Camilla MacPhee Mysteries 6-Book Bundle. Mary Jane Maffini
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* * *
Alvin was surprised to see me. Perhaps because I was leaning against his doorbell and had been doing so for five minutes. There was some interesting graffiti on the walls, and the corridor had a faint scent of illegal substances.
“Camilla,” he said, “What are you doing here?”
“Looking for you. What the hell do you think?”
“Gee. That is a surprise. Come on in.”
A surprise.
“I thought maybe you were dead. But, of course, that may have just been wishful thinking.”
“I wasn’t expecting you. The place is a bit of a mess.”
The place was less of a mess than I would have expected.
“I’ll get you some tea,” he said and disappeared from the room before I could tell him he was fired.
I headed for the sofa with the leopard-skin covering, passing the ancient refrigerator, painted silver, which was the focal point of the living area. There was no other furniture in the room, unless you counted the CD player and the chrome coat rack holding Alvin’s best studded black leather jacket. Or the toilet with the exuberant ivy growing out of it. No sign of the mess Alvin had alluded to, although it was hard to tell if the walls were clean or not, since they were painted black. The same applied to the floor, which was a giant abstract painting of household appliances and cleaning products, with a high-gloss finish. On a wall it would have been a mural. Was it a flooral? I wondered.
I had to sit down, since standing on the flooral gave me the feeling of hurtling through space.
The Hammerheads blasted from the sound system at about 100 decibels, so I decided to fire Alvin in the kitchen and avoid the tea thing altogether. On the way, I discovered the mess.
The large table in the dining “ell” was covered with magazines, newspapers, print-outs and cassettes. More were stacked on the ground. Sheets from flip charts had been ripped off and taped to the walls. Each contained long lists of names under different headings, like Femme Fatale, the local satirical magazine Peeping Tom and its relatives in other cities, and Mitzi’s broadcasts. There were also lists by type. Alvin had cross-referenced many of the names from one list to another.
So that’s what he’d been doing. It was going to be tough to fire the miserable little creature now.
“How are things at the office?” Alvin emerged with a silver tray carrying an old pink and gold china tea pot, creamer and sugar bowl and two cups and saucers, with tiny silver spoons. He passed me in the ell and plunked himself down cross-legged on the floor, leaving me to decide whether I would join him or perch on the sofa like a fool.
I picked the sofa. The floor made me dizzy.
“Well,” he said, looking up, “you got here just in time. I’m at the last list. Some interesting stuff is showing up there. We’ll have our tea and then see if you can find the most important patterns.”
“Sure,” I said, adding, “beautiful tea set.”
“Thanks, it was my grandmother’s Anniversary Rose. Mom gave it to me when I left. She figured it’d just get broken by the other kids at home. I think it adds a nicely jarring note of discontinuity with the floor, don’t you?”
“Indeed,” I said, as Alvin poured my tea.
“So, where did you get this very interesting floor design?”
He looked at me with surprise. “I painted it, of course. What did you think that I did with my spare time?”
I hesitated to mention I’d thought he spent his spare time frying his tiny brain with chemicals. Instead I said, “Beautifully done, Alvin. Tremendous precision, especially with the electric can openers.”
Was it my imagination, or did the faintest trace of a blush cross Alvin’s chalky cheeks?
When the tea was finished, we moved to the dining room to inspect the project.
Sure enough, there were patterns all right. Alvin’s list entitled Key Targets identified them by type.
Women Politicians, Royalty, Television Personalities, Singers, Actors and Models, and Anyone Fat were the headings Alvin had picked.
“Everyone she ever targeted in print or broadcast fits into one or more of these categories,” he explained.
“I guess people like to see the powerful and popular get skewered. It gives them a sense of superiority if the winners have warts.”
“Right,” said Alvin. “Look at the tabloids the next time you’re in the supermarket. They’ll give you tremendous insights into human nature.”
I considered the spectre of Alvin in the grocery store.
There were few surprises when we reviewed the lists. Each name had a check mark for every time Alvin had found a reference to that person in print or on air, he explained.
“It wasn’t easy getting video copies of her broadcasts,” he said. “You’ll have to reimburse me for some expenses encountered by a certain individual in getting them.”
I opened my mouth to speak.
“In cash,” he added.
I let that pass and noted that Deb Goodhouse had thirteen checkmarks, compared to one or two for most of the others. Alvin had circled her name in red marker.
On the media list Jo Quinlan was also circled in red, no doubt because of the nineteen checkmarks.
“Almost every show and every ‘Zits’ article had a little dig about Jo Q.,” Alvin said.
Nothing much of interest in the Singers and Actors list. A country-style singer had three checks by her name, as did an east coast pop fiddler. A great lady of Canadian theatre merited two. The initials B.F. were the last on the list with a question mark and a cross reference to the lists labelled Models, General Gossip and Coming Soon.
Brooke Findlay’s name appeared on all three.
I walked back into the black living room and poured myself another cup of Earl Grey.
Ten
I spent the evening examining the many complex lists compiled by Alvin, trying to find a few other leads. By midnight, I gave up. Jo Quinlan and Deb Goodhouse were still on my own, and they’d been joined by Brooke Findlay.
Brooke, according to Alvin’s mysterious sources, had been lined up in Mitzi’s sights, scheduled for a special treatment in the coming months.
“Why?” I’d asked.
He’d shrugged. “Unclear about that. Lot of shifty looks and sly remarks.”
“Like what?”
“Like ‘Ask Rudy, if you have the guts.’”
“What’s that supposed to mean? Is this guy supposed to scare me?”
“I don’t know. He scares everyone else.”
“Give me a break. Do I have to drag every little bit of information out of you?”
“Okay, okay. He’s supposed to be like some kind of major supplier, you know.”
“You sure?”
Rays from the only light in the room glinted off Alvin’s black cat’s eye glasses. Coupled with the pointer in his hand, he looked like a deranged fairy godmother.
“Don’t be dense. That’s the word on the street. Big time. And too hot to handle. Nobody tangles with Rudy Wendtz.”
“Hmmm.”
* * *
All night I dreamed about killing Brooke Findlay in a variety of satisfying ways. In my dreams,