Gladys Mackenzie had a full house this evening, and she was thrilled. She bustled around the living room, offering to refill coffee cups for the adults, as well as for one near adult who'd gotten a taste for the stuff, and made trips between the living room and kitchen to grab more snacks and drinks for the kids.
"I haven't had this many people over in... well... ever," she remarked more than once. Her late husband was an unsocial man who never wanted anyone to come by, and Rachel wondered how her mother-in-law, who seemed to bloom like a flower in water when she had company, could have ever stayed married to someone who was her complete opposite in so many ways.
Al, Rachel's husband, had discovered part of the reason late last year when he'd discovered Gladys' husband wasn't his father, but his uncle. One single act of adultery had condemned Gladys to a lifetime of punishing loneliness, since divorce would have left her with a child to raise on her own and no financial support whatsoever. Al had since reconnected with his biological father, who'd until then been an estranged uncle for good reason, as well as his four cousins who were in fact half-siblings, and the restored family connection that resulted had worked like a fountain of youth on Gladys. It warmed Rachel's heart to see Gladys, a sweet woman who'd always had an air of sadness and resignation, have the happiness she deserved.
Another part of the reason for the older woman's happiness had to do with her grandchildren, who were both here, to everyone's amazement. Rachel and Al had adopted Logan and Emma, both teenagers, last year, after their biological parents had both died in separate but equally horrendous murders committed by bad people involved in drug smuggling and trafficking, and Gladys, who'd despaired of her only child ever giving her grandchildren, couldn't have been happier with them if they'd been her own flesh and blood. Emma always visited her Grammy, and the two had a special bond that made Rachel's heart burst whenever she saw it, but Logan, three years older and technically an adult, with a job and friends who hung out with him into the late hours, rarely found the time to visit, but he was here tonight, and the reason for that was another reason Gladys was so happy: the tall redhead emerging now from her kitchen.
"It's too bad Joe couldn't make it tonight," Joanie said as she placed a plate of Dad's Cookies, perfect for dipping in coffee, on the table, "but I understand why."
Sergeant Joanie Mara of the RCMP had become like the daughter Gladys never had while Al was in his coma late last year, driving her to and from the hospital and having coffee with her, knowing the older woman was worried for her son and keeping her company whenever she could to keep the worry at bay. After Al had woken and gotten back on his feet, he'd never forgotten the special role Joanie had played for his mother, and his fondness for her had grown, regardless of the circumstances that made her presence in the lives of Rachel and her friends so... awkward.
Logan also had a special reason to like Joanie, and that was the reason why he was here today when he could have hung out with his friends. Joanie saved his life last year, stopping the man who'd been sent to assassinate him because he was a witness to the events that had ultimately resulted in his father's murder. Joanie had been shot herself for her trouble, and had taken months to recover from her injuries, but since then she'd risen in the ranks of her detachment, first becoming media relations officer and, now, fulfilling her dreams after months of studying and exams by finally becoming a detective.
Rachel saw how Joanie and Gladys interacted, moving around each other in the kitchen, gabbing and laughing together as they brought out drinks and snacks, and surmised that Al, who'd once complained about all the time his mother demanded of him, now had competition for his mother's favour, but Al, the kindest and warmest man she'd ever known besides her own father, smiled whenever he saw them together. Did he see Joanie now as a kind of sister from another Mister? He'd certainly had practice lately interacting that way with his cousins, who were themselves adjusting to the fact that Al was the result of their father's one indiscretion; even though it had been close to fifty years ago, it was a hard pill for them to swallow. Everybody wanted to believe their parents were perfect, didn't they? Rachel certainly felt that way about her father, who'd approached the level of sainthood in her eyes, especially after he'd taken her mother back after eight years away, and had ultimately paid for that decision, in her mind; she and her mother had a relationship as strained as Joanie had with her own.
This evening was Joanie's opportunity to celebrate her new rank with the family she'd indirectly chosen, and soon they'd all be meeting for dinner with some other friends, in a private banquet room booked in a family-friendly restaurant nearby in Coquitlam.
While this evening was a happy occasion, though, it was tempered with sadness, which was why Joe DiTomaso, the man responsible for Joanie's entry into this makeshift family, wasn't here; it might have been just as well, for he would have taken up half the room himself with his size.
