Foul Deeds: A Rosalind Mystery (26 page)

I was kind of in shock. This was an aspect of Peter I hadn't even considered. Could this have played into Greta's actions somehow?

“When are you referring to, that she was in Europe?”

“Oh, seven years ago. Something like that. It was just after Peter had come back from his first trip to Bolivia in '98.”

So, I thought, before Spiegle came to Halifax. “What was she doing in Europe, do you know?”

“I had the impression it was a mental health vacation, went to visit friends or something.”

“Did she know about you?”

“I always think women know, don't you? But if she did, Peter never mentioned it. I mean, he was clear about things right from the beginning. And I'm a grown-up. I valued his company too much to throw a scene. I knew he'd stay with her if push came to shove.”

She drained her first martini. “As I said to you that day you came to the office, I miss him terribly. If someone killed him, I hope they rot in jail for the rest of their lives. Good men like him are too few and far between. You're not actually looking at Greta for it are you?”

“He was poisoned. She's one of a couple of suspects. I would get into details Eloise, but it's early days and anything is possible at this point. I shouldn't be speculating out loud, but I know you'll keep this to yourself.”

“My life is one long confidentiality clause. Not to worry. In fact, you're the first person I've ever told about my relationship with Peter, and I don't want that to get around either, so we're even.” She held up her glass and we had a silent toast and drank. But she stopped as the glass got to her lips, looked at me and said, “Greta wouldn't have poisoned him because she found out about me, I hope.”

“Crime of passion. Stranger things have happened. But I think she would have killed you, not him. Or at least killed you first,” I said, teasing her.

“Is she behind bars?”

“For the moment. But she'll probably be out and about on bail soon, so lock your doors.”

“That's not funny, Roz.”

“But listen,” I said, “during those last couple of weeks tha
t Peter was alive, he was working on some international projects. Do you know anything about that? Were there any details about throwing roadblocks in the way of certain corporations or anything?”

“I can remember a couple of things he told me about. One was that he was able to force the same company that was originally contracted here—”

“Europa?” I said.

“That's right. Through some obscure WTO regulation he managed to force them out of this big water privatization scheme in West Africa. They were just one part of a multinational conglomerate, and that was only the beginning for Peter. He was determined to get all those companies out of there. He was working on behalf of a people's united action front. He was actually getting ready to go over there in the next few weeks, and was pulling in major support from water activists around the world.”

“Impressive work.”

“O
h yeah. And he had also gotten a temporary injunction to stop this German bottled water company from obtaining rights to Canadian bulk water. That was one of Peter's big concerns. He said he felt like the boy with his thumb in the dyke. Once one international corporation gained access to Canadian bulk water, it would change the picture forever. Commodification. It's a very frightening prospect, and Peter was on the front line like a ferocious guard dog.”

“Now that he's gone, I guess it's only a matter of time, eh? Bye, bye water.”

“There are other wonderful fighters, but he was hard to beat because he was such a brilliant lawyer.”

“To Peter,” I said, holding up my beer glass.

“And to all those brave people around the world trying to keep water off the market.”

We finished our drinks and parted with promises to stay in touch. I watched her walk down South Park towards Morris Street. I remembered she lived on the little tiny street behind Morris that backed onto a large cemetery. She had kept our conversation fairly light, and I knew she was tough, but I had felt the depth of her pain when she spoke about missing Peter. Seven years is a long time to be involved—and to think she never told a soul. So she would have gone through the funeral and the grieving entirely alone. I recalled seeing her name in the guest book. I thought about Peter King in this new light and realized I didn't hold it against him. It kind of humanized him for me.

But the important things I had learned from Eloise were about Peter's recent actions in West Africa and Germany. In both cases, preventing these companies from proceeding would have had a major impact on Carl Spiegle. He would have been set to see big profits from their endeavours, and may have lost initial investment money to boot. I would spend the next morning diving into those files that were being delivered from Peter's office.

When I got home,
I started making a little dinner for myself with some of the food I had bought with Harvie. That Saturday morning at the market now seemed like years ago. I had put some lamb chops into the freezer and managed to pull one out to defrost before I left for work that morning.

“What are you going to have?” I asked the cat. “Unfortunately I only thawed one chop.”

I picked her up. She wasn't a lap cat by nature, but she must have missed me because she seemed willing to go for a little affectionate scratching and purring this evening. She put her head back and closed her eyes as I rubbed her chin. The phone rang and she leaped to the floor.

“So much for that,” I said, going to the phone.

It was Daniel King. I asked how he was.

“I spoke to my mother's cousin Helga this afternoon.”

“Fast work, Daniel. How did you approach it?”

“I didn't get into our circumstances here. I just said that I'd been having this memory about my grandmother and that my mother wouldn't talk about it. I asked her if she knew who the boy was, and if it was true about my grandfather.”

“And?”

“She seemed hesitant at first, but I coaxed her along. She said she did remember the boy and confirmed that his name was Carl. Apparently, he was German. He'd been orphaned, and my grandfather—Heinrich Brunner—had known about him and wanted to help. He was fourteen or fifteen when he was brought into the house—around the same age as my mother.”

“How long was he there? Did she say?”

“She thought it was at least a year, maybe a year and a half, before everything went awry. She said he and my mother became really close—inseparable.”

“Did she confirm that your grandfather killed himself?”

“Yes. She said it was horrible for the family and that no one understood it. My mother was very upset and left almost immediately to go to school in France, and Carl left as well. She said my grandmother told him he couldn't stay on. He went to some kind of state boarding school or something. Helga didn't really know what happened to him after that.”

“What do you make of it, Daniel?”

