The Nesting Dolls

by Gail Bowen

I cut the joint between the drumstick and the thigh. “Apparently this priest had a generous heart, and the moral decision with which he was faced was clear-cut. He saw a good person suffering needlessly, and he was able to help. He was lucky.”

  “But you’re not?” Mieka asked.

  “Zack is Delia’s lawyer, so I can hardly make overtures to Nadine.”

  Mieka frowned. “I understand why Zack can’t, but I don’t see why you can’t do what you want to do.”

  I began removing the wings. “You may have a point. I like Nadine, and she is going to be so alone. Given the circumstances, there’s no guarantee that Delia will even let her see Jacob. It might be perceived as a concession.”

  “Where’s Noah in all this?”

  “Where he always is – with his arms protectively around his wife.”

  “That sounds a little bitchy.”

  “When it comes to Delia, I’m a little sensitive these days. She has an amazing success rate as a litigator, but the men around her treat her as if she’d fall apart in a stiff breeze.”

  I turned the bird onto its breast and began cutting along each side of the spine to remove the backbone.

  “So does your ire extend to Zack?”

  “I’m probably overreacting to the Ontario trip but, yes, it does. He treated Nadine badly and he risked his health because he felt he had to protect Delia.”

  “Jealous?”

  “Probably. There’s this primal thing among the partners at Falconer Shreve. It goes way back. No matter how brilliantly Delia performs as a lawyer, Zack still sees her as the girl he had to hold all night because, the year they were articling, she was at the centre of a fight.”

  “And Delia felt responsible?”

  “As Zack described it, it was more that she was in a state of shock. Anyway, there was no shortage of knights in armour prepared to defend her.”

  “And Zack was among them,” Mieka said. “So, was there a romance?”

  “I doubt it. Zack’s had a lot of women, but Zack’s and Delia’s feelings for one another go deep. I can’t see them risking their relationship for a one-night stand.” I removed the stewing hen’s backbone, cut through the breastplate to make two halves, and flourished my knife. “Done,” I said. “This chicken is ready for the pot.”

  After Mieka left, I covered the chicken parts and gizzards with water, chopped onions, carrots, parsnips, and fresh thyme and added them to the pot, seasoned the broth, and turned on the heat. Chicken soup, the anodyne for all the ills of the world, was on its way.

  Mieka and I had arranged that I would pick the girls up at school at three-thirty. The day ahead was clear. I took a biography I’d been waiting to read into the bedroom, sat by the window, and looked out at the day. It was bright, still, and cold enough to create sun dogs in the sky. I turned to the first page of my book. It opened in Tennessee. A young woman was driving through heat so blistering the plastic of her car seat was sticking to her legs. She was singing, “I’m Going to the Chapel and I’m Going to Get Married.”

  My husband stirred. I moved my chair closer and continued to read. It was a quiet morning. I awakened Zack when it was time to give him pills and liquids. At intervals, I skimmed the soup. Mid-morning, a courier arrived with three large and unwieldy packages. When I ripped off the paper, I discovered that I’d signed for three copper pots filled with poinsettias in Zack’s favourite deep red. I brought the pots into our bedroom, placed them on a low table close to the window where he could see them, and went back to my book.

  An hour before noon, I skimmed the soup and, following Helen Freedman’s recipe, made and refrigerated matzo balls. When Zack awakened, I was ready. I kissed him. “Welcome back,” I said.

  Zack took my hand. “Always glad to be where you are, Ms. Shreve. So what’s going on?”

  “Someone sent you flowers,” I said.

  “Am I dead?”

  “No, just worthy of spoiling.” I handed him the unopened card. He slipped on his reading glasses. “From Louise,” he said. “She sends her affection and apologies.”

  “As well she might,” I said.

  Zack gave me a sharp look. “I take it things didn’t go well with you two last night.”

  “No. I was angry at what she was doing to Declan, and I was furious that she dragged you out of the house when you were sick to clean up the mess she’d made.”

  Zack shrugged. “I agree with you about Declan. But Leland Hunter pays the firm a sizable sum to keep his family out of trouble, so I was just doing my job.”

