The Nesting Dolls

by Gail Bowen

  “Taylor brought them in. The cards are there by the bells.”

  “I take it the bells are for summoning your nurse.”

  “That’s right. I told you she hovered.”

  “She loves you,” I said. “I love you.” I gestured towards the poinsettias. “Everybody loves you.”

  “What the hell are we going to do with all those, anyway?”

  “Save money. I was going to buy a poinsettia for Mieka, one for Pete’s clinic, and one to put in Angus’s room to welcome him home. Now I don’t have to. You can spend the money we save on your heart’s desire.”

  “You’re my heart’s desire,” he said. “Did we save enough to buy you a Birkin bag?”

  “I don’t need a Birkin bag.”

  “Damn,” he said. “In that case, let’s just talk. Tell me about your afternoon. The pictures were very good, by the way.”

  “Maddy and Lena took them,” I said.

  “I kind of figured that when there weren’t any pictures of the two of them together.”

  “The girls and I missed you,” I said. “You’re our team photographer, but you’ll have plenty of chances. It isn’t even officially winter yet. Besides, Maddy and Lena had an audience. Theo and Myra Brokaw were down at the rink, watching the skaters.”

  Zack frowned. “No one had a better legal mind than Theo Brokaw. It’s sad to think of him spending his day watching other people’s kids go round and round and round.”

  “Myra told me Theo used to take his law students down to the Rideau Canal in the winter to skate.”

  Zack chuckled. “And so he could deliver his famous push-glide-push-glide speech – Delia told me about it. Then, of course, I heard about it from other lawyers who’d clerked for Theo.”

  “What’s the speech?”

  “It’s just a little gem Theo used to trot out for one of his ‘teachable moments,’ ” Zack said. “Theo explained that the law is like skating. Push-glide-push-glide. Argue – allow the argument to sink in – argue – allow the argument to sink in. If Theo had been hosting your show about the Court that kind of crap would have been pure gold.”

  “Actually, I did ask Myra to send over some of her home movies. But she beat me to the punch. The DVDS are already on the table in the front hall.”

  “You’re not still thinking of using Theo in that special, are you?” Zack’s voice, already raspy, was a growl. “Because you can cut and paste all you want, but all the king’s horses and all the king’s men aren’t going to put Mr. Justice Brokaw together again.”

  “I know that,” I said. “My interest in the tapes isn’t professional. I thought that with Nadine coming to Regina, it might be useful to narrow down the possibilities about the identity of Abby’s father.”

  Zack gave me a sharp look. “So you think it’s Theo, too?”

  “It’s logical,” I said. “The way Theo behaved when he saw Delia at the Wainbergs’ party was telling. These days, there must be a great deal that doesn’t make sense to Theo, but Delia’s perfume seemed to be a link to an old safe world when he was young.”

  “And a force to be reckoned with.” Zack exhaled slowly. “Life really can be a bitch, can’t it?”

  I kissed his hand. “I guess that’s why, all those years ago, Helen Freedman gave me the recipe for ‘Harvey Calls It “Jewish Penicillin” Chicken Soup.’ Think you’ll be able to handle a bowlful?”

  “Bring it on. I’m going to call Delia and ask her to come over tonight.”

  “Are we going to look at Myra’s home movies?”

  “Depends, but the very fact that they exist presents us with one of Theo’s ‘teachable moments.’ A DVD of her skating days might remind Dee about the importance of full disclosure.”

  “She’s kept that part of her life closed off for many years. You really think some old home movies will do the trick?”

  Zack shrugged. “Who knows? But I’m tired of screwing around. I’m going to tell Dee that unless she opens up, I’m off the case. Until she tells me the truth, my hands are tied. And for a paraplegic, that’s no option at all.”

  CHAPTER 11

  Taylor was not a fan of chicken soup. After she and Declan left to go to our favourite neighbourhood restaurant, the Chimney, for pizza, I took a tray to the bedroom and Zack and I had dinner for two. He finished his soup – a good sign – but refused seconds, and I didn’t push it.

