Verdict in Blood (4 page)

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.”