Saturday was a beautiful day. The cold air mass had moved out overnight and the temperature in Toronto hovered just above freezing. That’s balmy weather for central Canada in the winter. The sun shone down from a true-blue sky and “Spring” from The Four Seasons poured out of the stereo speakers as I drove north out of the city on the Don Valley Parkway. Maybe it was the sunshine, maybe it was Vivaldi, but my spirits lifted as I left the city behind.
Three hours later, I pulled into Braeloch. The little town on the shore of Serenity Lake was postcard-pretty that morning with a fresh dusting of snow sparkling in the sunlight. Its main street hugged the lake, which was frozen over and dotted with ice-fishing huts. A small public parking lot was tucked behind Main Street’s old brick buildings, and behind that a grid of residential streets climbed the hill behind the town. On top of the hill, two huge granite outcroppings embraced Braeloch like a pair of protective arms.
I cruised down Main Street past a bakery, two banks, a library, Stedman’s Department Store, a couple of eateries, the Dominion Hotel and a police station. I saw that Norris Cassidy, the investment firm I worked for, had a branch in a handsome Victorian house on the corner of Main and Queen, and I recalled reading about that new venture in the company’s newsletter. Morrison’s Funeral Home was in an even grander old home across the street. I smiled, thinking that Braeloch’s main street was a one-stop-shopping mecca.
I found Prince Avenue midway up the hill and pulled up in front of a tidy white-frame house with a veranda wrapped around it. Snow was piled on the front lawn, but I envisioned well-tended flowerbeds in the summer.
A woman with frosted blond hair opened the door as I walked up the front steps. Veronica Collins looked like the late Princess Diana grown into middle age, but she wasn’t smiling.
I held out a hand. “I’m Pat Tierney, Tracy’s mom.”
“Do you know where my daughter is?”
I shook my head. “Tracy hasn’t heard from Jamie since Thursday morning.”
She moved back so I could enter the house. “I call her Jenny,” she said. “Short for Jennifer.”
I felt tension emanating from her as she watched me take off my parka and boots. She put the parka on a bench by the door, and I followed her through the house.
It was bigger than it looked from the outside. An addition had been built onto the back, and the entire place was decorated in shades of white. Even the rugs were white, I noted as I followed Veronica into the gleaming white kitchen.
“Tea?” she asked.
“Thanks.” I took a chair at the table. She set down two white cups and saucers, and smiled for the first time. “I haven’t met Tracy,” she said, “but she sounded like a nice girl on the phone.”
I gave her a tight smile.
“I see you’re not comfortable with it yet,” she said. “Jenny told me twelve years ago so I’ve had plenty of time to adjust. Jen’s thirty-two now, old enough to live her own life.”
“Tracy only told me a few weeks ago.”
She gave me a wry smile. “You’ll live with it.”
I noticed then that she was perfectly put together, from her pale pink twin set down to the pearl polish on her fingernails. Perfectly put together, just like her home.
She joined me at the table with a teapot and poured the tea. “The police came by last night. They found your daughter’s car in the public lot, and they said a woman with red hair was seen at Lyle’s place on Thursday afternoon. Several hours before the fire.”
“Where is the house?”
“About three miles east of town on Highway 123.” She examined her pearl fingernails. “It doesn’t look good for Jenny. Lyle…”
“Tracy told me.”
“Yes.” She paused for a few moments. “It was ten years ago last summer, Carly had just turned seventeen. She was driving home from her weekend job at the garden center. She was making the turn onto 123 when Lyle hit her. The police said she died instantly.” Her voice broke.
I gave her a few moments to compose herself. “You just had the two girls?” I asked.
“Just the two of them.” She tried to smile. “You see why I don’t care about Jenny’s lifestyle. What’s important is that I still have her.”
“Yes.”
“We lived out at the lake in those days. I sold the place five years ago after Herb died.” She looked around her. “Decided to make a fresh start here.”
I sipped more tea and waited for her to continue.
“Lyle had been drinking that night, but he was never charged.”
