Law and Disorder

by Mary Jane Maffini

  “Hang on. Speaking of not sharing, you keep telling me that Roxanne Terrio’s death was an accident. Tragic, but no evidence of foul play at all. Although you distinctly failed to mention that you knew her. So stop trying to sidetrack me with Bunny talk and tell me what’s going on.”

  Leonard gunned it at the intersection and swerved past a Jeep that was taking a broad view of what constituted a red light.

  I said, “Fine, I’ll talk about it then. You know she got a joke.”

  For once Leonard stared straight ahead. “I made it clear that this joke thing is for the birds. And the official finding is that Roxanne Terrio’s death was accidental.”

  Leonard made an abrupt left turn and shot down Third Avenue. He angled the cruiser in front of the driveway of my fussy and officious next door neighbour.

  So call a cop, I thought.

  Mombourquette turned off the engine. “We were an item for a while. It was a long time ago, and it didn’t last, but she was someone I cared about.”

  It took a minute to get my head around that.

  “Okay,” I said after a while. “So did Roxanne have a problem with Brugel after his trial? He got a suspended sentence. Maybe he held her responsible for not getting him off?”

  “He made her nervous. She was afraid of him. And, if you must know, I think that’s why she went out with me. Because I was a cop, and she thought I’d keep her safe, but it wasn’t enough to ease her mind.”

  I decided to push the envelope. “Did you check out the place where she died?”

  Of course he had.

  Another little push. “Do you want to show me?”

  Mombourquette said nothing as he drove over the Portage Bridge to the Quebec side of the Ottawa River. I love crossing the river and don’t do it nearly enough, so I gazed at the scenery while Mombourquette glowered at the wheel and exceeded the speed limit. We headed out through Hull and up toward Gatineau Park. Fifteen minutes later, we were gliding along a wonderful wide parkway fringed by deciduous trees and thick evergreens. Cars were few and far between, although Lycra-clad cyclists laboured up the rolling foothills.

  “It’s around here somewhere. Goddam trees all look alike,” Mombourquette muttered as he peered out the side window. “Give me the city any time.”

  “Watch the road,” I said.

  “Feel like a hike?” he said, pulling over, getting out of the car and stretching.

  “Sure.”

  Gussie felt like a hike too. As we set off along the roadside, a few cyclists passed us, some older people off for a gentle spin, others in colourful gear playing out their Tour de France fantasies.

  Mombourquette could have done with a bit more quality time in the gym, if his laboured breathing was anything to go by. I didn’t think he was a smoker, but he sure wasn’t a mover either. We hadn’t gone far when he stopped at the side of the road. He pointed out a small makeshift memorial marker, the kind you see at the site of road accidents. A wooden cross was stuck in the ground, some fresh flowers suspended from it.

  A stuffed teddy bear leaned against the white cross.

  I scratched my head. “She died here?”

  He turned and glowered at me. I swear he showed his pointy little teeth. Whatever had happened with Roxanne Terrio, it had gotten under his skin for sure. Despite that, I knew he hadn’t constructed that small memorial. Whatever you can say about Mombourquette, and don’t get me started, he is a fine and elegant gardener. He would have done a better job than this.

  I said, “What’s wrong now?”

  “What’s the matter with you, MacPhee? Is everything some kind of weird riddle to you?”

  I thought about that. Was everything some kind of weird riddle to me? I took my time formulating a response. Whatever I answered, Mombourquette would just take it the wrong way.

  “It’s a beautiful place,” I said. “What a shame.”

  “Yeah. Anything else?”

  I glanced at him. What did he want from me? No point in asking. He gets like this sometimes. And it’s not like we’re the best of friends. “To me, seems like a funny place for an accident.”

  “Why is that?”

  I swivelled around, taking in the lush growth, the wide road, the shallow ditch.

  “The parkway is straight here. There is no curve, so no other unexpected cyclist or pedestrian would be appearing as you round a corner. The speed limit is forty kilometres an hour.”

