Denial

by Beverley McLachlin

  I get in and shut the door, and he returns his attention to the road.

  His face in profile is craggy. As we turn right on Hastings, he shoots me a glance. “Traffic’s terrible these days,” he says. “Getting harder and harder to manoeuvre a car downtown.”

  We sit in comfortable silence as the car noses through the downtown towers and crosses the bridge to the upscale shops of South Granville and the residential boroughs that lie beyond. We take a right at Forty-First onto the Kerrisdale high street and pull up in front of an office sign that proclaims itself Kerrisdale Realty.

  “One moment,” Joseph says. He takes the sidewalk in two smooth strides and emerges a moment later brandishing a set of keys. His every move exudes focus, control, and competence. A man to be trusted, a fixer.

  We turn north into leafy side streets and pull into a driveway of cracked cement. As I step out of the car, I survey the façade of the house. A gabled structure clothed in ochre stucco, it sits back from the street behind ill-tended beds and a patchy lawn, huddled modestly between gleaming new multistory dwellings with faces of glass and elegant porticos. A fine house, seventy years ago. A home where one could raise a family in quiet dignity.

  “How much did it sell for?” I ask.

  “Four-and-a-half million.”

  Under the will, my client has just become a multimillionaire, a status which she will lose if she’s found guilty, since the law holds that if you kill a person, you can’t inherit. I think of our conversation in the boardroom yesterday evening. Cy may pounce on money as a motive for the murder, but I can’t bring myself to believe that Vera Quentin would have killed her mother for money, even if she thought she could get away with murder. That leaves Nicholas. If Vera Quentin is convicted, her son will inherit everything.

  I push the idea aside and follow Joseph up the crumbling steps, sparing a thought for the plight of modern middle-class families on a five-figure income. The rising tide of wealth that has engulfed this city has displaced the people who once lived here.

  A wave of stale dust assails us as we enter, and I sneeze. When I open my eyes, I see the layout is typical: long center hall with a narrow stair to the second floor, living room on the right, den on the left. I know without looking that behind the living room lies a dining room, behind the den, an old-fashioned kitchen.

  I leave the den where Olivia Stanton died for last and make my way through the other rooms. Joseph stands back like a Realtor watching a client, but I am aware of his eyes tracking me. The house is empty, and my heels echo on the wooden floors. I take out my iPhone and start snapping photos. Nothing in the living room, nothing in the dining room. But there, in the kitchen, I spy a crumpled piece of paper on the countertop. Support the right to die with dignity, it says with the time and place of a meeting. Must look into this further, I tell myself as I fold the paper and discreetly thrust it in my bag.

  “What happened to the furniture?” I ask Joseph, returning to the den, which is also bare. According to the crime photos, there used to be a rolltop desk in the corner, bookshelves along the inside wall there, and a bed on the far wall.

  “After the investigation was over, Vera picked out a few keepsakes, a couple of old pieces of furniture to remember her mother by, but we had the rest trucked to the Salvation Army.”

  “What about her personal papers?”

  “We kept her will, a few bills and documents relating to the house and her pension. I can show you what I have. Although I can’t see how they could be relevant to the case.”

  “I’ve already seen the will,” I say. “The police made a copy. But you never know what may matter. I’ll need to look at all the papers.” I step out of the den. “Can you show me the second floor?”

  Upstairs, he motions me to a room in the southwest corner. “This was Vera’s room. She slept here the night of the murder.”

  “Right above the den.”

  “Yes. If there had been a scuffle in the den, it’s hard to think she wouldn’t have been wakened.”

  Cy will make something of that, too. I add photos of the room to the collection I’ve been amassing on my phone.

  “I need to check out the basement,” I say when we return to the main floor.

  “The electricity’s been turned off. It’s dark down there.”

  I smile, switch on the light on my phone.

  “As you wish,” he says. “I’ll go first.”

  I follow him down the dusty wooden stair, my light glancing off the grey concrete walls.

