The Further Investigations of Joanne Kilbourn (82 page)

“Lucy, you’re running out of time here.”

“Okay, I’ll tell you the truth. I don’t know what Signe did in Chicago, but she isn’t using that treatment on Eli Kequahtooway. My sister doesn’t make the same mistake twice.”

“She talked to you about how she’s treating Eli?”

Lucy shrugged. “She may have mentioned it.” She whirled around and gave me her dazzling smile. “So, that’s it, Music Woman. You’ve shaken out all the skeletons in our closet.” She adjusted her scarf. “Now, I’d better be on my way, let you get on with making supper for your kids.” Lucy
Blackwell looked at me wistfully. “It must be nice to lead such an ordinary life.”

As I stood in my garden in the late-afternoon sunshine, picking the last of the summer’s tomatoes, I thought about Lucy. If the purpose of her visit had been to clear the air, she hadn’t succeeded. As far as I was concerned, the Blackwell sisters were still, in Winston Churchill’s famous phrase, “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.”

All during dinner, I pondered the problem of where to find the pieces that would make sense of the puzzle. The possibility I came up with was born of desperation. After supper, I got Taylor bathed and in bed, pointed Angus towards his books, and drove downtown to Culhane House and the person who, according to Eric Fedoruk, had been Justine’s closest companion in the final year of her life.

When I got out of my car on Rose Street, the chill of apprehension I felt wasn’t wholly attributable to the fact that I was walking in an unfamiliar area on a moonless Sunday night. Detective Robert Hallam had characterized Wayne J. Waters as “lightning in a bottle”; it was impossible to predict how he’d react to an unexpected encounter. I checked the address I’d written down. Culhane House was only half a block away. I was almost there; it would be foolish to turn back now.

The building was an old three-storey house on a corner lot. In the first half of the century, this had been a fashionable downtown address, but the people who were on their way up in the world had long since abandoned the neighbourhood to those who were going nowhere. From the outside, Culhane House looked solid and serviceable. In selecting it as the site of an organization that would serve as both hostel and headquarters for ex-cons, someone had chosen wisely. The location was central; the upper storeys
could be used as temporary living quarters, and the bottom floor appeared to be spacious.

The hand-lettered sign on the front door said “Enter,” so I did. The room into which I walked was dark, acrid with cigarette smoke, and, except for the sounds coming from the television, silent. On the
TV
screen, the Sultan was plotting vengeance against Aladdin and Princess Jasmine; none of the half-dozen or so people watching his treachery even glanced my way.

“Do any of you know where I can find Wayne J. Waters?” I asked.

The blonde in leopardskin spandex draped over the chair closest to me gave me the once-over. “He’s in the office,” she said, “right through them double doors. But hang on to your pompoms, girlie, he’s in a lousy mood.”

The room in which I found Wayne J. appeared to have been the dining room in the house’s earliest incarnation. The chandelier he was sitting under had long since shed its crystal teardrops, but the long oak table in front of him and the sideboard in the corner were battered beauties. When he saw me, Wayne J. jumped to his feet and surprised me with a smile. “I’d given you up for dead,” he said. “How’s Hilda?”

“Coming along,” I said.

He made the thumbs-up sign. “Good, she’s a classy broad.”

“She is,” I agreed.

“You got time for a coffee?” he asked.

“Sure,” I said. “It’s been a long day. Coffee sounds great.”

When he went off to get the coffee, I looked around the office. There wasn’t much to see: an old Tandy computer; a battered filing cabinet; a poster of a kittens rollicking with a roll of toilet paper under the words “…  been up to any mischief lately?”; and a wall calendar for the month of September. The calendar had the kind of surface that can be written on with markers, and it was a crazy quilt of colour.
When I examined the entries more closely, I saw that they were a record of appointments, colour-coded to match the various names in the legend printed at the bottom of the calendar. Terrence Ducharme’s name was in red marker, and his list of meetings would have kept him busier than most middle-class children: Anger Management; A.A.; Substance Abusers Anonymous; Interpersonal Skills. I was checking the entry for the night Hilda had been attacked when Wayne J. came back with the coffee.

“Terry didn’t do her, you know.” His tone was conversational.

I turned to face him. “I know,” I said. “The police told me he had an alibi for the night Hilda was attacked.”

“I’m not talking about Hilda,” he said. “I’m talking about Justine.”

“But he didn’t have an alibi,” I said.

