April Fool (32 page)

 

In the El Beau Room, Brian astonishes Samson by ordering a grapefruit juice. “You on the wagon too, Mr. Pomeroy?”

“I have become a rabid teetotalitarian, Samson.” The waiter walks off, shaking his head. “I've started seeing Lila two evenings a week–she's putting in extra hours, she sees hope for me. I'm getting a ton of insight. For instance: the bikini incident. I've been focused on that one wrongful conviction, the case of the
planted panties, and have been blind to my other offences.”

Arthur listens patiently but with his mind on Ruth Delvechio. He waits until Brian's mouth is busy with his club sandwich, then turns the conversation to her evidence, its unexpected gifts. “The chip on her shoulder suggests this self-obsessed woman has something to hide.”

“Yeah, she's
so
agony of lost love,” Brian says. “Fragile. Handle with care.”

“I think not. I'll storm her defences. The jury isn't buying the twaddle about Winter's enduring love for her.”

“I'm out of there. The chief has my number, he'll be onto me like a pack of dogs on a three-legged cat. I like what you've done, Arthur, you've got suspects popping up right, left, and centre. Buddy is ducking and dodging, they're coming at him from everywhere. He's distracted, he can't see the danger lurking in the bushes, the bingo queen.”

Brian plays with an unlit cigarette. “Caroline stopped lecturing me about smoking months ago, but Lila said that's because she gave up, complaining was hopeless. I was hopeless, the marriage was hopeless.” He breaks the cigarette and kneads the tobacco into a saucer. “You can see how reborn I am, Arturo. I am the new version of me, booze-free, drug-free, charter member of Adulterers Anonymous.”

Arthur is booze-free and drug-free, smokes only the occasional pipe, and is only theoretically capable of adultery. Maybe he should forget being drug-free and add a little Viagra to his life. Hubbell would have Arthur believe a pharmaceutically triggered erection is the key to ultimate happiness.

Something is missing from Brian's list of resolutions. Women want more than easy vows of abstinence, but Arthur's not sure exactly what. Clearly, Brian and Hubbell have no idea either. He suspects it has something to do with listening. Tuning in. Not reading the newspaper while she's venting about imbecilic trustees.

“Can you find out if Delvechio's mother backs her up?”

“I'd get on it, but this is a make-or-break weekend. Caroline and I have that couples workshop on Cortes Island. You'll have to use your scary student.”

“You find Lotis scary?”

“You don't? She's an idealist and therefore dangerous. She doesn't know the legal game, thinks it's politics.” He represents several of the Gwendolyn protestors, and has got to know her. “Don't let her loose in the courtroom, she's a monkey with a buzzsaw. Also, her vibes of godlike infallibility piss me off. She has a Napoleonic complex, she's a borderline personality. She doesn't attract me, I prefer the sane.”

 

Arthur picked up where Buddy left off: “You say Eve Winters
forgot
to leave you a key to her apartment?”

“That's right.” Delvechio tosses back her hair defiantly with a glance at Bloom and Quong.

“Isn't it a fact, Ms. Delvechio, that Eve Winters refused to give you the key?”

“She forgot.”

“Did you ever go back there?”

“Yes, I had all my books and notes at Eve's, my computer, everything. The caretaker let me in so I could collect them.”

“And you moved into your mother's home.”

“Yes, in Shaughnessy.” A bastion of the well-to-do.

“Who else resides there?”

“No one now. She's recently divorced and my sister is away at a private school.”

“And what does your mother doff”

“Dr. Delvechio is the assistant director of a pharmaceutical company.”

“Which is named?”

“Advance Biotechnics Inc. It's listed.”

“She's obviously a busy, hard-working woman.”

“Yes, very demanding of herself.”

“Works late? Sometimes on weekends?”

“She was home on Friday, March 31, if that's what you're getting at.”

“You confirmed that with her?”

“Of course.”

“Did you ask her to say you were home that Friday night?”

Buddy leaps to the rescue. “That's below the belt.”

“I am cross-examining!” Arthur thunders.

That even restrains Wilbur Kroop, who seemed on the verge of upholding the objection. But he lets Arthur carry on; he will pick his spots to tangle with him.

