Speak Ill of the Dead

by Maffini, Mary Jane

  We ended the evening by driving around before heading back to my place. Down Wellington Street and Sussex, past the glass sculpture that is the National Gallery and across the Interprovincial Bridge to Hull, admiring the lights shimmering on the green roofs of the Parliament buildings and the sensuous curves of the Museum of Civilization.

  As we crossed back into Ottawa on the Portage Bridge and drove along the Parkway to my apartment, the river glistened in the surrounding blackness. When we stopped in front of my building, I felt disappointment that the civilized dinner and drink were over.

  “Okay, I’ll talk to the police. I’ll show them the photos and suggest they might want to have a word with the subjects.” After I’ve had a word with them, of course, I added to myself.

  Richard squeezed my hand. “I love it when you’re sensible.”

  “You do not.”

  “I do,” he said, watching my mouth.

  Usually I’m not even conscious of having a mouth. But at that moment, it seemed like the supreme erogenous zone. I was surprised he couldn’t hear my pulse pounding.

  I don’t know how long we sat there like that, stopped in time.

  Then I remembered his wife.

  * * *

  I couldn’t sleep, and it wasn’t just the cats lying on various parts of my body either. I lay staring around the room. The eggshell walls were stark in the moonlight. I tried to keep still, because when I didn’t, whatever cat was disturbed by the movement dug its claws into whatever part of my body had moved. And I didn’t feel like kicking cats off the bed. I was already too much of a bad guy.

  So there wasn’t much to do. I could think about Richard if I wanted and get up and take a cold shower. Or I could think about Mitzi’s murder and get up and have a drink. Or I could think about dead cats.

  For as long as I’d lived in the apartment with the eggshell walls, I’d thought about Paul when I couldn’t sleep. I saved that time for him. Picking up each memory from my mental safety deposit box, touching it, admiring it, feeling it. Remembering the time we first met on campus with the leaves crunching under our feet, remembering sipping cheap wine and munching stale crackers in our first lumpy bed, laughing about crumbs, remembering…but memories of Paul, always so fresh and alive, playing like a new videotape in my head, no longer filled every space in my mind and no longer left their trail of pain. Why was that?

  I stared at the walls. Maybe it was time to get a few pictures.

  My thoughts drifted to Richard. Although they were not the kind of thoughts you share with other people, the images were real enough for me, and as disturbing as our last conversation in his car. Richard and me. Richard and his wife. There was no way to make it work out right.

  Moonlight filled the room, lightening the walls and the bedclothes and me, lying there. The fat little calico cat snuggled into my side.

  Maybe it was time to buy some curtains.

  * * *

  In the morning, I snapped awake, remembering the Benning brief still had to be dealt with. Traces of the moon still hung behind the sky, just to haunt me. Five cats were haunting me, too.

  It was a world filled with flashing tails and accusing, pointed ears. Cats leapt from floor to counter and from counter to floor as I opened the Meow Mix. The calico rubbed herself against my legs.

  “Watch it, you guys, I’m not sure I’m cut out for family life.”

  No one paid attention.

  When I pushed my way through the office door an hour later, a man’s shape became visible. I came close to dropping my coffee and muffin and then exhaled in relief. Who else did I know with a brushcut?

  Merv. His leggy presence took up most of the available room. He was sitting in one visitor’s chair with his feet up on the other one, sipping coffee from a jumbo styrofoam cup. An immense bouquet of flowers lay on my desk. Daisies, mums and ferns mixed in with lilies and statice.

  Merv was not a happy man.

  “I don’t know how you can get anything done in here. It’s like a closet.”

  I refrained from saying that it was even more so when Merv squeezed his six-foot-three frame into it.

  But he wasn’t done yet. He looked at me with the same critical gaze you might direct at a head of broccoli that’s been in the fridge too long.

  “Look at you,” he said. “You look wrecked. Yuck, what’s that on your suit?” He reached over and brushed off a patch of cat hair.

  “What can I do for you, Merv?” I said, unwilling to get caught up in personal grooming issues.

