relaxed, leaning in to Delia as they sang. Noah Wainberg, an affable giant of a man who adored his wife, couldn’t take his eyes off her, even after the last bars ended and the group’s laughter and clapping had subsided.

  “Time for my favourite,” Taylor said. “Dad, will you play ‘Puff, the Magic Dragon’? Jacob will love it.”

  “Your wish is my command,” Zack said, and he began. The old Peter, Paul, and Mary song did indeed delight Jacob, but it broke the spell for Delia. As soon as she heard the line about little boys who, unlike dragons, do not live forever, Delia stiffened. Before the song was over, she had headed for the door and left. Noah scooped up Jacob and turned to Isobel. “Looks like we’re taking off,” he said.

  Taylor was clearly bewildered. “What happened?”

  Isobel’s sigh was resigned. “My guess is that the song reminded my mother of Chris.”

  “Chris has been dead for four years,” Taylor said. “And the song is talking about a boy not a man.”

  Isobel’s voice, like her mother’s, was husky and compelling. “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “These days, it never takes much to send her over the edge.”

  Noah moved close to his daughter. “I’m going to take Jacob back to our cottage and check in with your mum. Do you want to come with us?”

  Isobel squeezed Noah’s arm and kissed Jacob. “You go ahead, Dad,” she said. “You know it doesn’t matter to her if I’m there or not.”

  “You’re wrong, Izzie,” Noah said. “Try to be patient with your mother. She’s lost a lot, and Chris’s death still troubles her.”

  “It troubles all of us,” Zack said softly. “He was like a brother to Kevin, Blake, and me.”

  “He was more than that to Delia,” Isobel said.

  “Your mother believed that Chris led her to the two things that saved her,” Noah said. “A love for the law and the people who became her closest friends. But you know the story.”

  Isobel’s eyes were questioning. “Do I? Chris was special – we all felt that way, and I miss him too. But when I try to talk to Delia about him, she always finds a way to end the conversation. What I do know is that when she met him, she was in her first year at the College of Law. Her grades were through the roof, but she was going to drop out because she didn’t fit in, then Chris brought her into his study group and everything changed.”

  “That’s pretty well it,” Blake said. “After Dee joined our group, she knew she’d found a place where she belonged.”

  “Practising law.” Isobel’s smile was small and sad. “She’s never needed anything else. The law validates her and gives her a refuge from everything she doesn’t want to face.”

  Zack leaned forward. “Don’t give up on her, Izzie. It may be hard to believe, but Dee does need you.”

  “Then why does she push me aside?” Isobel said. “And she’s the same with Jacob. You saw what she just did. Jacob’s three years old, but when my mother ran out, she just left him, as if she had no responsibility for him at all.”

  Kevin touched Isobel’s shoulder. “Man stands in his own shadow and wonders why it’s dark,” he said. “We’ve talked about that Zen proverb before. Your mother’s life is darkened by her own shadow, but for some reason, she’s unable to understand that and step away.”

  Isobel had a kind heart, but her voice was cold. “Well, it’s time she moved out of her shadow and realized what she’s doing to the people around her. She won’t even look at Jacob because he reminds her of Abby, the daughter she lost. And she won’t look at me because I know that she gave Abby up for adoption, and that in all the years between Abby’s birth and her death, my mother never made a single attempt to discover what had happened to her daughter.” Isobel’s voice broke.

  Kevin’s hand remained on Isobel’s shoulder. When he spoke, his voice was tender but firm. “Isobel, I know it can’t be easy for you. When Abby died, you lost something too. But there are many good reasons why your mother didn’t attempt to find the child she put up for adoption. She wasn’t much older than you are now, and she still questions herself about what she did.”

  Isobel closed her eyes and took a deep breath. When she opened them, she looked intently at Kevin. “I understand that, but I’m tired of my mother thinking only about herself. My dad tries to make our family work. So do I, but no matter what we do, it’s not enough.”

  In the way of female friends from time immemorial, Gracie and Taylor offered Isobel the wordless comfort of an embrace. The sense of community that had linked us as we sang together was gone. Once again individuals alone with our private concerns, we carried our coffee cups to the kitchen and said our goodbyes. The party was over.

  —

  The forecast had called for a weekend of wretched weather, and for once the forecast was accurate. On Monday morning, the lowering sky was dull pewter; the wind whipping off the water was stinging, and the air had a sweet, pungent zing. A storm was brewing, and without discussion, Zack, Taylor, and I agreed to head home.