“Maybe he lacked an alibi,” Wayne J. said judiciously, “but he did have a disincentive.”

“You’re going to have to explain that.”

“There’s nothing to explain,” Wayne J. said, setting our mugs of coffee carefully on the table. “Terry knew the same thing everybody here knew.”

I slid into the chair nearest me and picked up my mug. “Which was?”

Wayne J. blew on top of his coffee to cool it. “Which was that I would have considered it my personal duty to kill anybody who touched a hair on Justine Blackwell’s head.”

Whatever his intention, Wayne J.’s words were a conversation-stopper. For a beat, we sipped our coffee, alone in our private thoughts. Wayne J. seemed content to be silent, but I wasn’t. I hadn’t come to Culhane House to reflect; I’d come to get answers.

“How are things going for you now?” I asked.

Wayne J. gave me a sardonic smile. “Fuckin’ A.” The table in front of him was littered with bills. He scooped up a stack in one of his meaty hands. “As you can see, our creditors grow impatient. Unfortunately, Culhane House lacks the wherewithal to meet their demands.”

“And no prospects?” I asked.

He laughed his reassuring rumble. “None that are legally acceptable. And believe me I’ve explored my options. I even bit the bullet and went to Danger Boy’s office.”

I must have looked puzzled.

“Eric Fedoruk,” he said. “Owner of one of the sweetest machines money can buy, and I’ll bet he never takes it past 160 kph. What a waste! Anyway, Mr. Fedoruk gave me a rundown of the situation with Justine’s money. He used a bunch of legal mumbo-jumbo, but I’ve spent enough time in courtrooms to cut through that crap. The bottom line is that I’m going to have fight like hell to get any of Justine’s money.”

“Are you going to do it?”

“No.”

“That surprises me,” I said.

Wayne J. leaned towards me; he was so close I could smell the Old Spice. “Why? Because I’m broke and because everything I care about is going down the toilet?”

“Something like that.”

“Some things are worth more than money, Joanne.”

I sipped my coffee. “What is it that’s worth more than money to you, Wayne J.?”

“Not dragging Justine’s name through the mud. If I got myself a lawyer and went to court about this, those daughters of hers would haul out all the dirty laundry. They don’t have much regard for their mother.”

Here was my opening. “What went wrong between Justine and her children?” I asked.

“They’re losers, and Justine was a winner,” he said judiciously. “And losers always hate winners. It’s human nature. And you know what else is human nature? No matter what a winner does for a loser, it’s never enough.” Suddenly Wayne J. clenched his hands, raised his fists, and brought them down on the table so hard, I thought the wood might crack. “She fucking did everything for them,” he said. “She gave Tina a bundle for that facelift or whatever the hell it was she wanted. And the singer was always there with her hand out too.”

“Lucy asked Justine for money?”

Wayne J.’s tone was mocking. “It costs money to make records. Haven’t you heard?” He was warming to his narrative now. “And the shrink had her own monetary needs – major ones. I know because I was involved in that one.”

“What?”

He shook himself. “Look, I shouldn’t be talking about any of this. It’s violating a confidence.”

“Justine’s dead,” I said. “Nothing she told you can hurt her any more.”

Wayne J. furrowed his brow in contemplation. “What the hell,” he said. “The good doctor never even thanked me. This couple in Chicago was shaking her down. Justine didn’t want her daughter involved, so she asked me to deliver the money to them. It was the only time she ever asked me to do her a favour. I was proud to do it.” Remembering, he looked away. “I was glad Justine didn’t have to deal with those people. They were garbage. The architect was a peckerhead – totally pussy-whipped. His wife was crazy and mean as hell. She had this little dog, and she made it wear boots when it went outside. To keep it from tracking in mud, get it? No wonder her kid needed a shrink.”

“Did you ever find out why these people were blackmailing Signe Rayner?”

“I never asked,” he said. “I just delivered the money, and told them it was a one-shot deal. If they got greedy, they’d get sorry.” His eyes bored into me. “Mrs. Kilbourn, I’d appreciate it if you kept this little story to yourself. I don’t want anything floating around that will make Justine look bad.”

“Then help me out with something else because, in my opinion, this
does
make Justine look bad.”

He laughed mirthlessly. “That screw-up about the burial plots at the cemetery,” he said. “I noticed you and Hilda didn’t stick around.”

