Verdict in Blood (23 page)

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.”