  “Has Leland ever considered doing that particular job himself?”

  “Too busy earning money. Considering that Louise is his ex, he’s very responsible. Over the years, he’s paid a number of people to keep her from self-destructing. She used to have a kind of babysitter who went to restaurants with her and sat at the next table. The theory was the guy would keep Louise out of trouble, but half the time she gave him the slip. Finally, Leland realized that no matter how many people he hired to protect Louise, she’d always find a log with which to set herself on fire. Last spring when she was charged with DUI, she was weaving and driving so slowly that the cops ran her licence and were there waiting at her front door when she finally wended her way home.”

  “Do you think she wants to get caught?”

  “I’m not a shrink, but my theory is that Louise’s motivation is the same as Declan’s – she wants Leland to pay attention to her.”

  “So Louise teaches her son that to get his father’s attention, he just has to break the law,” I said.

  “You know I can’t answer that,” Zack said. “Anyway, aren’t you being a little hard on her?” He started to cough and he couldn’t seem to stop. I put my arm behind his back and pulled him upright. When the coughing finally ended I was scared and furious. I rested my forehead on his shoulder.

  “To answer your question,” I said, “I don’t think I’m being too hard on Louise at all.”

  Zack slept deeply for the next three hours. He was feverish, and even when I wiped his head with a cool cloth, he didn’t awaken. Concerned that he was becoming dehydrated, I took him a glass of ginger ale and roused him. He’d managed to drink half of it when the doorbell chimed. He made a gesture of dismissal and lay back on his pillow. “I’m good,” he said. “Better see who that is.”

  The guest on the porch was Debbie Haczkewicz. Her cheeks were ruddy with health and cold, but her eyes were tired.

  “I was in the neighbourhood, so I thought I’d stop by to see how Zack’s doing,” she said.

  “He’s been sleeping pretty much on and off all day,” I said. “But I can see if he’s awake.”

  “It’s nothing important. Just telI him I came by.”

  Debbie looked as weary as I felt. “Would you like to come in?” I said. “I’m dragging, and I was about to make myself coffee.”

  “Dragging is my permanent state these days,” Debbie said. “Caffeine helps, and I’d appreciate a cup of something that didn’t taste like the floor sweepings we have at headquarters.”

  Our kitchen caught the afternoon sun. It was a cheerful place in which to sit, and Debbie and I had our coffee there. “So how’s it going?” I said.

  “Not well,” Debbie said. “It’s been nine days since Abby Michaels died, and all we have are questions. We know from the forensic pathology results that Abby Michaels didn’t fight her attacker. Usually in these cases the victim’s fingernails are a treasure trove for the M.E. – samples of the attacker’s hair, skin, and blood – but Abby’s nails were clean.”

  “Is it possible that she was drugged with something like Rohypnol?”

  Debbie sugared her coffee. “Nope, Toxicology’s still running tests, but so far no traces of any of the classic ‘date rape’ drugs, including alcohol. It seems that Abby didn’t perceive the man who killed her as a threat.”

  “She was a stranger here. Whom would she trust that completely?”

  “I have a theory,” Debbie said.
“Abby Michaels had just given away her child. She was traumatized. She went to someone whom she believed would help her deal with what she’d done. I think she put herself in his hands. The element of surprise was on his side. The autopsy results suggest that the man strangled her, raped her, dragged her down at least one flight of stairs, then pulled her through the snow to her car and drove her to the parking lot behind A-1.”

  I shuddered. “Do you ever get used to seeing that kind of viciousness?”

  Debbie was measured. “No, but that degree of contempt for another human being is revealing. It suggests a psychosis, and nine times out of ten, that means we’re dealing with a habitual offender. If we’re lucky and can match the semen on the victim with semen in the vi-class data bank, we can start checking halfway houses and the location of inmates on mandatory release and sooner or later, we find our guy. But we’ve already established the semen found on Abby doesn’t match any in the vi-class data bank.”

  The sun was pouring into our kitchen, but I felt a chill. “If he was able to take Abby by surprise, he must seem trustworthy,” I said.

