Speak Ill of the Dead (26 page)

“And when you found the body?”

She shuddered and pulled back. I grabbed her hand.

“Robin, we have to get through this. I am not the enemy.”

After a long time, she nodded.

“It was horrible.”

I knew. I’d seen Mitzi myself.

“And I thought, I thought…”

I kept a steady pressure on her hand.

“I thought…” Robin was having trouble with her breathing.

The hand I held was shaking.

“You thought,” I said, not letting go of her, “Brooke might have flipped out and killed Mitzi before you could get there to fix things.”

She exhaled. Shuddered.

“And you preferred to have the police badger you and make you miserable, rather than have them find out about the connection between Brooke and Mitzi.”

She nodded.

It was out on the table now, between us. I’d suspected and even known this was the problem. At least now we could discuss it, develop a strategy.

“You were making yourself sick over it.”

“I was sick. I was terrified, my mind just imploded thinking Brooke must have been there. That she might have…”

“You saw her, didn’t you? Leaving just before you went in?”

I thought back to Maria Rodriguez, pointing to Brooke’s photo with such certainty. “Don’t lie to me any more.”

Robin gave up. “I saw her slipping out the stairway exit just as I was heading up to the room. She must have seen Mitzi and panicked. I had to protect her. She’s my sister.”

“Does she know you saw her?”

“I don’t think so.”

“You don’t think she should feel obligated to protect you?”

“Please, Camilla. That’s why I couldn’t tell you. I know the way you feel about Brooke. I knew you wouldn’t help her.

Poor Brooke, she…”

“Okay, enough about Brooke,” I said.

The little witch, I thought. She’d hightailed it back to her expensive condo in Toronto and sat there for the better part of a week while her sister held off the police. On the verge of a complete breakdown. Even when she finally sashayed home, she didn’t seem concerned with Robin’s well-being. If ever anybody deserved to lose an account with a major cosmetics company and be pilloried in the press, it was Brooke Findlay. The “Walk in the Woods” witch.

“It would have killed my parents to have Brooke involved in this. They’re so proud of her. They just adore her.”

I knew Robin expected me to understand. But I didn’t. I thought about my own peculiar family and realized that what happened to Robin would never have happened to me. None of us would be expected to sacrifice so much for the others. We would all stand together no matter what. Bitching and complaining, but together. I decided to call Alexa, soon. I didn’t like to think there might be a bit of Brooke in any of my behaviour.

Robin was watching me. “I had no choice.”

“You have choices. You are a useful, productive, compassionate member of our society. Consider when you make your choices the effect your breakdown had on your workplace, your volunteer activities, remember the Food Bank, the Humane Society, your clients. You could have chosen to protect yourself. We’ll get to bottom of this, believe me. And we’ll try to keep Brooke’s name out of the papers, but if it comes down to the crunch, it will be you, not her, I’ll be protecting. That’s my choice, like it or not.”

It was a minute before she nodded.

“And what’s more, one of these days your parents are going to have to wake up and smell the coffee.”

“I’d still like to spare them.”

“Well, I’m going to need to stay in touch with you on all sorts of developments, so you’ll have to let your family know that I’m a welcome visitor at the Findlay’s again, or they’ll get an earful of reality from me.”

“Okay.”

I reached over and gave her a hug, glad to have the old Robin back. She smiled.

“How are my kitties getting along? I miss them.”

I was able to dodge the tricky question of how the kitties were getting along, because Ted inserted himself back into the group at just the right moment.

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

G
ee, 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 talking about Sammy Dash had undone all the good of her Saturday in the country with the horses and the dogs.

“He was always asking for trouble, all his life. When I was a teenager, I thought he was great. A real rebel. Smart but undisciplined. He brought me a lot of trouble too. My parents hated him, and when I stuck with him it weakened my relationship with them. All my relationships.”

“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.