his dad thinks the kid is headed for serious trouble and he’d rather pay up front than foot the bill when the kid is tried as an adult. After that, I’m going to try again to find Francesca Pope, then come home and work on my speech honouring Morty Lamb.”
“Zack, do you think you should get the police to look for Francesca? She brought those bears over last Thursday. It’s been five days.”
“Too long,” Zack agreed. “But the cops are the last resort. Francesca’s terrified of authority figures. If I can’t find her myself, I’ll get the investigators Sean hired to look for her. They must have women working for them.”
“Francesca doesn’t like men?”
“She’s easier with women.”
“But she reacted so badly to Ginny.”
“Guess Francesca just doesn’t like Ginny,” Zack said. “Oh, one other tidbit: Debbie Haczkewicz called when you were on the phone.”
“Have the police come up with something?”
“Not that they’re telling me. Debbie was pretty tightlipped, but she didn’t press me at all about Ginny so I have a feeling the cops may be closing in on someone.”
“But you don’t know who?”
“Don’t know and don’t care, as long as it’s not my client. And more good news: the reason Debbie called was to tell me Bree Steig is back in the land of the living. She doesn’t remember anything about the circumstances of the beating. That’s not unusual with head injuries. In a way, it’s a blessing. Anyway, Bree’s going to be all right.”
“Can she have visitors?”
“I’m sure Debbie will put you on the list. Do you want to talk to Bree?”
“I just thought I’d take her some flowers.”
“You’re probably the first person who ever has.”
“That’s why I’m going to take them,” I said.
Zack pushed the dish of cashews towards me. “Have a fistful, on the house. One good deed deserves another. So what else do you have on the agenda today?”
“I’m going to persuade Keith to have lunch with me before I drive him to the airport, and I’m going to call your new junior partner and ask him to talk to me about his impressions of Ginny’s campaign. He might have something I can throw into the mix.”
“And you might find out if his intentions towards Mieka are honourable.”
“That too,” I said.
I spent a couple of hours in my office having a go at the first draft of my proposal, then I stopped by a florist on 13th Avenue. I chose a spring bouquet for Bree and started looking around for a congratulatory bouquet for Margot. I’d settled on an arrangement of stargazer lilies when I remembered Margot telling me that Zack’s invariable gift to women he was dumping was a nice note and a hundred bucks’ worth of flowers. I paid for Bree’s bouquet and walked up the street to a shop called the Embroidery Works. My aim was modest, a T-shirt, but when I walked inside, I knew that this was my lucky day. On a sale rack by the door was a single yellow and maroon satin bowling shirt. I took it to the clerk, told her what I needed embroidered on it, asked her to courier the finished shirt to Margot’s office, paid, and left triumphant. I was still aglow with self-congratulation when I put my key in the ignition to drive to Regina General. Some days, I just had all the moves.
Bree had been moved from intensive care to one of the wards, but she was in a private room with the door locked, and the nurse at the station asked for my ID before accompanying me down the hall and letting me in to see her patient.
She was propped up in bed. There was a large bandage across the top of her skull and an intravenous tube was taped to the vein of her left hand. Without makeup and wearing her skimpy blue hospital gown, Bree Steig looked much younger than she had the evening I met her at Nighthawks. She was hard at work on a colouring book opened on the tray in front of her.
Her face brightened when she saw the flowers. “Are those for me?”
“They are,” I said.
“Pink and purple, my favourite colours. Can I hold them?”
I moved her tray aside and handed her the vase. She sniffed the flowers and beamed. “I feel like a bride.” She giggled. “Bet I don’t look like a bride, except maybe the Bride of Frankenstein.”
“You look fine,” I said, and in truth, she did. The hectic glitter was gone from her pale eyes, and her skin had lost its sallow cast.
She lowered her voice. “I’ve been eating,” she said confidentially.
“So you’re feeling better?”
Her eyes scanned the room, then she leaned towards me. “I’m fine. I really am fine. I’m just not telling the doctors and nurses.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’m safe here. Could you take my flowers? I’m supposed to finish colouring my picture before lunch.”
“So the colouring book is therapy.”
“They’re worried that I’m not focusing my mind. My mind is exactly the same as it was before I got hit on the head, but I don’t want them to know that, so I just keep colouring.”
“So you do remember what happened that night?”
“I remember everything.” Bree’s eyes were sly. “I don’t know his name, but I could pick him out.”
“Tell the police. They’ll arrest the man who attacked you, then you’ll be safe.”
The scorn in the glance Bree levelled at me would have curdled milk. “Right,” she said. “Could I have my table please?”
I slid the table back in front of her, and she picked up a crayon and began colouring in the ball gown of one of the indistinguishable Disney princesses.
“Bree, you can’t stay here forever.”
She cocked her bandaged head. “Do you have a better plan?”
“No.”
“Thanks for the flowers. I think the pink ones are the prettiest. What are they called?”
“Tulips,” I said.
“Tulips,” she repeated. Then, with the tip of her tongue extended catlike from between her teeth, she returned to her colouring.
Keith and I didn’t manage a last lunch. There were many loose ends from Ginny’s campaign that needed tying, and in the absence of the candidate, Keith stepped in. I picked him up at Ginny’s constituency office, and we barely had time to make it to the airport. On the drive, we talked about Maddy and Lena. I told him about Lena’s variation on the theme of cinnamon toast, and he told me that when he was a child, his mother had pencilled faces on each of the family’s morning boiled eggs and he missed it still.
“Next time you’re here, we’ll have you over for breakfast. Lena will do the toast, and I’ll draw the face on your egg.”
“Next time,” Keith said softly, but we both knew.
As I turned towards the airport parking lot, Keith touched my arm. “Don’t bother parking. Just pull into the five-minute zone over there. If I’m going to catch my plane, I have to make tracks.”
I took his hands in mine. “This is no way to say goodbye.”
He brushed my cheek with his lips. “For us, it’s the only way.”
I popped the trunk, Keith went around to the back of the car, took out his laptop and suit-bag, and headed towards security. He didn’t look back.
Sean Barton had agreed to meet me at his office at four o’clock. As I stepped into the elevator and pushed the button for the fifteenth floor, I caught sight of myself in the mirrored walls. What I saw was not encouraging. I’d chewed off my lipstick, my hair needed attention, and the coffee I’d bought at a drive-through after Keith disappeared into the terminal had leaked onto my skirt. When the elevator doors opened onto the hard-polished perfection of the reception area, I felt like a woman who’d arrived at the wrong party. But Denise Kaiswatum had a way of making everyone feel that they were in the right place.