  He agreed.

  “Flat grassy shoulder, nice and wide.”

  “Yup.”

  “So if you had to get off the road in a hurry, you’d either keep going until you could stop or you’d land on the grass. A lot softer than the asphalt, so it’s highly unlikely that she died dodging a dog or a knot of joggers, because there would be plenty of room for everyone.”

  He glared at the grass.

  “And,” I said, “I guess it would make a difference that the road itself is in good shape here. No pot holes, gouges, nothing to destabilize a bike. So what happened?”

  “Goddamned if I know,” Mombourquette said.

  “I suppose there are unpredictable elements, stuff you can’t prepare for. A child could run out, and you’d have to swerve. Leaves on the ground making it slippery. Was it raining that night?”

  “Day. It was in broad daylight. She’d never do anything as risky as riding her bike here in the night. Look around you. This is a place for the day. And no, it wasn’t raining. Calm, sunny.”

  “What did the witnesses say?”

  “Well, that’s the thing, MacPhee. There weren’t any witnesses, were there?”

  “There weren’t?”

  “None.”

  “There’s always lots of traffic around here. In the spring, people are itching to get out on their bikes. Or just to walk. You can see today how many people have passed us, dozens and dozens. On a Saturday, with good weather, there might be five times this many people. Like a highway.”

  “Did I say it was a Saturday?”

  I blinked. “No. I just assumed.”

  “You should know where assumptions get you.”

  Good point. I’d forgotten she’d received a joke at the office. “I should indeed. But she had a legal practice, so I figured the bicycle was either transportation or recreational weekend stuff.”

  “She often went for a ride in the day. The office wasn’t really that far from here. You saw it just took us twenty minutes by car. She had a bike rack, she’d park her car and do a loop, I guess.”

  That was enough information for me to know that Mombourquette had stayed in touch with Roxanne Terrio. Interesting and possibly weird.

  He shrugged. “I guess it only took a second for her to fall over. People came by right afterwards, but by the time they called 911 and the paramedics got here, it was too late.”

  I paused. Weighed my words, because you never knew with Mombourquette. “I’m sorry, Leonard.”

  He turned his head to stare down at the sad little memorial. “Yeah.”

  I gave him a bit of space for a couple of minutes until he jerked his head as if to say “get moving, I haven’t got all day.”

  On the slow walk back, I said, “Hard to believe her helmet wouldn’t have prevented that.”

  Mombourquette said, “She wasn’t wearing her helmet.”

  “Oh. I just… But I thought she was so careful.”

  “She was. But this time she left it in her car.”

  “So why did she leave without it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Do you think the jokes have something to do with it?”

  “That’s the thing, MacPhee. Until you told me, that was the first I’d heard about Roxanne receiving a joke.”

  I nodded. “Have you asked yourself why?”

  He hunched his shoulders and kicked at some pebbles at the side of the road. “What the hell do you think? I’m a detective, not a busybody like you. I know how important ‘why’ is. I’ve asked myself over and over. You’re right. Ro
xanne wasn’t the type to get into any trouble. She wasn’t the type to take a chance. She was lousy in criminal defence because of it.”

  “She was supposed to be obsessed with safety. Do you know why?”

  “In recent years, she was just a bit afraid of life.”

  “But she rode up here on her own without a helmet that day.”

  “Yes. I told you that. You don’t have to repeat everything I say as if you’re giving me a news flash.”

  I took a deep breath. “Fair enough. But in the end, her fears were proved right. She did have reason to be afraid. As did the other people who died or almost died after receiving these jokes.”

  Mombourquette’s nose twitched.

  I said, “We should really try to figure out what they had in common.”

  “I’ve been working on that, MacPhee, being a detective and all. But I’ll be damned if I can see what Roxanne had in common with that crooked lawyer Rollie Thorstein. She hadn’t been a criminal lawyer for years, and as I said, clearly, she was never any good at it.”

  “What about Judge Cardarelle?”

