I only thought about Paul once or twice during the entire evening. I had to admit, I was happy for Alexa. She deserved a new start. Maybe we all did.
Toward midnight, Alvin's slanty little eyes grew misty. He sidled closer and sniffed. “My conscience is bothering me about it.”
“It's over.”
“But everyone knows I saved you. No one knows you also saved me and, anyway, you wouldn't have been in danger in the first place if I hadn't told Mia about the evidence in the park.”
“And no one's going to find out about it from me. End of story, Alvin.”
It turned out to be one hell of a party, especially when the painkillers met the champagne. Nobody said a word about my unwaxed upper lip, and I didn't have to put up with one single person calling me a hero all night.
Photo by Christine Higgins
Mary Jane Maffini was a 1999 double-nominee for the Arthur Ellis awards. Speak III of the Dead was shortlisted for best first novel and “Kicking the Habit” for best short story.
Her short fiction has appeared in many magazines: from Chatelaine and Storyteller to On-Spec and Ellery Queens Mystery Magazine, as well as in Canadian mystery anthologies such as Cottage Country Killers, Menopause is Murder, The Best of Cold Blood, Over the Edge and Fit to Die.
The Icing on the Corpse is her second novel, and she is hard at work on the third Camilla MacPhee mystery, Little Boy Blues, due out in the spring of 2002.
A native of Sydney, Nova Scotia, and a graduate of Dalhousie University, Maffini lives in Ottawa with her husband and various neurotic pets. In real life, although she is part of The Ladies' Killing Circle, she has never pulled the plug on anyone.
The Icing on the Corpse Page 29