Читать книгу Speak Ill of the Dead - Mary Jane Maffini - Страница 8

Three

After twenty years or more, the tall respectable husbands collected by my sisters had begun to settle into middle age and to develop creeping hairlines, baby paunches, and minor peculiarities, some easier to adjust to than others. Take, for example, Donalda’s husband, Joe, each year withdrawing more and more into a world of his own, of golf and fishing and imaginary trophies. Or Edwina’s Stan with his collection of dribble glasses, plastic dog turds and fake vomit. I wish I had some kind of coin for every time I encountered a whoopee cushion in the passenger seat of Stan’s Buick LeSabre.

“Better take it easy on the baked beans,” he always said.

I suggested to Edwina that perhaps Stan was developing Alzheimer’s and should be locked away for his own protection, but I noticed she still kept sending him to pick me up for family get-togethers. This dinner was no exception.

A hand mirror lay on the passenger seat as I opened the door.

“Would you mind moving that?” Stan said.

As I picked up the mirror, it screamed with laughter and kept on laughing after I threw it on the floor.

“Perhaps you should get your hair done more often,” Stan said, between his own screams of laughter.

“Perhaps you should get a life, Stan,” I suggested, not laughing but giving some thought to screaming myself.

HAHAHAHAHAHA, howled the mirror from the floor, just before I picked it up and chucked it out the window.

Stan was still sulking when we reached Nepean and pulled into the driveway, which I think Edwina vacuums twice weekly.

“Aw, Camilla, the girls would have gotten a big kick out of that at dinner,” he said.

“Like hell,” I told him.

If “the girls” had sent Stan to get me into some kind of a mellow mood after a distressing day spent mulling over Mitzi’s death and Robin’s continuing state of withdrawal, “the girls” were going to be let down.

They were hanging around the entrance, three vultures with dish cloths, when we arrived. I could tell they’d been bustling around the kitchen, discussing my mental state, when they’d heard the car. Now they were trying to look like they’d all accidentally ended up near the front door just as we got there.

They scanned my face and turned to Stan. He shrugged, before perking up a bit.

“Wait a minute,” he said, flinging open the door to the basement and thundering down the stairs. “I think I have something else that might do just as well.”

“Are you all right?” Edwina asked.

“Well, I’ll never look in another mirror again.”

“He’s just trying to cheer you up, dear.”

“Let’s chat in the living room,” said Donalda, steering me, as if I hadn’t been there a thousand times.

Edwina’s entire house is picture-perfect polished mahogany, pastel brocade, flowers in silver or crystal vases. In the living room, my father glanced up from the newspaper, peering over the top of his little half-moon reading glasses. He matched the decor. Eighty-year old gentleman, distinguished, white-haired and slim, seated in wingback with matching ottoman.

“Hello, um, Camilla,” he said.

“Can I get you a little drink?” Alexa asked me. Her colour was high and she had a sparkle I hadn’t seen about her for months.

Donalda looked at my father after Alexa left the room. “Do you think she has a fever, Daddy?”

“No idea, dear,” said my father, with a flicker of worry.

“Maybe she’s in love,” I said.

“Oh, Camilla.”

Dinner was wonderful. Edwina knows her way around a kitchen and I have to confess it’s very pleasant to sit on well-padded dining room chairs, surrounded by the warm glow of mahogany, eating good food off Minton china. She presided over the distribution of the roast lamb stuffed with spinach and chèvre with the air of an artist at a show of her work.

And, in my family, we always find things taste even better when we’re discussing people who are not present.

“She did?” said Donalda, as we heaped the lemon rice onto our plates “Well, I’m not surprised. Did you see what she had on?”

“No wonder he practically dived down the front of her blouse,” said Edwina, passing the squash soufflé.

“Exactly,” said Alexa, and reached for the broccoli, “and I know we’re all human, but I don’t think church is the place for it.”

My father just concentrated on the food. He doesn’t approve of gossip. I concentrated on my food too, since I didn’t know any of the people whose blouses were under discussion.

When the neighbours and other parish members had been dealt with, they turned their attention to the murder. I was waiting for it. Mitzi Brochu’s murder had captured the imagination of the magazine-reading public in a big way.

“A crucifixion,” said Alexa, shivering. “It’s too gruesome.”

“Well,” I said, “it wasn’t really a…”

“Somebody absolutely had it in for her,” said Donalda.

“No kidding,” I said.

“Not surprising when you think about the sorts of things she wrote about people,” Edwina pronounced. “She literally ruined careers and brought terrible embarrassment to people, right here even in our community. People who were just minding their own business and had nothing to do with her.

She just selected them and burned them.” I wasn’t sure how the words were getting out with Edwina’s lips pursed like that.