  “He was supposed to be as mean as the day is long. Roxanne was kind and self-effacing if a bit socially awkward.”

  “And Steve Anstruther? He seems a totally different type again.”

  “He is.”

  “How is he doing?”

  “Still in a coma. Anyway, aside from the fact that Rollie and Roxanne both represented Brugel at one time, none of these people had anything in common.”

  “There has to be a connection with the other two and Lloyd Brugel.”

  Mombourquette said, “By the way, Roxanne was a long time before I became involved Elaine. I want you to know that.”

  “Of course. It goes without saying. Well, back to our connections. There’s going to be something. Surely you can find that out, Leonard, being a detective and all. Check out the judge and Anstruther. Even me, since I’m getting the jokes. Of course, my connection with Brugel is fairly obvious. Laurie Roulay. I made sure he got burned by her.”

  I didn’t mention Bunny, as no good would have come of getting Mombourquette hot under the collar about him. As a peace-keeping gesture, I said, “And I won’t mention anything to Elaine. You know that.”

  I guess that did the trick because Mombourquette said, “Steve Anstruther was on the task force that took Brugel down.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I don’t know anything relevant about the judge.”

  Gussie and I were deposited at home first. Mombourquette pulled in and blocked the neighbour’s driveway. Sometimes I think it must be terrific fun to be a cop. Eventually, Mombourquette headed back to the Elgin Street station to continue brooding and to do whatever you do when you have less than a month to work in Major Crimes and some serious crap to deal with.

  “It will take me a week to air out this car after that dog,” he said as I opened the door.

  “Forget about the dog, just don’t forget about Brugel and the judge, Leonard.”

  Mombourquette pulled away from the curb, just as my imperious neighbour descended from her designer front porch about to give him whatfor. He never noticed her, which meant a waste of dramatic and accusatory finger-pointing on her part.

  Oh, well.

  I grinned and headed into the house. By some small miracle, no one was home. No Alvin, no girls, no real estate agents. Just me, the stinky dog, the calico cat and the noisy birds.

  Bliss.

  I made a pot of coffee and sat at the stylish little kitchen table with a pad of paper. I wrote in stream of consciousness the names of every person who I knew to be even peripherally connected to the recent deaths or the people who had died, or in Anstruther’s case been critically injured.

  The victims were on one list. Their nearest and dearest on another. Bev Leclair was on the list. As were Tonya, Alvin, Madame Cardarelle and a dozen or so others. One name reminded me of a line I’d been meaning to pursue.

  Jamie Kilpatrick. A man who was very afraid of something.

  You can’t fault the telephone book as a source of information: in this case, Kilpatricks. The same goes for maps. I had the old phone book because Alvin insists on having the latest for his “work”. Mrs. Parnell just uses the internet. What can I say?

  I found five Kilpatricks in Ottawa. One on Bruyère, J. Kilpatrick, that would be lawyer boy. One in Orleans and one on Island Park. Not likely. Of the others, one was on Carling and the other off Lees Avenue. I just had to check out if any of these addresses featured a small house with a large spreading maple. The same one I’d noticed in the framed photo of Kilpatrick’s grandparents in his office.

  I had plenty to do to keep me busy. I waited until dark, then fished out a dark baseball cap that Ray had left behind on a visit and a dark long-sleeved T-shirt and black chinos. Naturally, my socks and running shoes were black too. I turned off the back porch light and slipped out into the backyard.

  TEN

  It shall be unlawful to shout “whiplash”, “ambulance”,

  or “free single malt scotch” for the purpose

  of trapping unwary lawyers in the wild.

  Paranoid? Sure, but it had finally crossed my mind that if someone was not only killing off innocent people, but also delivering envelopes to my home without getting caught, then that someone could be watching the house too. I might not have known much about what was going on, but I knew that whoever was behind this was dangerous.

  And may I point out that just because you are pananoid doesn’t mean that Lloyd Brugel might not have an interest in you. After all, I had been receiving these jokes too.

