Law and Disorder (29 page)

I raised my hands in defeat. “Hey, Leonard, go ahead. Throw the book at me. Bunny didn’t kill that woman. He was the intended victim, and I believe I can prove it. He was due to be home with his family at the moment his house caught fire. He would have been killed. His wife and child would have been too. The real question is: what was Annalisa Fillmore doing there?”

There was a sharp intake of breath on Mombourquette’s part. “What makes you think that Annalisa Fillmore was there? What would she be doing there? What’s her connection with Bunny Mayhew?”

“I don’t know.”

“Where did Bunny go? Did you take him somewhere?”

I could handle this without actually lying outright. “I saw him that day at his house, but I left before the fire and explosion. I thought that perhaps the whole family had died. Annalisa Fillmore never crossed my mind.”

“Where is he now?”

Good question. “No idea, Leonard. And I am happy to say that’s the truth. But I would like to know if the investigators found the remains of a toy dog anywhere near Annalisa Fillmore’s body? Maybe a huge green dog?”

“Okay. You do go too far, MacPhee. You’re not too badly off to get hauled into the station. Maybe we’ll have to beat it out of you.”

Dr. Hasheem reappeared at that key point. He stood behind Mombourquette, cleared his throat and said, “I don’t think either of those two things will be happening.”

I said, “Leonard here is just being whimsical. However, on the off chance he’s not, I’ll trust you to remember this conversation, Dr. Hasheem.”

“I could hardly forget it,” Dr. Hasheem muttered as he left the room. He turned and said, “Speak to the nurses before you leave, and make sure someone lets me know if this person tries to take you in for questioning before we get your results back.”

After he left, I said, “You see. Good citizens take care of each other. Here’s the deal. I haven’t been straight with you, Leonard, mostly because you wouldn’t believe me about the joke situation. So you can be mad if you want, and you can take it out on me if it makes you happy. You can even arrest me, but I have some information for you. You’ll have to work with me, though.”

Mombourquette was silent for a long while.

Finally, I said, “Evidence doesn’t interest you?”

“What is it?”

“You’ll find it of interest?”

“Talk.”

“It’s surveillance footage of Annalisa Fillmore heading into Bunny’s house after he left and while the house is empty. And afterwards. It’s pretty grim.”

“How do you come to have that?”

“I knew someone was going to go after Bunny today, so I installed a camera in the tree across the street to catch anyone trying to go in the front door. There was one by the back door too, but the fire probably destroyed that. I have a DVD. I would have told you about it if you hadn’t practically thrown me off the scene.”

“Why would you have something like that? It doesn’t make sense. Even for you, MacPhee.”

“Because I received a burglar joke. And you left me no choice.”

“Forgive me if, as usual, I don’t follow your thinking.”

“Three people are dead: Rollie Thorsten, Judge Card-arelle, Roxanne Terrio. Your police colleague Steve Anstruther is seriously injured. As far as I can tell, they all received jokes. I got the same jokes. So did Bunny. The day they died or were injured, he and I received their names, including Steve Anstruther. Remember? I have always figured it was Brugel. He’s capable of doing it. Completely. And there’s no way that Annalisa Fillmore would do anything for him or with him. Don’t you think I’m right there?

Mombourquette nodded dourly. “Love her or hate her, she wasn’t the front woman for a gang lord.”

“But she was involved somehow. We need to find out how she was connected with any of these people.”

“She was definitely connected to Thorsten. We all accept that. I myself checked that out. She couldn’t have killed him. She was with a number of people who couldn’t stand her and would have loved to point the finger..”

“Well, maybe she had someone to do her bidding. We thought that Brugel could use others to do his dirty work. Why couldn’t Annalisa?”

“First of all, for the last time, there is no ‘we’. Second, I want that DVD.”

“Sure thing,” I said. “I’ll ask Alvin to bring it over.”

“Never mind. I’ll send a uniform for it.”

