Speak Ill of the Dead (7 page)

“And you can make a living this way?”

“More or less. We get grants from various levels of government and personal and corporate donations. I supplement with a bit of legal work on the side, and I get asked to participate in task forces looking at the victim perspective.”

I didn’t tell him my expenses were minimal to run Justice for Victims. The office was sub-let from the association next door. Alvin came subsidized, although not quite subsidized enough. I also didn’t mention I had to top up my own living expenses, not that they were high, out of Paul’s estate. Still it was worth it as far as I was concerned.

“I can see why you would be so committed to victims’ rights, after what happened to Paul. And that guy getting away with it.”

I didn’t let myself think about this too often. The wounds were still there. Paul, brilliant and funny, would have been thirty-four in three weeks if a drunken lout hadn’t polished off a two-four of beer, then lurched onto the road with his RX-7 and mangled Paul’s little Toyota. It had taken three hours to cut his body from the wreckage. Longer than his killer served.

“One year suspended sentence. Gotta give the guy a chance. After all, he never killed anyone before.” My hands were choking my coffee mug as I talked. Choking the drunk driver, choking the judge.

“Tough on you.”

I wanted to change the subject. I wasn’t in the habit of discussing just how tough it was.

“Right,” I said, “so what else are you going to do on your day off?”

“I’m treating this like a Saturday, so I’m doing Saturday stuff,” he said. “Drop over to the market and get a few things, go to the library and stock up, see how the tulips are coming up…”

Those damn tulips again.

“…maybe go to a movie tonight.”

He’d been looking into his empty coffee cup, but now he flicked a glance at me.

“I don’t suppose you’d feel like a movie tonight.”

“I’m not ready to see other people yet. Sorry.”

This time the flush surged up past his hairline and down through his shirt collar. I could have sworn his hands got pink.

“Oh, of course not,” he said, “I realize that. Just talking about a couple of people watching a movie.”

“Don’t mind me, I’m being a jerk,” I said. “I’ve got a lot on my mind and it’s making me surly.”

I noticed he didn’t leap to deny this.

“This thing with Mitzi Brochu has thrown me. You remember Robin, I guess.”

“Of course,” he said. “I remember seeing the two of you together a lot at law school.

“Well, she’s just devastated by the whole thing and doesn’t seem to be getting over it, so that’s a strain. The police have been complete creeps about it.”

“Hmm.”

“So the point is, once life gets back to normal and I’m not such a jerk, sure, let’s get together and go to a movie. Maybe Robin could come too.”

That might be just what she needed, I thought to myself. And this little guy might be the perfect match for her. Pleasant enough. Appreciates tulips. Probably likes cats too. Maybe a movie with a single man would be enough to get Robin to climb out of bed and comb her hair.

“I’ll get your number,” I said, “and let you know when would be a good time.”

He wasn’t the type to insist on paying the bill. He got a point from me for that.

“I’ll be off to the library,” he said as we stepped out of the Mayflower and into the very bright sun.

“I’ve got some stuff to check out. Let’s walk over to together,” I said. Death Row reprieve for Alvin.

“Sure.”

He was the kind of person you could be comfortable with, without talking. I liked that.

As we reached the corner of Elgin and Laurier West, across the street in Confederation park, 15,000 tulips exploded into view. He stopped to look. Robin would have too. This could be a perfect match.

We jostled by the camera-toting tourists enjoying the Festival of Spring. By my calculations, there was a tourist for every tulip.

“So,” I said, while we raced the light across Elgin, “did I ever tell how I feel about the parole system?”

“Let’s not ruin a perfect morning.”

We said good-bye inside the library. I galloped up the stairs to reference and he headed for fiction. He was planning to do the W’s. Wodehouse. Westlake. Wright. Wolfe.

I was planning to do the W’s too. Wendtz.

There was only one Rudy Wendtz in the city directory. He had an address on the Queen Elizabeth Driveway and his employment was listed as prmtr. After a while, I figured out this must mean promoter. But what did promoter mean?

I let my fingers do the walking and sure enough, in the yellow pages under Promotional Services, I found “Events by Wendtz”.

What kind of events, I wondered, give you the kind of income you need to live at that address on the Queen Elizabeth Driveway?

