Читать книгу Speak Ill of the Dead - Mary Jane Maffini - Страница 10
ОглавлениеYes, this is Alvin Ferguson. Yes, I will accept the charges.” Alvin held his hand over the receiver and shot me a meaningful look. “It’s my mother, it’s quite personal. Would you mind waiting outside for a couple of minutes?”
It was Monday morning at ten, and I was still standing in the doorway of Justice for Victims, clutching my muffin and coffee. I opened my mouth just as Alvin reached over and closed the door.
I sat on the stair sipping my coffee, nibbling my muffin and listing all of the things I would like to do to Alvin. I’d finished the coffee, the muffin and the list, and was getting up to go back in to insert the telephone somewhere painful, when I heard the “excuse me.” It was What’s-his-name.
“Oh, hello, um…” I said.
“Ted. Ted Beamish. You remember, I ran into you the other day outside the Parole Board Office.”
“Right.”
“We talked about having a coffee together sometime when we ran into each other.”
Well, he had talked about it.
“I saw on the news that you and Robin Findlay were there right at the scene of the Mitzi Brochu murder. That must have been right after we bumped into each other. I’m sure you must have been very disturbed by it.”
“You bet.”
“So I didn’t like to call you right after the…um, incident, but I thought I might try today. It’s a new week and…” A band of sweat formed on his upper lip.
I might as well have coffee with the guy, I thought, since there was no point at all in strangling Alvin with a witness present.
“Sure, why not?”
“How about the Mayflower?”
As we settled into our booth, I wondered what we would find to talk about. It doesn’t bother me to sit there and not say anything, but it seems to make other people a bit edgy.
I ordered coffee and sat there.
Ted Beamish ordered carrot cake with his coffee and started talking.
“I had a lot of leave accumulated so I thought I’d take today off and get a few errands done,” he said.
“I’m an errand?”
The flush raced up his face.
“Of course not. It’s just I had some free time and I was on Elgin Street and I thought I’d drop in and see if you weren’t too busy to have coffee. To tell you the truth, you didn’t look too busy.”
“You mean because I was sitting on the stairs? They’re my favourite place to sit and contemplate when I have a tough problem.”
This seemed more reasonable than the truth, that I had been turfed out by the office help who needed to discuss an urgent and private problem with its mother.
“Do you have a tough problem now?”
I thought of Robin and Benning and Alvin.
“Yes,” I said, “several.”
“That’s interesting. The stairs, I mean.”
“Works for me,” I said, although I never intended to sit on them again.
“Tell me about Justice for Victims,” he said. “I heard you set it up yourself.”
“Right.”
He wasn’t one to give up, and he was nudging about my favourite subject. It was possible I was going to be lured into conversation after all.
“What do you do?”
“Well,” I said, feeling my motor turn on, “victims are the forgotten players in our legal processes. I’m running an advocacy agency for them. Justice for Victims represents the interests of victims in dealing with various parts of the government and the judicial system. We lobby for or against proposed legislation which we think will affect victims. For instance, changes to the Young Offenders Act. We offer support for the victim in dealing with the system. Often a victim is victimized all over again by the time a trial or a procedure is over. Or they’re terrified when a criminal is about to get paroled back into their community. They don’t know what to do, they don’t know what their rights are.”
“Sounds great to me.” He gestured to the waitress for a refill. “How do you get funded?”
He’d hit the sore spot.
“We’re a membership organization. Anyone with an interest in justice and victims can join for a small fee. I’ll get you an application form,” I grinned. “You’ll get a newsletter out of it, and sense of doing something good. And I get a constituency to mount letter writing campaigns to the feds when necessary. I ask for donations, too.”
“And you can make a living this way?”
“More or less. We get grants from various levels of government and personal and corporate donations. I supplement with a bit of legal work on the side, and I get asked to participate in task forces looking at the victim perspective.”
I didn’t tell him my expenses were minimal to run Justice for Victims. The office was sub-let from the association next door. Alvin came subsidized, although not quite subsidized enough. I also didn’t mention I had to top up my own living expenses, not that they were high, out of Paul’s estate. Still it was worth it as far as I was concerned.
