The Brutal Heart

CHAPTER 12

It didn’t take long for the harmony that had enveloped us to disappear. As I drove back to the city the next morning, Zack thumbed his BlackBerry and muttered an expletive. “I guess it was just a matter of time,” he said.

“Till what?”

“Till the cops got hold of Cristal’s client list. And someone made the job easy for them – sent it to them electronically. The police have been quick to request the men whose names appear on the list to honour them with their presence.”

“Including you?”

“Including me.”

“Any idea who supplied the police with the list?”

“According to the e-mail address, it was Bree Steig. Comatose, under twenty-four-hour watch, but apparently still able to use her Hotmail account.”

“Someone knew her password.”

“Right. Debbie Haczkewicz must be pulling her hair out. Almost two weeks since Cristal was killed – no arrest and the number-one suspect just got murdered. Now, some public-spirited citizen sends Debbie the names of thirty-two of our city’s best and brightest, with the suggestion that one of them had a very good reason for killing both Cristal and Jason.”

“It would be interesting to know who sent the e-mail.”

“Interesting but not easy. Trying to discover the user of a Hotmail account is right up there with counting the number of angels that can dance on the head of a pin. Interviewing all the men on that list is going to take time and personnel, and that gives us our silver lining.”

“How so?”

“Because it’ll take some of the heat off Ginny. It’s hard to imagine circumstances under which she would have found Cristal’s client list and sent it to the police.”

“It’s not hard at all,” I said. “If Jason had the list, Ginny could have picked it up the morning he died. I don’t believe that’s what did happen, but it could have. I wouldn’t count on the police easing up on Ginny quite yet.”

“I didn’t need to hear that.”

“Well, while I’m on a roll – we haven’t talked about Blake.”

Zack’s jaw tightened. “What about him?”

“When I told him Jason Brodnitz was dead, Blake said ‘People like that deserve to die.’ ”

“Well, thank God he’s out of town, eh? You say stuff like that to the cops, they start asking questions.”

“There were many men in Cristal’s life,” I said. “Some of them might have felt that way about Jason too.”

“Especially if he was trying to shake them down. Jo, there were names on that list that surprised even me. The one thing they share is they’re all guys who aren’t used to being fucked over.”

We drove past fields tender with the green of new growth. “So what’s next?”

“First thing I have to do is tell the seven dwarfs to find legal representation. I also have to tell my partner that. Ginny is my client, and looking out for Blake would be a conflict of interest.”

“You’re ready to cut Blake loose for Ginny?”

“I have to, but I’ve known Blake for almost thirty years. He didn’t kill anybody.”

“You think Ginny might have?”

Zack didn’t answer, and when he didn’t answer, I knew better than to ask. I changed the subject. “Do you think I’m spinning my wheels trying to find out about Cristal’s life?”

“Honestly, I don’t know. By this time, the cops will have done their job. I’ve had my run-ins with the force over the years, but they’re competent and they’re honest.”

“They could have overlooked something,” I said. “Cristal had a private life. She and 3 must have gone out for dinner or taken a walk or rented a video. Surely, someone saw them together.”

Zack was silent. “I wonder,” he said finally.

“You wonder what?”

“I wonder if Cristal paid my bill because Francesca saw something. They live in the same neighbourhood – in fact, Francesca’s favourite haunt is that warehouse next to Cristal’s condo. But Francesca’s terrified of cops – she’d never let one get close enough to ask questions.”

“She’d let you get close enough,” I said. “And she trusts you.”

“That’s because I like her,” Zack said. “I’ll see if I can carve out some time this morning and take a spin through the warehouse district.” He grinned. “I love it when the pieces start to come together.”

Zack’s BlackBerry rang. He checked the number. “Margot,” he said. “Probably anxious to hit the road and wondering what I’ve done with you.” He picked up. “Falconer Shreve Wainberg Hynd and Wright.” He grinned. “I thought you’d like that, and, no, your name can’t be first on the list. So what’s up?” He listened for a moment. “Joanne’s at the wheel. We should be home in ten minutes, but she obeys speed limits, so make it fifteen. Why don’t you meet us at the house?”

Zack punched in another number.

“Now who?” I said.

“Norine,” he said. “I might as well get caught up on what’s happening at the office. Hey, it’s handy having a driver.”