“Good idea,” I said, thinking fast. “I’ll ask him to let your officer in and hand the DVD over.”

Lucky for me, Mombouquette had to go to the little boy’s room. That meant I could tell Alvin, when I got him on my cell, to make sure to copy the DVD before the uniform showed up to get it.

“You’re where?” Alvin bleated.

“Emergency. Don’t even ask. Better yet, can you pick me up here and bring a copy of that DVD for Sgt. Mombourquette? That’s a copy. Don’t forget. Don’t mention it to anyone. Bring the original too. We need to show it to Mrs. P. And hurry up.”

“Good news,” I said to Mombourquette as he returned. “I reached Alvin. He’ll bring the DVD here. By the way, how’s the officer who hit his head? He seemed to be pretty badly injured. Will he need surgery?”

“I don’t know,” he said.

“What about the guys who hit him? That Mustang must have been damaged after that.”

His eyes narrowed. “We haven’t found them yet.”

“But you will,” I smiled encouragingly. Of course, Mombourquette was pretty well immune to deceitful types like me.

“We will. We got the car.”

“You did? Really?” I said admiringly.

“Not me personally, so you don’t need to lay it on quite so thick, but it’s been found. Abandoned. They must have fled on foot.”

“But you know who owns it? The Mustang, I mean.”

Mombourquette watched me with narrowed eyes. “It was reported stolen earlier today. But there will be a link to whoever was driving. For sure. Fingerprints, hair. Something.”

“Of course, although they don’t usually do any amount of forensic follow-up on stolen cars, do they?”

“This isn’t usual. This was an attack on a police officer.”

“Right. Of course. Sorry, I was just thinking out loud, and face it, I have my own interest in it. Those guys tried to run me over. They were coming after me when the first police cars arrived. I owe you guys a lot.”

“That’s weird, isn’t it, that a pair of complete strangers would try to kill you. You sure you didn’t know them?”

My jaw dropped. “Of course, I didn’t know them. The people I know don’t try to kill me. They just get pissed off.”

“They sure do. Don’t go anywhere. I’m going to make some calls. I’ll be back.”

After about twenty minutes, I was really glad to hear Alvin’s voice.

“Alvin, I need something else from you.”

“You could say hello first,” he sniffed. “And what happened to you, anyway? Do you know that you missed the girls’ second race?”

In the interests of redeeming myself, I filled him in on events, perhaps adding a bit of drama here and there, in case the missing burglar, the invaded apartment, the injured cop, and the attempt to run me over weren’t enough. Alvin can set the guilt bar quite high. Sometimes he’s worse than my sisters.

Finally, he sniffed, “I guess if you were in the hospital, it would be understandable. I’ll make sure the girls hear the story behind it.”

“Perhaps I should call Ashley and Brittany to apologize.”

“I don’t think so, Camilla. You’ll probably just make things worse. You know what you’re like.”

“Fine. Okay. Can you take me over to Clearwater to pick up my car? While you’re there, we can look for my digital camera. It got knocked out of my hand when that Mustang came after me. I’m hoping I captured a picture of the people who hit me. I’d like to get a look at that. Oh wait, here comes Leonard now. Do you have the DVD for him?”

“Why don’t you get him to pick up the camera?” Alvin said.

“Shh. Don’t mention the camera to Mombourquette because—oh hi, Leonard, how are you?”

Mombourquette just shot me a look. I made a big deal out of accepting the DVD from Alvin and passing it to him.

“Don’t thank me,” I said.

“I don’t plan to,” he answered. “You could have saved us a lot of trouble if you’d told me about it and don’t bother to pretend I wouldn’t let you.”

I just shrugged and turned to Alvin. “Let’s head home. Dr. Hasheem told me to take it easy.”

Dr. Hasheem, whishing past at that moment, said, “And try to stay out of fights.”

