Thirty
Nadine reorganized the table of clues as she waited. There came a point in any investigation where she liked to sift through all the available data, and she was looking forward to doing it with Wes. He was smart, and his memory left her awestruck when she wasn’t being envious.
Wes came in, and she admired the clean lines of his body against the light in the doorway. He was just tall enough and broad enough and everything enough to make her want to leap over the table, but she would have to save those impulses until tonight. “Brent called,” he said. “No floor plans.”
“Damn.” That basement door would be the death of her.
He blew his breath out in frustration. “It has to be somewhere. The house isn’t that huge. I’m starting to wonder if we suffered a joint hallucination.” He walked over to the dumbwaiter and slid the door open. “No, we didn’t.”
Nadine shared his incredulity that they were being defeated by a door but did her best to put it aside. “Well, we can’t find the door, but maybe we can make some headway with the clues we’ve found so far.”
He came over to the table. “Where do you want to start?”
“Here.” Nadine pointed to the Abigail Spencer obit he’d found in Pieces of Silver . “This woman doesn’t seem to have any connection to Dot, so I put it aside.”
“There must be something. Otherwise, why is it there?”
“To mark the chapter, the same way Dot marked ‘Strange Jest’? Although I read through chapter thirteen twice, and it’s about a visit the main character takes with a friend. I can’t figure out the link.”
“It might not mean anything,” Wes said. “Dot’s organizational hierarchy is scattered at best.”
“True, although I feel there must be something about Abigail.” She shrugged. “I can’t figure it out, but maybe it’ll come clear later.”
They picked through their treasure for items with the most relevance. As well as the first letter they’d found from Allan, there was one from Dot to her husband with an intriguing postscript.
I promised I’d do it and I will. You know I’ve never broken a promise to you, love. Except about the cats, which of course I had never planned to keep.
“There’s the promise,” said Nadine. “The one she mentioned to Brent, but we don’t know what it’s about.”
They turned to the photo of Dot in the porcelain frame, and a quick search showed that Werner and Knapp had been a popular Ottawa photo studio until it closed twenty years ago, another victim of digital photography. It proved Dot had been in the capital, but that could be for a variety of reasons that had no bearing on their search.
Next were the highlighted obituaries. “What if she left these to taunt me personally?” asked Nadine. That would be so unfair, as she had nothing to do with obits now.
“I wouldn’t put it past her, but they might not be entirely targeted to you.” Wes held out one about a woman who collected fridge magnets. “One of Dot’s short stories features a similar character.” He went to Dot’s shelf and pulled out a book, which he passed to Nadine. “There’s also a story about a man despised by his entire family.” He tapped another obit. “Like Robert Giles here.”
“Dot was underlining one when we talked to her in the conservatory, and she told me I needed to look deeper into what made people come alive.” Nadine sat down with a thump. “Did she leave them as red herrings?”
“They could be, or she simply collected them for inspiration. I found a bunch with folders grouped in categories. The Computers folder from the 1980s was especially hilarious.”
She put the obits to the side. “Let’s assume they’re not relevant and move on.” After the Monica Olway blackmail story, the next set of clips were from the social pages, covering galas and events, which they had found along with news clippings about places ruined by infrastructure projects. “Not really a match to the gala stuff,” Nadine said, reading about a bridge that destroyed a small town.
“I noticed that too.” Wes looked thoughtful. “Some of them were federal projects, and Wilson was briefly the minister for the public works portfolio. He had access to a lot of information and decisions. Then there’s this guy.” He pointed at a man in the background of one shot.
The face was familiar. “Matt White?”
“Rumored patriarch of the country’s biggest crime organization, who masqueraded as an honest developer through the White Group for decades.”
“Damn.” She looked through the photos. “Here he is again. It looks like he’s in all these clips. These seem like projects he’d be involved in and would make a killing on. Construction. Development.”
“They do.” Wes pulled forward the last set, about professional and financial misconduct by government officials. “Here are clippings about people who ended up on the wrong side of the integrity commissioner and sometimes the law.”
“These articles are all from the Herald ,” she said. “Written by a staff reporter.”
“Can you find out who wrote them?” he asked.
Nadine checked the dates and shook her head. “Our online platform would list the writer internally, but these are from before it was implemented.”
That started a flurry of research and phone calls until they’d found the common denominator. At one point, all those people had worked for or with John Wilson and been involved in large-scale infrastructure projects. Many of them had died (of natural causes, Nadine was relieved to note), and the rest they couldn’t find contact information for.
“That’s not enough,” said Nadine. “Politics is a small world, and it’s natural they’ll have worked with him or adjacent to him and those projects. He does seem to find people with flexible views of the law and process who have a bad habit of getting caught though.”
“Fall guys?” asked Wes. “Fall people?”
“Maybe.”
They debated various theories to no avail.