“Then let’s hire one,” I said. “Then we can both be boors.”

“Sorry, Ms. Shreve. Sometimes I forget your socialist roots. Hey, Norine, what’s going on there?” He listened. “It’s eight forty-five. How can the day be this fucked up already? Don’t try to answer, that was just rhetoric. Get Sean to call his investigators. I want them to find out everything they can about the men in Cristal Avilia’s life. I’m sending a list of the names. And, Norine, can you clear an hour for me sometime today? I’ve got to find Francesca Pope. Good. And no calls forwarded except from Blake.”

Margot’s black BMW was already in our driveway. When we pulled up, she leapt out.

“Ready to hit the road?” she said.

“Don’t rush off,” Zack said. “Come in and I’ll make us coffee.”

Margot raised an eyebrow. “You make coffee?”

“It’s not exactly verifying the string theory,” Zack said. “Just grind the beans, put the filter in the cone, measure the coffee into the filter, and pour the boiling water.”

“I’m impressed,” Margot said. “And you passed your bar exams too.”

We took our coffee outside. When I let out Taylor’s cats, they streaked to the one patch of sun on the back deck and took possession.

“We’re in for a warm day,” I said. “Those cats have an uncanny ability to predict weather.”

Margot moved her chair so she could pat Pantera while we talked. “I had a phone call last night,” she said. “Mandy Avilia has something very important she wants to talk to me about. Probably a new shade of nail polish they just got in at Cut ‘n’ Curl, but she’s a sweet girl, and she is Cristal’s sister. Sisters tell each other things.”

“If Cristal told her sister that Jason was her boyfriend, would you tell me?” Zack asked.

“Sure. I play by the rules, but it ain’t gonna happen.” Margot touched the lovely flame-coloured scarf she was wearing. “I’ll bet you this scarf against that tie you’re wearing that Jason wasn’t 3.”

“What would you do with my tie?”

“Wear it.”

“You’re on.” Zack said. “Full disclosure – we’re hiring a firm of investigators to find out everything they can about the men in Cristal Avilia’s life.”

“Joanne and I will find out more in an afternoon than they will in a month.”

Zack cocked his head. “The people of Wadena don’t like strangers?”

“Wadenans are the friendliest people on the prairie,” Margot said. She went over and fingered Zack’s tie. “You just have to know the right questions to ask.”

Wadena is two hours northeast of Regina. The drive is a pleasant one through gently rolling farmland and poetically quivering aspens, and Margot and I were both determined to enjoy our time together. Our topics of conversation were inconsequential: a new restaurant that had opened in town, some delicious gossip about a mutual acquaintance, summer plans. It wasn’t until we came to the sign welcoming us to Wadena that we talked about Cristal Avilia.

“I still can’t believe she’s dead, you know,” Margot said.

“Were you close?”

“No. She was six years younger than me and that’s a lot when you’re in school. But Cristal was in my sister Laurie’s class, so she was around the house.”

“What was she like?”

“Pretty, smart, quiet, not the girl you would have expected to end up living the life she did. There were girls who were more likely candidates, the ones they called the town bicycles because every boy had a ride on them, but Cristal wasn’t like that. She seemed focused, and – this is going to sound so high school – she was nice.”

“Do you have any idea why her life got off track?”

“No. I’m sure if you walked up and down Main Street – which, incidentally in Wadena is called Main Street – you would get fifteen hundred theories, but I’ve been a lawyer too long to waste time on root causes. Something happened, and Cristal gets a shitty life and an early death. That’s really all that matters.”

“Not to Zack. He’s convinced he needs to know what happened, at least in the time between the beginning of the shitty life and the end.”

“If anybody will know that, it’ll be my sister. That’s why we should see her before we see Mandy. I left Wadena twenty-two years ago. When I came home, I heard things about Cristal, but I didn’t pay much attention. I was busy, going to school, building a practice, having fun.” Margot slowed and pointed to a small brick building covered in painted daisies. “That’s the Cut ‘n’ Curl, where Mandy works. Anyway, my focus was not Wadena. My sister’s was. She’ll remember.”

