Brian wins her ear with a teary tale of how Gabriella came to his law office, wanted him to play hooky with her. Lunch, a movie, a stone-faced reception when he returned her to Caroline. The denouement, his lonely return to his hotel, is vaguely poetic in its telling, and seems to raise a reasonable doubt in Ms. Chow-Thomas’s mind. “That’s great, Lila. I’ll come by when I get back from Victoria.” The cellphone clicks shut. “I think it’s starting to dawn who’s really to blame.”
Arthur imagines it is no easy task to be a relationship counsellor, an occupation inherently risky. Eve Winters must have known that, a lesson reinforced moments before her death.
“I’m getting a deal at the Ritz because I beat a beef for the owner for running a book in the back. The pub is done up with old movie posters and attracts the upper underworld, chisellers, top-of-the-line hookers. Internet scammers and spammers-you see them with their laptops, comparing notes. I am not friendless in this place, many are free to continue their crooked lifestyles thanks to me. The attention whore is all atwitter as she plops beside me.”
So this is where you’re staying. I must say I was a little nervous coming into the rough part of town. It seems a little bohemian-is it an artists’ hangout?
You’re very perceptive.
You look so sad. Poor Brian.
He fast-forwards. “She orders a gimlet, a drink that causes confusion at the bar, the last time a gimlet was ordered in this joint, Jack Kennedy was boffing Marilyn Monroe. I deliver a stunning critique of ‘You Don’t Have to Ask’-I’d grasped her brilliantly understated message about illicit love, it thrives on secrecy, grows with danger. This sets her heart aflutter, she carries on about how it must be lonely living in this hotel, and how is the current situation between poor me and poor…”
Caroline is her name, isn’t it?
Yes.
Still pretty rough going?
I’ve seen better days. Taking them one at a time.
“This is how to reach her, you fire the cliches with both barrels. I told her how on April Fool’s morning, as we were about to go for a family romp in the park, I reached in my pockets for my gloves, and out popped the unmentionables.” A sigh. “The cruellest memory is Amelia saying, ‘Oh-oh,’ as she looked at Caroline’s livid face. Anyway, the segue: I casually ask Adeline where she was at ten o’clock that morning.”
Why would you want to know?
This may sound silly, but I want to see if our signs were, ah, conjoined at that moment. I’m into that sort of thing.
That doesn’t sound silly at all. That was a Saturday? Oh, I was probably at bingo, the Holy Rosary Hall. Or was that the VOSA wine-tasting? Victims of Sexual Abuse. We share, we celebrate each other.
But what were we sharing at that moment, the lawyer and the writer? I, in the vestibule of a house in North Vancouver, you…where? There’s a spiritual reason I ask-well, there I go again, you probably think it’s one of those silly New Age things…
You goose, not at all. I hope that wasn’t the weekend I celebrated too much-my story in Tales of Passion came out on a Friday, and I had a teeny, teeny bit too much at the Wanderlust. I was probably still in bed at ten in the morning…Or was that the previous weekend?
Brian closes the computer as Pierre brings the matelot de sole. “Enjoy your lunch.” He hurries off.
“Enjoy yours,” Brian calls. “I’d pushed as far as I dared the concept of our two souls conjoining in an April Fool’s spiritual fuck. So we’re left with an array of possibilities, bingo, wine-tasting, getting pie-eyed in the Wanderlust, or-this is where I put my money-none of the above. The Wanderlust is a hokey bar in Whalley-I popped in last night. Four guys were on the stage. I thought they were doing a parody of a barbershop quartet. They turned out in fact to be a barbershop quartet. The Whalley Wanderers, who sing for their beer. The song that brings the house down is ‘I Love to Go A-Wandering.’ Valderee, valdera. Hiking and climbing gear all over the walls, pictures of the Alps. I didn’t figure Angella for outdoorsy. Maybe she followed Eve to Bamfield, the silent stalker of the West Coast Trail.”
None of her alibis are likely to prove ironclad, though they must be delved into. But Arthur wonders how she might have known Eve Winters would be in Bamfield, in Cotters’ Cottage, and that Faloon lived nearby, a handy local scapegoat. Did she do the deed herself, or hire an agent, a contract killer? But Angella is meagrely off, and hit men don’t come cheap.
Buddy Svabo bobs and weaves outside the courtroom to let Arthur know he’s feisty, up for another battle of wits, then cracks open the door, to show him Larry Mewhort within-he is yawning, listening to a lawyer’s catalogue of spousal sins.
Buddy closes the door. “He’s yours for the taking. He has a big hole next month, he was supposed to do the last trial of the Vancouver assize, a two-weeker, it blew up. He doesn’t want to get stuck in divorce court cleaning out the backlist.”
Arthur isn’t sure how Mewhort, with his legendary slowness of mind, ever got raised to the bench. But accidents happen. As a criminal lawyer, he often stumbled into legal potholes, and leaned heavily on Arthur for advice.
“You don’t have to sell me on Larry. You have to sell me on going to trial without a client.”
“What’ve you got to lose, Artie? You’re not going to put Faloon on the stand anyway, because with his record I’ll freaking tear him apart.” Buddy’s afraid this file will drag out and be pulled from him-a missed chance at a sure winner, a chance to better Beauchamp, spoil his return. “We together on this? I’ve got a solid argument, section 475, an absconding accused waives his right to be present.”
Mewhort, a small, puffy man with a shock of white hair that resembles a fright wig, looks on with dread as Svabo rolls a trolley of casebooks into court and lines them up on counsel table. Arthur isn’t similarly armed, and wins a hesitant smile of gratitude.
They wait until an uncontested divorce wends tediously to its foregone conclusion, then Buddy files his direct indictment and passes ten pounds of photocopied cases up to the bench. Mewhort blanches. “Do we need all that law, Mr. Svabo? Tell me in simple words what this is all about.”
Buddy begins with a recitation of intended proofs so indisputable, he implies, that obtaining a murder conviction is akin to filling out an order form. The Crown will allege Faloon knew Winters was staying in Cotters’ Cottage. The murder came on the heels of four burglaries. Faloon is a notorious professional thief with a rape conviction. An underworld figure with easy access to Rohypnol. He avoided detection and arrest by disguising himself and stealing a truck. He escaped from jail, further proof of a guilty mind. A priest will recount his solemn confession: She was beautiful. I just couldn’t help myself.
But it is the DNA, ah, the DNA, that Buddy revels in, splashing about in its perfumed waters. “And when the semen was tested by my learned friend’s very own scientific expert, whose profile did she find? My goodness, it’s Nicholas Faloon. Surprise, surprise.”
This florid display is for the press. Arthur is still feeling leakages of anger over the sneak attack at Gwendolyn Bay, and it’s puddling at Svabo’s feet. Let this overconfident peacock rush the trial ahead, then Arthur will unmask Angella as Lorelei, who swore vengeance against Doctor Eve. Faloon will be sitting there looking innocent as a cherub. Surprise, surprise.
Buddy makes an issue of the advanced ages of the Cotters, they may not be available in five, ten years, whenever Faloon is hauled back into the system. There are cost factors, witnesses are subpoenaed for the third Monday of June, the Hyatt has been booked for the out-of-towners, if the trial doesn’t go ahead a jury panel of seventy will be sitting around twiddling their thumbs.