  “Be careful,” Joseph says.

  There’s no railing, and we hold the wall to keep from stepping into the void. Unlike most of these old houses, no one’s attempted to renovate the basement; the only adornments are a behemoth of a furnace in one corner and an empty makeshift storeroom in the other. No door to the exterior, four high windows—two in the front of the house, two in the back. I take some photos and reach up to check the frames. To my surprise, the last one I touch moves beneath my hand.

  “If you don’t mind, I’d like to send my detective over to check the windows before the house is torn down. If you let the Realtor know, he can pick up the keys directly from them. Richard Beauvais’s the name.”

  “Certainly.”

  I hear a note of impatience in his voice as he agrees to yet another useless chore. But once we’re back in the car, he resumes his patter about how the neighborhood has changed over the decades. I need to learn whatever I can about Olivia, so I take the opportunity to ask about when she first moved to Kerrisdale.

  “Olivia came here as a bride and lived here for fifty-two years,” Joseph says. “Same house, same furniture. They say you should revamp your house every fifteen years, twenty at the most. But Olivia never changed a thing. When her husband, Fred, died in 1998, we suggested she move, but she said no. We tried again when they started tearing down the neighbors’ houses and putting up McMansions. All your friends are gone, we told her, and you don’t know these new people from China and India and Lord knows where. The house was too much for her. We tried to convince her to sell it and get a condo. Or move in with Vera and me. But she refused. They’ll carry me out of this house, she would say.” He halts. “And tragically, they did.”

  We’re back at the Realtor’s office. Joseph drops off the key with instructions to give it to Richard upon request. When he gets back in the car, I prod a little more. “Olivia had cancer, was in a lot of pain, Vera told me. How was her mental state?”

  “A bit forgetful. She couldn’t always find the word she wanted right away. She was sometimes confused from the chemo and the medication. But she was sharp for her age and her condition. Some days she talked about wanting to die, said she wished she had gone with Fred, but that was just the pain talking.”

  As we cross the bridge and head downtown, I find a way to ask what’s been bothering me. “Vera doesn’t mention you much, Joseph.”

  “That’s because I’m not there much,” he says. “I won’t pretend, not to you. This whole business has put a strain on our relationship. I love Vera. I want the best for her, have always wanted the best for her. I wanted her to beat this charge. Above all else I wanted to be with her, wanted our marriage to continue. But I’m a realist. I took a long hard look at the evidence and concluded that she had no defence. That left two options, both stark, but one better than the other—ten years minimum in prison, or a plea bargain that would have her out on parole within a year or so. Maybe I was selfish; I certainly wanted to spare her a long sentence, to have her with me. So, I talked Cy into a plea bargain.”

  “But she wouldn’t take it.”

  “Sadly, no.”

  “You don’t believe her when she says she didn’t do it. Why?”

  “I want to believe her. I do believe her. But then I hit the hard truth—even now, after all this time together, I don’t understand my wife. She’s said so many things over the years. I try to believe her, but sometimes I just can’t.”

  “And Nicholas? Does he
believe her?”

  Joseph shrugs. “How should I know? Nicholas keeps his thoughts to himself. At least when it comes to me.”

  “Your wife doesn’t talk about him much either.”

  “Nicholas has been on his own for more than three years now. We don’t see a lot of him.”

  He falls quiet and I let my mind drift as we move through the narrow streets to Gastown until a short, hard laugh cuts through my reverie. I turn to Joseph.

  “Vera. Love of my life. My muse, my lady of mystery, my poet,” he says. “I don’t profess to understand her. All I know is that I underestimated her. Or maybe overestimated her. Anyway, I miscalculated. She’s always been so docile, looked to me for everything, and at this critical moment in our lives, she’s stubbornly clinging to her delusion that she had nothing to do with the death of her mother.”

  He pulls the car to the curb outside my office, then faces me. His eye runs down the line of my skirt. I have a policy for looks like this—ignore them. His gaze quickly shifts away.

