was hoping these jokes were irrelevant.”
“These jokes?”
“I’ve had a few of them. Anyway, it turns out the next day a name comes in an envelope. Alvin has been just throwing the names away or Gussie’s been eating them. He didn’t make the connection between the names and the jokes. But this is the third time it’s happened. After we get each joke, someone connected with the legal community dies.”
“Huh? So somebody’s killing lawyers and sending jokes? Or sending jokes and then killing lawyers?”
“Yeah. Don’t get upset.”
“Are you kidding? I love the idea. Hey, listen to this, Elaine.” A squeal in the background drifted over the line. “Elaine does too.”
The dial tone seemed to mock me as well.
I could tell I’d have a bit of work convincing Mombourquette that, just this once, I wasn’t pulling his leg.
“Camilla?”
“Oh sorry, Ray, I got distracted. I had to walk Gussie, and you know how he sniffs every tree. I meant to call you back and I would have.”
“Yeah well, it’s one o’clock here now, and tomorrow’s a working day, so I thought I’d speed up the process.”
I chose not to remind Ray that I’d been worrying about how to keep the cops from going through Bunny’s house once they found out he was involved, which they would. That would tick him off more. Of course, I knew that I couldn’t hold them off and that bothered me. Nearly a million people in the Ottawa area, and somehow someone had picked Bunny and me to share the sick joke with. And why was that anyway?
“Camilla? Are you there?”
“What? Sure I am. I was just waiting for you.”
“Okay then, here goes. It’s about the girls.”
“Oh, right,” I said with feigned enthusiasm. “Ashley and Brittany.”
“Yes,” he said. Did I detect a little tone there?
They were the second reason I liked talking on the phone with him, rather than living with him. We each had our baggage. My dead husband, Paul, and Ray’s memories of his late wife. In time we’d be able to have a great relationship. The presence of two teenage girls who viewed me as taking over their mother’s place currently presented a bit of a hurdle. Even if they were both attending university in Halifax, a five-hour drive from dear old Dad.
“What about them?”
“You know they’ve been keen on Dragon Boat races since we had those events here in Sydney the last couple of summers.”
“Right, and that’s terrific. Happy to contribute,” I said. This was going to be easy. Sponsoring the little beasts while they rowed for a good cause. Why not?
“You sound enthusiastic,” he said, that teasing note creeping into his voice. I loved that voice, made my knees weak.
“I am,” I said, “in a weak-kneed way, I am.”
“Well, that’s great. They’ll be arriving in Ottawa this week.”
“Did you say Ottawa?”
“I’m glad you’re not too weak-kneed to be listening.”
“They’re coming to Ottawa?”
“Quit teasing. You know how much I appreciate this.”
“Remind me why again?”
“The Ottawa Dragon Boat Race Festival is next week. I thought it had all been arranged, Camilla. We discussed it, and I talked to Alvin about it too the other day, and he said it was great. Don’t you remember?”
In fact, I didn’t. “It’s just late, like you said, and I’m groggy. That’s terrific. The Dragon Boat Races are a lot of fun. Are you coming with the girls? Because that would be really excellent.”
“I have a work commitment that I can’t get out of. Believe me, I’ve tried, but it’s a course, and I’m locked into it. No choice.”
“Oh.”
“I’ll be sorry to miss out on the race and, now that I think about it, I wouldn’t mind seeing you either.”
I said, “It’s wonderful. They’re coming with a team, right?”
Ray was quiet for a second. Words like wonderful do not come naturally to me, especially in connection to visitors, aside from Ray, himself. Maybe I had overdone it again.
“Right,” he said at last. “But there’ll only be the two of them and they’ll be busy. They’re a real pair of water rats. They love this racing thing. And they don’t mind sharing a room. Think how much worse it could be.”
Despite the time of night and my state of mind, I managed not to say that I couldn’t think of how it could be any worse.
What is a lawyer’s ideal weight? -Five pounds, including the urn.
Morning comes early in the middle of June. When the first light of dawn scratched at my eyeballs somewhere around four thirty, I sat up in bed and started making notes.
48 By the time I climbed out of my bed, I had a plan. A long shower and my favourite green apple shampoo helped me to feel alive at least. I shook my hair dry and slipped into a pair of light cotton capris and a sleeveless top to set out with Gussie through the sleeping neighbourhood. I banged on Alvin’s closed bedroom door as we stumbled by. Spare him the sympathy. He had it coming.
Twenty minutes later, Alvin gazed blearily at me across the kitchen. He squinted and turned back to sip his Cape Breton-style morning tea. “It’s too early for you to be so grouchy, Camilla. And it’s not fair of you to wake me up.”
“Time to come clean, Alvin.”
He glanced at me warily.
I pulled up the second stainless steel and leather chair. “I had a long talk with Ray last night. By any chance is there some small detail you might have forgotten to mention?”
Alvin had taken on the look of a mouse in his mousehole while the cat sat outside tapping its claws on the floor. In this relationship, I so rarely get to be the cat.
“Like what?” he said, sipping the bracing black tea.
We both knew perfectly well that there were many many things Alvin could have forgotten to mention out of self-preservation, playfulness, or other Alvinesque reasons.
“Oh say, like Ashley and Brittany? Ray’s daughters.”
“What about them?” he said.
“Well,
