Pierre
The tropical storm broke my leg, got Jeff McCurdy off the hook for criminal charges, and delayed Mrs. Irene Cook’s return home from Newfoundland. I was wishing I had requested permission to fly over to St. John’s to question her. But, enfin, she was home.
I was glad to get away from the detachment. Ever since we posted the reward, we’d been flooded with calls from cranks and kooks and people with nothing to do with their time, and I don’t mean locals. Calls were coming in from all over North America. Couple of heavy breathers, a Yank who offered to bring up a heavily armed vigilante group, a few who said they’d give us the scoop after we forked over the fifty grand, and of course the usual psychics and the inevitable tip-off about a soi-disant Satanic cult. We were still waiting for a call with real information. Of course I wondered, and not for the first time in my career, what kind of a person would have good reason to suspect someone of hurting a child and not call us until there was money in it.
So I was happy to get up on my crutches and go see Mrs. Cook. She lived in a blue-shingled two-storey house on Inverness Road, which intersects with Highland Avenue, where MacLellan Video is located. Dougald and I remembered her son saying she was going deaf, so we raised our volume several decibels and asked her what she knew about the night Bonnie disappeared.
She responded at the same volume. She commiserated with me about my injury and then got on to the subject of Bonnie. “I didn’t hear about what happened until Richard called me after he came back here from Newfoundland. He called and told me. I was floored when I got the news. A dear little girl like that. Bonnie Clan Donnie! Who would want to hurt her? I can’t begin to imagine.”
“Yes, we all feel that way, Mrs. Cook, and that’s why we need any help, any bit of information, people can give us. Do you remember anything about that night?”
“Well, I didn’t see Bonnie. And I didn’t see anyone creeping around out there. I did see a car, but so what? That may not be helpful to you. Why wouldn’t there be a car going up the street?”
“Tell us about the car.”
I knew what the next line was going to be, and it came on cue. “I don’t know much about cars, so what kind it was, I couldn’t tell you. Well, I’d know a Cadillac from a Volkswagen, but . . .”
“No, we understand that. Just do your best.”
“It was old.” We waited. “I don’t mean dirty and banged-up. I mean it was an older model car. Not a Model T or anything, not an antique, but something definitely out of date. And it was a dark colour. I’m thinking now it was brown. It honked the horn or, well, the driver did, and squealed the brakes. I looked out and it was passing by a streetlight, and I caught a fleeting glimpse of it. But I wasn’t paying it any mind, you know, because there was no reason to. At least as far as I knew that night.”
“Was there another car out there, or someone crossing the street? You say the guy blew his horn.”
“I didn’t see anybody else. Could have been a cat or something crossing the road, and the guy honked and tried to avoid it.”
Must have been a reflexive action on the driver’s part, if it was the kidnapper. You wouldn’t want to make a noise when you’re trying to hide a stolen kid in your car. He must have been a nervous wreck after doing that. If it was the guy. But there was no real reason to believe that just because a car was out there that night, near the video shop, it had to be the perp.
I returned my attention to our witness. “Very good.”
“Eh?”
“Very good. So, we have an older model car, brown, here on Inverness Road that night. Any idea of the time?”
“I think it was just before I put my book down. I always go to bed at nine thirty because I can’t keep my eyes open any later than that. Then, most nights, I’m wide awake again at eleven. After all these years, you’d think I’d learn! Anyway, when that happens, I pick up a book and read until I’m sleepy again. That night, I heard the noise and looked out my window. It would have been around twenty to or quarter to twelve. But I have to say again that I see cars on the street all the time, and there may be no significance to it at all.”
“Still. It’s something we can check out.”
“Eh?”
“It’s something we can check out!” I shouted at her. I felt as if I had bells clanging in my head from all this hollering. “What about the size of the car?”
“It was one of those great big ones. My husband used to call them big boats. Before they started making the cars smaller, more compact.”
“An American type of car, would you say?”
“Oh, yes, not a Japanese car. Or a fancy German type. No, it was one of the big American cars. You’d see them all the time a few years ago.”
“Any chance you could draw a picture for us?”
“Oh, I’ve never been able to draw. I was pathetic in school when it came to art class.”
