Verdict in Blood (25 page)

“You’re not the only one who cares about Hilda.”

“Sorry,” I said. “To answer your question, she seems to be improving.”

Signe Rayner came out through the French doors. She was wearing her signature muumuu-caftan; this one was magenta, and with her blonde hair swept into its Valkyrie braided coronet, she was a figure of such obvious rectitude that it seemed impossible to imagine her guilty of professional misconduct. But if I had mastered one lesson in my life, it was that appearances can be deceiving. Signe nodded to me. “Is Miss McCourt coherent?” she asked.

“She’s improving,” I said. There was an awkward pause.

Lucy and Signe exchanged glances. Suddenly, Lucy was all hostess. “We were just about to open a bottle of wine. Will you have a glass? Toast Hilda’s recovery?”

“There’s nothing I’d rather drink to,” I said. As Lucy poured the wine, Tina disappeared into the house. When she
came back, she was carrying a bottle of Snapple. She handed it to Taylor. “I hope this is all right,” she said.

“I love Snapple,” Taylor said. “Thank you.” She pointed to a small pool at the bottom of the garden. “Is that a fishpond?”

Tina nodded. “And the fish are still in it. Do you want to go down and have a closer look?”

“Could we?”

Tina looked surprised. “You want me to come?” She picked up her glass of wine and shrugged. “Why not?” she said.

Lucy watched as her sister and my daughter walked to the end of the garden, then she turned to me and lifted her glass.

“To Hilda.”

“To Hilda,” I said.

The wine was an excellent Liebfraumilch, but it was the glass that drew my attention. When I held it up to the light, the sun bounced off its beautifully cut surface and turned it to fire. I looked towards Signe Rayner. “And to Eli. Let’s hope they’re both back with us soon.”

Signe Rayner flushed, but she didn’t duck. “You were saying that Miss McCourt is improving. What’s her prognosis?”

“Guarded,” I said. “It’s not easy to recover from the kind of blow Hilda sustained. Eli seems to be taking time to recover too. Dr. Rayner, I’m just a layperson and I know you can’t talk about the specifics of Eli’s case, but I wonder if you could explain to me why a psychiatrist would use hypnosis with a boy like Eli. It’s obvious, even to me, that he hasn’t got the strength to deal with his memories.”

Signe Rayner looked at me coldly. “I couldn’t explain Eli’s treatment in terms that would make sense to you.”

I leaned forward. “Fair enough,” I said. “Then tell me if there are risks involved. Could a sensitive boy, like Eli, who
was pushed too hard, get to the point where he might harm himself?”

Signe Rayner’s eyes, the same extraordinary turquoise as her sister’s, bored into me. “Mrs. Kilbourn, what’s your agenda here?” she asked.

“I have no agenda,” I said. “I’m on a fact-finding mission.”

“Then may I suggest you use the university library. They have an adequate section on psychiatric practices.”

“Thank you,” I said, “I might just do that.” I put down my glass and turned to Lucy. “You were lucky to find replacements for your mother’s Waterford,” I said. “This is an old pattern. I would have thought it would be impossible to match.”

Lucy had the good grace to avert her eyes. I called Taylor, and she and Tina Blackwell came back. They had obviously enjoyed their time together and Tina looked stricken, when I said we had to leave. “So soon?” she said.

“You’re just about to have lunch,” I said.

Tina Blackwell looked quickly at Signe. Whatever she saw in her sister’s face obviously made her decide not to press the invitation. “I’ll walk you out,” she said.

“Thanks,” I said. “I wonder if I could use your bathroom before we leave.”

“Of course,” she said. This time Tina didn’t seek her sister’s approval. “Follow me,” she said.

I held my hand out to Taylor. “Come on,” I said. “You might as well go, too.”

We walked in through the French doors. They opened into the living room, a coolly beautiful room with dove-grey walls, exquisite lace curtains that pooled on the floor, and furniture with the gleaming wood inlays and fine upholstery of the Queen Anne period. A rosewood pier table between the two floor-to-ceiling windows at the far side of the room
was covered in photographs. Taylor, who loved pictures, ran over for a look. “Are these your kids?” she asked.

Tina smiled. “No, those photographs are of my sisters and me.”

