A Colder Kind of Death Read Free

memories, and Ian was the best.”
    “I always thought so,” I said, and I could hear the ice in my voice.
    Jane O’Keefe looked at her watch. “We should get inside. Considering that not one of us was on time today, I don’t think we should risk re-rescheduling.” She touched my arm. “It was good to see you again, Jo. Hang in there.”
    Gary leaned forward, gave me a practised one-armed hug and kissed my cheek. The others said goodbye and headed towards the elevators. As the doors closed behind them, I reached up and brushed the place that Gary Stephens’s lips had touched.
    “Why would he kiss me?” I said to Jill.
    She shrugged. “ ‘Man sees the deed, but God sees the intention.’ ”
    “That’s a comforting thought,” I said.
    “Thomas Aquinas was a comforting kind of guy,” Jill said. “You’d know these things too, if you’d had the benefit of a Catholic education.”
    When we stepped through the big glass doors into the night, Jill breathed deeply. The air smelled of wet leaves and wood smoke.
    “Hallowe’en,” she said, hugging herself against the cold. “Good times.”
    She grinned at me, and the years melted away. She was the shining-eyed redhead I’d met twenty years before when she showed up unannounced at Ian’s office the day she graduated from the School of Journalism. She had handed him her brand new diploma and said, “My name is Jill Osiowy, and Iwant to make a difference.” Ian always said he hadn’t known whether to hire her or have her committed.
    “I’m glad Ian didn’t have you committed,” I said.
    “What?”
    “Nothing,” I said. “You’d better get back inside. It’s freezing out here. Call me if you hear anything more about Kevin Tarpley.”
    When I pulled up in front of my house on Regina Avenue, Taylor and Jess Stephens were on the front porch supervising as my friend, Hilda McCourt, lit the candle in our pumpkin. Jess was Gary’s son, and he and Taylor had been friends since the first day of Grade 1 when they discovered they could both roll their eyes back in their heads so the pupils seemed to disappear.
    Jess was dressed as a magician, Taylor was in her butterfly costume, and Hilda was wearing black tights, a black turtleneck, silver rings on every finger and, around her neck, a silver chain with a jewelled crescent moon pendant. Her brilliant red hair was frizzed out in a halo around her handsome face. Hilda was past eighty and counting, but she could still turn heads, and she knew it.
    When she saw me coming up the walk, she called out. “Wait, I’ll turn on the porch light for you. We had it off so the lighting of the pumpkin would be more dramatic.”
    “Don’t spoil the effect,” I said. “I don’t need a light.”
    Jess waved at me.
    “My mum’s sick, and my dad’s doing something. Taylor said I could come Hallowe’ening with you. Can I?”
    “Sure,” I said. “Go call your mum.”
    He grinned. I could see the space where his front teeth were missing. “I already did,” he said. “My dad’s gonna pick me up when we’re through.”
    “Good enough,” I said.
    Taylor was looking at the face of the jack-o’-lantern, mesmerized. “Blissed out” her brother, Angus, would have said. I knelt down beside her. “T, I’m sorry I’m late,” I said. “I got hung up with something at the station.”
    “I saw the news,” Hilda said quietly.
    I looked up at her. “Did the kids?”
    Hilda shook her head. “No, Angus was in his room trying to decide what to wear to his dance, and tonight Taylor’s concerns appear to stop at her wingtips.” She leaned towards me. “How are you bearing up?”
    “I think trailing along behind these guys with twenty pounds of candy in a pillowcase might be just what I need.”
    “In that case,” said Hilda, “we’ll continue with the ceremony here. I was just going to tell the magician and the butterfly the story of Jack-O’-Lantern.”
    I stood in the doorway and listened as Hilda told the