“How about interviewing Queenie and you together?”
“Double forget it. There’s no story there.”
“If that’s true, then how about dinner tonight?”
Of course I’d been tricked, but still, we met at a café on Queen Street a couple of hours later.
“How’s your big case coming?” Aliana asked me even before she tucked into a smoked salmon, caper and sliced potato pizza the size of Lake Ontario.
I was wary of telling her too much. But Aliana had a lot of contacts, an impressive fund of general knowledge and a ferretlike ability to dig out anything that could suit her purposes. “The case is going fine,” I said carefully, “but I could use a little more financial information.”
“Financial? Like what? I know some guys on the money page. What do you have in mind?”
“Well,” I said, eschewing my own plain tomato and cheese pizza and reaching over to cadge a piece of hers, “I wouldn’t mind knowing a bit more about Justice Stoughton-Melville’s personal fortune.”
“Such as?”
“Little-known-fact types of things ... You know, whether he has any blind trusts—any secret bank accounts or hidden assets he might not want to come to the public’s attention.”
Aliana delicately cut a sliver of pizza and dipped it into a pool of spiced oil. “I could help you out if you were a little nicer to me.” I felt her eyes on my face, but I didn’t glance up from my plate. After a moment she said, “Why don’t you put that faithful little Nickel what’s-his-name on the case?”
“Because this might be a dead end.” I paused and gave her a conspiratorial look. “But maybe you could dig something up.”
“Oh, so it’s okay for me to waste my time chasing down tidbits of info, but not Nicky?”
“No, Aliana, that’s not what I mean. The thing is, you can do this without anybody realizing that I’m checking on Stow’s finances as part of his defense.”
She cut herself another piece of oil-drenched pizza. How did she stay so slim?
She must have read my mind. Attacking the pizza again, she said, “I run it off chasing after useless tidbits of info...”
Chapter 9
“Your client would make this a lot easier on himself if he would just plead guilty.” Ellen leaned forward across the expanse of her desk, her countenance severe. “And a lot easier on you and me, too.”
My little girl. Not literally, of course. Ellen was in her thirties. But my girl all the same. She wore her dark curls pulled back from her face, a severe style intended to give her a look of maturity and professionalism. I was absurdly proud of her, proud not only that she had followed my profession, but proud that she would be a worthy adversary—whether she liked it or not.
“Ellen,” I said, “today I’m an unknown legal quantity, but I wasn’t born yesterday. You might hope for a guilty plea first off, but you know as well as I do that Stow’s actual guilt or innocence is not the point here ...”
She stood up quickly, sending a little perfumed breeze in my direction. I found it odd that she wore Chanel No. 19, the same as her mother, when the two were such different personalities. For one wild moment, I actually wondered whether she had chosen that scent to disarm me, to remind me in some unconscious way that to oppose her was to be disloyal to my family.
While I quickly dismissed this idea, the notion of such a tactic remained with me. People seldom realize how much they depend on their sense of smell. Unless, like me, they have lived rough and learned to avoid odors that threaten survival: sickness, animals, fire, storm, police.
“Daddy,” Ellen said, “come on! Are you implying that you would defend Stow knowing beyond a reasonable doubt that he killed his wife?”
“Ellen, you won’t get us to plead guilty by accusing me of doubts, reasonable or otherwise, about Stow. That won’t affect my defense. The jury will make the decision about his guilt or innocence, not me. My opinion is completely irrelevant.”
“Daddy, Daddy,” Ellen declared, shaking her head and releasing some of her curls. “Who could possibly really believe that Stow isn’t guilty! First of all, there’s no other suspect ...”
“Oh, come on yourself, Ellen,” I objected. “That’s absolutely the weakest argument possible. There doesn’t need to be another suspect. Harpur was a sick woman. On some days, she was at death’s door.”
“Are you going to try to prove she died of natural causes?” Ellen asked with dramatic disbelief.
“I don’t have to answer that.”
