Denial

by Beverley McLachlin

  “Obviously Olivia didn’t give herself the morphine, not with those sleeping pills in her,” says Jeff. “Although she had talked about wanting to end her life. She could have given someone her key. Let them in to do it for her.”

  “True,” I say. “Unlikely, but we’ll need to look into that.”

  “What about Maria?” Richard asks.

  “Maria went home early. A neighbor says they spoke for a few minutes when Maria entered her house around five p.m. I suppose she could have gone back but that seems unlikely. Why would Maria want to kill her employer?”

  “Who knows?” Jeff shrugs. “We should talk to her anyway.”

  “That leaves Joseph,” I say. “Having spent the weekend with my head in police reports, I can tell you that it’s absolutely clear that Joseph Quentin did not kill his mother-in-law. The police checked out his whereabouts the evening of the murder. He returned to his house after dropping Vera off at her mother’s place and parked his car in front of the house, where it stayed the rest of the evening. The security cameras were on the whole night, recorded every movement, or rather lack of movement.”

  “Maybe he hired someone,” Richard suggests.

  Jeff folds his arms. “A man of his standing? Unthinkable. And if he did do it, why would he hire Jilly to defend his wife?” He turns to me. “Whether you like it or not, Jilly, you’re a tiger-lawyer—there’s nothing you won’t do to get your client off—and everybody knows it.”

  I grimace as Cy’s words come back to me. Jeff may have a point. “Let’s go back to the grandson, Nicholas. It seems he didn’t have a key. But he probably knew the house. He could have got in some other way, maybe he even knew the alarm code. He gets in and does the deed. Resets the alarm and leaves.”

  “What’s his motive?” Jeff asks.

  “Money?” I say. “I’ve looked at the will. Vera got the house, but Nicholas was the residuary beneficiary, stood to inherit all the stocks less a few charitable bequests—about a quarter million dollars, which would climb to roughly five mil if Mom gets convicted and can’t inherit.”

  Richard whistles. “Nicholas could have borrowed his mother’s key.”

  “But he didn’t,” I say. “Vera had her key with her. Pulled it out of her purse for the police. They also asked Joseph for his key on the scene the next morning, which he calmly handed over.”

  Alicia pipes up. “What about Maria’s key?”

  “When the police contacted her the next morning, she produced hers. And before you ask, the police found Olivia’s key in the drawer of her bedside table.”

  We sit back and digest this information.

  “This case just gets better and better,” Jeff says with a scowl.

  “We can’t dismiss our client’s version just because all the keys are accounted for,” I say. “Vera claims she put her mother to bed, went to bed herself, woke in the morning to find her dead. Unless she’s lying—and at this point I can’t conclude she is—a person yet unknown entered the house and killed her mother. I know it seems improbable, but we need to keep digging.”

  Richard holds up a police report. “The police found no evidence of any other person in the house that evening. No unexpected fingerprints. No sign of forced entry. No noises that woke Vera up.”

  “She says she was out on sleeping pills,” I say.

  “Convenient,” says Jeff.

  I move on. “The police say if someone came in, it had to be through the front door and it was untouched. From my preliminary look, for once the police work seems pretty thorough, but you never know. Richard, we need to double-check all the entry points.”

  “Sure,” he says unenthusiastically.

  “One more thing,” I say. “No one has suggested a plausible motive for Vera to kill her mother. Olivia was suffering from cancer and pleaded for Vera to end her life with a dose of morphine, and she didn’t. Why would she suddenly decide to kill her? Why would she lead the police to the missing morphine the next day?”

  “Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by confusion, mental aberration, or stupidity,” Jeff intones. “Hanlon’s Law. Or variation thereof. Well-known juridical principle.”

  I roll my eyes at this piece of pseudo learning.

  “Anything in here about Vera’s mental state?” Richard asks, prodding the box.

