“Give him another five years and he’s going to have a butt the size of a barn door,” she said, just loud enough for him to hear.
I let that go, wanting to take this opportunity to establish a better rapport with her. She was thawing toward me at least.
“Nora, I’m going to sound like a TV cop but I have to ask this question. Did Deidre have any enemies that you know of? Anybody she might have quarrelled with?”
She stared at me for a moment. “You saying you don’t know?”
“Know what?”
“Two years ago, Dee was one of the most hated women in the Sunshine Town. You must have read about it. Big headlines. Even got down to T.O.”
“It’s not ringing any bells at the moment.”
Nora went into the living room, opened a drawer in a desk by the window, and returned with a file folder. She dropped it on the table. “Here. Take a look at this stuff.”
I opened the file, which was stuffed with newspaper clippings. The Orillia Packet had a front-page feature.
An Orillia deaf woman admits she deliberately conceived a child who had a 90 percent chance of being hearing impaired.
Deidre Larsen, 25, who is deaf, admitted to our reporter today that she deliberately conceived a child with a congenitally hearing-impaired man so that she would have a child who was deaf. “Why not? Deaf Culture is just as good as any other, if not better,” said Larsen. “My daughter will be brought up to understand ASL. Or in our terms, sign language.”
Larsen’s mother, a prominent Toronto lawyer, contracted measles while she was carrying Deidre and the girl was born profoundly deaf. She has attended deaf schools since she was two years old and graduated with a B.A. from Gallaudet University in the States, the only university in North America exclusively for the hearing impaired. “I have been asked many times if I am trying to make a point,” said Larsen, speaking through an interpreter. “I suppose I would answer yes to that. Deaf people have undergone centuries of discrimination from the hearing world. We are not dumb; we are as capable of raising children as a hearing person is. Better probably. We have our own culture which is as good as any that the hearing world has. We are no longer trying to merely fit in; we can stand alone. Let the hearing world fit in to us.”
When questioned about the child’s father, Larsen refused to elaborate. “A friend obliged but he is not in any way involved with the child.”
The child’s name is Joy, and she seems a well-cared-for, contented infant. She smiled and reached out to this reporter, making her own strange noises. Her mother communicates with her by signs.
Larsen lives with another woman, Nora Cochrane, who shares child-rearing duties with her but who is not herself deaf.
Just as I finished reading, Johnson returned. He carried a waft of cigarette smoke with him. I saw Nora give him a look of disdain.
“I’m needed back at the station, ma’am, if you don’t mind.”
“Why don’t you go ahead then? Tell Sergeant Chaffey I’ll contact him as soon as I can.”
To heck with procedures. I wasn’t going to get anything out of Ms. Cochrane while the constable was hanging around. I decided to go semi-official.
“How will you get back, ma’am?”
“I’ll figure it out, Constable, don’t worry.”
He flushed and I realized I’d sounded sarcastic. I hadn’t meant to be. I think Nora’s attitude was rubbing off on me.
He left and the air lightened. I could swear Nora muttered under her breath, “What a prick,” although poor Johnson had done little to deserve her contempt.
“Well? Do you remember the story now?” she demanded. I thought she or Deedee must have enjoyed the notoriety because there were a lot of other clippings, including letters to the editor. Readers were weighing in at a disapproval ratio of four to one as far as I could tell. All of the letters were angry, expressing disgust at her action and pity for the child. Leo wasn’t mentioned in any of the articles and I wondered how he’d managed to avoid the press.
“I wasn’t in the country when the story broke,” I answered Nora. I was in fact in the Hebrides having my own life turned upside down but I didn’t tell her that.
The story had been pushed off the front page by the news of a suicide bomb attack in Afghanistan which had taken the life of a United Nations soldier, but there were a few more letters and an analyst or two debating the welfare of a child whose parents couldn’t hear them.
“You called her the most hated woman in Orillia?”
