She glanced at Guy out of the corner of her eye. No, she hadn’t said that out loud either. Although she wished she had. And some day she would.
“Sure,” she replied, groping for her glass.
“I’ll get that.” Guy lifted the bottle of Bordeaux. She watched his bony hand pour the liquid to the top of her glass and set it down carefully. She wouldn’t be able to lift it without some wine dribbling down the side. The little shit. He did it deliberately. It wasn’t his business to pour the wine in any case. He wasn’t the host, he was a guest. What was he doing here, anyway? This was supposed to be a symphony-related do.
Odd to have seven people at a dinner party. Usually they’re so couple-y. She leaned toward Guy and whispered, “Why didn’t you bring Merritt?”
Guy ignored her. He was paying attention to whatever Spencer was saying. Maybe I just thought I said that. Oh, well.
She reached for her glass. It dribbled.
Oops. She looked around the table and stifled a giggle. No one noticed. All eyes were on Spencer. She was sure she heard the word “Jews.”
Oh, no. They’re talking about money and Jews in practically the same breath. I can’t believe it. It’s 1988, for the love of god. Not 1932.
“Spencer!” she interjected.
Her husband gave her a furious frown. “We’re talking about the Kushniryk case, Liz. Are you feeling all right?”
Liz suddenly felt every eye on her. “Never better,” she replied. “Go on. Sorry I interrupted. I was just…never mind.”
She couldn’t bear to hear about it. Spencer’s firm had been retained to defend some man accused of murdering five hundred Jews in Poland or Latvia or some such place in the Second World War. A test of new legislation permitting trials in Canada of atrocities committed elsewhere. And naturally Spencer’s firm took on this mighty task. How high-minded of them. Of course, Spencer wasn’t personally involved. Oh, no. He wouldn’t want the taint of defending some Nazi to follow him into government.
Well, let the Polish guy have it, I say. Hang him high! Then dig him up and hang him again!
Her grandfather used to say that about Louis Riel.
Liz giggled aloud.
I really have had too much to drink! I don’t think like this! I’m starting to sound like an American! See, this is what will happen if evil Mulroney shoves Free Trade down our throats!
She noted everyone staring at her. She felt a slight pain in her chest. She hadn’t really giggled. She had burped.
“Excuse me.”
“Elizabeth,” Spencer droned, as if talking to a child. “I think Bunny might like to clear. We’ve all been finished for some time.”
“Oh!” Liz stared at her plate. She’d hardly touched a thing. “Oh, Bunny, I’m sorry. My mind…this beef is lovely. Really, it is. It’s just that—”
“Have a few more bites.” Bunny rose from her chair. Her tone was soothing. But Liz detected the steely charm of a chatelaine of a thousand dinner parties. “I’ll just take these things away in the meantime.”
“I’ll help you.” Else gave her napkin an elegant fold, rose from her place, and began collecting the men’s plates.
Thank you, ladies, for making me feel guilty as hell.
Liz reached for her fork and watched Else glide out of the room. Even though she had to be sixty, she was truly something to behold. The frosty blonde hair. The bosoms of death. The assessing gaze. Une femme formidable, as Maîtresse Desilets used to say in French class. La plume de ma tante est sur la bureau de mon oncle cha cha cha…
“Don’t mind me,” she said breezily, as once again all eyes were on her. Cha cha cha.
“Shall we dance?”
Headline: Guy Clark exhibits wit. World agog. Liz straightened her shoulders. “Perhaps after dessert.” She flashed him a high-wattage smile as phony as anything Hollywood could produce. And there’ll be no dessert for you, missy, if you don’t finish your — she looked down—cold tenderloin of beef with creamy tarragon sauce. She was sure she’d seen this in a Gourmet magazine at the hairdresser’s recently. She contemplated the barely touched squash cup with the basil vegetable stuffing and the out-of-season asparagus on the side of her plate. She felt a more urgent need for a cigarette.
“Are you descended by any chance from Hans Richter—” she heard Guy say to Paul.
She looked up to see Paul’s eyebrows ascend his forehead. Lovely eyebrows.
“—the nineteenth-century German conductor?”
“I know who he is.” Liz enjoyed the wintry stare Paul directed at Guy. “And no, there’s no relation. Hans Richter was Hungarian.”
