The Unlocking Season Read online

  The Unlocking Season

  A Joanne Kilbourne Mystery

  Gail Bowen

  Contents

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Dedication

  For Jack David, for having faith in the Joanne Kilbourn series and in me.

  And Nathaniel Bowen, for making it possible for his Dad and me to continue living great lives.

  Chapter One

  On the Saturday morning before Easter, when I opened the front door and saw Georgie Shepherd on our porch, I felt a twinge of unease. Georgie was the executive producer of Sisters and Strangers, a six-part TV series based on the tangled relationships of my family. We had solid scripts for the first two episodes, but we were still struggling to finish the rest. Georgie’s appearance at my house on a holiday weekend did not augur well.

  Our dogs, Esme and Pantera, were sniffing Georgie’s knees, making sure she passed muster before she stepped over the threshold. Luckily, it appeared that Georgie was a dog lover. “You have a bullmastiff and a Bouvier,” she said. “They’re beauties, but wow, they are big. You must be a fan of the giant breeds.”

  “We are, but Pantera and Esme chose us. Our son, Peter, is a vet. Pantera’s owners brought him to Pete’s clinic to have him neutered and never picked him up. When Pete called them, they told him they bought Pantera because he was cute, and now he was just big. Esme belonged to Pete’s sister-in-law. When she died, Esme needed a home, and we needed a Bouvier.”

  “So happy endings all around,” Georgie said, giving the dogs one last pat. There was an uneasiness in her tone. “Joanne, I apologize for barging in like this. I did try to phone, but my calls went straight to voicemail.”

  “My phone was turned off,” I said. “Zack and I are dyeing eggs with our grandchildren.”

  The sulphur scent of boiling eggs lingered in the air. Georgie sniffed and grimaced. “I didn’t know anyone still did that.”

  “We’re old school,” I said. “Come in and join the party.”

  “Sign me up for next year,” Georgie said. “There’s a problem we need to talk about.”

  Sisters and Strangers was about Douglas Ellard, the father who raised me, and his lifelong friend, the artist Desmond Love, who was my biological father. Telling their story fully and honestly mattered to me, and I had been working with the writer, Roy Brodnitz, on the script. At sixty, the chance to understand and accept a part of my life that until a year earlier had been shrouded in secrecy was a gift, and the chance to be involved in a process that meant stepping into a new world was seductive, but after a promising start, things fell apart.

  I led Georgie into the living room. “The kitchen windows are open, and I’ve put out dishes of vinegar, so we’ll be able to breathe soon. I’ll let my family know you and I are talking.”

  When I returned, Georgie was sitting in an easy chair by the window that overlooked the creek behind our house. Her scrubbed, blond good looks, fine, precise features and cleanly marked jawline suggested a woman with a sunny, uncomplicated view of life, but Georgie’s grey eyes were knowing, and her lips had a way of curling in private amusement at the vagaries of human behaviour. My grandmother would have said that Georgie Shepherd “was nobody’s fool,” and my grandmother would have been right.

  Our forsythia had just bloomed. The bush’s gold, bell-shaped flowers were a welcome burst of colour in the grey late-winter palette, and Georgie had half turned to gaze at them. “That forsythia is glorious,” she said.

  “A harbinger of spring,” I said. “And a good omen.”

  “Let’s hope,” she said, “because there’s troubling news. You know that Roy flew up north with the production team to scout locations for Sisters and Strangers.”

  “I talked to Roy yesterday,” I said. “They’d just arrived on the island at Emma Lake where Ernest Lindner had his studio. Roy was ecstatic. One hundred and eighteen acres of virgin forest and a log cabin constructed in 1935 — exactly what they need for the outdoor shots.”

  Georgie winced, and when I saw the pain in her eyes, I sank into the chair across from hers. “Something’s happened,” I said.

  She nodded. “Everything was fine. The production team rented vans in Saskatoon, drove to Emma Lake and hired boats to carry them and their gear out to the island. They had a shore lunch and then split up to explore the terrain. It was a gorgeous day, and at five o’clock, the team met back at the boat dock as planned.”

  “But Roy wasn’t there?” I said. My pulse was racing. Our family had known Roy for less than a year, but he had been a good friend to us.

  Georgie’s gaze shifted back to the forsythia and stayed there, as if she wanted to hide among the blossoms. “Everyone assumed he’d lost track of the time, but when he wasn’t there by half past five, they separated and started scouring the island. This time of year, the sun sets around seven thirty that far north. The crew knew they’d never find Roy in the dark, so they called the police in Prince Albert. It was close to ten before Ainsley and Kyle Daly, the production designer, spotted Roy. He was alive, but in Ainsley’s words, he was in ‘a state of mortal terror.’”

  The image of the Roy Brodnitz I knew flashed through my mind. He was an elegant and fastidious man. At the beginning of his career, Roy had been a dancer, and after twenty years of sedentary life as a writer, he still moved with a dancer’s grace. “I can’t believe any of this,” I said. “When I spoke to Roy yesterday, he was fine — better than fine. He sounded like his old self.”