“Me too. But why don’t you give it a try.”
Irene got up and found a pad of paper and a pencil and sat tapping the pencil against her teeth while she contemplated the empty white sheet in front of her. Then she got to work, tentatively at first, and then with more confidence. When she had completed the outline, she shaded the picture in to darken it. The car was long and rectangular, the back and front ends squared off. I realized she had drawn a Ford product, from the 1970s. Specifically, an LTD.
“Oh no,” Irene said as she looked at what she had drawn. “I’ve been wasting your time. Now that I see it in front of me here, I know this isn’t a strange car at all. I’ve seen it around here before.”
So had we. As soon as we had cleared the place, Dougald and I looked at each other. We both knew the car.
If this information proved reliable, little old Mrs. Cook here might just become the recipient of the fifty-thousand-dollar reward. Under the circumstances, I wondered how she’d feel about accepting it.
“It’s impossible,” Dougald said.
“Nothing is impossible when it comes to human behaviour.”
“Yeah, well, we’re going to let human behaviour enjoy a break. We’re going to wait till after the concert.”
Normie
The MacDonald family decided to go ahead and be a part of the big concert at the Savoy Theatre in Glace Bay, and all the people involved in it said it would be dedicated to Bonnie. And because everybody was going to be in town for the big event, we rented rooms in a fancy hotel called the Bayview, where all the aunts and uncles and cousins would go to sleep after the show. Sharon and the rest of them used to think it would be wrong to get up on stage with the other musicians and sing and have a good time with Bonnie missing. It would look as if they didn’t care, as if their life could just go on without her. But it wasn’t that. Sharon said she knew Bonnie was still alive, out there somewhere. And this concert with a whole bunch of Bonnie’s favourite songs would be a message to her. But that didn’t mean it was easy for Clan Donnie to get in the right mood for the show, to get their “game faces” on. I knew because I was there with Mum and Dad and Father Burke, and Sharon and Andy Campbell and Aunt Ginny and the rest of them. And Sharon was crying, and her hands were shaking, and she kept saying, “I can’t do it. I can’t go through with it.” And the others were trying to look brave and talk her into it. They said, “She’ll want you to keep singing, Sharon. This is what she would want.” And Sharon snapped back, “People always say that. ‘This is what she would have wanted.’ They say it about someone who’s dead. As if they knew the person’s wishes. As if the person would want them all to be living it up and not giving them another thought! I hope I never hear that expression again!” And she sank down into her chair and covered her face with her hands. I started crying myself, and I felt guilty for even being there, seeing her like that.
But they talked to her some more. Ian and Robbie said they understood what she meant, but there were good reasons to do the show. The TV cameras were going to be there, and the family had pictures of Bonnie that they were going to show, so if anyone saw her they could phone in. And the music, and all her favourite songs, would be on the radio, on the news, and Bonnie would know, wherever she was, that the concert was for her. So many people bought tickets that the theatre was full and they set up a video screen outside for the overflow crowd. Everyone knew, and Bonnie would, too, that her family was calling out to her, telling her in music how much they loved her. And then Sharon got up and hugged Andy and Mum and Dad and said, “Let’s get out there.”
Andy gave her a big kiss and said, “We’re gonna drive ’er. Let’s go!”
Holy Jeeze! What a great, great concert! Andy acted as the master of ceremonies. He said, “We all know why we’re here. We’re here for a good old Cape Breton racket. Let’s make such a holy commotion that Bonnie will hear us and know we love her. This is our cry to heaven for Bonnie!” And everybody went wild and clapped and shouted “Yesss!” and Andy stepped back and swiped his hand across his eyes and bowed to the audience.
I looked around at all the people and who did I see but Lee sitting with Nancy. Lee was clapping for Andy and giving him a great big smile, even after what happened at Nancy’s house. She saw me looking and made a face. It looked like the kind of face you’d make if you were saying, “I don’t know what to do about this!” I knew what she should do, and I felt like going right over there and saying in her ear, “Break up with him and find somebody who is nice to you all the time, not just some of the time!” But she might think I was being too bossy. And she probably wouldn’t want to tell him off and “cause a scene” on the big night. I could understand that; it would be really hard to stay mad about anything when such wonderful music was being played.