The reason for Joe's absence was also the reason they'd stopped by Gladys' house before going on to the restaurant: they were walking down memory lane by looking through photo albums for pictures of the deceased in their salad days.
Emma sat with a photo album open on her lap, looking down on the grainy Polaroids and the clearer professionally-developed photos with the awe that Howard Carter must have felt upon discovering the tomb of Tutankhamen. The paper photos must have felt like ancient artifacts to this girl raised in the digital age, who kept all her dearest photos on her phone. She pointed down at one in particular and said, "Is that you, Dad?"
Al, who always lit up from the inside like a paper lantern whenever Emma called him Dad, sat beside her and looked at where she was pointing. "Yup. That's me on my bike. I put a lot of miles on that thing. By the time we moved away from Queensborough, it was ready to be retired; I think it went into the dump, which wouldn't be the thing to do nowadays. Oh, look!" he exclaimed, smiling and pointing to another photo. "There's me and Mum."
Emma gasped and looked at Rachel. "That's you! How old were you when you were in this picture?"
Rachel bent over and had a look. "Probably... ten or eleven?" She looked at Al, who nodded confirmation.
Emma looked at the picture again and frowned. "Your hair's messy in this picture, Mum."
Laughter from the other chair. Rachel looked over at Lauren Hasegawa, Joe's wife, who was here with her kids Naomi and Tosh. Naomi, who was Emma's best friend in the entire world just as Lauren had been Rachel's when they were kids, sat on Emma's other side to look at the photos of their parents as children, smiling whenever she saw one she recognized, probably one with her dad in it, unmistakable with his auburn hair, which she'd inherited from him; the rest of her she'd inherited from Lauren.
"Your mum's hair was a tangle every day of her childhood," Lauren said. "Once she cut it because a hairbrush got stuck in it and wouldn't come out. Her hair was as short as mine was, then."
"Yeah, see, there's my mom," Naomi said, pointing at another photo. "Whoever thought that the bowl-cut looked good?"
"That was the style back then!" Lauren protested.
"For boys, maybe," Rachel shot back.
"You should have kept yours as short as mine. Without a mom to comb yours out, you let it become a rat's nest more often than not."
Emma looked up at her. "Your mom wasn't there?"
Rachel didn't fail to notice Emma never addressed her mom as Grammy like she addressed Al's mother; Jennifer McWilliam could never pass as a Grammy. "Not at first," she said diplomatically. "She had to go away for a while, but then she came back."
"Oh!" Emma said, brightening. "Like my mom!"
"Sort of. But my dad never left. He was always there, even if he worked a lot to support us." She was embarrassed to feel the sting of tears in her eyes. "He was the best dad ever."
She knew she was feeling sentimental about fathers today because it was unavoidable, given the recent loss. She looked at Lauren. "How's Joe doing?"
Lauren sighed sadly. "Not good. He's at his mom's with Johnny and Val and the kids, praying the rosary. I couldn't stand the idea of it, so I came here with the kids, who didn't want to be there either. Better to be here, with other kids, being happy. There'll be enough sadness at the funeral."
In the aftermath of the sudden passing of Umberto DiTomaso, Lauren had informed her earlier, it had become clear that his widow was too overcome with grief to be able to do anything but wail and rend her garments, and his two sons had become basket cases, incapable of performing the tasks relevant to sending the man on his final journey. Rachel could understand; when her own father passed, she'd been good for absolutely nothing, and her own mother, as cold as she could be sometimes, had ended up doing the funeral planning herself, a herculean feat, in Rachel's opinion, especially after she'd discovered her mom had bottled her own terrible grief for Rachel's sake, feeling as if she hadn't had the right to it after having left them for eight years.
The funeral and reception planning had fallen, with barely any discussion at all, on the shoulders of Lauren and Val. Johnny's wife, Catholic herself, had taken on the mass and burial, knowing better what was expected, and Lauren had taken on the reception. The pictures, she'd informed them, were going to be scanned and made into a slideshow playing constantly in the background while the mourners ate, drank and regaled each other with stories of the once great man, a man who'd rarely shown Lauren any warmth, but to Rachel's surprise, Lauren didn't resent her task. She seemed to enjoy looking at old photos as much as the kids did, and she had her own album in her lap and was smiling down at them. "Most of these are pre-me," she said, smirking.
"Sorry, babe, it was just me, Al, Joe and Sunny for almost eight years before you came along," Rachel said.