Nadine was the one who summed it up. “We have a bunch of obits Dot used for research and one, Abigail Spencer, that might be relevant, but we can’t find anything unusual. We have a promise from Dot to Allan about a secret that is almost certainly about telling the truth about what inspired Pieces of Silver .”
“I think we can confidently say John Wilson is involved, that he’s the inspiration for James Walton, the antagonist in Pieces , which fits with what we learned from Monica Olway, who he claims tried to blackmail him, and anecdotally from his ministerial portfolio. We also know organized crime might be involved via Matt White, and extrapolating from that, there might be some shadiness in how contracts were handed out or decisions made, which might also explain those vacations Wilson went on.”
“I wish Monica would go on the record.” Nadine rolled her shoulders, feeling the ache in her neck. “We still don’t know exactly what happened, by whom, or Dot’s involvement, and most of our evidence is a bunch of clips that would mean nothing if they hadn’t been collected together.”
“At least we know it’s Wilson we’re building a case against, but we need more,” Wes agreed. Then he smiled. “I’m racking up those points.”
“Great,” said Nadine without enthusiasm.
***
The late afternoon rain continued down in torrents, making it too wet for Wes to go for a brisk outside walk while Nadine cooked dinner. However, he had energy that needed to be burned off after their discussion, so he wandered through the conservatory, deadheading the occasional flower.
It had been a fantastic day. They were getting somewhere. It made him want to dance and hug Erma, that terrible animal, who had come out to the conservatory and was looking at the koi pond with a predatory eye.
He checked his phone to see a message from Amy. All good here, so don’t worry.
Wes took a step back as a thought occurred to him. Although he felt bad about leaving Amy to deal with her, he didn’t feel bad about leaving his mother. It was as if Dot’s mansion was a Faraday cage shielding him from Ma, because apart from sending a daily text that went unanswered, he’d barely thought about her since he’d arrived. Had the distance given him a perspective he’d been unable to gain living in her house? Or had Nadine’s quiet outsider sympathy told him what he knew deep down but had been unable to face—that the relationship with his mother was unsustainable?
Perhaps.
To distract himself, he texted Caleb to see what he was up to.
The reply came quick. So that wedding therapist.
Wes had almost forgotten he’d sent the link. Caleb hadn’t mentioned it until now. Did you call her?
Not yet. What if it’s not the wedding? What if it’s us?
This was big. Eager to escape his own problems, Wes called, and Caleb picked up. “Talk to me,” Wes said. “What’s going on?”
“It’s like, this is supposed to be for the rest of our lives, right?”
“Yes.” This was a safe answer.
“But I can’t tell the future.”
“Are you worried about something in particular?” Spying a rattan armchair, Wes sat down, brushing aside the parlor palm leaves draped over the mossy arm.
“Napkins. Isabel’s got three pinks that look freaking identical to me, and I don’t care because they’re napkins, but when I say that, she gets on my case about emotional labor and mental load or something like that. All I said was to pick one because they all look the same and I don’t care! And any time I do care, she says my idea is ridiculous.”
“Like what?”
“Like a taco truck for after midnight.”
Wes laughed. “That would be amazing.”
“Isabel wants some waffle wall thing. Says tacos will wreck the aesthetic. I get she’s doing most of the planning, but that’s because I’m in Calgary. It’s not like I don’t want to help.”
Feeling as if this was slightly above his pay grade, Wes trod carefully. “What else?”
There was a long silence. “I thought this was supposed to be our day, you know? Together. But she could stuff any dude in a tux and stand him at the altar, and it wouldn’t matter as long as the wedding favors are perfect. I don’t see the point in those, by the way. That was another fight.”
Wes knew this wasn’t true because he’d known Isabel for years. However, telling Caleb that wasn’t going to calm him down much. “Have you told her?”
“How can I? She’s so stressed. She’ll cry.”
“Isabel would be more upset to know you’ve been hiding this,” said Wes, settling into fixing mode.
“I guess. Goddammit. I should be able to talk to my own fiancée.” Caleb blew out his breath so hard that Wes pulled the phone away from his ear. “What if she doesn’t listen?”
“Then you have bigger problems than a waffle wall.”
“I only want to be with her, man. I don’t need all this stuff.”
Wes thought. “Does she?”
“What do you mean?”
“Did you assume she wanted a big wedding, or did she assume you wanted one, so she’s trying to make you happy?” Caleb loved a party, after all, and Wes never had the sense that Isabel liked being the center of attention.
“Don’t all women want a wedding like that?” Caleb sounded puzzled.
“Isabel isn’t all women,” Wes reminded him.
“I don’t know,” said Caleb thoughtfully. “I guess we didn’t talk about it? Like, I proposed, and we were happy and stuff, but we didn’t talk details. We went to Mike’s wedding around then, and we were talking about how cool it was, I remember that. It was on a boat, huge blowout.”