Other fiddlers and singers were on first, and then it was Clan Donnie’s turn. Sharon started out playing the bodhrán, then she sat down and played a gigantic harp. Robbie played the pipes for a couple of pieces, then the accordion, and then the guitar. Andy was on the fiddle and then the piano and the tin whistle. They took turns singing. And every beat of the music was going right through me and down to my feet, and they wouldn’t stay still. People clapped and sang along, and some got up in the aisles and did a step dance. There was an old lady dancing and then a young guy my brother Tommy’s age, and then a girl got up. She had on a really fancy dress with coloured thread woven into it. And she had big dark eyes and long black curly hair that bounced up and down as she danced. Wow, did she ever look cool! It made me want to get up, too, even though I was only in jeans and my curls are short. And red. And I had my glasses on, and I was afraid they would go up and down on my face and I’d look foolish. So I was shy about getting up. But if I could dump my glasses on Mum and jump up really quick . . . Then Mum herself gave me a nudge; she knew what I was thinking. And I said to myself, Go for it! And I got up and whipped off my glasses and dropped them in Mum’s lap, and I danced, and then some other girls and a boy my own age joined in. We all ended up in front of the stage, and the people were cheering for us as much as for the band.
There was great music all through the concert. They did “Cape Breton Lullaby,” which is a beautiful song with a haunting kind of beginning with the pipes, and then Robbie got up as a lone piper and played the piece he wrote, and he told everybody the name of it, “Lament for Bonnie.” After that, there was an announcement that the Rankins, who were away on tour, had phoned the theatre to tell everybody they would be singing for Bonnie at their show that night. And then there was a video played, a recording from a concert last year with the Barra MacNeils. They are really good, so I always want to brag that our MacNeils are related to them. It’s a very distant relation, but still. We watched their video of “My Heart’s in the Highlands” and then Lucy singing “Darling Be Home Soon.” You can imagine how much the crowd loved it.
Then nobody could believe it: Rita MacNeil herself, one of the most famous singers in Cape Breton, someone with her own TV show, appeared as a surprise guest, and my grandfather Alec and the Men of the Deeps were with her, with the lights on their miners’ helmets shining. And they sang Rita’s beautiful song about people coming home to Cape Breton. It’s called “Home I’ll Be.”
And you kept your arms wide open
To let your children know
Wherever there is distance
The heart is always home
You’re as soulful as a choir
You’re as ancient as the hills
I caress you, oh, Cape Breton, in my dreams
And home I’ll be
Home I’ll be
Banish thoughts of leaving
Home I’ll be
Even the men, like Daddy and Father Burke, had tears in their eyes. People stood and clapped forever after that. Then the concert finished with another famous song about how things would get better in Cape Breton, through Cape Breton’s own children. It’s called “Rise Again.” People were all on their feet and stayed standing as if it was the national anthem.
The crowd went crazy when it ended. They whooped and roared and shouted “Yesss!” for ages after the music was over. And you realized why Cape Bretoners, even if they have to leave and go away to work, never want to stay away from their homeland. Who would? I decided right then and there that I would be in a band myself in the summers in Cape Breton. And Bonnie would be in it with me when she came home.
We all gathered together at the back of the theatre because we were going to the Bayview Hotel. The kids were going to have treats in one of the rooms, and the grownups were going to the hotel’s bar to have a drink. Or two or three! So we all got together, ready to leave. When we turned around to go out of the theatre, we saw four Mounties standing at the back. Two were in regular clothes, Pierre and Dougald, and two had uniforms on. They were watching everyone in the crowd as they walked out of the hall.
Monty
It was a magnificent and heart-wrenching evening at the Savoy. There wasn’t a dry eye in the house when it came to its soaring climax. Everyone remotely related to the MacDonalds and the Drummonds was in attendance, even the ex-spouses. Master Campbell was there with her daughter, Nancy, and Nancy’s boyfriend, Lee; you had to give credit to Master after the show. She congratulated Andy on a fine performance and wished him well. Collie MacDonald had the children, Heather and Jockie, with him, and he gave Sharon a quick hug and a kiss when it was over. Everyone agreed to meet at the Bayview Hotel for drinks.
