Verdict in Blood

Chapter

10



I tried Alex’s number until 11:00, when, exhausted, anxious, and furious at his refusal to have an answering machine, I turned out the lights and went to bed. Twice during the night, I woke up, rolled over, and dialled again. There was still no answer. The next morning I made a pact with myself; I wouldn’t even attempt to call until after Rose and I had our walk and I’d showered and dressed for the day. Like most bargains with a fool, my compact got me nowhere. When Rose and I got back, I dialled Alex’s apartment, and there was still no answer. Undeterred, I made another pact. The kids loved James Beard’s pecan coffee cake, and I hadn’t made one since the beginning of summer. I’d stay away from the phone until I’d made a coffee cake and put it in the oven.

My homage to James Beard paid off, but not with the dividend I’d expected. By the time Taylor and Angus straggled down to breakfast, the kitchen smelled the way a kitchen in a well-run home is supposed to smell in the morning, and I’d decided that calling Alex was a dumb idea. He was a man who operated on fact, not theory, and my concerns about Signe Rayner were based on conjecture. Calling him would make me look hysterical. More seriously, it would make me look desperate. Whatever lay ahead for Alex and me, I didn’t want him to remember me as a woman who grasped at any excuse to ring up her ex-lover.

After we’d eaten, I felt better. I’d made a world-class coffee cake, and I hadn’t made a fool of myself. Not a bad record to rack up before 7:30 a.m. But praiseworthy as my restraint might be, it didn’t change the fact that I still needed answers, not just about Signe Rayner, but about other members of Justine’s circle of family, friends, and acquaintances. Detective Hallam might not have believed that Hilda had been attacked because someone Justine knew was desperate to get at her financial papers, but I did.

I was certain that Hilda’s assailant was connected somehow to Justine, but most of the people in Justine’s life were unknown quantities to me. Fortunately, as I’d been measuring out the cinnamon and butter for the coffee cake, I’d come up with a candidate who might be able to help me fill in the blanks. Eric Fedoruk had grown up next door to the Blackwells; he had considered Justine his mentor, and he had been her lawyer. If I was going to unearth the truth about Justine’s life, he might just be my man.

For a successful lawyer, Eric Fedoruk was surprisingly accommodating. When I called his home number, he didn’t miss a beat before offering to meet me at his office within the hour. The address he gave me was on the top floor of one of the twin towers at the end of Scarth Street Mall. I was early enough to get a parking spot a block away, but as I walked towards his building, the morning sun bounced off its glass face, blinding me. I hoped it wasn’t an omen. There had been few occasions in my life when I’d been more aware of the need to see clearly.

Eric Fedoruk was waiting for me when I stepped off the elevator. His black motorcycle boots had been replaced by nutmeg calfskin loafers, his fawn suit looked like Armani, and his buttercup-yellow tie demanded attention. When he offered his hand, I was glad I wasn’t being billed by the hour.

“I was relieved to get your call,” he said, as he steered me smoothly past the firm’s receptionist into his office. It was spacious and airy, filled with natural light from two walls of floor-to-ceiling windows. The other two walls were filled with photographs and hockey memorabilia. Eric Fedoruk led me past his desk and the client chairs which faced it to a trio of easy chairs that had been arranged around a low circular table in the corner of the room. He held out a chair for me.

“Can I get you anything before we begin?” he asked.

“Thanks,” I said, “I’m fine.” I leaned towards the window. “What a spectacular view of the city.”

“It is, isn’t it?” he said. “And it’s beautiful in every season.” He made a face. “I sound like I’m running for President of the Chamber of Commerce.”

“You’ve got my vote,” I said. “I think Regina’s a great place to live.”

He grinned. “It’s nice to be having a civil conversation. You know, we are on the same side in this.”

“Whose side is that?”

He didn’t hesitate. “Justine’s. In your case, Miss McCourt’s, but she was on Justine’s side. Now, since we are allies, can we graduate to first names?”

“That’s fine with me, Eric,” I said.

“Good.” His eyes, the grey of an autumn sky before a storm, met mine. “Now, why don’t you tell me what brought you here this morning.”

“The attack on Hilda,” I said. “I think the police are on the wrong track. Eric, I’m certain Hilda knew her assailant. Before I left the house that night, she told me she was going to spend the evening working on Justine’s financial records. I think she was searching for something that would help her resolve the question of Justine’s mental competence once and for all.”

“And you believe she found it.”

I nodded. “I do. I think that there was something in Justine’s personal papers that tipped the scales, and that whoever came to my house that night knew it was there. That’s why they tried to kill Hilda, and that’s why they ransacked the house until they found what they were looking for.”

