The Wandering Soul Murders by Gail Bowen Page A

picture ID down there, but so far no luck.”
    I looked at them both wearily. “What’s your point?”
    Officer Miner looked at me steadily. “Easy on there, Mrs. Kilbourn. There are no accusations being made here. This is an information session. We’re just letting you know that, no matter how you saw the relationship, Christy Sinclair apparently chose you to be the most important person in her life.”
    Unexpectedly, I felt my eyes fill with tears. “It’s too late now to do anything about that, isn’t it?”
    Officer Kequahtooway lowered his gaze and coughed. “Actually, Mrs. Kilbourn, it isn’t too late. There are a number of details that have to be attended to, funeral arrangements, that kind of thing. You have no legal responsibility. I should make that clear. But there are other kinds of responsibility.”
    “Yes,” I agreed, “there are.”
    Officer Miner stood to leave, and Constable Kequahtooway and I followed her to the front door. But when she started down the front walk, he didn’t follow.
    Instead, he turned and said, “Mrs. Kilbourn, this is unofficial, but I think when we get the final reports from pathology, we’re going to find out that Christy Sinclair’s death was a suicide.”
    I leaned against the doorjamb. “I kept hoping it wouldn’t be,” I said. “That makes everything a thousand times worse.”
    “It always does,” Perry Kequahtooway said softly. Then he looked at me. “Sometimes people find comfort in searching out the truth about the life of a person who’s passed on.”
    “You mean investigating?” I said. “But you’ll be doing that.”
    Constable Kequahtooway shrugged. “That’s right, we will, but sometimes people like you can get to a different kind of truth than the police do. It’s just a thought, Mrs. Kilbourn. But I think, in the long run, it might comfort you and Peter to find out why you mattered so much to Christy Sinclair.”
    When he started down the steps, I touched his arm. “Constable, what does your last name mean? We had a friend years ago named Kequahtooway, and I know the name is significant.”
    He squinted into the sun, and then, unexpectedly, he grinned.
    “In Ojibway,” he said, “it means he who interprets. You know, the guy who tries to help people understand.”

CHAPTER
    5
    On Victoria Day, when I went to the mailbox to get the morning paper, Regina Avenue was as empty as a street in a summer dream. I went in, made coffee and looked out at the backyard. Peter was in the pool swimming, and Sadie and Rose, our dogs, were sitting on the grass watching.
    I went out and knelt by the edge of the pool.
    “How’s it going this morning?” I asked.
    Peter swam to the edge of the water and looked up at me.
    “It’s been better,” he said, and I could hear his father in the weary bravado of his voice.
    “I know the feeling,” I said.
    His face was a mask. “I didn’t go after her, Mum. When she said she was going out on the lake, I was relieved. I was going to have a whole hour where I didn’t have to worry about her. So I didn’t go after her, and she died. How am I going to live with that?”
    “I don’t know, Peter,” I said. “But for starters, you can see that what you did was pretty normal. You thought about yourself. You wanted some breathing space, and when the chance came, you took it. Mother Teresa may not have done what you did, but most people, including me, would have. Look, I’m not saying that it was right to let Christy go when she was that upset, but we don’t carry a crystal ball around with us. You didn’t know what Christy was going to do, and you’re certainly not responsible for what she did.”
    “Mum, listen to yourself. You don’t even believe what you’re saying. You know I didn’t have to be in the boat with her. You know it’s not that simple because you’re the one who told me it’s never simple – that we’re always responsible for what we do and what we don’t do. You’ve been drumming