by Gail Bowen
When he finished, there was a smattering of applause, quickly muffled, from Wayne J.’s side of the church. Then he resumed his seat, and we were back on program. The discreet young men from the funeral home reappeared; the casket came back down the aisle and Eric Fedoruk and the Blackwell sisters followed it. Eric’s arm was around Lucy’s shoulder; she looked dazed, like the survivor of a disaster. Tina’s emotions, hidden behind her black veil, were unreadable, but Signe Rayner was white with fury. When we came out of the church into the transept she was waiting for us. She grabbed Hilda’s arm and took her aside.
“Whose decision was it to let that creature sing?”
Hilda tapped the program. “As you can see, Mr. Waters was not part of the Order of Service. He acted on his own initiative, and I, for one, am glad he did.”
Signe’s voice was low with fury. “Will you still be glad you let him sing when he’s arrested for murdering my mother?” She turned on her heel and strode towards the mourners’ limousine. One of the young men from the funeral home helped her in; the door slammed shut, and the car sped off.
“Wait.” When I turned, I saw Lucy standing at the entrance to the church. “They left without me,” she said. She looked at us beseechingly. “Can I go to the cemetery with you?”
“Of course,” I said. “Hop in.”
During the ten-minute drive to Crocus Hills Memorial Park, no one said a word. When we drove through the gates, Lucy, who was in the back seat, leaned forward and pointed. “It’s just over there,” she said. “It’s past the place where all the soldiers are buried. You can’t miss it. There’s this incredible weeping willow.”
Hilda turned towards her. “Your mother isn’t being buried there, Lucy.”
“Why not? That’s our family plot. That’s where my father is.” There was an unsettling edge in Lucy’s voice.
Hilda must have heard it too. Her answer was firm and factual. “When I talked to the people from Crocus Hills, they said the family plot was full. We had to purchase a new burial space for your mother. There was no alternative.”
Lucy’s teeth began to chatter. “That’s crazy,” she said. “That plot was for all of us.” She opened the car door. “I’m going over there.”
I glanced at Hilda. She nodded. “Maybe it’s best if Lucy sees for herself,” she said.
We drove past the area reserved for military burials. Under the gunmetal sky, it was a solemn sight: row upon row of identical grave markers, each with its own small red-and-white Canadian flag.
I pulled up in front of the area Lucy had indicated. Before I turned off the ignition, she was out of the car and running towards the weeping willow. She stopped in front of a low black marble headstone; then she gazed around her, as if she were trying to get her bearings.
Hilda and I walked over to her. The tombstone was engraved simply: RICHARD BLACKWELL: 1902-1967. The grave it marked was surrounded by other graves with small cheap markers. Lucy knelt on the wet grass and read out the names incredulously: WANDA SPETZ (1961-1997); KIM DUCHARME (1970-1997); DANIEL SOKWAYPNACE (1975-1997); MERV GEMMELL (1973-1997). When she looked up at us, her extraordinary turquoise eyes were blank with disbelief. “Who are these people?”
Hilda shook her head. “The man from Crocus Hills told me they’re relatives of people your mother met in the last year.”
“My mother let strangers be buried in the family plot? Sweet Jesus.” Lucy laughed mirthlessly.
I touched her elbow. “Lucy, come back to the car. You can deal with this another time.”
She stood up wearily. “Can I? Somehow I doubt that, Music Woman.” She started back towards the car, then she turned to face us. “You understand that I don’t give a good goddamn about the property. It’s just that, after everything else she did to him, my mother shouldn’t have done this to my father.”
The three of us got back in the car and retraced our route to the cemetery entrance. Hilda pointed towards the new and treeless area where the limousines and hearse had stopped. A knot of mourners was already standing over the raw wound of a fresh grave, and the men from the funeral home were unloading their cargo.
Lucy put her hands up as if she were warding off a blow. “I’m not going over there,” she said. “I want to go home.”
I looked at Hilda. Her face was so pale and strained, I didn’t even consult her. I just stepped on the gas.