Arthur retreats from this dicey area, not wanting to reinforce her alibi. “Truthfully, Ms. Delvechio, you weren't at all eager to leave Bamfield and get back to classes, were you? You wanted to stay with Eve.”

“Did Glynis Bloom say that?”

“Just this morning.” He quotes her answer: “‘Ruth wanted to stay on in Bamfield with Eve. Eve wanted to be alone.'”

“Glynis must've been confused.”

“I regret to tell you she was forthright and plain. The fact is Eve wanted a holiday away from you. She found you clinging, cloying, and self-absorbed. She announced your severance so loudly it could be heard outside the cottage walls. ‘It's over, Ruth. Repeat, it's over. Do you receive?'”

“She had one of her little outbursts. It was about…nothing.” That tattletale phrase flutters like a flag at a country fair.

“
Nothing
, Ms. Delvechio?”

“Her emotions were so close to the surface…”

“We accept that, Ms. Delvechio. Tell us what caused her to blow up.” Cyrano's sniffer has picked up a scent. He snaps his suspenders. “What was the quarrel about?”

Delvechio clears her throat, can't answer. She is labouring so hard that Buddy chooses unwisely to interrupt. “Milord, this is totally…” But he too must struggle, unsure what he should complain about.

“Totally what, Mr. Svabo?” Kroop says.

“I object to how much time this is taking. I have a raft of witnesses, and I'd appreciate knowing how long he's going to be with this one.”

Arthur coldly stares Buddy back into his chair. “We'll move along faster if my learned friend stops playing jack-in-the-box and lets me go about my business in peace.” Arthur is on familiar ground at last, doing well what he does best.

“For the third time, Ms. Delvechio, what was the quarrel about?”

“Nothing,” she repeats with lowered voice. “A silly thing.”

Arthur waits.

“Over a letter.”

“What letter, Ms. Delvechio?”

“She'd been writing a letter to a…well, I suppose, a friend. A former friend. I happened to come upon it.”

“How?”

“It was in a compartment of her pack. Something she'd been scribbling while we were on the trail.”

Arthur waits once more, prying out answers with silence.

“We'd just settled in. The others were walking the beach or somewhere, and Eve's pack was lying there and I decided to clean it out for her, all the sand and dirt and whatever. And there was this writing pad, and I happened to be glancing at it when Eve walked in, and she grabbed it and gave me a bad time over it, and that's it. And then Glynis and Wilma came in, and Eve said we'd talk later, the two of us. But we never did, until there was that little eruption the next morning.”

“To whom was she writing?”

“I really don't know.”

“Come now, Ms. Delvechio.”

“I honestly don't know the woman. Dear…Dear Daisy, that's all I saw.”

“Dear Daisy or Dearest Daisy?”

“Dearest or…I don't know.”

“Darling Daisy?”

“I don't know!” She seems on the verge of tears, but Arthur presses on.

“Daisy who?”

“Daisy whatever, Eve never told me. Anyway it was over. Long ago.” Now comes a tissue to her eyes.

Glynis Bloom is looking at Delvechio with a skeptic's arched eyebrows; Wilma Quong seems puzzled.

“Bring her a glass of water,” Kroop orders. When the sheriff moves to the pitcher, Kroop says, “Mr. Gilbert will do it.” The whipped dog rises. Flynn looks very tense for some reason, his neck muscles bunched as he crouches over his pad.

Arthur waits out her long, shaky sip. “Are we to understand, Ms. Delvechio, that Dr. Winters and Daisy were lovers?”

“A fleeting affair. It ended just before I met Eve. It was never going anywhere.” Another sip. “Daisy was very, totally married.”

“To whom?”

“Some…I don't know, rough trade, Eve called him. A jerk.”

“What kind of jerk?”

“Abusive husband, Eve said. I don't know anything more about Daisy, except Eve called her a diamond in the rough. I assumed she was your basic trailer trash. The affair was
so
dead in the water.”

The pour of metaphors ceases, and she dabs her eyes again.

Buddy says, “If we could have a brief recess, milord, so the witness can compose herself…”

“We will take our break at the usual time.”

