The Nesting Dolls

by Gail Bowen

“Do you think that’s where Nadine went when she left here?”

  I narrowed my eyes at my daughter. “You seem to have developed a knack for raising the worst possibilities. But as Zack says, ‘It’s better to know than not know.’ ” I took out my cell and thumbed my address book till I found Nadine’s number.

  The phone rang repeatedly without a response, and I was about to end the call when she answered.

  “I’d just about given up,” I said. “It’s Joanne. Where are you?”

  Her voice was mechanical. “On the corner, just down the street from UpSlideDown – waiting for a taxi to come by.”

  “There won’t be one,” I said, “it’s a busy time of year. Come inside. I’ll drive you wherever you want to go.”

  Nadine came back through the door a couple of minutes later. She was wearing the smart outfit she’d been wearing the day she arrived in Regina, but the pea jacket was unbuttoned; the black cloche was stuck carelessly in her pocket, and her scarf hung around her neck, unknotted and askew. She was pale and she was shaking either from cold or shock or both. The deadness in her eyes scared me. “Did you see Jacob’s baby book?” she asked.

  “I did,” I said. “Nadine, I’m so sorry. I can only imagine what you’re going through.”

  Mieka noticed Nadine’s pallor. “Sit down,” she said. “I’m going to bring you some tea with lots of sugar. That’ll help.”

  We found a table near the door. A mother with three very young boys was sitting on a bench next to us, attempting to get her children into boots and snowsuits. The boys, determined to stay and play, kept running off on her. When one of the boys ran past me the mother shot me a beseeching look. “Could you…?” I reached out and touched the boy’s arm. “Who’s that on your boot?”

  “SpongeBob SquarePants,” he said.

  “Could you hold still so I could see him?” I said.

  The boy held up his foot. “Is he your favourite?” I asked. While the boy told me about SpongeBob, his mother zipped his brothers into their snowsuits and readied them for the trip home. When she took her son from me, she smiled at Nadine and me. “Thanks,” she said. “I hope you both have a very merry Christmas.”

  “I’m sure you will,” Nadine said. We watched as the mother shepherded her boys through the door and turned to give us a final wave. Mieka came back with the tea, and as Nadine drank it, the colour returned to her cheeks. When she was finished, she stood, buttoned her jacket, tied her scarf, and pulled on her hat. She was calm again; she was also very determined.

  My mind raced as we walked to the car. I was certain that Nadine would ask me to drive her to the Wainbergs’. I couldn’t refuse, but if I could convince her to wait until the morning to talk to Delia, there was a chance she’d arrive at the same conclusion I had: the price of revealing the identity of Jacob’s father was simply too high.

  When we had snapped on our seat belts, I turned the key in the ignition, but I didn’t pull into traffic. I turned to Nadine, prepared to present my argument, but she beat me to the punch. “I’d like you to take me to Theo Brokaw,” she said. “If you don’t know the address, I’m sure Delia Wainberg will have it.”

  I was reeling. “I know the address,” I said. “But taking you there is pointless. Theo had a serious fall on the Labour Day weekend. He suffered a brain injury that’s resulted in something like advanced Alzheimer’s. You won’t be able to make him understand what’s happened.”

  “I’ll make him understand,” Nadine said fiercely. “I’ll make him understand that he’s a monster.”

  “No one can justify what Theo did,” I said. “But Delia says that he didn’t know Abby was his child, and I believe her. Delia was in love with Theo, but he was married and their relationship ended.” I took a breath. “His wife says that there were many other women over the years and all of them bore a marked resemblance to Delia.”

  “So he was drawn to Abby because she was his type.” Nadine spat out the word. “He must have been thrilled to prove his virility with the reincarnation of another young woman he seduced.”

  I touched her arm. “Nadine, don’t speculate about what went on between Abby and Theo. It will tear you apart.”

  “I’m already torn apart. I’ve never believed I was capable of hating another human being. But I would kill Theo Brokaw without a second’s hesitation.”

  “Given his present state, that would be a kindness,” I said.

