The Brutal Heart (3 page)

Her sister frowned. “Nobody can always be
It.”

“Zack can,” Lena said. Then she aimed a kiss at Zack’s cheek, slid off his knee, and both girls ran to their mother. Zack wheeled his chair after them. “Mieka, I didn’t have a chance to thank you for the toast.”

Mieka met his gaze. “I didn’t exactly have them rolling in the aisles, but I meant what I said. I’m really glad you’re around, Zack.”

I closed the door after them and Zack turned to me. “Do you think she’ll still be glad to have me around when she finds about Cristal Avilia?”

“Is there a reason why she needs to know?”

There was a crack of thunder and Willie, who’d followed Mieka and the girls to the bedroom, whined. I rubbed his head. “It’s just thunder,” I said. “You’re okay. I’m okay. We’re all okay.” I turned to Zack. “We are okay, aren’t we?”

“No,” he said. “We’re not.” He splayed his hands on his knees and stared down at them. “Cristal’s dead, Jo.”

“Oh God. What happened to her?”

“She was murdered. At some point between the time I left her around two this afternoon and six tonight, when the lawn service went out to fix the underground sprinklers, Cristal fell, jumped, or was pushed over the railing of her balcony. The police are leaning towards the third possibility.”

“How do they know it wasn’t an accident or suicide?”

“They don’t know,” Zack said. “Cristal’s condo was on the fourth floor. She could have fallen or jumped, but her body had been pulled towards the side of the building so the other tenants wouldn’t discover it when they came home from work.”

I felt my nerves twang. “Zack, the police don’t think that you – ”

His laugh was short and humourless. “There aren’t a lot of advantages to being a paraplegic, but I think even the cops would see that a guy in a wheelchair would have trouble pushing a healthy thirty-four-year-old woman over a balcony railing, then zipping down to the place where she fell so he could pull her body out of sight.”

I walked over and pressed my forehead against the cool glass of the patio doors. The rain was falling hard now, and the trees at the bottom of our yard were thrashing in the wind. “Thirty-four,” I said. “Mieka’s age.”

“Too young to die,” Zack said. “Also too young to have lived the life she lived.” He moved his chair to the place beside me, and for a moment, we were silent, looking out together at the night.

Finally, I said. “How did they connect you with this?”

“Through one of my more egregious fuck-ups. I thought I was handling the blackmail threat exactly right. I played hardball. I told Cristal I knew she’d been taping her clients, and I wasn’t going to deal until the camera was turned off. It was in a smoke detector on her bedroom ceiling, angled to pick up the bed and a special chair she reserved for what she called
boutique requests
. Of course, while she was
boutiquing
, her camera was able to get a nice clear shot of her client.”

“Including you?” I said.

Zack shrugged. “Honestly, I don’t know. Logic would suggest that I’d be worth taping – I have money and people know my name – but she never approached me.”

“But the police called
you
. They must have found something.”

“They did indeed. They found the camera that I so shrewdly insisted she turn off. She must have forgotten to turn it back on.”

“So as far as the police know, you were the last one to see her alive.”

“Right,” Zack said, “but looking on the bright side, they didn’t hear me offer her $
10,000
for the Osler
DVDS.”

“So they don’t know about Ned’s involvement with Cristal.”

“No, and I’d like to keep it that way.”

“Had she agreed to take the money?”

“I thought she had. She brought out the
DVDS
. I put one in the machine to make certain I wasn’t paying $
10,000
for
Bambi
. I watched long enough to see what I was buying, then I took out the envelope with the cash. That’s when it got weird.”

“Weird how?”

“Cristal wouldn’t take the money. She said she never dreamed that Ned would commit suicide. In her words, his death was just ‘tragic collateral damage.’ ”

“That sounds as if she had a larger agenda.”

Zack sighed. “No flies on you, my love. I should have picked up on that myself, but at that point, Cristal started to cry. She said she knew she’d made a mistake. She’d deleted the files from the camera, but she wanted me to know she was trying to rectify what she’d done. Giving me the
DVDS
was the first step.”

“Why did she care about what you thought?”

