Verdict in Blood

Chapter

4



I slept deeply that night and awoke thinking about Alex Kequahtooway and Martin Heidegger and the question of whether any of us ever truly knows who we are. It was gloomy pondering for 5:00 a.m. on the first workday after a holiday weekend, and I was relieved when the phone rang and I heard my older daughter’s voice. Mieka was twenty-four years old, and she had a great marriage, a career she loved, and a first child due any minute. To my mind, the only problem about Mieka’s life was that it was being lived in Saskatoon, 250 kilometres away from me.

“I knew you’d be up,” she said. “No baby news. I’m just calling to whine.”

“Whine away,” I said.

She took a deep breath. “Well, for starters, I don’t think this baby is ever going to be born. My doctor says if I don’t get cracking by next weekend, they’re going to induce me. Is it just an old wives’ tale that painting the kitchen ceiling gets baby moving along?”

“I don’t know about kitchen ceilings,” I said, “but I do know that going out for Chinese food works. That’s what your dad and I did the night before you were born.”

Mieka laughed. “Tucking into a platter of Peking duck does sound more appealing than clambering up a ladder to slap on a coat of flat white.” She sighed heavily. “Mummy, I’m so discouraged. I haven’t slept through the night in eight months, I haven’t seen my feet since Canada Day, and I’ve got a seductive line of black hair growing from my breastbone to what used to be my organs of delight.”

“It’ll be over soon,” I said. “I just wish I was there with you.”

“But you will come when the baby’s born?”

“Wild horses couldn’t keep me away.”

After we hung up, I reached under the bed and pulled out the cradle board that Alex had made for Mieka and Greg’s baby. The hide bag stitched to the board was as soft as moss, and it smelled of woodsmoke. A newborn would feel safe in its snug confines. Later, the cradle board would hold the baby tight against its parent as it learned to keep a careful eye on the wonders and the terrors of the world.

I slid the cradle board back under the bed and walked downstairs. The heat and the humidity in the closed-up house were almost palpable, and I opened the front door to let in some fresh air. On the cedar chest in the front hall, Taylor’s new tartan backpack bulged, waiting to be grabbed by its owner as she sped out the door, eager to seize all the learning and fun Grade 2 had to offer. Ordinarily, I loved fall days with their heady mix of elegy for the summer past and anticipation of adventures to come, but this September was different, and as Rose and I headed for our run around the lake, I wondered if the heat would ever stop pressing down on us, making our nerves jump and our spirits sink.

By the time we got back, my hair was curling damply, and my clothes were soaked with sweat. I grabbed the newspaper off the porch and went inside to get Rose a bowl of fresh water and to plug in the coffee maker. As I waited for the coffee to perk, I glanced at the front page. The story of Justine Blackwell’s murder was above the fold. The picture the editors had chosen was a formal one of Justine robed for court. With her fair hair swept back into a smooth chignon and her coolly intelligent gaze, she seemed an unlikely candidate for grisly murder.

The story accompanying the photograph was circumspect and predictable: a dry but factual account of the murder, a review of Justine’s legal career, a brief history of her personal life. No surprises, but the final sentence of the piece was unexpected: “Longtime friend Hilda McCourt announced that funeral plans for Madame Justice Blackwell were pending.”

When Hilda came in, I held the paper out to her. It was 6:45, but she was already dressed for the day in a trim mint sheath, with a mandarin collar and neck-to-knee mother-of-pearl frog fastenings.

“You’re famous,” I said.

She took the paper, glimpsed at the story, and frowned. “I was afraid my name would be mentioned.”

“How did the paper get hold of you?”

“Lucy Blackwell gave them my name and your number,” Hilda said. “Joanne, I apologize for yet another intrusion in your home. This is becoming a distressing pattern.”

“Don’t give it a second thought,” I said. “But I don’t understand why Lucy would decide that you should be the one dealing with the press.”

Hilda sighed. “Neither do I. But according to Lucy, I was the unanimous choice. Apparently, Tina Blackwell is having a difficult time accepting her mother’s death. Her sisters think she’s in no state for media scrutiny. They’ve concluded that since Justine asked me to protect her interests, I might as well act as an intermediary with the press.”

