Verdict in Blood - By Gail Bowen Page 0,90

search of an appropriate quote for Justine’s funeral were still on Mieka’s old desk, neatly aligned, and, it suddenly occurred to me, overdue.

The books were on my card, and Hilda would be mortified if she knew they hadn’t been returned promptly. She had, I noticed, made quite a selection: Francis Bacon; Thomas Aquinas; Plutarch; and, the winner, Montaigne. I picked up the Essays. The envelope containing Justine’s authorization was still where Hilda had slipped it to mark her place the morning before Justine’s funeral. Events since then had given a painful resonance to the words Hilda had finally chosen: “What? Have you not lived? That is not only the fundamental but the most illustrious of your occupations.… To compose our character is our duty.… Our great and glorious masterpiece is to live appropriately.”

I closed the book, but not before I’d removed the envelope. As far as I was concerned, if Hilda was going to live appropriately from now on, she had to be as far as possible from Justine and her troubled life. It would be a distinct pleasure to put a match to this document that had caused my old friend so much grief. I started to put the envelope in my pocket, but curiosity drove me to read Justine’s final written instructions one last time.

When I took out Justine’s letter, there was a surprise. Enclosed in the single folded sheet of expensive letterhead were two items that hadn’t been there the morning Hilda and I had discussed Justine’s life. The first was a slip of paper upon which were written two names, a Chicago address, and a telephone number with a 312 area code; the second was a cancelled cheque for thirty thousand dollars made out to Tina Blackwell and signed by Justine. The cheque was almost a year old. I turned it over. On the back were Tina’s endorsement and the stamp of the branch of the bank that had cashed it. As I read the information, I felt my nerves twang. Justine’s cheque had found its way halfway across the country to Lunenburg, Nova Scotia. Until her recent financial reversals, Lunenburg had been Lucy Blackwell’s home town.

CHAPTER

13

It had started to rain by the time Taylor and I chose our library books and set out for Palliser Place. My younger daughter was full of plans. Buoyed by the news of Hilda’s recovery, she’d checked out the video of Anne of Green Gables to watch when she and I got back from our visit. As our windshield wipers slapped rhythmically at the rain, the notion of losing myself in the blossom-heavy trees and azure skies of Prince Edward Island grew increasingly seductive, but the brutal realities of Justine’s life made escape impossible.

The pieces of the puzzle were beginning to fall into place, and the picture that was emerging was a troubling one. There was no doubt in my mind that Larry and Paula Erle, the Chicago couple whose name and address had been in Justine’s private papers, were the parents of the boy who had committed suicide because of Signe Rayner’s treatment. Justine’s reasons for keeping the Erles’ address close at hand were less clear, but an unsettling possibility presented itself. If, as Eric Fedoruk had suggested, Justine had been determined to force her daughter to give up her psychiatric practice, the Erles would have been a useful weapon to have at the ready.

There was logic to my theory that Justine was prepared to use the Erles as a lever to pry Signe loose from her profession, but I was still grappling with the significance of the cancelled cheque. The reason for the cheque’s journey from Regina to Lunenburg seemed clear enough. Somehow, Lucy had persuaded Tina to sign the money over to her. The endorsed cheque was certainly evidence that Lucy was a deeply flawed human being, but why had Hilda considered it important enough to remove from Justine’s other records? By the time we pulled into the parking lot at Palliser Place, I still hadn’t come up with a satisfactory answer.

Tonight, the pretty young woman behind the reception desk was wearing a lime-and-black-striped zipper-fronted Fortrel pantsuit. When I asked her where Garnet Dishaw was, she yawned and indicated the area behind her. “The place he always is when he’s not in the hallway hitting balls around – in the dining room, watching the Golf Channel on the big-screen TV.

As soon as she turned her back, Taylor whispered, “I really like that girl’s clothes.”

“I used to have