They had been lovely girls, and the photographs of them chronicled a happy life of Christmas stockings, Easter-egg hunts, summers at the lake, and birthday parties. “My father took all those,” Tina said softly. “We stopped taking pictures after he died.” She took a deep breath. “Now, you wanted to powder your nose. I’m afraid all the bathrooms are upstairs. They’re in the usual places. Just keep opening doors till you find one.”

“Thanks,” I said. Walking up the curving staircase was a sensual pleasure. The bisque-coloured carpeting under our feet was deep, and the art on the walls was eye-catching. The works were disparate in period and technique, but all the pieces were linked by subject matter: justice and those who dispensed it. There was a reproduction of a Ben Shahn painting of Sacco and Venzetti, a wonderful contemporary painting of Portia by an artist named Kate Rafter, whom I’d never heard of, but whom I was willing to bet my bottom dollar I’d be hearing about again. There was also a striking black-and-white photograph of LeCorbusier’s High Court Building in Chandigarh, and a kind of mosaic depicting Solomon’s encounter with the two mothers. Interspersed with the art were formal photographs of actual judges in full judicial rig-out.

I could have taken Tina at her word and opened every door on the second floor, but by the time I got to the top of the stairs, I didn’t need further proof to validate the theory I’d been forming since I talked to Justine’s neighbour. Epiphanies be damned: there was no way in the world the woman who had assembled this house would have exposed
its treasures to people who had the rap sheets I’d seen in Jill’s report. I was now ready to bet the farm that the scene Hilda and I had walked in on the Monday after Justine’s murder had been carefully arranged. The odour of garbage, the sticky floors, the desecration of the wallpaper in the dining room had all been part of an elaborate hoax. Clearly, the game had been to make us believe Justine’s mind had disintegrated, but her daughters had lacked the time and the stomach to finish the job. I remembered how carefully we had been shepherded into the dining room, and led out again. Given the time constraints, the Blackwell sisters had put on the best show they could.

At least, two of the sisters had. Tina seemed to be in the clear. She hadn’t been around the day Hilda and I had visited, and today she hadn’t hesitated when I asked if we could use the bathroom. Nothing seemed certain in this house, but given her openness, it seemed reasonable that Tina Blackwell hadn’t been part of the farce that had been prepared for Hilda and me.

I looked at the emblems of justice that decorated the wall beside Justine’s staircase. Suddenly, all I wanted to do was get away from Leopold Crescent. I turned to Taylor. “Come on T, let’s blow this pop stand.”

“We didn’t pee.”

“Do you have to?”

“No, but you said …”

“I made a mistake. Let’s go.”

Tina looked wistful as she let us out the front door. “Thanks for coming over, Mrs. Kilbourn, and thank you, Taylor. It was good to forget for a while.”

“It was fun,” Taylor said.

“Maybe someday I could visit you,” Tina said.

“Any time,” I said. “By the way, I forgot to mention that
I’m a friend of Jill Osiowy’s. She tells me she admires your work.”

For the first time that afternoon, Tina turned her face fully towards me. “Does she admire my work enough to ignore this?” she asked bleakly.

As we walked home, I tried to sort out the information I’d gleaned from our visit to the Blackwell sisters. It seemed that, like characters in a Pinter play, Justine’s daughters’ most significant communications were carried out through silence and subtext. While I puzzled over the line between illusion and reality, Taylor performed the useful work of planning the rest of our afternoon. As always, she proposed enough projects to fill a thirty-six-hour day, but we settled on a more modest agenda. We’d get the car, drive to the hospital to see Hilda, then take in the new show at the Mackenzie Gallery.

Our stay at the Pasqua was short. Hilda appeared to be sleeping comfortably, and we didn’t want to disturb her. Taylor left her a drawing she’d made, then slipped away to sit with Nathan. When Taylor was out of earshot, I leaned over and kissed Hilda’s forehead. “Justine’s daughters lied to us, Hilda, but it won’t happen again. Now that I know what we’re dealing with, I won’t be so gullible. We’ll get to the bottom of this. I promise.”

The new show at the Mackenzie was too cutting edge for Taylor and me. We hurried through, then headed outside to visit the Fafard cows; half-sized bronze sculptures of a bull, cow, and calf in front of the gallery. The animals’ names were Potter, Valadon, and Teevo, and for me, the time we spent admiring their perfect lines and the gentleness of their expression had the restorative power of a romp in a meadow.

