Verdict in Blood (6 page)

Hilda’s eyes widened. “A psychiatrist,” she said, settling into the chair to Signe’s right. “Your mother presented me with a book last night: a review of geriatric psychiatry. It was a medical text. Did you give it to her?”

Signe Rayner met Hilda’s gaze. “I did. At her request.”

“When did she ask you for it?”

Signe rubbed at a whorl in the mahogany table with her fingertip. “At the beginning of August. We have a family cottage up at Little Bear Lake. We take turns using it, but we always reserve the first weekend in August to be together -just the four of us. I’d been concerned about my mother’s behaviour for months. I’d suggested she see a colleague of mine who specializes in geriatric patients, but my mother refused.” Signe’s brow furrowed. “She was quite vehement. She insisted that a change in the way one chose to live one’s
life was not necessarily an indicator of a progressive dementing disorder.”

Hilda leaned forward with interest. “Did she use that term?”

“Oh yes,” Signe said. “When it came to areas that touched her life, my mother believed in acquiring expert knowledge.”

“Oedipus had great knowledge too,” Hilda said gently. “He was even able to solve the riddle of the Sphinx, yet he never truly knew himself. That was the source of his tragedy.”

Lucy twisted a hank of her hair around her finger. “Do you think my mother didn’t know herself?”

Hilda smiled enigmatically, then she turned to Signe Rayner. “Perhaps you have an opinion?”

Signe shrugged. “I was trying to formulate one up at the lake. There are a number of standard tests that are used to determine mental status.”

“And Justine agreed to be tested?” Hilda asked.

Signe Rayner looked rueful. “She wasn’t supposed to notice. I was trying to be unobtrusive.”

“Blending into the wallpaper isn’t exactly your strong suit, Signe.” Lucy Blackwell pushed back her chair and drew up one of her legs so that its heel rested on her other leg. Her legs were beautiful, long and shapely. The pose seemed deliberatively provocative. She was, I realized, one of those people whose every encounter is surrounded by an erotic haze. She gazed at her sister with interest. “To be fair, the time for subtlety did seem to be over. I hadn’t seen Mummy since the summer before, but her life really had become quite bizarre.”

“That’s why Tina and I had been calling you for almost a year asking you to come back,” Signe said.

“I had obligations.”

“We hoped your obligation to your family might take priority.”

“Families,” Lucy said. She shot me a conspiratorial glance; then, in a voice that was thrillingly familiar, she sang, “ ‘You
can slam the door and walk away, but you’re still trapped in their photo albums.’ ”
She looked at me expectantly.

“ ‘Picture Time,’ ” I said. “From the first album.”

Signe glared at me. “Don’t encourage her,” she said sternly. She turned to Hilda. “Miss McCourt, you said Mother gave you my handbook on geriatric psychiatry. Did she explain why she wanted you to have it?”

“Justine wanted me to decide whether her mental faculties were intact.”

“Isn’t the fact that she dragged you into this proof that her mental faculties
weren’t
intact?” Lucy’s frustration was evident. “I mean no disrespect, Miss McCourt, but from what Signe tells me, you weren’t that close to my mother. She had friends and family here. Doesn’t it strike you as bizarre that she felt she couldn’t go to the people who knew her best?”

“Not at all,” Hilda said flatly. “It strikes me as eminently sensible. Your mother knew me as a person of probity who had no axe to grind. Now, let’s deal with the situation at hand. When Eric Fedoruk came to see me this afternoon, we talked about the task your mother set me.”

“Eric
came to see you?” Lucy leaped to her feet. She seemed close to tears. “He hasn’t even returned our calls.”

Signe Rayner half-rose from her chair. “Lucy, don’t.”

“Why not? What did he tell you about us, Miss McCourt?”

“That’s enough, Lucy.” Signe’s voice was commanding. “We can talk about this later.”

Lucy walked over to Hilda. “Miss McCourt, don’t believe everything you hear.”

At close to five-foot-eleven, Lucy was almost a foot taller than my old friend, but Hilda took charge of the situation. “I’ve learned to make my own assessments of people, Lucy. Now, while I’m truly sorry for your loss, my purpose in coming here this afternoon is not simply to commiserate. Last night, when your mother gave me Signe’s book, she also gave me a note authorizing me to do what I deemed necessary to protect her interests.” Hilda turned to Signe. “I came here today to let all of you know that’s exactly what I plan to do.”

