coffee, Camilla?”
“No thanks, Mr. Findlay,” I said, watching him wipe his hairy hands on his blue and white checked apron. I tried to remember if I’d ever seen Mr. Findlay without an apron.
“A little lemon coffee cake?”
He slid the lemon coffee cake towards us on small blue-rimmed plates. Forks and blue napkins arrived on the table seconds later.
Mr. Findlay’s coffee cake is not the sort of thing I’m ever going to turn down. I was through mine in a flash. Mr. Findlay had replaced the first piece while both of us watched Robin fiddle with her little plate, never even touching the fork. Her nails were bitten to the quick.
I took a deep breath.
“Tell me what the police asked you.”
Mr. Findlay scuttled from the room.
She looked at me with unfocused eyes.
“A lot of things.”
“Like what?”
“What was I doing there, did I know her, was I angry with her, did I kill her.”
I nodded. I understood why the police would ask that sort of thing. Of course, they didn’t know Robin like I did. You couldn’t blame them for seeing guilt in Robin’s refusal to say why she went to see Mitzi Brochu that afternoon.
“It was awful,” said Robin. Whether she meant finding Mitzi or being grilled by the police was unclear.
“Who questioned you?”
“I don’t remember his name. But he came here to my parents’ house and he badgered and badgered. He thinks I killed her. I know it.” She bit her lip.
“Was it the retriever or the rodent?”
A tiny flicker of Robin’s old smile twitched.
“It was the ratty-looking one. He kept trying to trick me.”
Mombourquette. I shivered. I hated the thought of his rodential mind. And even more the idea of him invading the Findlays’ blue-flowered territory, trying to trap Robin for a murder she could never have committed.
“They’ll be under pressure from the media to get an arrest. I was there with the body. Covered with blood.”
She caught me by surprise. The old Robin spoke for just a minute before disappearing back into the sedative-induced mental mire.
“You’d better get a good defense lawyer. You don’t even need to talk to them without a lawyer present. You know that.”
She half-smiled.
“You’re a good lawyer.”
“I mean a defense lawyer. One of the big ones.”
“I want you.”
Robin had always been stubborn, even from the first day when we met in kindergarten and she wanted the red crayon. Some people might have interpreted her collapse as wimpiness, but I knew it was just another way of being obstinate.
“I don’t get people off,” I said, “I try to keep them in jail. This is not the right attitude for your case.”
“I don’t care.”
“Well, if you don’t care about yourself and your chances, do you care about your parents? And your sister? They’ll want you to have the best.”
I had felt the parental presence of the Findlays throughout the conversation. I hoped they would rush in to offer reinforcement, but it was just Robin and me, locked in a struggle of wills.
“You or nobody,” she said, with that little smile.
“Shit.” But I knew I was hooked. She had gotten the red crayon, too, way back in kindergarten. I’d backed right off because I was so happy to have a new friend with blonde curly hair and eyes like cornflowers. Only then did she share it with me.
I knew why she wanted me. In practical terms, I was just as good as the next guy. My five years in criminal law before starting up Justice for Victims gave me the tools I’d need to mount a competent and spirited defense. But more than that, I was the only lawyer around who loved Robin and would do damned near anything to make sure she was all right.
Having won her point, Robin closed her cornflower eyes. Her smile faded. So did her colour. I didn’t think she could get any paler, but I was wrong.
“I have to go back to bed now.”
As I helped her up the stairs to her bedroom, I tried again. “You’ll have to tell me why you were there, if you expect me to help.”
“Not now,” she said, as she slipped between the pink sheets with the white ruffles, looking like a sallow stranger in this familiar room. “Not yet.”
Mr. Findlay was waiting for me, with what looked like tears in his eyes, when I got down stairs.
“She’s asleep already,” I told him.
“Thank you for taking her case. We hoped you would.”
I didn’t have the heart to tell him it wasn’t the best thing at all. That you get what you pay for. In this case, the fee would be nothing, and the defense lawyer would be blinded by affection, and someone who usually played for the other side.
Mrs. Findlay was staring at the television as someone’s previously unknown illegitimate child inserted herself as a new character on Another World. She didn’t hear me say goodbye. “It will all work out,” Mr. Findlay called out to me, as I climbed into my car.
* * *
“That’s right. Wendtz,” I said to Conn McCracken when I reached him by phone that afternoon. “Rudy Wendtz.”
“What about him?”
“Do you realize he was Mitzi Brochu’s boyfriend?”
“Your sister has an unlisted telephone number. Do you realize that?”
“Yes, I do.”
“She’s a bit hard to locate.”
“I suppose she is.”
“I was trying to get in touch with her soon.”
“So, this Rudy Wendtz, you talked to him?” I asked.
“I can’t seem to remember. I got a lot on my mind.”
“I think I have that number somewhere.”
“Oh yeah, right,” he said. “Wendtz. It’s all coming back to me now.”
“My sources tell me he and La Belle Mitzi had a major battle the night before she died.”
McCracken coughed.
“Right,” I said, spitting out Alexa’s number.
“The guy’s a vampire,” said McCracken, “just like the victim. Even looked a bit like her.”
“What about the fight?”
“What about it?”
“Check the statistics, Detective. Eighty percent of women who are murdered are murdered by their significant others.”
“Coincidentally, a substantial portion of killers turn out to be the person who reported the murder.”
“That would be me, in this case. Bring on the cuffs.”
“Course, we don’t know, maybe you ducked in, did the deed, ducked out again, disappeared and dashed back in time to discover the deceased with Robin.” A long, wheezy chuckle followed this.
“You have the mind of a poet, too bad you’re developing asthma. Should see a doctor.”
He kept on chuckling.
“Back