Liz cackled—in her head, she hoped, glancing around quickly. Oh, Guy, you moron. How did you ever become the Go! editor and arbiter of arts coverage in the city? Of course, silly me! You planted your thin lips on Martin’s flabby posterior! You flattered him by consistently losing in golf and exhibiting such shameless ambition that Martin, no slouch at shameless ambition himself, raised you from junior copy editor to section editor in a twinkling. Oh, my. What fun it is working under a twenty-eight-year old, someone nearly a decade younger like you, whose interests are the stock market, hockey, and the ramblings of David Letterman in his nightly monologue. It’s a treat. I can’t wait to get up in the mornings.
Liz, take your knife in your right hand and scrape some beef onto your fork, and stick the whole thing in your mouth. There’s a girl. You can do it. Oh, what the hell are they yakking about now?
“How did you know?” Paul’s words were sudden and sharp enough to focus her muzzy attention.
“My sister told me,” Guy replied, turning to Martin. “Caitlin went to the Curtis Institute with your nephew.”
“What’s the matter?” Wassamadda? Was that slurred?
It was Martin who replied. “Apparently Michael told Caitlin there was an opening for a violinist—”
So?
“I’d rather board members didn’t interfere in personnel matters,” Paul said, as if addressing an earlier concern.
“Well, former board member,” Spencer interjected. “Or didn’t you hear?”
“—and Guy’s wondering if his sister might do, Liz,” Martin supplied. She noted him studying her as she picked up a piece of asparagus with her fingers and waggled it in front of her face. Semi-firm, it reminded her of Spencer’s less-than-enthusiastic penis these days. So, I’m a little blitzed, Martin, oh eternal managing editor of the Zit. So fire me. She bit off the head of the asparagus. She thought she saw Martin wince. You big baby. He even looks like a baby in the candlelight—a clever sort of baby, all bulging forehead, receding chin, and skin less lined than a man in his late fifties ought to be. But then he’s had a pretty soft life as Mr. Bunny Kingdon. He was poor and he married rich. Bunny has money. Bunny’s a money bunny.
“Oh, I doubt Michael’s likely to interfere again.” Guy reached for his wine glass.
“You seem very sure.” Liz articulated slowly. She had been paying attention. Some attention at any rate.
“Well…Caitlin and Michael are very good friends. I’m sure he didn’t intend to butt in. Besides, your husband says he’s not on the board anymore.” Guy flicked her a dismissive glance. She thought: I’ve never seen such a thin face on a man. It’s like a whippet’s. “By the way, maestro—”
Maestro—oh, puh-leeze!
“—Caitlin was first violinist with the Atlantic Symphony before it crumbled. She’s living here for the time being. She’s very good.”
“And you would be a judge of such ability.”
Liz suppressed a snicker. She glanced across the table at Paul, who had turned his great greying head toward her, the ghost of a smile on his lips. Of course it was she who, in their interludes together, told him tales of Guy the Obtuse. She smiled back at him. Oh, not too brazenly. She hoped. She had a wicked urge to wiggle her foot out of her shoe and run her toes up his leg. Too bad the table was glass. Well, they were eating in the conservatory. It was an informal supper, as Bunn
y had promised. I wonder what it costs to heat this room in the winter? Liz’s eyes wandered over the plants to the sky nearing dark beyond the glass panes. I want a conservatory. How nice to have a conservatory. How nice to be rich. Really, really rich. Rich enough to heat a glass room through a Winnipeg winter. Her eyes returned to Paul. Wouldn’t it be nice to be dancing with him in a candle-lit conservatory? Cha cha cha. Oh, yes.
Suddenly, she was aware of Guy’s eyes boring right into her neck. She could feel hot blood rising to her face, unbidden. “What about the Guarneri del Gesu?” she blurted, hoping the question blended into the flow of conversation. Why did she let Clark get under her skin so?
“He’s making a gift of it to the orchestra,” Paul replied evenly, then smiled. “Didn’t I read that in Saturday’s paper?”
“The thing’s worth a million bucks in Canadian money.”
“Liz!” Spencer glared at her.
Oh, sorry, how vulgar to discuss the price of a violin.
Like she hadn’t featured it in the first paragraph of the story she had written for last Saturday’s paper. The whole city knew its worth.