As I started out through the cemetery gates, Eric Fedoruk was driving in. He slowed and rolled down his window.
His eyes were red-rimmed, but his voice was firm. “Is it over already?” he said. “I had an urgent call from a client.”
Lucy leaned towards the window on the driver’s side. “It isn’t over,” she said. “Eric, she gave away the burial plots around my father’s grave. Did you know about it?”
He winced. “I knew.”
“And you didn’t tell us. Because you were protecting her. The way you always have.”
As I drove down Albert Street, Lucy was silent, sunk into the corner of the back seat.
When I pulled up in front of the house on Leopold Crescent, Lucy mumbled her thanks. Before she went inside, she turned and gave us a small wave. I thought I had never seen anyone so alone.
“I guess if you needed proof that Justine’s mind had deteriorated, you have it now,” I said.
“I wonder,” she said. “I was thinking of another possibility.”
“What other possibility?”
Hilda’s voice seemed to come from far away. “That Justine found her family so abhorrent that the idea of spending eternity with them was insupportable.”
Hilda and I were met by the sounds of the Smashing Pumpkins when we got home. Normally, the Pumpkins were not my favourite group, but that day the pulsing rhythm of “Bullet with Butterfly Wings” was just the antidote I needed for the misery of our morning. Angus and his girlfriend, Leah, were in the kitchen making grilled cheese sandwiches. Taylor was sitting at the kitchen table, pounding the bottom of the Heinz bottle she was holding over her plate. Just as we walked in, her efforts paid off and she flooded her sandwich with ketchup.
She glanced up at us, triumphant. “I didn’t think this was going to work.”
Hilda’s face regained some of its colour during lunch. It seemed grilled cheese sandwiches and the company of young people was just the tonic she needed. At the end of the summer, Leah’s theatre school in Toronto had performed a rock-opera version of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, and Hilda appeared genuinely absorbed by Leah’s account of how she had played Emily. Hilda had taught high-school English for almost fifty years. Our Town couldn’t have held many surprises for her; nonetheless, she appeared to find the prospect of an Emily with cropped hair, an eyebrow ring, and a tattoo of foxes chasing a lion around her upper arm as provocative as I did.
After lunch, I tried to get Hilda to take a nap, but she squared her shoulders and insisted on getting to work on Justine’s papers.
“I don’t mind telling you that business with the family plot has shaken me, Joanne. If there are other surprises, I’d like to know about them before Eric Fedoruk and I discuss the disposition of Justine’s estate.”
I was surprised. “But I thought Eric Fedoruk was the executor.”
Hilda shrugged. “The situation is no longer that clear-cut …”
“Why am I not surprised?” I said.
Hilda’s smile was wry. “Your point’s well taken. For a woman who lived her life with such precision, Justine certainly left her affairs in a troubling state. A second will has just surfaced, Joanne.”
“The one that names you executrix,” I said.
Hilda nodded. “It was in a safety-deposit box at Justine’s bank, and it’s going to raise hackles. The original will was drawn up years ago, and it’s pretty much what you’d expect of a woman like Justine. She makes contributions to some decent charities and arts organizations, and asks that the major part of the estate be divided equally among her daughters. This new will leaves everything to Cul
hane House, including the home on Leopold Crescent. It was dated three months before Justine’s death.”
“Then it would take precedence,” I said. “Anyone who ever watched Perry Mason reruns knows that, but I wouldn’t want to be in the room when Justine’s daughters hear the news.”
“Nor would I,” said Hilda. “And Eric Fedoruk has suggested that we do a little investigating before he brings this explosive information to those most directly involved. He’s staved them off until now, a tactic for which he deserves commendation. The Blackwell women have been nipping at his heels. But we were wise to wait. If there is a real possibility that Justine was non compos mentis, her daughters are in an excellent position to challenge the second will. You can imagine what the media would make of a legal wrangle between Justine’s daughters and Wayne J. Waters and his crew.”
I nodded. “That business with the family plot today would certainly make for engrossing reading.”