“We had Lucy Blackwell with us,” I said. “When she saw there were strangers buried in the family plot, she was devastated.”

Something hard came into Wayne J.’s eyes. “Lucy’s mother had her reasons for doing what she did.”

“What possible reason
could
she have had? I know Justine had undergone some profound philosophical changes in the past year, and I know she wasn’t close to her daughters, but didn’t she have any feelings at all for her husband?”

“She respected him,” Wayne J. said. “That’s why she did what she did. She said he’d be better off spending eternity surrounded by the kind of people he’d spent a lifetime defending than with Goneril and Regan, whoever they are. I figured that was some kind of family joke, but Justine wasn’t laughing when she said it. She was dead serious.” He reached for my empty coffee cup. “Refill?”

“No thanks,” I said. “I’d better be getting home.”

He stood up. “Come on,” he said, offering me his arm. “I’ll walk you to your car. After dark, this neighbourhood is no place for a lady.”

CHAPTER

12

I woke up the next morning with a sore throat, itchy eyes, and sniffles. By the time I’d showered, taken some echinacea, told Rose our walk was cancelled, and hustled the kids down for breakfast, I was ready to go back to bed. But the day ahead was mercifully short of demands: my first-year students had a quiz, and Howard Dowhanuik, our ex-premier and my friend since Ian’s early days in politics, was coming in to talk to my senior class in the afternoon. It was a day to limit my aspirations and take comfort in Woody Allen’s dictum that 99 per cent of life is just a matter of showing up. If I played my cards right, I could be home, curled up in bed with a hot toddy and a good novel, by 3:30 p.m.

When I walked into the Political Science offices, Rosalie was on the telephone. As soon as she heard my step, she blushed, whispered something into the receiver, and hung up.

“How was
Romeo and Juliet?”
I asked.

“Transcendent,” she said. “Robert said he’d never realized Shakespeare was so s–e–x–y.”

“I’m glad you had fun,” I said, as I started towards the door.

“Wait,” she said. She handed me a pink telephone-message slip. “Your calls are still getting transferred out here.”

I glanced at the name. The message was from Alex.

Rosalie smiled shyly. “Maybe we’ll both be lucky in love today,” she said.

“Maybe,” I said, but my voice lacked conviction.

Alex sounded as if he had a cold too, but even making allowances for the fact that he was unwell, his tone was more encouraging than it had been in days.

“Bob Hallam said you were looking for me,” he said.

“I just wanted to thank you for getting involved in Hilda’s case.”

“Actually, Jo, I wonder if we could get together and talk about that.”

“Has something happened?”

“Yes, but I’d rather talk to you about in person. Are you free for lunch?”

“Yes.”

“It’s raining, so I guess the bird sanctuary’s out,” he said.

His reference to our shared past touched me, but I was too taken aback to pick up on it. “There’s a new restaurant in the University Centre,” I said. “It’s called Common Ground. If you can get past the symbolism, there’s homemade soup and a piece of fresh bread for $2.49.”

“Twelve o’clock okay?”

“Twelve o’clock’s fine. Alex, I’m looking forward to seeing you again.”

“Same here, Jo.”

When I hung up, my heart was pounding. Alex had sounded like himself again. I had no idea what had brought about the change, and I didn’t care. For the first time in days, we were talking, and in three and a half hours, we’d be talking face to face.

Garnet Dishaw’s call came just as I was about to leave for class. Even over the phone, his voice seemed to fill the room. “I wondered if you could find a few moments this evening to come by and talk about Justine,” he said.

I thought about the warm bed and the good novel I’d promised myself. “Of course, but could we make it earlier?”

“Later suits me better,” he said. There was a silence. “Evenings are long around here.”

“May I bring something for the laundry hamper?”

“I knew you were a perceptive woman?”

I laughed. “What’s your preference?”

“Surprise me,” he said. “But when you go to the liquor store, remember that extravagance is not numbered among the seven deadly sins.”

The morning crawled by. For once, no students straggled behind after class to talk. Back in my office, there was a stack of papers to mark and a pile of minutes to read from a committee I’d agreed to join. But I knew my limits. Until I met Alex for lunch, any activity I undertook would get short shrift. Angus had been hinting at his desperate need for a new fall jacket, and the morning paper had announced a sale at Work Warehouse. The liquor store wasn’t far from the Golden Mile shopping mall. If I took care of my errands in the morning, I could still grab some recuperative time in the afternoon.