Speak Ill of the Dead (8 page)

“Fair enough, but you’re the one who’s going to look like a putz in the local media when the killer turns out to be someone else.”

“Would you mind repeating that number?” he said, just as I hung up.

I was alone in the office and that was good, since I could swear in private.

I nibbled at my nails and tried to work on what they call a three-pronged strategy. One, try to keep Robin from getting arrested. Two, work out a foolproof defense in case she did get arrested and, even worse, had to stand trial. Three, try to find out what her real involvement with Mitzi Brochu had been.

My mood was not enhanced by the five person-to-person collect phone calls for Alvin.

I picked up the sixth and snarled, “I told you he’s not here.”

“Camilla?” Alexa’s voice came through after a pause.

“Sorry.”

“I just wanted to tell you I’m going to the lake for a few days to open up the cottage. I wanted to check you’d be all right.”

“Why wouldn’t I be all right?”

“Well, you know, finding that body…”

“That was last week.”

“Even so, it must have had an effect on you.”

“Have a good time.”

“I don’t suppose…”

“You don’t suppose what?”

“Never mind, I’ll call you when I get back. If you need anything, Edwina and Donalda are there. And Daddy.”

“Good-bye.”

Great, I smiled to myself, Edwina and Donalda and Daddy. I could put them to work. Shadowing Rudy Wendtz maybe.

This was such an amusing thought, I was still smiling when Alvin’s shadow darkened the door.

Anyone else but Alvin and I would have felt sorry for him, his face was so grey, his eyes so clouded, his pony tail so wilted.

“Oh, it’s you,” he said. “Some people called for you this morning,”

“Who?” I said. “I didn’t see any messages.”

“They said they’d call back.”

Any single-cell scrap of sympathy I might have felt evaporated.

Alvin reached over and picked up his backpack from the floor. “Gotta go,” he said. “Family emergency.”

“What a shame. Well, take your time. We all have to have our priorities. And if you can’t get back from Cape Breton, I’ll understand.”

My facial muscles ached from suppressed joy.

“What are you talking about? It should all be settled by tonight. By the way, I did a little research on your friend Mitzi Brochu. That pile there’s got every article she ever wrote and that pile next to it is newspaper articles about her and reviews of her TV specials. Everything’s in date order with the most recent items on top. See you tomorrow.”

When Alvin’s good, he’s very, very good. He’s particularly good
in absentia
. I spent the rest of the afternoon combing through the articles by and about Mitzi Brochu. It proved to be a potent dose of a poisonous pen. Mitzi had been a lot of things. Nice was not one of them.

Alvin had been very thorough. There was even a picture of Wendtz. Rock promoter Rudy Wendtz, according to the caption. He was shown sampling sushi with Mitzi, she glittering and malevolent in black velvet and metal, he with a two-day growth of beard and slicked back dark-blond hair ending at his shoulders. He looked like a man who worked out. And weren’t those tattoos an adorable touch?

Articles on Mitzi were plentiful and while one or two bleated about the effect her call to “diet or die” had on the already precarious eating habits of teenage girls, most gushed about Mitzi’s wicked wit and unflagging sense of style.

When I had finished wading through the world of the late La Brochu, I slapped the magazines on the table and considered taking a Gravol.

She had her favourite targets: actors, politicians, TV personalities and a Toronto model she compared to a grouper.

Deb Goodhouse had been the butt of insults for years. I thought Mitzi’s jabs had been a one-time random effort to skewer women M.P.’s in general. But Mitzi articles dating way back had rearview shots of Deb and curare-tipped remarks about her sense of style. Running a close second was Jo Quinlan, who averaged two major slams a year by Mitzi. I wasn’t sure who suffered the most slings and arrows: Deb or Jo.

I flipped through the magazines and checked the little credits area in the front. The photographer was the same for all the Deb and Jo pictures and many of the others. He smiled out from a photograph that made him look very, very good. I fished the scissors from the desk and snipped out the picture of the photographer.

Sammy Dash was his name, a man who obviously loved his work.

