“But maybe even Rollie wasn’t foolish enough to go off on a boat with someone who might do him harm. So he mustn’t have been too worried about whoever it was.”
“Then there’s the cop, Anstruther. Cops are used to crooks,” P. J. said.
“Uh-huh. Ever see a police officer in a restaurant? Back to the wall. Or scanning the room. They’re wary. But someone took him by surprise in his car. Whoever it is, it’s someone nobody would worry about. And that someone, somehow, goes back to Brugel.”
“It would be one helluva story, if you’re right. Still not convinced Brugel’s behind it.”
“Fine. But it’s worth considering. This is one story that would be above the fold.”
“Can’t argue with that. I’ll dig around a bit to see who might be associated with Brugel, but who might appear to be pretty tame and harmless and not obviously criminal.”
“Great. Stay in touch. We can brainstorm.”
By the time we got back to the bench, P. J. decided he would never walk again. I left him panting, and I hoofed it on home.
“They interrogated you?” Ray said. “I can’t believe they interrogated you. You’re just pulling my leg, Camilla.”
I was lounging in the bathtub and enjoying his consternation. Ray’s calls and his reactions were two of the reasons I enjoyed the midnight hour. “Well, they did.”
“Why haven’t you filled me in on this before? It’s not like I couldn’t help you.”
“I’m sure I mentioned the jokes before. I hardly knew whether it made any sense or not at the time. I didn’t know if it wasn’t just a figment of someone’s imagination, but then today kind of proved it wasn’t.”
I chose not to bring Bunny into the equation as Ray isn’t that crazy about burglars.
“I’m going to give Lennie a call anyway, just to get his take on the situation,” he said.
“You know what? They’re all pretty wrecked because of this young colleague.”
“You know what, Camilla?”
“What?”
“Two points. One: when you say, you know what, you are almost always about to tell me a whopper of some sort or divert me from something that I shouldn’t be diverted from, and two: if this joker is out there and involving you, then you need some kind of protection, and since I’m not there, I’m going to make damn sure that Lennie takes care of that.”
“But—”
“Don’t bother arguing. I am fully aware that you’ve left out some key information. I don’t need to know what it is to realize that you’ve done it.”
“Come on, Ray.”
“Just don’t insult my intelligence, Camilla, although I know that’s fun for you. My gut tells me you’re protecting someone who may or may not need protecting and that you are as usual needling the local cops for the hell of it. I can accept all these things, but I don’t have to take them lying down.”
“Are you lying down?” I said, attempting to get the conversation into a more interesting track that wouldn’t involve Leonard Mombourquette or me giving Bunny up to the cops.
“Are you?” he said after a pause.
“I am, as a matter of fact, and if you weren’t, you will be when I tell you that Alvin and I went to see the girls practice for the race. It was beyond awesome.”
“Beyond awesome?”
Oops. I’d overdone it again.
“Well, interesting,” I amended.
“Hey, that’s great. So, tell me, what was their time?”
Aw, crap. Of course, I hadn’t really understood anything at all about it, and Ray wouldn’t take long to figure that out. “No technical questions, Ray. But I was really impressed.”
“Camilla?”
“What?”
“Promise me you’ll never change.”
TEN
You’re trapped in a room with a tiger, a rattlesnake and a
lawyer. Your gun has two bullets. What should you do?
-Shoot the lawyer. Twice.
I opened my eyes to find Gussie gazing soulfully into them. “Not now,” I said. “It’s too early.”
Was it my imagination that Gussie seemed to be staring at the clock? The clock in turn suggested it might be eight o’clock. I tumbled out of bed, dislodging Mrs. Parnell’s cat in a pile of sheets.
Ten minutes later, I’d had the world’s fastest shower, uncovered Lester and Pierre and changed their food and water, fed Gussie, and slipped the cat some tuna as a way of making amends.
