It seemed to me, as I watched them depart, that Robin was steadier, happier, better off after our meeting. I sipped a cappuccino as I watched Ted collect his car and come back to pick up Robin. But I was the only one who noticed the other silent observer. A man with a great deal of misery drawn across his face.
Merv. Watching Robin like a lovesick Great Dane. All this goddam romance. It was enough to make you throw up.
Eighteen
“Gee, hi,” I said. “Imagine meeting you here. I was just on my way over to take a look at the tulips. Aren’t they great?”
I might have been a maggot on the stem of one of those tulips the way Deb Goodhouse looked at me. It wasn’t just that she was splendidly casual in a full patterned cotton skirt and matching blouse that I thought might be from Suttles and Seawinds while I had on my ancient blue jeans and an oversized tee-shirt that said “I’m With Stupid”. Maybe she just wasn’t used to people sneaking up on her right in her own neighbourhood.
“Mind if I walk along with you?” I asked, walking along with her.
“I’m in quite a hurry.”
Deb Goodhouse had been meandering along until I sidled up behind her. A typical Saturday stroll for someone lucky enough to live in a fashionable townhouse smack in the middle of the Golden Triangle.
“I’ll try to keep up,” I said, picking up my pace to match hers. “I’m not sure if you remember me….”
“Of course I remember you.”
“Oh good, that makes it easier. I have a couple of questions for you.”
Her mouth compressed.
“Well, just to clear things up. You see, you told me you had never met Mitzi Brochu. The funny thing is there are people who claim they saw you visit her in the Harmony Hotel. People who could not help but notice you were upset.”
I looked at her with what I hoped was a guileless expression. She was two shades paler after I dropped my little bombshell. Of course, it didn’t do to underestimate Deb Goodhouse. I gave her one more little push.
“I’m not sure what the police will make of this information,” I added.
“I don’t intend to stand around listening to you slandering me,” she snapped. “I have nothing to say to you on this or on any other subject. Now if you don’t get out of my way, I will call the police.” She stepped onto the street to pass me, stepped back onto the sidewalk again and kept going toward Elgin.
“That was an incorrect use of the term ‘slander’”, I called after her, but she didn’t seem to hear me. “Bingo,” I added to myself. Everything about Deb Goodhouse’s body language and expression told me I had gotten what I had come for.
Jo Quinlan was the next name on the list I fished out of my jeans pocket. Alvin had provided me with an address along with a very interesting tidbit of information. Luckily for me, Alvin had also put in a little map, because Jo Quinlan lived on the Quebec side, over in Chelsea.
I retrieved my car and double checked the map. I was still chuckling over Deb Goodhouse as I crossed the Portage Bridge five minutes later and spun along towards Highway 5.
Jo Quinlan, according to the notes left in Alvin’s backhanded scrawl, lived in the country and kept horses. Alvin’s directions were better than his office skills, and not long after, I found myself pulling into a tree-lined driveway with a mailbox marked Quinlan/Belliveau.
A man in a pickup truck was pulling away as I nosed my car into the driveway as far as it would go and stopped.
I stuck my head out the window and bellowed. “Jo Quinlan around?”
“She’s out back,” he hollered. “You might need to yell a bit to get her attention.”
The German Shepherd beside him in the cab sat there assessing me.
“Thanks.”
“No problem.” His pickup was already rolling down the drive.
“Hello?” I yelled a few times as I walked towards the back of the house. “Hello?”
The house was one of those modern cedar designs with floor to ceiling windows and skylights. In back the property took a spectacular slope, a view well worth looking at.
Another German Shepherd came loping across the lawn.
“Hello?” I continued to holler as I approached the nearest of the two barns.
The Shepherd was in front of me and seemed to be considering if I would be tastier with or without mustard.
“Hello!” I roared as loud as I could.
The Shepherd barked back at me, moving forward at the same time.
Jo Quinlan took that minute to walk out of the barn.
“What is it, Maggie?” Behind her, horsy sounds emerged through the barn door.
“Hello,” I breathed.
She looked at me for a long minute, running me through her own internal computer.
“Health Club,” she said. “You were asking questions about Mitzi Brochu.”
“Exactly. I wonder if you could spare a couple of minutes. There are some things I need to understand. I’m trying to help my friend, the one who found the body.”
“Sure, why not?” she said. “You want to come inside? Have a coffee or something?”
Saturdays seemed to agree with Jo Quinlan.
I followed her across a large deck, though a large door into a large country kitchen. With a wood stove and a lot of pine furniture.
Maggie stayed outside, whining through the screen.
“This is a wonderful place,” I said, settling myself in at the large kitchen table.
“Yep.” I could see this was an understatement on her part. Her colour was high, her eyes were bright.
“Sorry to bother you on a Saturday. A nice man told me you were in back.”
“That’d be Dan. My husband.” She laughed a bit. “I still find it sounds a bit strange. We’ve only been married for six months. You want to make that cappuccino?”
Aha. No wonder Jo Quinlan seemed to shine. She was living happily ever after with a new husband, a spectacular place in the country and a cappuccino machine.
“Sammy Dash,” I said, after the cappuccino was in my hand.
“What about him?” she said, the smile slipping.
I took a little sip, to help rid myself of the sudden chill. “I understand you were very good friends for quite a long time.”
“Yes.”
The quintessential interviewer knew how to clam up when it came to her own personal life. She looked at me for quite a long time, her hazel eyes cool.
I felt a surge of relief when she started to talk.
“We grew up in the same area, we met in high school and I guess we were inseparable from that point until…we broke up.”
“You must have felt terrible about his death.”
She hesitated. “Well, you have to be repelled by the way he died. But, if you’d known Sammy, known how manipulative and cruel he was…”
“You mean you were expecting something like that?”
“No, of course not, not exactly like that. But something, for sure.”
“Mind telling me why?”
She exhaled, and I noticed she was pale. The effort of