Eric Fedoruk looked hard at me. “Where do I fit in?”

“I’m hoping you can help me understand some of the people in Justine’s life. The problem is I don’t know enough about any of them to ask the right questions.” I leaned towards him. “I guess all I can do is ask you to tell me about Justine.”

Pain crossed his face. “I don’t know where to begin.”

I gave him what I hoped was an encouraging smile.

He returned it; then he shrugged and glanced around his handsome office. “Well, for starters, I wouldn’t have any of this if it hadn’t been for her.”

“She opened the right doors for you.”

He shook his head. “She changed the course of my life,” he said softly. “If it hadn’t been for her, I never would have been a lawyer. Which means that, at this point, I would have been an aging jock, trying to get by with a smile, a handshake, and a basement full of game tapes nobody gave a damn about.” He shuddered. “It’s scary to look back and think how close I came. Anyway, thanks to Justine, it didn’t happen.”

“She was your mentor.”

“She was more than that,” he said. “When I was fifteen, all anybody saw when they looked at me was a kid with a great slapshot. My dad died a month after I was born, and I guess my mother was sort of overwhelmed by all the scouts knocking on her door telling her that, as soon as I turned sixteen, I should be in junior A. Of course, that was what I wanted too. My mother was just about to cave in, when – he smiled at the memory – “Justine took me out to dinner.”

“Because she saw you as somebody who had more going for him than a slapshot.”

“Right,” he said. “She took me to the old Assiniboia Club, and she laid out a plan for my life. Get serious about my studies. Go to university. Play hockey for a while. Then go to law school. As we were talking, all these big-shot lawyers kept dropping by our table ‘just to chat.’ ”

“Justine had invited them?”

“She never left anything to chance. Anyway, it was heady stuff for a fifteen-year-old: a glamorous successful older woman taking his life seriously, treating him like an adult.”

“And you followed the plan?”

“To the letter. I finished high school, got a hockey scholarship to the University of Denver, graduated cum laude; went straight to the Maple Leafs, where, for six years, I had more fun than most people have in a lifetime, then came back to Saskatchewan and enrolled in law school.”

“Right on track,” I said.

“Yeah,” he agreed. “But it was a good track to be on.”

“Justine must have been an amazing woman.”

“She was that,” he agreed.

“All the same, what she did for you surprises me. It was so parental, and I got the impression she wasn’t much of a mother.”

“Given the daughters she had, Justine was as good a mother as she could be,” he said tightly.

“Her children do seem to have had troubled lives,” I agreed. “But, Eric, surely some of their troubles have to be rooted in their relationship with her. You may have every reason to be grateful to Justine, but from what I’ve heard she didn’t find family life very congenial.”

“If you got your information from her children, you should remember that there are two sides to every story.”

“I know that,” I said. “And I know that Justine’s daughters aren’t exactly poster girls for filial devotion, but they weren’t my only source. Hilda got so involved with Justine and her circle that I had a friend do a little checking around. Some of what she came up with puts Justine in a pretty negative light.”

“Such as?”

“Such as the fact that Lucy tried to kill herself after her father died. As soon as she recovered, she ran away and, apparently, Justine just let her go.”

“There were reasons,” he said coldly.

“What possible reason could any mother have for letting a distraught sixteen-year-old just take off?”

Eric Fedoruk’s face was stony. “It was a complex situation, and Justine was the injured party.” He got up, walked to the window and stood with his back to me.

“I take it the subject is closed,” I said.

“It is,” he said wearily. He turned to face me. “I want to co-operate with you, believe me. I want the truth to come out. Justine had nothing to hide, but that particular time in the family’s life was painful for so many people. Can’t we just drop it?”

“All right,” I said. “We’ll drop the subject of Lucy’s running away. But, Eric, if Justine is the woman you say she is, wouldn’t putting some of the other rumours to rest be the best way to honour her memory?”

“I was her lawyer, Joanne. There are matters I’m just not free to discuss.”

“But there must be things you can talk about. Wayne J. Waters, for example. You and Justine must have discussed him.”

“We argued about him. I don’t think Justine and I were together once over the past year when his name didn’t come up. I thought that he was pond-scum and that Culhane House was a scam.” He looked away. “Justine didn’t share my feelings about his character or his project.”

“But Hilda told me Wayne J. and Justine quarrelled about money the night she died.”

“I guess he was afraid she was reconsidering her commitment to Culhane House. She wasn’t, of course. She’d just put her financial support on hold, the way she’d put everything else on hold until she’d found an answer to the question that was consuming her.”