“I can see why you would be so committed to victims’ rights, after what happened to Paul. And that guy getting away with it.”
I didn’t let myself think about this too often. The wounds were still there. Paul, brilliant and funny, would have been thirty-four in three weeks if a drunken lout hadn’t polished off a two-four of beer, then lurched onto the road with his RX-7 and mangled Paul’s little Toyota. It had taken three hours to cut his body from the wreckage. Longer than his killer served.
“One year suspended sentence. Gotta give the guy a chance. After all, he never killed anyone before.” My hands were choking my coffee mug as I talked. Choking the drunk driver, choking the judge.
“Tough on you.”
I wanted to change the subject. I wasn’t in the habit of discussing just how tough it was.
“Right,” I said, “so what else are you going to do on your day off?”
“I’m treating this like a Saturday, so I’m doing Saturday stuff,” he said. “Drop over to the market and get a few things, go to the library and stock up, see how the tulips are coming up…”
Those damn tulips again.
“…maybe go to a movie tonight.”
He’d been looking into his empty coffee cup, but now he flicked a glance at me.
“I don’t suppose you’d feel like a movie tonight.”
“I’m not ready to see other people yet. Sorry.”
This time the flush surged up past his hairline and down through his shirt collar. I could have sworn his hands got pink.
“Oh, of course not,” he said, “I realize that. Just talking about a couple of people watching a movie.”
“Don’t mind me, I’m being a jerk,” I said. “I’ve got a lot on my mind and it’s making me surly.”
I noticed he didn’t leap to deny this.
“This thing with Mitzi Brochu has thrown me. You remember Robin, I guess.”
“Of course,” he said. “I remember seeing the two of you together a lot at law school.
“Well, she’s just devastated by the whole thing and doesn’t seem to be getting over it, so that’s a strain. The police have been complete creeps about it.”
“Hmm.”
“So the point is, once life gets back to normal and I’m not such a jerk, sure, let’s get together and go to a movie. Maybe Robin could come too.”
That might be just what she needed, I thought to myself. And this little guy might be the perfect match for her. Pleasant enough. Appreciates tulips. Probably likes cats too. Maybe a movie with a single man would be enough to get Robin to climb out of bed and comb her hair.
“I’ll get your number,” I said, “and let you know when would be a good time.”
He wasn’t the type to insist on paying the bill. He got a point from me for that.
“I’ll be off to the library,” he said as we stepped out of the Mayflower and into the very bright sun.
“I’ve got some stuff to check out. Let’s walk over to together,” I said. Death Row reprieve for Alvin.
“Sure.”
He was the kind of person you could be comfortable with, without talking. I liked that.
As we reached the corner of Elgin and Laurier West, across the street in Confederation park, 15,000 tulips exploded into view. He stopped to look. Robin would have too. This could be a perfect match.
We jostled by the camera-toting tourists enjoying the Festival of Spring. By my calculations, there was a tourist for every tulip.
“So,” I said, while we raced the light across Elgin, “did I ever tell how I feel about the parole system?”
“Let’s not ruin a perfect morning.”
We said good-bye inside the library. I galloped up the stairs to reference and he headed for fiction. He was planning to do the W’s. Wodehouse. Westlake. Wright. Wolfe.
I was planning to do the W’s too. Wendtz.
There was only one Rudy Wendtz in the city directory. He had an address on the Queen Elizabeth Driveway and his employment was listed as prmtr. After a while, I figured out this must mean promoter. But what did promoter mean?
I let my fingers do the walking and sure enough, in the yellow pages under Promotional Services, I found “Events by Wendtz”.
What kind of events, I wondered, give you the kind of income you need to live at that address on the Queen Elizabeth Driveway?
* * *
Back in the office, there was no sign of Alvin. With luck, he’d caught the first flight back to Sydney to resolve the family crisis.
Wherever he was, I had free access to the phone. I checked in with the Findlays. Robin was in bed.