*   *   *

Back in the office, there was no sign of Alvin. With luck, he’d caught the first flight back to Sydney to resolve the family crisis.

Wherever he was, I had free access to the phone. I checked in with the Findlays. Robin was in bed.

“Perhaps when Brooke gets here…” Mrs. Findlay let her sad, flat voice trail off. “It’ll be good to see her.”

“Well, yes,” I said, “especially after her long walk.”

Mrs. Findlay always pretends she doesn’t hear my Brooke comments.

“And you too, will you be here tonight?”

“Count on it,” I said.

“Oh, that’s good. Robin has been finding the visits from the police very upsetting. Wait a minute, here she is. She says she wants to talk to you. Are you sure you should be out of bed, dear? Dr. Beaver says…”

“What police? What visits?” I shouted into the receiver. But no response.

“Camilla?” Robin sounded like an exhausted mouse. “I think they’re going to arrest me.”

*   *   *

She looked like hell when I shot through her front door twenty minutes later. In sharp contrast to the perky, bright, blue flowers marching across every free inch of the Findlays’ kitchen, Robin had definite grey undertones. She was wearing an old United Way campaign tee-shirt with tea stains down the front, grey jogging pants with a hole in the knee and pink pig slippers. Deep half-circles were gouged under her eyes. Her blonde curls hung in greasy strands. She clutched a china cup of camomile tea, and her knuckles were white.

Why? I asked myself. I’d seen the same body, minutes afterward. Why was she so psyched out? Not that it wasn’t distressing. Not that you wouldn’t have nightmares. I still jerked awake in the night with Mitzi’s dead eyes winking at me. But I wasn’t reduced to a psychiatric case. Logic told me that stable, sensible, unimaginative, dependable old Robin should have been in the same state I was. After all, it wasn’t someone she loved or even someone she knew as far as I could tell. I knew it could be explained, and I knew Robin was keeping something from the people who loved her. I wanted to grab Robin and shake the truth out of her.

So instead I said, “You look like roadkill.”

It was intended to make her laugh. But all it got was a little nod of agreement.

“I know,” she said.

“More coffee, Camilla?”

“No thanks, Mr. Findlay,” I said, watching him wipe his hairy hands on his blue and white checked apron. I tried to remember if I’d ever seen Mr. Findlay without an apron.

“A little lemon coffee cake?”

He slid the lemon coffee cake towards us on small blue-rimmed plates. Forks and blue napkins arrived on the table seconds later.

Mr. Findlay’s coffee cake is not the sort of thing I’m ever going to turn down. I was through mine in a flash. Mr. Findlay had replaced the first piece while both of us watched Robin fiddle with her little plate, never even touching the fork. Her nails were bitten to the quick.

I took a deep breath.

“Tell me what the police asked you.”

Mr. Findlay scuttled from the room.

She looked at me with unfocused eyes.

“A lot of things.”

“Like what?”

“What was I doing there, did I know her, was I angry with her, did I kill her.”

I nodded. I understood why the police would ask that sort of thing. Of course, they didn’t know Robin like I did. You couldn’t blame them for seeing guilt in Robin’s refusal to say why she went to see Mitzi Brochu that afternoon.

“It was awful,” said Robin. Whether she meant finding Mitzi or being grilled by the police was unclear.

“Who questioned you?”

“I don’t remember his name. But he came here to my parents’ house and he badgered and badgered. He thinks I killed her. I know it.” She bit her lip.

“Was it the retriever or the rodent?”

A tiny flicker of Robin’s old smile twitched.

“It was the ratty-looking one. He kept trying to trick me.”

Mombourquette. I shivered. I hated the thought of his rodential mind. And even more the idea of him invading the Findlays’ blue-flowered territory, trying to trap Robin for a murder she could never have committed.

“They’ll be under pressure from the media to get an arrest. I was there with the body. Covered with blood.”

She caught me by surprise. The old Robin spoke for just a minute before disappearing back into the sedative-induced mental mire.

“You’d better get a good defense lawyer. You don’t even need to talk to them without a lawyer present. You know that.”

She half-smiled.

“You’re a good lawyer.”

“I mean a defense lawyer. One of the big ones.”