“Anyway,” Martin shrugged. “I doubt we shall see it this Saturday. I’m not sure he brought it with him from London. Bunny didn’t mention seeing it, and she’s been visiting next door a lot recently—this book project of hers.”
“And Saturday’s event would hardly be the place to introduce such a magnificent instrument.” The compressed line of Paul’s mouth drew her flickering attention. The last time Liz had teased him about the orchestra’s engagement opening a new downtown mall, Galleries Portáge—they had been undressing at Paul’s pied-à-terre off Central Park—he had snapped. Having to sell the orchestra’s services like so much sausage. Being nothing more than window dressing, Muzak for the local philistines who thought the opening of a—god-help-us—shopping mall was a grand social occasion. Bravo! Liz had sat up on the bed and applauded, as if he had just brought the orchestra to the crashing finale of some mighty symphonic work. His eyes had blazed—green fire and blue fire—and, aroused, she couldn’t help drawing him toward her.
She studied his face as he talked. The blue, blue eyes. Blue as sapphires. How surprised she had been the first time when he had removed his contact lenses and revealed one green iris paler than the blue. Like David Bowie’s eyes, she remembered from photos in the 70s—unearthly, unnerving, yet strangely compelling; a tiny flaw among flawless features (well, she thought the broad forehead and the square, ample jaw flawless)—a suggestion of vulnerability. And like Bowie’s, the result of having been struck in the eye with a stone when he was a boy. He turned his head to address Spencer, then glanced up toward the glass ceiling, exposing the powerful cords of his neck. She could hardly believe he was her father’s age. His body was astonishingly athletic, and if he’d had a little nip and tuck around his face, who cared? Cha cha cha! Her eyes followed his glance. A streak of light crossed the glass pane. Then another.
“You’re pretty loaded.” Guy’s murmur broke her reverie.
Liz turned her head unsteadily. “More keen observations like that, sonny,” she said under her breath, “and someday you might be a journalist.”
“Still bugs your ass that I’m Go! editor and you’re not, doesn’t it?”
Oh, screw it. I am loaded! “That job should have been—would have been—mine, but then I can’t do the male-bonding thing the way you can.”
“Really? I think you bond with males pretty well.” He flicked a glance at Paul.
Liz’s heart fluttered. Oh, god, can he possibly know? She said as evenly as she could: “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Oh, nothing.” Guy reached for his dessert fork and began twisting it. “You never know, the opportunity might rise again.”
“Opportunity for what?” Her eyes were again drawn to the ceiling, which now seemed to pulse with a dull light.
“To be Go! editor.”
Liz shrugged and returned her eyes to Guy’s profile, to the protruding lower lip. “I don’t think I’d want it now.”
“Oh, you want it.”
“Anyway, maybe Axel will re-apply. I hear Winnipeg Life is fizzling. No October issue.”
“Axel’s return to the Citizen will be over my dead body.”
Liz watched the fork go round and round in Guy’s hand. What is the little turd up to? “Are you trying to tell me in your own weird way that you’re getting a new job or something?”
“I’m just making conversation, Liz.”
Like hell. “There’d be no point in my applying for your job, anyway. I don’t know how to play golf.”
“Then learn.”
Guy looked past Liz. Bunny and Else stepped down into the room burdened with a cake tray and coffee pot. Conversation ceased. Bunny put the tray on the sideboard and glanced over Paul’s head toward Liz’s plate. But before Liz could grovel—she had barely eaten another thing—Bunny’s attention was drawn to the glass panes above.
“Oh, look! Maybe we’ll have rain after all.”
“It’s not lightning,” Spencer said.
“There it is again.”
“Perhaps it’s a tow truck,” Martin observed.
“Might be a police cruiser.” Guy’s fork slipped from his hand and hit the glass table top with a ping.
Bunny clucked. “I hope nothing’s wrong. Now, who would like chocolate raspberry almond torte?”
“I would.” Guy raised his hand.
Bunny regarded him—Liz smiled—like a bug that had hit her windscreen.
“Anyone else?”
But a silence had descended over the table. The sound of a siren had stolen everyone’s attention.
4
Death of an Angel
Leo Fabian dropped the telephone receiver into its cradle and stared at it, surprised he’d heard the telephone at all above the whine of his power drill and the blare of the radio. While he had been thinking about Stevie—not an unusual occurrence—he hadn’t expected to hear from her, much less get her call from Michael Rossiter’s house.
