Mousse and Murder

by Elizabeth Logan

  I headed out, feeling less guilty abandoning my staff when I noticed Victor and Rachel pulling in. Three capable employees would be managing the weekend late-morning breakfast crowd. I was one lucky diner owner.

  About five minutes into my drive, Trooper called to report on his interview with Stanley.

  “Can we do a conference call?” he asked. “I’d like to say this once to all my deputies. Chris is on the line. I can’t reach Annie or your mom, Charlie. Can you fill them in?”

  “Sure. I know Mom is probably still gathering groceries to welcome my dad home. With Sergeant Fergie, of course.”

  “He’d love to hear that title. I’ll have men outside your mom’s house for one more night at least. And you’re going back there, Charlie. Correct?”

  “I’ll tell Annie about this report,” I said, avoiding the question.

  “There’s nothing earthshaking,” Trooper said, giving up on me sooner than usual. “Stanley the publisher verified that Oliver had come to him with an idea for a cookbook, back when Oliver was still in Paris. He’d won some big prize with one of the recipes and thought that would be a good marketing angle. The two signed a contract and Stanley was ready to roll the presses, then Oliver pulled out of the contract.”

  “So that’s what Oliver and Stanley were arguing about. But so many years later?”

  “Stanley doesn’t know what got Oliver all excited about it again. Not about publishing it, get this, but to make sure he never did publish it.”

  “Strange,” I said.

  “Weird,” Chris said.

  “Are we clearing Stanley, then, as far as Oliver’s murder?” I asked.

  “I’m not holding him, but I’m also not satisfied with his alibi. Says he was working in his Eagle River office by himself on Monday afternoon. It was his admin’s kid’s birthday and he sent her home early.”

  “That’s easy to verify, isn’t it?” Chris asked.

  “Working on it.”

  We thanked Trooper for the update, but Chris wasn’t finished.

  “Charlie, can you stay on the line for a minute?”

  Of course I could, and I knew why he asked. I explained that I was on my way home to read the English translation of the letters from Genevieve.

  “If you want to meet me at my house, we can look at them together,” I said.

  “Great. I have a meeting but I’ll swing by when it’s over. Maybe we can wrap this up.”

  I was proud of myself for staying within the speed limit, not that there was one posted. I thought again about Pierre. There weren’t that many male names that began with P. Or were there? Phillipe, Paul, Patrick—and I remembered one of my law school profs was named Pascal DuBois. There was also the small matter of a different last name. Pierre’s was Fournier, decidedly not beginning with an M. Then there was the big matter of my not liking Pierre that much, because I suspected he was leading Annie down a path that was going nowhere, perhaps simply for his own ego.

  I had time for one more hands-free phone call. It would be to Annie while I was thinking about her. I reached her and gave her a summary of Trooper’s report. She listened, but I could tell she had a report of her own that she was dying to give me.

  “I haven’t had a chance to tell you the real reason Pierre wanted to stay around. Not that he told me or anything, but I’m guessing, because today is the anniversary of his sister’s death and he doesn’t want to be alone.”

  “He told you that?”

  “No, no, he’s not like that. He almost never talks about personal things, like even family. But I was in his room, just to leave him some fresh towels, and I happened to see something on his dresser and it fell so I had to pick it up and I wouldn’t have otherwise or anything.”

  I questioned the “it fell” designation, but there wasn’t always a payoff with Annie’s long, convoluted utterances. And I was almost home and didn’t want to drag the call out.

  “Annie, what did it say?”

  “It was one of those cards with a picture of a saint or an angel, they both can have halos, and on the back is information about someone who died. Birth date, death date, and so on. And a prayer, too. You know, it’s a Catholic thing.”

  I did know about that Catholic thing. I knew from Catholic Chris Doucette, for one. Another Frenchman, albeit not one who could speak or read the language. My brain went automatically to Chris’s name and initials. Monsieur Christopher Doucette. M. C. D. Not even close.

  “Oh, and there was a little newspaper announcement clipped to the card. So sad. It said something like ‘by her own hand,’ how sad is that?”

