The Devil's in the Details

by Mary Jane Maffini

“Yes, the woman in this house right there.” I pointed to the house he had just watched me leave.

  He shook his head.

  “She’s your next-door neighbour.”

  “Brown,” he said. “Is that her name?”

  “Has she been here long?”

  He shrugged. “A couple of years, I guess. My wife might know.”

  A silver-haired woman with amazing cheek bones stuck her head out the door. “Now,” she said. She looked like she meant business.

  “The woman next door, dear, have you met her yet?” he asked.

  “Why?” she said.

  He turned to me. “What did you say her name was?”

  “Laura Brown.” These people had a BMW parked in their driveway. You’d think they could have purchased a few brains.

  “This . . . um . . . person was asking.” He turned back to the tricky matter of arranging the mums.

  His wife stepped out onto the veranda.

  “I am inquiring,” I said, pleasantly, “whether you had met Laura Brown, your next-door neighbour.”

  “And you are?”

  “Camilla MacPhee.” That didn’t seem to be enough. “I’m a lawyer,” I said, stepping up to the veranda and extending my hand. “Mrs . . . ?”

  She didn’t volunteer her name. “May I ask what your interest is in my neighbour?”

  “She’s had an accident.”

  “Oh.” That took her by surprise. I wondered what she’d been expecting.

  “Do you know her well?”

  “Hardly at all. Sometimes make a remark about the weather, that kind of thing. I don’t think we’d ever introduced ourselves.”

  “But you saw her?”

  “Yes, I see her coming and going. Is she all right?”

  “I’m afraid not. This seems like a friendly neighbourhood, and I’m hoping someone can help us find her relatives.”

  “That sounds serious.”

  “She was killed in a fall today.” I figured this woman could take it on the chin.

  Her hand shot to her mouth. “That’s dreadful.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “I don’t think I can help you much.”

  “Did she know anyone else on the street, do you think?”

  “She kept to herself. Wasn’t one to socialize. I don’t think she really was friendly with anyone, you know, beyond a smile and a hello.” She paused. “But, of course, I don’t know that for sure. You’d probably be better off to ask around. Although, it’s a bit late now.” She glanced at a small watch. I thought I spotted the flash of diamonds.

  “Right. I’ll try tomorrow.”

  “And it’s Labour Day weekend. Lots going on, people are at their cottages.”

  “Did you ever see people coming and going? Friends? Boyfriends?”

  “We have better things to do than spy on our neighbours.”

  I said, “I’m sure you do, but the houses on this street are quite close. Did you notice if she had regular visitors?”

  “I don’t believe I ever saw anyone come or go. Just her. Laura Brown, you said?”

  “Do you have any idea where Laura worked?”

  “None. As I said, we never spoke about anything. I used to see her walking back from downtown in the evenings. I assume she was returning from work, because she’d have on a nice suit and pair of running shoes. That’s such an awful look, don’t you think? It always sticks in my mind. And usually people who are dressed like that are coming back from offices. I can’t imagine what they’re thinking.”

  As someone who regularly walked to work in business clothes and running shoes, I bit back my comment.

  “What about seeing regular delivery people at her house? Anyone like that? Cars parked in front?”

  She shook her head. “We’re not home all that much. We’re busy. Concerts and community commitments. And the garden, lest I forget.”

  “Did you ever see her outside the neighbourhood? At a concert or anything?”

  She paused, apparently thinking. “No. Not that I recall. It’s a shame, isn’t it? Such a nice-looking woman. Obviously doing well for herself, they don’t give these houses away. Or those cars.”

  “What cars?” I said.

  “Well, her car. She drove an Acura Integra. Brand new. Black.”

  “Where did she park it?”

  She flashed me a look calculated to reset my self-esteem to a lower level. “In her garage. Where else?”