  I cleaned up our dishes and when I came back, Zack was on his BlackBerry. I went out in the hall and made a call of my own. Nadine was touchingly grateful when I offered to pick her up at the airport and introduce her to Mieka, who, as far as any of us knew, was the person who’d spent the most time with Abby in the days immediately before her death. I hung up feeling relieved that I’d made the effort. When I came into our bedroom and told Zack, he was less sanguine. “There are two sides to this case, Ms. Shreve,” he said, “and you’re stepping over the line.”

  “It’s a very small step,” I said. “I’m simply extending the same courtesy to Nadine that we’d extend to anyone coming to Regina.”

  “Maybe,” Zack said, “but I’m guessing Darryl Colby isn’t going to be any happier about this female bonding than I am.”

  “That’s a problem for tomorrow,” I said. “So let’s leave it alone.”

  “Fair enough,” Zack said, “because we have enough going on tonight. I called Dee. She’s coming over to watch Myra’s home movies.”

  “Zack, how much are you telling Delia about the police investigation?”

  “The bare minimum,” Zack said. “Dee doesn’t need to hear the details. Why do you ask?”

  “Debbie Haczkewicz came by this afternoon while you were sleeping. I thought you might want to hear what she told me before Delia arrived.”

  “That’s probably best,” he said. “So how’s Debbie?”

  “Tired. Frustrated. Worried.”

  “Unsolved homicide cases are tough on cops,” Zack said. “The last time we talked, Debbie told me that all they’ve nailed down is the ‘window’ of time in which the attack took place. Abby’s car was not in the parking lot at A-1 when the power went off, but it was there when the power was restored.”

  “That’s a pretty small window,” I said. “The power went off just before six and came back on at eight-thirty.”

  “Apparently, the power downtown wasn’t restored till after eleven,” Zack said, “and even when it came on, visibility was lousy because of the blizzard. Debbie assigned some poor rookie to go through the A-1 security tape frame by frame, and he spotted Abby’s car in the first frame after the power came back on.”

  “So no pictures of the man who killed Abby leaving the scene?”

  “Nope. Debbie has uniformed officers going door to door to see if anyone heard anything, but in that area houses are few and far between and the people who live in them are not overly fond of cops.” Zack looked hard at me. “Your attention seems to have drifted,” he said.

  “Not at all,” I said. “I’m just trying to figure out how everything that happened to Abby could have taken place within five hours.”

  Zack winced. “Is your back hurting?” I said.

  He tried a smile but all he managed was a grimace. “Nothing a change in position won’t fix,” he said. “Could you give me a hand?” I put my arm around him and lowered him so he was lying on his side, facing me. I placed a pillow behind his back for support.

  “Thanks,” he said. “Does any of this make sense to you, Jo? A smart woman, who happens to be a lesbian, comes to a city where she’s a stranger, gives away her child, and then goes off with a man whom she instantly trusts?”

  “Debbie has a theory that Abby sought out a professional to help her through the trauma of giving up Jacob. She thinks it wasn’t the man, himself, whom Abby trusted. She thinks it was his profession.”

  “So we know he wasn’t a lawyer,” Zack said.

  I raised an eyebrow. “Nothing like a lawyer joke to ease tensions,” I said.

&nbs
p; “You almost laughed,” Zack said. “Anyway, if lawyers are out, what’s left?”

  “Doctors and clergy, and Abby’s Catholic, so I guess we can assume doctors and priests.”

  “There are bad apples in every profession,” Zack said. “So Abby leaves Luther College, meets up with a doctor or a priest, goes somewhere with him, he attacks and kills her, pulls her down a flight of stairs, drags her through the snow to her car, drives to A-1, and gets away. All within five hours. You’re right. It doesn’t add up.”

  “Are you going to tell Delia?”

  “Nope. I think movie night might be enough misery for my partner.” Zack looked at his watch. “Dee won’t be here for another three-quarters of an hour. She wanted to give Jacob his bath. Shall we have a preview?”