  Georgie shook her head. “According to Ainsley, when she finally found Roy, he didn’t recognize her.”

  “How could that be?” I said. “The two of them have been inseparable since they were fourteen.”

  “Ainsley said Roy was drenched in sweat; his clothes were filthy, and his fingernails looked as if he’d been clawing at the ground. He was muttering gibberish. He seemed desperate to make the others understand, but before they could make sense of what he was saying, he started gasping for breath and collapsed. Apparently, he suffered a massive heart attack.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “Nick Kovacs and one of the police officers carried him out of the woods to a clearing where a helicopter could land and take him to a hospital in Saskatoon.”

  “What do they think caused the heart attack?”

  “They don’t know,” Georgie said. “The doctors are waiting for more test results. When I raised the possibility that Roy might have been using cocaine again, Ainsley ripped my head off.”

  “Roy’s been clean for over four years,” I said. “I know that after his husband, Lev-Aaron, died, Roy hit bottom, but he made it through and went on to have the greatest success of his career.”

  She nodded. “The Happiest Girl.”

  “It’s still playing to packed houses on Broadway, and everyon
e who worked on the film adaptation says Roy’s script is brilliant. He’d have no reason to use again.”

  “Are you certain of that?” Georgie said, and her tone was measured. “I’ve barely seen Roy since I arrived in Regina. When Ainsley asked me to take over as executive producer of Sisters and Strangers after Gabe died, I had to hit the ground running. Roy and I haven’t even had a cup of coffee together — his choice, not mine, and believe me, I gave him plenty of openings.”

  “Why would Roy need an opening to have coffee with you?” I said. “I thought the friendship among the three of you went way back.”

  “It does.” Georgie’s eyes met mine. Her gaze was penetrating. “You’re a hard person to deceive, Joanne, so I’m going to lay it all out for you. After Gabe’s death, Ainsley believed that she and Fawn could cope without bringing anyone else in. Gabe had made all the decisions about cast and crew, and as director, Ainsley had been part of all those decisions. Fawn had years of experience managing productions day-to-day. With one exception, it was in great shape for pre-production.”

  “And that exception was the script,” I said. “When Roy and I agreed to what we referred to loosely as a collaboration, we were both so excited that the first two episodes seemed to write themselves.”

  Georgie nodded. “That’s the way the scripts read. That opening with Sally and Joanne at fourteen, together on the raft is a flawless introduction to their idyllic summer.”

  “It was idyllic,” I said. “One of the many perfect summers we shared growing up — all of them filled with blue skies and the fishy-weedy smell of the lake and Sally and me lying side by side on the raft with the sun pressing down on our backs like a hand. We thought it would always be that way.”

  “But it ended,” Georgie said gently. “The scene where Joanne goes to the Loves’ cottage and discovers the family in the dining room — Des dead, Nina apparently near death and Sally lying face down in her own vomit — is heart-wrenching.” Georgie reached out and squeezed my hand. “And you survived it.”

  “Barely,” I said. “When I stood on the dock that night and watched my father drive the boat carrying Des’s body and Nina and Sally across the water to the mainland, my world shattered. And it got worse. My father was a physician. He was also Des’s oldest friend, and he told me he believed that after Des suffered the stroke that paralyzed his right side and ended his career, he must have felt he had no reason to live. He killed himself, and he attempted to take Nina and Sally with him by poisoning their drinks. Sally carried that assumption with her till the day she died. Months after her death, I discovered the truth — that it was Nina, unwilling to face a future with an invalid husband and a daughter she hated, who had poisoned the drinks. By then, of course, it was too late for Sally and too late for Des.” I took a deep breath. “Working on Sisters and Strangers gave me a chance to right the terrible wrong that was done that night.”

  Georgie’s voice was strong. “And you can still right that wrong. That’s why I came over here today. No matter what state he’s in, you’re the only one who can give Roy what he needs to finish Sisters and Strangers.”

  “But I don’t know what he needs. I’ve tried everything I can think of to bring Roy back to the way he felt when he wrote the first two episodes. Nothing I do works.”

  She turned to me. “What happened, Joanne?”

  “I honestly don’t know,” I said. “But I do remember the exact moment when everything changed between Roy and me. It was not long after Gabe Vickers died. We had all just learned that Gabe was a sexual deviant who knew how to get what he wanted from innocent young women. Ainsley had a brilliant future as a director, but as long as Gabe was in the picture, that future was clouded. Roy was open about his relief that Gabe was out of her life.”

  “Roy’s emotions were always close to the surface,” Georgie said. “And sometimes that was problematic.”