“Whether she was in full possession of her faculties.”

Eric winced. “Exactly. By the night of her party, Justine had been so badly shaken by all the people, including me, who were questioning her behaviour that she did a very lawyerly thing: she decided to hold all her affairs in abeyance until she was certain she was sane.”

“Then she hadn’t rejected Wayne J.”

“No. I wish she had. But on the night she died, Justine was still passionate about Culhane House, and she still trusted Wayne J. It makes me faintly queasy to say this, but in the last year of her life, Justine was closer to him than she was to anyone. She just wanted to make certain that when she signed a cheque, she was making a rational decision about the use of her money.”

“Is that why she didn’t loan Tina the money for the plastic surgery she needed?”

Eric Fedoruk looked genuinely puzzled. “Is that the story you heard? Because whoever told you that doesn’t have the facts. Justine gave Tina the money she asked for. If we had the financial records, I’d be able to show you the cancelled cheque.” He shrugged. “Unfortunately, we don’t, so you’ll just have to take my word for it.”

“Eric, if Justine gave her the money, why did Tina get the surgery done on the cheap?”

“That’s a question for Tina to answer, but if you want my opinion, somebody gave her a hard-luck story. Tina tries, but she’s easily led.”

“By men?”

“By everybody. But Tina’s not the issue here; Justine is. And no matter what you hear, Justine was never selfish and she was never vindictive. At the end, she was just very confused.” His voice was close to breaking.

I leaned towards him. “Eric, why didn’t she get help? Her own daughter is a psychiatrist. She could have recommended someone.”

“Signe was hardly a disinterested party.”

“Because Justine was her mother?”

“No, because in the last year, there was a lot of tension there. Justine was doing everything in her power to get Signe to stop practising psychiatry.”

I felt a chill. “Because of what she’d done to that boy in Chicago.”

“Who told you about that?” Eric’s tone was edgy.

“The news clippings were in my friend’s research. But the papers said Signe was exonerated. Was she guilty? Is that why her mother didn’t want her practising any more?”

Eric’s eyes met mine. “I can’t talk about this, Joanne.”

“Were you involved in Signe’s defence? I know you couldn’t act for her in the States, but did you advise her? Is that why you can’t talk about the case?”

Eric looked at his watch. “I have a nine o’clock appointment. I’ve already kept him waiting too long.”

I stood up. “Thanks for seeing me,” I said. “You’ve been a help.”

“Have I? Maybe the more helpful thing would have been to tell you to get out while the getting’s good.”

“Meaning?”

He shrugged. “Nothing. Just be careful, Joanne. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I really do have to see my client.”

Waiting client or no, Eric Fedoruk was a gentleman. He walked me to the elevator and pressed the call button. As we listened to the elevator make its smooth ascent, I knew I was looking at my last chance. “I know you can’t discuss what happened in Chicago,” I said, “but can you answer a hypothetical question?”

He raised an eyebrow. “Depends on the question.”

“Eric, if you had an adolescent child, would you let Signe treat him?”

For a beat, he didn’t answer, and I thought I’d pushed too hard. But as the elevator doors opened, his eyes met mine. “I would move heaven and earth to keep Signe Rayner from getting anywhere near a child of mine.” he said. Then he smiled. “Of course, that’s just hypothetical.”

As soon as I got to the university, I called Alex at the police station. He was in a meeting, but I gave the woman on the other end my name and told her it was an emergency. As I waited for Alex to come to the phone, my heart was pounding.

At first, he sounded like himself, warm and concerned. “Hilda’s not worse, is she?”

“No,” I said. “This isn’t about Hilda. Alex, I have more information about Signe Rayner.”

He made no attempt to conceal his irritation. “I thought we’d agreed Eli’s treatment was no longer your concern.”

“We didn’t agree,” I said. “You decided, but, Alex, you were wrong. You’ve got to hear me out. Even her own mother didn’t think Signe should be practising medicine, and Eric Fedoruk says he wouldn’t let her treat a child of his.”

Alex’s voice was coldly furious. “A woman who hangs out with felons and allows strangers to be buried in her family plot isn’t exactly what I would consider a credible arbiter of someone else’s competence. Damn it, Jo, are you so determined to prove that you’re right that you’ve lost sight of the facts? At the end, Justine Blackwell’s life had become so bizarre that even she wasn’t sure of her sanity.”

“Then what about Eric Fedoruk?”