Six

A
lvin was settled in at the desk, humming, so I found myself huddled in the back of the office, surrounded by work I should have been doing. It was just after nine in the morning, but already I did not feel like working. All I could think about was rat-faced Mombourquette waiting for his chance to scurry through the Findlays’ front door and drag Robin off to the station, still in her pink pig slippers.

No, the best thing, I told myself, was not to sit in the office listening to Alvin sing his favourite Fred Eaglesmith song for the eighty-second time. The best thing would be to get out and stir up a little dust to distract Ottawa’s finest from my very, very vulnerable client. I had a few strong options based on reading about Mitzi’s favourite victims. A phone call was all it took, and I was on my way.

“You’re spooking the horses,” Alvin sang, “and you’re scaring me.”

“Good,” I said, just before I slammed the door.

*   *   *

Deb Goodhouse was one of those rare women who look good in red. Very good. Her hair was still dark brown, almost black, cut in a dutch-boy style. Her dark eyes and ivory skin showed to advantage with her red blazer and matching slash of lipstick. She looked like Snow White, grown middle-aged and professional. She smiled and shook my hand till my bones ached. But I could tell she was not at all glad to see me.

“Well,” she said, “imagine. Alex and Donnie’s little sister. What can I do for you?”

I wondered if she could have been one of the handful of Ottawans who had missed the sight of Robin and me being hustled away from Mitzi’s murder site by the cops. Somehow I doubted it.

Still, she’d been willing to see me, which was the only way I could have gotten past the long-faced security guards and into the labyrinth of offices in the West Block of the Parliament Buildings.

Deb Goodhouse’s assistant, tall, beautiful and black, had ushered me in through the antechamber to the M.P.’s office.

“Thanks for seeing me. This is great,” I said, gawking like the rest of the tourists on the Hill. I had got past the area designated for the public.

The soft leather padding on the door made me wonder, but Deb Goodhouse’s office was less opulent than I expected, even taking the leather sofa, the brass floor lamp, and the very good rug under the mahogany coffee table into consideration. A television set stood within easy view from the desk or the sofa. Citations from dozens of civic organizations hung around with portraits of former Prime Ministers. A small Canadian flag sat on the desk.

“I always wondered what it was like inside a Member of Parliament’s office.”

Deb sat behind her massive desk, her fingers pressed together in a tent. She wore red nail polish and a chunky square-cut silver bracelet with matching earrings. Her body language said “shut up and get out of here”, but her red lips stayed curved in a tight little smile.

Mitzi had done a real number on her. I thought back to phrases such as “Polyester Goes to Parliament”, “Pound for Pound the Voter’s Choice” and “The Hulk on the Hill”. It seemed absurd to think of Deb Goodhouse in those terms. She was a large woman, but polished and attractive, looking younger than her fortysomething years. Her overall image was one of competence and calm. Of course, she was a little tense, but that was because I was there.

“Mitzi Brochu.” I met her eyes as I said it.

“What about her?”

“I’m sure you know she’s been killed, and in a most gruesome manner. A client of mine is being investigated for the murder and, as part of the background work for the defense, I’m looking into what kind of woman the victim was.”

A little snort escaped from Deb Goodhouse’s red lips.

I stopped.

“Go on,” she said.

“Well, there were some Ottawa people she liked to skewer in her columns and on her broadcasts. You were one of them. That makes me think you couldn’t be a fan. I wanted to get a sense of how the non-fan would describe her.”

I sat back in my chair. Alex and Donnie’s little sister from hell.

“Well,” she said, “how would you like to pick up your mail some day and see your flowered butt in full-colour spread across the pages of one of your magazine subscriptions? Of course I wasn’t a fan. She didn’t
want
me to be a fan. She wanted me to be one of her victims.” She paused and watched my face. “I don’t make a good victim, Ms. MacPhee.”

“Doesn’t surprise me. But what did you think of her? What emotions did she arouse in you?”

She laughed.

“You don’t get elected, you know, by giving in to your emotions on every little thing. You’ve got to save your energy for what counts.”

“So she didn’t bother you?”

“Of course, she bothered me. Wouldn’t she bother you?”

“She did bother me. And I wasn’t even one of her victims.”

“Neither was I, Ms. MacPhee. She wanted me to be, but I wasn’t.”

“I’m sorry?”

