Law and Disorder (23 page)

If there is one thing I have learned from my sisters, it’s how to guilt trip people. I usually try to avoid this. However, the situation called for desperate measures. I lowered my voice.

“I don’t take medications, and you know it. This is Bunny, Elaine. Paranoid crazy idea or not, you should want to help. You want to go together to his funeral? You could do a touching eulogy. Dead at twenty-nine? Never had a chance in this cold and uncaring world where even social work professionals refused to—”

“Cut it out,” Elaine snapped. “That’s not fair. Bunny’s not going to die.”

“But that’s the thing, Elaine. He is. And he will. Maybe his sweet little family too.” I didn’t look in Bunny’s direction. I heard him dash from the kitchen into the dining area where Destiny was once again playing happily under the tent.

“Let’s go downstairs to the playroom, pumpkin,” Bunny was saying. “Away from the windows.”

Destiny began to wail. “I want to stay here, Daddy. You’re ruining everything today.”

“That is so unfair,” Elaine said. “Emotional blackmail. Call 911, Camilla, and stop jerking people around.”

“911 will only be a stalling technique. Listen, who’s doing your rugs? Did I hear you say Joe?”

“Joe Jeremiah. He always does them. You know that.”

I also knew that Joe Jeremiah owed Elaine beyond bigtime for the work she’d done as a social worker with his two crazy teenage boys back in the day, before they became more or less solid citizens. Better yet, he’d always been grateful to me for the legal work I’d done for those out of control offspring.

“Put him on,” I said, loudly, because Destiny was screaming at the top of her lungs that she did not want to leave her tent.

I heard a loud sigh from Elaine. That was a good thing. A short chat with Joe Jeremiah confirmed that he could be with us in about an hour earliest or an hour and a half latest. I was grinning as I hung up. Of course, that was until Tonya burst into the house.

Great. One more target for whoever was behind this.

Tonya ignored me and got straight to the point of pounding on Bunny’s chest. By the time Alvin and I intervened, she had him slammed against the wall.

“Family violence, Tonya,” I said. “Bad experience for the child.”

She shrieked, “Putting my baby in danger. That’s worse.”

She turned to see Destiny, who had stopped screaming and was standing staring, her thumb in her mouth, fat tears running down her cheeks. Tonya choked out, “Go play, honey, Mommy wants to talk to Daddy.”

“You’re hurting him.”

“No, no, it’s just…” Tonya sank onto the chair and put her head in her hands. “It just looks that way.”

Alvin took Destiny’s hand. “Do you have any Frosted Flakes?”

Destiny nodded.

“Do you have any Count Chocula?”

Another nod.

“What about Pop Tarts?”

“Yes.”

Alvin said, “No one will mind if we eat them now. Let’s mix them all together. We could put the Pop Tarts on top.”

“I want the biggest bowl,” Destiny said.

I turned to Bunny and Tonya and said, “You two better pull yourselves together. This is serious, Tonya. If you touch Bunny like that again, you will find out how the courts view a mother hitting her spouse in front of her child.”

Tonya said, “What’s so urgent, Bunny? Why is Camilla so worried? What have you done now?”

Bunny wrapped his arms around Tonya, who sat shaking on the sofa. “But, Camilla, Tonya was just upset. She thinks I put Destiny in danger. I don’t know how I did, but I understand how she was feeling. She’d do anything to protect our daughter.”

“Yeah well, understand this, Bunny: if you want to protect your daughter, don’t ever let her see you accept violence to your person because someone else doesn’t like what you’ve done. You both sent some powerful messages today, and you’d better make goddam sure you send better ones in the future. I’ll have Elaine Ekstein talk to you as soon as this is over. She’ll chew your ears off. It will serve you both right. Now, get upstairs and pack up what the three of you need for a few days, maybe even a week. Clothes, toiletries, medicines, toys, books, the works. Make-up, I suppose, for Tonya. Don’t leave anything important behind.”

Bunny said, “But where are we going?”

“I’m working on that.”

Tonya said, “And how?”

“Don’t ask.”

I took Alvin aside while Bunny and Tonya were packing. Destiny joined them to pack a bag for her dolly. Alvin had been asked to dollysit in the meantime.

“Alvin, it just occurred to me that even if we get them out of here, there might be some kind of an attempt. Especially as no one will know that they aren’t here.”

“And what can we do about that?”

“Surveillance.”

“You mean we should watch the house?”

I looked at his unmistakable beaky profile. “Nah. We’d get spotted, and anyway, we need to be free to get around. But remember, Justice for Victims had that surveillance camera when we were worried about clients being harassed?”

“Sure. I remember it. It’s in a box in the basement along with a bunch of other junk.”

“That device needs to be plugged into an electrical outlet and attached to some kind of recorder.”

“It’s old, so I think there should be a VCR with it in the box.”

