Drew was in grade 10 when he first read about Charles Baxter’s murder, and admittedly, he was hooked from the first article. At first, his mother was concerned about her fifteen-year-old son’s obsession with a brutal crime, but when he told her he was thinking of studying journalism one day, she started saving the newspaper articles for him to read after school.
Unlike the family court proceedings, the murder trial was reported widely, the details of each day’s testimony recounted in almost every Canadian media outlet. Only sketch artists were allowed inside the courtroom, but the newspapers were happy to publish full-color depictions of Ruby Reyes sitting at the defense table. In some of the sketches, she looked beautiful. In others, she looked vicious. She was both.
On the afternoon that Joey was scheduled to testify for the prosecution, the courtroom was closed entirely. Joey was a minor, so the media was prohibited from publishing her name or any identifying details about her. Still, things leaked, and any details that the Canadian media couldn’t talk about, the American media was happy to provide. There was no publication ban in the US, so Drew’s uncle in Buffalo was tasked with mailing every article about Ruby that he came across to his nephew.
The murder of Charles Baxter was, in a word, gruesome.
The picture the papers used showed a man who appeared to have it all. Still reasonably handsome and fit at the age of fifty-six, Baxter looked exactly how you’d expect a wealthy bank president to look. At the time of his death, he’d been married to his college sweetheart, Suzanne, for thirty years, and they had a son and daughter who were both away at university.
Pictures of Ruby and her lover were often shown side by side in order to highlight the stark contrast between them. Baxter was gray haired and older; Ruby was gorgeous and twenty-one years younger. He was white and privileged; she was an immigrant from the Philippines. He lived in a five-bedroom home in The Kingsway; she was raising her daughter in a shabby apartment in Willow Park. He was the company president; she was a customer service rep so many levels below him, it was amazing he even knew her name.
To make things even more titillating, the media also loved to show the picture of Suzanne Baxter standing right next to her husband’s mistress at the bank’s annual holiday party. Canadian Global threw a swanky black-tie dinner at the Royal York hotel each year, complete with champagne, filet mignon, and an eight-piece orchestra. A professional photographer was always on hand to capture memories of the event, and in all the photos Ruby was in, she was stunning. Tall for a Filipina at five eight, her long legs were on full display in her short, strapless gold dress. Her eyelashes were thick, her lips were red, and her long, shiny black hair spilled in perfect waves over her bare shoulders.
Suzanne Baxter, in comparison, was the same age as her husband and no more than five three, with teased blond hair. For the party, she wore a long red evening gown paired with a red sequined jacket. The wardrobe choice was unflattering. The jacket was too short and the dress too snug, highlighting the roundness of her stomach.
It had been so easy to villainize Ruby. This was long before #MeToo, and nobody seemed to blame Charles Baxter at all for the affair. Ruby was the other woman, a seductress, a home-wrecker who’d lured a happily married man away from his wife and family. She was obviously obsessed and clearly manipulative. She was Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction; she was Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct. There were no other narratives. After her conviction, Suzanne was quoted as saying, “I wish she had never come into our lives,” as if her husband had been completely helpless, as if the affair—which lasted two years, by the way—had happened without his consent.
The story stayed with Drew long after high school, long after Ruby was convicted. Which is why, a few years later, he could not have been more shocked when Joey Reyes knocked on the door.
At the time, he and his girlfriend Simone were renting the basement apartment of a house owned by a man who spent half the year in India, leaving his twenty-year-old son to manage the property. The son never came around, more interested in his Camaro and the older Italian girlfriend his parents wouldn’t approve of than the needs of his tenants. Calls went unanswered after the oven stopped working and the freezer wouldn’t get cold enough to keep their ice cream from melting. When a family of raccoons made a home inside the chimney, Drew and Simone were forced to pay for a professional “raccoon removal” service themselves. The guy who showed up noticed the chimney was full of cracks and buildup, rendering the fireplace extremely dangerous. He told them that until it was cleaned and repaired, they should never light a fire in it, ever.