Laurie and her husband and kids lived in a pale blue split-level house opposite the high school. There was a station wagon in the carport and an impressive number of sturdy plastic vehicles for kids on the asphalt driveway. Two boys about ten were throwing a football on the front lawn. When they spotted Margot’s car, they came running. She jumped out and opened her arms. When she put them both in a hammerlock, the boys didn’t protest. With the boys trapped under her arms, she introduced them. “The squinty-eyed one who looks like Roadrunner is Roger,” she said. “The one who looks like the bad guy in a Quentin Tarantino movie is Sam. Men, this is Joanne Kilbourn. You may have seen her on television.”

The boys smiled politely; it was clear that whatever kind of television I was a part of wasn’t appointment TV for them. “Nice to meet you,” Sam said, and Roger nodded agreement.

“Nice to meet you too.” I said.

“Did we miss lunch?” Margot asked.

“Nope,” the boys said. “If you let us go, we’ll tell Mum you’re here.”

Margot released the boys, and they ran for the house. “How do you feel about Kraft Dinner?” she said.

“It’s been a while,” I said. “But it’s a taste worth revisiting.”

Margot raised a perfectly arched brow. “Or experiencing for the first time,” she said. “I believe KD now comes in yet another distinctive flavour.”

There were six boxes on the counter. Sam identified them as Creamy Cheddar, Three Cheese, Spirals, White Cheddar, Tomato, and Normal. Congenitally risk-averse, I chose Normal. When the boys started the water boiling, their mother and the two other children came in from the backyard. Margot performed the introductions. “This is my sister, Laurie and” – she held out her arms – “our big guy, Jack, and the baby in the family, Cass.” Margot’s sister wasn’t as blonde or as buff as Margot, but she had the same cornflower blue eyes and the same husky alto voice. She was holding a squirming towhead wearing a Dora the Explorer shirt and a diaper. Jack, without prompting, sauntered over to his aunt and hugged her. I remembered my boys at fourteen and thought Auntie Margot must be more than an occasional visitor.

The big kids served up the KD while Laurie spooned lunch into Cass, who turned out to be a determined and enthusiastic eater. The boys talked across us. Kraft might have developed new permutations of cheese and noodles, but the conversation that ping-ponged across the lunch table was the same talk I remembered from lunch hours at our house when my kids were young: a pungent mix of bad jokes, sibling torment, and classroom gossip. After the boys left for school, Margot and I cleaned up and made tea while Laurie put Cass down for a nap.

We took our tea into the living room where we could see the high-school kids straggling out of the parking lot into school.

“Is that the school you and Margot went to?” I asked.

Laurie leaned towards the window. “That’s the one. But you didn’t drive all the way to Wadena to hear about the time Steve kissed me under the blue whale in the gym.”

Margot frowned “I don’t remember any blue whale in the gym.”

Laurie shot her sister a pitying look. “That’s because your class didn’t choose The Great Sea of Life as the theme for its grad dance. But the topic is Cristal. Of course, she’s been Topic A ever since she died. Everybody remembers her, but nobody really knew her.”

“She was a pretty girl,” I said. “She must have had boyfriends.”

“Not really. I was just trying to remember who she went with to the grad dance. I think it was another leftover, you know, somebody who’s still alone after all the popular kids have paired off. But I don’t remember Cristal having a serious boyfriend till she left here.”

Margot leaned forward. “You never told me you knew about a serious boyfriend.”

“It’s because I didn’t remember till I was in Crawford’s shopping for underwear for Jack this morning.” Laurie rubbed absent-mindedly at a spot of dried egg yolk on her jeans “They had these really cute Spiderman boxers, and I’d put two pair in my cart when I remembered that Jack is fourteen now, so I put them back and got the same kind of tighty whiteys I buy Steve.”

Margot glanced at me. “My sister’s narratives are not linear,” she said dryly.

“I’m approaching the point,” Laurie said. She turned to me. “When I got pregnant with Jack, Steve and I had one of those hurry-up weddings, and this being Wadena, Cut ‘n’ Curl was abuzz. Oh, I had a bridal shower and a baby shower, even if they were a little too close together, but there were some disapproving glances. The only person who seemed really happy for me was Cristal.”

Margot punched her sister on the arm. “I was happy for you.”

“Okay,” Laurie said, “I should have said the only person outside the family. Now who’s derailing the narrative? My point was that the December I was pregnant with Jack, I ran into Cristal on Main Street when she came home from university.”