“That’s right. You should have seen the hate mail. We had to move, change the phone number, you name it. We were getting so many calls. Vile, scary calls, I can tell you. Men and women. She must have had fifty or more emails. All along the same lines: how could you do that to your child, you will go to hell for this, blah blah blah. What really incensed people was the way that bitch wrote the article implied Dee and I were lezzie lovers, which we’re not.” For the first time, Nora grinned. “She isn’t, I mean. I live here strictly as a friend. I get free rent and she gets my ears. So far it’s worked out well. You saw Joy. She’s a happy little kid.”
“Who outed Deidre?”
Nora fiddled with her eyebrow ring. “She did it herself. Called the newspaper and asked if they wanted her story. She went after the publicity. I don’t think she expected quite such a reaction but as she says somewhere in there, she was trying to make a point. She’s what you might call a militant for Deaf Culture.” Nora made wobble movements with her hand. “And I mean, militant.”
“How did Deidre support herself?”
“She’s a teacher at the OHHA. The Ontario Hard of Hearing Association. And she does interpreting when she’s asked to. It’s a bit hard to scrabble the money together but we manage. It’s evening hours mostly and we work it out so that she’s with Joy in the day and I’m here at night.”
“Where do you work?”
“At the addiction counselling centre on Lachlie Street. I answer the phone. I don’t counsel, although I could probably do a better job than most of them.”
“Nora. We found a letter in Deidre’s car. Somebody was arranging to meet her by the monument in Memorial Park. Any idea who that might be?”
“Last night?”
“It didn’t say but that’s where her body was found, not far from the Champlain Monument. Her car was in the casino parking lot with a flat tire, so at the moment we don’t know how she got from the casino or where she was killed.”
Nora picked up a spoon that was on the table. It was a child’s short-handled silver spoon. “Dee’s social life was the pits. She was a good-looking girl but except for the very occasional party with the Deaf, capital D, folks, she just wanted to be at home with Joy and working at her computer. She had a large network of Deaf folks who she was always writing to. Tuesday was her one night out. Come hell or high water she went to the casino. Forty dollars for the night, win or lose.” She tapped the spoon on her hand. “She often won, the little bitch, and then we’d celebrate. She’d order in a pizza. Big fucking deal. The rest went to the savings fund for Joy’s education.”
Suddenly, she put her head in her hands and gulped a couple of times as if something was stuck in her throat. “Poor sod. Why’d anybody kill her? She was as good a mom as you can hope to get.”
I reached out to touch her arm. She tolerated it for a moment then shook me off.
“Goddam all those self-righteous shits anyway. Let them all rot in hell.” She jumped to her feet and went over to the cupboard, her back to me. I waited. She started to open one cupboard after another and then banging them shut. I didn’t know what she was looking for when she swivelled around.
“I don’t suppose you have a fag on you? I could have sworn I stashed a pack in here for emergencies.”
“No, sorry. I don’t smoke.”
“Smart woman, it’s a filthy habit.” She took in a deep breath and exhaled slowly. Then another. “There you go, craving gone. I quit a month ago but this has thrown m
e for a loop and man, oh man, those cravings!” She came back to the table. “What else do you want to know?”
“Can you give the names of her closest friends? We’ll need to talk to them.”
“She only had two that you’d call close, that I know of. They work at the OHHA as well. One of them is Joy’s godmother if I remember right. She’s Jessica Manolo. The other is Hannah Silverstein. I’ve met them a few times but they make a point of coming over when I’m out. They don’t approve of me.”
Nora had a look on her face that said volumes. The dislike went both ways, it seemed.
I wrote down the names. “Did Deidre keep the hate mail she received?”
“Not here. That stuff’s bad karma, man.” Nora shuddered. “I think she took them to work but I’m not sure about that.”
“What about the emails?”
“Ditto. She printed them off and took them with her.”
“Could I just have a look at her bedroom?”
Nora flashed me a quick glance. “What for?’
“I’d just like to get a sense of her.”