  “She admits to suffering from general anxiety disorder. She was on Celexa and Prozac and who knows what else—the doctors were constantly changing the chemical regime. I imagine Cy will paint a picture of a woman at the end of her rope, frustrated with her mother’s demands, overwhelmed by anxiety. It’s all the motive he needs.”

  “He can’t get first-degree murder on a desperate moment of frustration,” Alicia notes.

  “That’s why the charge is second degree,” Jeff explains. “Ten years is enough for Cy.”

  I pick up the photo of Olivia on her birthday. “Maybe we should focus on the deceased,” I say, changing tacks. “Find out if there’s someone out there who wanted Olivia Stanton dead. Then work back to see if there’s a way that person could have done it.”

  “Right,” says Alicia, feigning wisdom. “If you want to solve a crime, ask about the victim.”

  “Ha! Reading too many crime novels,” says Jeff. “But, okay, who would have wanted Olivia dead, except Vera? Or maybe Nicholas, which seems doubtful?”

  “Someone off the street?” offers Alicia. “Were there cameras near the house? Sightings of suspicious people in the area?”

  “But why pick a sedate house in tranquil Kerrisdale for a random home invasion?” Richard asks. “There was no robbery. Nothing was taken from the house.”

  “Perhaps Olivia was involved in something that might have made her enemies,” I say. “Nothing jumps out of the police reports, but can you do some digging, Richard? I’ll ask Vera what she knows, too.”

  Richard nods. “I’ll check her phone records, her emails if she used email, any friends or acquaintances. I assume most of this is right in here, but the police may have overlooked something.”

  “Let’s not give up just yet,” I say, gearing up into pep talk mode. “The onus is on the Crown to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Vera Quentin killed her mother. No matter how open and shut the case seems: no one saw Vera Quentin put the needle in her mother’s arm. The case rests entirely on circumstantial evidence, which means the Crown bears the burden of proving there are no other explanations for the death except for the accused. All we need to do is show there is one other rational possibility that the Crown hasn’t excluded.”

  Across the street, lights from mock gas lamps glitter, echoes of laughter drift up.

  “Time to call it a night,” I say, gathering up the papers splayed across the table. “I still have a stack of reports to get through. Help, someone?”

  “Sorry, got an appeal tomorrow,” Jeff says.

  “I’m busy with the business of inebriation,” Alicia says. “Back-to-back DUIs tomorrow.”

  I feel the self-care session at the spa I promised myself after a weekend of work slipping away and sigh. “Thanks, anyway.”

  Richard stands. “I’ve got to get home to the twins. You think this is chaotic.” He gestures to the table. “But I’ll do some digging, see what I can find out. Au revoir.”

  On the way out, I pull Alicia aside. “How’s May?”

  “We found her a room in a shelter, got her on welfare. She has an appointment with a refugee lawyer next week.”

  “Good.”

  Alicia’s eyes scan mine. “Good? Maybe for us. But May’s not so sure. She’s frightened that those men will find her, drag her back.”

  May’s terrified face fills my mind. Childlike forms, ruthless men. I repress a shudder. She doesn’t have a hope, unless, unless…

  “We can’t change the world, but our job is to try. Maybe we do a little more to help May. I’ll give my friend in human trafficking a call.”

  “Thanks, Jilly,” says Alicia, then she makes
for the door.

  In the dimness of our little lobby, the new furnishings seem less elegant than I once thought they were. I hear Jeff behind me.

  “Something’s bothering me,” I say.

  “Just one thing?” Jeff replies dully.

  “Vera’s adamance. It’s like one of those modern classical pieces where the same note plays over and over again, a little variation in rhythm, a different register, but always the same words, I did not kill my mother, and I will not say I did. Who else was in the house that night? I don’t know, but I didn’t do it. Who else could have wanted your mother dead? I don’t know, but I didn’t do it. Like a metronome. Over and over and over and over. Like it’s rehearsed, like it’s the only thing she knows how to say.”

  “Like she’s in denial,” Jeff says.