“Cristal went to university?” I said.

Laurie bit her lip. “I told you she was smart. Anyway, she hugged me, and it wasn’t one of those fake girly hugs. It was sincere. She said, ‘I hear you’re getting married. Me too – same reason.’ Then she asked me when I was due – it was a couple of weeks before she was due, so we shared a hormonal moment. I remember us standing in front of the office of the Wadena News blubbering, then wiping our eyes. And Cristal leaned close to me and asked me if I loved Steve.

“Of course, I said yes. Then she said she loved the man she was marrying too. She said – and I remember this – ‘If I couldn’t have him, I wouldn’t want to live.’ She asked me if I felt that way about Steve. Of course, I said I did, but that wasn’t the truth. Don’t get me wrong. I love Steve. He’s a good husband and he’s a big part of my life, but I’ve never felt I wouldn’t have a life without him.”

Cass started to cry in the other room, and Laurie stood up to go to her.

“Wait,” I said. “What happened to Cristal’s baby?”

“I have no idea,” Laurie said. “The next time I saw Cristal, I had Jack with me. She didn’t even look at him and she didn’t say a word about the time we talked at Christmas. I remember trying to check her left hand without seeming to. There was no wedding ring. I assumed the man she couldn’t live without decided that he preferred to live without a wife and a baby.”

We didn’t stay long after Laurie came back with Cass. We still had to talk to Mandy, and Margot had a late appointment with a client in Regina.

Mandy Avilia’s house was on the street next to the golf course. It was a nicely kept bungalow with a picture window, a double carport, and two concrete-resin deer grazing on the lawn. When we pulled up outside, Margot took her BlackBerry from her purse.

“What did lawyers do before there were BlackBerrys?” I said.

Margot cocked her head. “I can’t speak for the profession, but I, personally, was on my cellphone all the time, checking my voice mail and hectoring my assistant to see if I had any messages.” She scrolled down the items in her in-box and whistled. “Now this is why we have our little office in a pocket.”

“Something useful?”

“Very. Mandy didn’t know where her sister’s will was. So I went on-line to the Law Society and asked if anyone had a will for Cristal Avilia. No news till today. Guess which firm did Cristal’s legal work?”

“Falconer Shreve?”

“Bingo. I’m going to call my new partner and see if he can get me the file.” After Margot talked to Zack, she handed the BlackBerry to me.

“How’s it going?” he said.

“Fine,” I said. “I’ll tell you when we get back. Anything happening there?”

“I have a new client – a doctor who’s suing another doctor for malpractice. We don’t get many of those. And Cristal’s client list has ended up on the Internet, so the shit is hitting the fan.”

“Busy morning,” I said.

“I’m not through. Pantera ate the remote.”

“That’s the third remote he’s eaten. What did you do?”

“Ordered another one.”

I laughed. “Never a harsh word for that dog.”

“Nope. Love my dogs, love my kids, love my woman.”

“I’ll call you when we’re close to the city.”

“Why don’t you bring Margot in for a drink? I’ll have Norine courier the Avilia file here – save Margot a trip downtown.”

“And if you’re lucky, she’ll open the file in front of you, and you’ll know what’s going on.”

“You know my methods, Ms. Shreve.”

“I do indeed.”

Mandy led us into the living room. Like the rest of the house it was spotless except for the dining-room table that was covered with everything a dedicated scrapbooker would need. “Come, see,” she said. “You’ll be interested in this, Margot, and Mrs. Shreve – ”

“Joanne,” I corrected.

She dimpled. “Joanne, you might think it’s fun too. Do either of you scrapbook?”

Margot and I both shook our heads.

“Well, I do, and I love it.” Her face looked hollowed. Her sister’s death had hit her hard, but she was still full of spikey energy. “Sometimes I get so interested in what I’m doing, I forget to eat. Anyway, I’m really proud of the scrapbook I’m working on now. Do you want to see it?” When we said yes, she took us both by the hand and drew us towards the table. “Did you know that this year will be the twenty-fifth anniversary of Cut ‘n’ Curl?”

Margot was pensive. “I guess that’s about right. Rhondelle gave me my first dye job there. My mother just about killed her – and me.”