Arthur must be as hard of heart as the judge, must resist sympathy: these are the tears of self-pity. “Dead in the water? Yet she was writing Daisy a love letter?”

“To announce it was all was over, to persuade her not to write any more.”

“Is that what her letter said?”

“I
assume
. I told you I didn't read it.”

“How many pages was it?”

“I don't know. Maybe three. Four.”

“A four-page rejection slip? Come now.”

“Believe what you want.”

“Six months after you took up with Eve Winters, they were still writing to each other?”

“Whatever.”

“The truth, Ms. Delvechio, is that Eve was writing to say she was sorry she rejected Daisy for you. It was
your
relationship that was dead in the water.”

“That is so totally…not
true
!”

“What did Eve do with this letter after she snatched it from you?”

“She stuck it in her pocket.”

“You don't know if she mailed it?”

“I assume so, since it wasn't found.”

“How do you know it wasn't found?”

“I…I think someone would have mentioned that.” She looks at the troika of Crowns. No help forthcoming. Buddy has his arms folded, Flynn is busily doodling, and Ears chewing.

“Did Eve keep an address book?”

“Yes, but…I'm not sure if she had it with her.”

“What kind of address book?”

“A little ring binder, stiff grey cover.”

“Was Daisy's address in it?”

“I never bothered to look.” Another sip of water, but she's recovering.

“Ms. Delvechio, did you ever mention this letter to the investigating officers?”

“I don't think I was ever asked.” That may seem evasive even to her, because she adds, “It wasn't my business to mention Daisy to anyone. Especially if she was in a bad marriage situation.”

“Daisy's husband was physically violent?”

“Eve said something about him being jealous and abusive.”

“Did he beat her?”

“Eve didn't say exactly. I assumed. I didn't ask.”

“How did she and Daisy meet?”

“I don't know.”

“How did Eve happen to mention her friend Daisy to you?”

Delvechio slumps a little, crumbling. A deep breath. “Okay. This was back in the fall, October maybe. Eve was being all moody. She had had a couple of drinks and…She just started talking about this Daisy person, this totally ridiculous affair. How Daisy was so refreshing and original even though she wasn't awfully bright or educated. Never went to college. She had a family, a couple of boys. I didn't get it, it was so
not
Eve Winters: I had this picture of Daisy Mae in a tattered skirt living in some runty home in Dogpatch, struggling with her sexual identity and a horrible marriage.”

“And what else did Eve say?”

Delvechio shrugs. “I think she surprised herself running on like that, and she looked up kind of startled, as if she forgot I was present. And she put on the brakes. I gave her a hug, and she smiled and shook off her little blue funk, and that was it, and she never mentioned Daisy again. It was like she just disappeared from the map.” She straightens, returns to an earlier theme. “And then…well, it was like magic the way it happened–Eve and I fell in love.”

“Please tell us what was in the letter that Eve caught you reading.”

“I hardly
looked
at it!”

“Come now, what was in that letter that was so upsetting?”

“I didn't!”

The tears return, but no one on the jury seems to share her sorrow. Martin Samples has seen bad actresses cry before. One and a half stars out of five.

“No more questions.”

 

That exchange has Arthur in a contemplative mood during the break, as he stands by the vine-draped terrace of level six, staring down at three scurrying figures in the Great Hall, a
sheriff leading two lawyers with gowns flapping. A jury has rendered its verdict. He shivers at the thought of that intense, taut moment, the jurors shuffling into court, red-faced from battle, the last holdout grim-faced and sour.

Delvechio's imagery sticks in his mind: Daisy Mae Yokum in her ragged skirt and polka-dot blouse, pretty and bouncy and refreshing and real. As portrayed in the funnies, read furtively when he was a boy, his father frowning upon the practice. Who is the abusive Li'l Abner?

Could Ruth Delvechio have dreamed up this complex murder? Yes, this clinging creature has a jealous, conniving mind. She has become an admirable suspect. Her mother holds high office in a drug company. Does Advance Biotechnics do DNA testing? Manufacture Rohypnol for export?

Bloom and Quong are in intense conversation near the stairs. Arthur approaches, asks if he may speak with them.