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Brian drew close to her ear. “Did you bring it?”

“I flushed it.” She continued to glare at him until the attendant left, then said, “Covering up for your sins is not part of my job, Mr. Pomeroy, and I don’t intend to be deported because of them.”

“You don’t understand. They think I’m insane.”

“Insanity is a state of mind.”

Brian fell back on his bed. The cowboy paintings he’d grown to love had been replaced by impressionist landscapes. Soothing decorous slush.

“Mr. Beauchamp has taken on the trial.”

That’s something Brian hadn’t written. He felt empty, as if something had been stolen, plagiarized.

“He wants to know where the ring is.”

“Around a rosie.”

“Cudworth says you have it. Florenza LeGrand’s opal ring.”

“You’re not my type, you’re gay. Don’t expect me to give you a ring.” He shuffled through the cardboard box. “Where are my reference materials? My Widgeon manuals?”

“I’ll have them sent. You’ve received a number of personal messages from friends. Your former wife called to ask about your condition. What shall I tell her?”

“I’m burning up as I descend from outer space.”

“What do you mean?”

“I love her.”

“I shall be working for Mr. Beauchamp while you are treated for your illness. If that is what it is.” Maybe she suspected he was faking it. Maybe he was. Maybe he wasn’t. Keep them guessing.

He escorted her downstairs, past the fireplace, everyone watching, nudging, suspecting. At the door, he asked her to report back.

“About what?”

“About their plans. The people spying on me.”

“Who’s spying on you?”

“I think you know who. I think you know very well who your paymasters are.” He had her dead to rights, he could tell by her startled reaction. “Is Caroline coming to see me?”

“She didn’t indicate that.” She turned and walked quickly to a waiting taxi.

He began to cry. They were staring at him again as he ran upstairs. Tears smudged the manuscript as he removed it from the box. The pages slipped and scattered across the floor. There was no point in finishing this book. He’d lost control over his story. Arthur Beauchamp had control over it now…

PART TWO

Poetic Justice

17

THE THIRD FIDDLE THEORY

Arthur sat glumly on a porch chair on this miserable Saturday afternoon, his bags packed, waiting for the rental car. Wentworth Chance was prancing about the apple orchard like a nervous colt-the gangly fellow was ever in motion, stretching, fidgeting, twitching, as if afflicted by a strange muscle disorder.

Margaret had already said her goodbyes, was off to a rally in East Shipwreck, then the all-candidates debate in Duncan. Her slight of two evenings ago still rankled. He muttered, “As if I’ve an obsession with”-seeking the right phrase- “performance issues.” Too many courtroom battles, he’d wasted all his juices, saving nothing for the bedroom.

Nick came running down from the milking shed, shrine of the teasing Estonian goddess. “Good luck, Grandpa, all the woofers are rooting for you too.”

Arthur ruffled his hair. “You’re in charge now. Show your dad a good time.” Nicholas Senior was coming, sans Pamela, and would be staying for the week. He’d been on the phone to his son a few times, apologetic, making amends.

“I better get back to my chores.” A hug-Nick actually hugged him! — and he hastened back to the shed.

Arthur resented having to forsake Blunder Bay to do the chores of court. He wasn’t looking forward to a week in crowded, jarring Vancouver, already in a flag-waving fervour for the Winter Olympics two years hence. It had become foreign territory, this town where he’d been born, raised, enrolled in private schools, where he’d studied law, married, divorced, fought cases for forty hard years. Where he’d been an impotent, raging alcoholic.

His main libation was tea, and many pots of it had fuelled him over the last day and a half as he muscled through particulars and witness statements, as he planned courtroom strategy with his fussbudget junior. Three days was an obscenely short time to prepare for a murder trial, but in compensation Hitchins had promised him virtual rule of the courtroom. That will help keep Kroop on the sidelines-though doubtless the old boy will find excuses to nag and nettle him. His free reign, not Kroop’s hollow threat to proceed without counsel (and definitely not Margaret’s critique of his bedroom expertise), persuaded Arthur it was now or never, carpe diem. After a long delay, witnesses tend to reconstruct memories. Such changes cement. Eyesight improves.

Wentworth won marks by picking up on Arthur’s antipathy toward the client and offering to be his handler. He even took an anxious call from Cud, arranging to spend time with him tomorrow. He was a willing mule for any task, sharp enough, but would occasionally fall into some manner of spell, daydreaming perhaps, or overcome by the radiance of the god he served. An annoying tendency to hiccups whenever Arthur lit his pipe.

They hadn’t had much time to talk about Pomeroy’s bizarre behaviour, though Arthur learned, gratifyingly, that Wentworth had experience in a murder case-he’d assisted Pomeroy in the defence of Gilbert Gilbert, Kroop’s would-be assassin. “Ask me anything about legal insanity, Mr. Beauchamp.” Sadly, that was not on the list of useful defences.

By peculiar coincidence, Wentworth’s small stable of clients included Minette Lefleur, a sex worker known well to Justice Darrel Naught, who’d planned to enjoy her comforts before he drowned on a warm summer night six months ago. Several years earlier, as an articling student, he’d fought her case of keeping a common bawdy house. “I won on a technicality,” he confided with pride. “The judge ruled a houseboat isn’t a house.”

Stoney honked a greeting as he came around the bend in his cherry 197 °Chrysler New Yorker-the gas-gulper. Arthur will feel guilty driving it. But aside from minor dents it was in decent shape. Stoney disembarked with a smile, seeming sober though it was already half past one. He saw Wentworth gawking at the car and gave him a card.

“This here is Loco Motion’s finest model, a beauty, eh? Our stock also includes a splendid example of a Merc Cougar V8, from back in the days when they made cars instead of battery toys, and we expect to bring on line a superb ’69 Fargo…”

Stoney wasn’t sober after all, or so absorbed in his sales pitch that he forgot Arthur was present-his voice faded as he turned to see him hovering with his bags. “Of course that depends on, I gotta make, like, satisfactory arrangements with the, ah, registered owner.”

“The Fargo is locked in the garage, Stoney.”

“I won’t touch it, I promise.” He raised a hand. “I swear.”

Arthur heaved his suitcase into the trunk. Lots of room for the disassembled bicycle too, which Wentworth carefully set inside.

“I had to fill the tank, set me back about sixty easy. Them vultures at the gas station are taking advantage of the worldwide fossil fuel crisis.”

“Stoney, we have an arrangement. Three hundred dollars a week, a full tank at the end.” He greased Stoney’s palm and got behind the wheel, beckoning Wentworth to join him.

“You got me wrong.” Stoney got in the back. “A deal’s a deal, eh, I’m not gonna smirch my good name by reneging. It’s just something to keep in mind when you’re considering the tip.”

The car lurched forward when Arthur nudged the accelerator.

“You got to use a gentle touch on this baby, Arthur. Pretend you’re making love to her. The radio’s broke. Probably could use new wiper blades, especially the right one, which don’t work at all. Otherwise she’s street legal.” He got out at his driveway.

As they rounded a bend by the ferry dock, Wentworth said, “What’s going on there?” He was pointing to a twenty-foot structure, the lower half hidden by draped black plastic, a complex armature above. A local sculptor, Arthur explained, was paying his debt to society.