“If you can find a picture, I’ll make a page for you. We’re having a surprise party for Rhondelle at George’s Steak House on the long weekend. I’m going to present her with this scrapbook.” Mandy picked up a page from the table. A photo was already glued into place in the upper left quadrant of the page. “That’s Cristal getting a spiral perm for grad.” The photo was of a very young Cristal, draped in a plastic cape, half her hair wound around medieval-looking rods, looking nervously into the beauty shop mirror as a generously proportioned redhead wound another strand of her hair around yet another rod.

Mandy picked up another picture, one of Cristal in her prom gown. Rhondelle had triumphed. Cristal’s hair was an explosion of curls. “Remember what Rhondelle used to call this style?” Mandy said.

Margot chortled. “Jacked-up-to-Jesus hair.”

“I was going to write that on the page,” Mandy said. “ ‘Cristal with her Jacked-up-to-Jesus hair,’ but I was afraid it was sacrilegious.”

Margot touched the photograph of Cristal gently. “Put that on the page,” she said. “It’s not sacrilegious. It’s just Rhondelle being Rhondelle.”

“Well, if you’re sure,” Mandy said.

“I’m sure,” Margot said. “Look, Mandy, I’m sorry. We can’t stay very long, but I wanted you to know where things stand with Cristal’s estate. I’ve just discovered the name of the law firm that drew up the will. I should have some information for you tonight.”

Mandy bit her lip. “I really appreciate this. I don’t have a clue how these things work.”

“Well, I do, but I don’t know how to cut hair, so we’re even.” Margot said.

Mandy looked down at the photo of her sister. “If Cristal’s boyfriend gets involved, I won’t have to deal with him, will I?”

Margot stiffened, suddenly alert. “I didn’t know Cristal had a boyfriend.”

“Oh yes. Those other men – that was just her business. He was the one she loved.”

“Do you know his name?” I asked.

“She never told me. He didn’t want anybody to know who he was.”

“Was he married?” Margot said.

Mandy looked miserable – trapped. “I don’t know. All I know is she said she loved him, but she was afraid of him” – suddenly, the old bounce was back – “and you should never be afraid of the man who’s supposed to love you.”

“Did you and Cristal talk about this?” I asked.

Mandy placed the scrapbook page back on the table, positioned the photograph of Cristal on her prom night, then laid a paper frame carefully over it. The frame was the same shade of foam-green as Cristal’s dress. “The frames just came in the mail today,” Mandy said. “I was afraid the colour wouldn’t be right.”

“It’s a perfect match,” I said.

Margot swept her hand across her eyes. “Goddammit,” she said. “Mandy, this is important. Did Cristal never tell you her boyfriend’s name?”

“She said if it got out they were together, it would hurt him professionally.”

“And that didn’t worry her?” Margot’s hands were at her sides, balled into fists.

“It worried me,” Mandy said simply. “And I must have asked her a million times to tell me his name. She’d never tell me. She’d just laugh and say he was her perfect three.”

I felt my nerves twang. “And that meant something to you?” I said.

Mandy’s brown eyes were guileless. “Sure. It was a game the girls at our school played. It’s been around forever.” She looked at Margot. “You must remember.”

Margot nodded. “The girl subtracts the number of letters in the name of the boy she likes from the number of letters in her name. The difference is supposed to be the number of kids they’ll have when they get married.”

“And Cristal wanted three children,” I said.

Mandy shot me a grateful look. “That’s right,” she said. “Cristal always wanted three kids: two girls and a boy. I guess when her life turned out the way it did, she had something done so she wouldn’t get pregnant.”

Margot sat down in the chair opposite Mandy and leaned forward with her chin cupped in her hands. “Do you have any idea why your sister ended up the way she did?”

“As a prostitute? You can say the word. Cristal knew what she was, but she wouldn’t talk about how it happened. I think it was because of her boyfriend.”

“He made her do it?” I said.

“I don’t know for sure. All I know is that the last time I talked to her, Cristal said she did everything he wanted, but it was never enough.”

Margot couldn’t seem to get out of the house quickly enough. She embraced Mandy and told her she’d call her that night, then she sprinted to the car. I barely had my seat belt buckled before she backed her BMW out of the driveway and hit the road. We didn’t get far. As soon as we were on the outskirts of town, Margot drove onto the lot in front of an Esso gas station.

“Is there a problem with the car?” I said.