  “Or he’s in a profession that makes a woman feel it’s safe to let down her guard,” Debbie said tightly. “And, of course, that’s why he poses such a threat to his potential victims and to the police force. There’s a deadly mix here: We have a disarming psychotic, and we have a public desperate for action because Abby was educated, middle-class, and not known to indulge in risky behaviour.”

  “People identify with her,” I said.

  “And they feel vulnerable,” Debbie said. “Abby could be their sister, their girlfriend, their wife, or their daughter. People are scared.”

  “And that puts pressure on you,” I said.

  “You bet it does,” Debbie said. “Nobody likes to admit it, but when we get the call that a body’s been found, there’s an adrenalin rush. All the possibilities are open. We choose the members of the lead investigative team, let them know they’re up to bat and meet them at the crime scene. By the time I get there, the uniforms are already ricocheting, bagging evidence, taking photographs, taking notes, making guesses. Everybody’s charged up. But that’s Day One. As the days go by and nothing pans out, the adrenalin seeps away. We all start getting antsy, and that’s a dangerous time in an investigation because this is when we start getting seduced by false clues. It’s as if we’re all standing in the dark – waiting for a sound or a flash of light. When there’s been nothing but silence, and one of us hears the snap of the twig, there’s always the danger that we’ll overreact – give that twig far more attention than it merits. That’s where we are now, Joanne, and it’s not a good place to be.”

  We walked to the front hall together. When Debbie was dressed to leave, she turned to me. “If there’s anything I can do… ”

  “You’re doing it,” I said. “Arresting the man who killed Abby will bring Delia a measure of peace. Take my word for it – that will make Zack’s job easier.”

  Debbie pulled on her gloves. “I hope so. Zack’s a fine man. I wouldn’t have Leo today if it hadn’t been for him.”

  “Was it that bad for Leo?”

  “My son tried to kill himself,” Debbie said. “In my estimation, that’s as bad as it gets. All his life people had admired Leo; suddenly, they pitied him. I’ll never forget the deadness in his eyes the day he was told he’d be in a wheelchair for the rest of his life.”

  I thought of Abby. “Leo didn’t see how he could survive his new life,” I said.

  “That’s right,” Debbie said. “But luckily, he had Zack.”

  In one of life’s small cosmic jokes, Madeleine and Lena had found the skates they dreamed of, but the skates Madeleine coveted were available only in Lena’s size, and the only pair left in the style for which Lena longed was in Madeleine’s size. They accepted their fates with uncharacteristic equanimity. Christmas was growing closer, and our granddaughters were fervent believers in Santa’s list.

  We left the store with time enough to take the new skates to be sharpened by Eddy, the wizened gnome who had sharpened our family’s skates since my children were little.

  Eddy’s tiny business, in the basement of a store that had once sold tobacco products but now sold vintage comic books, had been there for as long as I could remember, but this was the girls’ first trip. They had been chatting nonstop since I picked them up at school, but as we walked to the back of the comic book store and stood on the threshold of the steps that led to the basement, they fell silent.

  The steps were steep and poorly lit; the air from below was dank and smelled of tobacco. When the girls and I started down the steps, we were met by an odd and unsettling whirring sound that caused both girls to grab my coat from behind. We were, indeed, descending into the heart of darkness.

  In every essential way, Eddy and his business were much the same as they had been when I met him thirty years before. I had never seen him without a cigarette. There was always a pack of Player’s Plain in the pocket of his muscle shirt, and there was always a lit cigarette in his mouth. His skin was the colour of a cured tobacco leaf and his arms, now stringy with age, were heavily tattooed with images of anchors and calls to patriotism. Yellowing pictures of busty bathing beauties with come-hither smiles and upswept hair blanketed the shop’s ceiling. Periodically, Eddy would tilt back his head, peer through the smoke from his cigarette, and wink at them.

  Madeleine and Lena were mesmerized as Eddy went into action, clamping each skate so that the blade touched the grinding wheel, setting the wheel in motion, whirring away just long enough, taking the honing stone to the sharpened blade to remove the burr. Eddy never spoke a word until he was through and he muttered a price. I paid. He pocketed the cash and we left the stygian depths.

