The rest, as they say is history.”
“Not great history for Felix,” I said.
“Not great history for any of us.” Jill looked down the street. “Son of a bitch,” she said and broke into a sprint. Half a block away a commissionaire was standing beside my Volvo writing up a ticket. Jill caught up with him, took something from her purse, and handed it to him. He glanced at it, then ripped up the ticket.
“Did you give him money?” I asked when I caught up with her.
Jill raised her hands in mock horror. “Of course not,” she said. “That would be bribery. I gave him my business card. You have no idea how many people have a special Sunday-morning experience they want to share with Canada.”
The unadorned plantation pine wreath on the door of Kevin Hynd’s shop was so serene in its perfection that it soothed me to look at it. The scene inside Kevin’s shop was tranquil too. He was sitting at his work table holding a fine-pointed bamboo brush and meditating on a square pastel-iced cake. When he heard us come in, he peered at us over his wire-rimmed glasses.
“Greetings,” he said. He dipped the point of his brush into a tiny porcelain dish of linden green colouring and painted what appeared to be a stylized leaf on the cake’s centre. “I’ve been thinking about this design for an hour,” he said. “I had to execute it while the idea was still fresh. Take off your jackets and come over here and tell me what you think.”
“It’s exquisite,” I said. “You’ve come a long way from Dumped Dames.”
Kevin gave me a beatific smile. “Not far at all,” he said. “What do you think this drawing signifies?”
“I have no idea,” I said.
“It’s a wet leaf,” Kevin said. “The kind that sticks to your foot and won’t shake off. It’s the Japanese character for what my client tells me is called ‘a retirement divorce’ – the kind that happens when a man leaves the workforce and finds himself trailing his wife around the house all day. My client’s language is more piquant than mine.”
“You seem to have cornered the Angry Woman market,” I said.
“Everybody deserves a cake,” Kevin said equitably. “And I do my best to give them what they want.”
“That cake you made for me was a work of art,” Jill said. “Too bad it was wasted on a disaster.”
“But there was a moment when it brought you pleasure,” Kevin said. “That’s all we can ask for in this changeable world.” He dipped his paintbrush into the porcelain dish and drew a smaller wet leaf on the side of the cake. “So what’s new?”
Kevin continued to paint his pattern as Jill brought him up to speed. When she’d finished, he sat back on his stool. “Curiouser and curiouser,” he said. “Short-term, the prescription bottle is good news for you. The police will have to divert some of their energy into finding out what was up with that. But long-term, the picture is still murky.”
“I know I’m still front and centre,” Jill said.
“Do I have your permission to talk about your financial situation with Joanne present?”
“Of course,”
“Good,” Kevin said. “Let’s start with the fact that, for you, becoming a wealthy woman overnight is both a curse and a blessing.”
Jill gave him a sidelong glance. “Where’s the blessing?”
“Money’s always useful,” Kevin said. “Chances are that the person who dropped that prescription bottle in the garbage bin is someone you know. Who’s your candidate?”
“I don’t have one,” Jill said quickly.
“Because you lack knowledge about the possibilities,” Kevin said. “Money can buy you that knowledge.”
Jill set her jaw. “I won’t do that. I won’t hire some sleaze-ball to ferret out secrets about Evan’s family.”
“Your choice,” Kevin said. “But unless you do something to help yourself, you’re in for serious grief. The police are thorough, and you’ve worked in media. You know this will be a bonanza for the press. A lot of things about your private life are going to come out.”
“I haven’t done anything I’m ashamed of,” Jill said.
Kevin gave her a half-smile. “Neither have I,” he said. “But if I had a seventeen-year-old, there are a few things I’d rather explain to her myself. Face it, Jill, paying a little money to arm ourselves with information is the lesser of two evils.”
Jill ran a hand through her hair. “Jerry Garcia always said that the lesser of two evils is still evil.”
“You’re not going to shame me out of giving you the best advice I can.”
“All right,” Jill said. “Do it, but I don’t want anyone going around asking Bryn’s friends and classmates about her. She’s off limits.”
Kevin and I made eye contact, but neither of us said a word.
Jill’s voice was steely. “That’s the condition,” she said. “Keep Bryn out of it.”
“So where does that put us with examining Evan’s current projects?” Kevin asked. “If Bryn appears in a frame of film, do I hit the off switch?”
Jill shook her head. “I’ll need to know everything about Bryn, but it can’t go any further.”
Kevin turned to me. “I wrote down the address you gave me. Who are we dealing with?”
“A psychiatrist named Dan Kasperski,” I said. “He’s a good choice. He’s absolutely trustworthy, and his speciality is troubled adolescents. Bryn has been through a traumatic experience. The police will believe it’s logical for Jill to be visiting his office.”
“And while Jill’s visiting the good doctor, she can examine her late husband’s stuff,” Kevin said. “Very handy.”
“In more ways than one,” I said. “You heard Bryn say she hated her father.”
Kevin nodded. “On the night he was killed. It’s occurred to me since that she must have some complicated feelings to sort through.”
“She does,” Jill said. “But there’s no way Dan Kasperski can help her if she refuses to see him. I’ve asked her if she wanted to talk to someone about her father, but she says what he did to her gives her every right to hate him.”
Kevin leaned forward. “What did he do to her?”
Jill’s voice was bleak. “He’s used her for material. Starting on the day she was born, he began filming her life. He never stopped. The night he died, Bryn said she couldn’t remember a time when he wasn’t stalking her. She begged him to leave her alone. He just kept on shooting.”
“Why wouldn’t he stop?” Kevin’s voice was barely audible.
“Because the film about Bryn was going to be his magnum opus. He told Bryn that being in this movie would be the most significant thing she would ever do in her life, that when she was an old woman, audiences would still be watching her grow and develop.”
“But she just wanted to be a kid,” Kevin said.
“Exactly,” Jill said. “But when Evan weighed Bryn’s need to be a kid against his need to make a great work of art, it was no contest.”
“Fucker,” Kevin said. He glanced towards Jill. “Sorry.”
“No need to apologize for the truth,” Jill said shortly. “I guess the next order of business is to check with Dan Kasperski to see whether he’s had a visit from FedEx.”
I glanced at my watch. “Almost ten till. Dan’s appointments start on the hour and run fifty minutes. I’ll try him.”
When he heard my voice, Dan was enthused, “Hey, your boxes arrived.”
“If it’s all right with you, I’m going to send over a lawyer to go through them,” I said.
“The goodies never end.”
“You’ll like this lawyer. His name is Kevin Hynd. I’m with him right now.”
“Can I talk to him?”
When Kevin rang off, he turned to me. “Sounds like a nice guy.”
“He is, and he’s amazing with kids. Jill, if you’ll give him permission to look at some of the footage Evan shot of Bryn, he’ll be able to tell you the best way to approach her.”
“There’s no question that your stepdaughter needs help, Jill,” Kevin said. “Might as well pull out all the