  Leaving Lawyers’ Bay was always a wrench for me, and regardless of the weather, I tried to squeeze in one last moment. Zack’s all-terrain wheelchair was rugged, so that morning we’d walked our mastiff, Pantera, and our bouvier, Esme, to the tip of the western arm of the bay so we could take in the full brunt of the whitecaps hitting the rocks before we returned to the city.

  The four of us were windblown but in high spirits as we wandered back along the shore. The dogs were running ahead of us and when they disappeared into the boathouse shared by the families of Falconer Shreve, we knew we didn’t have to whistle for them. Noah Wainberg was a magnet for kids and canines, and Pantera and Esme had sniffed him out. By the time we entered the boathouse, man and dogs were already roughhousing on the concrete floor of the winter storage area.

  Spotting us, Noah gave the dogs one last nuzzle and stood up. “Perfect timing,” he said. He picked up a large canvas cover and began stretching it over the raft that, until that morning, had been anchored twenty-eight metres from our dock since the May long weekend. “Getting this canvas in place is definitely a three-person job,” he said.

  Zack steered his wheelchair to the side of the raft opposite Noah, and I found a corner. Securing the snug canvas over the raft was not easy. When we finished, Noah raised his arms in triumph. “Done!” he said. “This raft is cleaned, drained, safe from the elements, and ready for next year.”

  My gaze drifted to the grey and choppy waters. Noah had attached a yellow vinyl boat bumper to the raft’s anchor line, and it bobbed in the spot where the raft had been moored. Come spring, the floating bumper would make finding the anchor point a simple matter. As he always did, Noah was planning ahead.

  The rain had started. Zack took one look outside and turned his chair towards the boathouse door. “Noah, if you’re sure you don’t need a hand with anything else, we’d better make tracks. Rain always makes the path back to the cottage slick as greased owl shit.”

  “Go for it,” Noah said. “I’m almost through here. We’re going back to the city early too.”

  Zack was wheeling towards the door, but he stopped. “How are Dee and the kids today?”

  “Dee spent all night preparing for her trial in Saskatoon, and Isobel and Jacob made pancakes this morning.”

  “So life goes on,” Zack said.

  “Ob-la-di, Ob-la-da,” Noah said, and he gave us a quick wave as we left the boathouse.

  As Zack and I climbed towards the cottage, the deteriorating condition of the path demanded our full attention. After Zack gave the hand-rims attached to his wheels a final hard push and we were finally on solid ground, we both heaved a sigh of relief. I glanced back at the lake. Noah had brought a canoe dockside, and as I watched he stepped in and began paddling towards the yellow bumper, checking to make sure the anchor line’s knot had been firmly tied.

  I adjusted the hood of Zack’s windbreaker to protect
his face against the rain. “Noah doesn’t leave anything to chance, does he?” I said.

  “He’s the best,” Zack agreed. “He keeps Lawyers’ Bay running like a Rolex. And he plays an essential role at Falconer Shreve. All law firms have business that needs to be kept under wraps – evidence that can’t fall into the wrong hands; clients that need seclusion; confidential meetings – that kind of stuff. Noah takes care of all that and more. He doesn’t ask questions, and he knows the law.”

  “I always forget that Noah’s a lawyer.”

  “Well, he isn’t really,” Zack said. “He graduated the same year we all did, but he never did his articling year, and he never practised law.”

  “Do you think he regrets his decision?”

  “He and I have talked about it a couple of times. Noah’s grateful for the life he’s been given.” Zack’s eyes took in the five handsome cottages that overlooked Lawyers’ Bay. “Not many people in our small world can say that.”

  The screened porch of Kevin Hynd’s cottage faced the path to the beach and I saw that, as always after a weekend together, the families had gathered to say goodbye. When Taylor spotted us, she opened the door and hustled the dogs and Zack and me onto the porch of the cottage where she, her brother Angus, and I had spent our first season at Lawyers’ Bay.

  It was a summer that had changed all our lives. I’d known Kevin for over ten years. He and my friend Jill Oziowy had dated, but her job was in Toronto, and their long-distance relationship was short-lived. After he and Jill parted ways, Kevin remained friendly with my kids and me. When he decided to spend a summer travelling, he asked if my family would be interested in renting his cottage for a loonie. He didn’t have to ask twice.

  The history of Lawyers’ Bay was bittersweet. Kevin’s parents had planned on a large family, and his father, Russell, a lawyer, had purchased the half moon of beachfront property around the bay, dreaming that his children would some day build cottages of their own there. The locals, tickled pink with the fact that the big-city lawyer was a regular guy who spent Saturday mornings with them chewing the fat on the stoop of The Point Store, christened his new property “Lawyers’ Bay.”