  Amazement, or something like it, washed across his face and settled in around the eyebrow area.

  “What can you do for me? I love it. Little Miss Busybody sends me on half a dozen errands and then says…”

  “Can it, Merv. Three things, that’s all I asked you. And may I remind you that you did them for Robin’s benefit, not mine.”

  The hard line of Merv’s jaw always softens when you mention Robin.

  “It’s still what I can do for you. What I’ve done for you.”

  He fished a paper out of his pocket. “It’s the scoop on your new friend.”

  Large-and-Lumpy.

  “Denzil Hickey. Let’s see,” said Merv, “long history of criminal lifestyle. Couple convictions. Armed robbery. Assault with a deadly weapon. They were a long time ago. Served a couple terms in maximum security. And that’s not counting the charges they couldn’t make stick. Stuff like intimidating witnesses, trafficking. Well-known to police here and in Toronto. They know he’s still active. He’s a goon for Rudy Wendtz. I imagine he picked up a few nasty tricks in Kingston Pen. I would not join his bridge club if I were you, Camilla.”

  “I love it when you use the subjunctive, Merv.”

  The back of Merv’s chair reverberated as the door to the office hit it.

  “Sorry I’m late,” said Alvin, squeezing in past Merv. He edged around me and hung his best black leather jacket up on the oak coat rack, flicked his pony tail back over his shoulder, realigned his right row of earrings and sat himself down at the desk. He regarded the flowers and Merv with interest.

  Merv looked back at him with astonishment. I looked at both of them and thought I would rather be elsewhere. But Merv was pretty well blocking the exit.

  “Merv, Alvin. Alvin, Merv.” I hoped that would be all there was to it, but the looks on both of their faces indicated they would be making evaluative remarks about each other when the time was right.

  Merv sipped his coffee.

  I remembered my own cup and opened it. It was still hot enough to drink, and I felt I needed it.

  Merv must have decided that the best way to deal with Alvin was to ignore him.

  “So my point is, stay the hell away from this guy. We have reason to think he may be involved in the disappearances of several people. People who were of great interest to the Crown.

  In the sense that they were potential witnesses and in the sense that nobody knows anything about their whereabouts as we speak. In the sense that they are no longer among the living. Do I make myself clear?”

  “As clear as you ever do, Merv.”

  It didn’t seem to bother him.

  “Took the day off,” he said, unfolding out of the chair and making the room look even smaller. “Planning to visit Robin for a while.”

  Well, at least that explained the flowers.

  “And don’t forget what I said about that guy. He is vicious. Stop your meddling. Leave the investigation to the police.”

  “May I remind you, Merv, that when the investigation was left to the police, they focused on Robin.”

  “You won’t be much good to her if you’re dead,” was Merv’s parting shot.

  I whipped my camera out of its case and captured a shot of Merv with his bouquet, for future blackmail.

  “Delightful meeting you,” said Alvin. The morning sun glinted off his cat’s eye glasses.

  But the glass in the door was already rattling from Merv’s exit.

  I had mana
ged to catch Merv’s bad mood and add it to my own, and therefore was glad Alvin was in the office. At least I could pick on him. I looked around at the piles of paper.

  “For God’s sake, don’t you ever get any work done?”

  Alvin looked up from his magazine in surprise. A hurt look settled on his bony face.

  “What are you talking about? What about all the sleuthing I’ve been doing for you? Do you think you’re going to find out who murdered Mitzi without my help?”

  “Yes, I do. It’s just a matter of time until I figure out what happened there. I know that Brooke Findlay’s big ambition was to be the ‘Walk in the Woods’ woman. I know she has a fondness for nose candy. I know that she was Rudy Wendtz’s part-time girlfriend, and I know Mitzi was jealous and planning to fix Brooke but good. And I know Mitzi and Wendtz had a huge fight the night before she died. I know that Wendtz employs someone who probably will kill on command. Yes. I think I can solve it while you’re catching up on the filing. The other suspects look pretty unsuspicious next to Wendtz and Company.”

