“No. But I thought I’d get your permission anyway.”

“You can just reorder the autopsy by yourself?”

“I have to ask a coroner, but it’s fairly straightforward.”

“Then why come to me? Why even tell me? Do you want my blessing or something?”

Hazel looked at a vase of flowers on the hall table. “I guess so.”

“Just do what you have to do,” Cathy said angrily.

Hazel went to the door and left it open as she descended the steps into the garden. It smelled like warm grass in the day’s heat. Cathy Wiest called to her, and Hazel turned around in the riot of flowers. Cathy’s face was burning. “How will I know when all of this is going to be over?” she said.

“The investigation?”

“No, Hazel.” She spread her arms. “This.”

] 4 [

Evening

Hazel was almost used to the renewed pleasure of eating dinner at her own table, going to sleep in her own bed, in her own house, under her own star-filled window. The time spent recuperating in her ex’s basement had been almost as difficult as the back pain that had caused her to seek his aid. Now the back pain that had plagued her for years was mostly gone. With its absence, and the fact that she hadn’t had a Percocet since the end of May, she felt renewed. Women her age weren’t supposed to have renaissances, but here she was having one. Maybe the timing of Ray Greene’s return to Port Dundas was supposed to be part of this rebirth of hers? Maybe she was meant to get out now. Actually retire. Get a hobby. Take care of her mother.

Hobby, she thought, and she laughed meanly under her breath.

She and her mother had settled back into what passed for their domestic reality quite quickly, and after escaping from an invalid’s prison at her ex’s house, Hazel began to find it much easier being with her mother. At first she chalked it up to relief at being out of Andrew and Glynnis’s basement, but then she realized it was something else. Her mother was finally slowing down. The recent deaths of a couple of her close friends and some health troubles of her own were weighing on her. Which, Hazel thought, shouldn’t come as a surprise. Emily would be eighty-eight in three weeks. Her time was coming. But it was still hard to believe that this locomotive of a woman was finally slowing down. She still needled Hazel endlessly, but Hazel was beginning to think her heart wasn’t in it.

“I will kill anyone who tries to throw me a birthday party this year,” she grumbled one night to Hazel over a dinner of grilled cheese sandwiches. “Or a cake with any number of candles on it. I don’t want my wattle catching fire.”

“Why don’t I just make you dinner at home?”

“You’re going to cook for me? A special dinner?”

“I can do more than grilled cheese or hangar steak, Mother. I cooked for my husband … on and off … for thirty-six years.”

“Your infrequency of cooking probably prolonged your marriage. We could order in if you’d rather.”

“I don’t rather, but it’s your call.”

Hazel could tell that her mother didn’t actually have a preference. She wasn’t sure her mother cared about much these days, and although Emily was making an attempt to seem her old self, it wasn’t particularly convincing. It wasn’t even a year since a murder spree had come to its climax under this very roof. A mild-mannered psychotic named Simon Mallick had been crossing the country killing the terminally ill, seemingly at their invitation. He got all the way to this house and the mild-manneredness had worn off him by then: he staved in the head of one of Emily’s oldest friends, Clara Winchester. It was no wonder Emily hadn’t looked particularly well since they’d come back to this house. But really, Hazel had to admit to herself, her mother looked even worse than a woman who’d been through what she’d been through.

Emily was sleeping in front of the television when Hazel got in from Kehoe Glenn at six o’clock on Tuesday night. The kitchen was dark: nothing had been readied for supper. She decided to let her mother sleep and she cracked four eggs into a bowl and mixed them with a dash of cream and nutmeg. She fried onions and mushrooms in butter and then poured the egg mixture in. The smell of onions woke her mother and Emily shuffled into the kitchen looking bleary. “Did you turn off the TV?” she asked.

“It’s past six, you know. You were asleep.”

“No I wasn’t.”

“I just got in, Mum. You were snoring.”

Emily sat down at the kitchen table, hovering over a chair before dropping into it. “I didn’t hear you come in.”

Hazel dished the meal out onto two small plates and put some bread in the toaster. Her mother refused a slice and picked at the eggs. “I think maybe we should go see Dr. Pass, Mum. You’re flat, you know? Maybe he can suggest some vitamins.”

“There’s nothing wrong with me that can’t be fixed by a facelift and a bottle of whiskey.”

“I’m serious.” Hazel slid half her mother’s supper off onto her own plate, like she used to with the girls. The toast popped up and she dropped two dry pieces into the basket on the table. “Finish what’s on your plate and you can be done.”

“Don’t talk to me like I’m an invalid,” Emily said, and she pushed the meal away.

Hazel took both of their plates to the sink and washed them. Perhaps her grief over what had happened here was the reason for her lethargy, but Hazel suspected it was deeper than that. Her colour was wrong. “Listen,” she said, “we don’t have to stay here, you know. I can sell the place, we could get an apartment in town. This place is too big for us, anyway.”

“You think I should be in a home.”

“I don’t.”

Emily humphed and picked at a piece of toast in the basket. “Maybe we should both be in a home.”

“Our own home, Mum. Whether it’s here or somewhere else, but I don’t think either of us has to be alone. God knows if the home for spry annoyances would take you now, anyway. With the spring going out of your step and all.”

“I’ll grant you that my step is more spongy than springy these days, Hazel. But so will yours be when you’re eighty-seven. Just promise me the day before you want to put me in a home you’ll leave me alone in the house for an hour.”

“So you can gravely, but not mortally, wound yourself with a firearm you won’t be able to lift all the way to your head, Mother? Don’t worry, I’ll shoot you first if it comes to that.”

Finally, her mother smiled. “You were always such a romantic when you were a girl, Hazel. You so rarely show that side of yourself these days.”

The following morning, as soon as she walked into the station house, Wingate flagged her down. “Jack Deacon’s on the phone. All excited about stinging insects.”

“Excellent,” she said. “Ask Melanie to patch him through to the thingy.” She hung her coat on its hook. “Aren’t you leaving today?” The phone rang a moment later and she punched the speaker button.

“Thursday,” Wingate said.

“Thursday?” Deacon repeated in the speaker.

“James is taking his first vacation since arriving in Westmuir. Nine months without so much as a long weekend.”

“I don’t like to relax,” James said.

“There’s more than one way to die,” said Deacon.

Hazel got to the point. “What d’you have for me, Doctor?”

“Well, it turns out there are nocturnal wasps, Detective Inspector. But they don’t live in North America.”

“I see.”

“However, there’s no saying what might happen to someone who steps on a nest in the dark. Sundown’s almost at ten right now, and wasps do burrow. He could have disturbed something.”

“And then been stung only twice? And on the face?”

“Anything is possible. This is nature we’re talking about.”

Hazel sighed. “All right. I was hoping for more, but never mind.” She stole a glance at Wingate, who was squinting with one eye. “We better get Harvey Tilberg.”