Verdict in Blood Read Online Free PDF

spritzed myself with White Linen, slipped on my coolest sundress, and revelled in feeling fresh. The pleasure was short-lived. By the time I got to the kitchen, I could feel the rivulets of sweat starting. In ten minutes, my sundress would be sticking to my back. Hilda was sitting at the kitchen table, cutting salmon sandwiches.
    I leaned over her shoulder. “Those look wonderful,” I said.
    “Angus thought so,” she said. “These are my second attempt. He ate the first plateful. Incidentally, he’s going to be gone this afternoon, too.”
    “Did he say where he was going?”
    “No, but he did he say he’d be home for dinner.”
    “That’s a good sign.”
    “Is something wrong with him, Joanne? He was uncharacteristically quiet when I saw him.”
    “He’s worried about Eli,” I said. “So am I. He ran away again yesterday. You’d already gone to Justine’s party when we got back from looking for him, so I didn’t have a chance to tell you. He showed up at Alex’s late last night.”
    “Is he all right?”
    “I don’t know.”
    Hilda gave me a searching look. “I gather you’d prefer that I not press you for details.”
    “It’s not that,” I said. “I just don’t know very much. At the moment, all we can do is be here if he needs us.” I smiled at her. “Now, it looks like you and I are on our own this afternoon. Anything special you’d like to do?”
    “I’m afraid we aren’t quite on our own, Joanne. While you were sleeping, I checked the message manager on my phone in Saskatoon.”
    I couldn’t help smiling. Hilda noticed. She lifted her hand in a halt gesture. “I know I said those machines were cold and impersonal and would erode even the small amount of civility we’re still clinging to, but they really are handy, aren’t they? Mine certainly proved useful today. I had a message from Eric Fedoruk. Do you remember my mentioning his name to Detective Hallam?”
    “I remember,” I said. The name had seemed familiar to me at the time, and it nagged at me still, but I couldn’t place it.
    “At any rate,” said Hilda, “I returned Mr. Fedoruk’s call. It turns out that he was Justine’s lawyer as well as her friend. We had a very curious conversation.” She frowned. “I’m still not quite sure what he wanted. He kept circling around the question of my relationship with Justine. For a man trained in the law, he was quite imprecise.”
    “Law schools aren’t exactly breeding grounds for clear expression,” I said.
    Hilda gave me a wry smile. “True enough,” she said. “But I had the sense that Mr. Fedoruk’s obfuscations were deliberate. My reading of the situation is that he was less concerned with giving information than getting it.”
    “You think he was on a fishing expedition?”
    “Exactly,” she said. “And I don’t like being baited. So, to stand your metaphor on its head, I reeled Mr. Fedoruk in. He’s coming here at two o’clock. I hope you don’t mind, Joanne. I know it’s a breach of etiquette to invite a stranger into a home in which one’s a guest.”
    I picked up a sandwich. “Hilda, you’re not a guest; you’re family. Besides, you’ve made me curious.”
    Hilda handed me a napkin. “Wyclif thought ‘curiouste indicated a disposition to inquire too minutely into a thing,’ ” she said, “but I have a premonition that it’s going to be impossible to inquire too minutely into the circumstances of Justine Blackwell’s death.”
    As soon as I opened the front door and saw Eric Fedoruk standing on the porch, I knew why his name had rung a bell. In the late seventies, Eric Fedoruk had played for the Toronto Maple Leafs. He was a prairie boy with a slapshot that could crack Plexiglas and a smile as wide and untroubled as a Saskatchewan summer sky. The man offering his hand to me was a boy no longer: his crewcut was greying and the athlete’s body had thickened with middle age, but as we introduced ourselves, it was obvious Eric Fedoruk’s