I felt a rush of annoyance. Hilda was a wonder, but she was an eighty-three-year-old wonder, and she had just been handed an open-ended duty.

As always, Hilda was quick to read my face. “You’re not convinced I’m the best choice.”

I shook my head. “As far as I’m concerned, you’re the best choice for any job you choose to undertake. I’m just not certain you should have been asked to undertake this one.”

“It’s been busy, I’ll grant you that. Just after you left to meet Alex last night, I had a call from the journalist who is responsible for this.” Hilda tapped the Blackwell story with a fingernail freshly painted in her favourite Love That Red. “Later, there were other members of the press. I’m afraid your house was photographed, Joanne.”

I felt a stab of irritation, not at Hilda, but at the intrusion. “Don’t worry about it,” I said, but my voice lacked conviction.

Hilda leaned towards me. “Maybe it would be easier all around if I went back to Saskatoon. With facsimile machines and my message manager, I could handle everything from there, and you’d be spared the prospect of living in a circus.”

“Don’t be silly,” I said. “In a day or two, there’ll be another story for the media to chase. Besides I love having you here. You know that.”

Taylor’s ginger cat, Benny, padded into the room. As usual, her tortoiseshell, Bruce, followed meekly. My daughter wasn’t far behind.

“I like it when you’re here, too,” Taylor said. She bent, grabbed Benny, hefted him under one arm, and scooped up Bruce. Then she twirled so Hilda could check out the back of her head. “Are my braids okay?” she asked.

Her braids were, in fact, okay. So was her face, which was clean, and her runners, which matched and were tied. What wasn’t okay was the T-shirt she was wearing, which had a picture of a bull on it that bordered on the obscene, and an eyebrow-raising caption: “Bottlescrew Bill’s Second Annual Testicle Festival – I Went Nuts.”

I knelt down beside her. “T, you look great, but you’re going to have to find another shirt.”

“But this one’s so funny. You laughed when Angus brought it home from the garage sale, and everybody at the cottage thought it was good.”

“It was good for the cottage,” I said, “but not for school.”

“Why?”

“Because wearing that shirt to school would be like wearing tap shoes to church.”

“Dumb,” she said.

“Not dumb,” I said. “Just not your best choice. Now come on, let’s go upstairs and find a shirt that isn’t going to get you thrown out of Grade 2 before the end of the day.”

Taylor went off to school wearing a white cotton blouse and the intricately beaded barrettes Alex had bought the day we went to a powwow out at Standing Buffalo. They were reserved for special occasions, but she and I agreed this occasion was special enough. After she left, Bruce looked so miserable I gathered him up and began scratching his head. Benny came over, rubbed against my ankle and howled. Benny and I had never been close, but it was a day to put aside old enmities. I bent down to pick him up too. “She’ll be back,” I said. Benny shot me a look filled with contempt and streaked off; then Bruce, who was sweet but easily led, leaped out of my arms and dashed after him.

When I finally got around to showering and dressing, I was running late. I knew that if I didn’t make tracks, I wouldn’t be on time for the early-morning meeting the Political Science department always held at the Faculty Club on the first day of classes. I decided to skip breakfast, grabbed my briefcase, hollered at Angus to get moving, called goodbye to Hilda, and raced out the front door and straight into the wall of muscles that was Wayne J. Waters.

At close range, he was even more intimidating than he had appeared at a distance. He was not a tall man; in fact, he wasn’t much taller than I was, five-foot-six. But he was tattooed to terrify. On his arms, jungle beasts coupled ferociously; savage mastiffs chewed on hearts that dripped blood; buxom women straddled unidentifiable animals and embraced crucifixes. It was the Garden of Earthly Delights envisioned by a lifer. I couldn’t stop staring, and Wayne J. Waters caught me.

“Better than an art gallery, eh?” His voice was deep and surprisingly pleasant. “Are you Hilda McCourt? That reporter who came to interview me did the usual half-assed job those media types always do – told me where to find Hilda but didn’t give me a whiff about how to recognize her.”