Hilda’s eyes were troubled. “Justine put her trust in me. As her friend I have an obligation to protect her reputation, but as her executrix I also have an obligation to see that her estate is settled fairly. I’ve decided the best route to honouring both obligations is to carry out the task she set me. If Justine was sane, she was entitled to do what she wanted with her money, including give it to Wayne J. Waters. If she was delusional, her money should go where she had intended it to go before her mind became clouded: to her daughters.”
“And you have to decide,” I said. “Damn it, Hilda, why does it always come back to you?”
Hilda gave me a small smile. “Because much as we wish it were, life isn’t all meadows and groves.” She stood up. “Now, I really had better get down to business. Luckily for all concerned, until the day she died Justine was a meticulous keeper of records. It’s amazing how often one can find an answer to a big question by answering a number of smaller ones.”
After Hilda went upstairs, I was restless. I threw a load of laundry in the machine, gave the living room a perfunctory dusting, and flipped through an academic journal that had arrived in Friday’s mail. I couldn’t shake the image of Lucy Blackwell, standing alone on the doorstep, her dark honey hair sleeked by the rain into the style that evoked the flower child she’d been when she made her first album. Curious, I went back down to the laundry room. The last time we’d cleaned the basement, I’d been merciless. I’d thrown out all our old cassettes. I’d deep-sixed Petula Clark and Jimmy Webb and a score of others, but I’d stashed the cassettes I couldn’t part with in my old wicker sewing basket. With its cotton lining patterned in psychedelic swirls of orange, yellow, and red, the basket seemed an appropriate final resting place for old tunes and old memories. Lucy Blackwell’s debut album was on the top of the pile. Almost thirty years had passed since she’d posed for the cover photo: a carefree girl on a garden swing, eyes closed in ecstasy, legs bared, shining hair flying. Almost thirty years had passed since Ian and I had embraced in the hush of the university library and whispered our plans for a perfect life.
I took the tape back upstairs, dropped it in the player on my bedside table, and turned down the bedspread. As I slipped between the cool sheets, Lucy was singing “My Daddy’s Party.” The lyrics were as poignantly beautiful as I had remembered them being, but for the first time I was struck by a curious omission. Lucy Blackwell’s account of enchanted evenings in the lives of three little girls, mesmerized by candlelight and grown-up laughter, shimmered with detail, but nowhere in her remembrance of things past had she mentioned her mother’s name.
When I woke up, Taylor was standing beside the bed, peering down at me. She was wearing the Testicle Festival T-shirt from Bottlescrew Bill’s. “How can you sleep in the middle of the day?” she asked.
“It’s easy,” I said. “You just have to go to bed too late and get up too early.”
She shrugged. “You don’t let me do that.” She ran her finger along the buttons of my tape player.
“Something on your mind?” I said.
She didn’t look up. “You never said whether he liked it.” When I looked at her quizzically, she frowned. “You never said whether Eli liked the dragon-boat painting.” Her dark eyes were anxious.
“Who wouldn’t love that painting?” I said. “Just looking at it made me feel happy.”
Amazingly, the diversion worked. “Did you really like it that much?”
“I think it’s the best work you’ve done,” I said. “I hated to see it leave the house.”
“I could do one for you,” Taylor said. “Not the same. Maybe I could paint a dragon boat with all of us in it.”
“Sounds good to me,” I said.
“Sounds good to me, too,” she said. She scrunched her nose. “How come you didn’t say anything about my T-shirt?”
“It’s Saturday,” I said. “This house is a taste-free zone.”
The rain had stopped by the time I pulled into the parking lot at Nationtv. When I got out of our Volvo, I noticed a spectacular rainbow arching over the east of the city. It seemed like such a good omen that when I got to Jill Osiowy’s office I insisted she come to her window to have a look.
“Does this mean all our troubles are over?” asked Jill.
“Every last one,” I said. “The rainbow never lies.”
Jill had set up the VCR and TV in her office, and as she organized the tapes, I watched the colours of the rainbow fade, then disappear. I was so intent that I didn’t notice Jill waiting for me.
