Death in Cold Type

by C. C. Benison

  “Seventy-five, seventy-six.”

  Nan sipped her tea thoughtfully. “You weren’t dissatisfied with our program, were you? I don’t mean to pry, but you might be asked in an interview.”

  “No,” Stevie lied, draining her cup. “I just wanted a change.”

  “Oh, I thought it might have had something to do with Michael—”

  Stevie glanced over her cup rim sharply. But Nan was reaching for a biscuit.

  “—going to the Curtis Institute. Philadelphia’s not all that far from Providence. I thought—”

  “Actually, Nan, after Michael went to the Curtis, we weren’t much in touch.” Stevie realized she sounded more curt than she’d intended.

  “Oh.” Nan regarded Stevie with undisguised curiosity. “I see.”

  Stevie smiled. “Just one those of things.”

  “Oh dear.”

  There was an awkward pause.

  “Well, at least you finished your year with us. Anyway, as I say, the job at the university is only a term position, and I know you’re wondering what other opportunities there might be—out there, so to speak.”

  “There’s been kind of a downturn in Toronto since Black Thursday.”

  “Well, you know, Winnipeg just plugs along, not as affected by—”

  The telephone rang on the table near them. “Sorry,” Nan said, reaching for the receiver, “I’d let the machine get it, but there’s a chance it might be the school.”

  Stevie observed Nan’s eyes widen with surprise after her initial greeting, then a kind of gravity settle over her expression as she mouthed a series of yesses of varying emotion into the mouthpiece.

  “Has something happened?” Stevie asked after Nan replaced the receiver.

  “That was the police.” Nan frowned and pushed up her sleeve to reveal her watch. “They’re coming over shortly.”

  “Probably want to know if you saw anything Tuesday evening—”

  “But—”

  “—on the way to the restaurant, most likely. Or before. Or during.”

  “But how did they know—?”

  Stevie sighed. “Leo.”

  “The man you were with.”

  “His brother-in-law is the detective in charge of the investigation. Leo told him Roger was reviewing the Wajan. I guess they’re just following leads.”

  Nan regarded her with mild alarm. “But I can’t think of a thing. It was a perfectly ordinary day.” She glanced absently around the room. “I got home from the university about 5:30. Roger telephoned at just before 6:00 to say he was going to freshen up—he walks to and from work, it was a hot day—and come get me around 7:15, which he did. And then we walked to the Wajan, which took about ten minutes.” She shrugged. “Had a pleasant dinner. Roger sometimes get a bit severe with the waiters. But nothing out of the ordinary, I don’t think.”

  She tapped her lower lip thoughtfully, then addressed Stevie apologetically: “This is an awful question, but do you have any idea exactly when Michael—?”

  The word was left unsaid. She told Nan what Frank had told her and Leo—somewhere between 6:30 and 7:15, the earlier time favoured.

  “Oh, well then, we were here for most of that hour. I was getting ready. I could hear Roger singing in the shower. And I don’t think we even passed anyone on the street going to the restaurant.”

  Nan glanced down and brushed her hand along the length of her kimono. “I guess I’d better get out of this thing, if I’m going to receive the police.”

  “Maybe I should go.”

  “No, no. Stay. Finish your tea. I’ll just slip on a dress.”

  “But—”

  “I’ve hardly given you any help at all.”

  “Well, a term at the school might be interesting—”

  “Come through to the kitchen.” Nan rose in a swirl of silk. “If I go into the bedroom we can still hear each other.”

  Nan lifted the tray and guided Stevie, cup and saucer in hand, through the furniture jungle to the kitchen. “I was going to say,” Nan began, placing the tray on the counter and moving down the short hall toward the back of the apartment, “that Designers Four Plus One might be looking. I understand they’re minus one. They seem to be branching out into interiors for clinics and dentists’ offices and the like. Have you done that sort of thing?”

