Speak Ill of the Dead

by Maffini, Mary Jane

  “Quite an effect,” I agreed.

  “Not only that, but her blood pressure went practically through the roof,” said Alexa.

  “Indeed?” I said. “She must have hated Mitzi.”

  “God, yes,” said Alexa, avoiding my father’s flicker at her minor profanity, “Deb felt like killing her.”

  Everyone made a point of letting me know this was just a figure of speech, only an emotion and not a reality, and Deb Goodhouse could never have crucified Mitzi Brochu, in case I had drawn that conclusion from Alexa’s remarks. Even Joe came back to earth during the brouhaha.

  “Don’t worry about it, girls, I wasn’t about to call the police.”

  “Well, of course not,” they said in unison, and changed the subject yet again.

  “So, how’s Robin doing?” Donalda asked.

  “She’s still in bed.”

  “Still in bed!” said Edwina.

  “Dr. Beaver’s been giving her sedatives. He says she’s too emotionally fragile to be up yet or to be on her own.”

  “What does he know about emotional shock, you tell me that?” said Donalda, “If she were my daughter, I’d send her to the vet before I’d let old Bucky Beaver look after her.”

  “Tell me about it,” said Alexa. “I’m surprised he didn’t recommend mustard poultices to draw out the poisons in her system. Or maybe he did. Camilla?”

  “Sorry to disappoint, but I think it’s just good old fashioned tranquilizers.”

  “Well, none of my business, of course, but Robin hasn’t really led such a sheltered life. I mean, she is a working lawyer and she did do a lot of legal aid work before she went into real estate law and, sure, it’s traumatic finding a dead body, but don’t you think she’s over-reacting?” asked Edwina.

  “I’d like to see how any of you would hold up if you stumbled across a crucified, bleeding corpse, still warm.”

  “Pass the lamb, dear,” said Stan.

  “On the other hand,” said Edwina, “you stumbled across the very same bleeding corpse, still warm, too, I believe. And yet, here you are bouncing off to work and indulging in a full and active social life.”

  Fighting off the memory of dead Mitzi while I slumped around the office and getting dragged off to family dinners with shades of the Spanish Inquisition was more like it. Still, Edwina had a point. Robin was overdoing it.

  “Unless,” Edwina continued, “Robin killed this woman. Then she’d have a reason to feel so upset.”

  “Edwina,” said my father.

  And I’d thought he was dozing at the other end of the table.

  “I know, Daddy, but she was there, all covered in blood and she won’t tell anybody why she was in that room and now she’s verging on a catatonic state. Something’s very strange about all that.”

  “Oh, Edwina, you can’t think Robin would kill anybody.

  We’ve known her since she and Camilla were kids. It’s not possible,” said Donalda.

  Donalda was right. It was far, far more likely I would kill somebody. And even that was out of the question most of the time.

  Edwina was not one to give up when she was onto a good angle.

  “Maybe Mitzi Brochu had something on her and was going to do an article on it.”

  “Oh, right, Edwina,” I said, “and what would Mitzi have on Robin? Putting too much milk in the cats’ dishes? All of Canada would rush to the newsstands to buy that issue.”

  “You may be her best friend, but you don’t know everything about her.”

  “Yes, I do know everything about her. And I know she didn’t, and she couldn’t kill anybody.”

  I felt unshakable certainty about this. I’d thought for hours about Robin and what she could have done. I’d examined every memory I had of her since the day in kindergarten, when we’d first shared the red crayon and become friends for life. Robin was always the one who helped the smaller kids with their overshoes and zippers. Robin always helped the old ladies cross the street. Robin would give anyone her last dime. Robin didn’t kill Mitzi.

  But Robin, Robin, Robin, I thought, why are you lying?

  “Maybe,” said Alexa, “she was in love and…”

  This startling suggestion was followed by a strangled gasp from Donalda. We all turned to gawk at a set of teeth complete with full gums, sitting in the middle of the table next to the silver vase with the six baby roses. The teeth grinned in a mad parody of every denture advertisement ever made.