“She’d been at Ned’s funeral. I didn’t notice her, but there were hundreds of people there. I probably wouldn’t have recognized her anyway. She’s changed her hair – it’s lighter or something. I don’t know – she just looked different. Anyway, she told me she couldn’t stop thinking about that poem I used in the eulogy. Remember? It was the one Ned e-mailed to me after 9/11.”

“ ‘September 1, 1939,’ ” I said. “Auden really made the rounds after the World Trade Center was attacked.”

“I don’t exactly travel in literary circles, but I must have received six copies of that poem,” Zack said. “Anyway, Cristal latched on to what I said about how Ned never let the darkness engulf him and how he believed it was our duty as human beings to show ‘an affirming flame.’ Then she announced she was going to change.” Zack pounded his palm with his fist. “It really pissed me off.”

“Why would that piss you off?”

“Christ, Jo. If you knew how many times I’ve had to listen to people bleat on about how sorry they are for what they’ve done, and how they’re going to reform. Usually, I just watch the clock and let them pile on the billable hours, but Cristal had driven a decent man to suicide. It was a little late for tears.”

“Did you tell her that?”

“Nope. I didn’t say anything. I tried to leave, but Cristal stepped in front of me and blocked the way. She asked me if I believed in evil. I said I wasn’t a theologian; I was a lawyer. She said that the people who thought she was evil were wrong – that all she did was let people live out their fantasies.”

“Had she ever said anything like that before?”

“Not to me. Of course, she and I didn’t talk much. And today, I just wanted to get the hell out of there, so I told her I didn’t think she was evil. I thought she was like me, someone who provided a necessary service.”

“And that satisfied her?”

“I guess so. She let me leave, and I had the
DVDS
in my possession. Thank God for that. I wouldn’t want the boys and girls at the cop shop to be sitting around watching those right now.”

“Were they that bad?”

“Objectively, no. As sexual acts go, what Cristal did to Ned was pretty tame. In the romantic language of the courtroom, she fellated him.”

“Why would Ned kill himself over that?”

“Because all the time Cristal was fellating him, Ned called her ‘Evvie.’ ”

“His dead wife’s name.”

“Right, and when he was finished, he closed his eyes, stroked Cristal’s hair, and thanked her for taking him into her mouth and letting him be part of her private world.”

Except for the sound of rain splashing through the eaves-troughs and hitting the ground, the room was silent. “That breaks my heart,” I said.

Zack stroked my arm. “You’re a gentle soul. Ned was a realist. He knew that most people would just see the tape as sordid – an old man getting a blow job and fantasizing.”

“So you made sure his private life was kept private.”

“It was the least I could do,” Zack said. “Ned has always been on my side. The legal community here is tight. Everybody knows how everybody else operates, and everybody knows that the Law Society has rapped my knuckles on more than one occasion. A lot of people would be delighted if I really stepped on my joint and got disbarred, but Ned was a friend. If he heard that I was getting too close to the line, he’d invite me for a drink and, in the most gentlemanly of ways, remind me that discretion is the better part of valour.”

I touched his cheek. “I’m glad you got the
DVDS.”

“I am too,” Zack said. “When I was trying to talk Ned out of committing suicide, I told him he had many, many reasons to live.”

“But he didn’t see it that way.”

Zack shook his head. “No. He said that in the end everybody loses everything – the only choice we have is deciding the order in which we lose the things that matter to us.”

“And Ned decided he’d rather lose his life than his reputation.”

“It wasn’t his reputation Ned was concerned about; it was Evvie’s. He didn’t want people to know the man whom Evvie had loved for all those years was incapable of remaining faithful to her memory. He said that satisfying himself with a prostitute cheapened everything he and his wife had been to each other.”

“So he shot himself?”

“As you said, Ned was a gentleman of the old school.”

I straightened the sprig of forsythia in Zack’s buttonhole. “I love you very much.”

Zack sighed. “Hold that thought, Ms. Shreve, because I have a feeling that we’re in for a rocky ride.” He tousled my hair. “But what the hell, as long as we’re together, there’s nothing we can’t handle, is there?”

A bone-rattling clap of thunder shook the heavens, and I shuddered. Zack was sanguine. “Listen to that,” he said. “The gods are definitely on our side.”

