Verdict in Blood (21 page)

On the Post-it note she had stuck to the eight-by-ten glossy of Tina Blackwell, Jill had scrawled a three-word
question: “See the problem?” I could. On the few occasions I’d caught Tina on
TV
, she’d struck me as the epitome of glazed perfection: flawless makeup, hair teased and sprayed to look casual, classic jewellery, sleekly fitted jackets. In the photograph in front of me, Tina Blackwell was still an attractive woman, but even the benevolent hand of the retoucher hadn’t been able to erase the inevitable signs of aging: the softening of the jawline, the droop of the eyelid, the tiny lines around the corners of her eyes, the feathering of her lips. The printed material on Tina was minimal. Jill had included three items: a copy of the announcement
CJRG
had made when they fired Tina, or in their sly corporate-speak, “freed her to pursue other opportunities”; a copy of the c.v. Tina had submitted to NationTV, and her cover letter to Jill offering to take “even a very junior position if one is available.”
CJRG
had referred to Tina as “a longtime employee.” In fact, she had been there for more than twenty years, her entire working life. With her surgically scarred face and her one-line résumé, it was hard to imagine what was ahead for her.

I almost put the material on Signe Rayner aside without reading it. So far, when it came to lousy lives, Justine Blackwell’s daughters were two for two, and I wasn’t eager for more sad revelations. But if I was going to resolve Hilda’s unfinished business with Justine Blackwell, I had to be resolute. I opened the file, and as soon as I saw the first newspaper clipping, I was riveted. Dr. Signe Rayner was a woman with a past. The clippings were three years old, and they were from the Chicago papers. The parents of an adolescent boy Signe had been treating sued her after the boy committed suicide. According to trial transcripts, while the young man was under hypnosis Signe had returned him to an infantile state, and encouraged him to see her as his mother.

Signe’s lawyers had earned their fees. They established that the dead boy’s father, an architect, had recently declared bankruptcy, and that the mother had her own lengthy history of psychiatric problems. A clutch of Signe’s professional colleagues had testified that, while her approach was unorthodox, it was not unethical. They supported Signe’s contention that she was attempting to help the boy return to the genesis of his problems and that, in urging him to consider her as his mother, she was simply offering herself as an ally in his battle against his demons. The boy’s parents lost their case. Signe Rayner was cleared of wrongdoing.

Despite her exoneration, she left Chicago, moved back to Regina, and began again. It was a puzzling coda to a court victory. A suspicious mind might have theorized that there had been some sort of prior agreement between Signe and her professional colleagues in Chicago, a kind of
quid pro quo
in which they agreed to support her in court if she agreed to remove herself from their jurisdiction.

I reread the account of Signe’s bizarre relationship with the dead boy, then I picked up the telephone and dialled Alex’s number. If Shakespeare was right about past being prologue, Alex needed to take another look at the doctor he was trusting to take his nephew to the brink and back again.

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.”