Murder At The Mendel (18 page)

“Jo, you must promise me that what I tell you won’t leave this room. The money was from Stuart. I was just the messenger. He’d die if he knew you’d found out. No one must know about this. If it gets out, it will destroy Stuart, and he and Taylor have suffered so much already.” She had tears in her eyes.

“My God, Nina, what has Stuart done?”

“He wrote a book, Jo. That’s all he did, but he’s so anxious about its reception that he struck a kind of bargain with Izaak. Izaak agreed to give favourable attention to the book in print and send copies to his colleagues in the art world along with a flattering letter.”

Suddenly I was so tired I could barely hold my head up. All I wanted to do was sleep. But I had shaken out the bag of tricks and I had to stay there until all the surprises were accounted for.

“And what did Stu agree to do for Izaak?” I asked.

“You know the answer to that already, Jo. You saw it yesterday afternoon. In exchange for friendly consideration, Stuart agreed to extricate Izaak from his latest financial crisis.”

“This doesn’t make sense, Nina. If the book’s so bad, there’ll be other reviews. Stuart can’t buy off everybody.”

“The book’s brilliant, Jo, but you know how these things are. Izaak’s always been considered the expert on Sally’s work. People will take their lead from him. A good response is crucial. Stuart’s going to be fifty years old this summer. He sees this book as his chance to make his mark professionally.” She sat on the bed in the same place where her daughter had sat twelve hours earlier. “Jo, please don’t say anything. Stuart’s been wounded enough. If this came out …”

“He’d be a laughingstock,” I said.

She winced. “Or worse. Please, Jo.”

I sighed. “I won’t say anything, Nina. You’ve asked me not to, and that’s all I need.” Suddenly I was exhausted. “But I think you’re right. I think I should sleep now.”

She plumped up my pillows and smoothed my sheet. Then she blew me a kiss and moved quietly out of the room. This time, when I fell asleep I wasn’t smiling.

When I woke up, there was a small green wicker basket on the nightstand. Inside was a bagel with cream cheese and lox, a bottle of soda, a century pear and a piece of wicked-looking chocolate cake. There was a white silk bow on the basket and a card. “Judgements,” the card said. Mieka’s name and a phone number were printed in the lower right-hand corner. On the back she had scrawled, “Eat and be well. Love, M.” I ate and felt better.

Hilda McCourt came by just as the one o’clock news came on the radio. She was wearing a skiing outfit, lime green and cerise, very Scandinavian in design. It looked expensive enough for Aspen. Her bright red hair was tucked under a lime-green ski cap, and her cheeks were rosy from the cold. In that room that smelled of disinfectant and medicine, she was bright with health. She pulled up a chair by my bed, sat down and bent close to look at my face.

“It could have been a great deal worse,” she said thoughtfully. “I’ve had your name put on the prayer roster at the cathedral. We’re thanking God for your deliverance, not praying for your recovery.”

“I’ve been doing some thanksgiving myself,” I said.

“I expect you have,” she said. “Well, let’s get on with life. Shall I bring you up to date on the gallery’s celebration for Sally Love?”

“You’re going to have to do more than bring me up to date on it,” I said. “I didn’t even know it was happening.”

She looked puzzled. “I stopped by your house last week and left some information with your younger son.”

“Angus?” I said. “He’s the black hole of messages.”

“I’ll bear that in mind next time,” she said. “At any rate, the affair for Sally is going to be on February fourteenth. I couldn’t resist the Eros-love-Valentine connection, and, of course, we had to speed things up because Sally told me she
and her daughter are leaving town. It’s going to be a glittering evening, Joanne. Black tie, of course, with a sit-down dinner prepared by a first-rate caterer.”

“I suppose you already have a caterer,” I said.

“Yes, all that’s been taken care of. Did you have someone in mind?”

“Maybe for next time,” I said, smiling.

“Well, as I said, there’ll be dinner. But here’s the treat, and it was Sally’s idea. She’s agreed to let us auction off the preliminary sketches for the sexual parts in the fresco in Erotobiography. It’s a wonderful tie-in with Valentine’s Day. And an auction will be a feather in the cap for the gallery, not to mention a solid moneymaker. We’ve already had some nibbles from the national media interested in a Valentine story with a twist. Stuart is thrilled with all the attention.”

