Kaleidoscope (15 page)

Taylor was studying my face. “Mieka told you about Riel, didn’t she? I saw you two talking at the wedding and you were both so serious I thought she must finally be telling you.”

“You knew about Riel?”

“I met him a few times when I went over to Mieka’s after school. He’s really nice, Jo. That thing that happened with Declan’s dad was terrible, but it was an accident – you said
that yourself. I know Riel’s fighting the project Declan’s dad’s working on down here, but Riel never talks about any of that with me.”

“What does he talk about?”

“My art. Riel says there are a lot of kids in North Central who could be helped by learning to make art. He thinks I’d be a good teacher.”

“You would,” I said.

Taylor cocked her head. “So you’d be all right with the idea of me volunteering at the Willy Hodgson Centre.”

I was taken aback. “Taylor, where’s this coming from? You’ve never mentioned teaching art till this moment.”

“But I’ve been thinking about it for a while.” She leaned towards me. “It’s something I want to do, Jo.”

There was hope in her voice; there was also determination. I touched her hand. “Then do it,” I said.

It had been a long day, and when we turned out the lights, Zack fell asleep immediately. I didn’t. It seemed suddenly as if the axis of our lives had shifted. The house. Mieka and Riel. And now Taylor wanted to work in North Central. It was exactly the kind of commitment I hoped she’d make some day, but not now. Working at Willy Hodgson would put Taylor right in the middle of a neighbourhood at war, and I knew that, as our daughter, Taylor would be seen as the enemy. My mind raced, but my thoughts were not productive. I slid out of bed, went out on the terrace, and pulled my chair into a corner where I could look down into the shimmering depths of the swimming pool in the courtyard. Lit from below, the pool was jewel-like – a brilliant gem in the velvety emerald grass.

When Leland and Margot appeared, I didn’t move. They were wearing white terrycloth robes that they shed casually at the pool’s edge. They dove in and, side by side, began doing
effortless lengths. When they were through, they pushed out of the water, shrugged into their robes, and walked hand in hand back to their condo. Healthy, intelligent, successful, and in love, they were, in E.A. Robinson’s memorable phrase, “everything to make us wish that we were in their place.”

After Leland and Margot left, my eyes drifted to the razor wire that topped the security fence. Once long ago, a friend had related the words of the priest who had prepared her for confirmation. “God says take what you want,” the old priest said. “Take what you want and pay for it.” As I stepped back inside our condo, I wondered about the price we would pay for what we had taken.

CHAPTER
8

At five o’clock the next morning, Leland met me at the elevator in a faded blue T-shirt, running shorts, and a brand of performance training shoes that I knew were light and well balanced because I wore them myself.

Leland pressed the elevator button and we stepped inside. “Do you like to talk when you run?” he asked.

“Usually I run with our dogs,” I said. “We only talk if there’s something worth talking about.”

“Good precedent,” Leland said. “Let’s follow it.” The elevator doors opened and we were on our way.

My usual route was along the bike path that followed the gentle curve of Wascana Creek. The sounds of my morning run were pastoral: the rustle of branches in the wind, the plash of water as a duck or a beaver broke the surface of the creek, and the lyric urgency of birdsong.

Leland and I ran on cracked concrete past giant machines mired in the mud of construction sites and hoardings covered with the graffiti tags of gangs. No birds sang here. Feral cats yowled over territory and tethered dogs snarled behind welded steel mesh security fences that were
indestructible and unscaleable. I slowed when we came to a pair of angry Rottweilers behind a security fence.

“That bothers you,” Leland said.

“I hate seeing dogs chained,” I said. “And I don’t understand why dogs are being used to guard a construction site. Nobody’s going to steal those machines.”

“No, but somebody could screw around with them,” Leland said. “Every development project teaches you something. Sometimes the lesson costs money, sometimes it causes pain, sometimes both.”

“So what have you learned from the Village Project?”

Leland shrugged. “Too much to go into now, but the dogs are necessary, Joanne. These cretins need snarling dogs to remind them that their actions have consequences.”

“They must know that,” I said.

