The Devil's in the Details

by Mary Jane Maffini

  Brother Two stuck his head out the window and called to me. “Best try around back.”

  I edged my wobbly way around the side of the house. A German shepherd cross bounded toward me, snarling.

  Thanks to Gussie, I had a few Liver Snaps in my pocket, and that earned me a new friend. Even watchdogs can be bought. Beyond the dog, a grey-haired man in a black and red checked shirt took a break from chopping wood.

  I raised my hand in greeting. The dog sniffed at my pockets.

  “Mr. Brown?” I said.

  He nodded.

  “My name is Camilla MacPhee. Can we talk inside?”

  From the look of it, no one sat in the immaculate living room much. Mrs. Brown called it the front room, and it was plainly reserved for company. I would have preferred the warmth of the kitchen we’d walked through, where the smell of fresh bread hovered. The shepherd cross hovered in the doorway, whining, not daring to put a paw on the beige wall-to-wall carpeting.

  Dust-free photos of a young smiling girl with dark braids occupied every available surface. I didn’t see a single picture of Laura. Was this Laura’s younger sister? She’d never mentioned a sister. No wonder, with such obvious favouritism. At the least, I would have expected Laura’s high school and university grad photos.

  Sadie Brown was small, slim and just short of seventy. Her steel-grey hair was trimmed almost to the roots. She shook my hand with a powerful grip. She’d done her share of wood-chopping.

  They settled me with coffee and fresh cookies, neither of which held much appeal. I still had to tell them their daughter was dead. That’ll curb your appetite.

  She sat on the sofa. He remained standing. They looked at me expectantly. Whatever they were expecting, it wasn’t bad news.

  “Before I go on, I want to make sure you are the parents of Laura Lynette Brown.”

  “Laura Lynette?” Mrs. Brown said in surprise.

  Ralph Brown said nothing.

  My mouth was dry. “I am sorry to be the one to tell you this,” I began. I had already decided to leave the business of foul play to the police.

  Their foreheads creased in puzzlement.

  I felt my stomach turn over. “I’m afraid your daughter, Laura, has been killed. In an accident.”

  Mrs. Brown’s hand shot to her mouth. Her husband sank into a chair.

  I plowed on, gibbering. “It happened on Friday. A fall from an escarpment not far from the Parliament Buildings. I believe it was instantaneous.”

  They stared at me.

  I felt tears rising. “I’m sorry.”

  “I don’t understand,” Laura’s mother said.

  Denial. I knew it only too well.

  “Because of her diabetes, apparently she passed out and slipped.”

  “Diabetes?” he said.

  Sadie Brown said, “What kind of terrible joke is this?”

  Laura’s father got to his feet. So did I, unsteadily.

  He said, “You’d better go now.”

  Laura’s mother remained seated. She said to no one in particular, “What’s all this crazy talk about our Laura Lynette? I thought she wanted to see the house.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said again.

  She picked up the nearest photo and began to weep soundlessly. Her husband, white-faced, jaw clenched, held the door for me.

  I didn’t remember Laura ever mentioning her family’s religion, but the University of Ottawa had been overwhelmingly Catholic, so I made an assumption. “Is there someone we can send for? Maybe your priest?”

  She cried out, “Just leave. Leave.”

  I stood my ground. “I can’t just leave you here on your own to deal with the shock of Laura’s death.”

  “Why the hell not?” Laura’s father said. “We’ve been dealing with it for the last thirty years.”

  Twenty-Five

  I whipped open the car door and gave Elaine a bit of a scare. “You’d better get in there now,” I said. “You’ve got to hear this.”

  It took quite a bit of soothing from Elaine to get the Browns to talk.

  “We thought you were coming to look at the house,” Mrs. Brown repeated. “We get lookers every year or two.”

  I bit my tongue before I said I was sorry again. Too much of that can backfire. “It’s a beautiful place. Just a matter of time until you sell it.”

  “It’s been on the market thirty years, since Laura Lynette died.”

  I blinked. Whatever I’d been expecting here, it sure wasn’t that.