“Hilda, how long have you known Stu?”

She looked surprised. “He was my pupil when he was in high school, and, of course, I knew his parents.”

“What do you think of him?”

“That’s an odd question,” she said, “but I presume not an idle one, so I’ll be candid. I think Stuart Lachlan is a pleasant but weak man. He’s good company but not the man you’d want with you in a foxhole. Do you want to hear more?”

“Yes,” I said, “I think I do.”

“I’ll give you a little family history, then. Stuart was an only child. His parents were wealthy, at least by Saskatoon standards, and his mother doted on him. I bristle at those who blame all their difficulties in life on their mothers, but in Stuart’s case it would be justified. Caroline Lachlan protected her son so rigorously that she emasculated him.

“I remember when he was in grade eleven he received a poor mark on an essay. Caroline came up to the school to castigate me. She told me that Stuart’s understanding of the
play was deeper than mine and she was taking his paper up to the chairman of the drama department at the university to have it ‘assessed by a qualified person.’ ”

“Did she do it?”

“Of course. That night when I was at home, my phone rang. Gordon Barnes was chairman of the drama department in those days. He was a dear man, but he did not suffer fools gladly, even rich ones. When I picked up the phone, he was on the other end. ‘The mark is not altered,’ he boomed, and that was the end of it.”

I laughed. “Poor Stu.”

“Indeed,” said Hilda. She leaned a little closer. “And Joanne, do you know the title of the play that Stuart’s mother thought he had done such a bang-up job on?”

I shook my head.

“Oedipus Rex.”

We both laughed, and then Hilda grew serious. “It is funny in the telling. But when you think of what Stuart became, the story’s not so funny. Graham Greene has a splendid line in
The Power and The Glory:
‘There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in.’ I wonder if that was Stuart’s moment?” Her eyes looked sad. “I don’t think Stuart ever had a chance to develop any moral muscle. Caroline was always there, running interference, and her son became a man who has no ability to deal with adversity because he never had to. You saw him when Sally left him. He just about destroyed himself with liquor. Luckily for everyone, Sally’s mother came along and Stuart had someone to lean on again. She’s much the same type as Caroline, you know.”

I thought I’d misheard her. “Nina and Stu’s mother? Oh, no, Hilda, you’re wrong there. Nina has her faults, but …” Pain stabbed the place behind my stitches. It was the first time I’d ever articulated a criticism of Nina.

Hilda looked at me curiously. “I’m always willing to be convinced, but not at this moment. Right now, I want to talk about you. How long are they keeping you in here?”

“The doctors say a few more days. They also say I can teach on Monday. The way my face looks, I may wear a mask. The plastic surgeon says no makeup till all the cuts are healed. I hope I look a little less horrifying by the night of Sally’s party.”

“You’ll be fine. You’re in good health. You’ll heal quickly.” She stood up. “Now, if there’s anything at all I can do to help, let me know. And when you’re up to snuff again, you can help me. I need a fresh eye to help me shop. I’m having a terrible time finding a dress for Sally’s gala. Everything seems too trendy. I like a sense of fun in daytime clothes, but when I get an evening gown, I want to get one I can wear for years.”

She zipped up her ski jacket and disappeared down the hall – more than eighty years old and determined to find a party dress she could really get some mileage out of.

Two days later I was discharged from the hospital. The cuts in my forehead would be a long time healing, but the bruises under my eyes were fading, and the cuts on my cheek were distinctly better. Most importantly, I felt fine. Mieka had continued with what she called her “test runs”; three times a day something freshly prepared and tasty would arrive in the distinctive green Judgements wicker basket. There was a half bottle of wine with dinner. It was food to get well for, and I did.

On the day I was discharged, a package came to me by courier from Vancouver. Inside was a bubble-gum pink sweatshirt, with
I LOVE JO
written across the chest in sequins and bugle beads. In Sally’s surprisingly precise hand
there was a note: “Now you’ve got it in writing. Get well soon. Love and XXX, S.”

I wore the sweatshirt home from the hospital. As Peter pulled into the driveway, I could see the dogs waiting at the front window. Inside, Angus had a bed made up for me on the couch in the den, and the morning paper was open at the
TV
page. As I pulled the afghan around my chin and settled in to watch the local news, the dogs came in and nuzzled curiously at the hospital smells on my clothes. When they satisfied themselves that the old familiar smell of me was there after all, they relaxed, curled up on the floor beside me and fell asleep. I was home.