“I couldn’t care less what some lawyer with a six-figure income would do with his child. My only concern is Eli, and, Joanne, whether you like it or not, Dr. Rayner is giving my nephew something he hasn’t had a lot of in his life: consistency. She’s there, Jo. Every appointment, she’s there waiting. She never decides Eli’s too much trouble. She never abandons him. She never …”

I cut him off. “Sorry I bothered you,” I said, and I slammed down the receiver. I was still shaking with anger when the phone rang. When I picked up the receiver and heard Keith Harris’s voice, it seemed as if providence was taking a hand in the sorry mess of my life.

“Are you okay, Jo?” he asked. “You sound a little down.”

“Nothing a few kind words won’t fix.”

“My pleasure,” he said. “Now, listen. I have news.”

As Keith gave me an account of the latest episode in his fortunate life, I felt my pulse slow and my spirits rise. The tenant who had sublet his father’s Regina apartment was moving out at the end of September, and Keith saw the freeing up of the apartment as significant. “Everything’s working out just the way it’s supposed to,” he said. “Part of a larger cosmic plan.” As I hung up, I decided that maybe it was time to step aside and let the universe unfold as it should. The rhythms of everyday life pushed us ahead. I talked to Mieka and Greg every night and we e-mailed each other every day. Their news was as miraculous as it was commonplace. Madeleine was eating and growing and discovering. When I told them about the attack on Hilda, I tried to minimize her injuries, but as my daughter continued to press me about coming up to Saskatoon again, I was forced to tell her the truth. Mieka had always loved Hilda, and the anxiety in her voice when she asked for details saddened me. Those first days with Madeleine should have been a time of cloudless joy, but it seemed that days of cloudless joy were in short supply that September.

I taught Taylor how to send messages to Madeleine on e-mail, and she and Jesse got an A for their project on owls. Even these accomplishments weren’t enough to offset my daughter’s awareness that all was not right in her world. My daily reports on Hilda’s progress appeared to reassure her, but Taylor continued to be perplexed about Alex and Eli’s absence from our lives. My explanation that Alex and I had just decided to spend some time apart didn’t satisfy her. It didn’t satisfy me either, but as unsatisfactory as the story was, I didn’t have a better one. Alex didn’t call, and after a few days I stopped expecting him to. As the third week of school started, Anita Greyeyes, the woman who would have been Eli’s teacher, phoned to ask me what arrangements had been made about Eli’s schooling. I gave her Alex’s work and home numbers and told her that she should deal with him directly. Another link had been severed.

My professional life was moving into high gear. My classes were taking shape, the inevitable academic committee meetings had begun, and Jill and I had started to mull over topics that might work on our first political panel of the new season.

I visited Hilda at least once every day, and here the news was good. Even my untutored eye could discern cause for hope. Increasingly, as I read to her or as we listened to the radio together, she became restless, as if she were wearying of her long sleep. Even her stillness seemed closer to healthy consciousness. Nathan Wolfe was encouraged too. Hilda’s numbers on the Glasgow Coma Scale were rising, and Nathan and I fussed over each incremental gain like new parents. Despite our hovering and hoping, when the breakthrough finally came it had the force of a surprise.

It was on a Friday afternoon, thirteen days after Hilda had been assaulted. I’d come to the hospital just after lunch. My morning had been busy, and Hilda’s room was warm. From the moment I started to read, I could feel my eyelids grow heavy. After five minutes, I closed my book, turned up the radio, leaned back in my chair, and gave myself over to the considerable pleasures of Henry Purcell. When I woke up, “Rejoice in the Lord Alway” had been replaced by the news, and, for once, there was news worth noting.

Boys playing along the shoreline of Wascana Lake had discovered the marble-based scales that had been used to bludgeon Justine Blackwell to death. The scales, which had been presented to Justine with such fanfare at the dinner were half-buried in the gumbo of the lake bed. It was a case of sic transit gloria mundi, but it was also a piece of real evidence in an investigation which, if the media could be believed, was woefully short of concrete proof that Terrence Ducharme had murdered Justine. Reflexively, I glanced over at Hilda.

What I saw made my pulse race. She was conscious, but the woman before me was not the Hilda I knew. This woman’s eyes were wild, and her mouth was contorted with rage and effort. She was trying to speak, but the sounds that came out of her mouth were guttural and unintelligible. When her eyes met mine, I almost wept. In that moment, I knew that she understood her circumstances and grasped the fact that we were both powerless to change them.

“It’s all right,” I said. “It’s going to be all right.”

She shook her head furiously and made a growling sound.

“What is it?” I asked. “Is there something you want me to get?”

For a beat, she stared at me. Then she lifted her head, and, in a voice rusty with disuse and hoarse with effort, she pronounced a single recognizable word. “Maisie,” she said. “Maisie.”