  “That would be very hard, I imagine.”

  I wondered which would be worse, a loved one who died by her own hand or one who died by someone else’s hand. A foolish question. But it had been a long week, full of strange and sometimes foolish goings-on.

  “Her name was Genevieve.” Annie sighed. “Isn’t that beautiful? And maybe the saint was Saint Genevieve. Is there one? A Saint Genevieve?”

  I hit the brake and the accelerator at the same time, skidding into my driveway.

  “Did you say Genevieve?” I thought my head would explode. “When did she die?”

  “Probably centuries ago.” Annie stopped. “Oh, silly, you mean Pierre’s sister. She was Genevieve Meunier.” After a rocky start at pronunciation, she spelled it for me. “Funny that she didn’t have the same last name as Pierre Fournier. Maybe she was married or something, but it didn’t say that.”

  “Do you remember the date, Annie?”

  By now, I was unbuckling my seat belt, unhooking my phone from its car holder, grabbing my tote, stepping out of the Outback, and bounding up my front steps.

  “The date? Let me think. A long time ago. I don’t have it in my hand, of course, but it was a while ago, and this was one of those anniversaries on the fives, like fifteen or twenty or twenty-five. You sound excited, Charlie.”

  Excited in part because I remembered a French vocabulary lesson and a word that was important for me to learn. Fournier. The person in charge of the communal ovens, or the baker. I’d gone home and recited it to my mom.

  “Vous êtes fournier,” I’d said.

  I pictured Pierre helping out in the Bear Claw kitchen on the afternoon of Oliver’s service, completely at home with the diner staff, wanting to help in the kitchen.

  How incredibly slow and dumb I’d been. I hadn’t even put him on my suspect list.

  “I’m just unlocking my door, Annie. Do me a big favor and go to my mom’s house. Right now. And call Trooper.”

  I dropped my keys, picked them up, unlocked my front door, and pushed it open.

  “Why?” Annie asked.

  I stepped into my foyer. “Never mind. I’m inside. I can call him myself.”

  A pain shot through me. Someone had grabbed my upper arm and squeezed.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Charlie? Charlie? Are you still there? I think we got cut off for a minute.”

  The pain in my arm and the fear throughout my body kept me from answering Annie’s question. I wanted to shout, “Nine one one. Nine one one.” into the phone, but the expression on Pierre’s face stopped me. If that didn’t do it, it would have been the fact that he’d put his index finger to his lips, looking as scary as if he held a gun to my head.

  In fact, he was actually holding the gun about three inches from my chest.

  He made so many gestures, one after the other, I didn’t know where to focus, which of his directives to obey. Should I follow his index-finger-to-the-lips signal, old-fashioned library style, and be quiet? Or his thumb and little finger that were mimicking a phone to his ear. Or his hand, cutting a swath to indicate cut, as in, end the call or I’ll end your life.

  “I have to let Benny out for his walk,” I said. “I’ll call you later.”

  Pierre nodded
approval and I hung up. I followed the motion of his gun and took a seat where he indicated, in the family room, not far from Benny’s feeder.

  Would Annie get my message? My code? Would she remember that Benny never set foot outside unless he was in his carrier? When he went for a walk, it was on the carpet in the living room, the tile in the kitchen, the hardwood floors and scatter rugs in the family room and bedrooms. He walked high up on the beds, the bookcases, the doorframes, or his own condo tree. Surely Annie would know that I never let him out for a walk. She’d understand the code and call Trooper. Wouldn’t she?

  Where was Benny now? Safe, I hoped. I wanted to ask Pierre, but I didn’t dare. Benny was hiding, I told myself. He always disappeared when someone he didn’t like was in his space, like our mail person. Maybe Benny hid as soon as he smelled Pierre’s aftershave, fruitier than the balm my dad used. I regretted using Benny’s name on the phone to Annie and hoped Pierre hadn’t been paying attention.

