Verdict in Blood

Chapter

2



When I awoke the next morning the sun was streaming through the window, and our golden retriever, Rose, was sitting beside the bed, looking at me accusingly. It was 7:00 a.m. Our collie, Sadie, had died in June, and Rose, in her grief and confusion at losing her lifelong companion, had become a stickler about adhering to the old routines. By this time, she and I were usually halfway round the lake. I rubbed her head. “Cut me a little slack, Rose,” I said. “It was a long night, and I don’t bounce back the way I used to.”

Fifteen minutes later, we were on our familiar route. For the first time in weeks, Wascana Park wasn’t throbbing with the drums and shouts of a team getting ready for the Dragon Boat Festival. The exuberant event had become a highlight of our city’s celebration of the last weekend of summer, but now the paddlers had gone home, and the only sounds on the lake were the squawks of the geese and the shouts of the men loading the last of the big boats onto trailers.

The races had been held all day Saturday. A crew from “Canada Tonight,” the TV show on which I appeared every weekend as a political panellist, had drawn a position in one of the first heats, and Alex and Eli and my kids and I had gone down to the lake to offer moral support. We found a clearing on the shore where we could see the finish line, and after the “Canada Tonight” team came in dead last, we cheered for whoever struck our fancy until we got hungry and decided to cruise the concession stands. After we’d sampled everything worth sampling, we came back to my house, dug out the old croquet set, and played until it was time to eat again, and Alex had barbecued burgers while I served up potato salad and slaw. When the sun started to fall in the sky, the five of us walked back to the lake and watched the final heats of the race.

The evening had been flawless. As the sun set, the lake glittered gold, transforming the dragon boats into sampans, those magical vessels that sailed through the China of fairy tales, a land of sandalwood, silk, and nightingales whose silence could break the heart of an emperor.

For the first time I could remember, the five of us seemed to be in a state of perfect harmony. On the way home, the boys talked about getting a team together to enter the race next year. My daughter, Taylor, who was two months shy of her seventh birthday, was adamant about being included.

Her brother winced, but Eli was gentle. “Sure we’ll need you, Taylor. Somebody has to sit at the front of the boat and beat the drum. You’ll have the whole winter to practise.” When Taylor crowed, Eli looked at me anxiously. “That’ll be okay, won’t it?”

“Absolutely,” I said. Then, tentatively, I’d let my hand rest on his shoulder. In all the time I’d known him, Eli had never permitted physical intimacy. When he smiled at me, I thought that, at long last, we might be home-free. Yet not even a day later, he’d run away again. It didn’t make sense.

A cluster of dog-walkers had gathered along the shore. They were looking out at the lake. I joined them. A few metres out, police frogmen were diving.

“What’s happening?” I asked.

A man with a black standard poodle half-turned towards me. “You heard about that murder last night?”

“Yes,” I said. “I heard.”

“Apparently, they’re looking for the weapon.”

I gazed out at the lake. It shimmered sun-dappled and inscrutable: a place for secrets.

“The woman was killed up there at the Boy Scout memorial,” the man with the poodle continued, pointing towards the path that ran from the clearing where we were standing up towards the road. Between us and the road was the Boy Scout memorial. A handful of curious joggers were checking out the yellow crime-scene tape which roped off the area.

“You can take a look if you like,” the man with the poodle said. “But there’s not much to see.”

“I think I’ll give it a pass,” I said. At the best of times, the monument gave me the creeps, and this was not the best of times. Both my sons had been Boy Scouts, so I knew that the memorial, a central stone circled by nine smaller stones, was a representation of the sign Scouts leave at a campsite to indicate to others that they’ve gone home. But these stones were as large as tombstones, and they were engraved. The chunk of marble in the middle was inscribed with the Boy Scout emblem and motto; each of the more modest stones encircling it was etched with one key word from the laws that stated what a Boy Scout should be: Obedient, Cheerful, Thrifty, Clean, Trustworthy, Helpful, Brotherly, Courteous, and Kind.

Tired of waiting, or perhaps responding to some atavistic urge the presence of death stirred in her, Rose began to whine.

I tightened the leash around my hand. “I’m way ahead of you, Rose,” I said, and we headed for home.

When I came in, Alex and Taylor were sitting at the kitchen table reading the comics in the newspaper. It was a homey scene, but Alex’s shoulders were slumped and his exhaustion was apparent. I said hello, and he looked up at me through eyes so deeply shadowed that I went over and put my arms around him.

