The Nesting Dolls

by Gail Bowen

  “You broaden my horizons,” he said. He rubbed my arm. “I really am sorry about today.”

  “So am I,” I said. “You were in a rotten position.”

  “You don’t know the half of it. When I saw Nadine Perrault down by the river, all I could think about was how I would feel if I were in her place. Loving you is making me a lousy lawyer, Jo, and I can’t afford to blow this one.” He pinched the bridge of his nose wearily. “After you left, I called Dee to let her know you and I were in for the night. She understood, of course, but she sounded whipped.”

  “Nadine is the one who’s whipped,” I said. “Delia’s holding all the cards.”

  Zack’s eyes turned back to the flickering flames of the fireplace. “I’m not so sure about that. The Michaelses’ family lawyer, Graham Exton, appears to know something I don’t know, and that makes me uneasy.”

  “Was he hostile?”

  “No. He’s a nice enough guy. He said he wished we’d met under happier circumstances – that he’d known Abby all her life, and that she was a fine human being. He offered coffee and extended all the professional courtesies, but he wasn’t exactly forthcoming.”

  “Did he show you the will?”

  “Sure. No reason not to. There were no surprises. Jacob gets $250,000 when he turns twenty-five. The rest of Abby’s effects, assets, and considerable property holdings go to Nadine Perrault. Delia Margolis Wainberg is designated as the person to raise Jacob in the event of Abby’s death.”

  “Nothing personal for Jacob?” I asked. “No photographs or family heirlooms? I would have thought Abby would want him to have that painting of her with her parents that we saw at the house.”

  Zack shook his head. “All that goes to Nadine.”

  “I don’t get it,” I said. “Today Nadine told me that until three weeks ago she and Abby and Jacob were a family. They’d been through a nightmare, but they were doing what families do – they were pressing on. Why would Abby make a will that handed Jacob over to a woman who was a stranger and severed his connections with the only family she’d ever known?”

  Zack sneezed percussively. He gazed at his box of tissues. “Man-size,” he said. “I’m flattered. And to answer your question with a question: Why would Abby Michaels do any of the things she did in the last few weeks?”

  “If Graham Exton knew Abby all her life, surely he would realize that she was in a fragile mental state. Didn’t he have an obligation to keep her from changing her will?”

  “You bet he did, and when I raised that point, he was ready for me. He said, ‘I satisfied myself that, given the circumstances, Ms. Michaels was justified in asking me to draw up a new will and that she was of sound mind.’ When I pointed out that two weeks after he had pronounced Ms. Michaels ‘of sound mind’ she walked away from her partner and gave away their baby, the situation got ugly.”

  “What happened?”

  “Mr. Exton told me to advise my client that if she dug too deeply into the question of Abby Michaels’s state of mind when she had him draft the second will, she’d regret it. Then he said, ‘Delia Wainberg has reaped what she sowed.’ ”

  “That’s a little melodramatic, isn’t it?”

  Zack raised an eyebrow. “For a guy who wears both a belt and suspenders, it’s way out there. And something else – Graham Exton can’t say Delia’s name without spitting it out. It’s as if he hates her. And she’s never met him. I asked. She’d never heard of him until she came to Port Hope.”

  “As long as he keeps what he knows to himself, I guess his feelings about Delia are irrelevant,” I said.

  Zack looked thoughtful. “I wonder. I hate secrets. They have a way of blowing up at a critical moment, and this adoption has to go through. My newfound empathy aside, I would hate to lose to that putz Nadine Perrault hired to represent her.”

  “You don’t like Llewellyn Llewellyn-Smith?”

  “We got off to a bad start,” Zack said. “By the time I arrived at his office, after my meeting with Exton, I had to go to the can. There was only one men’s room in the building. There were three regular stalls and one that was accessible. The three regular stalls were empty but the accessible stall was in use. So I waited – and waited. Whoever was in there was either reading the comics or whacking off. By this point, my need was great. So I rapped on the door, and said, ‘There’s a cripple out here who needs to be in there.’ ”

  I laughed. “You didn’t.”