CHAPTER
2

Sean Barton drove Zack to the police station. Zack had had very little to drink – a martini in the afternoon and a glass of wine with dinner. The cognac I’d poured for him had remained untouched, but given the prickly relationship between defence lawyers and cops, he was always cautious about sliding behind the wheel. After the two men left, the party began the slow dissolve to finish. The clouds in the west were still threatening, but the rain had stopped, and Peter, Angus, and Leah took advantage of the lull to give the dogs a run. The guests, too, decided it was time to head out. Ed Mariani was going to the airport to pick up his partner, Barry. During their time together Ed and Barry had never missed an airport reunion, and as Ed brushed my cheek with a kiss, he had the glow that comes when you know that the person you love will soon be in your arms. Even those who weren’t on their way to welcome their beloved had reason to move along. The next day was a working day, and their agendas were full.

Within an hour, Ginny Monaghan was the only guest left, and I was trying to conjure up the diplomatic words to speed her on her way. I’d had enough. Zack’s news had shaken me, and I needed time alone. Ginny, however, showed no signs of moving along. As the caterers began carrying out the rented glasses and dishes, I tried the last ploy of the weary host. “Can I get you anything, Ginny?” I asked. “A drink or a cup of tea?”

Ginny’s smile was mischievous. “Directions on how I can exit through the front door?”

I laughed. “Subtlety has never been my strong suit.”

“You’re doing fine. I’m playing the obtuse guest because I need to talk to Sean about what’s going to happen in court tomorrow.”

I glanced at my watch. “They shouldn’t be much longer.”

One of the caterer’s helpers came in and began collapsing chairs. The clatter reverberated through the silent room, and the young man looked at me questioningly.

“We’ll get out of your way,” I said. I turned to Ginny. “How would you like to see my second favourite room in this house?”

When we fell in love, Zack set himself the task of finding the perfect house for our family. His quest had not proven easy, but he’d been resolute, and, like all knights errant, in the end he triumphed. The house we decided on had been built in the 1960s, and it was solid enough to accommodate the retrofittings we needed and filled with enough space and light to please us all. The fact that our house had an indoor pool had sealed the deal. Taylor and I were committed swimmers, and after spending eighteen hours a day in a wheelchair, Zack needed exercise to give his cardiovascular system a workout, help control the spasms that harassed him, and just have fun. But the pool had been installed for therapeutic reasons and the area surrounding it was antiseptic, soulless, and depressing. It was a space in desperate need of transformation, and Taylor had thrown herself into the task.

Taylor’s birth mother had been my friend Sally Love, a painter whose work now routinely sold in the high six figures. Sally died when Taylor was only four, but from the moment I adopted her, I knew she had inherited her mother’s gift. Confronted with a space that was bare and ugly, Taylor made beauty: a mural depicting an underwater scene of swimmers – human, finned, and crustacean – that filled three walls and pulsed with colour and movement. The ceiling and the fourth wall were glass. Ed Mariani supplied a small forest of tropical plants; Taylor and I painted the wicker furniture that came with the house a shade of dusty rose the paint chart described as “azalea,” and we had a room that was a potent antidote to the grey months – just the ticket for a man whose frustration at navigating the snow and ice of a northern winter from a wheelchair spiked his blood pressure. Thirty minutes of laps unknotted Zack’s muscles, and twenty minutes with a chilled martini completed the job. Taylor’s mural and the moist gardenia-scented air were powerful restoratives, and that night they restored Ginny.

As soon as she came into the room, she collapsed on one of the wicker lounge chairs, kicked off her sandals, and flexed her feet. “It is so good to be away from all those eyes,” she said.

I lay back in the lounge chair next to hers. “You’re handling it well,” I said.

“Training,” she said. She raised the leg closest to me and began to rotate it from the hip. As she moved, the silk of her skirt fell back. She was wearing a string thong, but she was a woman at ease with her body and it was clear she took pleasure in experiencing its subtleties. “Athletes learn that personal victory means personal mastery,” she said. “You have to block out everything that gets in your way.”

“That can’t be easy,” I said.

“It isn’t,” she said. “But it can be done.” She switched legs; then, as the rain drummed on the glass above us, Canada’s latest infamous
MP
did hip rotations and talked about sports psychology.