“Okay, but just in case you are considering natural causes, Daddy, let me remind you that I have two doctors fully familiar not only with the details of any conditions that Harpur may have had, but also with her own particular case. If you’ve read all the material I sent you,” she went on, “you’ll also recall that I have several scientists from the pharmaceutical company that manufactures Somatofloran, as well as independent scientific evaluators—all of whom will testify concerning the chemical properties of that drug in Harpur’s system. They will convince the jury that there was nothing natural about the way Harpur died.
“On the other hand,” Ellen persisted, “if you decide to take the position that someone other than her husband was with her that night, I trust that you realize just how many witnesses I have to the contrary.” She sat back stiffly. She was bluffing.
“Give it up, Ellen,” I teased. “I may have been out of the loop for a while, but I’m still capable of proving to the jury that my client is nothing but the victim of overzealous police officers.”
“I beg your pardon?” Ellen asked. More of her curly locks were coming undone, framing an exasperated visage. I almost smiled, remembering the awesome temper tantrums she had thrown as a child. “You’re the one playing a game here. We have fingerprints, Daddy. We have witnesses. We have motive. And we have the accused in custody.”
“Custody! In Club Fed where he’s allowed to wear a fifteen-thousand-dollar watch? What kind of custody do you call that?” Why was I arguing with her out of court, continuing a replay of our encounters from her childhood?
“Daddy,” Ellen said, “in case you’ve forgotten, your client is an officer of the court. He’s a man with many enemies among Canadian criminals. Would you rather have him detained in some provincial jail where he’d be at the mercy of thugs?” She shook her head in disgust. “Whose side are you on, anyway?”
“Is it because I’m past it and shouldn’t have fooled myself into thinking I could be a lawyer again? Everybody, even the Crown, otherwise known as Ellen Portal, is yelling at me these days.”
Nicky and I, our differences temporarily quelled, sat in the Barristers’ Dining Room at Osgoode Hall eating a let’s-be-friends-again lunch. It was Friday, casual day, which meant that the trio playing for the fifty or so gathered attorneys was a jazz group rather than chamber music, that the featured dish was sole instead of beef, and that the dress was blazers and slacks instead of suits.
Nicky took a deep swallow of his Chardonnay before he deigned to speak. “Ellis, you know, I trust, that the Crown’s case is flawed.”
“Flawed?” Nicky was irritating me again, even before dessert.
He nodded. “All those eyewitnesses putting Stow in the hospital but never in Harpur’s room—they’re worse than useless. No jury is going to fall for that tactic.”
“You may be right, Nicky, but what about the scientific testimony?”
He shrugged. “Those pharmaceutical weirdos? They’re useless, too. Jargon junkies. People tend to ignore what they can’t understand. Which leaves us with our only real problem.”
“The fingerprints.” Was I more than a little annoyed at his slick analysis? Yes, I was, because he happened to be slick and right.
“Yeah. We’ve got to get those prints thrown out. And I know just the man to do it.”
“Who?”
“Why you, naturally,” Nicky answered, picking up the wine again and tipping his goblet toward me.
“Especially since
the police have my fingerprints, too,” I muttered into my sandwich. Now wasn’t the exact time to be candid about that point.
“They’re lovely, Ellis. I’m charmed that you remembered.”
I followed Anne through the white expanse of her living room and watched in silence as she found a Waterford vase for the tall blue irises I’d brought her. She stood contemplating the flowers for a moment, and her slender figure in cream-colored silk reminded me again of the advantages of a wife with every asset. Anne was an artist at decorating in the clean, uncluttered style I had come to love. This room and her adjoining solarium, for example, held little except a white sofa, a white grand piano, a few glass tables and two low-slung chairs in white leather and brushed aluminum. The irises added a splash of color to the one-tone room, and I supposed that her artistic side was charmed by the contrast.