  Elaine said, “It appears that my colleague has made a terrible mistake.”

  “Mistakes happen.” Mrs. Brown glanced quickly toward her husband.

  “That’s right,” I said.

  “Some mistakes are worse than others,” Mr. Brown said.

  “I really am sorry,” I said.

  But he didn’t really seem to be talking to me.

  “Camilla didn’t mean to upset you. I apologize for her unseemly intrusion,” Elaine said, stressing unseemly.

  Normally I would snap at such a remark. I said, “I am . . .”

  Sadie Brown said, “It’s a terrible mix-up. Now another mother will have to go through this.” She picked up a photo of the girl and traced the smile. “She never made it past ten years old, our Laura Lynette. She’d be older than you if she’d lived. Wearing city clothes, I imagine. Maybe with children of her own.”

  Laura’s father stood, his gnarled hands balled into fists, staring straight at the wall ahead, perhaps seeing the little girl who never made it past ten.

  On the way back to the car, I stopped to speak to Brother Two.

  “What happened to Laura Brown?”

  “Godawful thing, that. Poor Ralph there. He never saw her behind the tractor. Never got over it, neither of them poor folks.”

  “You wouldn’t,” I said.

  “If they sell this place,” he said, “maybe they can get away from those memories.”

  “Not likely,” I said, heading back to the Pathfinder.

  “Well, that was horribly upsetting for me, and unnecessarily distressing to those poor people. And a complete waste of time.” Elaine was doing well over the posted limit of 90 kph on Highway 7.

  “Upsetting, yes, waste of time, no,” I said.

  “But she wasn’t the same girl.”

  “Of course, she wasn’t the same girl.”

  “We’ve spent three hours driving around the backwoods, and it will take at least another hour and a half to get home. For nothing, except to resurrect all that grief.”

  “The point, Elaine, is if the woman we knew wasn’t Laura Lynette Brown, from Constantinople, Ontario, then who the hell was she?”

  “We’ll never know.”

  “I’m damn well going to find out. When we get back to town, I’ll duck in to my place to check on the animals, then we can go to your home and get to work on those photos.”

  “Count me out. I have an appointment, and it will be a miracle if I get there in time, so I can’t look through the snapshots for you.”

  “Fine, we’ll do it later. I have to drop on over to the Balloon Festival anyway. I promised Mrs. P. I’d take pictures, and I haven’t been there for a single launch. I’ll take a cab. Hey, wait a minute, what’s with all the appointments on the holiday weekend?”

  “What I do with my weekends is my business and, what’s more, I think if no one found out who Laura was after all these years, a few photos won’t do the trick.”

  “Maybe. But it’s the best bet we’ve got. I think someone in those photos got Chelsea killed.”

  It was mid-afternoon when Elaine dropped me off and headed out for the appointment that was none of my business.

  I said, “I’ll call you later. And I’ll pay you for the gas when we pick up my cash card at Maisie’s.” She pursed her lips in a way that could lead to serious wrinkles. “See you soon, Elaine. Thanks again.”

  Elaine gunned the Pathfinder, leaving me covered with dust from the driveway. Sometimes I don’t kn
ow what gets into that woman.

  Gussie had his legs crossed by the time I arrived.

  Needless to say, the phone was flashing. I started to peek at call display, on the off chance it was anybody interesting, but Gussie howled. And Gussie’s situation seemed more immediate. The empty and half-chewed doughnut box explained why.

  “Okay, Gussie, I get the point.”

  Maybe the brain injury was causing me to talk to animals. As I grabbed my keys and a couple of plastic bags for dooty duty, I caught sight of myself in the mirror. Some friend Elaine was. She might have mentioned that I had two black eyes. Well, black, dark olive with navy tinges. No wonder people had been giving me odd glances all day. Maybe that was why Gussie was howling. There wasn’t much I could do except slip on my Ray-Bans. I tucked my hair under a Blue Jays cap and pulled the brim low. The up and down weather was down again. I was feeling a bit chilly, and since my beloved jean jacket was gone, I dug around in the back of the closet and found a Carleton sweatshirt. It was a measure of the state of my head that I put the sweatshirt on after the hat and sunglasses.