Taylor looked at us happily. “This is nice,” she said.

“I agree,” I said. And for a while it was nice. We had breakfast, then Taylor took Alex and me out to the sunroom to look at the painting she was working on. She had started using oils that summer, and her talent, a gift from her birth mother, the artist Sally Love, was declaring itself with a sureness that filled me with awe. The picture on her easel was of Angus, Eli, and Taylor herself watching the dragon-boat races, and it throbbed with the energy of the contest. Spikes of light radiated from the sun, and as the dragon boats slashed through the water, they sent up a spray as effervescent as joy.

Alex gazed at the painting thoughtfully, then he took Taylor’s hand in his. “Nice work,” he said.

She scrutinized his face carefully. “You really think it’s okay?”

“Yeah,” Alex said, “I really think it’s okay.”

Content, my daughter picked up her brush and began shading the underside of a cloud.

I looked at Alex. “I don’t think we’re needed here,” I said.

He grinned. “I think you’re right.”

I made us a pitcher of iced tea. We took it out to the deck and sat on the steps.

Alex closed his eyes and touched his cold glass against his forehead.

“Headache?” I asked.

“It’s manageable,” he said.

I turned to him. “Ready to talk about Eli?”

Alex shook his head. “There’s not much to say. It’s as if he’s decided to shut down. He doesn’t talk. His face is a mask. Even the way he moves is different – as if suddenly his body doesn’t belong to him. The psychiatrist who’s taking Dr. Rayner’s emergencies is going to see him this morning. The new guy’s name is Dan Kasperski, and he specializes in adolescents. I like his approach. When I started to tell him Eli’s history, he asked me to wait and tell him later. Kasperski says it’s best to start with a clean slate, no preconceptions; that way he can put himself into the patient’s situation and pick up on what Eli thinks is important.”

“It sounds as if Eli’s in good hands,” I said.

Alex sipped his tea. “Let’s hope.”

“I haven’t thanked you for stepping in last night,” I said. “Going downtown to identify her friend would have been very painful for Hilda.”

“And unnecessary,” Alex said. “Justine Blackwell had three daughters. They did their duty. Apparently it was quite a scene.”

“The daughters made a scene?”

“No. From what I hear, they were quite businesslike. The problem was with the pathology staff. They were tripping all over one another to gawk at Lucy Blackwell.”

“It’s not every day you get a chance to gawk at a legend,” I said. “When I was in my twenties, I was so proud that a Canadian girl was hanging out with Dylan and Joan Baez. I think I’ve got all of Lucy Blackwell’s old albums. It’s funny, I hadn’t thought about her for ages, then I heard her interviewed on the radio this summer. She’s just come out with a CD boxed set. It’s called The Sorcerer’s Smile. I’ve asked Angus to get the word out that’s what I want for my birthday.”

Alex laughed softly. “Angus has already got the word out. I might even be able to get you an autograph. Sherm Zimbardo is the M.E. on this one, and he said that Lucy Blackwell was very co-operative.”

I shuddered. “Poor woman, having to go down to the morgue and see her mother like that.”

“At least she was spared the crime scene.” Alex’s face was sombre. “Justine Blackwell did not die easily. She was bludgeoned to death. We haven’t recovered the weapon yet, but Sherm thinks she was probably killed on that big flat stone at the centre of the monument.” He looked at me questioningly. “Do you know the one I mean? It’s got the Boy Scout motto on it.”

“I know the one,” I said.

“Sherm thinks that after the first couple of blows, Justine Blackwell fell back against the centre stone. The killer finished her off there, then dragged her over and propped her up where we found her.”

“You mean the killer deliberately moved her to one of those stones with the Boy Scout virtues on them?” I said.

“Is that what they are?” he asked. “We didn’t have a Boy Scout troop out at Standing Buffalo.”

“Too bad,” I said. “You would have looked mighty fetching in those short pants.”

Alex’s face was pensive. “I wonder what we’re supposed to make of the stone Justine Blackwell was propped up against?”

“Which one was it?” I asked.

“ ‘Trustworthy,’ ” Alex said drily.


It was almost 9:30 when Alex left. I walked him to the car and watched as his silver Audi disappeared down the street. Angus was waiting for me in the front hall when I went inside.

“Has anybody heard from Eli?” he asked.

“He’s back,” I said. “Too bad you didn’t get up earlier. Alex was here. He could have filled you in.”