The RCMP were on hand, eyeing everyone as they filed out of the theatre, the room still ringing with Leon Dubinsky’s great Cape Breton anthem “Rise Again.” I thought at the time the police were doing what they do at victims’ funerals: turn up and look for anyone who seems out of place, anyone who behaves oddly. Just in case the old saw is in operation: the “killer” couldn’t stay away. There may have been an element of that in their presence last night. But that was not their primary goal. No, there was someone they wanted to see. I guess they couldn’t bring themselves to grab the person in public and take the shine off the concert.
The morning after the show, I thought I was losing my mind. It was bad enough that I was seriously hungover from the post-concert drinking binge in the bar of the Bayview Hotel. The bar was packed and you could barely get your elbow up to drink. But, as always, we rose to the occasion. Now, on the painful morning after, I got the news. After two decades in the criminal courts, I thought I had seen and heard it all. But of course we’ve never seen and heard it all. There is always going to be something that will blast you into stunned incomprehension. On the morning of August 15, I got word that Ginny MacDonald, grandmother of Bonnie and mother of the Clan Donnie MacDonalds, was being questioned as a suspect in connection with the abduction and disappearance of her granddaughter.
The phone rang that morning at Catherine and Alec’s. I answered it, and I could not make out a word that was being said. There was a faint, tremulous voice, and there was sobbing, and I nearly hung up. Then a man’s voice came on, and it was Dougald MacDougald, the Mountie, telling me he had Ginny at the RCMP detachment in Sydney, and that she had asked for me.
I had had plenty of opportunity to fret over what I would do if one of the men in my wife’s extended family got charged in connection with the missing child. If I thought the guy had had anything remotely to do with it, if I suspected he had hurt Bonnie in any way, I would not have given him two minutes of my time. Unless I got him in a dark alley. But Ginny? The child’s grandmother? Iconic figure on the island of Cape Breton, mother of the band? The loving matriarch for whom many a fiddle tune and pibroch had been written by her talented children over the years? Could I turn down Ginny MacDonald? Did I think she was guilty of abducting or harming her grandchild? The answer was no.
What in the hell was going on? First, suspicion fell on Collie and on Andy. There was Collie’s resentment and drinking, and the night out on the land with Bonnie on the ground. There was the suggestive note about Andy found in the little friend’s knapsack. There was a young fellow named Jeff McCurdy, whom Bonnie had been meeting, apparently secretly. This Jeff had broken into Collie’s house. Bonnie’s house, when she stayed with her father. Now the Mounties thought there was evidence of some kind against Ginny. Were bits of evidence popping up like jack-in-the-boxes, each time pointing in a different direction? The Mounties were not stupid; they were not incompetent. So what accounted for them being all over the place in terms of who their suspects were? Of course it often worked like that. As the investigation went on, more and more information came to light, and it often shifted the focus from one suspect to another. But in this case . . . I am not given to flights of fancy or fits of paranoia, not a ready subscriber to conspiracy theories. But there was something about this case, something that almost made me think it was being orchestrated behind the scenes. That there was an operating mind out there, directing events and manipulating the players from an unseen control centre. Directing suspicion at one person, then lifting his hand and pointing at another. Yeah right. Old Monty had better get a grip before he lost it completely and started insisting to the police that his new client was the victim of an evil genius hiding behind a curtain at the back of the stage. I shook off the feeling.
When Dougald told me about the interview, I answered without hesitation that I would be representing Ginny, that they were not to question her, and that I would be at the detachment in half an hour.
That’s when he broke the news. She had already been questioned, had already given a statement. And it had all been above board. The Mounties had read Ginny her Charter rights, told her she did not have to say anything, that anything she said could be used in evidence, and that she had the right to call a lawyer without delay. She said she understood, she was innocent, and they could ask her anything they liked. That gave me hope, though I’ve been around the block enough times that it should have been the death knell of hope. But, the way I wanted to see things, it spoke to me of innocence. A bad move to be sure, a bad move to tell the police anything. Because, as I had told every other client I had ever represented, you never know what information the police have, which, coupled with something you tell them, however innocuous it may seem, can complete the picture of guilt and seal your fate. Anyway, the die was cast. She had spoken. I got into my car and headed straight to Sydney to see her.