“My mother always told me three things, ‘Doing well is the best revenge, look at yourself and see the truth and make sure you find the opportunity in every situation.’”

I raised an eyebrow at her.

“When Mitzi first started to skewer me, as you call it, I was pretty steamed. I talked to my lawyer and I slammed every cupboard door in the house.”

I liked this approach. It was the first feeling of warmth I’d felt for her.

“Then I tried my mother’s advice and took a good look at myself. In the mirror. I saw a woman who was large and dumpy and wearing plenty of flowered polyester, but no make-up. At the same time, I saw a woman who’d spent a career fighting to help other people—street kids, refugees, the working poor—but the only time she splashes across the pages of a national magazine is when some shark-woman in Toronto decides she’s not fashionable.”

For someone who saved her emotion for what counted, Deb Goodhouse’s neck was very red. Her lips were now clamped in a steely line.

“Not fair, really,” I encouraged.

“Of course, it wasn’t fair. But that’s not the point.”

“What is the point?”

“The point,” she said, pointing a red fingernail at me, “is I decided to take a few lessons. It doesn’t pay to be a laughingstock in this business. I didn’t sue the witch, that would just draw attention to her. But I changed my appearance, dropped the polyester, got professional advice, modified my hair a bit. Just gradually, over a year or so. And I didn’t say boo about Mitzi and her campaign of mockery. I got a lot of sympathy calls and visits from other people who thought I might be upset and a few smirks from so-called friends. But I’ve weathered it.”

“What about the photographer?”

“What about him?”

“Did you have any reaction to him?”

She shrugged. “Why should I? He was just doing his job. Mitzi was the driving force behind the articles.”

“Tell me, why did Mitzi pick you?”

“Who knows? Because I was there, I guess. I asked myself that often enough. I think she just liked to single out women who were doing something real and important and hold them up to ridicule.”

“Did you ever meet her?”

She shook her head. “Never wanted to. I might have had trouble holding my tongue, and I wouldn’t have wanted to read my comments in the media.”

“So,” I said, “you must have hated her, though.”

“I didn’t hate her. I have better uses for my energy.”

I thought her snarl took away from the sincerity of the statement. Deep down, Deb Goodhouse had harboured a red-hot hatred for Mitzi Brochu. Too hot to hide behind a cool exterior. Too hot to cool down even after Mitzi’s death.

“I’m sure you have.”

“Anything else you need to know, Ms. MacPhee?” She pointed at her in-basket. “As you can see, I have plenty to do.”

“You’ve given me lots to think about,” I said.

I stood up and shook her hand before she could take the initiative. It was sweaty, not at all like a politician’s should be. Stress can do that to you.

I said good-bye to the beautiful assistant, leaning over her desk to shake her hand.

“Sorry,” I said, “I didn’t catch your name.”

“Manon. Manon Bruyère,” she said, with some reluctance. She seemed to think I was up to something.

I was.

Deb Goodhouse bellowed for her and I left, smiling.

I was still smiling as I strolled out of the West Block, through the tourists, and down the Hill to Wellington Street. Eighteen thousand blood-red tulips nodded at me, pleased with my results.

I thought about the woman I had just visited. The shoulder pads on Deb Goodhouse’s very good red jacket had been designed to draw the eye away from the size of her arms, but in my mind, there was no doubt about it: Deb Goodhouse would have been strong enough to hoist skinny little Mitzi by those ropes. Things were looking up. Another day like this and I hoped to be able to present a package of possibilities to the police.

*   *   *

“What kind of knots were used to tie those ropes?” I asked McCracken. I thought coming straight out with it would be the best approach. I thought wrong.

“That number doesn’t answer,” he said.

“It doesn’t?”

“That’s right.”

“Well, I’m sure it’s her number. I ought to know. I’ve been returning her calls for enough years.”

“Well, she doesn’t appear to be there.”

“She could just be out shopping.”

“I don’t think so. I tried all last night. And this morning from nine o’clock on.”

“Hmmm, well, I’m kind of busy now trying to find out what kind of knots were used on Mitzi. Once I find out, I could look into why Alexa isn’t answering her phone. In the meantime, I guess you could say I’m tied up.”

“Reef knots. Some people call them square knots.”