“Perhaps when Brooke gets here…” Mrs. Findlay let her sad, flat voice trail off. “It’ll be good to see her.”
“Well, yes,” I said, “especially after her long walk.”
Mrs. Findlay always pretends she doesn’t hear my Brooke comments.
“And you too, will you be here tonight?”
“Count on it,” I said.
“Oh, that’s good. Robin has been finding the visits from the police very upsetting. Wait a minute, here she is. She says she wants to talk to you. Are you sure you should be out of bed, dear? Dr. Beaver says…”
“What police? What visits?” I shouted into the receiver. But no response.
“Camilla?” Robin sounded like an exhausted mouse. “I think they’re going to arrest me.”
* * *
She looked like hell when I shot through her front door twenty minutes later. In sharp contrast to the perky, bright, blue flowers marching across every free inch of the Findlays’ kitchen, Robin had definite grey undertones. She was wearing an old United Way campaign tee-shirt with tea stains down the front, grey jogging pants with a hole in the knee and pink pig slippers. Deep half-circles were gouged under her eyes. Her blonde curls hung in greasy strands. She clutched a china cup of camomile tea, and her knuckles were white.
Why? I asked myself. I’d seen the same body, minutes afterward. Why was she so psyched out? Not that it wasn’t distressing. Not that you wouldn’t have nightmares. I still jerked awake in the night with Mitzi’s dead eyes winking at me. But I wasn’t reduced to a psychiatric case. Logic told me that stable, sensible, unimaginative, dependable old Robin should have been in the same state I was. After all, it wasn’t someone she loved or even someone she knew as far as I could tell. I knew it could be explained, and I knew Robin was keeping something from the people who loved her. I wanted to grab Robin and shake the truth out of her.
So instead I said, “You look like roadkill.”
It was intended to make her laugh. But all it got was a little nod of agreement.
“I know,” she said.
“More coffee, Camilla?”
“No thanks, Mr. Findlay,” I said, watching him wipe his hairy hands on his blue and white checked apron. I tried to remember if I’d ever seen Mr. Findlay without an apron.
“A little lemon coffee cake?”
He slid the lemon coffee cake towards us on small blue-rimmed plates. Forks and blue napkins arrived on the table seconds later.
Mr. Findlay’s coffee cake is not the sort of thing I’m ever going to turn down. I was through mine in a flash. Mr. Findlay had replaced the first piece while both of us watched Robin fiddle with her little plate, never even touching the fork. Her nails were bitten to the quick.
I took a deep breath.
“Tell me what the police asked you.”
Mr. Findlay scuttled from the room.
She looked at me with unfocused eyes.
“A lot of things.”
“Like what?”
“What was I doing there, did I know her, was I angry with her, did I kill her.”
I nodded. I understood why the police would ask that sort of thing. Of course, they didn’t know Robin like I did. You couldn’t blame them for seeing guilt in Robin’s refusal to say why she went to see Mitzi Brochu that afternoon.
“It was awful,” said Robin. Whether she meant finding Mitzi or being grilled by the police was unclear.
“Who questioned you?”
“I don’t remember his name. But he came here to my parents’ house and he badgered and badgered. He thinks I killed her. I know it.” She bit her lip.
“Was it the retriever or the rodent?”
A tiny flicker of Robin’s old smile twitched.
“It was the ratty-looking one. He kept trying to trick me.”
Mombourquette. I shivered. I hated the thought of his rodential mind. And even more the idea of him invading the Findlays’ blue-flowered territory, trying to trap Robin for a murder she could never have committed.
“They’ll be under pressure from the media to get an arrest. I was there with the body. Covered with blood.”
She caught me by surprise. The old Robin spoke for just a minute before disappearing back into the sedative-induced mental mire.
“You’d better get a good defense lawyer. You don’t even need to talk to them without a lawyer present. You know that.”
She half-smiled.
“You’re a good lawyer.”
“I mean a defense lawyer. One of the big ones.”
“I want you.”