She was distraught when I arrived, so much so that I could not get any information from her. Instead, I was treated to what had already been done. I sat down to watch the video of Ginny MacDonald’s statement to the police. They had her in an interview room containing nothing but a table and two chairs. Sergeant Pierre Maguire, his left leg in a cast, sat across the table from his suspect. She stared at him, unblinking. Maguire read her her rights and asked if she understood them. She did. Did she want to take advantage of her right to call a lawyer? Would she like to get in touch with Legal Aid? To my mind, Maguire was practically begging her to get a lawyer. But she gave him a firm no. “I’ve done nothing wrong, and I will answer your questions. Then, I hope, this misunderstanding will be cleared up, and I can go home.”
So the interrogation began. “As you know, Ginny, we’ve been doing our best to trace Bonnie’s movements on the night she disappeared.”
“Of course.”
“And we have received some new information recently.”
She looked up at him with what appeared to be genuine relief. “Have you found her?”
He didn’t answer that but said, “We won’t get into any information right now. We just have some questions for you.”
“All right.”
“Now, you were at the party that was held at Red Archie Drummond’s and Mary Reid’s houses?”
“I was there.”
“At both houses, or did you stay in one place?”
“I only went to Mary’s. Didn’t feel like traipsing back and forth. And I knew if I stayed in one place, the party would come to me because everybody else was moving from one to the other and back again.”
“How late did the party go on?”
“Well, late, I guess. I didn’t stay the whole time.”
“Oh? What time did you leave?”
“It would have been around eleven thirty, I suppose.”
“So where did you go then?”
“I just went home.”
“And how did you get home?”
“I walked. I like to walk as much as possible.”
“That’s how you keep yourself so fit, Ginny!” He smiled at her. Trying to put her at ease? Or lull her into a false sense of security?
“I’d like to think so.”
“How tall are you, Ginny, do you have a rough idea?”
“Why do you want to know that? You can see me for yourself!”
“Five nine, five ten, something like that?”
“That’s right. I’m around five ten.”
“How did you get to the party in the first place? Walked or did somebody drive you?”
“I walked.”
“Now, I imagine you saw Bonnie at the party.”
“Oh, yes. She was at Mary’s, and I talked to her for a while there.”
“Do you recall what she was wearing?”
“Yes! She had a new bright blue sweater, cotton knit, you know, for summer evenings. I had never seen it on her before. It looked lovely with her eyes. Other than that, I think she had on a kilt or a skirt. And she was wearing a nice pair of suede boots. Blue. Like the old song.”
“The Elvis Presley song.”
She blinked and took a moment before replying, then said, “I wouldn’t know. That’s not the kind of music I listen to.”
What was it with Ginny and Elvis Presley? She had reacted strangely to the news about the teddy bear in the Elvis shirt, and now this, a musician pretending she didn’t know that “Blue Suede Shoes” was an Elvis song.
Maguire ignored that and said, “So Bonnie never had the blue sweater on in your company before.”
“No, she had just bought it that day, or the day before. She had gone into Sydney with Andy and had done some shopping.”
“What kind of things do you keep in your car, Ginny?”
“My car?”
“Yeah. What would you typically have in there?”
Ginny looked perplexed and gave a little shrug. “Just . . . I don’t know.”
“You’d carry groceries in it.”
“Certainly.”
“Snow scraper and brush in the winter.”
“Of course.”
“Cleaning rags to wipe off a misty window or something?”
“No, no, I don’t think so. I have a box of Kleenex in it, and some maps. Other than that, I can’t remember. Why are you asking me about the car?”
“Rope?”
“Rope? What do you mean? What kind of rope?”
“Just do you keep any rope in the car for emergencies or any reason?”
Ginny looked wary then. It was about time. She must have caught on, as I had long before, that the Mounties had found something in her car. A piece of rope, presumably. Maybe fibres from a blue sweater. It was possible that they had found nothing and were putting forward these suggestions to make her nervous and prompt a response. But I didn’t think so. The fact that they had brought in a sixty-four-year-old grandmother told me they had something. This didn’t come out of the blue.
