to Cristal. It turns out he’d recommended her to other guys, all lawyers, and all of them had very personal DVDS hand-delivered to their family mailboxes today.”
“Without explanation.”
“Right,” Zack said. “No explanations, no demands, no nothing. Just seven DVDS of married men doing what they shouldn’t have been doing with Cristal Avilia.” He rubbed his head. “You know, until now, I thought I had a pretty good idea of how that disc ended up in our mailbox.”
“You never said anything.”
“I wanted to make sure I was right. Jo, I thought Debbie Haczkewicz put it there.”
“Debbie Haczkewicz? Come on, Zack, she’s a police officer. Why would she risk her job to hand you evidence?”
“Because it wasn’t evidence. It was just something that happened to be in Cristal’s condo. Debbie knows I didn’t kill Cristal, and she knows I am married. She is also aware that Denise Kaiswatum opens and logs every piece of mail that arrives at Falconer Shreve and that much of the time I work at home. When you told me about the disc, I assumed that Debbie slipped it in our mailbox and didn’t have a chance to call and tell me it was there.”
“Why would Debbie try to protect you?”
He sipped his tea. “Because she thinks she owes me. Her son, Leo, was in an accident three years ago. He flipped his motorcycle on the Ring Road and broke his back. He’s a paraplegic. Nineteen. Not easy to be that young and know that you’re going to be stuck in a wheelchair for the rest of your life. But, like the rest of us, Leo didn’t have a choice. The doctors patched him up and packed him off to Wascana Rehab so he could ‘adapt to an altered lifestyle.’ ”
“And Leo didn’t want to adapt?”
“He wanted to die. I remember the feeling.” Zack’s lips were tight. “That’s when Debbie called and asked me to visit him.”
“What happened?”
“I introduced myself, and Leo took a swing at me. Strong kid,” Zack said admiringly.
“Did you swing back?”
“God, no. I remembered my own days in rehab. Our most potent weapon was our catheter. Disconnect one of those, aim it, and -”
I put up my hand. “I get the picture.”
Zack smiled at the memory. “Anyway, I let Leo flail away and rant about how unfair it was that he had to spend the rest of his fucking life in a fucking wheelchair. And when he was finished, I told him I’d be back the next day and I wheeled off in my fucking wheelchair.”
I shook my head. “How come you never told me this?”
“The kid deserved his privacy, and when I met him, he was not at his best. Leo was a tough case. I must have gone there every day for three solid weeks before he finally cracked.”
“You won him over with your charm,” I said.
Zack shook his head. “No, I bought him off with a T-shirt I got on the Internet. On the front there was a cartoon of a guy in a wheelchair saying, ‘I’m only in this for the parking.’ ”
“And the cartoon got through to Leo?”
“Something did. He stopped yelling, and we started talking. He turned out to be a really nice kid. We still keep in touch.”
“So where’s Leo now?”
“At U of S, majoring in English, which, as Leo points out, is a lame subject anyway, so what the hell?”
I took Zack’s hand. “We’re laughing again,” I said.
“Yep, and we can freeze the frame right here if you want. I can tell you more uproarious stories about my adventures in rehab, and we can declare the subject of Cristal off limits.”
“Except it’s always better to know than not to know,” I said. “So let’s have it. I’m assuming the fact that the DVDS went to other people besides you rules out Debbie Haczkewicz as the source.”
“Absolutely,” Zack said. “So we’re back to square one.”
“Square one times seven,” I said.
“With a couple of significant differences.” Zack ticked off the points on his fingers. “My relationship with Cristal had been over for two years when she died, and you knew that I’d been with her.”
“And the men who called this morning had wives who were still living in blissful ignorance,” I said.
Zack lowered his eyes. “Right. And, of course, these guys are terrified that now that the genie is out of the bottle, they’ll lose their families.”
“Maybe they should have thought of that sooner.”
Zack pushed his chair back. “Jo, all of Cristal’s clients, me included, took a stupid risk, but what we should have done is no longer an issue. We have to deal with the stuff that’s hitting the fan now. And I need to know where it’s coming from.”
“Talk to the other men,” I said.
“That’s not a problem for you?”
I shook my head.
“I’d like to keep this whole thing as quiet as possible. Would it be all right if we met here tonight?”
“Of course,” I said. “But, Zack, I’m assuming these are people I know.”
“Some of them are,” he said, “and if it’s going to be awkward for you, say the word.”
“It’s going to be awkward for everybody,” I said. “It might be wise to make sure Taylor and I have already left for the game when your guests arrive and that they’re gone by the time we get back.”
“Got it,” Zack said. “To be fair, Jo, most of these people are decent. They’ve done something foolish and they’ve jeopardized things that should not have been jeopardized, but they’re not beyond the pale. Try to hang on to that.”
“You think I’m being judgmental.”
Zack’s dark eyes met mine. “I think none of us knows what goes on in other people’s bedrooms.”
As soon as Taylor and I arrived at Luther, she spotted Blake Falconer’s Mercedes in the parking lot. “Hey, there’s Gracie’s dad’s car. Okay if I go in and find her?”
“Uh-uh,” I said. “Gracie’s probably with her team, warming up. And there are going to be a lot of people at this game. In that new hoodie, you’re going to look like every other Luther student in the gym.”
Taylor patted the emblematic lion on her shirt. “I want to fit in.”
“Wherever you are, you fit in,” I said.
Arms outstretched, Taylor did a 360-degree twirl, taking in the campus. “Isn’t this just the greatest?” she said.
It was a green and gold evening in May. The sun was moving down in the sky and as its light hit the jets of water from the lawn sprinklers, it shattered into prisms, small rainbows blooming in the rich grass. The air was silky and filled with the sounds of spring: birdsong, young voices, and the rustle of new leaves in the wind.
I put my arm around my daughter’s waist and squeezed. “You bet,” I said. “This is the greatest.”
We didn’t need directions to the gym. It was half an hour till game time, but this game was being played for a charity and the halls were already choked with donors and students, most wearing the Luther black and gold, but many wearing the red and yellow of their rivals, the Spartans. Rowdy, animated, and flushed with excitement, the kids moved towards the gymnasium, where the hormones boiling inside them could erupt as soon as the whistle blew. The donors, many of them wearing smart scarves in the colours of their alma mater, were carried along by the crowd and by the hope that, when the whistle blew, their own hormones would kick in.
I didn’t have any trouble spotting Ginny. She was sitting in the front row of the bleachers, wearing jeans, a sweatshirt, and a black ball cap. More than a few people glanced her way, but Ginny’s focus was her daughters, who were doing layups with the rest of their team. I sat down beside her. “Quite a crowd,” I said.
“Ranch Ehrlo’s a good cause,” she replied, but her eyes stayed on her girls. When their coach whistled the team off the court, Ginny turned to me. “I’m glad you’re here. You, too, Taylor.”
“Thanks for keeping seats for us,” Taylor said. “I hate sitting way up at the top.”
“Me too,” Ginny said. “That’s why I always made sure I was in the game.”
I laughed. “How did the door-knocking go this afternoon?”
“Not bad. No one threw stones at me and no one called me a slut. Getting custody of the girls is helping.”