  I fetched Myra’s package and we watched the DVD she’d had made from the movies shot the year Delia clerked for Theo. Most of the footage was of Theo thinking aloud about decisions he was about to make. Dry stuff, but Myra knew how to bring her husband’s legal ponderings to life by placing him in compelling settings: beside a rushing river on a soft green spring day; atop a ski slope in the Laurentians; strolling alone along a shadowy deserted corridor in the Supreme Court.

  “Always alone,” Zack intoned theatrically, “except, of course, for his ever-present wife with her ever-present camera. Boy, talk about ego. I can’t imagine you taking pictures of me wrestling with my conscience.”

  “The temptation’s there,” I said. “A lot of lawyers in this town would pay serious money to see if you had a conscience.”

  Zack laughed, which of course set off another coughing attack. When it was through, he closed his eyes. “Watching this crap is getting us nowhere,” he said. “Myra obviously didn’t send over the X-rated version. Let’s turn it off, and watch the rest when Delia comes.”

  “Wait,” I said. “Here comes the skating.”

  There was an establishing shot of the frozen Rideau Canal. Then the camera zoomed in on a man and woman skating. He was tall and confident of his prowess; she was petite and moved tentatively. They weren’t touching, but they moved in perfect harmony, and they turned and began to skate towards the camera at precisely the same moment. “Hold on,” I said.

  As the man and woman locked eyes, the person behind the camera froze the shot. Even twenty-seven years later, the heat between the lovers was palpable.

  We watched to the end of the sequence. As Theo delivered his familiar push-glide speech, Delia’s eyes never left his face.

  Zack clicked off the DVD. “So now we know,” he said.

  “It was a long time ago,” I said. “By now, it’s probably ancient history for both of them.”

  “I’m not sure it is for Dee,” Zack said. “On that fated day when I had to decide between buying you a toothbrush or getting a new Jaguar, I went to Delia for advice. To be honest, the reason I chose her was because I was certain she’d tell me I should bid you sayonara, but she surprised me. She told me I should go back to you. She said that otherwise, I’d spend the rest of my life wondering.”

  “And you think that’s what happened to Delia?”

  “I do. She and Noah were married the week after she came back from Ottawa. The marriage came out of the blue. Everyone was shocked, and nobody was more shocked than Noah. I was best man at their wedding. Noah looked like a guy who’d won the big prize in a lottery he didn’t know he’d bought a ticket for.”

  “And you think Delia’s been wondering ever since?”

  “I guess we’re about to find that out.”

  Before Delia arrived, I gave Zack a sponge bath, helped him into fresh pyjamas, changed the sheets, tucked the prescription drugs out of sight, then began removing some of the flowers that had been delivered.

  “You don’t have to do that,” Zack said.

  “You said the place looked like Walmart.”

  “It was just an observation,” he said. “Come sit next to me for a minute.”

  I went over, lay on the bed beside him, and slipped my hand under his pyjama top onto his chest.

  “This is more than I asked for,” Zack said.

  “And it’s only the beginning,” I said.

  For an evening designed to elicit a revelation, Delia’s visit was surprisingly without fireworks. When I showed her into our room, she went straight to Zack and embraced him. “I’m so sorry,” she said gently.

  He patted her shoulder. “It’s okay, Dee. It’ll work out.”

  “I hope so,” she said. She glanced around the room. I’d left the curtains open so we could see the night sky. The snow outside the window was blue-white, and on the low table in front of the window the three copper pots with their deep red poinsettias glowed. The room was very quiet. “It’s so peaceful here,” Delia said.

  She was all in black, her face was pale and drawn, and as she pulled a chair close to the bed, she moved with her characteristic taut intensity. “Might as well get this over with,” she said.

  “You don’t have to watch the movies, Dee,” Zack said.

  Delia picked up the remote. “I’ve ducked this long enough,” she said, and she hit power.

  I’d taken the DVD back to the beginning. As Theo came on screen looking as he had twenty-seven years ago, Delia’s face grew soft.

  Zack had been watching his partner, but he dropped his eyes at her show of emotion. Then his eyes shifted to the screen.

  We watched in silence till the sequence on the canal was over.

  “That’s it,” I said.