  “A little,” Stevie responded. Working in a shop like Yabu Pushelberg had spoiled her. Having been project director for restaurants and hotels in Toronto, a dentist’s waiting room seemed a little unchallenging. She glanced at the kitchen’s fifties-style breakfast nook. Savoye House was attractive. But did she want to buy something if she stayed longer in Winnipeg? More than a term job, real estate would be commitment.

  Nan was rattling on and Stevie didn’t catch the words. “Pardon?” She raised her voice. But the reply was cut off by a sharp buzz that made Stevie’s nerves jump. “Damn,” Nan called from the bedroom. “Would you get that, Stevie?”

  Stevie found the intercom. If the caller was Frank Nickel, he’d travelled faster than stink, which made her guess where his last stop had been.

  “Mrs. Hughes?” The voice barked.

  “No,” Stevie groaned. “But I’ll let you in anyway.” She pressed a red button on the panel, then listened as the door opened on the stairwell below and soft thuds proceeded up the carpeted stairwell. She pulled the door open quickly before a hand could go to the buzzer. Frank stopped wiping rainwater from his coat to stare at her.

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake—you again.”

  “Professor Hughes was one of my teachers at university. I’m seeing her on a business matter.”

  “So where is she?”

  “She’ll be out in a moment.”

  “Are you going to let me in?”

  Stevie stepped aside. “You got here fast.”

  “I was just down the street.”

  She watched Frank loosed the knot of his coat belt. “What did Merritt have to say?”

  “The car’s in the driveway. Lights are on. But Mrs. Parrish doesn’t seem to be at home.”

  “But the funeral’s—”

  “Oh, she’s at home all right,” Frank yanked his coat off and handed the wet bundle to her. “She’s just not answering her door. Or her phone. And if I have to pull her out of that funeral, I’ll do it.”

  “You wouldn’t dare.”

  Frank raised an eyebrow. “I don’t think Mrs. Parrish’s reluctance to speak with me works in her favour.” He leaned toward her. “Do you?”

  Nan joined them in the hall, wearing the navy-blue sheath she’d worn like a uniform every day of the year Stevie had spent in I.D. “Am I interrupting something?” she said with the authority Stevie recalled from art history lessons all those years ago.

  Frank flashed his warrant card. Nan glanced at it, then, worriedly, at Stevie.

  “No,” Stevie replied. “Anyway, I must go. Thank you for the tea.”

  “Come and see me again,” Nan said, helping her into her coat. “And do think about the job at the school.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  Stevie hustled down the stairwell. Soon she was outside.

  “Oh hell,” she thought as the cold rain drummed onto her head. “I’ve left my umbrella behind.”

  23

  Fugue State

  Merritt ran her forefinger down the surface of the hand mirror and then delicately dabbed the tip of her tongue. She repeated the action and then, satisfied not a single speck of the sparkling powder remained, replaced the mirror on the dressing table next to the matching brush and comb, part of a very expensive art deco vanity set that had seduced her on her recent New York visit, and which she really couldn’t afford. She fingered the cool, smooth edge of the ebony and closed her eyes. Gently, she began to rock back and forth on the vanity stool, feeling the easy gallop, as the drug sought its destination. A glow suffused her limbs and then her mind surged forward onto a high radiant plateau. The pain was gone. Twice in the past week—the last time T
uesday night—she felt as though she might shatter, break into a thousand shards of glass along the dark carpeting, brittle and glistening like cold stars in airless space. But now…

  What did that damn cop want anyway? She had said everything there was to say on Tuesday.

  That evening, after Axel, sensing her preoccupation, had left, after the phone call, she had sat immobile, staring into the mirror over the dressing table, looking at the teeny-tiniest of lines that had appeared lately at the corners of her eyes, expecting them somehow to crack wide open and race down her body like the spreading claws of an earthquake, until she tumbled in upon herself. She had muttered a few phrases—she couldn’t remember now what she said, how she sounded—and returned the phone to its cradle.

