“Why did you stick with him?”
Her smile held a bit of self-mockery, I thought. “Because he was powerful and sexy and I was caught in his net. He liked to have women caught in his net. And once you were caught, he didn’t like to let you go.”
I considered what I knew of Sammy Dash. The lazy arrogance, the macho stances, the way that women’s heads turned when he was around. The public way he’d touched Brooke Findlay outside the restaurant in the market. It fit.
“By the time I got through Journalism at Carleton and landed my first job, I began to realize not every relationship was like ours, with one top dog and the other one the snivelling slave.”
It was hard to imagine Jo Quinlan as a snivelling slave. I said so.
“I know. I seem in charge, I guess, but it was a long, hard fight to get away from him and become a bit tougher.” She looked at me. “Okay, a lot tougher. At work anyway.”
“How did you do it?”
“Well, for one thing I felt I had to. He was not only treating me like dirt, screwing around, slapping me, drinking too much, hassling me at work, but he was getting more and more implicated in the whole drug scene. Getting involved with the big guys.”
“Like Rudy Wendtz.”
“Like Rudy Wendtz.”
“So you left him.”
She nodded. “And he hassled me until the day he died.”
“How?”
“Calls at work, calls at home, threats, embarrassments. Sammy didn’t like women walking out on him. He didn’t handle rejection well.”
I thought about the story that Sammy had been after Mitzi. Could he have killed her because she mocked him? And then who killed him? Wendtz for revenge? What a tangle.
“The photos and stories about you in Femme Fatale?”
“I’m pretty sure the stories were orchestrated by Sammy. I never had any dealings with Mitzi Brochu at all. I was stunned when she first started to make fun of me in the press. Until I figured out the Sammy connection.”
I thought back to the photos, nasty, sneering invasions of Jo Quinlan’s privacy. “You must have been pretty uptight, not knowing when he was going to stick his head out of a bush and snap.”
She shrugged. “By that time I had my job as an anchor, I had self-esteem and I even had Dan. Sammy had sunk to nuisance value.”
“What about your career? Didn’t all this sneering commentary hurt that?”
“On the contrary. It seemed to help. I started to get calls and mail in support. That’s how I met Dan. He picked up a copy of Femme Fatale by mistake in a dentist’s office. It was the first one where Mitzi and Sammy took a real shot at me. Dan was outraged. He called me at the station to tell me he thought I was,” she flushed, “beautiful the way I am. I think I fell in love over the phone.”
“Dan must have hated both of them then.”
Just what I needed, a new suspect to up the confusion level. But the more I thought about it, the more it worked.
“Don’t even think that,” Jo said, her eyes hard. She reached into a basket on the table and tossed a business card at me. “He was at work that afternoon. Easy enough for you to confirm.”
Maybe, I thought, deciding to dig further. Tan shoes, I reminded myself, were all I knew about whoever attacked me and killed Sammy. To my satisfaction, Maggie started a ruckus outside.
“Mind if I use your bathroom?” I asked Jo as she moved to the door to check it out.
“Go right ahead. The one downstairs isn’t working right, try the one at the top of the stairs.”
I scuttled up the stairs, pausing to peek into the downstairs closet. No luck. Upstairs, I ducked into the master bedroom, not paying attention to the country style decorating, sticking my head into the walk-in closet and checking out the men’s shoes. I couldn’t see any tan ones. I peeped under the bed. Nothing.
I ducked into the hall bathroom just as the front door slammed. Dan was back, standing at the foot of the stairs, when I emerged one loud flush later. I could only pray he hadn’t seen me explode out of the bedroom.
I smiled at him when I walked into the kitchen. Jo was giving me facial signals I interpreted to mean don’t talk about Sammy, don’t talk about the murders.
“Well,” she said, “I don’t know what got into that dog today.”
Maggie whimpered from the deck.
I accepted the offer of another cappuccino, because it gave me a chance to check out Dan.
He was not as tall as he looked in the pick-up truck. I think it was the heavy shoulders and large upper body that led me to expect a near-giant. Standing, the top of his head reached Jo’s ears. From the look on her face, that was just fine with her.
I smiled at him in a way I hoped wouldn’t let him know I had just added him to my list of possible murderers. Close-cropped grey hair, silver-rimmed glasses. Wearing jeans, and, I checked, running shoes.
“Camilla,” said Jo, “is looking into Mitzi Brochu’s murder and she was wondering whether I could…give her some insights into what Mitzi was like.”
He flicked a glance at me. It was a lot chillier than the way he looked at Jo. The room, which resonated with Jo and Dan’s feelings for each other, was an uncomfortable place for me.
“Terrible woman,” I said, having no qualms about speaking ill of the dead. “Everything I hear about her confirms it.”
“You getting anywhere, um, looking into her murder?” he asked.
“No,” I said, “nowhere at all. I seem to be wasting my time.
Everybody disliked this woman. I’m probably going to have to give up.”
“What’s Mitzi Brochu’s murder to you?” His eyes behind the metal-rimmed glasses were as grey and cold as the Atlantic.
“A very good friend of mine found the body. The police are giving her a hard time.”
He watched me as he inhaled the cappuccino.
“I told you about that, honey,” she said.
I couldn’t wait to get out of that room.
Jo walked me to my car.
“I don’t imagine you’ll find out who killed them. But I kind of hope you do. It would make a hell of a story.”
“Right.”
I climbed into my car and bumped down the long drive. As I turned on to the main road, I could see Jo Quinlan still standing there. I waved.
Ten minutes later, I pulled up outside Alvin’s apartment in the centre of downtown Hull. I was skipping through the front door when two children selling candy bars stepped out.
It only cost me two dollars. Banging on Alvin’s door gave me a certain satisfaction. I was almost sorry when he answered, standing there in his jockey shorts squinting, without his cat’s eye glasses.
“You look like death,” I said, slipping past him. I didn’t say a word about his belly-button ring.
“God, it’s not even noon. And it’s Saturday,” he said, leaning against the wall.
“Get dressed, I need you to come with me.”
Another ten minutes passed as I sat in the black living room, staring at the blenders and electric frying pans painted on the floor and covered