“Maybe you should talk to her.”
“It’ll probably pass. I’ll deal.” He sighed, and Wes could almost see him shake it off. “Enough of me. How’s your investigation going? How’s Nadine?” He drew the name out like he did when they were teenagers and Caleb was ragging on him about his crushes.
He couldn’t help smiling. “She’s good. Easy to work with.”
“No problems from the other night?”
“We’re kind of sleeping together now.” When Caleb made a humming noise, Wes went on alert. “What?”
“Be careful, okay, man?”
He stiffened. “Careful how?”
“You don’t usually do casual.”
“There’s a first time for everything.”
“There is, but is this it? How are you going to mesh your need to get in there and be Mr. Fix-It for everyone’s lives with letting things just happen? Casual means no feelings .”
“It’s called caring for others, and I can do both.”
Caleb laughed as if genuinely amused. “Are you serious? You can’t move out from your mom’s place because you’re worried she’ll be upset. There’s caring, and there’s self-sacrifice.”
Wes wanted to argue, but Caleb had known him for years and was only echoing what Amy had also said.
“Wes?” asked Caleb.
“That doesn’t have anything to do with Nadine.”
“You seriously don’t see it? How you put everyone over yourself and how that’s not the best way to start a casual thing with a woman you actually might like?”
“I can handle this.”
“Sure, bud. How about I think about talking to Isabel and you think about what you’re doing with Nadine?”
“Deal.”
They disconnected as Nadine’s voice came from the conservatory entrance. “Wes? It’s dinner.”
“Coming.”
She waited for him, looking adorable with an apron wrapped around her clothes and her hair a tousled mop. “I made dal,” she said. “It’s my brother’s girlfriend’s recipe.”
That explained the bright yellow stains on her apron. Turmeric. “Sounds good.”
He offered her the bowl of chopped garden cilantro, and she waved it away. “It tastes like soap. I don’t like it.”
“Then why did you prepare it?”
“In case you wanted it.” She handed him the salt and smiled at him. His heart jumped. “Who were you talking to earlier?”
“My friend Caleb.”
“The one who’s getting married.”
He’d mentioned that briefly while they were working in the attic one day. He didn’t know why her remembering that felt like a big deal, especially since she was a reporter and was good with names, but it did. He turned the conversation to Dot, who even in death retained main character status. “You’re going to talk to Irina tomorrow?” he asked, filling their bowls with salad.
“I’m going to ask her about Monica’s story,” she said.
“The Herald still doesn’t know what you’re doing here, do they?”
She shook her head. “To them, I’m relaxing on vacation.”
“The deal we had with Dot was that we would wait until she’s gone,” said Wes. “We’re free to do what we want with the story now.”
“We don’t have a story,” she reminded him. “We have some suppositions that make a good hypothesis and no proof that’s good enough to accuse a senator of being in the pay of organized crime.”
“It’s a strong hypothesis.” To Wes, it was clear as day. “I could talk to one of my editors at this point.”
She smiled at him. “We have very different ways of working. No, I want to wait until there’s something more solid.”
A cat jumping on the table interrupted their conversation, and once Octavia had been shooed off, they started talking about John Wilson, reexamining what they had but finding no new conclusions.
Wes busied himself with the dishes while Nadine took a turn in the conservatory. She was a clean-as-you-go type of cook, and while that wasn’t his own inclination, he’d started doing the same to even out the number of dishes they each had. It seemed unfair that on his washing nights, he had half the amount while she was stuck cleaning everything he touched on hers.
Was this fixing things? Or a usual level of care? He cursed Caleb for resurfacing these thoughts.
As he scrubbed, he thought about the next day. It made sense that Nadine wasn’t comfortable talking to her editor until there was something firm, given she was on thin ice thanks to the Dot Voline obituary. She would want to wait until everything was in place.
However, for Wes, it was a good time to loop in an editor. The Spear ’s philosophy was to acknowledge that a digital platform was a benefit. They had been the first in the country to start posting news stories blog-style as updates came. This way, he could give them a heads-up—no editor enjoyed being presented with a fait accompli—and get back on the radar as someone who could handle the big stories.
His goal was to land on the I-team, so it would be best to go straight to Jason. Although Rebecca would be upset to be left out of the loop and furious if she found out he was working on vacation, Wes thought the I-team editor would be more open to a story of a senator’s malfeasance. The story had become bigger than Dot. Wes could broaden it out with a deeper look at Wilson’s career and questions about corruption in the political system. He could almost see the all-employee email now. We’re pleased to announce Wes Chen will be taking a permanent role with our award-winning investigative team.
Mind you, he’d make it known this was a joint investigation with the Herald . Jason might not like that, but fair was fair. Satisfied, he finished the dishes.