Gussie and I arrived breathless at the dog park. I plunked myself down on a bench and started on the large dark roast coffee I’d picked up at Francesco’s. The cooler weather had carried over, and at least this morning, it was still pleasant enough to drink coffee without dropping ice cubes into it. Gussie joined in with a gang of gangly fuzzy dogs like himself. They romped and barked merrily, and I sipped and thought about bad jokes and deadly jokes, deceased lawyers and cops in the ICU.
As I took the first sip, I spotted Madame France Cardarelle. She was unleashing a smallish silky dog with delicate features. The dog hobbled off and stood shyly gazing at the gangly crowd before choosing a King Charles spaniel and a pair of miniature dachshunds to hang out with.
Mme Cardarelle waved and approached me. She was the only person in the dog park dressed in a crisp white shirt and tailored charcoal pants with a snazzy leather belt. I found myself waving back. She sat on the bench beside me. “Coffee,” she said, “what a good idea. I’ll do that the next time too.”
“What kind of pooch is that?” I asked, pointing at the new arrival.
“Her name is Lulu,” she said, smiling. “What they call a mix, I believe. Mostly Pekinese, they told me.”
I paused here. What I really wanted to know was why Mme Cardarelle, who had no pets, was walking a dog early in the morning in a dog park that was nowhere near her home. I’m not that subtle at the best of times and not at all in the mornings. “Are you walking her for a neighbour?” I asked.
A smile lit up her face. “I am walking her because she is mine.”
“Yours?”
“Yes. Imagine. My own little dog. I saw her in the paper. She was advertized by the SPCA of Western Quebec. I read the description, and I saw her beautiful little picture, and I fell in love with her. Those silky ears! I think the person who does those write-ups must have the soul of a poet.”
“So you drove over to see her?”
“And I took her home with me the same day. She is eight years old, and that made it hard for her to be adopted. People don’t value old dogs. Or old ladies for that matter. I thought we’d be perfect for each other.”
“That’s great,” I said. “She looks like a nice pet, although if you don’t mind me saying, you don’t strike me as an old lady. Anyway, in my own experience, many people do value old ladies. They are full of surprises.”
She said, “Lulu is the first pet I’ve ever had in sixty-five years. Like me, she was in a cage, just wanting to be out and to love and be loved. Your assistant told me that you usually take Gussie here in the morning. I was hoping to introduce you to Lulu.”
“I was wondering, because you don’t live nearby,” I said.
“I thought about our conversation the other day and the possibility that someone killed my husband for a joke as you suggested.”
I nodded. “Not a good way to go.”
Across the field, Lulu trotted along with the others, not gamboling like the larger ones, but getting the idea that this was a good safe place.
“You pointed out that I wasn’t grief-stricken. That was true. In fact, I’m not sorry that he’s dead. It’s opened a door for me to enjoy life and be happy with myself.”
She kept an eye on her new pet as she spoke. “I didn’t hate Robert. They say that the opposite of love isn’t hate, it’s indifference. He had always been indifferent to others, to their needs and their feelings. Although I loved him at one time, I believe you could say I had become indifferent to him.”
“Do you have a
ny idea who might have hated him?”
“It must have been someone he met through his work.”
“Did he talk about his work? Any case that he worried about? A plaintiff? A defendant?”
She laughed. “Robert wasn’t fearful. He saw himself as right and as unassailable, on almost every issue. It didn’t endear him to people, but he didn’t believe in wasting time on worry. And of course, as I said, he just didn’t care.”
“What about friends or family?”
“There wasn’t a tear when he died, Camilla. Do you mind if I call you Camilla? At any rate, no one seemed in the least bit upset. He didn’t have any friends that I knew of.”
I was pushing my luck when I said, “You could have left him. You would have split the assets. I am sure you would have been all right financially and much better off emotionally.”
She shook her head. The beautiful bob swayed. “Robert was a man who enjoyed exercising power. I suppose I could have left, but he would have made me pay in some unexpected way. He was not a man to be crossed. So I stayed. From the outside, it may have looked as though I had a wonderful life, but it was anything but that.”