“I’m not Miss McCourt,” I said. “But she is staying with me. I’m Joanne Kilbourn. Can I help you?”

“We’ll give you a try. My name’s Wayne J. Waters,” he said. “I wanted to talk to Hilda about the funeral she’s got pending.” He shook his head and laughed. “The way we word things, eh?” he said. “Anyway, you get the drift.” He stepped closer. His aftershave was familiar and distinctive. Old Spice. “So is Hilda around?”

My first thought was to lie, to simply say that Hilda had left town. In his sleeveless muscle shirt, Wayne J.’s upper arms were grenades, and Hilda’s account of his nasty confrontation with Justine the night of the party leapt to my mind. But my friend was not a person who took kindly to having decisions made for her; besides, the rumble of Wayne J.’s laugh was reassuring, and there was something in his eyes which, against all logic, inspired trust. It was a tough call. Luckily, while I was vacillating, Hilda appeared and made the call for me.

As soon as he saw her, Wayne J. introduced himself and held out his hand. Hilda’s response was icy. “Mr. Waters, when I’ve satisfied myself that you had nothing to do with Justine Blackwell’s death, I’ll take your hand. Until then …”

Hilda’s blue eyes were boring into him, but Wayne J. Waters didn’t flinch. “Fair enough,” he said. “Do you want to talk out here, or can I come inside?”

Hilda shot me a questioning look.

“It’ll be easier to talk where it’s cool,” I said.

As we walked back inside, Wayne J. glanced at the briefcase in my hand. “Decided to play hooky, Joanne?”

I shook my head. “Decided not to leave until you do, Wayne J.”

He put his head back and roared. “Who could blame you?”

Wayne J. Waters might have had his troubles with the law, but somewhere along the line he had come up with some personal rules about how to treat a lady. He waited until Hilda and I were seated before he lowered himself into my grandmother’s Morris chair. Once seated, he got right to the point.

“To set your mind at ease,” he said, “I had nothing to do with Justine’s death. If I have to give you specifics I will, but for now, I hope it’s enough to say that she was the classiest woman I ever knew, and she was a good friend to me and to a lot of other people I could name.”

Hilda adjusted the mother-of-pearl button fastening at the throat of her dress. “Yet you quarrelled with her bitterly the night of her party.”

Wayne J. Waters put the palms of his hands on his knees and leaned forward. “Didn’t you ever fight with a friend?” he asked softly.

Hilda wasn’t drawn in. “Not one who was murdered a few hours after our dispute,” she said.

Wayne J. reddened. “You were lucky. I’d serve ten years of hard time to see Justine walk into this room. But that isn’t gonna happen. As they say, all we can do is honour her memory.” He squared his shoulders. “That’s why I’m here. Hilda, will the people who Justine helped out at the end be welcome at her funeral?”

Hilda’s brow furrowed. “Provided it’s not a private service, I see no reason why anyone who chooses to attend wouldn’t be welcomed.”

Wayne J. sighed heavily. “That’s all I needed to know,” he said, standing up.

“Wait,” Hilda said. “I answered your question. Now please answer mine.”

He turned and looked at her expectantly.

“What was the cause of your quarrel with Madame Justice Blackwell?” she asked.

The question could hardly have been a surprise, but as Hilda posed it, the pulse in Wayne J.’s neck began to beat so noticeably that the wings of the eagle tattooed on his neck appeared to flutter. I remembered Detective Hallam’s one-phrase description of him: lightning in a bottle.

“Money,” Wayne J. said, biting off the word.

“Can you elucidate?” Hilda asked.

He eased himself back into his chair. “Justine had promised to give some money to Culhane House – it’s a prisoners’ support group some of us started up for cons and ex-cons.

“Culhane House, as in Claire Culhane?” I asked.

He gave me a sidelong glance. “She was another classy lady,” he said. “Justine suggested the name.” He turned back to Hilda. “Prisoners’ rights aren’t exactly a hot ticket now. Most people seem to think the only choice society should give a con is permanent incarceration or the end of a rope.”

