The Icing on the Corpse

by Mary Jane Maffini

  “Don't be such a turkey. Who has a key to the SUV?”

  “No one. I wish you'd believe me that I killed him, Camilla. Alone and without any help. It would save everyone a lot of trouble. We could plead guilty with justification, and we'd be away to the races.”

  “If that's how you want to refer to maximum security, sure. We'd be away all right. I don't know how much trouble it would save, though.”

  “I can take it.”

  “I'm sure you'll love prison. Especially with the new regional arrangements for women. Plenty of social projects to keep you busy for the next twenty-five years.”

  “Couldn't you try to understand, Camilla?”

  Was everybody in the entire world demented? “All right. Let me be fair. Maybe you did do it. Who's to say? Why not?”

  “I'm glad you're coming around, Camilla.”

  I leaned in until I was about a half inch from her face. “Look, I'm willing to try to think that you might have done it, but you're going to have to work with me here. How did you drive the van?”

  “Van?” Elaine frowned.

  “You know what a van is, Elaine. You've almost collided with enough of them. So a van arrived and a person looking like you wheeled out a large box using a dolly and that box contained the body of Ralph Benning encased in ice.”

  Her eyes widened. “Really? I mean, yes, that's what happened.”

  “We're getting somewhere. So tell me, since when are you strong enough to load a box containing the body of a large man onto a dolly and wheel that dolly off the van you think you drove?”

  “In an emergency, you find strength you didn't know you had.”

  “And the Valium you drugged us all with? Where did you get that?”

  “Valium? It's everywhere. The whole thing was just too easy.”

  Bingo. She had no clue about the Rohypnol. I knew she hadn't done it. “It's frigging amazing all right. So who were your accomplices?”

  She leaned back against the bare wall and smiled again. “I acted alone. And I'm proud of it.”

  “I want to tell you something, Elaine.”

  “No, it's time for me to tell you something.”

  I was steaming when I checked out through the elaborate security and passed through the tall gate with the razor-wire top at the Regional Detention Centre. I kicked the tire of Mrs. Parnell's LTD. It seemed better than kicking the next human being I encountered.

  I sat in the car and tried breathing normally for three minutes. Enough time to fog the windows. It took another five minutes with the defrost going full blast before I could see to ease out onto Innis Road and begin the fifteen minute drive downtown.

  It would take a lot longer to get over being fired by Elaine.

  Sixteen

  I left another voice mail message for P.J., and he left one for me. A bracing round of telephone tag followed until I left my final shot. “Sure, you can play games, but remember the guys at The Sun are happy to return my calls.”

  I figured that should get him.

  The Crystal Garden site was lovely. Even though the morning sun beat down on the ice sculptures, they were holding up well. Happy tourists took pictures in front of transparent whales, ships and symbols. Lots of scarves, lots of smiles. I found no indication the sculpture of Justice with Benning inside of it had ever been there. I checked and rechecked for the location of the security camera.

  Surprise, surprise.

  There wasn't one.

  When the going gets tough, the tough get nasty.

  That's what caused me to trot across to the Elgin Street Courthouse later in the morning. Nastiness laced with a dose of desperation. It brought me face to face with Mia Reilly. She strode along the second floor corridor in a sleek black suit with a touch of Lycra. The whole effect made her long legs seem longer and her blonde hair blonder. She made a fine poster girl for the benefits of physical fitness.

  “Mia.” I showed my teeth. “Good morning.”

  She glanced at me without breaking stride. “What do you want?”

  “Want? Me? Nothing.” I wanted a chance to pump her for inside dope she might have on the police connection to Benning.

  “Good, because I'm busy.”

  “I can tell by your cruising speed. I'm glad I ran into you. Maybe we could do lunch today.”

  “Lunch? I don't eat lunch. That's my time to run.”