Angus looked away. “I was waiting till he left.”

“Waiting till Alex left? Why would you do that?”

“Because I need to talk to you alone.”

“Okay.” I put my arm around his waist. My son had shot up over the summer. He was close to six feet now, but he was still my baby. “Let’s sit down in the kitchen so we can look each other in the eye.”

As a rule, Angus met problems head on, but it took him a while to zero in on this one. He went to the fridge, poured himself a glass of juice, drained it, and then filled his glass again. Finally he said, “Something happened at the football game yesterday that I should have told you and Alex about.”

“Go on,” I said.

“You’re not going to like it.” He leaned forward. “Mum, when you asked me why Eli ran off at the game, I said I didn’t know.”

“But you did.”

He nodded. “Remember those college kids who ran out on the field just before half-time?”

“Of course,” I said. “I was surprised they didn’t get thrown out. They were pretty drunk.”

“But everybody thought they were funny,” Angus said. “Those guys sitting behind Eli and me were really cheering them on.”

“They weren’t exactly sober themselves,” I said.

Angus traced a line through the condensation on his glass. “When Eli and I were coming back with our nachos, another man ran out on the field. The guys in the row behind us started to cheer – the way they’d done for the college kids. Then one of them said, ‘It’s only a f*cking Indian,’ and everybody stopped cheering.”

“And Eli heard them.”

Angus nodded. “At first, I thought he was going to cry. Then he just went ballistic. Do you know what he said, Mum? He said, ‘Sometimes I’d like to kill you all.’ ”

I felt a sudden heaviness in my limbs. “He didn’t mean it, Angus. I’ve blown up like that when I was mad. So have you. It’s just a figure of speech.”

Angus shook his head dismissively. “I know he didn’t mean it. Eli wouldn’t kill anybody. What pissed me off was the way he just lumped me in with those jerks. I was ready to go up and pound those mouthy guys into the ground, but Eli didn’t give me a chance. He acted as if we were all the same.”

“Well, we’re not,” I said. “But Eli will never know that if you bail on him now.”

After Angus went upstairs to shower, I poured myself another glass of iced tea and turned on the news. There was nothing there to cheer me up. The media had discovered Justine Blackwell’s murder, and judging from the play it was getting on the radio, her death was going to be the biggest story to hit our city in a long time. A breathless account of the bizarre circumstances in which the body was discovered was followed by an obituary which moved smoothly from the highlights of Justine Blackwell’s legal career to a synopsis of the life and loves of her celebrated daughter, Lucy. Finally, there were excerpts from a press conference with Detective Robert Hallam in which he announced that the police were following up a number of leads and asking for the public’s help.

The saturation coverage of Justine Blackwell’s death didn’t leave much time for the other big news story, the heat. At mid-morning the temperature in Regina was 32 degrees Celsius and climbing. The last day of the holiday weekend was going to be a sizzler, and there was no relief in sight. I turned off the radio, called Taylor, and told her that if she wanted to hit the pool for her daily swimming lesson, now was the time.

When I’d been looking for a larger place after I adopted Taylor, one of the features that had made this house affordable was its backyard swimming pool. By the mid-nineties, prudent people had filled in their energy-wasting pools, but the owners of this house hadn’t been prudent, and I’d been able to snap it up at a bargain price. Angus and I had counted it a privilege to be able to swim whenever the fancy struck us, but no one took greater pleasure in the pool than Taylor. All summer, she had been working to transform her exuberant dogpaddle into a smooth Australian crawl. She was no closer to her goal when we came home from the lake than she had been on Canada Day, and that morning she splashed so much that Rose, who was getting fretful with age, thought she was drowning and jumped into the pool to save her. After Taylor and I had helped Rose out of the water and praised her for her heroism, my daughter decided we’d logged enough pool time. She pulled a lawn chair into a shady spot, plunked herself down, and announced that she needed to rest. I grabbed a chair, sat down beside her, closed my eyes, and gave myself over to the rare pleasure of a silent moment with my little girl.

It wasn’t long before her flutey voice broke the stillness.

“Was my mum a good swimmer?” she asked.

“Let me think,” I said. “When your mum and I were growing up, we always spent summers at the same place, so all the holidays sort of blend together, but I think when she was your age your mum swam pretty much the way you do.”

“Not great,” Taylor said gloomily.

“Not bad,” I said. “And she got better.”