  Gussie likes to take his time and frolic, and because he is a big dog who needs some exercise, and because he had been stuck in an apartment with quite a few doughnuts, and because I wasn’t in frolicking condition, I decided to take something to read.

  I spotted the Berger book from Laura’s place, sitting on the dining room table where I’d dumped my backpack while hunting for Jasmine’s phone number.

  I stuffed the book back in, slung the pack on my back and departed, ready for anything.

  Gussie and I were returning from our walk, during which Gussie had taken an inordinately long time to accomplish a straightforward matter, when we stopped in our tracks. A flurry of police cruisers idled at odd angles in front of the building. Nobody would be driving past them, in or out, as far as I could tell.

  The roof lights were flashing, but there were no sirens.

  We followed a pair of unfamiliar constables into the building. Gussie and I got into the elevator with them. One of the constables pressed sixteen. My floor. I was hoping they were all heading for my pesky neighbour’s place but, deep down, I knew they weren’t.

  The constables stayed well on their own side of the elevator. That might have been because of the plastic bag I was swinging.

  When the door opened, sure enough, the officers marched briskly down the hallway and joined a couple of others clustered outside my door. This didn’t help the bad stuff going on in my head.

  I hesitated by the elevator. Even if they wanted to talk to me about that business with Chelsea in front of the bar, it seemed like a lot of cops for a force that claims to be underresourced.

  Whatever their reason, they were taking it way too seriously, and I didn’t want to be part of it. It was time for another painkiller, and I had just a short while to let the medication take effect before heading to Hull.

  The baseball cap combined with my Ray-Bans to work in my favour. The sweatshirt added fifteen pounds and ten years to my appearance. For once, that was a good thing.

  With two of the cops looking my way, ducking back into the elevator seemed like a red flag. I fished out my keys, and Gussie and I stopped in front of Mrs. Parnell’s apartment, since I had a key to that. But which key was hers? I tried a few, hoping not to be noticed. One of the officers approached me.

  He flashed a badge.

  I tried for just the right amount of interest, not guilt, not anxiety, just normal nosiness. Gussie barked, protectively. Luckily, this guy wasn’t any of the many constables I had come in contact with.

  “What can I do for you, officer?”

  “We’d like to talk to your neighbour.” He pointed toward my door.

  “How come?”

  “Have you seen anyone enter that apartment lately?”

  “No.” This was true, if not the whole truth. You can’t really see yourself without a mirror. I said, “A lot of people are away for the weekend.”

  “You know where she might go?”

  “No idea.” Aside from Mrs. Parnell’s, I had no place to go at that moment.

  “Nothing comes to mind?” I guess this guy had aspirations to become a detective.

  “I wish I did.” Very very true.

  I hoped he wouldn’t notice I wasn’t familiar with the key to apartment 1608. Now with Laura’s keys added to my clutch of home, mailroom, car and office keys, I had a fistful of metal. I felt a surge of joy as one key slipped into the lock. The lock turned.

  Mrs. Parnell’s lovebirds, Lester and Pierre, shrieked in dismay as the door swung open. What a pair of turncoats.

  “Good luck, officer,” I said.

  He flipped open his notebook. “Can I have your name, ma’am?”

  That might have been a pivotal moment, but his radio went off. We said “excuse me” simultaneously, and I slipped into Mrs. Parnell’s apartment without committing an actual indictable offence. The door closed behind me, and I exhaled softly.

  My hands shook as I dialled P.J.’s number. This time, he picked up.

  “I have a story for you, P.J. Come to my place and find out why half the police force is banging on the door of my apartment.”

  “No shit?”

  “No shit.”

  “I’m on it. This is great. Thanks, Camilla.”

  I read Mrs. P.’s telephone number to him. “After you find out, call me at this number and let me know what’s happening.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Just call the number.”