“But Madame Justice Blackwell believed there were more humane alternatives,” Hilda said.

Wayne J. shrugged. “You could say that, but I wouldn’t. I think for Justine it was more a practical thing.”

“Practical in what way?” asked Hilda.

“Like in the way that, most of the time, prisons just don’t do what solid citizens want them to do. All prisons are good for is pissing away lives and pissing away money. You can make semi-good people bad in prison, and you can make bad people worse, but you never make anybody better. And I’ll tell you another thing, Hilda. They may be hellholes, but I’ve never seen a prison yet that made anybody scared to come back. Every time I hear some expert running off at the mouth about that three strikes and you’re out crap, I want to laugh. The only guy who’s scared of going to prison is a guy who’s never been there. Any ex-con knows that he might as well be in prison as anywhere else. Justine finally figured that there was a cheaper, better alternative to prison, and she was prepared to use her chequebook so that other people could figure it out too.”

“But she withdrew her offer of financial support,” Hilda said.

Wayne J. gripped the arms of his chair. Until that moment, I hadn’t noticed how big his hands were. They were huge, and they were taut with the effort to maintain control. “God damn it, she didn’t withdraw the offer,” he said furiously. “She just decided to f*cking reconsider.”

The rage in his voice was a shock; so were his eyes, which had darkened terrifyingly. The Old Spice and the self-deprecating chuckle had lulled me, but there was no disputing the fact that only an act of will was preventing the man in front of me from springing out of my grandmother’s chair and smashing everything in sight. My grandmother would have said I had been six kinds of fool to invite Wayne J. Waters into my house, and she would have been right. I began to run through strategies to get him out of the house. Just when I’d decided that none seemed workable, the storm passed.

Wayne J. hung his head in an attitude of abject apology. “Sorry about the language, ladies,” he said. “It’s just that there were so many people pushing Justine to ‘withdraw’ her offer. Miss McCourt, I don’t know if she had a chance to tell you this the other night, but since Justine decided to support Culhane House, people have been lining up to tell her how crazy she is – was.” He made a fist with one hand and pounded it repeatedly into the palm of his other hand. It was the same gesture he’d made when no one answered the door the day he went to Justine’s house on Leopold Crescent. “They tried to tell her she was losing it because she was getting old, but she wasn’t losing it, she was finding it.” He looked at me. His eyes were black and mesmerizing. “Does that make sense?”

Almost against my will, I found myself agreeing. “Yes,” I said. “It makes sense.”

“Good,” he said. “Because no matter what people said, Justine was with the people at Culhane House 110 per cent.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “Absolutely trustworthy,” I said.

He didn’t blink. “Except for that last night, absolutely.”

When Wayne J. left, I followed him out. I’d decided to skip the meeting at the Faculty Club and concentrate my efforts on getting to the university in time for my first class. I backed the Volvo down the driveway, but as I turned onto the street, Wayne J. came over. I cranked down my window.

“I forgot to say thanks,” he said.

“For what?”

“For letting me into your house. A lot of ladies wouldn’t have had the balls.” He realized what he’d said and grimaced. “Whoa,” he said, “that didn’t come out right.”

“I took it as a compliment,” I said.

He touched an imaginary cap. “That’s how I meant it.”


I got to the university just in time to run to the Political Science office to check my mail and pick up my class lists. Rosalie Norman, our departmental administrative assistant, was lying in wait. She was dressed in her inevitable twin sweater set, this time the colour of dried mustard. As it had been every morning since I’d come to work at the university, Rosalie’s greeting was minatory.

“It helps to let me know ahead of time if you’re not going to show up for a meeting. That way I don’t order extra at the Faculty Club.”

Wayne J. Waters might have seen me as a lady with balls, but dealing with Rosalie always unmanned me. “I’m sorry,” I said. “Something came up at home. I hope you were able to find someone to eat my bran muffin.” I looked down at my class list for Political Science 110. There were 212 students registered, twice as many as usual. I held it out to her. “Rosalie, something’s wrong with this list.”