  “I found them,” Pierre said, thankfully not referring to Benny. “The letters from Genevieve to Oliver. Nice of you to leave them on your scanner. You can thank your friend, you know. Chris. He couldn’t wait for you to find a translator, so he told me about the letters and asked me to be ready to translate whenever he could get them away from you.”

  Chris. Again. I’d deal with him later. If I lived. I closed my eyes tight, until they hurt. I had to believe I’d come out of this, if only to find Benny. Give him a tuna treat.

  “You broke in here yesterday to look for the letters,” I said.

  I needed to keep Pierre talking until Trooper came, in response to Annie. Or Chris, whose meeting might have ended by now. Chris, who was going to get a piece of my mind for not keeping our deal. That we would not include anyone who was remotely connected to the Bear Claw or to Oliver’s case.

  “That’s what it was about, wasn’t it?” I continued, unable to bring myself to define what “it” referred to. “Not just the cookbook, but your sister.”

  Pierre’s features twisted into an evil look. If Annie had ever seen that countenance she’d never have fallen for the blond high-fade cut, the hand-knit sweaters and adorable accent.

  He pointed the gun at my face, I thought. I’d closed my eyes as the weapon approached, so I couldn’t be sure.

  “You’re smarter than Oliver. Stupid Oliver thought it was just about the money. When I contacted him that first time in Elkview earlier in the month, I told him if he would give me thirty thousand dollars, five thousand more than the prize money he got for my recipe, I’d forgive him and never bother him again. He agreed. He really thought that would do it. He told me he’d probably leave town, just to be sure.” Pierre was laughing now, at the stupidity of his victim or at his own genius, or both.

  “He took everything from me,” Pierre said. “It wasn’t enough that he stole my recipe that would have sealed my reputation as a baker. And we were classmates, mind you. And not even the recipe and the prize money were enough for him. He had to take the one person I loved more than anything else.”

  “Your sister.”

  “My sweet, sweet baby sister, who was so young, so naive.”

  I opened my eyes. “But Oliver didn’t—”

  “Worse! Worse than if he killed her.” Pierre was swinging his gun wildly now. I tried to see if he had his finger on the trigger. What if he pressed it accidentally? My mouth was as dry as the deserts of the lower forty-eight. “He broke her heart. He took all hope from her. I tried to talk to her about love. That she would find someone else, that she had a lifetime in front of her.”

  By now, Pierre was pacing in front of me. I thought of jumping up, knocking the gun from his hand. I was taller, I knew, but certainly not heavier or more muscular.

  “Five more minutes and I’d have been out of here,” Pierre said. He patted his pocket, where I assumed Genevieve’s letters rested. “Now I have to do something with you.” He jiggled the gun and stopped in front of me. He leaned over, closer to my chest. “What shall I do with you?”

  I opened my mouth to suggest he just leave, pretend I didn’t show up to spoil his plan.

  Instead, I gasped. Benny.

  Benny was creeping along the hallway, directly behind Pierre.

  No, no. Go back, Benny.

  But he kept up his forward crawl.

  “So you stayed to find the letters?”

  “Oliver told me he had them. One of his last pleas to stay alive. He knew I would want them, but I decided to find them myself. I almost gave up. I knew you wouldn’t quit.”

  Stop, Benny. Go back!

  “But then Chris told you I had them.”

  If Pierre turned around, he’d see Benny immediately, and . . . I held my breath, tried not to look at my tabby in case Pierre would follow my gaze, and . . .

  Benny ran the last few feet. He jumped on Pierre’s back, clawing at the Frenchman’s neck as if it were the world’s best scratching post. Pierre yelled and tried to shake Benny off, but Benny had hooked one paw into Pierre’s collar. Pierre dropped his gun, needing two hands to work at getting free of Benny.

  I jumped up and kicked the gun away. It slid along the polished hardwood floor. I remembered the crystal bell Mom had brought me. I scooped it out of its box, still on the floor where I’d unwrapped it. I grasped the long handle, silently asked Mom to forgive me. With one forceful swing of the bell, I clocked Pierre.