  For some reason, Mrs. Parnell prefers to keep her telephone number unlisted. I wasn’t sure how long that would slow down a former crime reporter like P.J.

  There’s a lot to do in Mrs. P.’s apartment. You could read a hundred books on World War II history, strategy or military memoirs. You could listen to a thousand classical or jazz CDs on her high-end stereo system. You could sit at one of her computers and search the net, or you could park yourself in the black leather chair and turn on the big screen television and watch anything that VIP cable has to offer. Of course, for any of these activities, you’d need single vision, a clear head and an untroubled mind. Every minute felt like a year as I slumped on Mrs. Parnell’s leather sofa and fretted. My instincts told me to lie low. What if the next cop recognized me?

  P.J. would take a while to get to the bottom of things. Once he did, I could head to Elaine’s. My key strategies were: avoid long, time-wasting interviews with the police, avoid getting dragged off to the cottage by overbearing relatives, avoid missing yet another take-off at the Balloon Festival and avoid more blows to the head.

  Lester and Pierre continued to shriek throughout my attempts to think. “All right,” I said, “I’ll feed you.”

  In retrospect, this was a bad idea.

  In the time it took to replace their VitaVittles Gold and special honey nut treats, Lester and Pierre managed to elude me and head for the chandelier over the dining room table. Gussie was thrilled. I’d never seen him jump on a table before. In fact, I’d never seen him jump anywhere. But deep in his fuzzy body were the genes of a hunting ancestor.

  Lester and Pierre shrieked shrilly. Gussie barked joyously. The doorknocker sounded ominously. I said “shit,” meaningfully. The phone rang. Naturally. No point in pretending there was no one home.

  “Yes,” I said, peering through the peephole.

  “Police, ma’am.”

  “Hold on a second, please. The phone is ringing. Hello?”

  “Camilla? It’s P.J. You’re not going to believe this.”

  “Can I call you back?”

  “Are you crazy? You need to hear this!”

  “I want to hear it, but the police are at the door.”

  “What’s all that racket?”

  “Hold on a second.”

  The doorknocker sounded. This cop had no attention span. “Can you open the door, ma’am?

  “My pet birds are out of the cage, and the dog is threatening to eat them.
You can probably hear him barking. Can I get back to you, officer?”

  “It won’t take long, ma’am.”

  “It will if my birds escape. Can we talk through the door?”

  I opened it a crack, hoping the space was too small for a lovebird to shoot through.

  “Just a few questions about your neighbour.”

  “I don’t have much to say,” I started, when the miserable so-and-so next door shouldered his way past the officer. “But that’s her next-door neighbour. He might know something. That will give me time to get the birds back in the cage. Or I could go to the police station later. Who should I talk to?”

  He said something that was drowned out by the shrieking of Lester and Pierre. I swung around to see Gussie make an optimistic leap toward the chandelier. Lester and Pierre swooped across the room, touching down on a cluster of framed photos of Mrs. Parnell’s World War II comrades. Gussie followed them, barking. The birds, the dog and the tinkle of breaking glass drowned out my words. “Thank you, officer. You’ll hear from me.”

  “What is going on there?” P.J. said.

  “You wouldn’t believe it.”

  “And you won’t believe this,” P.J. said.

  “Right. Did you find out why the cops are looking for me?”

  “They have a warrant for your arrest.”

  “What?”

  “Promise me I get the exclusive interviews.”

  “Don’t be a jerk.”

  “Well, Tiger, looks like murder.”

  “Murder? That’s not possible.”

  “To be more precise, two murders.”

  Twenty-Six

  Two murders?”

  “So I’m told.”

  “Who the hell do they think I murdered?” I held on to the table as the room whirled.

  “First, Laura Brown, and second, someone called Chelsea O’Keefe.”

  “That’s just nuts.”

  “No yelling. I’m not the one with the warrant for your arrest.”

  “Sorry. I’m a bit shaken up.”

  “Can I get an interview from you about how it feels to be accused of murdering two women?”

  “Come off it, P.J.”

  “You said if I found out what was going on, you’d give me a story.”