  There was no car parked in the garage now. I hadn’t noticed any car payments in the bank statement, but then I hadn’t been looking for them. There hadn’t been a car registration or insurance certificate in her fanny pack, but lots of people kept those in the glove compartment. But now I had something concrete to speak to the police about. Wherever Laura’s car was, it shouldn’t take them long to track it down.

  I dug into my shoulder bag and fished out a business card. “If you remember seeing her or seeing anyone here, give me a call.”

  “But surely you’ll be able to track down her family without too much trouble?”

  “Not so far,” I said.

  “There must be information in the house.”

  “Nope. One more thing, what day is your garbage collected?”

  “I don’t see what difference it makes, but they pick it up on Tuesday mornings. James. In the house. Now.”

  By the time I made it back to the sidewalk, she had separated her reluctant husband from his mums, and they’d vanished through the door. And I had something else to think about.

  Aside from the missing car, the fact that Laura had created no garbage for three days and the creepy lack of personal information, there was something else wrong in Laura’s house, something out of whack, but damned if I could figure out what it was.

  Eight

  I was ready to drop when I got home. And I still had a purely temporary dog requiring recreation. The routine went like this: take the elevator down sixteen floors, walk to the park, poop, scoop, walk back from the park, elevator up, repeat as needed. I might have been bushed, but Mrs. Parnell was ready to party. She whipped open the door of her apartment as I dragged myself past with Gussie on the way to the park. There was no sign of Alvin, which was good news.

  “Ms. MacPhee,” she said. “There you are!”

  Apologies don’t come naturally to me, and many people have suggested I need a bit of practice.

  “Sorry I let you down about the pictures of the take-off, Mrs. P., but I didn’t have much choice. I had to identify the body of an old school friend. Apparently she named me nextof-kin. I’m not sure if Alvin passed on that information. I was glad to have the Volvo. I drove around trying to spot your red balloon, but all the balloons were gone by then.”

  “Of course, you did what you had to do. When duty calls, one must obey.”

  That was a relief. Or it was up to the point where she headed down the hall to my place. By the time I’d returned with Gussie, Mrs. Parnell had settled in for a chat. She made a production of filling two juice glasses to the brim with Harvey’s Bristol Cream. She handed one to me.

  I supposed a little sherry couldn’t hurt.

  “Give me a minute,” I said. I wanted to leave a message for Constable Yee and a matching one for Constable Zaccotto to see if Laura’s Acura had shown up anywhere. I knew they’d probably gone off duty at eleven, but they’d get on it when they could.

  Mrs. Parnell waited cheerfully. As soon as I put down the phone, she raised her glass in a salute and settled onto my sofa to light a Benson & Hedges. “Death is never easy. But when you have seen as many bodies as I have, Ms. MacPhee, you develop a certain sang-froid.”

  I couldn’t imagine my sang getting any more froid, and I sure didn’t need a couple of hours reliving Mrs. Parnell’s World War II adventures.

  I tossed back a bit of the sherry. “I’m glad you understand.”

  “And don’t worry about Young Ferguson. Don’t take his outburst to heart. He is young and sometimes hot-headed.”
/>   “Right. I hope you had fun.”

  “An altogether first-rate experience. We found ourselves well down the Rideau in record time. Left some of those other chaps in the dust, so to speak. Excellent pilot.”

  “I’ll take some shots tomorrow.”

  “Splendid. I think the dawn launch will be even more dramatic,” she said.

  I put the drink down with a splash. “The dawn launch?”

  “0600 hours. I think we’ll be fine if we get to the field by 0530. We’ll pick up Young Ferguson first. If you decide to come along for the ride with us, we’ll dragoon someone else into taking the photos.”

  “Thanks. I’ll just stay on the ground,” I said.

  “As you wish. But to return to your problem, was this a close friend? Something unexpected?”

  “Not a close friend. I’m not sure what’s going on. But I have to locate her family quickly so they can arrange the services and all of that. Otherwise, I’ll have to make decisions about what to do with her body after the autopsy. She can’t stay in the morgue. I don’t think funeral homes can just put you in storage either. I have to do something.”