“She has to build new pathways,” Nathan Wolfe said. It was mid-afternoon, and Nathan and I were sitting in the cafeteria of Pasqua Hospital. Twenty-four hours earlier, Hilda had entered a brief period of consciousness, and I had felt the darkness lift, but soon after she had articulated the single word “Maisie,” my friend had lapsed back into her silent private world. Now Nathan and I were splitting a plate of fries, drinking Coke, and talking about what came next.

“She’s almost there,” Nathan said. “The restlessness and the fact that she actually talked are great signs, but it’s going to take time. And learning how to say what she wants to say is going to take a lot of time. The communication pathways she used before are blocked, and until she builds some new ones, Miss McCourt has to use whatever’s handy to get her message across.

“She could find the name ‘Maisie,’ but not ‘Justine,’ ” I said.

Nathan speared a fry and dipped it in gravy. “She was lucky she made a connection you could understand,” he said. “ ‘Maisie’ is at least in the ballpark. A lot of recovering coma patients come out with stuff like ‘potato’ when they mean ‘water.’ ” He chewed his fry reflectively. “Makes it tough to meet their needs when they’re thirsty.”

“So how do I meet Hilda’s needs?” I asked.

“Do anything you can to keep her from getting frustrated,” Nathan said. “Listen hard to what she’s trying to say, and translate. Play it by ear. You’ll get the hang of it.”

My chance came sooner than either Nathan or I anticipated. When we went upstairs to intensive care, Hilda was lying on her back. Her eyes were open, but she didn’t appear to be seeing anything. Nathan was quick to spot my fear, and he did his best to be reassuring. “Lethargy and stupor are part of the package, Mrs. K. Just do what you usually do, and don’t panic if she gets agitated. That’s part of the package too. In fact, a little flailing around is good exercise for the patient’s arms and legs.” He smiled.

I didn’t smile back. “I hate this,” I said. “I hate standing in this room, talking about Hilda as if she were a piece of wood.”

Nathan pulled back Hilda’s sheet, poured some skin-care lotion into his hand and began to rub it into her legs. “I know how you feel,” he said, “but in these cases, there’s a lot of behaviour that seems scary if you’re not prepared for it.”

I watched as Nathan massaged Hilda’s legs and arms. As he rubbed her muscles, he talked to Hilda in a voice that was as soothing as his hands must have been.

“You’re so good with her,” I said.

“I like the work,” he said. “Every so often, these patients come back. It’s a real rush when you’ve got to know the physical part of a person so well, and all of a sudden the rest of them’s there.”

After Nathan left, I picked up Anne of Green Gables and began to read. As soon as she heard my voice, Hilda became uneasy. She shifted position, then drew her legs up.

“It’s okay,” I said. “I won’t read any more. We can talk. Let’s see … It’s the third week in September, and it’s Saturday – a real fall day. This morning, before her art lesson, Taylor and Jess decided they were going to earn money raking lawns. Taylor thought they’d get more people to sign on if we bought some of those Hallowe’en leaf bags. She and Jess have about ten customers lined up. I hope this doesn’t end up like Angus’s pet-walking service. Remember that time we spent the whole weekend walking dogs and cats because he’d overbooked?”

Hilda’s eyes were closed, but she seemed to be listening, so I rambled on about the latest batch of baby photos Keith had brought down from Saskatoon and about Angus’s disgust at his football team’s 0–2 record. I had just started describing the cormorants I had seen that morning in the park when Hilda’s eyes flew open. “Maisie,” she said, and her tone was pleading.

Remembering Nathan’s advice, I translated and played it by ear. “I’m not sure how much you’ve been able to pick up about Justine’s case from the radio,” I said, “but there isn’t much to report. Twelve days ago, the police arrested a man named Terrence Ducharme. He was one of the ex-convicts Justine got involved with in the last year. I’m sure the police are hoping they can connect him to those scales they found in the lake yesterday, but I haven’t heard anything.”

Hilda’s eyes opened. As she took in her situation, there was the same bleak shock of recognition I’d seen the day before. I grasped her hand and leaned closer to her. “You’re in the hospital here in Regina,” I said. “You’ve had an accident, but you’re going to be all right.”

My explanation seemed to satisfy her. She squeezed my hand, then closed her eyes again. I leaned over and kissed her forehead. “I missed you,” I said. “Don’t leave me yet.” Anxiously, I searched her face for a hint of response. There was none. I sat with her, listening to the opera on the radio until 3:00, when the shift changed, and a nurse I hadn’t seen before came in to record Hilda’s vital signs. I was in the way, and I knew it.