“I don't know what to think. I keep going back to the memory, to my grandmother saying that she knew my mother blamed herself. So my mother must have done something that she believed caused my grandfather to kill himself. What could that be? Say it was a pregnancy. It would have been shameful at the time perhaps, but surely it wouldn't have led to suicide. My grandfather had gone through the war; he must have had a thick skin.”

“And his suicide would have taken place in the mid sixties?”

“That's right—my mother was born in 1950.”

“Thank you for making that call. I need to sleep on all this. Let me know if you have any other thoughts or memories.”

Daniel surprised me then by saying he wanted to talk to his mother about the memory and see what she had to say. I was impressed with his desire to get to the bottom of the story, and I thought this might be the beginning of him finding the strength to really face her. I told him I thought that was an excellent idea and that I would pass it on to Arbuckle, and let him know when we could set up the session. We rang off.

I went back to my dinner preparations and realized I didn't quite know what to do with a lamb chop. I called Harvie the chef to get his advice.

“No rehearsal tonight?”

“It's Monday.”

“Dark.”

“That's right.”

“So a lamb chop, eh? Aren't you lucky. They don't need much cooking. You could wrap it up with a lot of garlic and pop it in the oven. Have it with a green salad and mushrooms.”

“What are you eating?”

“Leftovers. Why don't you bring your lamb chop over here and have me do a demonstration for you?”

“But aren't you—”

“What?”

“I don't know…sick of me?”

“Oh boy, have you got the wrong end of the stick, Roz. There's nothing I'd rather do. Besides, you have to catch me up on what happened with Daniel, right?”

“Right. See you in a minute.” I hung up. Harvie had once again succeeded in making me feel pretty good about myself. I was enjoying his company so much. But now that we were actually working together, I wanted to be careful about getting too close personally. Even though my work with him was likely temporary, I'd always been stringent about drawing the line between work and play. Or maybe I was using that as an excuse not to get intimately involved. I had no idea what I'd actually do if Harvie came on strong. His shyness kind of suited me, and I loved feeling such a warm regard for him.

I looked at the cat. “You can't come with me but it's your lucky night—I'll open a can of your favourite.” She went and stood by her dish. She always had her priorities straight.

“Wine?” Harvie asked as I plunked the wrapped lamb chop on his counter.

“Not yet. I've already had a beer today. With Eloise. I bumped into her on the street and we had a drink. She had some very intriguing information about Peter's intervention in a couple of those international water deals that Spiegle was involved with. Apparently, Peter had succeeded in getting an injunction to stop the bottled water company from proceeding.”

“Really. That's exactly the kind of information we need.”

“I know, it was perfect timing to run into her. She's thrilled about you having this new job, by the way.”

“She's a smart cookie, that one.”

“She must be—she's the one who gave me your number in the first place.”

“Yes, because otherwise you would have starved to death by now,” Harvie said, unwrapping the meat I had brought over. “I just happen to have my own chop in the fridge, so we'll each have one. Much more interesting than my original plan.”

He had already peeled and sliced several cloves of garlic. He rubbed the chops with oil and laid the garlic on some foil and put the lamb on top of it. Then he sprinkled a little lemon juice over the chops and put more garlic on top. Lastly, he added some ground pepper and a few small sprigs of rosemary, which he cut from a plant on his windowsill. He folded the foil around them and set the package in a dish—ready for the oven. I watched all this with a mixture of joy and fascination. He was doing this for me. Well, for himself too of course, but in my experience, food had never been so much fun.

“Yum,” I said.

“Well, those won't take long. Let's have a drink while they're cooking. I've already made the salad. We just have to fry the mushrooms up. Would you like a beer? I've got Stella and Corona.”

“Corona with lime would be great,” I said.

“Done. Shall we be radical and go sit in the living room?”

Harvie sat in his well-worn leather easy chair and put his feet up, and I curled up on the end of the couch. As we relaxed, I recounted Daniel's story of his early memory and told Harvie about his follow-up call with Helga, his mother's cousin. I also told Harvie that Daniel had suggested to me that he would like to talk to Greta about it. “What do you think?”

“I think it could be productive. Any information is better that what we have now.”

Then I caught him up on my conversation with McBride and his idea that telling Greta we were charging Carl with murder might provoke her to speak.

“We could try it. Now, would we do that in the same meeting, I wonder. Let's run this by Arbuckle tomorrow and see what he thinks.”

“Great,” I said.

“Now we're cooking,” Harvie said.

“Cooking with gas,” I said as we went back to the kitchen and got on with dinner.

The next day, I tackled the boxes of files that arrived just as I got to work. As Harvie was rushing off to court, he suggested I call Arbuckle and talk to him myself about setting up the interview with Greta. At around 10:30 I took a break from making an inventory of what was in the boxes and gave him a call, filling him in on Daniel's recollection and Helga's affirmation about the boy and the suicide.

“Very intriguing indeed,” he said. “A possible connection with Spiegle that goes that far back. If Daniel's willing to try and talk to her about this, I think we should definitely go for it. I'd like to do it soon. How about tomorrow? Say, after lunch, around two o'clock.”

“I'll contact Daniel and let him know the time.”

“We should meet before the interview,” he added.

I called and left a message for Daniel and then went back to work. I stood in the doorway and surveyed the boxes. There were a couple labelled “Bolivia.” I opened one of them out of curiosity. Daniel had told me that Bolivia was where Peter's decision to become dedicated to the Water Wars had begun. I pulled out a couple of thick files. A book fell out of one of the folders. Not large—four by six, black with a flexible cover. I opened it and discovered it was a journal containing personal entries, handwritten by Peter.

It appeared to be a record of his trip in 1998, likely the trip that Eloise had referred to, just at the beginning of the Cochabamba conflict. I flipped through quickly, looking for his return to Canada. I saw notes on a flight itinerary, and turned the page. Then: