The Glass Coffin

“Sure,” I said. “It’s New Year’s Eve – the most hopeful night of the year – 365 days of possibilities ahead.”

  “And what are you doing New Year’s?” Jill asked.

  “We’re going to Mieka’s tomorrow, so I’m taking down our Christmas trees tonight,” I said. “Kevin is coming over to give me a hand.”

  “Speaking of possibilities,” Jill said. Suddenly she looked impish. “Hey, here’s a plan. Let’s crack open a couple of cool ones and listen to Taylor’s tree one last time.”

  “I don’t think I can take it,” I said.

  “Sure you can,” Jill said. “It’s for auld lang syne.”

  So my old friend and I went downstairs, opened two bottles of Great Western, and turned on Taylor’s tree. We drank a toast to absent loved ones, then we sat on the floor and listened to the world’s most painfully tuneless version of “The Way We Were.” Above us, Jerry Garcia, once the bard of Songs of Innocence and Experience, now an icon in a Day-Glo sunburst, beamed down warmth and hope on our cold and needy world.

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  GAIL BOWEN’s first Joanne Kilbourn mystery, Deadly Appearances (1990), was nominated for the W.H. Smith/Books in Canada Best First Novel Award. It was followed by Murder at the Mendel (1991), The Wandering Soul Murders (1992), A Colder Kind of Death (1994) (which won an Arthur Ellis Award for best crime novel), A Killing Spring (1996), Verdict in Blood (1998), Burying Ariel (2000), The Glass Coffin (2002), The Last Good Day (2004), The Endless Knot (2006), The Brutal Heart (2008), and The Nesting Dolls (2010). In 2008 Reader’s Digest named Bowen Canada’s Best Mystery Novelist; in 2009 she received the Derrick Murdoch Award from the Crime Writers of Canada. Bowen has also written plays that have been produced across Canada and on CBC Radio. Now retired from teaching at First Nations University of Canada, Gail Bowen lives in Regina. Please visit the author at www.gailbowen.com.