  “I thought he was the sun and the moon and the stars,” Delia said. “I was very young.” Her husky voice broke in its strangely adolescent-boy way.

  “Dee, the point of showing you the movie wasn’t to make you miserable,” Zack said. “It was to find out everything we could about the circumstances surrounding Abby Michaels’s birth.”

  Delia shrugged her slender shoulders. “It’s the old sad story. I fell in love with Theo. He said he loved me. I thought he’d leave his wife. He said he wanted to be with me, but that Myra had invested everything in him, and I had my life ahead of me. Case closed.”

  “Did you tell him about the baby?” I asked.

  Delia shook her head. “No. Eventually, of course, he must have realized I was pregnant, but he never mentioned it, and neither did I.”

  “He never asked if the baby was his?” I said. “I would have thought… ”

  “To be fair, by the time news of my pregnancy made the rounds in the Supreme Court Building, Theo had every reason to believe the baby wasn’t his.”

  “What happened?” I said.

  “Someone started a rumour that I’d been screwing pretty much everything that wasn’t nailed down. A kind soul told me she’d been at a drinking party where they narrowed the list of potential fathers down to five and everybody voted.”

  “Jesus,” Zack said.

  “Welcome to the world of women,” I said, and Delia shot me a grateful glance.

  “Anyway,” she said, “I appeared before the Court many times over the years, but, quite correctly, there was no acknowledgement from Theo that he knew me.”

  “He never made any attempt at a personal connection?” Zack asked.

  “No, nor did I. Come on, Zack, you know the rules. Anything like that would have been highly unethical and it might have compromised a client, so Theo and I soldiered on, protected by the anonymity of our robes: just another justice; just another barrister. And it would have continued that way if it hadn’t been for Abby’s letter.”

  “But you did tell Theo that Abby was his daughter?” Zack said.

  “I took the coward’s way out,” Delia said. “I wrote to him. I knew he’d retired suddenly and moved back here. He was no longer a judge, so that particular barrier to communication had been removed, but to be frank I didn’t want to face him. I didn’t know how he’d react. Anyway, I sent him a letter setting out the facts. I relayed Abby’s request and told him that he could do as he wished, but that I thought i
t was fair to convey the medical information his biological daughter requested, and I believed her when she said she had no wish to have further contact with either of us.”

  “Did you get a response?” Zack said.

  “I did. One line typed on monogrammed stationery. ‘The matter has been taken care of,’ and then Theo’s initals, ‘T.N.B.’ ”

  “Were the initials typed or handwritten?” Zack asked.

  “Handwritten,” Delia said. “I should have just let it go, but the ambiguity was unsettling. I decided to arrange a face-to-face meeting. I wrote a note addressed to Theo and Myra. I said I understood they had moved back to Regina and that Noah and I were having a gathering on December 5. There would be people there whom they would find congenial, and we’d be delighted if they could join us. I gave them my contact information, and I received an e-mail accepting the invitation.”

  “Was the e-mail from Theo or Myra?” Zack asked.

  “It was signed ‘Theo and Myra,’ which of course means nothing. Noah always signs both our names when he responds to invitations. The Brokaws’ note was cordial but it was just the usual. There was certainly no mention of Theo’s health problems.” Delia stood and walked over to the window. “And here’s something that puzzles me. Doesn’t Alzheimer’s take time to develop? After our party I had calls from lawyers who’d appeared before the Court last spring, and according to them, Theo was fine. Nobody, including me, had ever heard of a case where the disease moved that quickly.”

  “It isn’t Alzheimer’s,” I said. “Theo had a fall. He was shingling their cottage roof last summer, and he fell. He suffered a traumatic brain injury that’s left him in a state similar to advanced Alzheimer’s.”

  Delia bit her lip. “Just one false step, and an entire life changes.” Her eyes moved to me. “How do you know all this?”

  “NationTV is considering a show about the Supreme Court. It would be part of a series they’re doing explaining the institutions that affect our lives. When I heard Theo was retiring here, I thought he’d be a good fit, and I e-mailed him. Myra responded for him, but I didn’t think anything of it. I just assumed he was busy and she handled his correspondence.”