She came over and tapped me on the shoulder. “Can we roll now, or do you want to check some pigeon entrails to see if this is an auspicious day for decision-making?
“We can roll,” I said.
“Good,” she said, then she leaned over and hit play.
Our first prospect was an Ottawa academic who was a Nationtv regular during federal elections. He was about my age, with a sonorous voice, a fifty-dollar haircut, and the perpetually aggrieved air of an elitist in an imperfect world.
When his commentary was finished, I looked at Jill. “I could never measure up,” I said.
Jill ejected the tape. “I know what you mean. He always makes me feel as if I have spinach hanging out of my teeth.” She dropped in the next tape.
“Now this one isn’t empathy-challenged, but there is another teeny shortcoming,” Jill said. The smiling face on the screen belonged to a premier who had been retired by the electorate in his province’s last election. In the three minutes during which he spoke about welfare reform, the ex-premier dropped all his final g’s and made four factual errors.
“Thick as a two-bob plank,” I said.
Jill nodded in agreement. “Wouldn’t recognize an intelligent idea if it came with a side order of fries.” She brightened. “But you have to admit he is folksy.”
“Is that why he made the short list?”
Jill dropped the ex-premier’s tape back in its case. “Nope. He made the short list because he’s married to my boss’s sister.” She inserted a third tape. “Let’s hope third time’s lucky.”
Jill’s words were light, but I noticed she was watching my face with real interest. My reaction didn’t disappoint her. Our third candidate was wearing bluejeans and a T-shirt and he had the kind of energy that made a viewer sit up and listen. He was young, in his late twenties, and as he described the recent convention of our official opposition party, he was smart and irreverent.
“He’s good,” I said. “What’s his name?”
“Ken Leung,” Jill said. “He teaches Canada–Pacific Rim Studies at Simon Fraser.”
“I like him,” I said.
“So do I,” Jill said. “What do you think of the shirt?”
“Taylor was wearing one just like it when I left the house,” I said.
“Serious?”
“Serious. Bottlescrew Bill’s Festival obviously draws a varied clientele.”
Jill laughed. “So, is the shirt omen enough for us to offer Ken Leung the job?”
“Sure,” I said. “
Especially when you factor in his intelligence, his presence on camera, and the fact that he will appeal to a whole new demographic. It’ll be good for all of us to have somebody on the show who knows what the world feels like to people born after 1970.
“He speaks Cantonese, too,” Jill said. “Do you think Glayne will like him?”
“She’ll love him. He’s a terrific find. If I were you, I’d offer him the job before somebody else grabs him.”
Jill picked up the phone and dialled Ken Leung’s home number. The person on the other end of the line said Ken was playing tennis, but he was expected back any moment. Jill said the matter was urgent and left her number. When she hung up, she screwed her face into an expression that was supposed to be beseeching. “Wait with me until he calls? It’s so boring here on Saturdays; besides, it will give us a chance to get down and dirty about our lives without Angus flapping around.”
“I’ll stay,” I said. “But at the moment, there’s nothing in my life to get down and dirty about.”
Jill frowned. “You and Alex are still together, aren’t you?”
“I guess so, but it doesn’t feel like we’re together. His nephew’s had a lot of problems lately, and Alex and I had a pretty nasty exchange about it last night.”
“I didn’t think you two ever fought.”
“We don’t,” I said. “Maybe we’d be better off now if we had.”
Jill frowned. “Is it that serious?”
“I don’t know. There’s just so much we never talk about. I think we’re both afraid that if we ever really started talking about all the things we were worried about, we’d discover we had too many strikes against us.”
“Is there anything I can do to help?”
“No,” I said, “but thanks for asking.”
Jill glanced at her phone. “Looks like we may be here for a while. Do you want a Coke?”
“Sure,” I said.
Jill went to the apartment-sized fridge in the corner of her office. She took out two Cokes, snapped the caps, and handed me one.
I took a sip. “Jill, what do you know about Justine Blackwell and her family?”