“You have to clear your mind,” she said, and the measured cadences of her public voice disappeared. She sounded younger – both open and fervent. The words might have come from a training manual, but Ginny was a true believer. “You have to train yourself not to hear the noise or see the fans or feel the exhaustion or listen to that inner voice that tells you you’re going to fail.” For a beat she was silent. When she spoke, her tone was self-mocking. “Maybe instead of tuning out that inner voice, I should have listened to it. I really believed I’d become prime minister, Joanne. Looks like the only thing I’ll be remembered for now is being a dependable free-throw shooter.”

“There are worse things to be remembered for,” I said. “Drawing a foul is one of life’s most satisfying manifestations of justice. The other team gets punished, and you have a chance to rub salt in the wound by scoring free points.”

Ginny shot me a look of surprise. “You played basketball,” she said.

“Enthusiastically, but not well,” I said. “Mieka was really good, especially at sinking free shots.”

“Nothing feeds the ego like sinking a free shot,” she said. She dropped her leg and closed her eyes. “You stand on the line. The referee approaches. He bounces the ball to you. You line the seams up.” As she recreated the moment, her fingers splayed. Her hands were large and powerful, the nails unpainted and cut short. “Fingers spread over the ball. Focus. Bounce once, then twice. Breathe in slowly. Raise the ball up to your forehead, feel the balance of perfect form, elbow in line with the basket. Look at the top knot of the mesh and relax your chest. Breathe out slowly; your lungs are almost empty. The shot releases itself; your body knows what to do. Your legs and arms are in sync. The shot swishes dead centre and snaps the cord. Nobody can describe what a perfect shot sounds like, but when you’re a shooter it’s all you can hear.” Ginny’s voice was dreamy, but she was quick to shake off the memory and bring herself back to reality. “I’d give a lot to hear that sound right now.” She examined her hands with interest. “I’m going to lose, you know.”

I’d seen the campaign photograph of Ginny with her daughters. They were close to Taylor’s age: coltish girls with their mother’s long limbs, shoulder-length dark blonde hair, and the unfinished look some girls have on the cusp of adolescence. In an ideal world, Ginny and her daughters would be battling over whether the girls could get tattoos or pitch their sleeping bags outside the Centre of the Arts overnight to be first in line for tickets to hear a hot new band. There would be tears and a reconciliation made poignant by the awareness on both sides that, as C.P. Snow said, the love between a parent and a child is the only love that must grow towards separation. But Ginny’s custody battle had removed her from the ideal world, and as I glanced at her worn face, I knew the prospect of being legally severed from her daughters was taking its toll.

She hugged her legs to herself. “I could have made a difference,” she said.

“You still can,” I said. “Even if your ex-husband gets custody, you’ll have rights. Your daughters are growing up. There’s a lot you’ll be able to give them.”

Ginny levelled her gaze at me. She looked perplexed. “Em and Chloe don’t need anything from me. They’re smart and strong. Contrary to what you’ve undoubtedly heard, I’ve been a good parent. They’ll be fine if they end up with Jason.”

I was astounded. “If you don’t care about the custody, why are you going to court?”

Ginny’s slate-blue eyes were cool. “Because I have – or did have – political aspirations, and it would have been political suicide not to put up a fight for the girls.” She read my face. “Now, I’ve shocked you. Tell me something, Joanne. If I were a man, would you be shocked at what I just said?”

I stared at the tranquil water of our pool. “I wouldn’t give it a second thought,” I said. “I apologize.”

Ginny seemed amused. “My old coach used to say, ‘Don’t apologize. Do something.’ ”

“All right,” I said. “I’ll do something. How would you feel about me helping you get your case in front of the public?”

She stiffened. “ ‘The Rise and Fall of Ginny Monaghan’? I don’t think so. There are enough people lining up to throw a handful of dirt on my political grave.”

“This wouldn’t be a sensational piece. Did you see that Nation
TV
special on the religious right and the values war in Canadian politics?”

“One of my advisers made me watch it, but I’m glad I did. It was good. Fair, balanced, and I actually learned a few things.”