Taylor slid off her chair and came over and sat on my knee. She smelled of chlorine and sunblock and heat, good summer smells. “When Eli’s mum was ten years old, she swam almost the whole way across Echo Lake.”

“That’s impressive,” I said. “Echo Lake’s big.”

“And she could run,” Taylor said. “Eli says she could have been in the Olympics.”

“When did Eli talk to you about his mum?” I asked.

“That night at the lake when we had the corn roast. He told me his mum liked to cook her corn with the skin still on, then he just kept talking about her.”

I pulled my daughter closer. “Do me a favour, Taylor. Do what you can to keep Eli talking about his mum. He misses her, and it helps him to talk.”

“Sure. I like Eli.”

Taylor wriggled off my knee. The subject was closed. “I’m going in now,” she said. “I’ve got to find some shorts and a T-shirt to wear to school tomorrow. If I wear that back-to-school outfit we bought at the mall, I’ll boil to death.”

I lay back and closed my eyes again. I didn’t intend to drift off, but the heat and the broken sleep the night before caught up with me. My dreams were surreal: Lucy Blackwell was there, singing with Bob Dylan, and Karen Kequahtooway was dancing to their music. Detective Hallam was trying to focus a spotlight on them, but he kept shining it on me by mistake. The glare hurt my eyes, but every time I tried to get out of the way, the spotlight followed me. Finally, someone tried to pull me out of the light’s path, and I woke up.

The sun was full in my face and Hilda McCourt was bending over me with her hand on my shoulder. She was wearing a lime-green peasant skirt and a white cotton blouse with her monogram embroidered in lime green on the breast pocket. Her face was creased with concern.

“I hate to awaken you, Joanne, but I was afraid you were getting sunburned.”

“I’m glad you did,” I said thickly. “What time is it?”

Hilda looked at her watch. “It’s a little after twelve,” she said. “Why don’t I make us all some lunch while you give yourself a chance to wake up?”

I stood up. “I feel like I’ve been hit with the proverbial ton of bricks,” I said. “I think I need a shower.”

“Before you hop in,” Hilda said, “there was a telephone call for you from Jess’s mother. She wondered if they could take Taylor to a movie with them this afternoon. Your daughter was at my elbow, militating for a positive answer, so I said yes, conditional upon your approval, of course.”

“You’ve got it,” I said. “I don’t want Taylor racing around outside in this heat.”

After I’d showered, I towelled off, spritzed myself with White Linen, slipped on my coolest sundress, and revelled in feeling fresh. The pleasure was short-lived. By the time I got to the kitchen, I could feel the rivulets of sweat starting. In ten minutes, my sundress would be sticking to my back. Hilda was sitting at the kitchen table, cutting salmon sandwiches.

I leaned over her shoulder. “Those look wonderful,” I said.

“Angus thought so,” she said. “These are my second attempt. He ate the first plateful. Incidentally, he’s going to be gone this afternoon, too.”

“Did he say where he was going?”

“No, but he did he say he’d be home for dinner.”

“That’s a good sign.”

“Is something wrong with him, Joanne? He was uncharacteristically quiet when I saw him.”

“He’s worried about Eli,” I said. “So am I. He ran away again yesterday. You’d already gone to Justine’s party when we got back from looking for him, so I didn’t have a chance to tell you. He showed up at Alex’s late last night.”

“Is he all right?”

“I don’t know.”

Hilda gave me a searching look. “I gather you’d prefer that I not press you for details.”

“It’s not that,” I said. “I just don’t know very much. At the moment, all we can do is be here if he needs us.” I smiled at her. “Now, it looks like you and I are on our own this afternoon. Anything special you’d like to do?”

“I’m afraid we aren’t quite on our own, Joanne. While you were sleeping, I checked the message manager on my phone in Saskatoon.”

I couldn’t help smiling. Hilda noticed. She lifted her hand in a halt gesture. “I know I said those machines were cold and impersonal and would erode even the small amount of civility we’re still clinging to, but they really are handy, aren’t they? Mine certainly proved useful today. I had a message from Eric Fedoruk. Do you remember my mentioning his name to Detective Hallam?”

“I remember,” I said. The name had seemed familiar to me at the time, and it nagged at me still, but I couldn’t place it.

“At any rate,” said Hilda, “I returned Mr. Fedoruk’s call. It turns out that he was Justine’s lawyer as well as her friend. We had a very curious conversation.” She frowned. “I’m still not quite sure what he wanted. He kept circling around the question of my relationship with Justine. For a man trained in the law, he was quite imprecise.”