“I spoke to Ellen today,” Anne said, moving away reluctantly from the flowers. “It sounds as though you two are managing to work together well after all.”
I didn’t know how she’d come to that conclusion, but I didn’t argue. I merely sat and waited for her to reveal the reason she had summoned me.
“Ellis,” she said, casually studying her long fingers with their perfect nails, as if to avoid my gaze, “do you ever think about the way things used to be?”
“What things, Anne?”
“Us. Our children.”
“Of course. Sometimes.”
Now she glanced past me out the window toward the blue expanse of the lake. “Do you ever wish you could have back what you’ve lost?”
The awkward question embarrassed me. “My dear, how could I not miss the life we shared? You were a perfect wife.”
I realized how crass this sounded the minute the words left my mouth. If I had thought her so fantastic, why had I chosen to sleep in a cardboard box in a ravine rather than in her bed?
“Not so perfect that you cared to stay,” she said, embarrassing me further.
Now it was I who glanced away. “Anne, I can’t explain my breakdown or ask your forgiveness. It was not something I chose to happen.” I spoke to the vista outside the window. “I’m sorry I turned out to be such a loser.”
Anne captured my gaze and replied vehemently, “You have always been the man I wanted you to be. What a person does and what a person is aren’t the same thing.”
“Oh, Anne,” I exclaimed, “you’re so wrong! We are what we do. That’s prima facie evidence.”
“Does that mean there can be no going back?”
“Going back?” I asked, my eyes on the exit. “Going back to what?”
She rose, moved to the piano where she had set the vase of irises and began to rearrange them.
I stood, too, and approached her. I needed to head off this personal discussion. I caught a whiff of that scent again. She used to wear it even in bed. “Anne,” I said, “why does Ellen wear your perfume?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. It is unusual for a mother and daughter to both choose No. 19, I suppose. But it’s a scent we both like. And wearing it makes us feel connected. Is there something wrong with that?”
I recalled something I hadn’t thought about in thirty years. “Do you remember the time Jeffrey gave the dog a bath with the bottle of Lisle Douce aftershave that your father had given me?”
“A four-hundred-dollar bath,” Anne said. “It’s interesting, isn’t it, that of all of us, Jeffrey cares the least about such things: expensive clothes, fine cologne.”
“I guess he just doesn’t take after his father,” I said jokingly.
“No,” Anne said with surprising seriousness. “He does not.”
“I always felt that was another reason I was a disappointment to you,” I said.
She looked at me with an expression of deep puzzlement. “Whatever do you mean?” she asked. “Surely you can’t think I’d be disappointed because our son isn’t a carbon copy of his father?”
I smiled. “Sometimes I don’t think he’s related to me at all!”
“I would give anything if I could make things right between us, Ellis,” she said. And she leaned close and kissed me on the cheek. So this was her reason for inviting me. A regal woman with a pathetic plea is the saddest of humans.
“We can’t go back, Anne. We can’t repeat the past.”
“I wasn’t talking about the past,” she said.
I was really worried. She had been in court every day of the pretrial motions. Since these covered mundane matters of procedure and the admissibility of evidence, I felt both annoyed and flattered at her presence, though I felt it was Ellen’s work she was interested in. It seemed now that I was equally the source of Anne’s pride, and she wanted me to know that. The thought of the potential consequences made me want to head for the ravine again.
Quickly I made my farewells and escaped. Once out on the street, I felt less like a cornered rat. I didn’t want to renew anything with Anne. That was yesterday. Today held new promises. Why didn’t she feel the same?
I was equally puzzled by the persistent and intense scrutiny of Aliana Caterina in the courtroom. Every day, she sat scribbling away from the first “All rise” to the last “Court adjourned.” I felt as though she were stalking me. Two or three times a week, I’d pick up the World and find myself quoted in one of her hard-nosed pieces. Daily I felt more indebted to her—and less inclined to pay. The day the final three candidates for the Judge of Orphans position were leaked to the press, Aliana was on me like a bird on a bug at the court’s morning break.