  Nadine’s laugh was bitter. “In that case, he gets to live. I still want to see him, Joanne. He committed incest. He destroyed the life of the woman I loved. Even if he doesn’t understand my words, I need to make him feel the horror of what he’s done.”

  “All right,” I said. “I’ll take you to him.”

  I’d just started to pull out of my parking spot when my cell rang. The ringtone was a new one but it was instantly recognizable: Marvin Gaye’s “Sexual Healing.” Zack had been playing with the ringtone that morning. His intent had been to make me smile, but his timing could not have been worse.

  When Zack heard my voice, he was playful. “Like the new ringtone? It carries a message.”

  “I picked up on that,” I said. “You must be feeling better.”

  “I am. When are you going to be home, Ms. Shreve?”

  “Half an hour at the outside,” I said.

  “Would a martini be in order?”

  “God, yes.”

  “I love you,” he said.

  “I love you, too.” I rang off. When I turned to Nadine, I saw that she had tears in her eyes. “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “No need to apologize for loving and being loved,” she said, and then turned away.

  We didn’t speak again until I turned into the parking space behind the Brokaws’ condo. Louise’s Mercedes was there. When I pulled the key from the ignition, Nadine seemed surprised. “You’re not coming in with me, are you?”

  “I don’t like the idea of you being alone with the Brokaws.”

  Nadine gave me a quarter-smile. “Neither do I,” she said.

  Myra answered my buzz from the lobby, but when I announced myself she was curt. “We’re not receiving visitors.”

  “If you want to keep Theo’s incestuous relationship with Abby from becoming public knowledge, you’d be wise to let me come up. I’m not alone, Myra. Abby Michaels’s partner is with me.”

  The entrance door clicked open. Nadine and I rode up in the tiny elevator. When we stepped out, we could hear Louise playing Bach. She was hitting the right notes in the right order. Once, when she stumbled, she went back and began the phrase again. We were hearing Louise, not a recording. She was still sober. One small candle in the darkness.

  Nadine stood for a moment with her eyes closed, listening intently. “There’s still beauty in the world, isn’t there?” she said softly. The she squared her shoulders and breathed deeply. “I have to do this, Joanne. Thank you for understanding.”

  Myra opened her door as soon as I knocked, but she didn’t invite us in, so I stepped past her. Nadine followed. “We won’t stay long, Myra,” I said. “This is Nadine Perrault. She was Abby’s partner.”

  Myra’s laugh was forced and unpleasant. “That’s a new wrinkle. The last of my husband’s clever girls preferred other clever girls.”

  Nadine tensed. I touched her arm. “Nadine wants to see Jacob’s father,” I said. “It’s important to her, and it won’t matter to Theo.”

  “You don’t know a damn thing about what matters to Theo,” Myra hissed. Then she slapped my cheek in a movement as vicious as it was sudden. “Get out,” she said.

  My face was stinging, but I stood my ground. When people behave badly, they want the encounter to end quickly, and I wasn’t about to cede that advantage to Myra Brokaw. The quarrel with her was too significant to lose. My voice was surprisingly even. “Myra, you can’t continue to care for Theo alone,” I said. “It’s hurting you both. You need respite, and he needs professional help.”

  Her tone was withering. “
And where exactly do you think I could find a caregiver with the stomach to clean up the kind of messes that Theo makes?”

  Nadine spoke for the first time. “Competent professionals know how to clean up a man who soils himself. That’s part of their job, Ms. Brokaw. If your biggest problem is your husband’s hygiene, you’re blessed.”

  Myra’s eyes were icy. “There are other ways in which a man can soil himself, Ms. Perrault. The night of the blizzard I walked into this room and found my husband having sex with your lover. At one point, she had been his all-too-willing partner.”

  Nadine’s intake of breath was audible. “You knew,” she said.

  Myra’s voice was thick with rage. “I’ve been spared nothing. After Theo’s accident, I found their e-mails to one another. They were sickening. Theo and that woman believed their relationship was a fair exchange. She wanted a brilliant child and she got one; Theo wanted his youth, and for a few weeks he recaptured it. As it turns out, they paid in hard coin for their choices.” Myra’s smile was a rictus. “Apparently, when your lover found out the truth about her relationship with Theo, she came here to confront him. I was at the Medical Centre being treated for an injury.”