"I know how you feel, Lauren," Agnes said from her place at the dining room table. "Rachel and Al had a whole lifetime together before we came along."
Rachel looked askance at Lauren, whose eyebrows rose at Agnes' statement lumping the two of them together, which suggested so much more than the literal meaning.
Agnes Chu was here with her kids, Patrick and Melissa, who were currently playing with Gladys' cat Tabitha, because she and Joanie shared the loss of Agnes' ex-husband Patrick in common; Joanie had dated Patrick Marinville for about two months before he was murdered in a car bombing ordered by a vengeful family.
Agnes and Joanie were friends only because Joanie wasn't the reason Patrick was Agnes' ex; that distinction fell on the shoulders of another partner of Patrick's back in Kelowna, from where Agnes had fled back to her home in Richmond with her parents, on the run from that same vengeful family, who'd blamed Patrick for the death of the husband of the woman with whom he'd had the affair.
Joanie had been kind to Agnes and her children in the aftermath of Patrick's death, and the two had bonded, so now Agnes wanted to be here to celebrate Joanie's accomplishment and watch her kids hang out with the children of the friends she'd gained after moving home, the grown-up versions of the kids in those photo albums.
Everyone, including Gladys Mackenzie, knew Agnes had once been Al's serious girlfriend before she'd moved to Kelowna for work. Had Al and Rachel not reunited, Agnes might have come home to a man with every intention of picking up where they'd left off. It wasn't anything Rachel liked to think about, because she was already well aware that her marriage hung on a thin cord, her primary place in Al's heart secured only because she'd gotten there first. She might have been his first crush as he'd often told her, but she certainly hadn't been his only lover, nor was she his only one now. Neither was he hers, but the openness of their marriage wasn't anything she'd planned on, and she worried that any day now they might begin to wonder what the point was of staying together even with Logan and Emma to look after; not that they were unhappy with each other, but the more you cracked the door open, the more likely the barbarians would push through and take over, making the point of a door moot.
Lauren, one of the barbarians, had her own tenuous marriage with Joe to worry about; the two had nearly split up because of their indiscretions, Joe with Joanie, she with Rachel and Al. If Joanie hadn't been here, she would have been welcome comforting Joe in his time of grief if Joe's mother could stand the sight of her, but that was never going to happen. Still, it didn't escape Rachel's notice that all of the adults in this room had slept with someone else's spouse. Even Agnes. That was a relatively new one, and though Rachel had sanctioned it, it was beginning to grate on her.
Ironically enough, it was grating on Lauren, too; the very fact that Lauren didn't respond to Agnes' comment spoke volumes, because Lauren had been more polite to Agnes than Rachel had been in the beginning. She was feeling the lack of Al lately, and she was beginning to resent it. Any encounters Lauren had with Al now were in Joe's presence, or at least his vicinity, and often while Rachel was having her own encounter with Joe, or someone else was. Once Joe had become a willing participant rather than someone to sneak around on, Lauren had started playing by the rules they'd set, and Rachel thought she wasn't liking it, preferring the illicit to the sanctioned; it had been like that when Rachel and Lauren were sneaking around behind everyone's back, and then when they'd invited Al in but not anyone else. Lauren might have gotten her wish once on her birthday by being with both Joe and Al at the same time, but that was apparently scant consolation for losing her previous arrangements.
That left Agnes in the same position Joanie was in with Joe: someone Al could see from time to time without having to participate in any shenanigans with the other friends, since neither Joanie nor Agnes were interested in women. It grated on Rachel a little, the unfairness of it. It made her want to reach for another lover herself, but Sunny was a rare treat she couldn't access without Tej wanting a little of her herself, and their encounters were limited to once in a blue moon...
"Who are these dogs?" Emma asked, snapping Rachel out of her reverie.
Gladys bent over the photo album and saw what she was pointing at. "Oh! Those are Hunter and Duchess, my late husband's Dobermans. They were guard dogs mainly, so not very cuddly."
"They look scary."
"I was terrified of those dogs," Rachel said. "But they never bit me, though they did bark at me. Your dad had to escort me around his house if I ever came to visit."
"I can't believe you all lived on the same street," Naomi said. "That must have been so much fun."