“Great. That one will do for the backyard. And we’ll need something for the front too. We should mount it somewhere with a clear view of the front door, but at an angle so we might be able to catch a glimpse of a face. That maple across the way should be perfect. Our joker might be expecting some security at the house, but probably not from across the street.”

Alvin peered out the window and nodded. “We had two cameras, but one didn’t work. Anyway, there’s nowhere to plug it in over there.”

“Never mind. I’ll stay here for a while, and you head out as fast as you can. Grab the one from the basement and swing by Spytech on Bronson and pick up a model that’s battery-powered, that will record from a distance. I’m sure they make them now. I don’t care how much it costs, but we have to be able hide them quickly. I’ll call and have them get something ready, and I’ll give them my credit card number. You just have to pick it up and get it here as fast as possible.”

“And then what are we going to do?”

“Our joker might make a move. It would have to be either the front door or the back. With luck we’ll get an image. This could be the break we’ve been waiting for.”

Alvin abandoned the doll to me and made tracks.

I said, “I’ll be watching from the window until you get back.”

Alvin returned in very good time, obviously having violated the highway code in transit. He had two smallish boxes and some instructions. He said, “This model’s new. It works on batteries, and it should be good for about ten hours. It saves the images to DVD. It’s really neat. It cost enough, but—”

I said, “You did well.”

As Alvin installed the old camera near the back door, well-hidden behind a lattice with a climbing rose, I took the new gear, motion detector camera, battery pack and recorder from their packaging and stuck them in my purse. I headed across the street, where the apple-cheeked young mom was arriving home with her sleeping baby in the stroller.

She said, “It takes him forever to fall asleep.”

I smiled. “Your bird feeder looks like it’s about to fall down. Would you like me to fix it for you?”

“Oh, thank you,” she grinned. “There’s a ladder by the garage. Since the baby came, I find I can’t keep up with things. Would you mind refilling it with seed when you’re up there? The squirrels knock it sideways and eat most of the seed. It’s impossible to keep it filled.”

I followed her to her cheerful red front door and took the plastic bucket of birdseed. I climbed the ladder and quickly attached the motion detector camera on a branch about eye level. I thought it afforded a good view without being easily seen itself. I climbed higher, refilled the bird feeder and returned the bucket to the front step. There was a reasonable chance that anyone watching me would have been fooled into falling for the bird feeder trick.

Back in the house, I positioned myself to keep watch in the front window until Joe Jeremiah arrived. His white van with its grinning bullfrog logo pulled up to Bunny’s place. I opened the door, and he backed the van right into the garage. Tonya, Bunny and Destiny were waiting out of sight as instructed.

Joe approached me on the doorstep and nodded politely. I nodded back, also politely, held the front door open for him and pointed inside.

Alvin ignored him and headed for the car. If anyone was watching, they should take us all for complete strangers. So far so good.

“What now?” Alvin said as we pulled away.

“Joe will spend the amount of time in the house that he normally would for a rug-cleaning job. He’ll probably really clean the rugs too.”

“They seemed spotless to me. I think you could probably eat on them.”

“That’s Tonya. But he’ll do it. That way it will sound right to anyone keeping watch on the house. I don’t think they will try anything with Joe Jeremiah on the premises.”

“No kidding. The guy’s a giant.”

“When he’s done, he’ll get the three of them and their bags into the back of the van where the machinery is, without having them be visible to anyone who is watching the place.”

“Is that possible?”

“That’s why he backed right into the garage. When he leaves, he’ll make a big show of waving to them as though they’re still there.”

Alvin nodded and thought hard for a minute. “But what if the person is smart enough to catch on and follow them?”

“That person will have to be very lucky to catch up with Joe Jeremiah if he doesn’t want to be caught up with.”

I wasn’t expecting Mombourquette’s voice when I picked up.

“Sorry to disappoint you, MacPhee,” he said.

“Disappoint me about what?”

“For starters, your nutty idea that James Kilpatrick might have witnessed something about his boss’s murder.”

“Why?”

“Because it turns out that this Kilpatrick was a witness to something else entirely.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means there was some kind of an argument near his home with some neighbours, and he was drawn into it somehow and one of them is a bit unstable and she accused him of threatening her.”

“Threatening her? Kilpatrick? Are you pulling my leg?”

“Nope.”

“Well, that’s laughable. Kilpatrick couldn’t threaten a hummingbird. Have you seen him? He looks like a stick drawing.”

“So I gather, but a couple of uniforms were dispatched, and I guess they thought he got a bit lippy. All to say he ended up cooling his heels at the station. He was in an interrogation room screaming about a lawsuit at the key times between when Rollie Thorsten was last seen and when he died.”

“He has my sympathy then. I’ve been on the wrong side of your interrogation rooms, and I know how you guys can trump things up.”

“So here’s my point, MacPhee. We are on it. And you are not.”

“Well, thank you, Leonard. I appreciate your keeping me up to speed.”

“No need to be sarcastic,” he said and hung up.