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Authors: Mary Jane Maffini
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that. Sure you won’t join us, Ms MacPhee?”
“Another time. I just dropped in to see how you were doing. I’m missing your company.”
“I’m settling in well,” Mrs. P. said. “Plenty of esprit in this old corps, as you can observe.”
“I’ll head back to your room and get the CD box. I’ll bring replacements as soon as I can.”
“Pub hours are two to three, daily,” Mrs. Parnell said.
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
She’d already resumed her story before I reached the door. The Colonel and the Major went back to being riveted.
FIVE
Why did the lawyer cross the road?
-To sue the chicken on the other side.
B ack at the ranch, Alvin was making progress. Most of the progress involved lugging banker’s boxes full of files from the third bedroom to the basement. The rest involved shredding documents. I smiled approval. “No need to waste money on the gym,” I said encouragingly.
“Very funny,” he said, or something like it. His voice was kind of muffled.
“Don’t let me disturb you. I’ll be making a list of the people who hated Rollie Thorsten. That’s work too, you know.”
By the time Alvin got the last box down the two flights of stairs, I had twenty-eight names on the list. Mine was among them. Fair’s fair. So was Mombourquette’s. Others worked in the justice system in some capacity. Some of the people who would have had the best reasons to hate Thorsten were dead. People like Laurie Roulay. I put her name down anyway. To my knowledge, except for two children who survived her, she hadn’t had any relatives who cared much about her one way or the other. Certainly she’d had no one to turn to when Rollie Thorsten laid her soul bare in court. I’d looked after her funeral arrangements myself. I’d been happy for once to have had that pile of ill-gotten gains that weighs so heavily on me. The children had wept. Even the CAS workers had cried. Alvin had actually sobbed, although he’d only met Laurie once. I may have shed a tear myself, and I distinctly remember Mombourquette’s nose being pinker than usual. But that was it for Laurie, a girl with tattoos, a girl who had kicked crack cocaine to make a new life as a mother, a girl who had once lived on the streets, but who had the guts to testify against Brugel.
Of course, Brugel was on a different list: that one contained people who might benefit from Rollie Thorsten’s bizarre lawyer-joke death, a list of one. I couldn’t really think of anyone else.
“There have to be more,” I said pensively to Alvin as he staggered up from the basement.
I thought he muttered something about trading places.
I still wasn’t that happy with the one-name list by the time Alvin announced that the bedroom was empty of Justice for Victims crapola. His words. I headed up to check it out. Now that it was empty, I could see how it wouldn’t really do the trick. It had no bed for starters, also no dresser, although I supposed that visitors could store things in the desk drawers once Alvin emptied them. He didn’t react all that well to the suggestion, not that I cared.
“Two words, Alvin: Free and Rent. And a few more words: for the past year and a half. So let’s take stock. Did you remember when they’re arriving exactly?”
“I know it will come back to me.”
“Let’s hope. And what will they sleep on when they get here? Of course, I could have been thinking about this all along if I had known they were—”
“Who are you kidding?” Alvin said. “You wouldn’t have behaved any differently if you had known.”
I hated to admit he had a point.
He scrunched up his face. Sometimes that means he’s thinking. I hoped this wasn’t one of those times. “They have inflatable beds on sale at Canadian Tire this week,” he mused.
Inflatable beds? I wondered what could go wrong with those. And also if that would be one more item for the girls to curl their lips at.
“They’re really comfortable,” Alvin said. “Trust me. My
“Another time. I just dropped in to see how you were doing. I’m missing your company.”
“I’m settling in well,” Mrs. P. said. “Plenty of esprit in this old corps, as you can observe.”
“I’ll head back to your room and get the CD box. I’ll bring replacements as soon as I can.”
“Pub hours are two to three, daily,” Mrs. Parnell said.
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
She’d already resumed her story before I reached the door. The Colonel and the Major went back to being riveted.
FIVE
Why did the lawyer cross the road?
-To sue the chicken on the other side.
B ack at the ranch, Alvin was making progress. Most of the progress involved lugging banker’s boxes full of files from the third bedroom to the basement. The rest involved shredding documents. I smiled approval. “No need to waste money on the gym,” I said encouragingly.
“Very funny,” he said, or something like it. His voice was kind of muffled.
“Don’t let me disturb you. I’ll be making a list of the people who hated Rollie Thorsten. That’s work too, you know.”
By the time Alvin got the last box down the two flights of stairs, I had twenty-eight names on the list. Mine was among them. Fair’s fair. So was Mombourquette’s. Others worked in the justice system in some capacity. Some of the people who would have had the best reasons to hate Thorsten were dead. People like Laurie Roulay. I put her name down anyway. To my knowledge, except for two children who survived her, she hadn’t had any relatives who cared much about her one way or the other. Certainly she’d had no one to turn to when Rollie Thorsten laid her soul bare in court. I’d looked after her funeral arrangements myself. I’d been happy for once to have had that pile of ill-gotten gains that weighs so heavily on me. The children had wept. Even the CAS workers had cried. Alvin had actually sobbed, although he’d only met Laurie once. I may have shed a tear myself, and I distinctly remember Mombourquette’s nose being pinker than usual. But that was it for Laurie, a girl with tattoos, a girl who had kicked crack cocaine to make a new life as a mother, a girl who had once lived on the streets, but who had the guts to testify against Brugel.
Of course, Brugel was on a different list: that one contained people who might benefit from Rollie Thorsten’s bizarre lawyer-joke death, a list of one. I couldn’t really think of anyone else.
“There have to be more,” I said pensively to Alvin as he staggered up from the basement.
I thought he muttered something about trading places.
I still wasn’t that happy with the one-name list by the time Alvin announced that the bedroom was empty of Justice for Victims crapola. His words. I headed up to check it out. Now that it was empty, I could see how it wouldn’t really do the trick. It had no bed for starters, also no dresser, although I supposed that visitors could store things in the desk drawers once Alvin emptied them. He didn’t react all that well to the suggestion, not that I cared.
“Two words, Alvin: Free and Rent. And a few more words: for the past year and a half. So let’s take stock. Did you remember when they’re arriving exactly?”
“I know it will come back to me.”
“Let’s hope. And what will they sleep on when they get here? Of course, I could have been thinking about this all along if I had known they were—”
“Who are you kidding?” Alvin said. “You wouldn’t have behaved any differently if you had known.”
I hated to admit he had a point.
He scrunched up his face. Sometimes that means he’s thinking. I hoped this wasn’t one of those times. “They have inflatable beds on sale at Canadian Tire this week,” he mused.
Inflatable beds? I wondered what could go wrong with those. And also if that would be one more item for the girls to curl their lips at.
“They’re really comfortable,” Alvin said. “Trust me. My
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