She didn’t even favour it with a glance. Instead, she tapped her watch. “Well, you’re going to work it out yourself. When a person decides to come late, she can’t expect the rest of us to pick up the pieces.”

The day continued to run smoothly. My hope that the problem on my list was clerical rather than actual was dashed as soon as I walked into my classroom. More than two hundred students were jammed into a space with desks for a hundred. A computer glitch had timetabled two sections of Political Science 110 together, and by the time I had separated the classes, half the period was over. In the afternoon, my senior class informed me sulkily that their text wasn’t in the bookstore. When I got back to my office, the telephone was ringing, but it rang its last as I unlocked the door. I checked my voice mail. My first two callers invited me to start-up meetings of organizations I had no intention of joining; my third caller was Alex, asking a favour. He had been phoning Eli’s school all day, but hadn’t been able to connect with Eli’s teacher. Now he had a meeting that would run all afternoon, and he wondered if I could get in touch with the school and fill them in. I hung up the phone and grabbed my briefcase. Suddenly I had a legitimate excuse to get out of the office early, and I snatched it.

Gerry Acoose Collegiate was an inner-city experiment: an old secondary school that the community had convinced the Board of Education to give over to those who believed First Nations’ kids might thrive on a curriculum that reflected their cultural history and an attendance policy that took into account the realities of adolescent life in the city’s core. As I pulled up in front of the school, I thought about the new-model cars that lined the streets near my son Angus’s south-end high school.

The students at Gerry Acoose weren’t kids whose parents handed them the keys to a Nova on their sixteenth birthday. These young people had seen a lot more of life than the shining-eyed innocents who clutched Club Monaco book-bags in the back-to-school ads. Among other innovations, G.A.C. had a program for teen mothers, and as I waded through the students lounging on the front steps, I passed a number of girls, barely into puberty themselves, who were clutching babies. The only student who reacted to my presence was a whippet-thin boy with shoulder-length hair, worn in the traditional way. He gave me a half-smile, which encouraged me enough to ask him for directions to the principal’s office.

The halls of the school were filled with student art: some good; some not so good. On the wall outside the gymnasium, there was a life-sized painting of a white buffalo that was absolutely breathtaking. I thought of Eli’s spray-painted horses; this looked like a place where they might find a home. The principal wasn’t in his office, but the school secretary, a motherly woman in a flowered dress, pink cardigan, and sensible shoes, checked the computer and directed me to Eli’s homeroom.

At the back of Room 10C, a young woman in bluejeans and a T-shirt was stapling a poster of an aboriginal man in a white lab coat to the bulletin board. She didn’t look old enough to be the one in charge of the staple-gun.

I coughed to get the woman’s attention, but she didn’t respond. Finally, I said, “I’m looking for the homeroom teacher.”

“You’re looking at the homeroom teacher,” she said, without turning. “Hang on. I’ll be right with you.”

As I waited for her to finish, I glanced around. It was a pleasant room, filled with that gentle hazy light that comes when afternoon sun filters through chalk dust. There was a hint of sweetgrass in the air, a starblanket against the far wall, and a bank of computers in front of the windows. Posters brightened the other walls: a hockey player, a powwow dancer, an actor, a playwright, and an orchestra conductor – all aboriginal.

When Eli’s teacher turned and saw me, her face was as impassive as those of the kids outside. “I’m Anita Greyeyes,” she said, not smiling. “What can I do for you?”

“I wanted to tell you why Eli Kequahtooway wasn’t in class today,” I said.

Anita Greyeyes moved to the desk at the front of the room and motioned me to the chair opposite hers. “Are you his social worker?” she asked.

“No,” I said. “I’m a friend. Of Eli and of his uncle.” As I explained the situation, Anita Greyeyes’ gaze never left my face.

When I finished, she said, “What’s Eli’s prognosis?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “But, Ms. Greyeyes, he’s very bright and he has a close relationship with his uncle. We’re hopeful.”

She looked at me thoughtfully. “I take it that your relationship with his uncle is also close.”

“Yes,” I said.