"It was," Lauren said, "especially for me. When I moved there, I'd left Richmond because of bullying at my old school, and these guys took me in and made me one of their own. It changed my life."
Lauren was a little misty-eyed when she said it, and Rachel crouched beside her and took her hand. She saw another picture in Lauren's album and smiled. "Look, there we are with Sparky."
"Was Sparky your dog?" Emma asked.
"Only for a few days," Rachel said. "Then I had to give him up."
"Why?"
Emma looked so sad for Rachel that the memory of it couldn't help making her emotional again. "We were keeping him until his owner came to pick him up. Another little girl, younger than us, was missing him, you see, so it wouldn't have been right to keep him."
It wouldn't do to tell Emma they'd passed off Sparky as another dog that had died, a job the Lawrence Street Detective Club had taken from the girl's father, who'd made the mistake of telling the girl that her dog had run off to a butterfly farm, causing the girl to contact the LSDC with the intention of hiring them to find him. By that time they'd already found one lost dog and received payment for it, and Rachel had wanted to repeat her success, forming the club with her friends to make some extra spending money, but the ruse had been deceptive, and Rachel didn't want Emma to think bad of them, or to take away from the story that it was okay to lie for the purpose of making money. Too many people did that already nowadays, and Rachel wanted Emma to remain the pure, guileless person she was.
"Oh, good!" Lauren said suddenly. "Here are a couple of pictures of Pappa with Mrs. Anderson in her garden." Lauren had called her father-in-law the Italian word for Daddy even though the two hadn't been close, which Rachel had always found odd. Maybe it was because Lauren called her own father Daddy, because she couldn't help reverting to being a little girl whenever she talked to him, and didn't want to mix up her endearments.
Rachel looked at the pictures and smiled. There was Mr. DiTomaso, in his green sawmill coveralls and rubber boots, chatting amicably with Mrs. Anderson, her mentor and surrogate grandmother during the years her own mother had been gone. His moustache was luxuriant in the picture, and he was so large and capable, the exact opposite of the man at the end of his life; a bout of viral encephalitis back in 2005 had turned him into a husk of his former self, an old man overnight.
"May I borrow these, Mrs. Mackenzie?" Lauren asked. "I'll bring them right back after I scan them."
"Please, Lauren, call me Gladys," Gladys said. "And by all means, keep them if you want; maybe Joe and his family will appreciate having them. I'm not even sure who took those, because I never really visited Martha at her house."
"It might have been me," Al said. "I was testing out your new camera, I think, and visiting Rachel at Mrs. Anderson's place. Joe's dad happened to be there."
"Probably taking pictures of Rachel too because he had a crush on her, I bet," Lauren said, nudging Rachel in the ribs with her elbow.
"Yeah, probably," Al said, chuckling.
"Look!" Lauren suddenly said. "The Halloween when you had us all over for your birthday. I had my samurai costume that year! It was my best costume ever!"
"That was an awesome costume," Rachel said. "And you lent me your aikido gear, and it was too small."
"You lent Auntie Rachel your gear, Mom?" Naomi asked in incredulity.
"Poor Auntie Rachel ruined the costume she'd been working on," Lauren explained. "She needed something to wear. She had to put clothes on underneath so she wouldn't be indecent."
Everyone had a good laugh at that.
"What are these pictures?" Emma asked after she'd turned another page.
"Hm?" Al looked down at the pictures she was indicating. He examined them for a second, and then frowned. "Huh. I have no idea. I've never seen them before."
"Them?" Rachel asked.
"Four of them," Al said, "All in a row, as if they were placed that way on purpose. Did you take these, Mom?"
Gladys walked over and looked down at the pictures. "No. I've never seen these before either, but they look like they're from that time."
"Did Dad, maybe?"
Rachel smiled at Al's slip; he still referred to Gladys' late husband as his father even though his real father still lived.
Gladys shook her head, unaware of the slip because she probably felt her late husband had been Al's father in every way that mattered. "He wasn't the shutterbug in the family. I doubt he took more than a few in all the years I knew him."
"What are these pictures?" Joanie asked. "Now you have me intrigued."
"I want to know too," Agnes said. "A mystery from your childhood days?"
Al shrugged. "They just look like four sentences written in chalk on the pavement of the parking lot at Holy Spirit Parish in Queensborough."
"Holy Spirit?" Lauren said, getting up and coming forward to look at them, still holding her photo album open to the pages with Mr. DiTomaso. "That's where Joe went every week with his family."