I kissed Hilda’s forehead and promised to come back.


That night was our first political panel of the new season. Keith had come down the night before to lend moral support, but it was going to be a short weekend for us. He had business in Toronto, and he was taking the early flight out Sunday morning. When I got back from the hospital, he was in the backyard with Taylor and Jess, throwing around the yellow plastic football Eli had given me for safekeeping at the Labour Day game. Remembering, I felt a stab of guilt. Then I swallowed hard and tossed off the feeling. The football was, after all, only a cheap toy, and Alex had made it clear that Eli was no longer my concern.

Taylor threw me the ball. I had to dive, but I caught it.

“Good hands,” Jess said appreciatively.

“Go deep.” I threw him a pass and he made an effortless catch. “You’re looking pretty sharp there yourself,” I said. The four of us threw the ball around for a while, then Taylor and Jess went off to their lawn work.

Keith and I watched the kids until they had dragged their leaf bags and rakes around the corner onto Rae Street and disappeared from sight. “I envy them,” I said. “I can’t even remember when the biggest worry I had was filling a leaf bag.”

Keith looked at me hard. “Let’s grab Rose and take a walk. There won’t be many more days like this.”

“I should look at my notes for the show.”

“I’ll buy you an ice cream cone.”

“Sold,” I said. “These days, I come cheap.”

We walked along the levee on the north side of Wascana Creek. It was an amazing day, and it seemed that literally everyone and his dog was out. Rose was a gregarious creature and as she greeted dog after dog, she seemed like her old self again. Keith and I bought cones and took them back to a quiet spot on the levee where we sat down, with Rose between us, and watched life in the creek.

When we’d finished eating, Keith leaned towards me. “You’re looking a lot better. When you came back from the hospital, you looked pretty wiped. It worried me.”

“Sorry,” I said. “It’s just that I’m so scared. And I feel so impotent. I just don’t know what to do for Hilda. She asked about Maisie again today. Keith, I don’t understand why she keeps going back to Justine’s death. It has to be so upsetting for her.”

“It’s unfinished business, and you know as well as I do that once Hilda starts a job, she sees it through.” He pointed towards the opposite shore. “Look,” he said, “there’s an otter over there on the bank.”

“But not for long,” I said, as the otter slipped into the creek and disappeared. “You’re right, you know. Hilda prides herself on honouring her obligations. It must be so frustrating for her knowing that she never came to a final judgement about Justine.” I stood up and brushed the dust off my slacks. “At one point, I thought I could finish the job, but as Hilda said, there are so many cross-currents in Justine’s life. I didn’t know who to believe, and I guess I just gave up trying.”

“Want some help?”

“From you?”

“From me and from somebody with a little perspective. Jo, from what you’ve told me, everyone you’ve talked to has a vested interest in how that decision about Justine’s sanity comes down. Maybe I can flush out a couple of impartial observers for you.”

“Do you have anyone in mind?”

“I may,” he said. “Dick Blackstone’s old law partner is in a seniors’ home down here. His daughter lives in town, and I ran into her last weekend. She said her dad’s getting bored playing pinochle, and I should go see him. Let me give Garnet Dishaw a call and see if he’s up for a visit.”

“Do you think he’ll be able to help?”

Keith shrugged. “I don’t know, but at least we’ll be a diversion from pinochle.” He grabbed Rose’s leash and stood up. “Ready to go?”

“You bet.” I put my arm through his. “It’s good to have somebody ready to share the load.”

“Anything else I can do?”

I smiled up at him. “Sure. You can fill me in on all those provocative rumours I hear about dark plans to unseat your federal leader.”

“I thought you hated backroom gossip.”

“Not when it’s about you guys,” I said. “I love it, and the more stilettos the better.”

By the time I walked into the TV studio that night, Keith had arranged for us to meet Garnet Dishaw at Palliser Place, the seniors’ home in which he lived, as soon as the show was over. I’d been less successful with my second request. Despite my encouragement, Keith hadn’t volunteered a single indiscreet insight into the machinations of his party. Luckily, the show that night didn’t need inside information about dirty deeds.

Our topic was the proliferation of conservative parties in Canada. It was a red-meat topic, and Ken Leung made it sizzle. Glayne Axtell and I rose to the occasion. It was fun, and it was good television, but the real payoff came in the call-in segments. For the first time I could remember, we had callers who said they were under thirty years old. They were informed, witty, and iconoclastic; by the time the show ended, we all knew that it had generated more light than heat. It was a good feeling.

The glow endured. When I slid into the passenger seat of Keith’s Mercedes, I was still buoyant.