As for the rope, she said, “No, I don’t think so.”
“All right,” Maguire said then, “you and Bonnie talked for a while at the party.”
“Then she went over to the other party, at Red Archie’s. Or so I thought.” There was a quiver in her voice as she recalled what we would all hope was the last time she had seen her granddaughter.
“That would have been what time?”
“I don’t know. Well, I left at eleven thirty, so . . .”
“How long before that did you see Bonnie leave?”
She shook her head, and regret was written all over her face. “I don’t remember. I just don’t know.”
Maguire leaned back in his chair, and Ginny seemed to relax a bit in synch with the cop.
Then he sucker-punched her, not literally but with a question nobody could have expected in a million years. The gentleness of the cop’s voice belied the brutal frankness of the question. “How did your little boy die, Ginny?”
What on earth was he doing? I knew she had a baby when she was very young, working in Toronto, and the child had died not long after reaching school age. Ginny had moved back to Cape Breton and eventually started a new life with Stewart MacDonald. But she never got over the death of her firstborn child. Who would?
Ginny MacDonald always looked good. Fit, athletic almost. Stylishly dressed, younger than her years. Now she stared with horror at Pierre Maguire, and she seemed to age before my eyes. I wanted to fly into the interview room and clap my hand over her mouth, but of course it was too late. The statement was in the past.
Maguire prompted her. “Mrs. MacDonald?”
Her voice was almost a croak. “He had pneumonia.”
“I know this is going back forty years, Ginny . . .”
“Not quite that long. It was in . . .”
“It was in?” he prompted her.
“Um, 1956.”
“Right. Of course. Can you recall when exactly Lyle first showed signs of pneumonia?”
I had never heard anything the least bit questionable about the little boy’s death in Toronto. What in the name of God were the Mounties up to? I concluded that they must be trying to throw her off balance, so she might blurt out something she might not say if she were under control. Something they hoped she might say about Bonnie. But whether it was about Bonnie or that long-ago death of a child, I prayed that she would be cautious. If she said anything wrong, and the police could contradict her, her credibility would be shot. Maybe that was the object of the exercise here.
“When did he come down with pneumonia?”
She was too flustered to give him an answer beyond, “I don’t know. It’s all . . . I can’t remember the dates . . .”
“Who filled out the death certificate?”
She was ready for that. “Father Bertoni!”
“A priest.”
“That’s right. My parish priest up there.”
“But the government in Ontario, the records —”
“I don’t know anything about that. Father Bertoni took care of everything for me.”
“Was Lyle admitted to the hospital?”
Her eyes flew from her interrogator’s face to the far side of the room, and she didn’t reply. It was a fatal hesitation. If a child had been diagnosed with pneumonia, surely he had been in a hospital.
Then, in an attempt to recover, she said, “I had the doctor come.”
“To your home?”
“Yes.”
“What was the doctor’s name?”
“I don’t remember! It was nearly forty years ago.” But she had had the priest’s name on the tip of her tongue. “I was beside myself with worry! My child was dying before my very eyes! Why are you doing this to me?”
“I know this must be terribly painful for you, Ginny. At any time. But particularly with . . . whatever has happened with Bonnie.”
“That’s right. So why aren’t you out there looking for her? Instead of keeping me in here and asking horrible questions and pretending you think I had something to do with Bonnie’s disappearance!”
“I imagine you kept a copy of the death certificate?”
“I hardly needed a piece of paper to remind me that my son had died!”
Good answer.
The Mountie said nothing. Eventually, Ginny filled the silence. “But I probably do have it amongst my things, somewhere.”
“Perhaps you’ll tell us where we can find it?”
Ginny bent forward in her chair. “Why are you here, tormenting me about the death of my child? Have you nothing better to do? Such as get out there and find my granddaughter?”
“We’re doing everything we can to find Bonnie. I can assure you of that.”
Maguire lapsed into silence for a few long moments, then asked, “Where is your son buried, Ginny?”