  “You need to know. Vera and I aren’t separated; officially we’re still together. I go see her every few days. But she doesn’t want me around. These days, when I’m not in the office, I’m at a condo downtown.” He hesitates. “I hope, when this is all over, that Vera and I will be together again.”

  I remember my first meeting with Joseph. We’ve come so far together—I can’t walk away, he murmured as he stared out over the ocean. Commitment, yes, I get that, but it’s all the pieces I don’t understand that are bothering me. The distance between Vera and Joseph and Nicholas. I want to probe him about how it was—is—with his family, but behind us cars are honking.

  “Thanks for taking me to see the house, Joseph.”

  “Anytime, Jilly.” His voice is brusque. “Keep me informed. I need to know. Everything.”

  “Sure thing,” I say, and push the door open.

  CHAPTER 10

  “IT’S A START,” RICHARD SAYS. “Maybe just enough to plant a doubt in the jury’s mind that someone else could have gotten into the house on the night of the murder.”

  We are seated in a back booth of Savio Volpe, the hot Italian eatery on Kingsway in newly trendy East Van. It’s hard to get in, but I happen to be friends with the owner, who keeps a back booth for me.

  For an entire twenty-four hours I’ve stayed away from the file that increasingly dominates my life—Regina v. Quentin. Jeff phoned early to say he had the flu and ask if I could take over for him in the Court of Appeal. With no choice, I crammed for a ten o’clock hearing on whether the Crown’s acquiescence to a defence delay entitles the accused to a stay of proceedings on the ground that he didn’t have a trial within a reasonable time—a rehearsal for the motion I will bring if by some chance Vera’s trial is adjourned yet another time. It was uphill all the way. I emerged from court at 4:15 p.m. bruised, battered, and anxious for a report from Richard on the loose basement window I had discovered the day before in Olivia Stanton’s house.

  Richard and I pick randomly from delicious small plates. A dish of lamb braised in tomato arrives, and the amazing scent of basil caponata floats up from the bowl that joins it. I swirl the dark Ripasso in my glass and take a sip.

  Richard raises his wine to me. “If you get tired of lawyering, Jilly, you can join me in the detective business.”

  “I know my limits.”

  “No, I mean it. I doubted your hunch about the basement window would amount to anything, but decided to take along Reginald Pierce—a friend who’s an expert in window installations—just on the off chance. Sure enough, we found the loose casement you noticed.”

  I think of them messing up the evidence. “I hope…”

  “No worries, Jilly. We were totally professional, very careful. Photos and measurements, nothing unnecessarily touched or displaced. I ran the camera video while Reggie placed a hand on each side of the window. It came out like butter. He crawled through the opening and let himself inside. No problem. He found a small stool nearby, perfect to stand on—photographed that, too—crawled back out and replaced the window. Then we photographed everything again. Before and after pictures of the installed window are identical.”

  “Good work, Richard. As you say, it’s a start. Now all we need to fill in is who would have wanted to gain access that night.”

  “It had to be someone who knew the house, or at least had cased it,” Richard ventures. “Who could have known about the loose window? Joseph, but he was at his own house all night. Nicholas?”

  “But why would Olivia’s grandson steal in when he could just ring the bell and have Grandma come to the door?” I ask.

  “Perhaps it’s someone we don’t know about yet?”

  I help myself to a pocket of homemade pasta decorated with an exquisite shaving of white truffle. A day of fasting—no time for lunch—has left me ravenous. “Have you made any progress in mapping out Olivia Stanton’s last days?”

  “Some.” Richard swallows a bite of the lamb, then reaches for his phone and scrolls. “I’ve been able to glean a few of her comings and goings from the phone records the police passed along. It appears that Olivia visited a Dr. Menon on West Broadway the day before she died. Called a cab from her landline. When I inquired, the cab company verified the location of the drop-off. There’s a record of her returning home, again by cab, about an hour later.”

  “What kind of medicine does Dr. Menon practice?”

