I was astounded. “If you don’t care about the custody, why are you going to court?”
Ginny’s slate-blue eyes were cool. “Because I have – or did have – political aspirations, and it would have been political suicide not to put up a fight for the girls.” She read my face. “Now, I’ve shocked you. Tell me something, Joanne. If I were a man, would you be shocked at what I just said?”
I stared at the tranquil water of our pool. “I wouldn’t give it a second thought,” I said. “I apologize.”
Ginny seemed amused. “My old coach used to say, ‘Don’t apologize. Do something.’ ”
“All right,” I said. “I’ll do something. How would you feel about me helping you get your case in front of the public?”
She stiffened. “ ‘The Rise and Fall of Ginny Monaghan’? I don’t think so. There are enough people lining up to throw a handful of dirt on my political grave.”
“This wouldn’t be a sensational piece. Did you see that NationTV special on the religious right and the values war in Canadian politics?”
“One of my advisers made me watch it, but I’m glad I did. It was good. Fair, balanced, and I actually learned a few things.”
“That’s what I was hoping for,” I said. “I wrote it. And I’ve talked to the producer about doing some more specials along that line. She says we should pitch the shows as Issues for Dummies.”
“Never overestimate the intelligence of the voting public,” Ginny said.
“I’m hoping if we give viewers small nibbles at big questions, they might want to learn more.”
Ginny cocked her head. “And you think my story might give them a taste for more?”
“I’ve taught a graduate class in Women and Party Politics for the past five years. I have the research, but I could use a human face.”
“Or, even better, a human sacrifice,” Ginny said. “Well, why not? Nineteen days till E-Day. Follow me around, and you’ll be able to give the public some dynamite insights into the best prime minister Canada never had.” She smoothed her skirt, swung her legs off the lounge, and leaned towards me. “Consider me officially in, but no cameras, no tape recorders – just you and your notebook.”
Outside a car door slammed. Ginny stood up and stretched. “The men return,” she said. “Impeccable timing.”
When Sean came in with Zack, I didn’t encourage a visit. It was clear we’d all had enough. I told Ginny I’d see her the next day in court, then we said goodnight. After I closed the door, Zack shot me a quizzical look. “So what was that all about?”
“Ginny and I have struck a mutual assistance pact. I’m going to be inside her campaign for the next couple of weeks, and in return, I’ll use Ginny as my focus in that politics and women program I’m working on for NationTV.”
“So a good evening,” Zack said.
“No, but one good outcome. How about you?”
“Lousy evening. Lousy outcome.” Zack turned his chair towards the hall. “But I am soaked to the skivvies, so you’re going to have to wait for the blow by blow till after I have a shower.”
“I’ll give you a rubdown when you’re ready,” I said.
Zack looked at me hard. “You do realize that most women would be ready to kill me right now.”
“The possibility crossed my mind,” I said. “But we took an oath to stay together for better or worse, and as you reminded me at the altar, a deal’s a deal.”
He took my hand. “Thank God for legal training.”
Casual physical intimacy was difficult for Zack and me. We couldn’t walk hand in hand along the beach at our cottage, grope each other in the kitchen when we were drying the dishes, or make out at the movies. But we were deeply in love, so we had built some small rituals into our day that gave us both pleasure. The mutual nightly massage was one of them. Sometimes as we kneaded each other’s muscles, we talked about our day; sometimes we were silent, content just to feel the comfort of deep touch. As I worked the knotted muscles of my husband’s shoulders, he groaned.
“Better?” I murmured.
“Getting there,” he said.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“No, but we have to.”
“Let’s have it, then,” I said.
“Boy, where to start? Debbie Haczkewicz is leading the investigation, which isn’t exactly a break for me.”
“I thought you liked Debbie.”
“I do. And that makes it harder.”
I followed his thinking. “Harder to lie?”
“Uh-uh. Unless you’re a cop, lying gets you in serious trouble. But there are ways of telling the truth that leave the facts open to interpretation.”
“And that’s what you did with Debbie.”
“Bingo. I told her that I went to Cristal’s condo to pay her off so she wouldn’t show a DVD that was personally embarrassing on the Internet.”
I poured more massage oil into my palm. “And Debbie naturally assumed that the person who would be embarrassed was you.”
“Yes.”
“Didn’t she ask to see the DVDS?”
“Yep, but I said they’d been destroyed, and that was the truth. As soon as I left Cristal’s condo, I went back to the office. We deal with a lot of stuff that’s too hot to toss without shredding. Cops have been known to go through trash. Anyway, I asked Norine to shred the discs, and she did.”
“No questions asked?”
“Norine’s been my assistant for fifteen years. She knows not to know what she shouldn’t know.”
“And Debbie accepted your word that the discs had been destroyed?”
“Debbie’s a smart cop. She probably had her guys picking through the firm’s garbage while she was interviewing me, but she was gracious. She knows I’m married. Of course, she’s still a cop, so we had a little go round about destroying evidence, but I pointed out that when I was dealing with those DVDs they weren’t evidence because Cristal Avilia was still alive.”
“So you’re home free.”
“No one’s ever home free, Jo. That’s why the cops keep burrowing in. Tonight after Debbie was finished making nice, her buddies showed me their crime scene photos.”
“Why would they do that?”
“Just in a sharing mood, I guess. Truthfully, I imagine they wanted to watch my reaction to seeing Cristal.”
“I hope you kept Sean with you.”
“I did. Over the years, I’ve probably instructed at least two thousand clients not to say anything to the cops, but there’s something about staring at pictures of a dead body that loosens the tongue. Anyway, I didn’t screw up, but there were some shots of Cristal that are going to stay with me for a while.” Zack’s body tensed and I dug my fingers more deeply into the spaces along his spine. “She was young and she’s dead,” he said. “That’s bad enough, but there was one thing that really got me. Whoever killed Cristal went to the trouble of placing a book on her chest. It was that novel you and Ned talked about the last time we had dinner.”
“Portrait of a Lady,” I said.
“Right,” Zack said. “Debbie’s tough, but even she was taken aback at the cruelty of that gesture.”
My heart lurched. “The night we had dinner, Ned told me he’d given a copy of the book to a young friend who was determined to make something of her life. He said his friend was like the character Isabel Archer – too good for her world.”
I squeezed some more oil into my hand and began to rub the scarred area at the base of Zack’s spine. His upper body was powerful, but his lower spine was criss-crossed with scarring from botched surgeries that failed to fix what a drunk’s car had done to him forty-three years ago when he was coming home from baseball practice.
I smoothed oil on the raised tissue of his scars. “What was Cristal like?”
“To be honest,” he said. “I don’t know. When I saw the tape of her with Ned, I was really surprised. Not at the sex, but at the way she was with him: affectionate, attentive, the kind of young wife he must have remembered. With me, there was none of that.”