“Law schools aren’t exactly breeding grounds for clear expression,” I said.

Hilda gave me a wry smile. “True enough,” she said. “But I had the sense that Mr. Fedoruk’s obfuscations were deliberate. My reading of the situation is that he was less concerned with giving information than getting it.”

“You think he was on a fishing expedition?”

“Exactly,” she said. “And I don’t like being baited. So, to stand your metaphor on its head, I reeled Mr. Fedoruk in. He’s coming here at two o’clock. I hope you don’t mind, Joanne. I know it’s a breach of etiquette to invite a stranger into a home in which one’s a guest.”

I picked up a sandwich. “Hilda, you’re not a guest; you’re family. Besides, you’ve made me curious.”

Hilda handed me a napkin. “Wyclif thought ‘curiouste indicated a disposition to inquire too minutely into a thing,’ ” she said, “but I have a premonition that it’s going to be impossible to inquire too minutely into the circumstances of Justine Blackwell’s death.”


As soon as I opened the front door and saw Eric Fedoruk standing on the porch, I knew why his name had rung a bell. In the late seventies, Eric Fedoruk had played for the Toronto Maple Leafs. He was a prairie boy with a slapshot that could crack Plexiglas and a smile as wide and untroubled as a Saskatchewan summer sky. The man offering his hand to me was a boy no longer: his crewcut was greying and the athlete’s body had thickened with middle age, but as we introduced ourselves, it was obvious Eric Fedoruk’s smile hadn’t lost its wattage. He was wearing black motorcycle boots and he had his helmet in his hand. Over his shoulder I could see the kind of sleek, lethal cycle that Angus lusted after. I thanked my lucky stars he wasn’t home.

“I apologize for barging in on you like this,” Eric Fedoruk said. “Holiday weekends should be off limits to everybody except family and friends. But Justine’s death has thrown everything off balance, at least for me.” His sentence trailed off, and he shook his head in disbelief.

“Come inside where it’s cool,” I said. “Or at least cooler. Isn’t this heat unbelievable?”

“And getting worse, according to the last weather report I heard,” he said. “Mrs. Kilbourn, could I trouble you for a glass of water? I’ve been out riding, and throwing a six-hundred-pound bike around in this heat really takes it out of you.”

I led him into the living room where Hilda was waiting. When I came back with the water, I started to excuse myself, but Hilda motioned me to stay. “Joanne, if you have a moment, I’d like you to hear this.”

Eric took the water and gulped it gratefully. “Thanks,” he said. “I was just telling Miss McCourt that I’ve been on the phone all morning with Justine’s colleagues. I think we’re all just beginning to realize how completely we failed her.”

I sat down beside Hilda. “In what way?” I asked.

“Isn’t it obvious? Someone should have stepped in – faced the fact that Justine’s mind was deteriorating and forced her to get some professional help. As people who work in the legal system, we were all aware of how dangerous that crowd she was associating with were.” His gaze was level. “Mrs. Kilbourn, I know there are some ex-cons and gang members who turn their lives around but, believe me, they’re in the minority. I don’t know whether it’s bad genes, bad breaks, or bad judgement, but many criminals simply lack the kind of control they need to keep their violence in check. Look at them sideways and they snap.”

“And you think one of them snapped and killed Justine Blackwell.”

“I’ve talked to the police. Justine was bludgeoned to death. Doesn’t that sound like the murderer just went crazy? We blew it. We should have intervened. I guess we just didn’t want to deal with what was happening to Justine. I know I didn’t.”

“Because you and she were so close,” Hilda said.

A look of pain crossed Eric Fedoruk’s face. “Not as close as I wanted to be. Justine didn’t let anyone get too close. It’s just that I can’t remember a time in my life when she wasn’t there. I grew up in the house next door to hers on Leopold Crescent; I articled with her old firm after I graduated from law school; I represented clients in her courtroom. She was absolutely brilliant. That’s why all this is so …” He fell silent, fighting emotion.

In the course of her professional life as a teacher of high-school English, Hilda had dealt with more than her share of the agitated and the overwrought. When she spoke, her voice was as crisp as her monogrammed blouse. “Mr. Fedoruk, I understand that you’ve sustained a loss, but you don’t strike me as the kind of man who would come to a stranger’s home to vent his grief. What is it that you want from me?”