  “His response to Gabe’s death was definitely one of those times. When Gabe fell from the balcony of the penthouse he and Ainsley sublet, he’d been drinking heavily, and the assumption was that the fall was accidental. Of course, the police can’t operate on assumptions, and as part of their investigation, they were looking into Gabe’s relationships with those who had something to gain from his death. On more than one occasion, I’d heard Roy say that Gabe’s death diminished no one because Gabe was a man without a conscience. His lack of discretion worried me, and I advised Roy to watch what he said. My intent was simply to caution him, but Roy concluded that I was pointing the finger at Ainsley, and he exploded. He told me that he and Ainsley had been together every second of every minute of every hour the night Gabe died, and then he tore out of my house and slammed the door behind him.

  “That was before Christmas, and I didn’t speak to Roy again until early in the New Year. By then, the police had discovered that Ainsley had gone to the penthouse she and Gabe shared and although they’d quarrelled, she had played no part in his death. Once it was clear Ainsley was innocent, I waited for Roy to get in touch so we could resume work . . .”

  “But he didn’t,” Georgie guessed.

  I nodded. “And at the end of the first week in January, I called and suggested that we meet in our old workplace, the writers’ room at the production studios, the following Monday morning.”

  “And he agreed?”

  “It was an offer he couldn’t refuse,” I said. “Roy’s contract for The Happiest Girl gave Gabe the right of first refusal on Roy’s next project. On December 1 I told Roy the story behind Flying Blue Horses, a painting Sally made when she was twelve. As soon as Roy heard the story, he knew he had the seed that would grow into the script that ultimately became Sisters and Strangers. He pitched the idea to Gabe Vickers, and he was keen to option the project. Zack drew up the option agreement and Gabe signed. The entire process took less than a week.”

  “I’ve seen that option agreement,” Georgie said. “It’s watertight. It gives you the whip hand. As owner of the material the series will be based on, if you’re dissatisfied with the direction in which the project is developing, and you and the executive producer of Sisters and Strangers can’t reach agreement, the option will be declared null and void.” Georgie was clearly incredulous. “I still can’t believe Gabe signed that agreement.”

  “Gabe needed to move quickly,” I said. “The actors he wanted, Vale Frazier and Rosamond Burke from The Happiest Girl, were both available the following June; Ainsley was keen to direct; Roy was eager to write the script; the Saskatchewan Production Studios were available; and Gabe could hire the crew he was using for The Happiest Girl. All the stars were aligned. At that point, no one, least of all me, saw any reason why I would be dissatisfied with the direction the production would take.”

  Georgie took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “Man plans, and God laughs.”

  “So it seems,” I said. “Anyway, Roy had no choice but to show up on Monday morning. He didn’t even sit for our meeting. He came through the door and announced that we were changing our approach. He said he would write outlines for the remaining episodes and we would ‘flesh them out’ with dialogue later, and then he left.”

  “And you accepted that?”

  “I did. Roy had been our friend. I knew he was fragile emotionally, and I thought he needed time to work out whatever was troubling him. Anyway, I waited a full month.”

  Georgie’s eyes widened. “A full month? My God, Joanne. Friendship does have limits.”

  “You’re right, of course, but I kept hoping. Anyway, yet again, there was no real meeting. Roy came into the writers’ room the day after I called him, handed me the binder containing the outlines and left. When I opened the binder, I felt as if I’d been kicked in the stomach.”

  “I can imagine,” Georgie said. “I’ve seen the outlines. There’s nothing there — just numbered scenes with a list of the characters and locations needed for each scene.”
/>   “Ainsley was in the Living Skies offices, and I took the binder to her. She took one look at it, suggested it might be best if Roy and I worked separately for a while, and promised to take care of the problem.”

  “That must have been the day she called me,” Georgie said. “In theory, I was hired as executive producer to work with Fawn Tootoosis on pre-production, but my real job was to be the safety net.”

  “The writer who could take over if Roy shut down completely.” My heart sank. “This is all so sad.”

  Georgie nodded. “And to add to the sadness, Roy hasn’t been fooled by the subterfuge. He knows why Ainsley brought me in, and the truth is killing him.”

  “So where do we go from here?”

  Georgie ran her fingers through her smart shag haircut. “I honestly don’t know. You said Roy was his old self when he called you yesterday.”

  “It was as if the clouds had cleared,” I said. “Roy sounded carefree again. He used a phrase that was part of a kind of shorthand we shared. I’d had no experience with screenwriting, and it didn’t take long for me to realize that if the characters are people you love, facts can get in the way. The first time Roy altered the facts to give a scene more power, I bristled. He said, ‘This tweak makes the scene truer to life than life itself.’ And he was right.

  “Yesterday, he said the Lindner cabin was perfect for the Ellard family cottage, but the set carpenters would have to build something for the Loves. I hated the idea of adding a fake cottage to that untouched island, and when I didn’t respond, Roy knew exactly what I was thinking. He asked me how long it had been since I’d seen our cottages on MacLeod Lake. It had been forty-five years. MacLeod Lake was in the centre of Ontario cottage country. I knew that by now there wouldn’t be a square inch of the land that hadn’t been developed. Roy had made his point. I said, ‘Let’s go with truer to life than life itself,’ and we both laughed. It was like old times.”

  Now it was my turn to gaze out the window at the forsythia.