“Thank you for being candid with me. Even so, I am sorry to have brought the jokes to your attention. He was your husband, after all.”
She stood up and brushed off the back of her tailored slacks. “Don’t worry about it. I’m glad I met you and Gussie. Perhaps it was unintentional, but you have given me a way to move on. And little Lulu too. I am grateful. If you hadn’t been here this morning, I would have rung your doorbell to tell you that.”
I said. “In that case, you should consider yourself lucky that you didn’t meet the cat and the birds too.”
As Gussie and I strolled home, I decided I wasn’t going to let too much more time pass before I moved forward too. This time with the very amiable Ray Deveau.
I chewed over what Madame Cardarelle had said about her life and marriage. This was yet another aspect of this case in which nothing was what it seemed. What else was there to know about the late unlamented judge?
I stuck my nose into the Pub at the Perley before heading up to Mrs. Parnell’s room, even though it wasn’t even ten in the morning. I wouldn’t have put it beyond her powers of persuasion to have convinced the administration to modify the opening hours using her “The sun is over the yardarm somewhere in the world” argument. Apparently this hadn’t happened yet. I kept going and found her cheerfully seated in the armchair in her room.
“Ms MacPhee,” she trumpeted. “Just in time. I’ve printed out some information for you. Judge Cardarelle and Roxanne Terrio are considered to be accidents. Of course, it’s straightforward murder with this Thorsten fellow. And now as you say, there’s this young policeman in critical condition. There’s nothing much on that yet, except for a Facebook group that some of his family members and friends have set up. Seems to be a young man who is loved and admired. I was able to get some photos of him as a result. They’re in your package.”
“That’s the opposite of Judge Cardarelle. It sounds as though he was feared and loathed pretty much everywhere.”
“And Ms Terrio? What do you know of her?”
“Somewhere in between. Kept to herself, but pleasant enough to people she worked with. No friends other than work and estranged from her only sibling.”
She nodded. “That’s the sort of information that doesn’t appear in print.”
I picked up the thick wad of paper and flipped through it. Printouts of newspaper stories, mostly. I knew Mrs. Parnell would be nothing but thorough. I said, “The manner of their deaths is quite different. If it weren’t for the jokes, I’d say they have nothing in common.”
“Were they graduates of the same law school?”
“The judge and Roxanne went to University of Ottawa, same as me. But Rollie went to school out west somewhere.”
“Ah well. What do the police think?”
“They don’t think. Or if they do, they don’t tell me.”
Mrs. Parnell glowered. “They should. Don’t they know that wars are won or lost based on the choice of allies?”
“That’s my view too. What about connections between these names and Brugel?”
“Of course. Why do you think that package is so thick?”
I had to grin at that. “Spare me the suspense, Mrs. P.”
“Several connections, one a passing reference. It seems that Roxanne Terrio represented Brugel nearly twenty years back. Were you aware of that?” She took the package back from me and flipped through it until she found the right printout.
I took the package back and said, “I wasn’t. She must have been fresh out of law school then. I didn’t know she ever did criminal work. Paul and I were admitted to the bar fourteen years ago, and she was a few years ahead of us.”
“As far as I can tell, he was convicted for aggravated assault in that trial.”
I glanced over the article and raised an eyebrow. “Looks that way.”
“I was surprised to read that someone like that would still receive a suspended sentence, even back then,” Mrs. Parnell said. “Aggravated assault is a very serious change. You would think he’d be locked up.”
“You would. But that was early days for Brugel too. I imagine the judge had no idea he was sentencing a man who would later become one of the worst that Ottawa has to offer. I’ve heard that he got into trouble as a juvenile too, but that information would never be allowed into the record. Those files are sealed.”
“This young lawyer might have had some idea of what kind of person her client really was.” Mrs. Parnell pursed her lips in speculation. “Perhaps it put her off being a defence lawyer.”
“It would have put me off.”