My sense of renewal was short-lived. When we got home,
I could hear the phone ringing before I unlocked the front door. I raced to pick it up, heard the husky music of Lucy Blackwell’s voice, and felt my spirits plummet.

“Music Woman, you’ve got to give me a chance to explain.”

“Go for it.”

“Not on the phone. Can we meet for a drink somewhere?”

“I have a family, Lucy. I have to make supper.”

“I’ll take you to a restaurant – all of you. Please, you have to listen to what really happened.”

I almost hung up on her, then I remembered Signe Rayner. There was a chance that if I heard Lucy out, she might answer some of my questions about her sister. I took a deep breath. “Forget the restaurant,” I said. “You can come over. But it’s going to have to be a quick visit.”

Lucy Blackwell was at our front door in ten minutes. She was still wearing the gypsy outfit, but there was nothing carefree in her manner. As she looked around the living room, she seemed both tense and unfocused. “This is so homey. That rocking chair is perfect.”

“It was my grandmother’s,” I said.

Lucy laughed softly. “Somehow that doesn’t surprise me. Can I sit in it?”

“Of course,” I said. “Would you like a drink?”

She shook her head. “I had too much at lunch. After you left I was feeling a bit shaky.”

“Because I’d caught you in a lie.”

She flushed. “Yes. What Signe and I did was stupid, and childish, but it wasn’t malicious. It was,” she shrugged helplessly, “make-believe. We were just using make-believe to show you the truth. In the last year, my mother had fooled so many people.” Lucy leapt to her feet and came over to where I was sitting. In a swift and graceful movement, she knelt on the rug in front of me. “Mrs. Kilbourn, you saw
Tina’s face today. That abomination was a direct result of my mother’s enlightenment.”

I almost cut her off. I had believed Eric Fedoruk when he told me that Justine had given Tina the money she asked for, and I’d had my fill of make-believe. But there was a real possibility that, as she spun her latest fiction, Lucy would reveal a truth that I needed to know. I sat back in my chair. “Go on,” I said.

Lucy’s gaze was mesmerizing. “Tina was in a business where you can’t get old. When she asked for help to get the surgery that might have saved her career, my mother didn’t even hear her out. Instead of cutting her a cheque, Justine gave her a speech about how
privileged
we all were, and how it was time we stopped taking and started giving. That job of Tina’s might not have looked like much to you or me, Joanne, but it was her life. You should see her apartment. It’s
filled
with pictures of her doing all this demeaning public-relations stuff for
CJRG
: riding the float in the Santa Claus parade, flipping pancakes at the Buffalo Days breakfast, running in the three-legged race with the sports guy on her show. Total fluff, but it was her
identity.”
Lucy raked her fingers through her hair. “Tina’s always been fragile, emotionally. My mother knew that. She knew terrible things might happen if Tina was hurt again.”

“What kind of terrible things?”

Lucy looked away. “Forget I said that. I didn’t come here to talk about Tina.”

“That’s right,” I said. “You came to explain why you and Signe decided to produce that little vignette for Hilda and me.”

She winced, but she soldiered on. “I told you, it was just a way of getting you to see the truth.”

“How many lies do you think it’s going to take before I see the truth, Lucy?”

Her body tensed. “What do you mean?”

I moved closer to her. “I know Tina got that money from your mother.”

“How do you know?”

I remembered Eric Fedoruk’s certainty. “There’s a cancelled cheque,” I said. It was a bluff, but it did the trick.

In a flash, Lucy was on her feet. “Tina must have lied to me,” she said weakly and she started for the door.

“Wait,” I said. I got up and followed her. “My turn now, and I haven’t got time to figure out which of you is lying about what. Lucy, I have one question for you, and the answer you give me had better be truthful because I’m running out of patience.”

Lucy gazed at me intently. “What’s your question, Music Woman?”

“What happened between Signe and the boy in Chicago?”

Her face registered nothing. “I have to be going,” she said.

“No, you don’t,” I said. “Not until you tell me if the story is true.”

“Signe was found innocent.”

“That wasn’t what I asked.”

Lucy walked to the window. “Is that your Volvo out there?”

“Yes.”

“I’ve always wanted a Volvo wagon.” Her back was to me, and her tone was flat. It was impossible to tell if her words were derisive or heartfelt.

“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.”