  “I did, and the son of a bitch still didn’t come out. So I banged the door, and yelled, ‘Listen, fuck-wad, when you come out of there, you’d better be in a wheelchair or I’m going to sue your ass.’ Finally, the toilet flushed, and guess who swaggered out?”

  “Llewellyn Llewellyn-Smith?”

  “The putz himself, zipping up, proud as hell for having kept the big-time lawyer waiting. So that’s how we started.”

  “I take it the situation didn’t improve.”

  “Nope. Llewellyn Llewellyn-Smith is a banty rooster – one of those strutting guys with a whiny high-pitched voice, and he yells all the time. He’s determined to make this the case of his career. I tried to explain that I don’t have a coterie of press people following me at all times – that the only time I’m on TV is when the case involves big names or big issues.” Zack wheeled over to the waste-basket, picked it up, placed it on his knee, and wheeled back. “Hard to sink a tissue from across the room,” he explained. “Anyway, in an ideal world, this shouldn’t end up in a courtroom. Llewellyn-Smith and I should be able to sit down with our clients and come up with an arrangement that semi-satisfies everybody.”

  “But that’s not what he wants.”

  “No,” Zack said. “He wants a three-ring circus, and he wants to be the ringmaster. He told me that he has detectives out there looking for Jacob’s father and that when Jacob’s father finds out ‘the truth,’ he’ll support Nadine’s case.”

  “If he hasn’t found the father, how can he predict what the father will do?”

  “He can’t,” Zack said. “Good lawyers know enough not to show their hand until the time is right, but Putz isn’t a good lawyer. He’s a chest-pounder. He also wears a bow tie, and you know your theory about that.”

  “Wearing bow ties tells the world that you can no longer get an erection,” I said. “It’s actually David Sedaris’s line. I just used it to get you to throw out your bow ties. So did you share the theory with Putz?”

  “Hell, no,” Zack said. “I know how to keep my cards close to my chest.” He sneezed. “Shit, I am getting a cold. Airplanes!”

  “I told you they’re dangerous. Come on, let’s order some dinner. I brought Gawain along. I’ll read to you till our meal comes.”

  It didn’t take long. By the time Gawain had met and made his fateful pact with the lord of the great manor, our meal had arrived. We’d both ordered the brome duck. It was excellent, but Zack picked at his food.

  “Do you want me to order something else for you?” I asked.

  Zack shook his head. “I’m not hungry. I’m just going to try to sleep.”

  I called room service to pick up our trays, made Zack as comfortable as possible, and settled by the fireplace with the Northumberland News. The account of the memorial service was detailed. More than seven hundred people had been in attendance. Anticipating an overflow crowd, two rooms had been set up with closed-circuit televisions. The event was still standing room only.

  The article noted that while there had been readings and musical selections, the highlights of the gathering had been anecdotes about Abby Michaels. There were three pictures with the story: one was a studio portrait of Abby wearing her academic gown and Ph.D. hood; the second was of the crowd in the chapel; the third was of an unidentified young girl, her face tear-stained and knifed by grief. As I folded the paper, there was a lump in my throat, and I knew our decision not to attend the service had been a wise one.

  The room contained a bookcase filled with paperbacks: a shelf of mysteries; what
appeared to be the entire oeuvre of Zane Grey, and a small selection of worthy books about the history of Port Hope and Hope Township. I chose one of the history books and, seduced by the epigraph from Santayana, “History is a pack of lies about events that never happened told by people who weren’t there,” began reading.

  The memories of the town’s first newspaper editors were compelling, but the combination of the wine I had had with dinner and the warmth from the fireplace made my eyelids heavy. Zack was snoring peacefully, and I decided that oblivion was not without appeal.

  I readied myself for bed, slid in beside my husband, and closed my eyes. After an hour, the painful images of the day were still sharp. When my restlessness threatened to waken Zack, I slipped out of bed, put on my jacket, and went out onto the balcony. The air was chilly, but the night was clear. Beneath me, the Ganaraska flowed inexorably towards Lake Ontario; above me the sky was filled with stars. Finally, my pulse slowed, and my mind grew calm. I went inside, and this time when I lay down under the canopy, I slept.

  The next morning, we awakened to the sound of rain. Beside me, Zack stirred. “Bet it’s not raining at home,” he said.