“Never charged? But—”
She took a deep breath. “He was hurt in the crash. Some cracked ribs and a concussion, and he was taken to hospital. In his condition, he couldn’t take a Breathalyzer, and they never gave him a blood test. The upshot was they couldn’t prove his blood alcohol content was above .08%.” Her face crumpled.
“Good God!”
She nodded. “Only a fraction of impaired drivers who kill or injure people are ever charged, never mind convicted.”
“Why didn’t they do a blood test?”
She held out her hands, palms up. “Forgot? Didn’t get around to it in time? Or maybe because he was a prominent business owner in the area.”
“There was no closure for you.”
She toyed with her spoon. “For months, I just went through the motions. I made meals, I did laundry. I thought of Carly getting into her car, driving to the intersection…”
After a few moments, she continued. “My Herb was one of those men who says little but feels things real deep. When Carly died, he held it all inside.”
“And Jamie?”
“She was always feisty. She fought back, tried to get Lyle charged. But, as I said, there was no legal evidence against him.”
She gave me a weak smile. “When she got nowhere with that, she lashed out—not that I approve of what she did. She strung up signs with the word ‘Killer’ painted in red on Lyle’s front gate. She’s got plenty of spirit, my Jenny.”
Two years earlier, a Jennifer Collins had led the legal team that secured a landmark judgment on behalf of an elderly widow. The court ordered a financial advisor at a prominent Bay Street securities firm to pay the woman more than a million dollars for shrinking her assets by putting them into high-risk investments.
“Your daughter was the young lawyer who got money back for Betsy Cornell, wasn’t she?” I had been impressed. The thirty-five-day trial in Toronto Superior Court brought the issue of investment fraud, especially fraud against small investors, to widespread public attention. Unless their investment firms carry expensive liability insurance, fraud victims usually suffer in silence or settle out of court for pennies on the dollar, with the deals sealed by nondisclosure clauses. Cases of bargaining rather than justice.
Veronica’s face lit up with a smile. “That was my Jenny. She’s got a passion for justice.”
The more I learned about Jamie, the more I liked her.
“What happened with the signs she hung on Lyle’s gate?” I asked.
“He threatened to sue her for libel, and the police spoke to her. But nothing came of it. You see, everyone around here, including the police officers, knew Carly. She was a sweetheart. And the way she died…well, it could’ve happened to their daughters or sisters.”
Still, the police probably had a record of what Jamie did, even though they hadn’t charged her.
Veronica was thinking the same thing. “But when Lyle is killed, who’s the first person the cops look at?”
“Jamie was here in Braeloch on Thursday,” I said.
“You know that for a fact?”
“She took Tracy’s car.”
Her shoulders slumped. “She didn’t drop by here.”
“Do you have any idea where she could be? With a friend?”
She shook her head. “She stopped seeing her friends here when she went off to university.”
“She got a letter from Lyle on Tuesday. He asked her for help.”
Veronica looked surprised. “Lyle sent Jenny a letter? The police didn’t tell me that.”
“Tracy doesn’t know what kind of help Lyle wanted, only that the letter upset Jamie. She’d destroyed it by the time Tracy got home. But she may have had a change of heart. She called Tracy at work the next day and asked to take the car.”
“Did Jenny tell her she was coming up here?”
“No. But as the police told you, her car was found here in town. And a red-haired woman was seen at Lyle’s that afternoon.”
Veronica gave a small sigh. “She’s been coloring her hair that shade for years, ever since she started calling herself Jamie.”
“Her red hair would have been a beacon against the snow,” I said.
“So she was at Lyle’s that afternoon. So what? The fire broke out hours later.”
But she looked defeated, and my heart went out to her. She had lost one daughter in a terrible accident. And now her other girl was in serious trouble.
“Would anyone have a grudge against Lyle?” I asked.
“I don’t know about a grudge, but he rubbed a lot of people the wrong way. He was a cantankerous old man.”
“He was a heavy drinker?”
“He was known to be, but they say he never touched a drop after…” She gave a bitter laugh. “A lot of good that did my Carly.”