“Hey, you’re the reporter, P. J. You tell me.”
“I gather you didn’t read my piece in the Citizen this morning.”
“It’s early, P. J. And I didn’t get much sleep. Oh, come on, don’t get sulky. Do you want me to run to Mags and Fags and buy a Citizen? I’ll do it if that means I don’t have to look at your protruding lower lip.”
“Funny. It was just about the weirdness of Rollie Thorsten dying right when Brugel’s trial is coming to an end.”
I feigned a total lack of interest. “Oh yeah?” I yawned to further the point.
“Am I boring you? I thought it was great human interest.”
“Hmm. Did you hear anything about how Rollie managed to drown himself?”
“No reports available yet, but there’s something funny going down. The cops aren’t saying diddly.”
“Really? Didn’t you get anything out of Officer Wentzell?”
P. J. shot me a dirty look. “Don’t mock me.”
I said, “She just seems like such a nice girl. I don’t know why they wouldn’t release the cause of death. He was supposed to have drowned, but I heard a rumour that he was shot.” I didn’t let on that a joke was the source of the rumour and that Mombourquette had confirmed it.
“I heard that too.” P. J. actually quivered. And he was lying. I can always tell.
“Maybe the cops are being cautious about information so the relatives don’t get upset.”
P. J. snorted. “Be serious. The path lab and the coroner might be discreet, but all the cops I know hated Rollie. They probably have a flock of plastic flamingos outside the station today.”
I thought of Mombourquette and his visceral reaction to Brugel and his lawyer. “I suppose they all did hate him.”
“Sure. He used to shred them on the witness stand. I know one guy had to take stress leave afterwards.”
I shrugged. “They’re trained to cope with that kind of treatment on the stand. They just say what they observed. They’re not being accused of anything.”
Unlike Laurie Roulay. She’d been accused of lying and of being in part responsible for the death of her daughter and that of the child’s father. Specious for sure, and the judge rapped Rollie’s knuckles for it, but the damage was done.
P. J. said, “Rollie had special talent.”
“So they all hated him.”
He narrowed his eyes, watched me with more suspicion than usual. “Do you know something about his death?”
“Me? What could I know?”
“My spider senses are tingling.”
“Really? Have you thought about getting a job in a comic book?”
“Funny. But if you did know something, you’d tell me.
Right?”
“Sure. And you’d tell me too, right? You want another espresso?”
“Nope. I’m heading out to dig up dirt. You better not be holding back, Tiger.”
“Me? Dirt? I never touch the stuff. But I’d appreciate you keeping me in the loop.”
He tilted his head. “Why’s that?”
“Because I hated Rollie at least as much as any cop, and I’d salivate over the details.”
The second item on my plan was a trip to Rollie Thorsten’s office. The space was pretty much what you might expect: a straightforward legal office in a nicely converted old house on Somerset just west of O’Connor. It was a Saturday, but I figured the day after his death, someone might be there trying to figure what to do next. It was still before ten in the morning when I pushed the unlocked door open. The receptionist’s desk was empty. No big surprise.
The furnishings were fairly new and typical, heavy on the sand and taupe. Good quality. The sense of dinginess and sleaze was all in my mind, I knew.
I heard a small sound from around the corner, and I stepped further into the office. I knocked on a wall and said, “Hello.”
Jamie Kilpatrick, the fresh-faced junior lawyer who had been in court when Rollie failed to show up, jumped. He followed that by dropping the sheaf of papers in his hand.
“Let me help you with that,” I said pleasantly.
I guess he wasn’t reassured by my presence because he was practically trembling. “No, just leave them. Who are you? How did you get in?”
As this was not the time for sarcasm, I resisted. “The door was open. I was expecting a receptionist, actually.”
“It’s Saturday.” What was that in his voice? Irritation? Or just plain fear?
He couldn’t have been more than twenty-six, and if I read his body language correctly, he was a man who would leap backwards through the double-glazed window at the sound of a nearby hiccup.
“My name is Camilla MacPhee,” I said, soothingly. “And I’d like to talk to you for a minute.”
He said, “I’m not taking any new cases just now. And as you can see, I’m really quite busy.”
“Won’t be more than a minute. First of all, my condolences on Rollie’s death.”
“What? Oh. Yeah. Thanks. But really, I hardly knew him. I’d just joined the office last year and…”
I smiled understandingly. “I understand. Not to trash the recently diseased, but I imagine you’d just discovered that Rollie was sleazy, difficult and inclined to take advantage of the staff.”
He loosened his collar. “I wouldn’t exactly…”
I added, “And now he’s dead.”
He sat down and nodded. For a moment he seemed like a little boy, lost and most likely in big trouble over it.
I said, “Murdered too, which just makes it even worse.”
He glanced over at me. “What do you want?”
“Just to talk. I’m trying to understand what’s going on. Did you see the lawyer joke that Rollie received before his death?”
“What do you mean? A joke? Rollie’s death was horrible. Why are you talking about jokes?”
“I heard a rumour that he got one in the mail and then got a piece of paper with his name on it on the day he died.”
“Look, I don’t know what you want from me, but I don’t have time for this kind of sick nonsense.”
“Fine, but then, of course, I’m also interested in why you backed out of the Brugel case.”
He stared at me, took his time. “It was really in fairness to the client.”
“It sure was. I’d say it was Christmas in June, with a hint of Easter Bunny for Brugel.”
He flushed. I think they call that shade puce. He sputtered. “I don’t have enough experience to conduct this case. Rollie had all the background.”
“Give me credit for a brain. First of all, Rollie was so lazy, he probably didn’t wipe his own butt. You were the one required to do all the digging. You did the work, and probably knew the case cold. So let’s not bullshit about that.”
He straightened up and tried to save his dignity, although his lingering blush undercut that somewhat. “This is a private office.