“Ready to meet the prototypical curmudgeon?” Keith asked.

“Bring him on,” I said. “Tonight I’m a match for anybody.”


Palliser Place was a low-slung modern building with large windows and an air of being well kept. Its flower beds were already cleaned out for winter, and there wasn’t an errant leaf on its spacious front lawns.

The young woman at the reception desk was reed-slim and carefully made-up. When we asked to see Garnet Dishaw, she rolled her eyes.

“He’s in the hall outside his room, practising his golf shot,” she said. She pointed with a well-shaped, French-manicured nail. “West wing.”

Garnet Dishaw had set up a portable tee halfway up the hall. And he was indeed practising. The deep green broad-loom of the hall was littered with balls from the shots he had missed. As we started down the hall, he was just getting into his swing. He connected with the ball, but he had an ugly slice and the ball ricocheted off a door a couple of metres away from us and bounced along until it came to rest at my feet. Keith bent down and picked it up.

“Good to see you again, Garnet,” he said, extending the ball in his hand like a peace offering.

Garnet Dishaw had the patrician, silver-haired good looks of a lawyer in an old movie. He was dressed in the same casual manner as Keith: a golf shirt and casual slacks, but Garnet’s clothes hung on him. It was obvious that not long before he had been a much larger man.

“Come inside, Keith,” he said. “No use letting these senile old fools hear your business. Although your secrets would be safe enough; there isn’t a person on this wing who’s had a coherent thought since 1957.”

When he bent to pick up the golf ball nearest him, I noticed he had trouble straightening. “Let me get those,” I said. “Why don’t you two go on in. I’ll be along.”

Garnet Dishaw and Keith disappeared into the last room in the hall. When I’d made the floor safe again, I joined them, or attempted to. Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves were pressed against every wall, and they were filled with books. In the corner, there was a single bed, covered with a piece of brightly patterned madras; next to it was a single chair and a TV table crowded with glasses and spoons and bottles of medications.

“You’ll have to sit on the bed,” Garnet Dishaw said. His voice was deep and assured, the voice of a man who, whatever his current circumstances, was accustomed to being listened to. “These residential rooms were designed for people who’ve decided to leave the past behind, but I am not among them. We inmates of Palliser Place are not allowed to screw anything into the walls without the written consent of the board of governors and of all the cherubim and seraphim, so we must make do with freestanding shelves.” He squared his shoulders. “Now,” he said, “may I offer you a drink? This institution subscribes to the principle of teetotalism, but most regulations can be subverted.” He walked into the bathroom and returned with a bottle of Johnny Walker. “An old college trick,” he said. “Not many people risk foraging through a man’s laundry hamper, and even fewer sign on when the man is in his eighties. An old man’s dirty laundry is not a pleasant thing,” he said. Then he bowed to me. “I apologize for speaking of such matters before we’ve been formally introduced. May I offer you a drink, Ms.… ?”

“Kilbourn,” I said. “And I’d love a drink. It’s been a long day.”

“Sensible woman,” he said, approvingly. He poured whisky, no ice, no water, into glasses and handed them around. “All right,” he said. “What’s up?”

“Justine Blackwell,” Keith said.

Garnet’s shoulders sagged. “An awful thing,” he said. “Death doesn’t hold quite the terror for me that it does for you. Nonetheless, Justine deserved better; no one should die unprepared.”

“Had you kept up with her at all?” Keith asked.

Garnet sipped his drink and settled back in his chair contentedly. “Good stuff. Something to be said for limiting one’s intake. And yes, we had kept up, although I can take no credit for our association. Palman qui meruit qui ferat. Honour to whom honour is due. The praise goes to Justine, the Ice Queen, as she was known many years ago. She wasn’t icy at all, of course. Just focused. That’s never regarded as an admirable trait in a woman. I digress, a foible to be avoided at all costs when one is old. If I’m not careful, I could end up in a place even less forgiving than this.

“At any rate, Justine did keep in touch. And it surprised me. Before I retired, she was always good about Christmas gifts: the perfect cheese from Quebec or the best pecan fruitcake from Texas. I knew I was merely a name on a list; nonetheless, it was a good list to be on. But when I was …” His face clouded. The pain of his memory was apparent, but he forced himself to go on. “When I was compelled to move down here, to my daughter’s house, Justine stayed in touch. She was very faithful about visiting. I’ll give her that …”

Keith leaned forward in his chair. “Somehow that surprises me.”

Garnet Dishaw’s bright eyes were piercing: “You thought she’d no longer have use for someone who was no longer of use to her?”