“No, there’s a problem with me. I knew if I didn’t get out of there, I was going to spontaneously combust. Why would any woman let a man do that to her life? What was the matter with Cristal? God damn it to hell. What was going on in her head?” Margot banged her fists against the steering wheel until the tears came. Then she blew her nose, checked her lipstick, and turned to me. “I’m okay now.”

“Are you okay enough to do a little elementary math?”

Margot narrowed her eyes. “Shoot.”

“There are thirteen letters in Jason Brodnitz’s name and there are thirteen letters in Cristal Avilia’s name. Thirteen minus thirteen is zero.”

“Jason’s not Cristal’s perfect three.”

“Apparently not.”

I called Zack when we were on the outskirts of the city. “We’ll be home in ten minutes,” I said. “You can open the Bombay Sapphire.”

“Hallelujah.”

I closed my cell. “The martinis will be waiting,” I said. “Are you going to claim Zack’s tie?”

“On the basis of a game Cristal played with her boyfriends’ names? I may be a cockeyed optimist, but I’m not stupid. I have to tighten my case before I take Zack’s tie.” She gave me a sidelong grin. “But I will take immense pleasure in drinking his martini.”

When Margot turned onto our street, Sean Barton’s blue Camry Hybrid was in our driveway.

“Company?” Margot said.

“Sean Barton.”

“As ever, eager to serve,” Margot said tightly. “Joanne, I’ll come in to get my file, but I’m going to take a rain check on that drink.”

“You don’t like Sean.”

She shrugged. “I’ll learn to get along with him. I just don’t want to start today.”

Zack and Sean were in the office. They both had their laptops open, and the dogs were with them.

I went over and kissed Zack. “Good day?”

“Profitable,” Zack said.

Sean stood and offered Margot his chair, but she refused with a smile, then bent and put her arms around Pantera’s neck. “How are you doing, big boy? That remote you ate giving you any problems?”

“So far so good,” Zack said. “I called Peter, and he said to let it pass.”

“Oldest vet joke in the book,” I said.

“But good advice,” Margot said, scooping up the sealed envelope that contained her client’s file and dropping it in her briefcase.

Zack raised an eyebrow. “Am I ever going to know what’s in there?”

“After my client does,” she said. “That’s the way it works, remember?”

Zack chuckled and looked between Margot and me. “Exactly what I need in my life, another ethical guide.”

Margot met his gaze. “An ex-boyfriend of mine said men get the women they deserve.”

Sean was smooth. “Then the men of Falconer Shreve are lucky. I understand that you’re joining us.”

“I am,” Margot said.

“That’s good news for me,” Sean said. “It appears I have a lot to learn.”

“We all do,” Margot said. “That’s why they call it ‘practising law.’ I’ll call you later, Zack.”

Zack and I saw the two of them out and watched as they drove off.

“Alone at last,” Zack said. “How was your day?”

“More questions than answers,” I said. “Let’s save the talk till later.” I moved behind him and started rubbing his shoulders. “Your neck is tight,” I said. “You need a swim.”

“A martini works quicker.”

“But the effect doesn’t last. Swim first, then a drink.”

“You’re tough.”

“But I’m fun. Come on, let’s get our suits on.”

We’d just started our swim when Taylor came in from school. “Anything you need me to do?”

“Sure,” I said. “You can make dinner.”

Zack came over and grabbed the edge of the pool. “I’ll take care of dinner,” he said. “Where do you want to go?”

Taylor was quick off the mark. “The Chimney,” she said. “I am so in the mood for liver.”

“Fine with me,” I said. “There are days when only organ meat will do.”

“That’s settled then,” Zack said. “Want to put on your suit and join us, Taylor? Your mother is counting my laps. You can distract her.”

“You always tell me to do what Jo says. Besides, I really, really want to get back to this painting I’m working on.” She gave him her winsome smile. “If it turns out, you can have it for your office.”

Zack groaned and pushed away from the pool’s edge. “We pay for our pleasures in this world,” he said. Then he began moving his powerful arms and propelling his body through the water. Unprompted, he did ten extra laps, but he beamed when I said it was time to towel off.

We took our drinks outside. When Zack took his first sip, he closed his eyes with pleasure. “That was worth waiting for.”

“Deferred gratification,” I said. “So any new developments in the case?”