“That’s what I was hoping for,” I said. “I wrote it. And I’ve talked to the producer about doing some more specials along that line. She says we should pitch the shows as Issues for Dummies.”

“Never overestimate the intelligence of the voting public,” Ginny said.

“I’m hoping if we give viewers small nibbles at big questions, they might want to learn more.”

Ginny cocked her head. “And you think my story might give them a taste for more?”

“I’ve taught a graduate class in Women and Party Politics for the past five years. I have the research, but I could use a human face.”

“Or, even better, a human sacrifice,” Ginny said. “Well, why not? Nineteen days till E-Day. Follow me around, and you’ll be able to give the public some dynamite insights into the best prime minister Canada never had.” She smoothed her skirt, swung her legs off the lounge, and leaned towards me. “Consider me officially in, but no cameras, no tape recorders – just you and your notebook.”

Outside a car door slammed. Ginny stood up and stretched. “The men return,” she said. “Impeccable timing.”

When Sean came in with Zack, I didn’t encourage a visit. It was clear we’d all had enough. I told Ginny I’d see her the next day in court, then we said goodnight. After I closed the door, Zack shot me a quizzical look. “So what was that all about?”

“Ginny and I have struck a mutual assistance pact. I’m going to be inside her campaign for the next couple of weeks, and in return, I’ll use Ginny as my focus in that politics and women program I’m working on for Nation
TV
.”

“So a good evening,” Zack said.

“No, but one good outcome. How about you?”

“Lousy evening. Lousy outcome.” Zack turned his chair towards the hall. “But I am soaked to the skivvies, so you’re going to have to wait for the blow by blow till after I have a shower.”

“I’ll give you a rubdown when you’re ready,” I said.

Zack looked at me hard. “You do realize that most women would be ready to kill me right now.”

“The possibility crossed my mind,” I said. “But we took an oath to stay together for better or worse, and as you reminded me at the altar, a deal’s a deal.”

He took my hand. “Thank God for legal training.”

Casual physical intimacy was difficult for Zack and me. We couldn’t walk hand in hand along the beach at our cottage, grope each other in the kitchen when we were drying the dishes, or make out at the movies. But we were deeply in love, so we had built some small rituals into our day that gave us both pleasure. The mutual nightly massage was one of them. Sometimes as we kneaded each other’s muscles, we talked about our day; sometimes we were silent, content just to feel the comfort of deep touch. As I worked the knotted muscles of my husband’s shoulders, he groaned.

“Better?” I murmured.

“Getting there,” he said.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“No, but we have to.”

“Let’s have it, then,” I said.

“Boy, where to start? Debbie Haczkewicz is leading the investigation, which isn’t exactly a break for me.”

“I thought you liked Debbie.”

“I do. And that makes it harder.”

I followed his thinking. “Harder to lie?”

“Uh-uh. Unless you’re a cop, lying gets you in serious trouble. But there are ways of telling the truth that leave the facts open to interpretation.”

“And that’s what you did with Debbie.”

“Bingo. I told her that I went to Cristal’s condo to pay her off so she wouldn’t show a
DVD
that was personally embarrassing on the Internet.”

I poured more massage oil into my palm. “And Debbie naturally assumed that the person who would be embarrassed was you.”

“Yes.”

“Didn’t she ask to see the
DVDS?”

“Yep, but I said they’d been destroyed, and that was the truth. As soon as I left Cristal’s condo, I went back to the office. We deal with a lot of stuff that’s too hot to toss without shredding. Cops have been known to go through trash. Anyway, I asked Norine to shred the discs, and she did.”

“No questions asked?”

“Norine’s been my assistant for fifteen years. She knows not to know what she shouldn’t know.”

“And Debbie accepted your word that the discs had been destroyed?”

“Debbie’s a smart cop. She probably had her guys picking through the firm’s garbage while she was interviewing me, but she was gracious. She knows I’m married. Of course, she’s still a cop, so we had a little go round about destroying evidence, but I pointed out that when I was dealing with those
DVD
s they weren’t evidence because Cristal Avilia was still alive.”

“So you’re home free.”

“No one’s ever home free, Jo. That’s why the cops keep burrowing in. Tonight after Debbie was finished making nice, her buddies showed me their crime scene photos.”