“Do you think, Ms MacPhee, that Roxanne Terrio went into real estate law to avoid dealing with people like this Brugel?”
“Maybe she did. But if that was her reasoning, it sure wasn’t enough of a strategy to keep her from...” My head jerked at a familiar name buried at the tail end of the story.
“Something wrong, Ms MacPhee? You look as though something has shocked you.”
“No kidding. I saw a name I wasn’t expecting.”
“Who?”
“None other than our own Sgt. Leonard Mombour-quette.”
Mrs. Parnell shook her head in consternation. “How did I miss that?”
“Easy enough. I almost missed it myself. He was Detective Constable Mombourquette back then. He testified at that trial. Roxanne Terrio cross-examined him. So, what do you think about that?”
The Ferguson family’s cross-legged dog had just managed to get some relief when I heard the whoop of a siren behind me. An unmarked dark sedan with a cherry flasher had pulled up onto the sidewalk. It stopped, and the passenger door opened. I stuck my head in and waved my nasty-looking and pungent plastic bag in the direction of the driver.
“Hello, Leonard. I see you got my detailed message.” I opened the back door to let Gussie in before I slid into front passenger seat.
“Don’t even think about bringing that thing in the car.”
I hopped out and deposited the bag in the nearest garbage can. Gussie took advantage of the moment to scramble from the back seat to join Mombourquette in the front. That didn’t last long. When I got back, Gussie was sprawled over the back seat, and Mombourquette was fuming in the front. Perhaps that’s why he pulled back out into traffic apparently without a glance, causing a screech of brakes behind us. Mombourquette used to be a good driver. I decided that Elaine must be a bad influence on him. Or else my message had made him nervous.
The guy in the SUV who’d screeched his brakes now laid on his horn and upped the ante by showing us a good view of his upraised middle finger, a mistake as it turned out. On went the siren. The SUV pulled over, and Mombourquette got out, tail twitching.
I smiled. I planned to enjoy the entertainment portion of the encounter. It hadn’t been a great day, so I felt entitled. Five minutes later, he returned
in all his soft, grey glory. He pulled away without incident this time, leaving the driver of the SUV behind, routed and shaken. More fun than television, in my opinion.
Mombourquette was quiet as he drove.
I watched and waited. He had that watchfulness that so often predicts trouble. By the time we hit the lights at First Avenue, I caved.
“So, Leonard. What can you tell me?”
He turned his beady eyes on me. “What part of leave this to us would be unclear, MacPhee? Do you want to be interrogated again?”
“Before we go down that path, Leonard, as I said in my message, is there any reason you never mentioned that you were acquainted with Roxanne Terrio? Especially the part where you knew she had defended Brugel in the past— because she would have cross-examined you.”
Mombourquette has a genius for turning things around to suit his most rodential purposes. “Something just occurred to me, MacPhee. Does this obsession of yours have anything to do with that tame break-in artist you keep around? He was hanging around the courthouse the day they found Rollie’s body. And whenever he’s in the picture, there seems to be a batch of trouble brewing.”
I did not want Mombourquette connecting Bunny to the jokes or the murders. He’d love to haul Bunny in for questioning on general principles. Of course, I should have counted on his detective’s instincts. Now I tried for a bit of damage control. “First of all, I do not keep a tame break-in artist around. And that’s not fair to Bunny. You’re wrong about him, Leonard. He doesn’t break in to anything any more. He has a wife and child and a good life. Those are three good reasons for him to go straight. He’s even moved to a location where he doesn’t enounter any of the old bad influences.”
“I didn’t hear anything about a job.”
“He’s a stay-at-home dad, and he does some part-time work in a framing shop. That’s a job in itself. I told you he has a pre-schooler to look after.”
“You are such a sucker, MacPhee. So keep this in mind. If I find out that he’s put any kind of a foot wrong, or that he knows anything about Roxanne Terrio that hasn’t been shared with the police, then—”
Law and Disorder Page 13