Keith’s gaze didn’t waver. “Something like that.”

“To be honest, you weren’t the only one who was surprised. The first time she came into my daughter’s house, you could have blown me over with a fairy’s fart, but she was sincere. And she didn’t treat me like … Never mind. she treated me the way she always had. Even when my daughter moved me in here, Justine came.”

“When did you move in here?” I asked.

He scowled in annoyance. “I don’t know,” he said, “last year sometime.”

“Did you notice a change in Justine in the last year?”

“I’m not blind,” he snapped. “When Justine visited me at my daughter’s house, she looked the way she always looked, like she’d just stepped off a bandbox. In the last year, she looked like a goddamn tree-hugger.”

I leaned forward in my chair. “But she was still Justine.”

“Of course. She was trying to find answers to some big questions. That’s what you do when you’re old. I thought the answers she’d come up with were arrant nonsense, but they made sense for her.”

“So you didn’t think she’d lost her mind.”

Garnet Dishaw sat back in his chair. “Why would I think that?”

“I’m not trying to meddle in Justine’s personal affairs. These questions have to do with her estate.”

“Are those girls of hers fighting over the lolly? Her death was a stroke of luck for them, no doubt about it.” He drained his drink. “Poor Dick. Seeing his daughters like that would have been painful for him.” Garnet Dishaw’s voice took on a faraway quality. “Still, it wouldn’t have been the first pain they caused him, nor would it have been the worst. He died of a broken heart, you know.”

“Of a broken heart,” I repeated.

Garnet Dishaw heard the doubt in my voice, and he turned on me angrily. “You heard me. If the great Howie Morenz could die of a broken heart because his leg shattered and ended his career, Richard Blackwell could certainly die of a broken heart after his whole life was shattered. I don’t want to talk about this any more.” Garnet pushed himself up from his chair and extended his hand to Keith. “It was good to see you again, my friend.”

Keith took his hand and shook it. “Garnet, what the hell are you doing in a place like this?”

Garnet Dishaw made a moue of disgust. “I had a couple of falls,” he said. “The first one was in the courthouse in Saskatoon. My feet got tangled up in my robe – a boffo Marx Brothers moment for my colleagues, but I ended up in hospital. My daughter brought me down here to recuperate and I slipped on the goddamn bathroom floor at her state-of-the-art house. We weren’t getting along, and the fall gave her the chance she needed to get rid of me.” His voice became a stage falsetto. “ ‘With my job and the children and all, I can’t give you the care you need, Dad. You’ll be better off where there’s someone there to look after you twenty-four hours a day.’ ” When he spoke again, his voice had regained its normal tone. “It’s not an easy thing to face the fact that you’re extraneous.”

Our eyes locked, and for a beat there was a powerful and wordless communication between us. “No,” I said. “It’s not easy at all.”

“Will you come to see me again?”

I nodded. “I’ll come again.”

“Good.” He looked puckish. “And bring something for the laundry hamper.”

The drive home was a short one, and Keith and I were silent, absorbed in our own thoughts. When we pulled up in front of my house, I turned to him. “What did you make of Garnet’s comment about Justine’s death being a stroke of luck for her daughters?”

“That thought’s never occurred to you?”

“I guess it has, but it just seemed too terrible to consider.”

“That’s where you and Garnet part company then, because I don’t imagine there’s much about human behaviour that he classifies as being ‘too terrible to consider.’ ”

“I liked him,” I said.

“I like him too.” Keith touched my cheek. “It’s not easy, is it?”

“You mean what’s waiting for us in the years ahead?”

“That’s exactly what I mean,” he said. “It would be nice not to be alone.”

“Yeah,” I said. “It would be nice not to be alone.”

He kissed me. “I’ll phone you from Toronto.”

It was a little after 9:00 when I walked through the front door. When I called hello, only Rose responded, but she led me to the others. Angus and Leah were on the back deck, curled up together in one of the lazy lounges.

“You two look cosy,” I said.

“We are,” Angus agreed. “But we’re ready to move along, and a little coin for coffee at Roca Jack’s would be appreciated.”

“Is everything okay with Taylor?”

Leah stood up and stretched. “She’s out in her studio painting. Mrs. Kilbourn, that new picture of hers is sensational.”

“You’re just saying that because you’re in it,” Angus said. My son gave my shoulder an avuncular squeeze. “Now, Mum, about that cash infusion.”

I opened my bag and gave him a bill.

He waved it appreciatively. “Feeling generous tonight?”

“I’m investing in my old age,” I said. “I want to make you so indebted to me that you wouldn’t even consider making me spend my sunset years in Palliser Place.”