“Come on upstairs then.” She waved her hand. “Dee was the tidy one here. I can keep it together in the common areas but I hope you don’t want to see my room because it looks like a bomb dropped in it.”
I smiled at her, liking her more. “No, just Deidre’s will be fine.”
We went upstairs. The room at the top of the landing was Joy’s and was filled with colour. The Little Mermaid swam along one wall, meeting up with Shrek on the other.
Nora paused at the door. “I did the murals. Not bad eh?”
“They’re great.”
The next door was ajar but Nora stepped forward and closed it quick.
“My room.”
She pointed to the door opposite. “That’s Dee’s room. She took the smallest.”
As Nora had said, Deidre was a tidy person and the bedroom was neat, the bed made, no clothes lying around. The room was indeed small, big enough for a bureau and a single bed. Not too good if she did want to have a love life. A computer was on a table underneath the window. The tabletop was pristine, no papers visible.
“What’s this?” I asked. There was a little box sitting at the end of the bed.
“That’s a bed shaker,” said Nora. “It connects to Joy’s room. If she cries, that thing vibrates. Dee’s got one under her pillow too. She was always worried about sleeping through the kid’s bawling. So we’ve got so many flashing lights to signal the door, the phone, fire, the kid, you name it. It’s freaky at times. I mean that’s my job really but she used me more as a fail-safe than anything else. Sometimes when Joy was younger, she’d cry and Dee would be there before I was.”
There was a framed photograph on the bureau and Nora picked it up to show me.
“This is her grad picture. She went to the deaf university in the States. I forget what it’s called.”
“Gallaudet?”
“Yeah. That’s the one. This blonde girl on the end of the row is Jessica and the little fattie on the left is Hannah.”
The photograph must have been taken about four years ago. Deidre looked so happy and proud, full of life. Quite a contrast to how I’d seen her. I handed the picture back to Nora.
“Yeah. Sad isn’t it? And you didn’t even know her. It seems all so stupid and pointless, doesn’t it? What a waste.”
I’d seen all I wanted for now. Forensics would probably come back and do a thorough search but that wasn’t my job. We headed back downstairs.
“Nora, you said Deidre didn’t have a boyfriend?”
“Nope. I mean she must have got somebody to screw with when she conceived Joy but like she said in the article it was an arrangement. I don’t think the poor prick even knew about the kid. That’s the impression she gave me anyway.”
“She does seem to have been heading for an assignation of some kind. Did she seem in any way different lately? Nervous? Excited?”
“Not that I noticed. But then again, we weren’t exactly bosom buddies. I liked her, she liked me, but that’s about it. We gave each other lots of space. She never confided in me or anything like that. I mean, I can get by now with some basic sign language but it was hard to communicate. Who wants to have to write everything down? I sure don’t.”
She opened the front door.
“Thanks, Nora.”
She stayed there as I walked down the steps. “Catch the bastard, will you?”
CHAPTER FIVE
In crises like this, time has a strange warp quality. When I left Deidre’s house, it felt like most of the day had passed already but the Orillia morning rush hour was barely tapering off. I hailed a cab and went back to my own flat. When Leo called, I’d dressed hastily in my jogging pants and a sweater and I needed a change of clothes. I also hadn’t even fed my two cats, Victoria — or Tory — and Bertie. Yes, I know that sounds sort of cutesy, but believe me, the names suit them. Tory is a dowager skinny Abyssinian who is often mistaken for a kitten but who is actually eighteen years of age and showing signs of senility. Bertie is a Siamese with a paunch who dotes on Tory, grooms her, always wants to be near her or me. She seems indifferent to him but yowls at me constantly. I’d inherited them from the previous owner of the house, Mrs. Harley, who’d moved back to the UK to be with her daughter.
