I took another mouthful of cheesecake, savouring it.
“For God’s sake, Camilla, what were the damned results!” Edwina exploded.
My father shook his head at her. It was enough to get Edwina to stop, but I noticed her fingers started drumming again.
“How did he sound?” asked Alexa.
That was sufficiently peculiar to direct attention away from me. Of course, that wasn’t my intention.
“In this particular test, they use a chemical, which will cause blood stains which have been cleaned up to show under certain light.” I smiled.
“And?” asked Donalda.
“Well,” I said, smiling around at everyone, “the results were very interesting.”
“Get to the point,” Edwina barked.
“The test showed, and I must say I feel vindicated by the results,” I paused for a breath, during which there were definite signs of rebellion at the table, “the test showed what must have happened.”
“Camilla,” said my father, in the voice he’d perfected as a school principal, “stop teasing your sisters.”
“Well, the test showed large quantities of blood at the spot where I told them the body had been lying. It must have soaked through the carpet.”
Everyone gasped at once. Most gratifying.
“My God, you were lucky…”
“You must have interrupted the killer.”
“You could have been murdered.”
“It must be a maniac.”
I leaned back and enjoyed the reaction for a minute.
When they started to settle down, I added, “There was something else Sgt. McCracken said.”
I took the expectant silence as an indication of interest. “They found blood stains all over the place. On the walls and even on the ceiling.”
Stan said, “Somebody must have really hated this guy.”
“Or else, it was someone completely ruthless, without compassion,” said Donalda.
Exactly. And with the kind of psychotic sense of drama needed to lug in a pile of garbage in a packing box just to add substance to the sentiment. I wondered if Sammy Dash had had one encounter too many with Denzil Hickey, acting on behalf of Rudy Wendtz.
“You were in real danger.” My father could always cut through to the real issue. “I regret that we didn’t believe your version of the events, the first time. It is not like the MacPhees not to take each other seriously.”
I spent the rest of the evening smirking at my sisters and making faces at Stan when no one was looking.
* * *
“I don’t know where your photos are,” Alvin said.
It was Wednesday before I was pronounced ready to go back to work. Alvin was still peevish when I walked in. I put it down to jealousy, since I’d gotten closer to a murder than he had.
“You just don’t remember where you put them,” he added.
“That’s right, I don’t. But I know they were either in my apartment or in my briefcase or here in the office.”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah, and they’re not in my briefcase.”
“Umhum.”
“And they’re not in my apartment. I’ve been through every inch of it.”
Alvin shrugged.
“Soooo, they must be here. Let’s get moving and find them.” By this I meant, you get moving and find them.
It was a distressing thought, searching through the piles of paper in the office. Paper was piled everywhere. The twin disasters of Alvin’s arrival and my preoccupation with Mitzi’s murder looked like the undoing of Justice for Victims.
“I already looked through everything. They’re not here,” he whined.
I stared at him, long and hard.
“Maybe someone, the murderer I guess, stole them from your briefcase in Sammy’s apartment. When you were out cold.”
Maybe, indeed. I couldn’t even remember if the photos had been in my briefcase. My head was still fuzzy enough to blur the events just before my visit.
“Maybe someone broke into your apartment and stole them.” This was said with enthusiasm on Alvin’s part.
“Nobody broke into my apartment.”
“Yes, they did. Remember the dead cat?”
“Of course I remember the dead cat. How could I forget the dead cat? However, I still had the photos after that.”
“Oh.”
Of course, I knew Alvin was right. Someone had stolen the photos. From me. From my apartment, my briefcase or my office. No question about it. Someone who had been in one of the photos. Someone who didn’t want me going around asking questions. But I hated to give Alvin the satisfaction.
I also hated to go around snapping the suspects again. And one of them was dead.
Alvin’s face lit up a bit. “Of course, I have the negatives.”
“Good, where are they? We can get copies made and you can head off to the Harmony to do your back hall investigations.”
“They’re here somewhere.”
“What do you mean ‘they’re here somewhere?’”
“I filed them.”
“Well, get them out of the file.”
“Give me a minute. I need to think of what I filed them under.”
I glared at him while he stared at the ceiling as if the file title might be written there. I thought about how much I wanted to file Alvin under Employees, Former.
The blast of the phone startled both of us. I grabbed it before Alvin could.
McCracken.
I gestured to Alvin to get his head back into the files.
“So,” said McCracken, “looks like you were right.”
When Alvin pulled the negatives out of the Miscellaneous file, I was caught up in what McCracken was saying. I pointed in the direction of the Rideau Centre and hoped that Alvin would understand that meant take them in to get printed again.
McCracken was saying Sammy Dash had turned up in a dumpster, outside a renovated building. He had been punctured, many times, by something very sharp. And he’d been there a while.
Underneath him, a poem was clutched in what was left of his hand. McCracken read it to me, over the phone:
Here lies Sammy Dash Who sold trouble for cash Now he’s where he belongs With the rest of the trash
I heard about it again on the evening news as I passed through the Findlay living room on my way up to see Robin.
“Oh, look,” said Mrs. Findlay, “they’ve identified that man they found last night. Isn’t that terrible? We’re not even safe in our beds anymore. Even Camilla here found another body. What is the world coming to?” she asked Brooke.
But Brooke, who’d been slumped on the sofa, surrounded by Holt Renfrew bags, choked on her cigarette. She took the stairs two at a time and slammed the bathroom door.
I could hear her retching as I passed the door on my way to Robin’s room.
“What’s wrong with