  It was my time to stretch the truth. “Gee, bad day for running. It's warming up out there. Snow's melting and the sidewalks will be a mess soon. They're saying the canal will be unusable by the weekend. The paths alongside it haven't been plowed yet. Why don't you take a break at noon and join me at the Mayflower? My treat.”

  “I don't need a weather forecast from you. I run no matter what.”

  I believe the best defence is a good offence. Even so, I resisted the urge to yawn in her face. “Well, Mia, I am offended.”

  “Your problem.” She flashed her engagement ring, in case I had managed to forget about it.

  “Can't I run into you and say hello?” Can't I run after you would have been more accurate. I had to break into a gallop to keep up.

  “I notice you never wanted to do lunch before I was assigned to prosecute your client.”

  “Well, Mia, I'm glad you mentioned that.”

  “Sure you are.” She made a sharp right and zipped into the reception area of the Office of the Crown Attorney. The plum furniture matched her blouse perfectly.

  “I am. I didn't realize you had the case. That's terrific. It saves me calling your office.”

  “And that is so like you.”

  “Since we're talking girltalk, what makes you think you want to proceed with this ridiculous charge?”

  This time she stopped. Two clerks glanced up with interest as I almost hit the wall to avoid bumping into her.

  “Ridiculous? Your friend Elaine confessed. She killed Ralph Benning to make a political point. She's an extremist, as you well know. High on her own rhetoric. Pretty cold-blooded, wouldn't you say? It was clearly premeditated. If you have any brains, you'll have her plead down to manslaughter.”

  “What?”

  “Because if you don't, we'll get her for murder in the first and clang-clang the door closed for twenty-five years, no parole. Of course, there's always The Faint Hope clause.”

  “Are you out of your mind? You have people sashaying out of this Court House with suspended sentences after they murdered their mothers. Why would you go after Elaine this way?” I wanted to reach out and slap the self-satisfied smile off her face.

  “Because it was a horrific murder. Because we know we'll get her. Because it's high-profile. And because it will be a feather in my cap when we do.”

  Oh, right. I'd forgotten how irritatingly ambitious she was.

  I found myself sputtering. “Listen, aren't you the people who couldn't keep Benning behind bars for repeated injuries to his wife? Don't you wonder why? Don't you realize someone in the police force messed with that mountain of evidence? Didn't it occur to you the same person would have framed Elaine? Take a trip to the ice sculpture site. There's no security camera there. Someone set that video up to draw attention to Elaine. You're dreaming in colour if you think this won't come out in court.”

  I could see she didn't believe me. “If you practiced law instead of taking the easy way out with that pathetic agency of yours, Camilla, you'd remember we get the results we want here.”

  “Forget the feather in your cap. You'll come off looking like a fool. She's not guilty, and that's the plea we'll enter.”

  “And what does your client want?”

  I stopped myself from saying, “who cares what my client wants,” since, in fact, I didn't have a client anymore. This didn't seem like the time to mention it.

  “Remember: guilty plea or twenty-five.” She flashed the rock once more before she disappeared behind the plum-coloured door, leaving her lingering scent of spice, cedar and bergamot.

  Okay, so that hadn't gone
too well either. I was down but not out. And Mia was not the only game in town.

  Don't ask me why the sound of Lindsay Grace weeping bothered me so much. She hadn't forfeited all emotional rights when she took up with Benning. She'd lost her position, her mental stability, her reputation, her ability to sleep through the night and her health. Her tears unsettled me. I thought the death of Ralph Benning constituted grounds for celebration. Cakes, sparklers, voices raised in song. I knew she wouldn't feel the same, but I found her swollen eyes a bit more than I could take. It must have showed.

  “I'm sorry.” She blew her nose.

  Merv gave me a glare that would have reduced a lesser woman to a grease spot on the maple floor.

  “Don't worry about it.” I handed Lindsay a tissue. “I understand how you must feel.”

  Merv snorted.

  “That's a most unattractive sound, Merv.”

  “And a well-deserved one,” Merv said.