Robin had always been stubborn, even from the first day when we met in kindergarten and she wanted the red crayon. Some people might have interpreted her collapse as wimpiness, but I knew it was just another way of being obstinate.
“I don’t get people off,” I said, “I try to keep them in jail. This is not the right attitude for your case.”
“I don’t care.”
“Well, if you don’t care about yourself and your chances, do you care about your parents? And your sister? They’ll want you to have the best.”
I had felt the parental presence of the Findlays throughout the conversation. I hoped they would rush in to offer reinforcement, but it was just Robin and me, locked in a struggle of wills.
“You or nobody,” she said, with that little smile.
“Shit.” But I knew I was hooked. She had gotten the red crayon, too, way back in kindergarten. I’d backed right off because I was so happy to have a new friend with blonde curly hair and eyes like cornflowers. Only then did she share it with me.
I knew why she wanted me. In practical terms, I was just as good as the next guy. My five years in criminal law before starting up Justice for Victims gave me the tools I’d need to mount a competent and spirited defense. But more than that, I was the only lawyer around who loved Robin and would do damned near anything to make sure she was all right.
Having won her point, Robin closed her cornflower eyes. Her smile faded. So did her colour. I didn’t think she could get any paler, but I was wrong.
“I have to go back to bed now.”
As I helped her up the stairs to her bedroom, I tried again. “You’ll have to tell me why you were there, if you expect me to help.”
“Not now,” she said, as she slipped between the pink sheets with the white ruffles, looking like a sallow stranger in this familiar room. “Not yet.”
Mr. Findlay was waiting for me, with what looked like tears in his eyes, when I got down stairs.
“She’s asleep already,” I told him.
“Thank you for taking her case. We hoped you would.”
I didn’t have the heart to tell him it wasn’t the best thing at all. That you get what you pay for. In this case, the fee would be nothing, and the defense lawyer would be blinded by affection, and someone who usually played for the other side.
Mrs. Findlay was staring at the television as someone’s previously unknown illegitimate child inserted herself as a new character on Another World. She didn’t hear me say goodbye. “It will all work out,” Mr. Findlay called out to me, as I climbed into my car.
* * *
“That’s right. Wendtz,” I said to Conn McCracken when I reached him by phone that afternoon. “Rudy Wendtz.”
“What about him?”
“Do you realize he was Mitzi Brochu’s boyfriend?”
“Your sister has an unlisted telephone number. Do you realize that?”
“Yes, I do.”
“She’s a bit hard to locate.”
“I suppose she is.”
“I was trying to get in touch with her soon.”
“So, this Rudy Wendtz, you talked to him?” I asked.
“I can’t seem to remember. I got a lot on my mind.”
“I think I have that number somewhere.”
“Oh yeah, right,” he said. “Wendtz. It’s all coming back to me now.”
“My sources tell me he and La Belle Mitzi had a major battle the night before she died.”
McCracken coughed.
“Right,” I said, spitting out Alexa’s number.
“The guy’s a vampire,” said McCracken, “just like the victim. Even looked a bit like her.”
“What about the fight?”
“What about it?”
“Check the statistics, Detective. Eighty percent of women who are murdered are murdered by their significant others.”
“Coincidentally, a substantial portion of killers turn out to be the person who reported the murder.”
“That would be me, in this case. Bring on the cuffs.”
“Course, we don’t know, maybe you ducked in, did the deed, ducked out again, disappeared and dashed back in time to discover the deceased with Robin.” A long, wheezy chuckle followed this.
“You have the mind of a poet, too bad you’re developing asthma. Should see a doctor.”
He kept on chuckling.
“Back to the subject of Wendtz,” I said. “I hope Mombourquette put him through the wringer and then hung him out to dry.”
“I interviewed him myself. I hate to be the one to break it to you, but Wendtz had a business meeting with three associates between the time Mitzi was last seen alive and the time you called in.”
“Oh, sure,” I said. “Like some so-called promoter’s associates would never tell a fib to the big scary policeman. And what do you mean sicking Mombourquette on defenceless women while you get the vampires?”