  “Fine,” he sniffed, “then you won’t be interested in knowing that Jo Quinlan and Sammy Dash were high school sweethearts, and even lived together for a while, back when Sammy was plain old Sammy Dashchuk.”

  We looked at each other.

  “I think I’ll keep any other information I might happen to have to myself,” he added.

  Half an hour later he was still at his desk, doing nothing as far as I could tell, his scrawny shoulders tense.

  I found it hard to concentrate on the Benning brief with Alvin in the room, oozing resentment. I also suspected he was making paper airplanes instead of filing, but confirming that would have meant walking over and checking on him, admitting defeat in our contest of wills.

  I said, “Okay, I give up, what other information?”

  A paper airplane drifted by.

  “Well, I don’t know, but I think you ought to treat me more as a partner and less as an indentured servant if you want information.”

  “Don’t push me. What information?”

  He couldn’t resist telling.

  “Well,” he said, crossing his legs, “the scuttlebutt is that Sammy very much wanted to be Mr. Mitzi.” He watched me through those cat’s eye glasses, waiting for a reaction.

  “Mr. Mitzi?”

  “Right. He wanted to replace Rudy Wendtz as Numero Uno. He wanted a spot in the Brochu bed. He wanted…”

  “I get your drift.”

  “So you see what that means.”

  I didn’t.

  Alvin leaned forward. “Some people say that he was setting up the whole thing. Stringing Brooke along, flirting with her. Finding out her secrets. Making sure Mitzi found out about Brooke and Rudy’s relationship. Letting Mitzi know about Brooke’s problem with her nose. People think that after Mitzi wrote her planned spread about Brooke and her problem, that would have been it for the Mitzi and Rudy show. Brooke’s career would have been ruined. And Sammy would be on the spot to ooze in and comfort poor little Mitzi. And Sammy’s career would prosper as a result.”

  “But it doesn’t change anything.”

  “What do you mean, it doesn’t change anything?”

  “Well, we already figured that Rudy Wendtz engineered Mitzi’s death, even if he was elsewhere.”

  “So.”

  “So, it may give us a bit more on motivation or background, but it doesn’t solve the murder.”

  “Who said it did?” He jammed himself into his leather jacket.

  He was out the door before I could say anything else.

  * * *

  I was kicking around my apartment trying to figure out where the rest of the day had gone and why I hadn’t gotten anywhere with the Benning brief and what the stuff Alvin had found out meant, when the doorbell rang.

  “You see what happens?” I said to the cats. “You guys lounge around all day on the furniture, and now someone’s here and there’s not one clean spot for them to sit on.”

  They ignored me. They’re only interested in conversations about cat food.

  “Who is it?” I squawked into the intercom system.

  Alexa squawked back at me. By the time she reached my door, I had managed to sweep the black cat off the only armchair and brush most of the hair off the seat.

  “God, that woman’s nosy,” she said, pointing at Mrs. Parnell’s apartment and at Mrs. Parnell, who was lurking in her door, propped up by her walker, the ruby tip of her cigarette glowing.

  “It’s for my own good,” I said, giving a little wave to Mrs. P. and scooping up a couple of cats before they could shoot into the hallway.

  “What is that smell?”

  We both sniffed the air.

  “You’ve got to change the kitty litter. Every day. With this number of cats, maybe twice a day. Have you been doing that?”

  “Sure,” I lied, adding kitty litter to the growing number of things I was behind schedule on.

  “Well,” said Alexa, sinking her black-covered bottom onto the part of the sofa where the grey Persian sleeps, “guess what?”

  “What?”

  “I called him!”

  Just in time, I stopped myself from asking who.

  “Isn’t that great?” she added. “I never thought I’d have the nerve.”

  I decided to be adult about it.

  “So, what did he say?”

  “He didn’t say anything. He wasn’t there. But that’s not the point. The point is I got up the nerve to call him.”

  “Did you leave a message?”

  “Of course I didn’t leave a message. You must be kidding.”

  “You baffle me.”

  “Look, it took enough to get up the courage to call him. I wanted it to look casual.”

