smoking as just one of many positive changes she made in her life after she met Wayne J. Waters. Did she talk to you about him?”
Hilda nodded.
“Then you know what an impact he had on her. It was insane. Justine had always had a built-in radar for bullshitters, but Wayne J. seemed to slide in under the beam. She told me that meeting him was her ‘moment of revelation.’ I tried to make her see how nuts that was. ‘Like Paul on the road to Damascus,’ I said. I was sure she’d laugh. Justine didn’t have much use for religion.”
“But she didn’t laugh,” I said.
He sighed. “No,” he said. “She was very earnest. She said, ‘If you consider the moment on the road to Damascus a metaphor for a life-altering experience, then your comparison couldn’t be more apt.’ ”
To this point, Hilda had been silent, taking it all in. When she spoke, I could hear the edge in her voice. “So Justine was aware that her life had altered radically. She didn’t just slide into this new pattern of behaviour.”
“Oh no,” he said. “She was fully aware that things were different.”
“Then your assessment that Justine wasn’t in complete possession of her faculties hinges solely on the fact that you found the choices she was making repellent.”
Eric Fedoruk grinned sheepishly. “You would have made a dynamite lawyer, Miss McCourt.” He got to his feet. “Now, I really have taken up enough of your time. I’m sorry to have cast a shadow over the last long weekend of summer, but I needed to know how things stood.”
He started for the door, but Hilda laid her hand on his arm, restraining him. “I wonder if you could leave me your business card, Mr. Fedoruk.”
He pulled his wallet out of his back pocket, took out a card and a pen. “I’ll jot down my home phone number too. I’m not always the easiest guy in the world to get hold of.” He scrawled his number on the card and handed it to Hilda.
She looked at it thoughtfully. “You’ll be hearing from me,” she said. “Last night, Justine Blackwell asked a favour of me. Her death doesn’t nullify that request. She wanted me to look after her interests, and that’s exactly what I intend to do.”
Eric Fedoruk furrowed his brow. “We are on the same side in this matter. I hope you understand that.”
“Allegiances are earned, not assumed,” Hilda said. “I hope you understand that.” She smiled her dismissal. “Thank you for coming by. Your visit was most instructive.”
When the door closed behind Eric Fedoruk, I turned to Hilda. “Were you throwing down the gauntlet?” I asked.
She shook her head. “Just alerting Mr. Fedoruk to the fact that I’m a woman who takes her responsibilities seriously.” She squared her shoulders. “If your afternoon’s clear, Joanne, would you be willing to join me in paying a condolence call? I telephoned Justine’s daughters while you were napping. They’re expecting me at two-thirty. It would be good to have a companion with me whose judgement I trust.”
CHAPTER
3
Half an hour later, we were on our way. Hilda had replaced her peasant skirt with a seersucker dress the colour of a ripe apricot and covered her fiery red hair with a summer hat, a straw boater with a striped band that matched her outfit. I was wearing a white linen shirt and slacks. When I came downstairs, Hilda nodded her approval. “Very nice. Thank heavens we’ve jettisoned that hoary rule about summer’s colours being appropriate only during the weeks between May 24 and Labour Day.” She picked up her clutch bag from the cedar chest in the hall. “Now, it’s already two-fifteen, so I suppose we’d better step lively.”
From my kitchen window I could see the creek that separated my neighbourhood, Old Lakeview, from Justine Blackwell’s, an area of handsomely curved, pleasingly landscaped streets known, accurately if unimaginatively, as The Crescents. Justine Blackwell’s home was almost at the end of Leopold Crescent. I had walked by her place a hundred times, and I’d never ceased to admire it. It was a heritage house and unique: cobalt-blue Spanish-tile roof, white stucco walls artfully studded with decorative tiles, and windows of styles so varied and delightful that I’d once taken a book on turn-of-the century architecture out of the public library just to look them up. Their names had been as evocative as the windows themselves: Oriel, Lancet, Mullioned, Œil-de-bœuf, Catherine wheel.
The front door of 717 Leopold Crescent was oak, framed at