“A ’Mhac an Diabhail!” I asked around later and found out that means “O son of the devil!”
Her interrogator looked at her placidly with his light blue eyes. He had all the time in the world. The woman was trembling. Her words bespoke innocence, but her body language said something else. She finally struggled out of her chair, and Maguire rose with her. She jabbed a finger in his direction.
“Leave me!”
“If you could find that death certificate, Ginny, that would be most helpful.”
“Helpful for whom? Not for me, having to relive the most painful time of my life. And with wee Bonnie missing . . .” Her voice trailed off, and she sank back into the chair. She turned her face away from Maguire, who said for the record that the interview was being suspended at eleven fourteen a.m.
Dougald MacDougald took me to a room where I would be joined by Ginny. I stood and waited for them to bring her in. She ran into my arms and stood sobbing. Dougald didn’t order us to have no contact; he simply left us as we were and closed the door. Then I eased her down into the chair and took the seat opposite. She took a deep shuddering breath and looked at me.
“What the hell am I doing in here, Monty?”
“Ginny, I am here to help you, to get you out of this.” Then I couldn’t stop myself. “From here on in, you say nothing to the Mounties or to anyone . . .”
“I don’t see why I need any help. Why are they here interrogating an innocent woman about the loss of her child four decades ago?”
“The child’s father, Ginny, was he with you back then —”
“He had no father, as far as I’m concerned.”
“How long were you with him? Was he involved at all with the boy, or . . . ?”
“His involvement ended the day I announced the pregnancy.”
“Same old story, eh?”
“Exactly.”
“Well, if you have the death certificate, that might get the Mounties off the subject of your son’s death all those years ago.”
“I’ve got the damainte death paper, and they’re welcome to it!”
“Good. We’ll take care of that when we get you home.”
“Are they finished with me? Will they leave me alone now?”
As traumatic as all this was for her, she still had no idea how much trouble she was in.
“They aren’t finished with you, no.”
“A Dhia cuidich sinn! I just assumed that once I told them they had made a mistake, they’d let me go.”
“They don’t know that.”
“Don’t know what?”
“That you are innocent. They obviously think there is something that ties you to Bonnie’s disappearance.”
“God help us!” she prayed again, this time in English. “What can they possibly be thinking? You don’t think it, do you, Monty?”
I couldn’t imagine her hurting her grandchild. But, then again, I’d never heard anything that raised suspicions about the death of her son. Whatever the case, I was not about to walk out on her and let her down. “I’m sure you’ve done nothing wrong, Ginny. But you know what my job is. I defend people whether they’ve done it or not.”
“Well, I had nothing to do with whatever happened to Bonnie! I have no idea where she is. If I did, I’d have brought her home safe and sound.”
I nodded and hoped to God she was being straight with me.
“What can you tell me about the night Bonnie disappeared?”
She told me the same thing she had told the Mountie. She had walked to the party, she had seen Bonnie at one house and assumed that Bonnie had left for the other house, and then she, Ginny, had walked home at around eleven thirty. End of story.
“Ginny, as painful as it is for me to leave you here right now, I’m going to go and try to find out what brought this on. I’ll see what their story is.”
“They don’t have a story. I did nothing wrong.”
I went out then and had a word with MacDougald and Maguire, asked them what led them to Ginny MacDonald. They were upfront with me, or so I believed.
Maguire did the talking. “We have a witness who saw her car on a street just around the corner from the video shop where Bonnie was captured on CCTV. The camera recorded Bonnie walking by on the street with a man — a man or a tall woman — at thirty-eight minutes after eleven. Very shortly after that, our witness saw a car matching Ginny’s. Not too many seventies-era Ford LTDs in town.”
“Doesn’t mean Bonnie was in it, or Ginny was driving.”
“She didn’t say anything to us about it being stolen. And she told us back in July that she was on foot that night.”
I kept my next thought to myself, that maybe Ginny lets other people drive the car. Family members. “All right,” I said, “and?”
“And we found bright blue cotton fibres in the front seat and fibres from a rope made of hemp, and there’s a bit of blood visible on the rope fibres.” I tried to maintain a poker face while listening to this. “We don’t have the lab reports on the blood yet, but when you combine that with the blue fibres and Ginny’s statement that she had never seen the sweater on Bonnie until the party, we can conclude that the fibres were not in the vehicle until that night.”
