that the major case Falconer Shreve was handling at the time was the Patsy Choi case. It was a civil case, tort of assault, wrongful touching.”
“My God, the uncle deliberately broke the girl’s fingers,” I said.
“In the law, ‘wrongful touching’ was still the charge. The plaintiff, Patsy Choi, had to prove her damages, and it was not a slam dunk for her lawyer. Clare made copies of the notes to the case. The defence got great mileage out of the uncle’s philanthropy, the fact that as soon as he’d heard about Patsy’s talent as a violinist, he spared no expense in bringing her to Canada, giving her a home, paying for her lessons.”
“And then smashing her fingers with a hammer,” I said.
“Actually, it was a wooden mallet, the kind you use to tenderize meat,” Sandra Mikalonis said mildly. “The uncle was tenderizing a piece of round steak when Patsy announced that she didn’t want to practise any more – that she didn’t want to be a freak, she wanted to be a normal girl. The defence scored some points on that little outburst too.”
“But Patsy Choi ended up winning,” I said. “She got a huge settlement.”
Maggie snorted derisively. “Well, huge for Canada, and the appeal dragged on for a long time. But you’re right. In the end, Patsy won.”
Anne Millar gave a seminar leader’s summation. “The point is that Patsy Choi proved her damages because her lawyer hired an array of professional experts who he knew were plaintiff-friendly, and they did their job. An entertainment lawyer and an impresario put a dollar figure on Patsy’s loss of potential earnings. Three psychiatrists testified that she had suffered irreparable psychological damage when her fingers were broken. A partnership of psychologists who specialize in adolescents pointed out that no one would want to have their life determined by what they said during a tantrum when they were in their early teens. But expert testimony doesn’t come cheap.”
“And Patsy’s lawyer paid the experts out of the trust funds of Falconer Shreve clients,” I said.
“Bingo again,” Sandra said. “In the normal run of things, the partners could have covered the experts’ fees out of their personal funds, but Patsy Choi’s case took place during a serious slump in the stock market. Clare’s guess was that Patsy’s lawyer knew his partners’ circumstances and didn’t even approach them. You have to hand it to Chris Altieri: when it came to the people he cared about, he was a class act.”
An image flashed into my mind – Chris on the night of the barbecue whispering that he had done something unforgivable. But it didn’t fit. In my mind at least, dipping into a trust fund didn’t qualify as a mortal sin.
“What kind of disciplinary action did the Law Society decide on?” I said.
“None,” Linda said. “Clare never went to the Law Society. She just made copies of all the documents and wrote up her notes. When she gave me the file, she told me to hang on to it until she’d made up her mind about what she was going to do. I told her that she had no choice. She said she wasn’t talking about the Law Society – she was wrestling with a personal matter. She seemed very distracted, very un-Clare. Anyway, she never came for the folder, and she left town in mid-November without doing anything. A shocker, at least to me.”
“She was just beginning her career,” I said. “Chris Altieri had a lot of friends. Clare might not have wanted to be tagged as a troublemaker.”
“She wouldn’t have cared about that,” Maggie Niewinski said. “Clare saw the world in terms of right and wrong. She had her own inner account book. It was like the trust ledgers Anne was talking about: at the end of the day, everything had be reconciled right down to the last word or deed. That’s why I can’t believe she left town with so many things unresolved – especially the defalcation. I mean, talk about black and white.”
“Clare’s relationship with Chris Altieri may have drawn her into a grey area,” I said.
The women turned to me, alert and wary.
“Clare Mackey and Chris had an affair,” I said. “Apparently, she became pregnant and terminated the pregnancy.”
Anne Millar’s grey eyes widened with disbelief. “How could you know that? You never met Clare. You’d never even heard her name until I told you about her at the funeral.”
“But I met Chris,” I said. “The night he died he told me he was haunted by a relationship that ended in an abortion. He didn’t mention the woman’s name. I didn’t discover it was Clare until later.”
Maggie was chewing her thumbnail. Sandra reached over absently and batted Maggie’s hand away from her mouth, then she turned to me.
“Who told you the woman was Clare?” she asked.
“Zack Shreve,” I said. “After Anne went to Falconer Shreve and put pressure on Chris to supply the name of the firm Clare had joined in Vancouver, there was a meeting. According to Zack, Chris told his partners that Clare left because she didn’t want to be near him.” I glanced around the table. “You all knew Clare. Is that behaviour consistent with the kind of woman she was?”
“Is,” Linda Thauberger said angrily. “Let’s try to hold on to a little hope here. And let’s have a reality check. Clare would not have made the decision to have an abortion lightly.”
“Because of her religion?”
“I never heard her mention religion,” Linda said. “Just her own ethical sense. She would have lived with the consequences of what she had done.”
“Not if she thought the father of her unborn child was immoral,” Sandra said thoughtfully.
“Oh, come on,” Maggie said. “I’ll grant you that defalcation isn’t exactly admirable, but it isn’t as if Chris Altieri was diddling altar boys.”
“I agree with you,” Sandra said. “I’m just not sure Clare would. Don’t you remember what she said about her father that night we celebrated passing our bar exams?”
Maggie groaned. “I don’t remember anything about that night.”
“I do,” Linda said. “It’s the only time I remember ever seeing Clare angry – actually, it’s the only time I ever remember her revealing anything personal at all.”
“It’s coming back to me,” Maggie said, narrowing her eyes. “Her father embezzled funds from the company he worked for.”
“Right,” said Sandra. “Then he skedaddled, leaving Clare’s mother alone to raise her daughter. They lived in a small town. Everybody knew what had happened, and Clare felt that people were always watching her, waiting for her to slip up. That night at our little celebration, she was still bitter. I remember her saying, ‘It took me twenty years, but I’ve finally proven to them that I’m not my father’s daughter.’ Maybe she was afraid history would repeat itself.”
“But duplicity isn’t a hereditary disease,” Anne said.
“You know that, and I know that,” Sandra said. “But when it came to questions of morality, Clare wasn’t rational. I think it’s more than possible that when she discovered she was carrying the child of a man who’d done exactly what her dear old dad had done, she just overreacted.”
After that, there wasn’t much to say. When Linda replaced the Patsy Choi file in her handsome red briefcase, it seemed to be a signal to us all that the meeting was over. We pushed our chairs back from the table and made our way to the front door. The evening we walked out into had the clarity of a Dutch painting: everything was bathed in the warm golden light of the setting sun.
“I guess it’s time for us to take our stroll along the beach,” Linda Thauberger said. “Not exactly a sacrifice. It’s so beautiful here.”
Anne Millar took a deep breath. “I think we could all use a little fresh air before we head back to the city.”
Sandra Mikalonis kicked off her sandals and, ponytail flying, sprinted towards the lake. Maggie and Linda weren’t far behind. With every step, they seemed to leave the years and the tensions behind.
Anne’s voice was rueful. “They make me feel ancient.”
“Your advanced age aside, how are you feeling about the way things are moving?”
“Rotten,” Anne said. “I’m sure Clare is dead.” The words, uttered baldly and without preamble, were a blow. Anne stared intently at my face. “You believe that too, don’t you?”
“Yes,” I said.
“So do the police,” Anne said. “Of course, they’re not about to make an official statement, but Linda says the officers she talked to really grilled her about how the case was handled. She also said the phrase she heard from everybody at headquarters was ‘we needed to get to this sooner.’ ”
“They could have,” I said. “You talked to Alex Kequahtooway at the end of November.”