  “The wrist you sprained when you slipped on the ice,” I said.

  Myra corrected me. “The wrist Theo sprained when I kept him from going back to the Wainbergs’ party to see ‘his clever girl.’ My point is that I left Theo alone, and that was a mistake. The scene I walked in on when I returned was stomach-turning. My husband was clutching his new clever girl around the neck, uttering endearments. From the angle of her head, I was certain she was already dead.”

  Beside me Nadine recoiled as if she’d been punched. Myra was oblivious. “I waited until Theo ejaculated because I knew that would calm him. Incidentally, he doesn’t know your lover died. He thought she was simply distressed.”

  “You didn’t tell him,” I said.

  “I try not to upset him.”

  Nadine stifled a sob, and I pressed on. “If Abby Michaels died here, how did her body end up in her car?”

  “Theo has a wife who loves him,” Myra said. “And a loving wife has a price beyond rubies.” Her attention shifted to Nadine. “That’s something you’ll never understand, clever girl. A loving wife will perform actions that a ‘competent professional’ would never consider. After I’d cleaned Theo, I searched Abby Michaels’s purse and found her Ontario driver’s licence and a receipt from a local gas station. I went downstairs, checked our parking lot, and saw a car with Ontario plates. The keys in Abby Michaels’s purse fit the lock.”

  “You put Abby’s body in her car and drove it to the parking lot,” I said.

  Myra’s eyes met mine. “The pain in my wrist was excruciating, but we do what we must do, and Theo certainly wasn’t capable of handling the situation. Despite my injured wrist, I dragged the body to Abby Michaels’s car. I drove until I found an appropriately remote parking lot, pulled in, shut the car door, and walked home. Ten blocks, through a blizzard. Again, Ms. Perrault, not something your ‘competent professional’ would do.”

  “You left Abby alone,” Nadine said bleakly. Her face crumpled at the image. This time, she made no attempt to control her weeping. The sound drew Theo out of his bedroom. As always, he was immaculately dressed. He went to Nadine and reached out to her as if to comfort her. She stared at him in disbelief, and then she began to scream. Theo looked blankly at his wife. “Did I make this one cry, too?” he asked.

  “Don’t give her a second thought, darling. She’s just a whore, like all the others.” Myra took her husband’s arm. “Come sit by the window where you can enjoy the skaters,” she said silkily. “In a little while, I’ll bring your tea and some of those biscuits you like.” She turned to us. “Get out,” she said and slammed the door.

  Nadine’s eyes were wide with horror. “How can she do this?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said. I took the cell from my bag and called 911. After I’d described the situation to the police, I called Zack and told him that Theo Brokaw was about to be arrested for murder and he’d need a lawyer. I explained that Myra would be charged as an accomplice and she would need a lawyer too. As I knew he would, Zack said he’d be right there. When I rang off, I dropped the cell back in my bag, and Nadine and I walked out into the corridor to watch the twinkling lights on the ficus, listen to the piano, and wait. At one point, Louise Hunter opened her door a crack and saw us. “Is there anything I can do to help?” she asked.

  Pain ravaged Nadine’s delicate features. “Keep playing Bach,” she said.

  Louise’s music was the only sound we heard as we waited for the police. The Brokaw apartment was silent. At one point, Nadine’s eyes travelled to the Brokaws’ door. “What do you think Myra’s doing in there?” she asked.

  “There’s no way she can prepare Theo for what’s to come,” I said. “I imagine she’s just making him comfortable.”

  “Being a good wife,” Nadine said. She shook her head sadly. “Myra had the quotation wrong, you know. It isn’t a wife whose price is beyond rubies. It’s a virtuous woman.”

  After the police arrived, everything happened quickly. Nadine and I were escorted back into the Brokaws’ apartment in time to witness what, under other circumstances, would have been a poignant scene. Uniformed officers separated Myra and Theo, so they could be interviewed. Theo appeared dazed and frightened, and as he passed her, Myra took one of the martini glasses of candy from the counter and shook some jellybeans into his hand. Theo gobbled them and gave her a winningly boyish smile.