  “I do understand, Lindsay. But I need to talk to you about who might have killed Ben…Ralph.”

  “You're too frigging much, Camilla.” Merv snatched the box of tissues.

  “It's all right,” Lindsay said.

  “No, it isn't,” Merv said. “She's way out of line, and she has no right to hassle you.”

  Lindsay reached over and patted his hand. “She has to do this.”

  “Correct,” I said. “Lindsay, Elaine has been a good friend to you. You know the Crown Attorney is prepared to throw the book at her unless we find out who actually did it.”

  “I know.”

  “You understand why I need to ask you questions.”

  She smiled a pale smile. “There's no good time.”

  “Right.” I tried not to concentrate on Merv looming largely in the background.

  “Think about who might have wanted to kill Ralph Benning.”

  “I don't know. I didn't want to kill him myself, and yet he threatened my life over and over again. Don't ask me to explain it.”

  “Fine, anyone else you can think of?”

  “Even though I know I'm better off with him dead.” She stopped to blow her nose again. “I know it, but I'll never feel it.”

  “Right. Let me rephrase the question. Could anyone else be better off with him dead?”

  “Well, Rina, of course, but she couldn't have done it.”

  I tried not to think about Rina Benning's tragedy. Time to steer the conversation back to Lindsay. “Did anyone who cared for you want him out of the way?”

  Merv grunted.

  “Present company included.” I added.

  “No. My family washed their hands of me after Ralph's cases started to make the news. To tell the truth, we were estranged before then. I guess they felt disgraced. Their daughter living in sin was bad enough, shacked up with a convicted criminal and a married criminal to boot was too much. In retrospect, I suppose they had a point.” I caught the pale echo of a smile again.

  “But even so they must have hated him, not you. Maybe they held him responsible.”

  “No. They held me responsible. And they would never use physical violence. Too gritty. Too likely to make the papers. It would bring even more shame on the family.”

  “Maybe one of them snapped.”

  “I wouldn't expect them to kill Ralph for me. I would have been happy if my parents could even give me the time of day.”

  There's something to be said for sisters who are fighters, I thought. “Who else? Friends? Former lovers?”

  “No one. I've been cut off from everyone in my former life. He made it happen. I guess I let him. At first, my friends and colleagues were concerned, very worried. Then over time, they lost interest. I wouldn't listen. I had excuses for bruises, excuses for broken dates with friends, excuses for sudden changes in plans. Eventually people got fed up and drifted away. Then, one day, he was all I had.”

  “But there must be someone.” The emotion in Merv's voice would have been enough to make another woman blush. But Lindsay remained in her own world.

  “No. People get angry. They don't understand how an abusive person traps you. They think you can choose to leave and simply close the door and get on with your life. But Ralph would never release me. They blamed me for staying.”

  “Until Elaine.”

  “Yes. It took her a long time and a lot of talk, but she finally gave me the strength to make the break.”

  “That's why you're alive. Without Elaine, you might have arranged to meet him that last night. You might have helped him escape. You wouldn't have been able to resist.” I looked her straight in the eye and waited for the truth.

  She didn't fall for it. “You're right. I wouldn't have been able to survive without her. She felt passionate about my need to break free. She never stopped working on me. She kept insisting that understanding had to come first. And later, I would be able to get over the emotional damage. She tried to get me to respect myself.”

  “Elaine's behind bars, and, because of her desire to save people like you, she'll get convicted of murder.”

  “They'll never convict her.”

  “Why are you badgering Lindsay? Elaine fired you.”

  “Shut up, Merv. What is this talk? Of course they'll goddam well convict her. She'll plead guilty. If, and that's a big if, she gets a conditional sentence, the Crown will appeal. It'll be years before it's all resolved. And once she testifies she did it, even if she changes her mind, there could be mischief charges or worse. Perjury's a big deal. The system doesn't like to be made foolish. She'll serve jail time anyway.”

  Lindsay bit her lip.