  I hadn’t seen any lowlifes lurking around my place, nor had I spotted anyone who seemed to be watching. But then again, nothing would have surprised me after the weird events that had been happening.

  I managed to haul myself over my back neighbour’s rickety fence and whipped through that yard and along the driveway to Fourth Avenue. Two minutes later, I was on Bank Street walking north. It wasn’t long before I was able to flag a cab. The taxi dropped me off at Mrs. Parnell’s apartment. I checked out her apartment as usual, only this time I picked up the little folder with her vehicle registration and insurance and went straight to the parking garage.

  Mrs. P. had upgraded her vehicle again, and the Altima slid out the door like a pat of melting butter. The Carling area was fairly close, and I chose that first. I drove along the street looking for the first Kilpatrick address. The house seemed right, one of the many one-and-a-half-storey homes built for veterans after World War II, but there wasn’t a mature tree anywhere near it. Next I checked the Island Park address, not expecting that house to pay off. And it didn’t.

  I made a U-turn and headed for the Queensway, the quickest route to Lees Avenue and the Ottawa East address. Five minutes later, I turned on to Beechnut and pulled over. The street had several such post-war houses, some now with second storeys added, but most of the street had kept its character.

  Bingo. I was sure that I was looking at the same house as in the photo, the same massive tree towering over it, no doubt shading it, although at this time of night who could tell. Best of all, a Kilpatrick was listed at that address.

  I got out of the car and glanced around.

  “Here, Rover,” I said. “Where are you, boy?”

  I moved along the sidewalk, checking in front of cars and behind bushes. I whistled and called Rover again. Surreptitiously, I checked inside the cars for signs of anyone who could be associated with Brugel. I knew that they didn’t need to watch a person every minute to pose an effective threat. Every now and then would be enough, something dramatic. I wondered what they’d suggested that had terrified James Kilpatrick.

  “Rover!” I inserted a bit of irritation into my voice. There were no lights on in the house. A FOR SALE sign stood at an angle on the uncut lawn. For sure, Jacki Jewell wasn’t their agent. Had they gone into hiding?

  “You better show up, Rover, or you’re toast.”
r />   At that moment, a giant dog leapt at me. I fell back on the lawn, and the dog licked my face.

  “You’re not Rover, and you’re not fooling me,” I said, while attempting to push the dog away.

  “I’m so sorry,” a woman’s voice said. “Sultan! Off!” She had a pronounced British accent and was dressed entirely in Tilley wear as far as I could tell.

  Eventually Sultan bounded off, and I struggled to my feet. “Definitely not Rover. But big, a hundred pounds anyway.”

  “One twenty,” she said. “Bernese mountain dog.”

  “Huh.” I brushed the dust off my pants. “I was looking for my dog, but he won’t come. I guess he’ll show up.”

  “Maybe he’s gone over to the dog park in back of St. Paul’s. That’s where Sultan goes when he manages to slip from his lead. Unless he’s just happy to knock people off their pins.”

  “I don’t come to this neighbourhood very often,” I said. “But I remember the Kilpatricks used to live here. Do you know them?”

  “Oh,” she said.

  “Oh?”

  “I suppose you haven’t heard.”

  I wanted to scream “out with it” but I said, “I haven’t heard anything about them for years. My parents know them.”

  “I’m so sorry to tell you this, but they’re dead.”

  “Dead? Really? Both of them?”

  She nodded sombrely.

  I said, “Well, that’s a shame. My father will be quite upset.”

  “It was an awful way to go.”

  “What do you mean? I haven’t seen anything about it in the papers lately.”

  “Well, of course, it was quite a while ago. A year and a half.”

  “What happened?”

  “They were coming home from church. There was a Christmas concert. The Messiah, I think. A drunk driver ran them down.”

  I chose not to let my mind go down the drunk driver path. I kept my focus. “I’m sorry. Were they killed?”

  “Yes.” She gave me a look like I wasn’t all there, which I suppose I wasn’t. I must have had some kind of unacceptable expression on my face.