CHAPTER

10

In the next two weeks it seemed that life had gone back to normal. I taught my classes on Monday, and when my students did not run screaming from the classroom at the sight of my face, I was encouraged enough to try again on Tuesday. That worked, too, and by Wednesday, it seemed as if I’d never been away. The only lingering effects from the accident seemed to be that I tired quickly and that I was afraid to drive a car.

That first week, Peter drove me out to the auto graveyard in the North Industrial Park, and I saw the Volvo. The driver’s side was mashed in, and the motor had been badly damaged. It was a write-off. As I stood looking at the car, once as familiar to me as my own face, now alien and abandoned in the snow, the man in charge of the yard came over.

“Any other car and you would have bought it, lady. I hope you know that.”

I looked at him. Then I looked at my valiant Volvo. For the first time since the accident, I burst into tears.

Peter made me stop at the car dealerships on the way home and pick up some brochures.

“Therapy,” he said. “You have to get back on that horse. If you’re nervous about driving Sally’s Porsche, get a car of your own.”

But I didn’t. That January I looked at a lot of brochures and went to a lot of showrooms. Somehow nothing I saw seemed quite right. By the end of the month I still hadn’t driven a car.

Sally was coming back the afternoon of February first. That morning, Peter looked at me sternly when I came down to breakfast.

“The least you could do is take Sally’s car around the block to make sure it turns over,” he said. “It’s been pretty cold. I don’t think a dead battery would be much of a homecoming present for her after she was decent enough to leave you her car.”

“Browbeating me into doing the brave thing, are you?” I asked.

He grinned. “Something like that. Just drive it around the corner, Mum. They came and cleaned our street this morning so it’s clear sailing. You know, it really is time you got behind the wheel again.”

“Okay,” I said, “you win. After I take the dogs for their run, I’ll drive Sally’s car around the block.”

“Promise?” he asked.

“Promise,” I said.

When the dogs and I came up the driveway after their walk, I patted the Porsche on the hood. “Your turn now. I’ll run in and get the keys and we’ll go for a spin. Nothing to it.”

But as I slid into the driver’s seat, I was overwhelmed with anxiety. I felt frightened and clumsy. I dropped the keys on the floor, and it seemed like an omen.

When I bent down to pick them up, I saw the tuque. It was under the passenger seat, and it was dirty and wet. It looked
like any of a dozen wool hats that my kids or their friends had abandoned on the car floor over the years. Except this hat didn’t belong to my kids. I pulled it out and looked at it carefully. A green tuque with the logo of the Saskatoon Hilltops. Like the hat Councillor Hank Mewhort had been wearing the night of Sally’s opening. But not like the one he’d been wearing at Clea Poole’s funeral. That day he’d been wearing a tweed cap with ear flaps.

The hat in my hand was the tuque Sally had ripped off the head of the man who was lingering around the Porsche the night Clea was killed. I was certain of it. She must have thrown it on the seat when she drove to the gallery. In the inevitable progress of tuques in cars, it had worked its way onto the floor and out of sight.

“Out of sight, out of mind, until today,” I said as I went into the kitchen and picked up the city phone book. “But, Councillor Mewhort, today your chickens have come home to roost.”

The woman who answered the telephone at his office in City Hall told me I was in luck. Friday morning was the time the councillor reserved for drop-in visits from his constituents.

Half an hour later, I dropped in.

His office surprised me. I thought a man whose daily business was hand-to-hand combat with sin in Saskatoon would work in a room furnished with flaming swords and thunderbolts. Hank Mewhort’s office was ordinary: a nice old oak desk, clear except for a telephone and a desk set; an empty bookshelf; a wall filled with the plaques from organizations I didn’t want to know the names of, and a large and ugly ficus plant.

Councillor Mewhort was sitting at his desk. Stripped of his troops and his placards, he looked ordinary, too. He was wearing a shirt and tie and a powder-blue cardigan that had
Christmas present written all over it. His pale hair was carefully combed, and his face was pink and innocent. When he saw me he rose and held out his hand.