“I know,” sighed Alexa, twisting her napkin. “Poor Deb Goodhouse.”

“She is a little bit broad in the beam, but even so…”

Donalda didn’t get to finish her sentence.

“Her beam is not the issue. The woman is a well-respected politician and a wonderful contributor to the community. She’s given a lot of herself to environmental projects and to helping the third world and what does she get in Canada’s best-selling women’s magazine? Not a word about her achievements, just her backside. After I read that article, I cancelled my subscription.”

Well, I bet that showed them, Edwina, I thought.

“Poor, poor Deb.” Alexa was still milking the poor Deb theme.

I’d never given a moment’s thought to the Hon. Ms. Goodhouse before I read the article in Femme Fatale. Somehow she seemed to be important to my sisters.

“She some kind of a friend?” I asked.

The three of them turned and looked at me.

“Oh, Camilla,” said Alexa.

“Of course, she’s a friend,” said Donalda. “Don’t you remember? We all went to St. Jim’s together. She used to be at the house all the time.”

“So what was I then? Seven years old?”

“All the same. You must remember Deb.”

“Right,” I said, referring to woolly memories of a beefy brunette scattered among the long blondes, all of them giggling and smoking cigarettes and listening to Pat Boone in the upstairs bedrooms.

“You must remember how excited we all were when she won her first federal election.” Edwina gestured around the table to indicate that I was not only unaware, but also alone, in my lack of excitement.

The other girls nodded, as did my father and Stan. Joe smiled to himself, managing a hole-in-one on his internal golf course.

“I guess I missed it.”

“It was around the time of…” Edwina started to say Paul’s death but was silenced by the tensing of muscles around the table, signalling the topic was about to change. Every one in my family is always worried that any talk of Paul will plunge me into some internal chaos, from which I will never recover. I’m not so sure they’re wrong. We don’t get nearly as agitated over Alexa’s much more recent widowhood. The topic veered to the highlights of Deb Goodhouse’s career.

“So was she upset by these articles in Femme Fatale?” I asked.

A rustle of relief around the table confirmed the tricky topic of Paul had not caused me to plummet into instant depression. I guess I was as relieved as anyone else.

“Oh, yes,” said Alexa. “She was very hurt. They were terribly personal and insulting.”

“And even worse,” Edwina broke in, “she thought they trivialized everything she’d been working on. You know, these women politicians, it’s a pretty tough life for them, and then, to have the only article ever written about you in a national magazine focus on your backside, well….” Edwina became speechless at this point.

“Quite an effect,” I agreed.

“Not only that, but her blood pressure went practically through the roof,” said Alexa.

“Indeed?” I said. “She must have hated Mitzi.”

“God, yes,” said Alexa, avoiding my father’s flicker at her minor profanity, “Deb felt like killing her.”

Everyone made a point of letting me know this was just a figure of speech, only an emotion and not a reality, and Deb Goodhouse could never have crucified Mitzi Brochu, in case I had drawn that conclusion from Alexa’s remarks. Even Joe came back to earth during the brouhaha.

“Don’t worry about it, girls, I wasn’t about to call the police.”

“Well, of course not,” they said in unison, and changed the subject yet again.

“So, how’s Robin doing?” Donalda asked.

“She’s still in bed.”

“Still in bed!” said Edwina.

“Dr. Beaver’s been giving her sedatives. He says she’s too emotionally fragile to be up yet or to be on her own.”

“What does he know about emotional shock, you tell me that?” said Donalda, “If she were my daughter, I’d send her to the vet before I’d let old Bucky Beaver look after her.”

“Tell me about it,” said Alexa. “I’m surprised he didn’t recommend mustard poultices to draw out the poisons in her system. Or maybe he did. Camilla?”

“Sorry to disappoint, but I think it’s just good old fashioned tranquilizers.”

“Well, none of my business, of course, but Robin hasn’t really led such a sheltered life. I mean, she is a working lawyer and she did do a lot of legal aid work before she went into real estate law and, sure, it’s traumatic finding a dead body, but don’t you think she’s over-reacting?” asked Edwina.

“I’d like to see how any of you would hold up if you stumbled across a crucified, bleeding corpse, still warm.”

“Pass the lamb, dear,” said Stan.

“On the other hand,” said Edwina, “you stumbled across the very same bleeding corpse, still warm, too, I believe. And yet, here you are bouncing off to work and indulging in a full and active social life.”

Fighting off the memory of dead Mitzi while I slumped around the office and getting dragged off to family dinners with shades of the Spanish Inquisition was more like it. Still, Edwina had a point. Robin was overdoing it.

“Unless,” Edwina continued, “Robin killed this woman. Then she’d have a reason to feel so upset.”

“Edwina,” said my father.