“Sorry you don’t like it, but your little friend is still our prime suspect.”
“Fair enough, but you’re the one who’s going to look like a putz in the local media when the killer turns out to be someone else.”
“Would you mind repeating that number?” he said, just as I hung up.
I was alone in the office and that was good, since I could swear in private.
I nibbled at my nails and tried to work on what they call a three-pronged strategy. One, try to keep Robin from getting arrested. Two, work out a foolproof defense in case she did get arrested and, even worse, had to stand trial. Three, try to find out what her real involvement with Mitzi Brochu had been.
My mood was not enhanced by the five person-to-person collect phone calls for Alvin.
I picked up the sixth and snarled, “I told you he’s not here.”
“Camilla?” Alexa’s voice came through after a pause.
“Sorry.”
“I just wanted to tell you I’m going to the lake for a few days to open up the cottage. I wanted to check you’d be all right.”
“Why wouldn’t I be all right?”
“Well, you know, finding that body…”
“That was last week.”
“Even so, it must have had an effect on you.”
“Have a good time.”
“I don’t suppose…”
“You don’t suppose what?”
“Never mind, I’ll call you when I get back. If you need anything, Edwina and Donalda are there. And Daddy.”
“Good-bye.”
Great, I smiled to myself, Edwina and Donalda and Daddy. I could put them to work. Shadowing Rudy Wendtz maybe.
This was such an amusing thought, I was still smiling when Alvin’s shadow darkened the door.
Anyone else but Alvin and I would have felt sorry for him, his face was so grey, his eyes so clouded, his pony tail so wilted.
“Oh, it’s you,” he said. “Some people called for you this morning,”
“Who?” I said. “I didn’t see any messages.”
“They said they’d call back.”
Any single-cell scrap of sympathy I might have felt evaporated.
Alvin reached over and picked up his backpack from the floor. “Gotta go,” he said. “Family emergency.”
“What a shame. Well, take your time. We all have to have our priorities. And if you can’t get back from Cape Breton, I’ll understand.”
My facial muscles ached from suppressed joy.
“What are you talking about? It should all be settled by tonight. By the way, I did a little research on your friend Mitzi Brochu. That pile there’s got every article she ever wrote and that pile next to it is newspaper articles about her and reviews of her TV specials. Everything’s in date order with the most recent items on top. See you tomorrow.”
When Alvin’s good, he’s very, very good. He’s particularly good in absentia. I spent the rest of the afternoon combing through the articles by and about Mitzi Brochu. It proved to be a potent dose of a poisonous pen. Mitzi had been a lot of things. Nice was not one of them.
Alvin had been very thorough. There was even a picture of Wendtz. Rock promoter Rudy Wendtz, according to the caption. He was shown sampling sushi with Mitzi, she glittering and malevolent in black velvet and metal, he with a two-day growth of beard and slicked back dark-blond hair ending at his shoulders. He looked like a man who worked out. And weren’t those tattoos an adorable touch?
Articles on Mitzi were plentiful and while one or two bleated about the effect her call to “diet or die” had on the already precarious eating habits of teenage girls, most gushed about Mitzi’s wicked wit and unflagging sense of style.
When I had finished wading through the world of the late La Brochu, I slapped the magazines on the table and considered taking a Gravol.
She had her favourite targets: actors, politicians, TV personalities and a Toronto model she compared to a grouper.
Deb Goodhouse had been the butt of insults for years. I thought Mitzi’s jabs had been a one-time random effort to skewer women M.P.’s in general. But Mitzi articles dating way back had rearview shots of Deb and curare-tipped remarks about her sense of style. Running a close second was Jo Quinlan, who averaged two major slams a year by Mitzi. I wasn’t sure who suffered the most slings and arrows: Deb or Jo.
I flipped through the magazines and checked the little credits area in the front. The photographer was the same for all the Deb and Jo pictures and many of the others. He smiled out from a photograph that made him look very, very good. I fished the scissors from the desk and snipped out the picture of the photographer.
Sammy Dash was his name, a man who obviously loved his work.