“Look at this,” Leland said, pointing to a hoarding covered with graffiti. Gang members had painted over one another’s marks indicating ownership. “Riel Delorme thought he could unite this bunch for a greater good. These guys can’t even let one another’s graffiti alone – and what are they claiming ownership of? A piece of scrap lumber. Property that belongs to a multinational corporation. So instead of getting a job and a paycheque, they waste their lives hating me and spraying meaningless symbols on cheap wood.”

“Are you ever afraid?”

“Being afraid doesn’t change your fate,” Leland said. “When it happens, it happens.” With that, we picked up speed and ran wordlessly home.

Usually my morning run centred me, made me optimistic about my ability to handle the day ahead, but my run with Leland had unsettled me. The world of tethered dogs and unseen threats was new to me, but it was my world now, and I wasn’t at all certain I could find my way. When I
opened the door to our condo, my nerves were raw, but everything seemed reassuringly normal.

Zack was at the kitchen table, thumbing his BlackBerry, dressed for the day in the suit he’d worn to Ed’s wedding. He grinned when he saw me. “I won’t ask if you found Iron Man training up to your standards. You look as if you just stepped out of a sauna.”

“How would you like a long, sweaty kiss?”

Zack held open his arms. “Bring it on,” he said. “Nothing like a whiff of pheromones to get the day off to a great start.”

“You do remember that the suit you’re wearing might well be the only suit you now own?”

“True enough,” he said. We shared a careful kiss, and I poured myself a glass of water.

“What do you want me to do about clothes for you?” I said.

“Nothing. Norine will take care of it. She’s been ordering clothes for me for years. She just calls Harry Rosen in Calgary. They know my sizes and what I need. It’s summer. I’ve got a sports jacket and slacks at the lake. When I’m in court, I wear my barrister’s robe, so nobody knows what I’m wearing. If I’ve got a heavy-duty meeting, I can wear what I’ve got on. You worry too much.”

I felt my gorge rise. “What do you mean ‘I worry too much?’ I’m not like you, Zack. I can’t just shrug all this off and go merrily on my way. Our lives have been turned upside down. All I do is worry.”

Zack touched my arm. “Is it helping?”

“Don’t patronize me.”

“I wasn’t patronizing you. Crazy as it sounds, I was trying to get you to smile.” Zack’s voice was soft and reasonable – it was the voice he used in court when he was dealing with someone who was rocketing out of control. “We need to talk about this,” he said.

“Not now,” I said. “You have to be in court. Taylor has to get moving. And frankly, I’m pretty close to the edge already. Good luck with your case.”

“Jo, please.” Zack held out his arms to me, but I turned away. Then I did the unforgivable. I ran upstairs where he couldn’t follow me.

After I’d rapped on Taylor’s door, I splashed my face with cold water and took some deep breaths. Then I waited in the upstairs hall until I heard the front door close and I knew Zack had left.

As I went downstairs, I felt sick to my stomach. I had never loved a man as completely as I loved Zack. Our marriage was everything I could have hoped for, and I was jeopardizing it because my life was disintegrating, and I didn’t know how to stop the erosion. I picked up my BlackBerry to text him, but the red light indicating an incoming message was already flashing.

Zack’s message was to the point: “We love each other too much to let this happen, Ms. Shreve.”

I texted back. My message was an overly emotional, school-girlish declaration of love, but the moment I hit Send I felt relief wash over me.

By the time Taylor came down for breakfast, my pulse had slowed and my voice was steady. I poured us both juice. “We’re going to have to go shopping for you after school,” I said. “I’m going to need some things, too.”

“And Dad.”

“Norine buys your dad’s clothes. She has for years – I wouldn’t dream of trying to live up to her standards.”

As she always did, Taylor was cutting her toast into the bite-sized triangles before she ate it. “How old is Norine?”

“I don’t know. She must be close to fifty.”

“When we talked about matriarchies at school, I thought about Norine,” Taylor said, nibbling a triangle. “She’s like a tribal queen.”

“A tribal queen who wears nothing but Max Mara,” I said.

“She does have great taste,” Taylor said. “And she’s so regal. I wonder why she never got married.”

“Some people have everything they want without marriage,” I said. “Norine loves her work and she knows who she is.”

“And that’s enough,” Taylor said thoughtfully.

“It can be,” I said.