  A male officer stayed with Nadine in the corridor and Debbie Haczkewicz ushered me into Myra’s sitting room. I sat on the cranberry-coloured reading chair. Debbie’s eyes met mine. “I am so relieved that this is over,” she said.

  As I answered Debbie’s questions I faced the photographs Myra Brokaw had taken to create the self-portrait of the aging fragmented woman she believed herself to be. I remembered the sympathy I’d felt for her as she’d talked about the “little death” she’d experienced in leaving everything of her old life behind in Ottawa. Then I remembered her cold disposal of the woman Theo had raped and murdered, and averted my eyes.

  Zack came. He’d brought another lawyer with him, a man named Tyler Maltman. I recognized him, as we’d been seated across the table from one another at a fund-raising dinner a few weeks before. I remembered Zack had told me that, of all the smart young defence lawyers in town, Tyler Maltman’s name was the one most frequently written on the walls of the cells. According to Zack, a positive jail-house rating was the equivalent of a starred consumer report. As I watched Tyler stride into the room where Myra was being held, I knew he had his work cut out for him.

  After Zack embraced me and assured himself that Nadine and I were both all right, he told me that, given the complexity of this case, he might be a while. His excitement was palpable. He wheeled his chair with real vigour towards the room where his new client was waiting. For him, the good times were back.

  Nadine and I left together. When we stepped outside, Nadine’s eyes swept the pedestrian mall. People were shopping and skating, and the man who looked like a sumo wrestler was ringing his bell for donations. “Ordinary life,” Nadine said. “All this was going on when we were in there with Myra. How can that be?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “All I know is that you and I have to become part of ordinary life again, and the sooner the better. How would you feel about going back to my place and taking our dogs for a run?”

  Nadine’s smile was faint. “You’re the driver.”

  Except for Willie and Pantera, the house was deserted. There was a note from Taylor on the kitchen table reminding me that it was our turn to feed the feral cats, and Declan had volunteered to help out because she knew I’d been delayed. I called and told our daughter that all was well and that Declan was on my hero list.

  There’d been many times in my life when I’d found physical activity to be the perfect
antidote for overheated emotions. That day as Nadine, warm in one of Taylor’s jackets and a pair of her snow pants, ran beside me along the levee, I knew that while the horror of the last few weeks would never leave her, Nadine had not been broken by it.

  Later, sitting at the kitchen table waiting for the milk to heat for cocoa, Nadine leaned back in her chair. Our run had drained the tension from her body, and she was ready to talk. “I was aware of Theo Brokaw,” she said. “Not that he was the one; just that Abby and he were acquainted. When she was finishing her dissertation, Abby needed a summer without distractions, and she rented a cottage at Stony Lake. Theo Brokaw was her neighbour. He was working on a book, and he, too, required solitude.”

  “Myra wasn’t there?”

  “Abby never mentioned her, but she did speak highly of Theo. She said he’d read her dissertation and asked all the right questions.”

  “A mentor,” I said. “Someone she could trust.”

  “What’s going to happen to him?” Nadine asked.

  “Zack should be home in a while, he can give you a general idea, but Theo’s his client, now, so… ”

  “I understand.” Nadine stood. “Joanne, is there a church near here where I could go to mass tonight? One within walking distance?”

  “Holy Rosary,” I said. “But it’s a long walk.”

  “I need a long walk,” she said. “My mind is crowded with thoughts that have no place in a church.”

  When she was leaving for mass, Nadine started to put on her pea jacket. “You’ll freeze in that,” I said. “Wear Taylor’s jacket and snow pants. I can drop your clothes off at the Chelton tomorrow morning.”

  “Thank you,” Nadine said. “But please don’t bring the clothes to the hotel. I’d welcome an excuse to come back for a visit.”

  When Zack came through the front door, he looked like himself again. “I think I could handle a martini,” he said.

  “Nothing like a red-meat case to bring a guy back from the brink,” I said.

  Zack grinned. “And this case is going to be a doozy.”

  “What’s going to happen to Theo?”