I drove Ginny to her house and told her I’d leave her to relax a bit before I came back and talked to her again. She thanked me and said there was no need to wait. So we went in together. She headed upstairs and came back a few minutes later, changed and refreshed. Her next destination was the kitchen, where she got busy with the teapot. When the tea was brewed, she brought two cups into the sitting room, and we sat and sipped.
“Ginny, as you must have gathered, the Mounties say they found something in your car.”
“How could they have? What was it? What was all that about a rope?”
“They found fibres of a rope.” I decided to leave out the blood for the time being. “And blue cotton fibres as well.”
Ginny looked as if she were about to faint. Her hand holding the teacup was shaking so badly she had to put the cup on the table beside her chair.
I waited to see what she would say, and she finally responded. “There was never any rope in my car.”
This was another of those instances when an admission would have been better. Sure, I’ve had rope in the car from time to time to hold things together. Nothing new about that.
“Could Bonnie have been in your car that night?”
“No! I didn’t have the car with me.”
“Do other people borrow the car?”
“Sometimes, but not very often. Not that night.”
“Did you go to sleep right after the party?”
“Yes, I was tired.”
“Where do you keep your car keys?”
“In an old dish full of keys and other things on the cedar chest when you come in.” She pointed to the entranceway to the house.
“Who tends to borrow your car on those rare occasions?”
“Well, the girls don’t like it. Sharon and Kirsty. They keep telling me to get rid of it and get something smaller and newer. So they never use it. Robbie calls it the HMCS Destroyer; he wouldn’t be seen in it to save his life. Collie used to borrow it once in a while, when, you know, he was with Sharon. He likes old cars.”
“Has he used it lately? Or any time shortly before Bonnie’s disappearance?”
“I don’t remember. I don’t know. I can’t think straight. This is unbelievable. I haven’t really got my mind around what happened to Bonnie, and now they think I had something to do with it!”
“I know, and I’m sorry I have to add to the pain for you, Ginny. But I have to ask these questions in order to help you.” And prepare you for what is to come. “Now, about your son in Ontario.” Her hands were trembling again, and she clasped them together in her lap. “You told the police about a death certificate.”
“Yes.” She heaved herself up and left the room. I heard some shuffling and banging, a drawer being closed, and then she was back. She handed me an old stained envelope with no writing on it. Inside was a piece of paper, yellowish-brown with age. “Certificate of Death” was in elaborate script at the top of the form. Other information was typed in, including Our Lady of Sorrows Church, Etobicoke, and the name of the priest, Father A. Bertoni. The details were written in by hand: the name of the deceased, Lyle James Drummond (Drummond was Ginny’s maiden name); cause of death, pneumonia; date of death, March 27, 1956; age, seven years; burial, March 30. It was signed by Father Bertoni.
“Is Lyle buried in the churchyard?”
She shook her head. Why not, I wondered, then remembered that those times were not kind to the children of unmarried mothers. “Illegitimate” children, as they were considered to be. But surely they were not denied a Christian burial. I would have to look into it, ask Brennan.
Ginny spoke up then. “I buried him, Father Bertoni and I did, on the grounds of the house I was renting in Etobicoke. God only knows what became of that place with Toronto sprawling all over the surrounding areas.”
“Why would you bury him there, Ginny?”
“I . . . I wanted him close to me.”
Ginny had tried to make a plausible narrative of her son’s illness, death, and burial. But I would never be able to forget how she looked while being questioned by Sergeant Maguire. What was the real story about Lyle Drummond’s death? Was there a death certificate registered with the Province of Ontario, or just this one with the name of her parish church typed in? And what had prompted the Mounties to look into it now?
And, I asked myself as I pulled out of Ginny MacDonald’s driveway with one last look at her house, why was there a teddy bear dressed in a T-shirt showing Elvis Presley with Ed Sullivan in the background in a bootlegger’s cellar on the outskirts of Kinlochiel? Elvis’s first appearances on the Sullivan show were in 1956.