And I’d thought he was dozing at the other end of the table.

“I know, Daddy, but she was there, all covered in blood and she won’t tell anybody why she was in that room and now she’s verging on a catatonic state. Something’s very strange about all that.”

“Oh, Edwina, you can’t think Robin would kill anybody.

We’ve known her since she and Camilla were kids. It’s not possible,” said Donalda.

Donalda was right. It was far, far more likely I would kill somebody. And even that was out of the question most of the time.

Edwina was not one to give up when she was onto a good angle.

“Maybe Mitzi Brochu had something on her and was going to do an article on it.”

“Oh, right, Edwina,” I said, “and what would Mitzi have on Robin? Putting too much milk in the cats’ dishes? All of Canada would rush to the newsstands to buy that issue.”

“You may be her best friend, but you don’t know everything about her.”

“Yes, I do know everything about her. And I know she didn’t, and she couldn’t kill anybody.”

I felt unshakable certainty about this. I’d thought for hours about Robin and what she could have done. I’d examined every memory I had of her since the day in kindergarten, when we’d first shared the red crayon and become friends for life. Robin was always the one who helped the smaller kids with their overshoes and zippers. Robin always helped the old ladies cross the street. Robin would give anyone her last dime. Robin didn’t kill Mitzi.

But Robin, Robin, Robin, I thought, why are you lying?

“Maybe,” said Alexa, “she was in love and…”

This startling suggestion was followed by a strangled gasp from Donalda. We all turned to gawk at a set of teeth complete with full gums, sitting in the middle of the table next to the silver vase with the six baby roses. The teeth grinned in a mad parody of every denture advertisement ever made.

For a minute there was total, and uncharacteristic, silence at the table. Until Edwina reached forward to wipe that smile off her Irish linen tablecloth.

“HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA,” roared the teeth. “HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAAHA…” Startled, Edwina dropped them into her Minton vegetable platter.

So that was what Stan had been prowling around in the basement for. A suitable replacement for the laughing mirror.

“HAHAHAHHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHA,” howled the teeth from on top of the broccoli.

With the exception of me and Joe, who didn’t return to earth this time, everyone collapsed with laughter. Donalda’s shoulders shook and her head bobbed. Alexa wheezed out heeheehees until twin streams of tears ran down her cheeks. Edwina had a full-bodied boom, not unlike the teeth in the broccoli. Even my father had to smile. Stan was a happy man.

“Get that damn thing out of here before I toss it,” I said.

Stan stretched toward the broccoli where our new friend was starting to wind down to a “hahaha”.

“She’ll do it!” he squeaked. “She threw the mirror out of the car.”

“Oh, Camilla” said Edwina. “He’s only trying to cheer you up.”

“He’ll have to try a lot harder,” I said.

Donalda reached over and patted my hand. “We all know how worried you are. But Robin will be okay. Her mother told me Brooke’s on her way back from Toronto. That should make a big difference for Robin to have her sister here.”

Sure, I thought. It will mean there’s that much less attention for her when she needs it the most. Brooke will siphon off every extra bit of tender loving care the Findlays were lavishing on Robin. They won’t even know it’s happening. If I knew Brooke, it would be just little things, but soon her mother would be busy altering clothing and making special little meals for Brooke’s friends, and making her bed and picking up after her. And what was this “on her way back” business? Toronto was a fifty minute flight or a four-and-a- half-hour drive. Why wasn’t Brooke at home already?

Somehow I couldn’t see Brooke soothing Robin after her nightmare. On the other hand, Robin, like her parents, would do anything for Brooke. Maybe even get out of bed to help out with the added workload Brooke always presented. Brooke might be good for Robin, but for all the wrong reasons.

As we started to clear the table, I got instructions to relax in the living room with the boys. Does all this special treatment make me the same kind of person as Brooke? I wondered as I lounged on the sofa. A user, a burner-up of the good will of others?

Alexa brought me a fresh cup of coffee. She leaned over and whispered, “He hasn’t called yet.”

My thoughts of Conn McCracken were not fond. I’d already had a couple of chats with him and all the information had been flowing one way. I had a feeling I would keep on hearing from him until he found out why Robin had gone to see Mitzi Brochu and why I’d gone with her. Whenever I’d ask him something, he’d indicate in that big, comfy way of his, that he couldn’t answer me.

“Count your blessings if he didn’t call, Alexa,” I said, thinking that the fewer complications any of us had in our lives, the better.

“Oh, Camilla.” She bit her lip as she flounced back to the kitchen.

I couldn’t help noticing she was wearing red lipstick for the first time since her husband had died.

My father eyed me warily from the armchair at the end of the living room. Finally, he spoke.

“Tell me,” he said, “how’s Alvin getting along?”