“Ellis, it’s super! I knew you’d make the short list!”
The weather was cold, but Aliana was wearing a remarkably skimpy dress. She was a woman who would not see forty again, but she had spectacular legs.
“Look, Aliana,” I said, “you can’t talk or—good grief—write about a judicial appointment as though it were a popularity contest. There is no ‘short list’ as you call it. There’s just ...”
“Come out with me after court is finished today. I’ll treat you to a special Shirley Temple. Maybe even a double Shirley Temple.” The woman had no shame.
“I can’t. Nicky and I have to spend all evening going over jury selection to present to Stow.”
“Are you driving up to Fernhope tomorrow, then?” she asked.
“I suppose so. Yes.”
She hooked her arm through mine. I couldn’t draw attention to us by shaking her off. We were in the main corridor of the courthouse, surrounded by robed lawyers, students, members of the public and the press. “Let me drive you up,” she cajoled. “I can interview you as we go. You can tell me what sort of jury you’re hoping for.”
“Aliana, please!” I responded. “Don’t you ever give up? I can’t discuss jury selection with you—or the judicial appointment either. And I’ll be driving up with Nicky.”
“Nicky,” Aliana repeated with a snort of contempt. “Why do you let that spoiled brat work with you?” She looked around as if to make sure Nicky wasn’t within earshot. She didn’t see him, but I was taller. Nicky was nearby, deep in conversation with someone who was shielded from my view by his body. Some witness he hadn’t told me about?
“What part of the case is he handling, anyway?”
“What?”
“Nicky. What exactly is he doing for you? Maybe I should talk to him.”
“Forget it, Aliana. You’re not going to pump me about the angles he’s working on, and you’re not going to pump him, either. So quit wasting your time.” At that, she turned and left me standing on the sidewalk like a leper. But the next day she wrote a glowing account of my loyalty to my “underlings” and my willingness to trust them with important elements of Stow’s case. She said my efforts to shield my “staff” from anyone who tried to interrupt them in their work were “stalwart.”
The only woman of my acquaintance who never came to court was Queenie. I regretted that. When the day arrived and I stood before a judge to open a case for the first time in almost two decades, I
would have liked Queenie to be there. Obviously, her interest in my new career was minimal. I put her absence out of my mind.
Late winter snow slowed our progress the next day, and it was noon before we reached Fernhope. Both Nicky and I were allowed inside. On this occasion, the prisoner looked unchanged from my last meeting. His clothes were neatly pressed. His expensive watch and leather belt were in place. His Gucci loafers were pristine. His hair was combed, but still uncut. I saw Nicky study him the way he had studied the tenants of Queenie’s domain. If Stow noticed this scrutiny, it did nothing to affect his haughty hello when he was introduced to my assistant.
“Housekeeping matters first,” I chirped, hoping to put both Nicky and Stow at ease, but only managing to increase the palpable tension in the little room. “I’ve managed to speak to the preliminary motions without your being present in court, Stow, but that’s over. Now, you must be there every day. Do you want me to arrange some sort of secured accommodation for the duration of the trial?”
Stow made a dismissive gesture, as though he couldn’t care less about where he stayed or how many security officers watched over him.
“All right, then,” I responded, “I’ll see what I can do.”
Nicky handed me a file. Now that the trial was about to begin, I was allowed more latitude about bringing documents to my client. In fact, the guards had got so used to our meetings that they practically ignored us.
“Let’s get down to the reason for this meeting,” I said. “Time is short. First, we need to talk about the challenge for cause. We intend to question each juror ...”
“On what grounds?”
The three-word question demonstrated Stow’s first sign of interest that day. But I kept my surprise to myself and pretended his query was no big deal—the way a parent will pretend a baby’s first word is not worth making a fuss over, so that the word will be said again and again. With a glance toward the guards, I handed Stow a sheet of paper with a few lines of type on it.
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