Law and Disorder (20 page)

I didn’t mention Bunny, as no good would have come of getting Mombourquette hot under the collar about him. As a peace-keeping gesture, I said, “And I won’t mention anything to Elaine. You know that.”

I guess that did the trick because Mombourquette said, “Steve Anstruther was on the task force that took Brugel down.”

“Thanks.”

“I don’t know anything relevant about the judge.”

Gussie and I were deposited at home first. Mombourquette pulled in and blocked the neighbour’s driveway. Sometimes I think it must be terrific fun to be a cop. Eventually, Mombourquette headed back to the Elgin Street station to continue brooding and to do whatever you do when you have less than a month to work in Major Crimes and some serious crap to deal with.

“It will take me a week to air out this car after that dog,” he said as I opened the door.

“Forget about the dog, just don’t forget about Brugel and the judge, Leonard.”

Mombourquette pulled away from the curb, just as my imperious neighbour descended from her designer front porch about to give him whatfor. He never noticed her, which meant a waste of dramatic and accusatory finger-pointing on her part.

Oh, well.

I grinned and headed into the house. By some small miracle, no one was home. No Alvin, no girls, no real estate agents. Just me, the stinky dog, the calico cat and the noisy birds.

Bliss.

I made a pot of coffee and sat at the stylish little kitchen table with a pad of paper. I wrote in stream of consciousness the names of every person who I knew to be even peripherally connected to the recent deaths or the people who had died, or in Anstruther’s case been critically injured.

The victims were on one list. Their nearest and dearest on another. Bev Leclair was on the list. As were Tonya, Alvin, Madame Cardarelle and a dozen or so others. One name reminded me of a line I’d been meaning to pursue.

Jamie Kilpatrick. A man who was very afraid of something.

You can’t fault the telephone book as a source of information: in this case, Kilpatricks. The same goes for maps. I had the old phone book because Alvin insists on having the latest for his “work”. Mrs. Parnell just uses the internet. What can I say?

I found five Kilpatricks in Ottawa. One on Bruyère, J. Kilpatrick, that would be lawyer boy. One in Orleans and one on Island Park. Not likely. Of the others, one was on Carling and the other off Lees Avenue. I just had to check out if any of these addresses featured a small house with a large spreading maple. The same one I’d noticed in the framed photo of Kilpatrick’s grandparents in his office.

I had plenty to do to keep me busy. I waited until dark, then fished out a dark baseball cap that Ray had left behind on a visit and a dark long-sleeved T-shirt and black chinos. Naturally, my socks and running shoes were black too. I turned off the back porch light and slipped out into the backyard.

TEN

It shall be unlawful to shout “whiplash”, “ambulance”,
or “free single malt scotch” for the purpose
of trapping unwary lawyers in the wild.

P
aranoid? Sure, but it had finally crossed my mind that if someone was not only killing off innocent people, but also delivering envelopes to my home without getting caught, then that someone could be watching the house too. I might not have known much about what was going on, but I knew that whoever was behind this was dangerous.

And may I point out that just because you are pananoid doesn’t mean that Lloyd Brugel might not have an interest in you. After all, I had been receiving these jokes too.

I hadn’t seen any lowlifes lurking around my place, nor had I spotted anyone who seemed to be watching. But then again, nothing would have surprised me after the weird events that had been happening.

I managed to haul myself over my back neighbour’s rickety fence and whipped through that yard and along the driveway to Fourth Avenue. Two minutes later, I was on Bank Street walking north. It wasn’t long before I was able to flag a cab. The taxi dropped me off at Mrs. Parnell’s apartment. I checked out her apartment as usual, only this time I picked up the little folder with her vehicle registration and insurance and went straight to the parking garage.

Mrs. P. had upgraded her vehicle again, and the Altima slid out the door like a pat of melting butter. The Carling area was fairly close, and I chose that first. I drove along the street looking for the first Kilpatrick address. The house seemed right, one of the many one-and-a-half-storey homes built for veterans after World War II, but there wasn’t a mature tree anywhere near it. Next I checked the Island Park address, not expecting that house to pay off. And it didn’t.

I made a U-turn and headed for the Queensway, the quickest route to Lees Avenue and the Ottawa East address. Five minutes later, I turned on to Beechnut and pulled over. The street had several such post-war houses, some now with second storeys added, but most of the street had kept its character.

Bingo. I was sure that I was looking at the same house as in the photo, the same massive tree towering over it, no doubt shading it, although at this time of night who could tell. Best of all, a Kilpatrick was listed at that address.

I got out of the car and glanced around.

“Here, Rover,” I said. “Where are you, boy?”

I moved along the sidewalk, checking in front of cars and behind bushes. I whistled and called Rover again. Surreptitiously, I checked inside the cars for signs of anyone who could be associated with Brugel. I knew that they didn’t need to watch a person every minute to pose an effective threat. Every now and then would be enough, something dramatic. I wondered what they’d suggested that had terrified James Kilpatrick.

“Rover!” I inserted a bit of irritation into my voice. There were no lights on in the house. A FOR SALE sign stood at an angle on the uncut lawn. For sure, Jacki Jewell wasn’t their agent. Had they gone into hiding?