  “The forecast for Regina today is thirty-eight below,” I said. “I checked last night. How are you feeling?”

  “The same.” Zack raised his arm to see his watch. “Too early to call home and see how everybody’s doing?”

  “Better hold off on calling Taylor, but Pete’s a safe bet. He gets up earlier than I do.”

  Zack picked up his BlackBerry and called our house. After he’d chatted with Pete and spoken to Pantera, he handed the phone to me. As always, Pete was laconic. “Nothing much going on here,” he said. “Noah brought the baby by last night to play with the dogs.”

  “How did that go?” I said.

  “Willie herded Jacob for a while, but when he satisfied himself that Jacob was safe, we put Jacob down on the floor and Pantera pushed him along with his nose. Every time Jacob rolled over, he’d laugh, and every time Jacob laughed, Pantera pushed him again.”

  “You do realize that when Zack hears about this, he’ll be arranging play dates.”

  “Jacob could do worse,” Pete said. “Pantera plays well with others.”

  “Agreed,” I said. “Thanks for taking care of everything, Pete.”

  “My pleasure. Have a good flight.”

  “Impossible,” I said, “but I appreciate the thought.” After I rang off, I called Alwyn, and we arranged to go to the ten-thirty service at St. Mark’s Anglican Church. Zack was in the shower, and I was ironing slacks for church when Noah called.

  “Nothing special,” he said. “I just thought I’d let you know that everybody here is fine.”

  “That’s always a relief to hear,” I said. “May I talk to Taylor?”

  “She and Izzy are still sleeping. Big night – the girls and I took Jacob over to your place; then we ordered in pizza. I had beer and a slice, Jacob had formula and pureed peas, then we gents went to bed and left the ladies to their stack of holiday DVDS.”

  “I hear your boy fell under Pantera’s spell,” I said.

  Noah chuckled. “You’ve been talking to Peter. I wish Delia could have been here – not just to see Jacob, but to see Izzy having so much fun. She’s always looking for the next mountain to climb. It was great to see her rolling around on the floor with her brother.” Noah caught himself. “I guess ‘nephew’ is more accurate, but the term doesn’t matter. Izzy loves that little boy. So do I.”

  “Jacob’s pretty easy to love,” I said. “Thanks for the update, Noah. I’ll give Taylor a call when I’m back from church.”

  When Zack came out of the shower, I told him about Pantera and Jacob. His laughter turned into a coughing jag, so I pulled out the jar of Vicks and told him to open his robe so I could rub his chest.

  “Does that stuff work?” he said.

  “I have no idea,” I said. “But it smells like it means business.”

  He extended his arms. “Have at me,” he said, and then he started hacking again.

  “That’s quite the bark you’ve got,” I said. “I wouldn’t want to sit next to us in the dining room. Let’s call room service again.”

  “Fine with me, but I’d appreciate it if you’d have breakfast with Dee. Do you think you could sit across the table from her without squashing a grapefruit in her face?”

  “This is Loyalist country,” I said. “People don’t make scenes. I’ll call her.”

  “If it’s any consolation, Dee knows she behaved badly. She said she was going to send Nadine some flowers and a note this morning.”

  I slammed the jar of Vicks on the bedside table. “Flowers and a note,” I said tightly. “Falconer Shreve’s signature kiss-off when one of the partners wants to end an inconvenient relationship.”

  Zack picked up his pyjama top. “Can we give it a rest? I feel like shit. Delia feels like shit. If she can’t control every detail, she goes up her ass, and from the minute we got here, she hasn’t been able to control anything.”

  “What did she hope to accomplish?”

  Zack shook his head. “Beats me. I don’t think Dee knew herself. She never makes a move without considering every possible ramification, but she threw herself into this. If she’d been herself, Dee would have realized that Nadine Perrault was not a disinterested party and she would have finessed the situation. Dee works in a tricky field. Insurance litigation is high stakes. She gets paid the big bucks because she never makes a false move.”

  “But she’s blowing this,” I said.

  “And she knows it,” Zack said. “Yesterday in the car, Delia told me she was afraid. I’ve known her thirty years, and this is the first time I’ve heard her say she was afraid of anything.”