  For a minute there was total, and uncharacteristic, silence at the table. Until Edwina reached forward to wipe that smile off her Irish linen tablecloth.

  “HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA,” roared the teeth. “HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAAHA…” Startled, Edwina dropped them into her Minton vegetable platter.

  So that was what Stan had been prowling around in the basement for. A suitable replacement for the laughing mirror.

  “HAHAHAHHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHA,” howled the teeth from on top of the broccoli.

  With the exception of me and Joe, who didn’t return to earth this time, everyone collapsed with laughter. Donalda’s shoulders shook and her head bobbed. Alexa wheezed out heeheehees until twin streams of tears ran down her cheeks. Edwina had a full-bodied boom, not unlike the teeth in the broccoli. Even my father had to smile. Stan was a happy man.

  “Get that damn thing out of here before I toss it,” I said.

  Stan stretched toward the broccoli where our new friend was starting to wind down to a “hahaha”.

  “She’ll do it!” he squeaked. “She threw the mirror out of the car.”

  “Oh, Camilla” said Edwina. “He’s only trying to cheer you up.”

  “He’ll have to try a lot harder,” I said.

  Donalda reached over and patted my hand. “We all know how worried you are. But Robin will be okay. Her mother told me Brooke’s on her way back from Toronto. That should make a big difference for Robin to have her sister here.”

  Sure, I thought. It will mean there’s that much less attention for her when she needs it the most. Brooke will siphon off every extra bit of tender loving care the Findlays were lavishing on Robin. They won’t even know it’s happening. If I knew Brooke, it would be just little things, but soon her mother would be busy altering clothing and making special little meals for Brooke’s friends, and making her bed and picking up after her. And what was this “on her way back” business? Toronto was a fifty minute flight or a four-and-a- half-hour drive. Why wasn’t Brooke at home already?

  Somehow I couldn’t see Brooke soothing Robin after her nightmare. On the other hand, Robin, like her parents, would do anything for Brooke. Maybe even get out of bed to help out with the added workload Brooke always presented. Brooke might be good for Robin, but for all the wrong reasons.

  As we started to clear the table, I got instructions to relax in the living room with the boys. Does all this special treatment make me the same kind of person as Brooke? I wondered as I lounged on the sofa. A user, a burner-up of the good will of others?

  Alexa brought me a fresh cup of coffee. She leaned over and whispered, “He hasn’t called yet.”

  My thoughts of Conn McCracken were not fond. I’d already had a couple of chats with him and all the information had been flowing one way. I had a feeling I would keep on hearing from him until he found out why Robin had gone to see Mitzi Brochu and why I’d gone with her. Whenever I’d ask him something, he’d indicate in that big, comfy way of his, that he couldn’t answer me.

  “Count your blessings if he didn’t call, Alexa,” I said, thinking that the fewer complications any of us had in our lives, the better.

  “Oh, Camilla.” She bit her lip as she flounced back to the kitchen.

  I couldn’t help noticing she was wearing red lipstick for the first time since her husband had died.

  My father eyed me warily from the armchair at the end of the living room. Finally, he spoke.

  “Tell me,” he said, “how’s Alvin getting along?”

  Four
r />   Back in my apartment, I was so well-stuffed with lamb and rice and broccoli that I was ready to settle down for the rest of the evening. I shifted from novel to novel, from task to task. The phone at the Findlays’ was busy. And there were too many cats, everywhere you looked. I was getting used to them and even recognized the damn things. The black one, the white one with black markings, the ginger Tom, the tabby and the grey Persian. And the plump little three-coloured number, which Robin said was a calico cat. I didn’t know their names and didn’t plan to find out.

  It was just before nine and I decided to try a few chores to bore me to sleep. Reading the week’s papers, locating the week’s laundry, washing up the week’s dishes. Not that I cherish these chores, just that I find it better in the long run if I attend to them. And they are soporific.