He flinched. “All right,” he said. “Here it is. Miss McCourt, last night at the party, Justine told me she was going to ask for your help with a certain matter. Did she have time to talk to you about it?”

“You’ll have to be more explicit,” Hilda said. “Justine and I spoke about many matters last night.”

Eric Fedoruk hesitated. I could see him calculating the odds that, in divulging information to Hilda, he might lose his advantage. Once he’d made his decision, he waded right in. “What Justine said was that, as her lawyer, I should be aware that she was about to ask you to assess her capacity to handle her personal affairs. Did she ask you to make that assessment?”

This time it was Hilda’s turn to deliberate before answering. When she finally responded, her voice was firm. “Yes,” she said. “Justine did ask me to intervene in her life. She gave me a medical text on geriatric psychiatry and a handwritten letter authorizing me to evaluate her mental competence.”

“May I see the letter?”

“In due time,” Hilda said. “Now, I have a question for you, Mr. Fedoruk. What’s your interest in this?”

“I’m Justine’s lawyer. I need to know …” He was faltering, and he knew it. He took a deep breath and began again. “My interest is a friend’s interest,” he said. “In the past year, Justine Blackwell was not the woman she’d always been. Miss McCourt, you remember what she used to be like. She was so …” He shrugged, searching for the right word. Finally, he found it. “She was so elegant in everything she did: the way she wrote judgments; the way she dressed; the way she arranged her office; even the way she smoked a cigarette was stylish – the way actresses in those old black-and-white movies used to smoke.” He smiled at something he saw in my face. “Oh yes, Mrs. Kilbourn, until last year Justine was a two-pack-a-day smoker. Quitting smoking was another of her changes.”

“A positive one,” Hilda said drily.

“Maybe,” he said. “But if it was, it was the only one. Of course, Justine saw quitting smoking as just one of many positive changes she made in her life after she met Wayne J. Waters. Did she talk to you about him?”

Hilda nodded.

“Then you know what an impact he had on her. It was insane. Justine had always had a built-in radar for bullshitters, but Wayne J. seemed to slide in under the beam. She told me that meeting him was her ‘moment of revelation.’ I tried to make her see how nuts that was. ‘Like Paul on the road to Damascus,’ I said. I was sure she’d laugh. Justine didn’t have much use for religion.”

“But she didn’t laugh,” I said.

He sighed. “No,” he said. “She was very earnest. She said, ‘If you consider the moment on the road to Damascus a metaphor for a life-altering experience, then your comparison couldn’t be more apt.’ ”

To this point, Hilda had been silent, taking it all in. When she spoke, I could hear the edge in her voice. “So Justine was aware that her life had altered radically. She didn’t just slide into this new pattern of behaviour.”

“Oh no,” he said. “She was fully aware that things were different.”

“Then your assessment that Justine wasn’t in complete possession of her faculties hinges solely on the fact that you found the choices she was making repellent.”

Eric Fedoruk grinned sheepishly. “You would have made a dynamite lawyer, Miss McCourt.” He got to his feet. “Now, I really have taken up enough of your time. I’m sorry to have cast a shadow over the last long weekend of summer, but I needed to know how things stood.”

He started for the door, but Hilda laid her hand on his arm, restraining him. “I wonder if you could leave me your business card, Mr. Fedoruk.”

He pulled his wallet out of his back pocket, took out a card and a pen. “I’ll jot down my home phone number too. I’m not always the easiest guy in the world to get hold of.” He scrawled his number on the card and handed it to Hilda.

She looked at it thoughtfully. “You’ll be hearing from me,” she said. “Last night, Justine Blackwell asked a favour of me. Her death doesn’t nullify that request. She wanted me to look after her interests, and that’s exactly what I intend to do.”

Eric Fedoruk furrowed his brow. “We are on the same side in this matter. I hope you understand that.”

“Allegiances are earned, not assumed,” Hilda said. “I hope you understand that.” She smiled her dismissal. “Thank you for coming by. Your visit was most instructive.”

When the door closed behind Eric Fedoruk, I turned to Hilda. “Were you throwing down the gauntlet?” I asked.

She shook her head. “Just alerting Mr. Fedoruk to the fact that I’m a woman who takes her responsibilities seriously.” She squared her shoulders. “If your afternoon’s clear, Joanne, would you be willing to join me in paying a condolence call? I telephoned Justine’s daughters while you were napping. They’re expecting me at two-thirty. It would be good to have a companion with me whose judgement I trust.”