  I sat on the bed, so that Zack and I were at eye level. “Is she afraid of losing Jacob?”

  “That, and everything else. Delia feels as if her life is unravelling. She thought when she signed the papers giving up her child, she’d closed the chapter.”

  “And now the child appears as a grown woman, hands Delia a baby, and is raped and murdered.” I touched one of the lines that bracketed Zack’s mouth like parentheses. “I guess that sequence of events is enough to overwhelm anyone.”

  Short of the Fezziwigs’ Christmas party, there was no more festive scene than the Lantern Inn’s dining room on that wet December morning. Instead of a fiddler striking up Sir Roger de Coverley, there was the silvery staccato of Vivaldi’s “Winter,” and the buffet didn’t appear to feature cold boiled beef and mince pie, but the atmosphere of the room was one of Dickensian hopefulness and good cheer.

  Delia had found a table for two near the fireplace. She stood to motion me over when I came in. In her black leather-trimmed sweater, white turtleneck, fitted jeans, and black Fluevog lace-up boots, she looked successful, fashionable, and utterly miserable.

  “If this table is too close to the fireplace for you, I can ask them to move us,” she said. Her face was pale and strained and her husky voice cracked into the odd little hiccup it made whenever she was on edge.

  “It’s good to be warm,” I said.

  “Thanks for coming. I know you’re angry.”

  “I promised Zack I wouldn’t smash a grapefruit in your face.”

  She flashed her three-point cat smile. “That’s a start.”

  The server poured us coffee and asked if we needed menus. When we said we were going with the buffet, she nodded gravely and told us we’d made a very wise choice.

  “First wise choice I’ve made since I got here,” Delia said.

  During breakfast Delia and I made a deliberate attempt to keep the conversation light. She and Noah had talked, so the story of Jacob and Pantera gave us one safe topic. The skating rink Zack and I were putting in at the lake gave us another. Delia was intrigued, and she had enough questions about exactly how a skating rink came into being to get us smoothly through to our second cup of coffee.

  As the server cleared our pla
tes, Delia held out her coffee cup in a mock toast. “Well, we made it. No grapefruit smashing. Not even a raised voice. So I’m going to push my luck and ask you whether Nadine won you over when you went back to her cabin.”

  “I like her very much,” I said carefully.

  “So you’re on her side.”

  “No,” I said. “I’m on your side, but I’m hoping you can extend an olive branch to Nadine.”

  “She doesn’t want an olive branch,” Delia said. “She wants the whole tree – full custody, and she’s not going to get it. I’m prepared to offer Nadine access. She can visit Jacob in Regina when she has time off from teaching. She can even come out to the lake with us for a couple of weeks every summer. But Jacob will never be left alone with her.”

  “You think Nadine poses a threat to Jacob?” I said. “Where did that come from?”

  “Abby’s will,” Delia said flatly. “Joanne, most wills have a subtext. A father bequeaths equal parts of his estate to each of his three sons, but he leaves the watch that has been passed down through the family to his youngest son. There’s a message there.”

  “The youngest son is the father’s favourite,” I said.

  Delia nodded. “In her revised will, Abby left Nadine Perrault money and property but she made certain that Jacob came to me. Clearly there’s something in Nadine’s background that makes it impossible for Jacob to be left in her care.”

  “Abby and Nadine were inseparable from the time they were ten,” I said. “It’s difficult to believe there was anything of significance that they didn’t know about one another.”

  “There’s no disputing the facts,” Delia said. “Three weeks ago. Abby changed her will. Something convinced her that Nadine would not be a fit parent, and that Jacob belonged with us. We may not be able to see the logic, but it’s there. Once we’ve figured out what caused Abby to leave the bulk of her estate to Nadine but grant custody of her son to us, we have our case.”

  “And winning the case is all that matters?” I said.

  Delia’s mouth twisted in an ironic half-smile. “We seem to be moving into dangerous territory. I’d better get the bill.” She caught the server’s eye and picked up her bag. “Is Zack up for our meeting with Nadine’s lawyer this morning? He sounded terrible when I talked to him, but he minimized it.”