  “Exactly. Why is she willing to go to prison for ten years, when a simple plea in an empty courtroom will get her out in less than two? Is she trying to punish herself? Someone else? Is she crazy? Or is it something else altogether—something we don’t yet know?”

  “The case is a mess. We need to talk her into a guilty plea while we still can.”

  “As if,” I say, and push on. “And another thing, if Vera is telling the truth, why is Joseph pushing so hard for a guilty plea?”

  “He’s a good lawyer,” Jeff says. “He knows even if she didn’t do it, she can’t prove it. He wants to spare her ten years in jail. Or he wants to avoid a trial. I know the marriage seems perfect. But you never know: things may not be as idyllic as they seem. Every family has its soiled family linen, shake it, something may fall out.”

  “Cy said something similar, something about agreeing to offer the plea bargain to save the family from airing their laundry. And you mentioned Joseph’s fading reputation the other day, Jeff. Do you think…”

  Jeff shrugs. “Just rumours from disgruntled clients. If you’re in the business as long as Joseph has been, you’re bound to be called some names. But every family has secrets. You know that, Jilly.”

  I nod. I have my own share of secrets, and Jeff knows it. My mother giving me up for adoption. Vincent tracking me down all those years later to tell me that she was dead—a victim of a serial killer who preyed on vulnerable women—only to abandon me anew when I didn’t wrap my arms around him in happy reunion. Secrets, secrets, some big, some small, like the secret resentment I feel at Brock, Martha, and my adopted brothers enjoying the last of summer at the lake while I spent my long weekend immersed in work.

  I face Jeff, put the only question left to him, “So, partner, are you with me on the case?”

  He takes his time answering. “Against my better judgment, I am.”

  As Jeff and I hunch our shoulders and head into the night, my mind goes back to the case. Keep your secrets, Vera told her mother. What was Olivia hiding? And could it have killed her? I resolve to find out.

  CHAPTER 8

  VERA’S CASE HAS CLAIMED MY entire frontal lobe. Not good, I tell myself. I need to focus on something else, at least for a minute. I hit the number for Detective Sergeant Deborah Moser in the human trafficking section of the Vancouver Police Department. I’ve come up against her on more than one case. A smart officer saddled with a portfolio no one else wants. But to her credit, she cares.

  Deborah answers on the first ring. “Jilly.” Her voice is deep and raspy. A big sound from a big woman. “What can I do for you?”

  I tell her about May Chan. “I don’t know who is behind this trafficking operation. But you might want to talk to the girl, look into it.” I give her May’s current contact info, and she takes it down.

  “It’s a coincidence you phoned,” she says. “I was about to call you. You know we hire undercover operatives from time to time. People who can find their way around the street and the dark web. Let’s just say one of our recent recruits is a young man named Damon Cheskey. He said he worked for you for a while. I wanted to ask you about him.”

  I haven’t seen Damon for months. I represented him: a good boy gone wrong; he shot an enforcer in cold blood. It was an open-and-shut case, but the jury bought his plea of self-defence and let him off. I saved him again, this time from suicide, brought him in to fetch for Debbie, turned him around. Or tried to.

  “Damon did work for me,” I say.

  “He’s got an interesting background.” Deborah’s tone is skeptical.

  “He went through a time on the street. Bad scene, drugs, someone pulled a gun on him and he shot first. But he straightened out and worked for us for a while.”

  “Why did he leave?”

  I parse my words. How to say that he killed again after someone put a ticket on his life and he made the mistake of telling me? I decide to tell a partial truth. “He needed more money than I could pay a gofer. He has ambitions, wants to go to law school. He’s working by day and catching up on the prereqs by night—or that’s what he told me the plan was. He’s intelligent. And he’s got street smarts.”

  “The question is, will he stay out of trouble if I let him loose in the underworld?”

  I know more than I should about Damon. More about the street and life of lost kids—I was once there myself. Damon is walking the fine line between the dark side and enlightenment. Playing with the law, and now the police. Can’t stay away.