Lucy and Signe exchanged glances, then Signe thanked us, quite formally, for coming, and she and Lucy saw us out.

Silenced by the misery we had felt in Justine Blackwell’s home, Hilda and I walked down the front path. Out of nowhere, another image from “Picture Time” flashed through my mind.
“Our last smiles frozen in Kodachrome.”
As we turned onto the sidewalk, I found myself thinking that there wasn’t much about painful leave-takings that Lucy Blackwell didn’t understand.

Hilda’s musings had obviously been running parallel to mine. “Two very unhappy women,” she said. “And I don’t believe the genesis of their problems was their mother’s death.”

“No,” I agreed. “Whatever’s troubling the Blackwell sisters goes way back.”

Hilda touched my arm. “And there’s more trouble coming to them,” she said. “Look over there.”

A van painted in the style of comic-book high realism that Taylor’s art teacher called jailhouse art had pulled up across the road. The vehicle was, by anyone’s reckoning, a mean machine, and as its driver bounded out and started towards us, there was no denying that he was one tough customer. He was of middle height, with a shaved head, a full moustache, and the powerful physique of a bodybuilder.

As he brushed past us, I saw that the parts of his skin not hidden by his Levi’s and white V-necked T-shirt were purpley-blue with tattoos. He vaulted up the front steps of the Blackwell house and knocked on the door.

“Another condolence call,” I said.

“I wonder what the Blackwell sisters will make of this one?” Hilda said. She turned to me. “I assume you can guess at that man’s identity, Joanne.”

“Wayne J. Waters?”

“In the flesh,” Hilda said.

Patient as a choirboy, Wayne J. waited for someone to respond to his knock on the door. When it was apparent that no answer was forthcoming, he pounded his closed fist into the open palm of his other hand and headed back down the walk.

As his van screeched back towards Albert Street, the words painted in red on the back of the vehicle leaped out at me: “Every Saint Has a Past. Every Sinner Has a Future.” It seemed Lucy Blackwell hadn’t cornered the market on folk wisdom.

That night, after Taylor’s school clothes were laid out for the next day her backpack filled with her new school supplies, and she’d been bathed and tucked into bed with her cats, Bruce and Benny, and Hilda had been rung in to tell the next adventure in the ongoing saga of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, I drove over to Alex’s apartment on Lorne Street, and we made love.

When I was twenty, I had believed that the pleasures of sex were aesthetic and athletic. Then, the prospect of being physically intimate with a man when I was past fifty and my body was no longer a delight to look at or a joy to manoeuvre had filled me with alarm. I’d been wrong to worry. With Alex, I was enjoying the best sex of my life: by turns
passionate, tender, funny, restoring, and transcendent. That September night, we managed four out of five. When we’d finished, our bodies were slick on the tangled sheets, and we were at peace.

It was good to be back in the apartment. Since his nephew had come to live with him, Alex and I hadn’t spent much time there, but tonight we were alone. Declaring that Eli was in need of chill-out time, Dr. Kasperski had decided to keep him in the hospital overnight. As I looked at the lines of worry etched in Alex’s face, I thought the man I loved could use a little chill-out time himself. The events of the past twenty-four hours had taken their toll. Through the open window of the bedroom, I could see the plaster owl a previous tenant had anchored on the rail of the balcony to scare off pigeons. Alex called the bird his sentinel, and we had joked that as long as the bird was there, no intruder could disturb our delight in one another. As I felt the tension returning to Alex’s body, I knew I had to face the fact that even plaster owls had their limits.

I moved closer to him. “Talk to me about it,” I said.

“There’s not much to say. I had a quick visit with Dan Kasperski after he saw Eli this afternoon. Considering Eli’s his patient only until Dr. Rayner gets back to her practice, Kasperski’s giving a lot of thought to the case. He says his first task is to get Eli to see him as an ally who can help him find a way to deal with all the things that are troubling him.”

“That makes sense to me,” I said.

Alex’s dark eyes were serious. “Everything Dan Kasperski says makes sense. The amazing thing is he looks like he’s about seventeen years old. Maybe that’s why Eli’s responding so well to him. This afternoon, when Kasperski came in, I could see the relief on Eli’s face.”