“Any chance that’s the problem?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I hope not.”

Anita Greyeyes went to a table near the window that was loaded with texts. I watched as she chose a selection for Eli. She had small hands, blunt-fingered and efficient. As she recorded the titles in a record book, her precision-cut black hair fell forward against her cheekbones. She wrote assignments out in a small spiral notebook, put it on top of the books, and slid the stack to me. I noticed that one of the books was Eden Robinson’s Traplines.

I picked it up. “Good choice,” I said.

Anita Greyeyes didn’t respond. “If it looks as if Eli’s absence is going to be long-term, come back and we’ll work something out.”

“Thanks,” I said.

I was just about out the door when she called to me. “Tell Eli that there’s no shame in what he’s going through.”

“I will.”

She was leaning forward, hands on the desk. “And tell him that it may be hard to believe right now, but life will get better.” She paused. “I know because I’ve been there.”

“I’ll tell him.” I offered a smile, but she didn’t return it. Somehow, I wasn’t surprised.


I was in the garden, making a desultory pass at propping up my tomato plants, when Taylor got home from school. She burst through the back door with Bruce and Benny in hot pursuit. She kissed me, bent to nuzzle her boys, as she had taken to calling them, and began her monologue. By the time I’d threaded the last yellowing leaf through the tomato cage, the salient facts had emerged: there were two new girls in the class and one new boy. The Grade 2 teacher’s name was Ms. Jane Anweiler, and she had silver earrings that were shaped like dinosaurs. Ms. Anweiler also had a Polaroid camera with which she had taken pictures of everybody in the class. The pictures were mounted on a bulletin board outside the classroom, under a sign reading: WELCOME TO THE HOME OF THE GRADE 2 ALL-STARS!!! The letters were made out of baseball bats except for the O’s, which were baseballs. Taylor would be allowed to sit beside her best friend, Jess, as long as she remembered not to talk. The Lakeview School year was, it seemed, off to a dazzling start.

Angus didn’t get home from school till dinner time. I was making a salad when he came into the kitchen, poured himself a glass of juice, and started to leave.

“Hang on,” I said. “Whatever happened to ‘hello’ and ‘how are you’?”

“Sorry,” he said. “Hello and how are you?”

“Fine,” I said, “but you look a little down. Back-to-school blues?”

He shook his head. “No,” he said. “School’s okay. Actually more than okay. It looks like it’s going to be a good year.”

“So why the long face?”

“I went down to the hospital to see Eli.”

“Was he still mad at you about what happened at the game.”

My son’s face was perplexed. “No. When I got there, Eli was the same as he’d been before. I thought he was just ignoring what happened, and for a while I went along with him. Then I decided it would be better if we talked about it.” Angus put his glass down and came over to me. “Mum, Eli doesn’t remember what happened at the game. He doesn’t remember anything from the time he took off till he saw his shrink yesterday.”

“That’s twenty-four hours.”

“I know. So does Eli. He’s really psyched about this. Mum, could you go see him?”

“Do you think it would help? Eli has never been exactly easy with me.”

“It’d help. He likes you. I think he just kind of resented you.”

“Because of my relationship with Alex?”

Angus frowned. “I never thought it was that. I always thought it was just that you were our mum and, every time he saw you, it reminded him of what he didn’t have.”

That night, after supper, Taylor and I drove to the hospital with the books and assignments Anita Greyeyes had given me. I was tense as we approached Eli’s room, but he seemed genuinely pleased to see us. Physically, he was an immensely appealing boy: graceful, with the brooding good looks of a youth in an El Greco painting. He tried a smile of welcome, then stood aside so we could walk through the doorway. He was wearing brand-name sandals, khaki shorts, and a pressed white T-shirt, an absolutely normal sixteen-year-old boy, but one of his slender wrists was ringed with a hospital ID band, and his brown eyes were troubled.