  It’s complicated; I should tell her, you never know when the undertow will grab him and pull him back. But I don’t. “Yes,” I say. “He’s straight.”

  “Your word’s enough for me,” Deborah says. “Maybe I’ll put him on your Miss May case. See what he comes up with.”

  We say goodbye, and when I look up, Alicia fills the door.

  “Guess who human trafficking is putting on May’s case?”

  “Who?”

  “Damon Cheskey.”

  Alicia sucks her breath in. “Damon? Working for the cops?”

  “Seems so.”

  I expect her to say she’s disappointed that the best the VPD can do for May is put an untrained rookie on the case. But she surprises me. “Might just work,” she says, cocking her head. “I miss him around here. Whenever a case was going sideways, he would miraculously find a ruling to bail me out. He’s smart—and driven. If he decides to dig into the case, he won’t stop until he finds out who’s done this to May.”

  “Let’s hope.”

  I retreat to my computer. I try to focus on an application I’m drafting for leave to appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada—the Feds have seized my client’s home on the grounds she was using it to traffic drugs. But my mind keeps wandering from the point of law I need to cinch the application. I like to think I’ve aced the art of professional distancing, but I’m failing today. First Vera. And now May. Her scared face keeps interrupting my concentration.

  I’m relieved when the phone rings. Richard.

  “Give me some good news on Quentin,” I say.

  He chuckles. “Jilly, I’m not a miracle man. But I’m on it.” I hear him moving papers around. “I’ve been going over the documents I took copies of, trying to piece together the last week of Olivia Stanton’s life. No diary, no iPad. Just a cellphone with a few numbers and the calls we know about on her home phone. It’s mostly people calling her—Vera, a number of times, Joseph and Nicholas once or twice. There are a few numbers that I still need to verify the caller’s identity. But I have been able to establish a few connections.”

  “Yes?”

  “A couple of cabs. Someone listed as Elsie Baxter.” He pauses. “And one I didn’t expect. From the day she was murdered. A number that checked out with a Kerrisdale law firm, Black and Conway.”

  “What kind of work do they do?”

  “Family solicitors. Cradle-to-grave service. Wills, estates, the odd separation.”

  “Something to do with her will?” I ask.

  “But wasn’t her will prepared by Mick O’Connor at Joseph Quentin’s firm?” Richard asks.

  I lean back in my chair. “Now that’s interesting. Why would she be calling an
outside firm? Any way of finding out the name of the lawyer she talked to?”

  “No. All that shows is the firm number. I’ll follow up, try to suss out what she discussed with the lawyers. They’ll be tough, clam up on solicitor-client privilege.”

  “Tell them if they don’t want to share, I’ll get a court order. This is a murder trial. Our client’s liberty is at stake.”

  “Will do. What are you up to?”

  “I’m going to look at Olivia’s house, if I can line it up. I know you’re busy, but I’ll let you know if I find anything of interest. Jilly Truitt’s rule number two—right after get the money up front—get a handle on the geography of the crime.”

  CHAPTER 9

  “YOU WANT TO SEE THE house?” asks Joseph Quentin, like I’ve asked him to show me the far side of the moon.

  “Yes, I do. I always insist on checking out the scene of the crime. Matter of principle. Need to know the layout, the details. You never know what may come in handy on cross-examination.”

  I know what he’s thinking, Just who will you cross-examine about the details of the murder when the only person in the house was Vera? But he’s promised to help me in any way he can, and I’m betting that he cares enough to be known as a man of his word.

  “Okay,” he replies. “You’re actually just in time. The house sold two months ago and the new owners have scheduled demolition for next week. But I can get you in. I’ll phone the Realtor who handled the sale and set it up.”

  A half hour later his steel-grey BMW—the same car I’ve studied in the police photos of his house the night of the crime—stops at the curb outside Truitt & Co.

  An arm sheathed in deep-blue Armani reaches over the console, pushes the passenger door open with a flash of ruby against a pristine cuff. “Good afternoon,” Joseph says.