  “Okay,” I said, wondering what she wanted with me.

  She smiled at me. “Let’s have a little drink. I brought Piña Colada mix. I know you have rum.”

  A pyjama party, it turned out. A chance for the girls, in this case Alexa and I were the only two available, to lounge around for hours sharing their deepest secrets.

  I wasn’t in the mood to share my deepest secrets with anyone, but I didn’t have a problem listening to Alexa’s.

  Alexa, it was revealed after three Piña Coladas, had always been in love with Conn McCracken, especially after what happened on the night of their Senior Prom. Conn, it turned out, had never been far from her mind all those years. From time to time, she had been Filled with Regret.

  “You hid it well over those twenty-five years of a marriage that everyone thought was happy.”

  “I don’t mean my marriage wasn’t happy and that I didn’t love Greg. It’s just I never lost all my feelings for Conn,” she said, before filling me in on Conn’s many, many good points.

  “But you haven’t even seen him, for…how long?”

  “Gosh, about thirty years. Since I went away to nursing school.”

  I wasn’t sure how to break it to her.

  “He’s changed. He’s not the football hero anymore. He’s a middle aged man with a paunch.”

  “Sounds cute,” she said, draining her drink.

  I tried to feed her a few more Piña Coladas in the hope I’d get some specifics about what happened on the night of their Senior Prom, but no luck. At midnight, after a particularly vacuous remark about his noble spirit, she rolled over and began to snore.

  I hadn’t said a word about Richard. Somehow, it wasn’t so romantic, having a crush on a man almost old enough to be my father, with a wife who could reappear at any minute. It was stupid and inconvenient and most unlike me.

  I was grateful to Alexa who had kept me from thinking about Richard, Mitzi’s murder and how much I had to fear from Denzil the Deadly.

  Fourteen

  McCracken looked at me calmly. “Alexa’s worried about you poking around in this crime, and she thought I should try to talk some sense into you,” he said.

  It was only eleven o’clock. I’d left
Alexa in my apartment, hung over and surrounded by hungry cats, to try to catch up on a little work at the office. She must have called McCracken on my own phone.

  So that was why he wanted to meet me for coffee and doughnuts. On a Saturday, too. I could feel the steam puffing out of my ears as McCracken kept talking.

  He was in a good mood. Maybe it was Alexa’s call. Maybe it was the two jelly doughnuts.

  “Apparently your whole family is very concerned about your mental health, since you’re obsessing over Mitzi Brochu’s murder.”

  “She said that?”

  “She did.”

  “Well, for one thing, I’m not in the least obsessed about…”

  “I bet Alexa still looks the same, blonde and beautiful.

  Does she?”

  “She’s all right, I guess, if she remembers to keep her teeth in,” I said.

  I don’t think he heard me. He was eating his second jelly doughnut with a faraway and long ago look in his eye.

  * * *

  I puttered around in the office all afternoon, snarling rude remarks at Alexa, who was not present.

  At five p.m., I arranged my half-done office work in neat piles and set out on my next challenge. Sammy Dash.

  I figured by five, Sammy would be home from his afternoon activities and not out yet for the evening of wowing the ladies. I decided it would be better if he didn’t know I was coming.

  Merv’s information had Sammy at a very snooty highrise just off Sussex Drive. Like my own building, Sammy’s had security designed to let the good people in and keep the bad people out. I decided that for the purposes of this visit, I was one of the good people.

  A small rental moving van was parked outside of the building in the circular drive. I looked around to see if there were any movers I could pretend to accompany. But no luck.

  I didn’t want to buzz Sammy’s apartment, since a surprise visit seemed more likely to elicit useful information. I stood by the door balancing my briefcase in one arm and pretending to dig for my keys with the other. A couple in tennis gear smiled as they let me pass in with them.

  “Bad enough to have to work Saturday,” I said, “and now I can’t find my blankety-blank keys.”

  “Isn’t it frustrating,” she said, “the way those blankety-blank keys always sink to the bottom of your purse and hide?”