“You better show up, Rover, or you’re toast.”

At that moment, a giant dog leapt at me. I fell back on the lawn, and the dog licked my face.

“You’re not Rover, and you’re not fooling me,” I said, while attempting to push the dog away.

“I’m so sorry,” a woman’s voice said. “Sultan! Off!” She had a pronounced British accent and was dressed entirely in Tilley wear as far as I could tell.

Eventually Sultan bounded off, and I struggled to my feet. “Definitely not Rover. But big, a hundred pounds anyway.”

“One twenty,” she said. “Bernese mountain dog.”

“Huh.” I brushed the dust off my pants. “I was looking for my dog, but he won’t come. I guess he’ll show up.”

“Maybe he’s gone over to the dog park in back of St. Paul’s. That’s where Sultan goes when he manages to slip from his lead. Unless he’s just happy to knock people off their pins.”

“I don’t come to this neighbourhood very often,” I said. “But I remember the Kilpatricks used to live here. Do you know them?”

“Oh,” she said.

“Oh?”

“I suppose you haven’t heard.”

I wanted to scream “out with it” but I said, “I haven’t heard anything about them for years. My parents know them.”

“I’m so sorry to tell you this, but they’re dead.”

“Dead? Really? Both of them?”

She nodded sombrely.

I said, “Well, that’s a shame. My father will be quite upset.”

“It was an awful way to go.”

“What do you mean? I haven’t seen anything about it in the papers lately.”

“Well, of course, it was quite a while ago. A year and a half.”

“What happened?”

“They were coming home from church. There was a Christmas concert. The
Messiah,
I think. A drunk driver ran them down.”

I chose not to let my mind go down the drunk driver path. I kept my focus. “I’m sorry. Were they killed?”

“Yes.” She gave me a look like I wasn’t all there, which I suppose I wasn’t. I must have had some kind of unacceptable expression on my face.

“Mrs. Kilpatrick was in the passenger seat. I think she was killed instantly. Her husband never got over it, and a month later he was dead too. It would have been their sixtieth anniversary on the day he died.”

I glanced at the house and shook my head.

She had begun to take stock of me, I saw her eyes flick from the dark jacket to the dark pants and back to the baseball cap. Not at all right for a pleasant June evening like this.

“Thank you,” I said. “I am sorry to hear this. Good evening.” I tried to look normal, but I had a feeling that ship had sailed. I pretended briefly to continue my hunt for the mythical Rover. I could feel the woman’s eyes on my back as I turned the corner, shouting “Rover” once more for good luck.

Mrs. Parnell never sleeps. It’s one of the things I love about her. I got back into the car as soon as the woman with the Bernese mountain dog disappeared, and I could stop pretending to be looking for my non-existent dog.

“On the double, Ms MacPhee,” she said when I called and asked her to check on the Kilpatricks’ accident.

“Thanks, can you call me as soon as you find out anything?”

“I could email it to young Ferguson if there’s too much to convey by telephone. If you don’t mind waiting, I can see what I can discover with a quick search.”

I ended the call and had just turned the key in the ignition when I was treated to the flash of rooflights and the whoop of a siren.

“Good evening, officer,” I said. “What can I do for you?”

“License and registration, ma’am,” the officer said.

“Any particular reason?” I asked.

“We have a report of a person of your description engaged in suspicious activity, ma’am.”

“Really? And what exactly would a person of my description be? Out of curiosity, officer.”

“Dark clothing, dark baseball cap shielding face. Engaged in the pretence of searching for a dog.”

I refrained from asking him where they learned to talk in that alien way. I didn’t feel like ending up at the station again.

“No law against looking for a dog,” I mentioned.

“How about loitering with intent?” he said.

“Ah. But I didn’t have intent, officer. Clearly.”

“Not yet it isn’t clear, ma’am. License and registration, please.”

He was actually pretty polite, if a bit wordy. I fished in my pocket for my wallet, pulled it out and extracted my driver’s license. “This may be an embarrassing moment for me,” I said. I opened the glove compartment and pulled out Mrs. Parnell’s registration and insurance packet. “This is actually my friend’s car, but I have borrowed it to do some errands.”

“That so?” he said.

“Yes.”

“You just stay put, ma’am, and I’ll check this out.”

“Go right ahead. It’s not stolen, if that’s what you’re thinking. I can give you the owner’s telephone number.” Of course, he was out of hearing by then. I imagined he was waiting for me to make a break for it so he could have an exciting arrest or even activate his Taser. I used the time to call Mombourquette at home. Of course, he wasn’t at home, but I had better luck when I tried Elaine’s number.

“I have half a mind to let them drag you in,” he said.

“But that would be a travesty of justice, Leonard. Plays badly in the media, harassing citizens for sport.”

The officer began his slow swagger back to the car, and said, “I need you to step out of the car, ma’am.”

“Sure thing,” I said. “And I need you to talk to Sgt. Leonard Mombourquette of Major Crimes.”

“You first, ma’am.”

That whole thing would have gone better if Mombour-quette had had the basic decency to stay on the line.