Michael was back from Europe, apparently.
He wished Michael had stayed in Europe.
Stevie’s voice was surprising, too. Breathless, urgent. “Could you please come and get me? Now? Please?”
Leo saluted the phone. “Yes, ma’am!”
He punched the radio’s on/off button, neatly cutting off a local CBC weather report at the words “chance of showers,” and reached for the car keys, which were supposed to be hanging from a hook by the back door, but weren’t. He surveyed the crowded kitchen: the counter, the table, the workbench, the panels of oak he was turning into new cupboards, the patina of dust, the stack of unwashed dishes.
“Alvy,” he addressed the golden retriever who was watching him expectantly. “Where are my…keys?”
The last word triggered an ecstatic tail-wagging. Alvy scampered down the back stairwell. Leo scrambled the other way, into the living room. He quickly scanned the coffee table, the side tables, the bookshelves, the couch, then, out of habit, snatched the remote and switched on the TV. The flickering light of the boob tube was supposed to deceive potential intruders into believing people were tucked cozily inside their homes. Wasn’t there a crime wave in this city? Hadn’t he written about it himself in the Citizen? You bet he had. Take some statistics, place them in a thin context under a provocative headline, and—bingo!—ya got trouble. Right here in River City. It was just a statistical anomaly whipped into hot air but here he was, almost guiltily, taking small precautions himself against possible intruders—replacing locks, buying appliance timers—things he would never have thought of doing ten years ago. Or even five years ago. Or last year, before he moved into the house on Sherwood Street with Ishbel.
Where the hell are those keys? He scanned the top of the TV, noting that Death of an Angel, a horrible piece of crap starring Bonnie Bedelia that he’d seen on an early date with Ishbel, was playing on SuperChannel.
&nbs
p; No keys.
Think: He’d driven home from work, reheated some pizza, then driven to Beaver Lumber, then come home.
He’d worn his old leather bomber jacket to the store, the one emblazoned with an Italian flag, which he’d won at a raffle at the Italian pavilion at Folklorama one year. The air had seemed nippier.
The jacket was in the front closet.
Which—he groped in the jacket’s right pocket, then through the hole in the pocket to the lining—is where the keys were last. Found ’em.
The drive to Michael Rossiter’s, through the West End and across the river to Crescentwood, took less than ten minutes. Waiting impatiently behind a line of cars for the light to turn at the Maryland bridge, he glanced, as he often did at this stop, at the bleak brick face of the Misericordia Hospital, at the measly windows of the intensive care unit where his father had spent the last hours of his life, more than a quarter-century earlier. He could recall only big swinging doors that barred his entrance, but failed to muffle the chilling, sucking, bleeping noises within. He remembered struggling to reach the water fountains, then his mother being supported by his grim-faced aunts, reaching for him, her looming face wet, his fright.
Oh, fuck it. He banished the memory and concentrated on Stevie. His Stevie. No, not his Stevie. Elusive Stevie. Mysterious. Laughing, vivacious, suddenly silent, assessing him with her dark contemplative eyes. A little spoiled, Stevie. Prickly. A mouth on her, in several senses. He had hardly got past the mouth. What was he? Fourteen? Three months, they’d been dating. Well, hardly dating. A few movies, a few “dutch” cappuccinos, a lot of mutual commiseration, and a hug now and then. “Oh,” she had said on the phone when he had called that first time, finally, after a week of screwing up his courage. There had been a world of shadings in that little word he couldn’t fathom. “Oh.” What was the matter? For three months, Stevie had parried. He would like to have thrust. She was a challenge. Leo was smitten. He had been smote. Was “smote” a word? He was a candidate for the Blue Balls Hall of Fame.
Leo turned off Dorchester Square and headed for the cul-de-sac south of Michael’s home. As he braked his ancient Land Rover, he noted a police cruiser, its rotating red light casting into sharp shadow the overhanging trees and immense shrubs that formed a fence around the property. The light fell on one uniformed officer leaning into a rolled-down window. Through his own open window, Leo could hear the crackle of the police radio. Dismay thudded against his stomach wall. Stevie’s call had portended something even worse than his worst imaginings. He quickly jumped out of the Land Rover, Alvy at his heels, and started for the front gate but the officer, a woman, shouted at him to stop: “You can’t go in there.”
Death in Cold Type Page 4