  But the visit from my sisters earlier in the week had thrown the schedule off. The laundry was done, and there were only the breakfast dishes in the sink. Most of the papers had disappeared. Figuring I could limp on for another week without indulging in drudgery, I shook the Persian off the remaining papers and retired to the balcony with a lamp, an extension cord and a clear conscience.

  My apartment building is perched on the edge of the parkland which borders the Ottawa River Parkway. The balcony looks down on the Ottawa River from sixteen stories. To the North lie the Gatineau hills, green and rippling even in mid-May. I can see the bike and pedestrian pathways like ribbons along the river. And to the East, the green-roofed Parliament and Supreme Court buildings. A turn of the head shows downtown Ottawa, highrise clusters with more blotches of green, some with green rooftops and others consisting of mundane blocks of concrete and glass, creating wind tunnels. I could make out the mellow pink of the Harmony Hotel, the top stories glowing between two office towers.

  The Harmony Hotel, where Mitzi Brochu had checked into a spacious peach suite, expecting luxury and finding death.

  The Harmony Hotel, where Robin had kept an appointment and discarded her mental health.

  The Harmony Hotel, I thought, is the key to understanding everything.

  I chucked the papers back into the corner of the living room and lifted a cat from my favourite pair of running shoes.

  It was time to start sticking my nose in. And I knew the place to start.

  Forty minutes later, I walked into the lobby of the Harmony Hotel.

  Another girl with big hair was working the Reception Desk. This one’s tag said Naomi and she didn’t trill, she chirped.

  I flashed my driver’s license in front of her, and said, “We found a few gaps in the Mitzi Brochu investigation. Can you confirm a few facts, ma’am?”

  It wasn’t my fault if she mistook me for the police. Her eyes widened.

  “What kind of facts? I wasn’t on duty that day. But I’m sure one of the others…or even Mr. Sandes could…”

  “Don’t worry about it. You’ll be fine. I just need you to check the files to see if anyone was sharing Suite 815 with the victim on this trip. Or on any of her previous trips.”

  “One minute, please,” she breathed and vanished through a door behind the counter.

  I was drumming my fingers on the marble surface, when a voice behind me said, “Good evening, Ms. MacPhee, will you join me in my office?”

  The day had not been good to Richard Sandes, perhaps because he was still at work at night. His hair was a little greyer than I remembered it and there seemed to be extra space in his suit. I remembered him being very sick in the powder room after we’d found Mitzi’s body. Very sick and for a very long time.

  “Smoke?” he said, passing me the package.

  “No, thanks.”

  But his smile was still in working order. His eyes were rich and dark, like Belgian chocolates.

  “Naomi seems to be under the impression you are a police detective, Ms. MacPhee. I wonder why?”

  I shrugged my shoulders. “What can I say? Young people, they’re very impressionable.”

  The crow’s feet around his eyes crinkled up, but his mouth was busy with the cigarette. I couldn’t tell whether or not he actually smiled.

  “What can I do for you?” he asked.

  “I’d like to know a few things about Mitzi Brochu. How often she came here. And if there was anyone who usually stayed with her.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m trying to find out why my friend went to see her and asked me to come along.”

  “Didn’t she tell you?”

  “Well, I didn’t actually talk to her before the murder, it was all accomplished with messages. And after, she hasn’t been well enough to badger about it.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “She’s tranked to the ears because she was so traumatized by finding the body. Well, you remember the state she was in when we got there?”

  “How could I forget? I was pretty traumatized myself. You mean the poor girl’s still out of it?”

  “Right. Can’t or won’t eat. Can’t get out of bed. Starts to shake if there’s the slightest reference to Mitzi Brochu. Dead or alive.”

  “That’s too bad.”

  “So, you can see why I would like to get a handle on why Mitzi wanted to see her.”

  “Weren’t the police any help?”

  He raised an eyebrow when I snorted.

  “Okay,” he said, “I think I understand how traumatic it must have been to find the body. The whole tragedy is still haunting me.”

  “You’re going to help me?”