Taylor picked up another triangle of toast. “That’s something to think about,” she said.

When Declan texted Taylor to say he was out front, I went down in the elevator with Taylor and walked her to the curb where Declan was waiting in his car. I leaned close to have a better look at his face. It was a relief map of contusions, swelling, and stitches.

“You sure you’re okay for school?” I said.

He tried a smile but finished with a grimace. “It’s going to hurt just as much at home as it will there.”

“You sound like your dad,” I said.

This time, he did manage a smile. “Thanks,” he said. “I do my best.”

My cell was ringing when I came back into the condo. My friend, Jill Oziowy, head of news at Nation
TV
, was calling from Toronto.

“What the hell is going on?” she said. “I was in New York for the weekend, and I come back, start checking my 682 messages, and discover one from Ed Mariani telling me that somebody blew up your house. What happened?”

“The police are still trying to figure that out,” I said.

“You sound remarkably cool,” Jill said. “Especially since,
according to Ed, the explosion at your house was probably the work of the same people who killed Danny Racette.”

“I’m glad I seem cool, Jill, because I don’t feel that way. But we’re all trying to keep some perspective.”

Jill snorted. “No sane person has perspective about having their house blown up. Industrial espionage is big stuff, Jo, and not just for Regina. Leland Hunter has projects all over the world. If there’s some sort of international terrorist agenda …”

“There’s no international terrorist agenda,” I said. “This is purely local.” I gave Jill a précis of what I knew about the hostility towards the Village Project and then, because we’d been friends for more than thirty years, I told her about Mieka’s involvement with Riel Delorme.

When she heard about Mieka and Riel, Jill groaned. “That certainly complicates the situation,” she said.

“It does. A few years ago, Riel Delorme was a graduate student at the university. He was interested in doing a master’s thesis on movements that battled systemic racism and poverty. I liked him, he was smart and idealistic, and I was disappointed when he dropped out. Until last week, I hadn’t seen or heard of Riel in years. He’s changed, Jill. I could feel the anger coming from him, even though it wasn’t directed at me. I could also feel the strength. I can understand Mieka responding to him. In that much overused word, Riel Delorme is charismatic.”

“The Che syndrome,” Jill said dryly. “Those guys are so sexy. It probably has something to do with the rifles. I’ll bet if you asked Mieka, she could tell you what has happened in Delorme’s life since he dropped out of university.”

“I’m sure she could, but I’m not about to ask her,” I said. “At the moment, my relationship with my daughter is a powder keg.”

“Bad image,” Jill said.

“Bad but accurate,” I said. “Just about anything can set us off. Jill, I really would appreciate hearing anything you can find out about Riel’s activities in the past five years.”

“I’ll do what I can. Whoops. Time to go,” she said. “Somebody who thinks he’s important just waltzed into my office. Don’t take any chances, Jo.”

My next caller was Debbie Haczkewicz, although at first I didn’t recognize her voice. It was hoarse and strained. “Nothing real to report,” she said. “But I promised to give you updates. We have officers going door to door in North Central asking questions. Nobody knows anything – no surprise there.” A coughing fit interrupted her.

“Are you all right?” I asked.

“Summer cold,” she said. “No big deal.”

“Sounds nasty,” I said.

Debbie hacked again. “I’ve had worse. Anyway, since we’re not getting much help from the community, we’re trying to trace the supplies used in the bombing. Talk about a needle in the haystack. Any halfwit with access to the Internet could have done the job.”

“So you’re nowhere?”

“We’ll get there,” Debbie said, and despite her hoarseness, her voice was steely. “Whoever did this is not going to walk away.”

I had to ask the question that I had been trying to put out of my mind for days now.

“Debbie, was Riel Delorme involved?”

“We don’t know,” Debbie said. She hesitated. “Joanne, we do know that Riel is in a relationship with your daughter Mieka.”

“How long have you known?”

“Since January.”

“Why didn’t you tell us?”

Debbie made no attempt to soften the asperity in her voice. “Because Mieka is a grown woman. She hasn’t done anything illegal. She is spending time with a man who is of interest to the department but who has not been charged with anything.”

“I understand. Debbie, I’m sorry if I pushed. I appreciate the call. I know how busy you are.”