Taylor immediately staked out one of the visitor’s chairs for herself; Eli directed me to the other one and sat on the edge of his bed. For a moment, there was an awkward pause, then Taylor took charge. She amazed me. She didn’t prattle about her cats or her school; instead, she asked Eli very seriously about what they did to help him at the hospital and whether he’d made any friends. Even more surprisingly, she waited for his answers, which came, at first haltingly, then with more assurance. When she told him a story about Bruce and Benny, Eli laughed aloud, and the melancholy that had hung in the air, heavy as the hospital smell, seemed to lift.

I wasn’t as successful with Eli as Taylor had been, but I did my best. I told him about Gerry Acoose Collegiate and his homeroom. As I described the starblanket on the wall and the bank of computers by the window, Eli’s eyes moved with interest towards the textbooks we’d brought. When it was time to leave, he gave Taylor an awkward one-armed hug, then he and I stood side by side in his doorway and watched as she wandered down the hall towards the elevators. It was a rare moment of connection for us.

Eli seemed to feel the closeness too. “Thanks for bringing the school stuff by,” he said.

“It’s a good school, Eli. You could be happy there.”

For a moment he was silent. Then he said, “Do they know about me being in the hospital?”

“Your teacher does,” I said. “She seems pretty decent. She said to tell you you’re not the only person who’s ever needed time to work things out.”

“You mean this has happened to other kids in that class?”

“I don’t know about the other kids,” I said, “but I have a feeling Ms. Greyeyes has had some problems in her life. She asked me to give you a message.”

His look mingled hostility and hope. “She doesn’t even know me.”

“Maybe not,” I said, “but she says she understands what you’re going through because she’s been there.”

“And she’s all right now?” he asked. The question was barely a whisper, but I could hear the yearning.

“She’s fine,” I said. “And you’re going to be fine, too. A lot of people care about you, Eli.”

Riding down in the elevator, Taylor was quiet. As we walked towards the parking lot, she said, “When’s he getting out?”

“Soon, I hope,” I said. “But I don’t know.”

“I’m almost finished that painting of us watching the dragon boats.”

“Good.”

“Do you think Eli would like it as a present?”

I smiled at her. “I know he would,” I said.

When we got home, the dishes were done, the kitchen was shining, and the table was set for breakfast. I pointed Taylor towards bed, stuck my head into the family room where Angus was listening to a CD, and went out to the backyard. Hilda was sitting on the deck with a gin and tonic.

She raised her glass when she saw me. “I bought a bottle of Beefeater this afternoon. Will you join me?”

“Absolutely,” I said. “But I don’t think I’ve ever seen you drink gin before.”

“It’s been a gin kind of day,” Hilda said.

I poured myself a drink and went back outside. It was a beautiful night. The air smelled of charcoal and heat, and from the park across the way we could hear the sounds of an early-evening ball game. I sipped my drink. “The house looks wonderful,” I said. “I love it when you stay with us. Everything seems to run so smoothly.”

“I don’t do much myself, you know. Your children are very cheerful about pitching in.”

“Only when you’re here,” I said. “The rest of the time, they pitch in, but I wouldn’t characterize their attitude as cheerful.” I smiled at her. “You’re kind of like Mary Poppins.”

Hilda winced.

“You don’t like the comparison?” I said.

“Not much,” she said. “But I am relieved to hear that you welcome my presence, because I’m going to ask if I can stay a few days longer.”

“You can stay as long as you want to,” I said. “You know that. Has something come up?”

She sighed wearily. “This business with Justine,” she said. “I can’t seem to extricate myself from it.”

“Do you want out?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I went to see Eric Fedoruk this morning. My intention was to tell him that, after giving the matter some thought, I’d concluded my responsibility to Justine Blackwell was discharged.”

“That’s an about-face, isn’t it?”

Hilda turned towards me. “It is, but there are times when reversal is the only sensible course. Joanne, I went to Eric Fedoruk’s because it seemed that my commitment to Justine was a problem for you.”

“Hilda, you could never be …”

She made a gesture of dismissal. “I know what you’re about to say, but I saw your face last night when I told you a TV crew had interviewed me at your house, and I saw you change your plans this morning when Wayne J. Waters turned up on your doorstep. This business with Justine has simply become too much of a burden on you, and that’s what I intended to tell Eric Fedoruk.”