  “Think about who you know who could have been involved. Think about Benning's business associates. Think about how he might have been connected with the police. And with whom. Elaine helped you. You have to help her.”

  Lindsay turned those luminous honey-coloured eyes on me. Even swollen and red-rimmed, they were beautiful. “I'll try to think if there could be anybody else capable of such a thing. I'll use my imagination. But…”

  “But what?”

  “Oh, Camilla, how can you believe Elaine didn't kill him?”

  Merv stood up. “Okay. Show's over.”

  It seemed like a good time to leave anyway. I'd reached Lindsay. Now all I had to do was wait.

  Don't ask me what librarians see in Alvin. I don't want to know how he gets them to eat out of his hand. There's very little he can't find out in a reference department. Even when he shouldn't be able to.

  As soon as I get within sniffing distance of a reference desk, new rules spring out of the ground like tulips. Eyebrows shoot up. Questions are asked. Tempers flare. And I have never ripped covers from periodicals or removed entire volumes from tax-supported institutions without authorization.

  But I don't want to complain.

  “Present for you,” Alvin said, on his return to Justice for Victims.

  He dropped a batch of magazines on the desk in front of me and flicked the light layer of snow from his Day-Glo orange lei onto the floor. “I think you'll find these interesting.”

  “What are they?”

  “They're scientific journals. That's what you asked for.”

  “Do I see the stamp of the University of Ottawa Science Library?”

  “So?”

  “Stealing journals from a library is pretty low, Alvin.”

  “Like you wouldn't do it.”

  “Take them back.”

  “Relax, Camilla, just read these articles. They're about the effects of temperature on human tissue. They detail how long it would take a body to freeze under the ice at a given external temperature. I believe you sent me to find out. Am I wrong?”

  “No, you're not. But why did you have to steal the articles, Alvin?”

  His nose quivered. “What do you mean, steal?. I don't steal. I borrowed them. Lord thundering Jesus, they're from a library.”

  “I don't know why you couldn't just photocopy them. You're not even a student there.”

  �
�Do you want this stuff or not?”

  “Why can't you just search on the internet like everybody else?”

  Alvin snorted. “Thanks, Camilla, there's lots of great stuff on the net, but I like my info vetted by an expert who can show me the scientifically sound research. Lot of nutcases post so-called information out there. My way saves time and gets a quality product. We have high stakes here.”

  I hate to let him win. Especially if he's right. I eyed the stack with distaste.

  “Camilla, just read these. Then if it makes you happy, I'll slip them back into the stacks again when I go to see Angela.”

  Angela. That would be the latest librarian.

  What could I say? I needed to know when Ralph Benning had been iced before I could begin to clear Elaine. I'd also need to find an expert witness on the effect of freezing on bodies if the case ever came to trial.

  “Alvin, I have places to go and people to pester, so here's the drill. You, that means you by way of clarification, can sit here and go through these articles and then when you finish, you, you remember who that is, can tell me what you find out. And then you can get back to the library ASAP. With the files the cops have on you, if they get wind of this latest caper, it could be the final straw.”

  I didn't look back as I left the office.

  Lucky me. Alexa had a floral emergency, which meant our shopping trip to Holt's could wait until the next day. I headed home.

  My luck held in the corridor of the 16th floor when Mrs. Parnell stuck her nose out the door, blew a stream of Benson and Hedges exhaust in my direction and claimed to be too busy to chat. “Lots of fine stuff on the web, Ms. MacPhee, most intriguing. We'll get Benning's cohorts pinned down, and then we will pick them off, one by one.”

  “Good. But you can't use the internet to tell you if he had a pile of cash stashed or if he pushed a high-level criminal too far.” Of course, I was talking to her door.

  Never mind. Mrs. Parnell's little calico cat was waiting optimistically in my apartment. She made no demands. She was always happy to curl up on the sofa and purr along with a friend. She didn't mind if the friend made a few phone calls.