Armed? What could I be armed with? Talk sense, Leonard.”
“They got a tip you’re carrying a weapon. Might have been Elaine.”
“That’s just plain nuts. What kind of weapon am I supposed to have?”
“A gun. So some nervous constable thinks he’s facing an armed murderer, shoots first and asks questions later. Think about that.”
“Come on.”
“Or, you get arrested, you kick up a bit of fuss. The officers use reasonable force to subdue you. Your head gets rattled a bit. On top of your concussions, the additional injury leads to brain damage. You want to spend the rest of your days in a rehab centre? You think you got troubles now.”
“Holy shit.”
“Exactly. So where are you? I’ll come and get you and make sure there’s medical personnel available as soon as you come in. Conn will show up too. Nothing will happen with us.”
“If you want to do something for me, get Sheldon Romanek on the phone. I want him to represent me.”
“Romanek? That shithead defence lawyer? I wouldn’t talk to that snake if you did have a gun, and you held it to my head.”
“Don’t use clichés, Leonard. He’s a snake, but he’s the best snake.”
“I’ve had cases thrown out because of him.”
“I’m not asking you to date him.”
“It’s not exactly office hours.”
“That’s pretty lame, Leonard. Romanek has a criminal practice. His clients call when they get arrested. They don’t make appointments at convenient times. Please just make the call. I’d do it myself, but I don’t have his number.”
“You think I have his number?”
“You have a phone book. This cellphone is running out of juice.”
“You can’t get legal aid. Who’ll pay his exorbitant fees?”
“Well, not you, Leonard. So don’t worry.”
There goes the RRSP, I figured.
“Camilla, listen . . .”
“And tell Romanek I won’t submit to a dehumanizing strip search.”
“Be serious. You’re a lawyer, you know the rules.”
“And I want it in writing. Take it or leave it. Damn. I’m losing power. Don’t let me down, Leonard.”
I didn’t want to squander my cellphone charge arguing with Mombourquette. Plus I had the Elaine problem. Was Mombourquette right? Was Elaine capable of telling the police I had a weapon?
What did I really know about Elaine anyway? She’d moved from the States to go to Carleton. I’d never met any of her family, not even her diabetic brother, Eddy. Estranged from her parents, she’d said. Period.
But Elaine had been my friend through every tough time that had happened to me for the past eighteen years. She’d been part of my elopement plan and a witness at my wedding. Still, I had to be cautious.
I’d been so shocked, I’d forgotten to tell Mombourquette about the clippings. He could have followed up on the Settlers. And I hadn’t been able to reach Jasmine. I was counting on her to make connections between Laura and the women at the restaurant. Were there other contacts besides Bianca? Was someone else in danger? Was Jasmine?
Without the photos, I had nothing to show Jasmine. Which brought me back to Elaine. She had gazillions of photos, if I could get my mitts on them. Tricky. The police would have her place staked out. That added an element of challenge.
And police or no police, Elaine’s place was like a fortress. How could I get into her second floor apartment? Like they say, when in doubt, ask an expert. I knew just the one. The talented Bunny Mayhew, the best second-storey man ever. The good news: I had his telephone number.
“Wow, Camilla, you are sure in the deep weeds.”
“I noticed that myself, Bunny.”
“Canada-wide warrant,” he said. I detected pride in his voice.
“Can you help me?”
“Name it.”
“Okay. You can’t talk to the police or the media. And especially your friends.” I refrained from saying your shallow-end-of-the-gene-pool friends who always needed information to trade to the cops.
“Hey, you’ve done a lot for me. I’ve never even served time. You always got me off, even when I was guilty.”
True. If anyone had been primed for the slammer, it was Bunny Mayhew. I couldn’t take credit. Female jurors fell in love with him.
“Suppose, speaking hypothetically, I needed to get into someone’s house when they were in it, what would be the best way? Not that this would happen or that you would counsel someone to commit a crime.”
“Like you said. Hypothetical. They got a security system?”
“Hypothetically, yes.”
“It usually means there’s alarms on all the ground floor entrances and windows. What kind of system?”
“Don’t know. Say an extremely good one.”
“Motion detectors?”
“Yes, and a lot of locks.”
“No problem. First, you find a place to hide where the cops won’t look afterwards, and then you work on the motion detector. You could wave a branch so the shadow triggers the alarm.”
“But . . .”
“A thick tree is a good hiding place. Then when the cops show up four to five minutes later, they check out the house. Okay? That takes maybe fifteen minutes. Ten minutes after that, you wave your branch and set off the alarm again. You go back to your hiding place.”
“A tree? I don’t know . . .”
“Cops come, cops check, cops go away again. They don’t think you’re hanging around in a tree, they think you ran away. Speaking hypothetically. Ten minutes later, you do the same thing. Cops come, cops get a bit pissed off with the resident, cops suggest they’ll be charging for all three false alarms. Resident calls the security system and gives them hell. Turns off system. You’re in like Flynn.”
“Brilliant. But there would be cops outside the house, and they wouldn’t think it was a false alarm. They’d think it was me. In this far-fetched scenario.”
“Wow. And you’re armed and dangerous, eh. They’ll just shoot you.”
“Ouch.”
“You need a better hypothetical plan. Is there a second floor?”
“Yes. That’s where I need to be, if this were a real situation.”
“Any security there?”
“Motion detectors. Window alarms wouldn’t surprise me.”
“It’s an apartment?”
“Yes. Top two stories of a house.”
“Okay. I’ll bet you anything there’s no security on the third floor.”
I closed my eyes again. “I don’t know.”
“No one ever thinks you can get in on the third floor. But it’s a piece of cake. All you need is a ladder.”
“I can’t carry a ladder around the way I am now. Even if I had one.”
“Say you’ve got a ladder, then you hustle up to the window.”
“The window is on the third floor.” No point in boring Bunny with my various ailments, such as losing balance and seeing quadruple. I decided to let him finish, then try to find another solution.
“Third floor windows are easy. People leave them open all summer.”
“This apartment is air-conditioned.”
“Practically impossible to cool off the third floor. Windows will be open.”
“Even if a window is open, which I doubt, there will be a screen.”
“Nothing to a screen, Camilla.”
“For you, maybe. But I would be, hypothetically, up on a ladder, three-stories high, and new to the game.”
“Just cut it out.”
“I’m merely stating the facts, Bunny.”
“I mean just cut out the screen. A box cutter is best.”
“It’s three in the morning, where’s a person going to get a goddam box cutter?”
“So just give the screen a push. That’s all it will take. They come away like nothing. Particularly if it’s one of those converted places with older windows. You just push it, hard. And either the whole screen, frame and all, comes off or the screen breaks loose from the frame. Either way, you’re in.”
“If the frame were to fall in, wouldn’t it hit the floor and make a lot of racket?”
“Well sure, if you let it fall. You have to be fast. When I was allegedly in this game,” Bunny paused, “that’s what I would have done.”
“I don’t think I could pull that off.”
“For me, the thing that worked the best was visualization.”
“What?”
“You know, mentally rehearsing the outcome, seeing yourself succeed. You never heard of this stuff, Camilla? All the sports guys use it.”
“I’ve heard of visualization, but I just never realized it could be used for . . . this line of activity.” How many times had my father advised me to see the desired outcome in my mind? Of course, he hadn’t been thinking about burglary.
The phone beeped, indicating low battery.
“Phone’s running down.”
“Where’s the hypothetical house?”
“Near Spruce.”
“Wait half an hour and go to the alley between Spruce and Danton, you’ll find a ladder.”
One long beep, and the line went dead.
“Thanks, Bunny,” I said.