  Pierre fell in a perfect arc. His head hit the corner of a table across from the Bennycam.

  He lay there, unconscious. I heard Trooper’s car screeching into the driveway.

  All I could think of was how Benny and I had just created the best home movie ever.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  When William Seward, secretary of state under Andrew Johnson, purchased a piece of land from Russia at the bargain price of seven million dollars and change, he was mocked by many.

  “Seward’s Folly” or “Seward’s Icebox,” were the slogans, immortalized in newspaper articles and cartoons. Until the discovery of gold revealed the richness of the land a few years later. Since then, Alaska’s natural resources have paid back the initial investment many times over.

  I was in my twenties when I finally convinced my mom to toss the project I’d done for Seward’s Day in grammar school. A clunky papier-mâché Denali with the Alaskan flag stuck on top, hanging from a toothpick. Polar bears, moose, and dogsleds completely out of scale with one another. Lakes and ice made of blue-painted resin arranged in an unrealistic order. I’d won a prize—a pencil case with an image of an elk printed on it—but only because our art teacher, Miss Wyman, believed that every child should win a prize, no matter the quality of the work.

  It turned out Mom hadn’t completely trashed the project. Instead, she’d memorialized it in a photo and brought out a replica made of a vanilla cake with piles of blue icing.

  “Now we’re talking,” I said.

  It had been only twenty-four hours since my heart-stopping dance with Pierre. He was currently at the station house, handcuffed to a cot, according to Trooper, until his status as an international criminal could be determined.

  The Bear Claw friends and family community were up for a party. Since Benny was the hero of the hour, we held it at my house so he’d be included without the trauma of another trip in his carrier.

  To make up for his lack of judgment in confiding in a murderer, Chris had taken care of the cleanup and recovery of my house after Pierre’s trashing. He’d also bought, or found somewhere, a banner with the flag of Alaska printed on it and strung it across the doorway to my kitchen. All that, plus flowers, and I was ready to begin to forgive Chris. Not that I told him right away, however.

  The party couldn’t get fully under way until we had a complete report and the clarification of some loose ends from Trooper.

  “I think Pierre already told Charlie everything we need to
know,” he said, trying to nab a bite from a passing tray of shrimp.

  We disagreed.

  “Not me,” my dad said. “I didn’t know most of this until this morning.” He sighed and shook his head. “Geesh, Charlie, he could have—”

  Mom rubbed his shoulder. “But he didn’t. And I didn’t want to spoil your first sleep in your own bed.”

  Even Annie had already developed a healthy curiosity about the exposing of the man she had thought was Pierre Fournier, handsome magazine writer, as Pierre Meunier, killer. I’d expected her to have a longer period of mourning, but she brushed aside the idea.

  “I only knew him less than a week, Charlie,” she said. “I knew it wasn’t going to be serious.”

  She could have fooled me, and did, but I saw no reason to mention it.

  “How did Pierre find Oliver?” Annie asked.

  Trooper was ready for this one. “The same way Manny did, through that magazine article, except that Pierre already knew Oliver would be cooking somewhere. He scoured cookbooks, magazines, and cooking shows, starting from the first day Oliver disappeared from Paris.”

  “How come Oliver came back to Alaska, and so close to where he grew up?” Chris asked.

  I remembered his conjecture on the topic: that Oliver liked the cold.

  “Pierre told me he asked Oliver that question,” Trooper said. “He thought it was the last place Pierre would look. He, Pierre that is, traveled to New York, Chicago, Boston, all the big cities of the lower forty-eight, because Oliver always claimed to want to be the head chef at a big-city restaurant.”

  “Oliver was right that Pierre wouldn’t look here first. It took Pierre decades to find him,” Mom said. “I still remember a sort of interview I had with Oliver when he applied to the Bear Claw. I asked him, ‘Why Elkview, when you’ve studied in Paris?’”

  “What was his answer?” Chris asked.

  “That he’d grown up in Anchorage. That was true. And that he always wanted to live in a small Alaskan town. That was not, apparently.”