  A similar phone call, the Sunday after New Year’s Day 1977, had announced her parents’ death. She had been home, waiting for her parents to return from driving Michael to the airport. She might have gone with them, but she begged off claiming a sore tummy, but really wanting to hang around in case the boy she met at a New Year’s party called. Her physical response then, as on Tuesday, had been a kind of implosion, allayed by some accessible narcotic. At fifteen, it had been booze. At twenty-seven, the choices were more abundant. From a compact in her purse she had removed a vial, and carefully poured a small amount of powder on the slick surface of her hand mirror. Through a thin gold straw, she had applied the powder, first to one nostril and then to the other, inhaling greedily.

  Today was Friday, she recalled. The funeral was in four hours. Caterers would arrive in two. She opened her eyes. The face looking back at her in the mirror seemed subtly readjusted, the skin tauter, the cheekbones higher. Or perhaps she only felt they were. No matter: she subscribed to the idea that beauty was as much psychological as it was physical. Nature had not seen fit to provide her with the absolutely perfect symmetry or utterly flawless features she once craved, that had been everywhere around her in New York when she had elbowed her way into a job with Chiang, the PR firm whose every client was fashion-related. So she had nurtured a vivacity that overcame even a hint of doubt in the observer’s mind, fuelling it when she flagged with cocaine. She’d been a fixture at Limelight and The Saint and Danceteria and Palladium, all the clubs, straight, gay, whatever. She was everywhere during Fashion Week, running from one tent to another in Bryant Park, making sure Suzy Menkes was in the front row or Tori Spelling wasn’t behind a column. She went to the after-parties and the after-after-parties and the after-after-after parties. How many times had she said “must have…it’s all about…I’m loving…of the moment…it screams…beyond fashion”? How could you do all this without a noseful or two? The drugs were everywhere, all the time, so hard to resist. She refocused on her face in the mirror. Her eyes, she could see, had recovered some of their animation. They were her favourite feature, especially with the green contacts. Or was it her hair? She patted it gently. A feathery mass of copper waves and soft curls, she needed only to tease it with the end of a comb to return it to artful disarray.

  She was glad she hadn’t gone in to see Michael after all on Tuesday. Or had she? The question had been plaguing her all week. But she decided, finally, that she hadn’t. She certainly remembered sitting in her car virtually camouflaged by the shrubbery in the cul-de-sac outside Michael’s for what seemed like ages, unable to decide whether to pay him a visit or not. She could remember toying with the idea of telling him about her new situation and wondering if she should use it to leverage the one thing she really needed—money. She hated herself for even thinking along such lines. But she was so sick of asking for money. Every time she asked, she seemed to sprinkle more poison on her relationship with Michael. He would scrutinize her, as he scrutinized her every time they’d been together in the last eighteen months, since he’d dragged her from the flat in SoHo she’d been sharing with Diana Merlis, a fellow publicist at Chiang PR, and pushed her into rehab in Christ-forsaken Minnesota. Again. God, she had been on a real high that April day. She and Diana had been at St. Patrick’s Cathedral for Andy Warhol’s memorial service, which had been fabulous! Cast of thousands! She’d arrived back, turned the key, and there was Michael. Diana had scuttled into her bedroom. She denied it, but Merritt was sure she had been communicating with her brother.

  Was she using again? his expression always seemed to say. No, she was not fucking using again. Well, at least she hadn’t been. She had been good since leaving Hazelden and coming back to Winnipeg and working at Daddy’s old rag. But Michael had gone off to Europe. (She could breathe again!) And then Guy began to freak her out. So what if it was a stinking hot July in New York?—she’d fled there for a couple of weeks. Joined up with old friends. Went to some of the old clubs. Got into some old habits.

  So what? She could stop any time she wanted.

  Michael had no idea what things cost. He had the material needs of a hermit. How could she possibly live on the pissant salary the Citizen paid? How could anybody? She thought bitterly of all the money she had lost—on friends, drugs, bad investments, mostly drugs. Damn Michael for always being the blue-eyed boy! For always doing the right thing. For being so clever and good with his share. This time, though, she had the best reason to ask for money. This time, it wasn’t for her alone.