“Maybe you should ask him to take Eli on as a patient. In
the next few weeks, Signe Rayner could have her hands full just dealing with her own life.”

“What do you mean?”

“Did you know she’s Justine Blackwell’s daughter?”

“You’re kidding.”

“No. Hilda and I went over to Justine’s house today to pay a condolence call, and Signe Rayner was there. Alex, how does Eli get along with her? She seems so …”

“Forbidding? I know what you mean, but she came highly recommended, and she did get Eli to open up about the guilt he feels about Karen’s death.”

“Guilt? You never said anything about him feeling guilty.”

“It was Eli’s story to tell or not tell. Besides, he seemed to be dealing with it.”

“Why would he feel guilty? Nobody can prevent a car accident, and from what you’ve said, Eli really loved Karen.”

“He did love her, but he also caused her a lot of grief. I never could figure out why. Karen was about the best mother any kid could ask for: very devoted, very involved with the culture. But as great as Karen was, when Eli was about ten the graffiti started, and the running away to the city.”

“Did something happen?”

“No. Eli just got mad at the world. I went through the same thing when I was his age.”

“You straightened out,” I said. “Can’t get much straighter than a cop.”

Alex drew me closer. “I was lucky,” he said. “My mother didn’t die when I was sixteen. By the time my mother died, I’d had time to show her I valued the things she’d taught me.”

“But Eli never had that chance,” I said.

“No,” Alex said, “he didn’t. And it’s eating him up. Has he ever said anything to you about Karen?”

“Never,” I said. “But he did talk to Taylor about her.”

“To Taylor? She’s the last person I’d have thought he’d open up to.”

“There’s a certain logic there, I guess. Taylor lost her mother too, and of course she’s so young, Eli doesn’t have to worry about being a tough guy in front of her. Just this morning, Taylor was telling me that she and Eli had talked about what a great swimmer Karen was.”

In the moonlight, Alex’s face grew soft. “She
was
a great swimmer. We used to tell her she was part otter. She loved that lake. We had this old canoe. When Karen was four, she went clear across the lake in it. She was so little, she could barely hold the paddle.” His voice broke. “And could she ever run. Some of those hills we’ve got out at Standing Buffalo are steep, but that never stopped Karen. It seemed like every time my brother and I were supposed to be watching out for her, she’d take off on us. We always knew where to look for her – right at the top of the biggest hill she could find. As soon as she saw Perry and me, she’d start to run to us. We’d yell at her to slow down because we were afraid she’d break her neck, and then we’d catch hell. But she never slowed down. And she never fell.”

For a long time, we were silent. Finally, Alex said, “The only thing that ever scared my sister was thinking about what could happen to Eli. When she died, I promised myself that I’d do everything I could to make sure he had a good life. Damn it, Jo, until yesterday, I thought Eli was going to be okay. What would make a kid take off like that, for no reason?”

I sat up. “He had a reason,” I said.

As I told Alex about the incident at the Rider game, I could see the cords in his neck tighten, but he didn’t say anything until I’d finished. Then, under his breath, he murmured a word I’d never heard him use before, and I could feel
the barrier come between us. I went into the bathroom to get ready to go home. After I’d dressed, I looked out the bathroom window. On the balcony of the apartment across the alley, a man and a woman, who looked to be about my age, were having a late supper. There were candles on the table and fresh flowers. As I watched, the man leaned towards the woman and touched her cheek. When she felt his touch, the woman covered his hand with her own. That unknown couple might have had a hundred secret sorrows but, at that moment, I envied them their uncomplicated joy in one another. Moonlight and unspoken intimacies: that was the way love was supposed to be.

Alex walked me down to my car. I slid into the driver’s seat. “Tell Eli the kids and I will come by and visit him tomorrow after school,” I said.

“Considering the circumstances, maybe you’d better wait a while,” Alex said.

“Whenever you think he’s ready,” I said.

I waited as Alex opened the front door of his building and walked inside. He didn’t look back. His apartment was on the third floor at the corner. I knew exactly how long it took to reach it. I watched as the lights went out in his living room, and a few seconds later in his bedroom. Miserable at the thought of Alex sitting alone in the dark, his only protection against the vagaries of the world a plaster owl sitting sentry on a balcony railing, I took a deep breath and turned the key in the ignition.