“I think your home would be much improved by the addition of some dining room furniture. Nothing too avant-garde, just a couple of nice chairs and a good table. I don’t know how you can stand to have a desk in there. Why don’t you spend a little of your money on fixing it up? You could even get a pretty desk and put it in the living room.” Edwina. House Beautiful has always been her bible.
The burbling of decorating tips was drowned out by the squeal of the blender in the kitchen and the roar of the vacuum cleaner around our feet. Robin’s cats took refuge in my bedroom. My father sat in the armchair in the corner and studied me with keen interest.
No one mentioned the murder. And I sure wasn’t going to.
“Something else? What about a nice little rum and coke to settle you down?” Alexa never forgets our Nova Scotia roots.
To tell the truth, it felt rather good to have them bustling around, dispensing elbow grease and unsolicited advice, their voices blurring. Usually I protect my territory and independence and try to keep a handle on their surplus domesticity.
“A filing cabinet would help a lot. The light from your balcony would be perfect for a ficus benjamina. Can I top up your drink?”
The second rum and coke hit me like a piano from a second story window. As I crawled naked into my freshly made bed and curled into the fetal position, I could hear the gentle thudding of the washer-dryer and the hum of sisters chatting. I closed my eyes. Six cats settled themselves around my feet.
All that night and into the next day, Mitzi’s dead face kept flashing through my mind, with Robin’s wailing voice in the background. “No, no,” she kept saying, “not dead. Not like this. Please not now.”
* * *
“Crucified? Lord thundering Jesus,” said Alvin, filled with admiration for my cleverness in finding myself in the right spot at the right time. “What did she look like?” He picked up the receiver he’d dropped on the desk as I sagged through the door. “She’s here now, Mom, I’ll call you back later.” He hung up and looked at me with great expectation.
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
After a night of spinning in the sheets, fighting nightmares filled with dead eyes and silent screams, the last thing I wanted was to relive finding Mitzi Brochu. And the only way to avoid talking about it was to get Alvin out of the office. I decided the solution was a series of low-level yet time-consuming errands requiring stops all over town.
“Panty-hose?” he said, reading the list I handed him. “You want me to pick up your panty-hose? That’s demeaning. It’s bad enough I have to go to the print shop and the post office and the library and pick up cat food. But I draw the line at panty-hose. That’s not part of my job.”
“Sure it is. It’s called Other Duties As Required. Take it or leave it. You can always go home to Mom.”
I hoped Alvin would leave it, for good. But as a consolation prize, I hoped he’d at least be gone for a couple of tranquil hours.
In the meantime, I was counting on the Benning brief to take my mind off what we’d found in Mitzi Brochu’s bedroom.
The Benning brief wasn’t quite distracting enough. Mitzi, seen from different angles, superimposed herself on every page of notes. Even my endless doodles were gruesome.
And I kept thinking about Robin.
For my own peace of mind, I needed to know what Robin had been doing in Mitzi’s room. And what she had meant by “not now.”
The phone rang, jerking me back to the present. “Long distance, for Mr. Alvin Ferguson. Will you accept the charges?” “No, Mr. Alvin Ferguson is not here and, no, I will not accept the charges.”
The operator was pretty unemotional about the whole thing, but I slammed down the phone and made a mental note to check the next bill.
I couldn’t concentrate on the Benning brief. And things administrative paled next to the enormity of being involved in a murder. What made her go there? Robin, sensible, flat-shoed real estate lawyer. Singer in the church choir. Disher out of food at the Food Bank. What was her connection with Mitzi Brochu, shredder of egos?
Mrs. Findlay answered the phone in a whisper.
“No, dear, she’s still out like a light. Dr. B.’s been here again to give her something. She woke up at 6 in the morning and almost gave her father a heart attack, screeching.”
“What was she, um, screeching?”
“Something like, ‘you can’t do that to her. I won’t let you do that to her.’” A little quaver sneaked into Mrs. Findlay’s voice. “Oh, dear, what do you think it all means?”
“I don’t know.”
I didn’t either. But I had to ask myself, if Robin had seen the killer, had the killer seen Robin?
Why would she deny it? Especially to me?
Thanks to the vigilance of the local paparazzi, her face and name had blasted its way into every home in the region.
What had it felt like to preside over the media interpretation of the death of someone who had humiliated you on the pages of the magazine with the widest circulation in the country? Had there been a look of satisfaction on Jo Quinlan’s face?
“Don’t worry, Mrs. Findlay,” I lied, “just make sure she’s not alone. I think that will be much better for her.”
“You’re right, dear. Brooke’s on her way home from Toronto now. She’ll be a great help, I’m sure.”
I murmured soothing remarks, casually omitting agreement that Robin’s little sister would be a great help. I felt confident Brooke would be the self-centred and pampered vapour-brain she’d always been. It seemed inappropriate to mention this to her mother.
* * *
What the hell, I thought, I’m a taxpayer. And with Alvin out of the way, I was able to get to the phone.
“Oh, yeah,” said McCracken, when I identified myself. “How are you today?”
I stopped myself from saying, “Oh, you know, the way I always feel the day after I’ve found my best friend non compos mentis in the presence of a warm corpse.” Instead I said “Getting there.”
“Great,” he said.
“I’d like a bit of information.”
“Not much I can say. Aren’t you a defence lawyer?”
“Not usually. I’m an advocate for victims. My philosophy is toss the perpetrators in the hoosegow, slam the gates and turf the key.”
“Oh,” he said, “I guess that’s good. I’m afraid I still can’t give you any information. But how’s your sister?”
“What’s it worth to you?”
“Fingerprints.”
“Shoot.”
“Nothing but the deceased, your little friend and the housekeeping staff.”
“My sister’s fine.”
“Do you think she’d mind if I gave her a call sometime?” he asked.
I cleared my throat in a meaningful way.
“We’ve interviewed all the staff and the other guests and no one saw anyone except your friend Robin enter the scene of the crime. Ms. Brochu had no apparent enemies.”
“My fanny, she didn’t. Did you ever read anything she wrote?”
“I’m telling you what the witnesses tell me.”
“Maybe you should talk to them again.”
“Maybe.