Both cats were sitting at the window watching the passing parade and when I opened the door they were round my feet in an instant, Tory yowling, Bertie mewing at me in his hoarse Siamese voice. I obeyed, fed them some fresh canned food, popped some toast in the toaster for me, and phoned the OPP Centre so people could have the news about Leo. I keyed in Paula’s extension first. She answered on the first ring.
“Chris. I was just about to get hold of you. Where are you?”
“At home. I’ll be there shortly.”
“Katherine just told us what happened. Leo called her from the hospital. What a shock. How are you doing?’
“I was just giving the bad news to her roommate. Deidre had a child, about two years old. It’s going to be rough on her.”
“Really? I didn’t know Leo was a grandfather.”
“Neither did I. But he is. She’s a cute little kid.”
“And Leo? How’s he doing? Katherine didn’t have many details except he was being checked out in the hospital.”
“Did he say we found Deidre’s body in the lake?”
“Yeah, we got all that. Any ideas?”
“Not really. We found a note in her car which suggested she had an assignation but no names or anything. Unfortunately, Leo jumped in the water to get her out and the note was in his pocket. Still is. I’m not sure if we’ll get anything from it. There is another wrinkle which I got from the roommate.”
I told her the story of Deidre conceiving a deaf child and what a ruckus this had caused.
“My God, I remember that! Frankly, I thought it was wicked. You’d think any mother wants her baby to have the best chance in life, not to deliberately inflict a handicap on them.”
When Paula found out she was pregnant she had immediately stopped smoking. She was a two-pack-a-day woman and it was hell for her but she’d quit cold turkey the day the pregnancy results came back.
“You’re not the only one with those views, Paula. According to her friend, Deidre received a lot of hate mail, post and email both.”
“Leo never once let on, did he? And I never connected him to her at all.”
“You’d have no reason to. She changed her name to Larsen. According to Leo, they’ve had a troubled relationship since Deidre was young.”
“I can see it being hard for him to have a deaf child. You know what an opera buff he is. He’s passionate about it. Still, you can’t not love a child just because they aren’t perfect.”
I agreed with her, but in our line of work, we’d both had too much experience of situations where love for even a healthy child was in short supply. Paula handled her frustration by volunteering at a local women’s shelter, helpi
ng women cope with the demands of maternity. I didn’t have the same credentials, no kids, no live-in mate. I found my hope in being a godmother to Paula’s daughter, Chelsea, and whenever I could, I walked dogs from the animal shelter. That has its own heartache, let me tell you, but dogs are more resilient than abused kids are.
Paula’s phone beeped indicating another call was coming in.
“I’d better go. Short day today.”
Damn, I’d forgotten she was leaving early for a doctor’s appointment. She’d noticed a peculiar lump on her sternum and her doctor had ordered a biopsy this afternoon.
“Good luck, La. Call me as soon as you’re finished.”
“Will do. Don’t worry about me.”
We hung up and I drew in a deep breath. Paula Jackson had been my best friend and soul sister since we were teenagers and the thought of anything being seriously wrong with her was more than I could take in. Her husband was going with her to the appointment but I wondered if I should have insisted harder that I go with her. In my book, Craig was more likely to worry about himself than Paula.
I was just on my way out the door when the phone rang. It was the very man himself.
“Hi, Chris. Do you have a minute?”
“What’s up?”
“Frankly, I’m scared. Paula’s going on as if this is nothing but I saw her doctor’s face when he felt that lump. He’s worried. He thinks it’s cancer, I know he does.”
“Even if it is, Craig, these days it isn’t necessarily a death sentence.”
“Maybe not but it’ll be ugly if she’s got to go through that chemo shit.”
“Let’s not cross our bridges, shall we? Let’s hear the diagnosis first.”
“I suppose you’re right, it’s just that…”
His voice tailed off.
“Craig, I…”
I didn’t have a chance to finish what I was going to say.
“Never mind.” He slammed down the phone.
Drat! Craig and I had learned to tolerate each other over the years even though we’d never be best buddies but the old antagonism was never too far from the surface. I could have been kinder.
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