  “He’s her GP—has been for years.”

  “Was it a regular appointment? Seems odd that she saw him right before she died. We need to find out why she went and what the doctor told her,” I say. Richard looks dubious, and I head off his objection. “Olivia’s dead now. No professional privilege. I’ll find out.” I spear a morsel of tender broccolini clothed in walnut oil, then set it down as a thought occurs to me.

  Richard notices. “What?”

  “It’s interesting that Olivia didn’t ask Vera to take her to the doctor. Vera told me that was one of her chores, taking her mother to medical appointments and so on. But Vera didn’t mention this particular appointment, so I doubt she knew about it.” I pick up my fork again. “Have you learned anything about the law firm Olivia called?”

  “No, they’re giving me the runaround. Everyone’s out… I’ll have someone call… Can I take your number, Mr. Beauvais? You know the drill. One thing seems clear, Olivia’s call to the law office occurred after her visit to her doctor.”

  “Interesting,” I muse, savouring the last of my broccolini.

  “I did some digging into Elsie Baxter, the woman Olivia phoned the day before she died. They were old friends, attended UBC together in the sixties. Elsie’s seventy-six, in good health it seems, and heavily involved in an organization called the Society for Dying with Dignity.”

  I look up from my plate. “I found a piece of paper in Olivia’s house with details about a meeting for the cause.”

  “Maybe Elsie left it?” Richard suggests. “I asked Yellow Cab to check for any fares to Olivia’s address, and there was a drop-off the day of the murder around two twenty p.m. I’m assuming it was Elsie, come to visit.”

  “The caretaker, Maria, is coming in at nine tomorrow,” I say. “I’ll see if she can confirm.”

  The waiter clears the plates away. We hover over tiny espressos, considering what we’ve learned. That a person could have entered and left the house the night of the murder, meaning Vera may not be lying when she says someone else must have been there. That, in the days leading up to her death, Olivia had been busy: she paid a visit to her doctor the day before she died, and shortly thereafter she called her friend, a supporter of medically assisted dying, and a firm of family solicitors.

  I sink back against the leather banquette, rub my eyes.

  “I worry about you, Jilly.” Richard leans toward me, covers my hand with his. We’re business associates, but over the years we’ve become friends. “This year you’ve taken on more cases than ever before.”

&nb
sp; “I’m alright.”

  “Sure, you’re alright. Busy as hell. You’re building a spectacular career, rushing from one case to the next. Great car. Great apartment. You’ve made your life just like you like it. No time for family, no time for friends. It’s been a year since you and Mike broke up and there’s no replacement on the horizon. I’m not much for philosophy, Jilly, but a while ago I had a client who was near the end. You think you’ve got it all—money, respect, admiration, he told me, and then you realize, too late, that the only thing that counts is the people you love and who love you.”

  “Like Donna and the twins?”

  “Yeah. Like Donna and the twins. Sure, I complain. Sure, sometimes the routine of domestic life gets me down. But, yeah. I love Donna and the kids. They mean something to me, will always mean something to me.”

  I think of Mike as my stomach clenches. I admit it. I miss him.

  Richard’s voice cuts through. “Everything else is just bullshit.”

  I withdraw my hand. “I’m happy for you, Richard.”

  He sighs. “There’s one other thing I’m concerned about, Jilly.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I picked up a rumour a couple of nights ago. I was working a marital investigation, husband’s definitely not a nice guy. I was looking into something buried behind umpteen barriers and your name flew by, just a flash, but I didn’t like the context. Had something to do with that guy you got off last week, Danny Mah.”

  “What about him?” I ask, feeling a chill crawl down my spine.

  “I put a few things together and I think Danny believes you sicced the police on him.”

  I feel my face redden. “That’s nonsense, Richard. I haven’t spoken to the police. You know my ethics—” I break off, my mind racing.

  “I know you would never do that, Jilly, but I’m worried,” says Richard. “Be careful.”

  “I will,” I hear myself whisper.