  He shrugged his shoulders and smiled. “I remember the state your friend was in.”

  “Thank you.” I slumped back in the chair.

  “Do you want a cup of coffee or something?”

  “Something,” I said, not knowing what. My stomach was clenched.

  “All right, shall we chat in the bar? It’s pretty quiet on Sunday night.”

  “Good.”

  “I’ll just check a few details and be back in a couple of minutes.”

  While I was waiting, I looked around. The office reflected the aqua theme of the Harmony foyer and hallways. Very restful with the oak furniture and the silk flowers. But all business, except for two photos on the bookcase. A plump blonde girl, about ten years old, grinned from one. An older version of the same girl, svelte and elegant, even in sports clothes, stood with Sandes and a woman in front of a boat.

  Richard Sandes looked different in the photo. Heavier, happier, casual in beige boating gear.

  I was still standing by the photo when he came back.

  “Your family?”

  He nodded.

  “Your daughter?”

  “Yes.”

  “She’s beautiful.”

  He smiled and I realized I was disappointed. I’d been hoping for his sister and his niece or something. It had been a long time since I’d felt the pull towards a man, a long time since Paul.

  The bar was peach rather than aqua. We settled into peach-patterned tub chairs. The waiter materialized immediately. There are advantages to sitting with the manager. It occurred to me the tension in the tummy was nothing more than nerves, but even so I chose a double order of suicide wings and a light beer to wash them down.

  Richard Sandes had a Perrier and a cigarette.

  “So,” I said when the order had been taken, “what can you tell me?”

  I guess someday I’ll have to work on smoothing out my conversational skills. But he didn’t seem to mind.

  “Miss Brochu stayed here whenever she stayed in town. She liked the Harmony and the brass always insisted on making a big deal out of her. There was talk about using her in an ad campaign for the Harmony Hotel chain. She got preferential treatment, so I guess that’s why she chose us over the Hilton or the Westin or the Chateau.”

  “Hmm,” I said, “she didn’t strike me as too harmonious.”

  “True,” said Richard Sandes, “but she was very well known and popular, well, maybe not popular, but she got good media coverage and people liked to read about her and li
ked her broadcasts, so it must have seemed like a good idea to the decision-makers.”

  “Did she get free rooms?”

  “No, but she got the suite for the price of a standard room, provided we weren’t booked solid for a convention or something.”

  “How long has that been going on?”

  He stopped for a second and looked at me.

  Maybe I was getting goopy from those suicide wings. I dabbed at my mouth and fingers with a napkin. I’d lost the habit of worrying about how I looked to a man.

  “I don’t know,” he said, “I’ve only been here for six months. I’d have to check the files.”

  “Oh,” I said, distracted from my Mitzi probe, “where were you before?”

  “Toronto.”

  “Quite a change to Ottawa. How does your family like it here?”

  Richard sipped his Perrier for a second before answering.

  “I’m here on my own.”

  I didn’t know quite what to say. There are many reasons for being in a new city on your own. Most of them you shouldn’t pry into.

  “Do you like it here?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t get out much. I’ve been putting in pretty long hours. But I like that and I like the Harmony.”

  “It’s a beautiful hotel. I can see why you like it.”

  “Yes. I hope I can stay on.”

  “Would they move you without…”

  He smiled at me. A crooked smile with a lot of sadness in it.

  “I’m the manager at a showcase hotel where a star client was murdered. In a very showy way. The Official Philosophy of Harmony Hotels is to provide a place where clients don’t have to worry. There’s a lot of heat right now. Somebody’s got to carry the can, and I’m the ideal candidate.”

  “That’s not fair.”

  “Life isn’t always fair, Ms. MacPhee.”

  “Right. Tell me about it.”

  He waved the waiter over to refill our drinks. I was surprised to see mine was empty. There’s something about suicide wings.

  “So,” he said, “what did you want to know about Mitzi Brochu?”

  “Everything. How often she came here. Who stayed with her. Who came to see her. What she was like.”