LITMIR.BIZ

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      “Then you know what she was like. A lot of people would want to avoid being in her book.”

      “Perhaps not enough to kill her.”

      “Humph,” I said, getting back to the suicide wings.

      “Even though you might like it to be a conspiracy of parliamentarians.”

      I thought he had a point, so I tried another approach.

      “Did you know her well?”

      “Not really. She only stayed here three times since I’ve been here.”

      “Did you like her?”

      “Not in the least.”

      I raised my eyebrows and sipped my beer.

      “She wasn’t very likeable.”

      I had to agree.

      “And she upset a lot of people before she died,” he added.

      I knew what he meant. She’d been able to upset me a lot even after she died. Case in point, here I was on a Sunday night in a bar with a man I’d just met. Something I’d never done before in my life.

      “I know. Robin was one of them.”

      “And you say she’s still in shock.”

      “That’s right. And the police want to talk to her as soon as she’s well enough.”

      “Too bad,” he said. With sympathy.

      “Right.”

      Our conversation slid into personal matters, likes and dislikes, what chance the Jays might have this season, what it was like to live alone in Ottawa.

      Much later I looked at my watch and shook it. The time couldn’t be right. I had to get home to bed like a good little girl or I wouldn’t be able to catch up on the Benning case tomorrow.

      “Gotta go,” I said, whipping out some cash and looking around for the waiter.

      “It’s on the house,” Richard said.

      “Thanks.” I was on my feet, still marvelling at the fact I’d had two beer on a work night.

      “Something I said?” he asked, rising.

      “No, just pressures of work. Time for me to hit the hay. Do you mind if I call you if I have other questions?”

      “No problem.”

      As we walked back to the foyer, where the big-haired receptionist was chirping at new arrivals, I decided to grab a cab. It was very late by my standards, and the walk by the river was just a little too isolated at night. I’d had enough big, strapping clients who were victims of vicious predators to be under any illusions.

      “Thanks, again.” The front doors opened, and I walked towards the cab stand.

      Richard took me by surprise as he caught up to me. He took the Blueline driver by surprise too.

      “Can I give you a lift?”

      The last surprise was when I realized how much I wanted that lift.

      I found myself smiling as I waited for the parking valet to arrive with Richard’s car, and I was still smiling as we pulled on to Wellington Street and turned left.

      “Usually I walk,” I told him.

      “It must be nice. Especially with all the tulips.”

      “What tulips?”

      “The million or so tulips that are about to bloom,” he said, flashing a look at me.

      “I guess I haven’t really noticed them. You sort of take them for granted when you’ve lived here most of your life.”

      As we slipped along the Parkway, the river glittered in the May night. In five short minutes, we drew up in front of my building, and I felt a jab of regret.

      “Good night,” I said, regretting the regret.

      “We seem to have gotten off topic. Aren’t you going to ask me about her boyfriend?”

      “Whose boyfriend?” The words slipped out before I could stop them. Mitzi’s boyfriend, of course. “What about the boyfriend?”

      “I think he lives here in Ottawa, but he was always in her room. Every time she was in town.”

      “But not this time.”

      “Oh yeah, this time, too.”

      “Well, where was he when…”

      “According to the hotel staff, they had a knock-down drag-out dust-up, the night before. Bad enough for the other guests on the floor to phone and complain about the noise.”

      “Do the police know?”

      “They do.”

      “This is good news. They might leave Robin alone.”

      The little question still nagged me inside. If the boyfriend was the bad guy, why would Robin be lying?

      “What’s his name? Mitzi’s boyfriend.”

      “Wendtz. Rudy Wendtz.”

      We said good-bye for the second time and I smiled at the memory of Richard Sandes, all the way from the car to the elevator and from the elevator to the sixteenth floor and all along the hallway to my apartment. I kept smiling up to the point where I spotted my neighbour, Mrs. Parnell, moving her walker back to her apartment after her outing to the garbage chute. It’s hard to keep smiling once you’ve spotted Mrs. Parnell.

      I nodded to her and made a futile attempt to pass without engaging in conversation about anything I might have done to provoke her. She might be in her seventies, but she is a woman who embodies the word “formidable”. I’ve heard other neighbours speculate about her links to power in former governments, even insinuations about intelligence work in World War Two. Whatever the scuttlebutt about her past, at this point in her life Mrs. Parnell was content to occupy her time being a pain in the butt.

      “Excuse me, Ms. MacPhee,” she said, staring down at me over her remarkably long nose, reminding me of every nun who ever caught me making a paper airplane in Religion class. Her ability to terrorize was not diminished a whit by the fact that she leaned on the walker. Somehow she managed to hang on to a cigarette in a long holder everywhere she went.

      Mrs. Parnell is the sixteenth floor’s keeper of the public morality. She has two passions, music, opera in particular, and making sure no one, but no one, gets away with anything, but anything.

      “Oh, hello, Mrs. Parnell,” I said, once I was sure there was no escape. “Lovely evening.”

      She was five-eleven if she was an inch and I could feel myself shrinking as she continued to stare down at me. Why I, a thirtysomething lawyer, nasty as the next guy, should be intimidated by a tall, awkward old lady in a mud-coloured sweater with holes in the elbows was beyond me.

      “Ms. MacPhee, is it possible cat noises have been heard coming from your apartment?”

      “Cat noises,” I said, shocked. “Certainly not, Mrs. Parnell. What would ever give you that idea?”

      “I have ears, Ms. MacPhee.”

      Yes, and the less said about them the better, I thought. What the hell, the best defense is a good offense, somebody once said. It seemed to me to fit the occasion. I gave it a try.

      “I also have ears, Mrs. Parnell, and may I suggest you have confused the howling of vowels from one of your gruesome operas with feline sounds in the vicinity. And who can blame you?”

      “Well!” she said, moving herself and her walker back into her apartment with remarkable speed and slamming the door.

      I whipped open my own door, slid through and closed it. A great chorus of meows

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