“You were going to step aside?”

“I was. This morning after you went to the university, I sat down with Justine’s letter. I read it many times, and as far as I could ascertain, I had honoured my commitment. The power of attorney she gave me ended with her death, and when I called Eric Fedoruk to ask if Justine had named me executrix of her will, he said she hadn’t. He told me he had the will on the desk in front of him, and it named him executor. I went down to his office this morning fully intending to tell him that I’d satisfied myself there was nothing more I could do for Justine, and that I was going home to Saskatoon.”

“But something made you change your mind,” I said.

“Not something … someone. More accurately, several someones. Joanne, when I got to Eric Fedoruk’s office, the Blackwell sisters were there. From what Tina let slip, I gathered they’d come about the will. They certainly had some agenda in mind. As soon as I came into the room, they began apologizing. Lucy said they were wrong to shirk their obligations to their mother. Signe said they should never have asked me to act as their intermediary with the press. Even Tina Blackwell chimed in; she said she was wrong to put her need for privacy ahead of my right to live my own life.” Hilda frowned. “Although having finally met her, I can understand why Tina Blackwell wouldn’t want to be photographed.”

I was baffled. “Hilda why wouldn’t she want to be photographed? She’s on TV all the time. She’s the anchor on the CJRG six o’clock news.”

“With all that scarring?”

“What scarring? I don’t watch that station much, but over the years I’ve caught their news a few times. Tina Blackwell’s a very attractive woman.”

“No one would describe the woman I saw this morning as attractive.” Hilda’s voice was thoughtful, then she added briskly, “But Tina Blackwell’s appearance isn’t the issue. The issue is whether my continuing to work on Justine’s affairs is going to be a problem for you.”

“It won’t be a problem. But, Hilda, have I missed a step here? What did the Blackwell sisters do to make you change your mind about bowing out?”

“They nettled me.” Hilda’s blue eyes were dark with anger at the memory. “They treated me as if I were an old family retainer who was, oh so reluctantly, being relieved of her duties. Lucy offered the usual sweet female banalities: “It was too much to ask anyone outside the family to do.” Signe Rayner wondered, sotto voce, whether the fact that I lived in Saskatoon would prevent me from acting effectively in a Regina-based case.”

“I take it you countered their arguments,” I said.

“I most assuredly did,” Hilda said. I reminded the Blackwell women that their mother had asked me to protect her interests and that we lived in the age of technological wizardry. There was no disputing either argument. That’s when Signe Rayner turned cruel.”

“Towards whom?”

“Towards me and towards the memory of her mother. Dr. Rayner said that psychotic patients can often be quite charismatic, especially with elderly people. In her view, psychotics often infect those around them with their delusions. I asked her if she thought her mother had infected me. She said that, in her opinion, my determination to take on this commitment bordered on the obsessional.”

“But she and her sisters asked you to handle the funeral arrangements.”

“A decision they apparently regret,” Hilda said tartly. “Dr. Rayner’s attack on me was personal and it was vicious.”

I shook my head. “All this from someone whose profession involves teaching other people to handle their anger.”

Hilda sniffed. “Dr. Rayner didn’t bring much honour to her profession today. At one point, Eric Fedoruk literally jumped between us. He was quite sensible. He said that things were being said that could not be unsaid, and that perhaps we should go to the restaurant on the main floor of his building and have a drink.”

“Did you go?”

“No. At that point, I’d had enough. But when I started to say my goodbyes, Lucy Blackwell came over and put her arms around me. Joanne, it was the strangest thing. She was almost weeping, and she said, ‘Hilda, don’t be mad at us. It’s for your own good. My mother left everything in such a mess, and my sisters and I would feel terrible if anything happened to you.’ ”

I looked across at her. In the dying light, a truth that I tried to banish was apparent. While Hilda’s spirit was as robust as ever, there was no denying that physically she was becoming more fragile. I didn’t want anything to happen to her either.

“Let’s go inside,” I said. “Even on a night like this, it’s possible to get a chill.”