  We were on the street before either of the girls spoke again. “That was weird,” Madeleine said.

  “But not too weird,” Lena chirped. “Just weird enough.” She looked across the road at the skating rink on Scarth Street Mall. The sun was out; the sky was blue. The sun dogs had disappeared. The day was warm enough to try out new skates. “Could we have just a little skate, Mimi?”

  “Let me call your granddad and see how he’s feeling,” I said.

  I dialled Zack’s cell. He picked up on the first ring. He sounded terrible.

  “How are you doing?” I said.

  “I’m okay,” he said.

  “Is Taylor taking good care of you?”

  “She was with me until a few minutes ago. She hovers, so I sent her packing.”

  “Are you feeling worse?”

  “I’m fine. Did you get the skates?”

  “We did and we had them sharpened. The temperature is reasonable, and we’re standing here looking at the Scarth Street Mall rink. The girls are eager to try out their new skates. Would you be okay for another forty-five minutes?”

  “Sure. Hey, take some pictures with your BlackBerry and send them to me.”

  “I’m not sure I remember how.”

  “Maddy can give you a hand.”

  “Stay tuned,” I said.

  Regina is a city with a population of 200,000, but over the years, I’ve displayed an uncanny knack for running into the one person whom I least wish to see. The girls were laced up and slip-sliding their way around the ice when Theo and Myra Brokaw approached and sat on the bench next to me. They were dressed for a winter walk: Sorel boots, stylish grey down jackets, and the red scarves they’d been wearing the night of the Wainbergs’ party.

  “How nice that you’ve found the time for an outing,” Myra said.

  “I promised our granddaughters I’d take them skate shopping,” I said.

  “And a promise is a promise,” Myra said. The edge in her voice was unmistakable.

  “That’s Madeleine in the green jacket and Lena’s the one in purple,” I said, pointing them out.

  Theo shook his head. “Daughters.” As the girls moved around the rink, Theo’s eyes followed them. “Push. Glide. Push. Glide. Pus
h. Glide. Push. Glide,” he said softly.

  I looked at Theo Brokaw. He was still a handsome and virile man. Age had not blurred the classic lines of his profile; his skin was taut, and even in repose his body had the coiled-spring energy of a man who found pleasure in physical exercise. When Delia clerked for him, he would have been in his late forties. Attractive, learned, and revered by his colleagues, Theo Brokaw was exactly the kind of man to whom a young woman who lived for the law would have been drawn.

  The possibility that Theo had fathered Delia’s child had been at the edge of my consciousness from the morning Delia sat in our kitchen and told us about the baby she had given up for adoption. As Zack noted, nothing in Delia’s history or character suggested that her romantic life would be conducted so casually that she would be unable to identify the father of her child. Logic pointed to a serious love affair. So did the spark that flew between Theo and Delia when she greeted him at the door the day of the party. There had been nothing tentative or confused about Theo’s embrace; he had clung to Delia with the passion of a lover.

  It occurred to me that the tapes Myra had mentioned might offer a glimpse into Theo and Delia’s relationship that year in Ottawa. I turned to Myra. “This morning you mentioned that you had footage of Theo talking to his students. That might be good television.”

  Myra arched an eyebrow. “It would be good television,” she said. “That’s why I’ve already couriered the DVDS to your home.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “Myra, I admire your determination. I wasn’t trying to brush you off when you phoned. Zack is ill, but he was adamant about not disappointing the girls.”

  “I understand,” she said. There was sly amusement in her smile. “I understand a great deal, Joanne. I am not a stupid woman.”

  When I got home, Willie greeted me at the door, his stump of a tail moving like a metronome marking the beats of his joy. The package from Myra Brokaw was on the hall table.

  I unzipped my boots, hung up my coat, and went to my husband. There was a half-glass of ginger ale on the table beside him and Taylor’s practice bells from Luther were on the nightstand within easy ringing distance. Louise’s three poinsettias had been joined by six more – all large and all red. I kissed Zack’s forehead. “So what’s with all the flowers?”