“And Eleanor Drummond witnessed the document naming Miranda executrix?”
“Executor. Yeah, and since Griffin knew he was going to die, he must have known Eleanor would be his executioner. That’s strange enough. But why bring Miranda into it? And why wouldn’t Eleanor intercept the request? What could she gain from Miranda’s involvement? That’s as much a mystery as why Griffin would ask in the first place.”
“And bribe her with bequests she could hardly refuse …”
“She’s not his beneficiary.”
“Well, whoever is, is in for a lot of money, I guess. I’m going to clean up here. It’s getting late.”
“Sure,” he said, prodding at Griffin’s effects lying inside a plastic bag near his head. He took a wallet out, opened it, and removed a folded piece of yellow paper. “I knew there would be one of these here. The guy left notes all over the place.”
He read aloud, his voice sepulchral in the sterile chamber. “‘A farmer in Waterloo County once showed me a peculiar phenomenon. We were standing in his barnyard near a cow and her newborn calf. He walked over and stood between them, edging the calf away from its mother. The cow became visibly anxious as the distance increased, and in spite of being wary she came trudging forward in her calf’s direction. The farmer then lifted the calf off the ground, cradling it with one arm under its rump and the other under its neck. He lifted it maybe six inches. The cow suddenly stopped and gazed around in bewilderment. She could no longer recognize her own calf; she had lost it. As soon as the farmer set the calf’s feet on the ground, the cow saw it again, even though it was still in the farmer’s embrace. Several times he lifted it a few inches off the ground and each time the mother became confused by its disappearance. The point is, the cow had no concept of her calf. Her maternal instinct was directed toward a particular set of stimuli. When one of these was removed, namely that her calf was connected to the ground, the set collapsed. She could not extrapolate from the remaining stimuli.’
“I can’t get any sense who he’s addressing. Whom. He owned a bunch of feed mills. I suppose he knew farmers. I guess he even owned a couple of farms up near where Miranda’s from. Can’t see him in a barnyard, though. He strikes me as urban to the core. Anyway, there’s more.
“‘Bees are remarkable navigators. They travel far afield in random flight and yet like most foragers they return home by the most direct route possible. This in itself suggests mental activity no less astonishing than the migration of monarch butterflies to the place of their ancestral origins in Mexico. The bee flies home from three miles away with unerring efficiency. Within the hive she conducts a sound and motion seminar, instructing fellow workers on the distance and direction to a particular nectar trove. They travel there directly, following the path of the explorer’s return flight. Communication precipitates action. In fact, it is only by their action that we know communication has taken place. Now, if the returning bee were to be cleaned of pollen and nectar when she reenters the hive, or lost her load along the way, the same patterns of sound and motion would elicit no response from her peers. When one of the key factors is missing from the seminar, worker attention is absent. They cannot extrapolate from those factors remaining that it is in their interest to respond. Despite reinforcement for previous response to similar stimuli, conceptualization necessary for them to take action, even if their survival is dependent upon that action, is beyond them.’
“The folksiness is almost attractive. It’s as if he’s trying to create a speaking voice with a personality that maybe he can co-opt as his own. This is less about thinking than about inventing a personality for himself as a thinker.”
“Morgan,” Ellen said.
“Yeah?”
“It’s time to go home, love.”
“Yeah.”
“You want a lift?”
“Thanks.”
“To my place?”
“Yeah.”
“My place?”
“Sure.”
7
Rainbow Trout
Miranda dropped the girl off at a well-appointed house in Wychwood Park, the most exclusive but not the most expensive residential enclave in the city, a gathering of interesting houses nestled in a small ravine west of Rosedale that was originally conceived as a refuge for successful artists and their wealthy patrons. She made arrangements with the housekeeper to call back in the morning and gave the girl a warm hug in acknowledgement of the dark secrets they shared, then drove home. Somehow she would find provision for the girl in the will. In her mother’s lover’s estate there were convolutions where the welfare of a young girl could be sustained if the executor was sufficiently canny. Miranda knew that, and she suspected Eleanor Drummond knew it, as well. She felt quite certain, in fact, that she had been declared, by the curious deployment of circumstances, the girl’s unofficial guardian.
When Miranda got to Isabella Street, it was almost midnight. It was too late to check the car in at head-quarters. She parked in front of her building. Since it was a police vehicle, she didn’t anticipate a ticket, even though overnight parking was prohibited. It didn’t really matter; it had been a long day.
Miranda closed the door of her apartment behind her and felt a sense of relief. She had left the computer on all day, and she cranked it up, half expecting to find another message from kumonryu.ca, but there was only junk. Miranda deleted everything from the in box except Robert Griffin’s directive. Tomorrow she would have the tech people check it out, and she would call the fish man in North York, and get him on the case. She could delegate responsibilities; she had the authority and she had the funds.
She couldn’t remember whether she had eaten dinner or not. It was a hot evening, the last of Indian summer, and before she was completely undressed she wandered back into the kitchen, took a yogourt container out of the fridge, and scooped a few big spoonfuls into her mouth. Then she decided she wasn’t hungry anymore, resealed the plastic container, and put it back. Feeling the moral necessity for proper nutrition, she reached into a cupboard, lifted out a large jar of peanut butter, and ladled some into her mouth with a tablespoon. After she replaced the jar in the cupboard, she meandered back into the bathroom, pleased with her slovenly rebellion. Looking at herself in the mirror, with her mouth clacking from the peanut butter, she grinned. “I know better. I really do.”
With the ambient light of the city on a hot night washing through her apartment, Miranda left the bathroom, lay down naked on her bed, and covered herself with a sheet. She felt as if she were in an undersea grotto. On her back, with her head low on a pillow, her body fully extended, arms at her sides, hands folded in repose across her abdomen, she let her eyes wander through the depths of the bedroom, the walls wavering and indistinct, details obscure. Then, quite unafraid, she grasped the sheet and drew it aside so that she could lie in exact emulation of the body of the woman at the morgue. Eyes no longer moving, she lay perfectly still except for the tidal motion of her chest, rising and falling, perfectly quiet apart from the muffled throb of her heart.
Miranda was aware of what she was doing. It didn’t seem morbid but strangely comforting, as if she were connecting to another human being in an authentic way. She was naked and vulnerable, but there was no dread, only a sense of relief, as if she had discovered something about herself that couldn’t be expressed in words or images but was captured in a feeling that seemed to