  “Indeed, highest priority,” Mrs. P. said, raising her glass again. “Bottoms up.”

  “Right.”

  Mrs. Parnell paused. “Did you have an address for her?”

  “Yes, and the keys to her house. She lived on Third Avenue in the Glebe. I spent the evening searching, but I haven’t found anything that might lead me to a member of her family. Or even friends. I have to keep hunting.”

  “That’s the spirit, Ms. MacPhee. By the way, I am sure Young Ferguson will send his condolences on your loss.”

  “I liked her well enough, but it’s not really my loss. Even so, I can’t say I’m looking forward to telling people that she’s dead.”

  “I don’t blame you. There will be people who cared about her deeply.”

  “For sure,” I said. “Somewhere.”

  Mrs. Parnell’s eyes gleamed. “Let me know if you need assistance.”

  “Thanks, Mrs. P., I’ll be fine.”

  “Tell me about your friend,” Mrs. Parnell said.

  “Not much to tell. I met her in university. We were in a special social issues reading course together and a couple of other classes, and we worked on a project.”

  “Yes,” said Mrs. P. encouragingly.

  “We worked well together. She was strategic and organized. I was young and passionate about justice. We aced the project with not too much effort, and the course finished. End of story.”

  “Did you become friends afterwards?”

  “No.”

  “You didn’t care for her?”

  “She was a really pleasant person. She was about ten years older, I was just eighteen. We didn’t really have much in common.”

  Mrs. Parnell snorted. “I’m forty-four years older than you. But who’s counting.”

  “I guess you’re right. Ten years can make a big difference in university, though. I had plenty of friends, and I was seeing Paul. We just never hung out together.”

  “You never saw her again?”

  “Sure. This is Ottawa, after all, you run into people. Over the years, I’d see her at a concert or a movie. Lately, it’s been in restaurants. We’d say hi, nice to see you, we must get in touch, that kind of thing. I never called her, and she never called me. I meant to. I guess she did too.”

  Mrs. P.’s eyebrows remained high. “When did you last see her?”

  “Maybe early August. I saw her a few of times this summer at Maisie’s Eatery. That’s a new restaurant and spa in the market. Mostly female clientele. Before she left the restaurant, she stopped to talk to me. Both times.”

  “Was she alone?”

  “No. She lunched with different women. I didn’t really get a good look at them.”

  “What did you talk about?”

  “Nothing much. Pleasant chit-chat about this and that. A minute or two. She said she was doing well.”

  “Doing well at what?”

  “She didn’t say.”

  “And you didn’t ask?”

  “The conversations just didn’t go that way. Funny, she had a great laugh. And she was smart as all hell. I think if she’d been in the next office, I would have had coffee with her, stuff like that. But it never happened.”

  “And you didn’t recognize the women?”

  “I didn’t know them, and just because of the way we were positioned I suppose, she didn’t introduce them. They seemed like friends. Could have been clients or co-workers. It didn’t matter to me until today.”

  “You must have been important to her if she named you as next-of-kin.”

  “Not only that, but she named me as her heir. I found the will at her house. How weird is that?”

  “Curiouser and curiouser. And you had no idea.”

  “None.”

  “In my experience, young women want to talk about their boyfriends or husbands. Did she mention anyone?”

  “I wish she had. I would have followed up tonight.”

  “Was she attractive?”

  “Yes, not beautiful but very nice looking, well put together, lovely skin and a lot of lovely auburn hair. She was on the curvy side of medium. She’d put on a few pounds over the years, and who hasn’t. She had an absolutely luminous smile. She just lit up. My guess is she was single from choice.”

  “I thought if she had a gentleman friend, he might know something about the family.”

  “I never remember her having a boyfriend. Lots of guys were interested in her in university. She was quite beautiful back then. They used to hang around panting, but she just brushed them off. At the time, I thought they all seemed too young for her. Even her neighbours hadn’t seen anyone coming or going.”