“I want you.”

Robin had always been stubborn, even from the first day when we met in kindergarten and she wanted the red crayon. Some people might have interpreted her collapse as wimpiness, but I knew it was just another way of being obstinate.

“I don’t get people off,” I said, “I try to keep them in jail. This is not the right attitude for your case.”

“I don’t care.”

“Well, if you don’t care about yourself and your chances, do you care about your parents? And your sister? They’ll want you to have the best.”

I had felt the parental presence of the Findlays throughout the conversation. I hoped they would rush in to offer reinforcement, but it was just Robin and me, locked in a struggle of wills.

“You or nobody,” she said, with that little smile.

“Shit.” But I knew I was hooked. She had gotten the red crayon, too, way back in kindergarten. I’d backed right off because I was so happy to have a new friend with blonde curly hair and eyes like cornflowers. Only then did she share it with me.

I knew why she wanted me. In practical terms, I was just as good as the next guy. My five years in criminal law before starting up Justice for Victims gave me the tools I’d need to mount a competent and spirited defense. But more than that, I was the only lawyer around who loved Robin and would do damned near anything to make sure she was all right.

Having won her point, Robin closed her cornflower eyes. Her smile faded. So did her colour. I didn’t think she could get any paler, but I was wrong.

“I have to go back to bed now.”

As I helped her up the stairs to her bedroom, I tried again. “You’ll have to tell me why you were there, if you expect me to help.”

“Not now,” she said, as she slipped between the pink sheets with the white ruffles, looking like a sallow stranger in this familiar room. “Not yet.”

Mr. Findlay was waiting for me, with what looked like tears in his eyes, when I got down stairs.

“She’s asleep already,” I told him.

“Thank you for taking her case. We hoped you would.”

I didn’t have the heart to tell him it wasn’t the best thing at all. That you get what you pay for. In this case, the fee would be nothing, and the defense lawyer would be blinded by affection, and someone who usually played for the other side.

Mrs. Findlay was staring at the television as someone’s previously unknown illegitimate child inserted herself as a new character on
Another World
. She didn’t hear me say goodbye. “It will all work out,” Mr. Findlay called out to me, as I climbed into my car.

*   *   *

“That’s right. Wendtz,” I said to Conn McCracken when I reached him by phone that afternoon. “Rudy Wendtz.”

“What about him?”

“Do you realize he was Mitzi Brochu’s boyfriend?”

“Your sister has an unlisted telephone number. Do you realize that?”

“Yes, I do.”

“She’s a bit hard to locate.”

“I suppose she is.”

“I was trying to get in touch with her soon.”

“So, this Rudy Wendtz, you talked to him?” I asked.

“I can’t seem to remember. I got a lot on my mind.”

“I think I have that number somewhere.”

“Oh yeah, right,” he said. “Wendtz. It’s all coming back to me now.”

“My sources tell me he and La Belle Mitzi had a major battle the night before she died.”

McCracken coughed.

“Right,” I said, spitting out Alexa’s number.

“The guy’s a vampire,” said McCracken, “just like the victim. Even looked a bit like her.”

“What about the fight?”

“What about it?”

“Check the statistics, Detective. Eighty percent of women who are murdered are murdered by their significant others.”

“Coincidentally, a substantial portion of killers turn out to be the person who reported the murder.”

“That would be me, in this case. Bring on the cuffs.”

“Course, we don’t know, maybe you ducked in, did the deed, ducked out again, disappeared and dashed back in time to discover the deceased with Robin.” A long, wheezy chuckle followed this.

“You have the mind of a poet, too bad you’re developing asthma. Should see a doctor.”

He kept on chuckling.

“Back to the subject of Wendtz,” I said. “I hope Mombourquette put him through the wringer and then hung him out to dry.”

“I interviewed him myself. I hate to be the one to break it to you, but Wendtz had a business meeting with three associates between the time Mitzi was last seen alive and the time you called in.”

“Oh, sure,” I said. “Like some so-called promoter’s associates would never tell a fib to the big scary policeman. And what do you mean sicking Mombourquette on defenceless women while you get the vampires?”

“Sorry you don’t like it, but your little friend is still our prime suspect.”