Alvin was driving Mrs. Parnell’s former vehicle, the seemingly indestructible 1974 LTD that she’d given to him. It practically knew its way back to her apartment, leaving Alvin and me time to argue.

“I still don’t see why you didn’t just tell the police where in the parking lot your camera is and leave it to them.”

“If Mombourquette gets the camera before I do, he won’t let me see anything. He doesn’t want me interfering in his so-called investigation, which I have to say would be going nowhere if you and I weren’t involved. And Bunny is the second reason. I don’t want the cops around the building any more than they have to be. I’m willing to take the risk. Illegal, I know, unwise for sure, and possibly even insane. But Bunny went to the wire for me when I needed him, and I would do the same for him. Anyway, the camera might be behind the recycle bins or maybe it dropped when I jumped over the barrier at the end of the lot. It could be on the patch of grass by the edge of the parking lot. Let’s hope it’s still there and that there’s something worthwhile on it. If we find it, I’ll tell Mombourquette that I forgot all about the camera in the shock of being attacked.”

“The fun never ends,” Alvin said.

The camera turned up on the grass, just as I’d hoped. Alvin scooped it up. I peered at the indistinct image on the small screen. I could barely make out the cars, let alone who might have been sitting in them.

“Fine. We’ll drop off one of the cars at home and take the camera to Mrs. Parnell’s. She’ll be happy to print out my shots for us. She might be able to improve the image of the guy in the Mustang. And there are a few more things I’d like her to look up.”

“Okay. But are you sure you should be driving?”

“I’ve had lots of excellent painkillers. Unless you’ve figured out how you can drive two cars at once?”

Alvin sniffed. “Fine. But I hope I don’t have to drag you back to Emergency.”

“Not everything’s about you, Alvin,” I said as I hurried off before he could respond.

We chose to drop off the LTD first. As we both pulled up to the house, Jacki Jewell was just getting out of her black Mercedes SUV.

“Wow,” Alvin said. “She’s had her photo and name vinyl-wrapped on her car. That’s so—”

“Egotistical?” I muttered.

“Well, looks like I caught you,” she said with just a hint of accusation.

“Likewise,” I said. I tried not to stare at the giant scary vinyl teeth on the side of her pricey vehicle.

“We have an offer,” she said, the way anyone else might say the patient died.

“Told you,” Alvin muttered.

“Why the long face? I thought that was what we wanted,” I said.

“Well, I’m certain we can get a better price,” she said. “Give it some thought.”

“Is it much under what we asked?” I said.

“No. They didn’t quibble about price at all. But that’s a sign. Perhaps we can get a higher offer from someone else and then get a bidding war going. That’s where…”

“Is it that couple who were here earlier?” Alvin said, “Because they were lovely and I don’t think that Camilla wants to rip them off. Do you?”

“Of course not. We’re in a hurry, Jacki. Can you give us the offer, and we’ll take it with us to read it over before we sign it.”

“I’ve indicated those items you need to note,” she said haughtily.

“Camilla can never forget she’s a lawyer,” Alvin piped up.

“Is it a conditional offer?” I asked. “Maybe we shouldn’t get too excited, Alvin.”

“No conditions,” she said in clipped tones. “They have the money. They won’t even need a mortgage. They sold their house in Vancouver. Could have bought a much more expensive property if they wanted.”

“Possession date?”

“Flexible. Up to three months if you need it.”

“Is there anything unreasonable?” I asked.

“Not really, but I do believe we could have gotten a better price if you—”

“Thank you, Jacki,” I said extracting the envelope from her hand. “I’ll go over it tonight, and you can pick it up tomorrow. And now if you’ll excuse us, we have to get out to visit our friend before it’s too late. Alvin, do we have any good quality photo paper?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. We don’t even have a decent printer. But we can get some on the way.”

“Did you ever find the wires to connect the camera to the computer?”

“Lord thundering Jesus, Camilla, you’re the one who’s always losing things.”