  “Oh, well. Did Laura ask about you?”

  “A couple of years ago, she mentioned she hadn’t heard about Paul. She was sorry to learn he’d died. Laura always knew how to say the right things. She asked about Justice for Victims. She said she’d read stuff in the papers. That’s always a bit embarrassing for me.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Believe me, I’ve been trying to relive every encounter. All I have is a couple of pleasant chance meetings with a nice person. Nothing about next-of-kin, nothing about wills.”

  “Perhaps I am wrong, but is it not the custom for women today to exchange business cards?”

  “Come to think of it, I gave her mine the last time I bumped into her. She dropped it in her purse. She said she’d call me for lunch.”

  “And did you get hers?”

  “She said she’d just run out. Not that it mattered. She said she’d call me. Oh, wait a minute. That’s it.”

  “What’s what, Ms. MacPhee?”

  “She dropped the business card into her purse.”

  “Hardly unusual.”

  “That’s what was out of whack at Laura’s home.”

  Mrs. P. raised one eyebrow.

  “Her purse.” I said it more to myself than to her.

  “What about it?”

  “There wasn’t one.”

  “Perhaps it was with her at the time of the accident.”

  “I don’t think so. I was given her personal effects at the morgue, and there was a fanny pack, but no purse.”

  “Hmmm,” said Mrs. P., drawing deeply on her cigarette.

  “Of course, it could be in her car, wherever that is. She might have left it there for safekeeping when she went for her walk.”

  “You’ll find that out when the officers return your call tomorrow. And as next-of-kin, you’ll have access to that car.”

  “I’ll probably have to pay the parking tickets for it, the way things are going. But even if she did leave a purse in the car, she must have had more than one. I’m not the girliest of girls, and I usually just carry my backpack, but I still have a couple of handbags.”

  “I don’t, Ms. MacPhee. Never got used to being tied down like that. Basic supplies, that�
��s all.”

  I let that one go. “I’m thinking back. One time when I ran into her in the restaurant this summer, she had one of those slouchy leather shoulder bags. I noticed, because at the time my sisters kept telling me they were hot items, and they were pressuring me to go to Holt Renfrew and get one. Like that was going to happen.”

  “Aha.”

  “But the last time I saw her, she dropped the business card into a small, structured bag, looked like alligator or something. My sisters are always chattering about handbags, so it stuck in my mind. So my point is, there should have been at least two purses in Laura’s house.”

  “And I gather you didn’t find them when you searched the house.”

  “Bingo.”

  “Certainly that is odd. But perhaps they got damaged, or she tired of them and gave them away. I have seen young women with leather carriers slung on their backs, looking quite rakish, might I add.”

  “Point taken, but these were stylish and expensive handbags. Plus she had nothing aside from the fanny pack they gave me at the morgue. And if she had given them away, she would have bought something nice to go with her wardrobe.”

  “I see.”

  “Glad to hear it, Mrs. P., because I don’t see. If she has people in her life, where the hell are they? I’m betting if we find the purse, there’ll be something to help us track her down.”

  Mrs. Parnell loves digging for details. She wouldn’t mind the “us” part either. Right up her alley, in fact.

  “Maybe the police can give me some answers in the morning,” I said.

  “Don’t worry about it until then. Would you like your drink topped up? Help you relax.”

  I covered my glass fast, before she could slosh in any more Bristol Cream. I needed my wits about me.

  Mrs. Parnell shrugged. “Suit yourself. Get a good sleep, Ms. MacPhee. Shall we reconnoitre at Young Ferguson’s new place? He’ll give us tea.”

  “So early?” I squeaked. I find Alvin’s interior decor mind-bending at the best of times. Think nightmare theme park. I couldn’t imagine walking through his door at dawn. “Can’t we just meet him at the field?”

  “Perhaps you are correct. I’ll let him know. So we’ll be at the launch site at 0530. Up, up and away.”

  Maybe that should have been up, up and awake.