“Nothing good. Ginny came over this morning. Her position is not enviable. She had a motive. She had the opportunity and, of course, the fact that she pulled the knife out of Jason’s chest and contaminated the crime scene doesn’t endear her to the cops. Plus her prints are all over the place, so it’s a real mess.”

“Any luck finding Francesca?”

“Nope. I’m batting zero for two.” He took another sip. “And the cops found $50,000 cash in Jason Brodnitz’s house.”

My heart sank. “So Jason is 3.”

“Yep. It appears that you’re the new owner of Margot’s red scarf.”

“I wish I wasn’t.”

“Me too. I’m not looking forward to telling Ginny. When she came over this morning, she was hopeful. She knows she’s in deep, but she believes in the system, and she’s really looking forward to being at the lake. She thought that while they were there, she and the girls could come up with some way to honour Jason.”

“And now they’re going to have to deal with this. Zack, this is going to be tough on Margot too. After our day in Wadena, we were both certain Jason wasn’t the man in Cristal’s life.”

“Mandy Avilia knew something?”

“In retrospect, I guess she didn’t. Mandy told us about a game Cristal played: she’d subtract the number of letters in her boyfriends’ names from the number of letters in her name. The remainder was supposed to be the number of children they’d have together. Cristal wanted three children.”

“So ‘three’ was her ideal.”

“Yes, and Jason Brodnitz, like Cristal, had thirteen letters in his name. Margot thought that was a good sign. But I guess the discovery of $50,000 cash in Jason’s house trumps his coming up zero in Cristal’s name game.”

“It’s not unheard of for evidence to be planted,” said Zack. “You and I both thought there was something fishy about the fact that Bree Steig was carrying around a piece of paper with Jason’s phone number written on it.”

“There’s a difference between a number on a paper and $50,000. That’s a pretty substantial investment.”

“Not if you want to frame somebody.”

“You really don’t believe Jason was the man in Cristal’s life, do you?”

Zack shook his head. “I didn’t know the guy at all, but sometimes you have to go with a gut feeling. I think Brodnitz had a lousy couple of years. I think his ego had been bashed around and I think he made investments for prostitutes because no ‘respectable’ clients would come within a hundred feet of him. I think it’s even possible he was laundering money, but I don’t think he was that sadistic creep Cristal was involved with.”

“Neither do I,” I said. “So we’re back to finding out who that sadistic creep really was. She never said anything to you about her past?”

“We didn’t trade life stories. I was with Cristal for one reason and we both knew the reason.” Zack put down his drink. “Now you have that ‘how-did-I-end-up-married-to-this-prick?’ look on your face.”

“That’s a lot to read into one expression,” I said. “I don’t think you’re a prick. I just think it’s an odd world where a man and woman can do something as intimate as make love and not know anything about each other.”

“Cristal and I didn’t make love, we had sex. That’s a whole different thing.”

“She was more than just a body, Zack. Today when we were in Wadena, I caught a glimpse of the woman Cristal was. If we’re going to untangle this mess, I think we have to go back to the beginning.”

“Which is…?”

“The man Cristal fell in love with in university.”

“I didn’t know Cristal went to university.”

“Well, she did, and she got pregnant in her first year. Margot’s sister, Laurie, was pregnant at the same time. Laurie told me that when she and Cristal talked about their lovers and the babies they were carrying, Cristal just glowed.”

“So what happened?”

“Laurie didn’t know. Cristal came back to Wadena when the semester was over without a baby and without a wedding ring.”

“But if the guy Cristal was with in university moved along, he wouldn’t be connected with her life here in Regina.”

“He would if he came with her. Zack, Mandy told us that her sister had only ever loved one man. She also said that Cristal did everything her lover told her to do, but it was never enough, and at the end she realized that and decided to get out.”

“And so he killed her, and if we find the boyfriend, my client will be off the hook.” Zack rubbed the bridge of his nose – a sure sign of weariness with him. “God, I wish it were that easy. Maybe it will be. The cops have the same information we have. Right now, their computers will be smoking. Debbie Haczkewicz won’t be satisfied until she knows everything about the men on that list.”

“The boyfriend’s name wouldn’t be on that list.”

“I know, but in my experience, if you throw enough rocks in the water eventually the bottom feeders come up to see what’s happening.”