  At some point she must have nodded off in the rinky-dink Miata. Surely she had. She had been to Jane’s Boutique for a fitting after work and Jane, dear Jane, who could read her tension like a book, and who always had some treats for her special clients, had given her a little something to calm her down. And then it had been so warm in the car, even with the top down, that she just seemed to slip into a vivid dreaming. She was talking to Michael, imploring him, and he didn’t seem to be listening. He had been as remote and preoccupied as he had seemed two weeks earlier when they’d lunched at Le Beaujolais and she’d complained about Guy. She sensed there was something he wanted to tell her but couldn’t. In the dream, though, he turned his head away from her. He would not listen. She was screaming. There had been a cloud of noise and image, a thud and crimson, and then something whisked her out of the dream. She re-emerged into air as thick as a blanket and the shadows of dusk closing in along the cul-de-sac, frightened, wanting to gag. The great red ball of the setting sun reflected in her rearview mirror blinded her eyes.

  She shook herself at the memory. A shiver, like a cold hand, ran up her back. To counter it, she studied herself again in the mirror of her vanity table and fixed on her enlarged pupils, each a black diamond in an emerald sea. Yes, her eyes were definitely her best feature. Then the nasty thought entered her head, the same one that had intruded Tuesday, after the phone call: She would have Michael’s money. She would be the chief beneficiary in his will. Of course, she would.

  And why hadn’t that goddamn lawyer called her back?

  And then she remembered what it was that had awakened her so suddenly in the car. Why hadn’t she thought of it before? It had been a pounding on the pavement. The rhythm was like that of the cop banging on her door. She had opened her eyes just in time to catch a fleeting glimpse of someone bursting through the gate. She hadn’t expected him, of all people, to be there, then. But it had been him, moving as though the very devil weren’t far behind.

  24

  Shades of Mary Jo

  By late afternoon, the skies were worn out of rain, and the sun, slipping through a rift in the clouds, turned oil-slicked puddles on the Crescent into rainbow mirrors. Leo hopped over one of them as he made his way to the reception, joining what seemed to be a stream of humanity eager to shake off the solemnity of the funeral Mass and the bleakness of the graveside rites and have a drink or two. The service had seemed interminable. Leo had arrived at St. Giles early, found a seat at the back, and had made himself busy scribbling down the names of various local grandees come to mourn the late Michael Rossiter. He did so on the borders of the funeral program. His notebook, safely ensconced in his inside pocket, would have flagged him as one of those thoughtless, rude, debauched
reporter types—which he could be, if the need arose. He had just added the mayor’s name to the list when he felt something slam into his shoulder. He looked up and noted Axel Werner’s fist.

  “Shove over, Fabian.”

  “What brings you here?” Leo’s back twinged. He shuffled down the pew.

  “Since when do you need an invitation to a funeral? Anyway, I knew Michael a little.”

  “I don’t remember seeing you at his exclusive Victoria Day barbecue.”

  Axel grunted and pulled a copy of the Bible from the rack in front of him. “Why are you sitting way back here?”

  “The better to work by.” Leo held up his pen. “‘At the funeral attended by the premier, the mayor, and representatives of some of Winnipeg’s oldest families,’” he intoned, as if reading the news on the CBC. “Anyway, I tried calling you last night.”

  “I was out.”

  “I figured. Eve still in Dauphin?”

  “I suppose.” Axel opened the Bible and began flipping aimlessly. “Actually, I’ve been wanting to talk to you.”

  “What about?”

  Axel looked over and eyeballed his suit. “Is that what you’re wearing tomorrow to the Galleries Portáge opening?”

  “Christ, not this topic again.”

  “Don’t be such an asshole.”

  “You’re the asshole.” Leo jabbed Axel through his sweatered ribs with his elbow, then quickly jotted down another name in his pad as another nob cruised down the aisle. The gloom of the sanctuary and the gloom of the organ music were making him uneasy; he was viscerally reminded of the last funeral Mass he’d been to, a quarter-century ago at Holy Rosary—his own father’s. Distractions were welcome. “So, are you going to tell me what it is?”

  He looked down. The Bible on Axel’s lap had fallen open at the Book of Matthew.