"Chalk?" Tosh asked, coming forward with Patrick and Melissa, followed by the cat weaving her way among their legs. "Is it chalk art?" Tosh was the artist in his family.
Rachel, intrigued now that everyone else was, inched toward the already crowded sofa, kids and adults looking in on the album. Logan appeared to be the only one unconcerned with the provenance of the photos; he was busy texting his friends, or so Rachel thought at the time.
The pictures were pretty much as Al had described them, four of them, each with a statement written in chalk and bordered by flowers drawn in chalk, the flowers incongruously cheerful when juxtaposed with the following message:
"I have committed the perfect murder"
"You're going to thank me later"
"Come find me in 35 years"
"Sadie T. Diamond"
Rachel read the statements again and again, unable to determine if they were meant to be read in order. Maybe the first two? Still, it didn't matter. What was really weird was why these messages had been written in the church parking lot, and why she couldn't remember ever hearing word about something so disturbing being there. Wouldn't someone have seen whoever was writing this and chased them off?
"What the f-?" Lauren stopped herself from cussing in Gladys' house with children around, but she sounded just as confused as Rachel felt. "Who is Sadie T. Diamond?"
Joanie, tallest of everyone in the room, read the words from above and behind the couch. "It's probably just some kid thinking they're clever," she said. "No one can commit the perfect murder. I should know because I've read many case studies for my exams."
"Still," Agnes said, frowning. "It's weird. And why does she say to wait thirty-five years to find her?"
"And why would anyone leave their name if they've admitted to murdering someone?" Al asked.
"Like I said, it's just some kid fooling around," Joanie said. "The flowers are a dead giveaway."
"Why don't I remember ever taking these pictures?" Al asked.
"It's been more than thirty years since you moved away from Queensborough," Joanie said with a hint of indulgent pity in her voice. "Anyone can forget about a picture they took after thirty years. I mean, come on, think of the thousands of pictures on your phone. Do you remember taking every one? And that's just in the last few years."
"True, but we did take fewer photos when we had to pay to develop them." Al shook his head in befuddlement. "I would have remembered taking this because it was so weird."
"I don't remember it either," Rachel said.
"I don't either," Lauren said, "but it might have been before I moved to the neighbourhood."
"I still say you could have forgotten," Joanie said. She was starting to get on Rachel's nerves. Of all the adults in this room, she and Joanie had the most strained relationship, because Joanie hadn't really gotten over the fact that Rachel had slept with Joe, threatening Joanie's status as the only woman in Joe's life besides Lauren. Joe and Joanie had since reconciled, but Rachel was still on the outs with her, though they made nice at functions such as this one, for Gladys' sake and for Al's.
If Joanie ever found out Joe had also been with Tej, they'd be on the outs for good, but Rachel kept that secret to maintain the overall stability of the group. Things were in a good state at the moment, aside from the passing of Joe's dad, and she wanted them to stay that way as long as possible.
"Could I take those photos too?" Lauren asked as she removed the photos of Joe's dad from her album. "I'd like to scan them and examine them further. Maybe I can find some other information about them if I zoom in on them, or maybe track down this Sadie person. How old must she be, at least our age, you think?"
"If she exists at all," Joanie said. "That name could be fake."
"Go ahead and take them," Gladys said. "They're not of any value to me."
"But let us know anything you find out," Agnes said. "In spite of myself I'm really interested."
"Sure thing, Agnes," Lauren said, barely suppressing an eye roll. Yup, she was as irritated with Agnes as Rachel was with Joanie. Poor thing. She was missing Al.
Rachel smirked in spiteful satisfaction.
Thanks for discovering this title! As it says, this is Book 6 of the series, but I hope it gives you enough back story that it can be read as a standalone. If you're interested, though, the events described in this chapter can be found in "We Find What Is Lost" (Book 1), "Rude Awakenings" (Book 2), "Err on the Side of Violence" (Book 3), "The Hero Next Time" (Book 4), and "Hidden in the Blood" (Book 5).
If you enjoyed this chapter, hit "Vote" to send this title up the ranks. Leave a comment and let me know what you think!
We're going to see how Joe's doing at his mom's house, but the chapter will be in his brother Johnny's POV for the first time. Click on "Continue reading" to find out!