“The usual, Jimmy?” Mo called from behind the bar. Jimmy gave him a thumbs-up.
“She’s buying,” he said.
“Anything for you, Eulalie?” asked Mo.
“I’m good, Mo, thanks.”
When Jimmy’s beer arrived, and Eulalie paid for it, he started to look more cheerful.
“What can I do for you, girlie?”
“You can tell me what you and Marcel Faberge were cooking up together. You were doing work for him, and I want to know it was.”
Jimmy wiped away an imaginary tear. “Alas, poor Marcel. I knew him, Horatio.”
“I know you did, Shakespeare. And I want to know why.”
An expression of great slyness came over Jimmy’s face. “There was something he wanted, and I was going to supply it to him.”
“Yes, I know,” said Eulalie. “Some fountain of youth thing. He was going to add it to his organic foods business. I want to know what it was called and where you were proposing to get hold of it.”
Jimmy gave her a huge wink. “Ever hear of the youth lily?”
Eulalie stared at him for a moment. Then she started to laugh.
“The youth lily? That doesn’t have any magical properties. Youth lily isn’t even the right name for it. In French, it is called the août lily because it blooms in August. The English somehow misheard it and started calling it the youth lily. It has nothing to do with actual youth.”
“I know that,” said Jimmy, tapping his nose. “And you know that. But Marcel Faberge did not know that. Not that he would have cared much even if he did. Just the name would have been enough for him to sell it.”
“And what’s all that about it being so rare and hard to find? It grows in the deep forest.”
“You know that, and I know that …”
“But Marcel Faberge did not know that,” Eulalie finished for him. “You’re a crook, Jimmy.”
Jimmy sat up a little straighter. “I’m a businessman who understands the laws of supply and demand. If Faberge had known that the youth lily grows all over the forest, would he have agreed to pay me a fortune to find it for him? No, he would not. Nor would he be able to charge a huge mark-up for his youth lily serum of life or whatever. And the ladies of Prince William Island who want to preserve their youth and beauty would have no respect for a product that cost the same as a tube of toothpaste. It was a win-win situation. So, yes, I told Faberge that the youth lily is very rare, and that it grows in secret patches in the most inaccessible parts of the island, and that I was the only one who knew where to find it. We were just negotiating my fee when he died.”
“Did anyone else know about this?” Eulalie asked.
“Just the broad strokes,” he said. “I think his wife was familiar with the concept. And that thin-lipped deputy of his knew roughly what we were planning. But Faberge said he hadn’t told anyone which flower we were going to use, and I believed him. He understood the danger of someone else getting there first.”
“Was the organic food business real or was it just a base from which to sell his youth lily products?”
“It was a base for the youth products. But once he got started, he couldn’t resist trying to put your friend Fleur out of business. Marcel never liked competition. He always thought there wasn’t enough room for him and another operator. I guess someone else felt the same way seeing as he got himself killed. The papers said he was knifed, right? Well, I know what that feels like.”
Eulalie nodded. Not many people knew that Jimmy the Knife got his nickname from being the victim of a knife attack, not the perpetrator. Whenever he got drunk enough he would lift his shirt and start showing you the scar just below his diaphragm where a knife had nearly put an end to him.
“Did you ever think of the possibility that Faberge was going behind your back and using someone else to find the youth lily for him?”
Jimmy laughed. “Not likely. He didn’t even know what it looked like. And like I say, we were just negotiating terms when he was killed.”
“If you had to put money on it, who would you say killed him?”
Jimmy hesitated for a moment. “If it wasn’t a business competitor, I would say it was someone from the horseracing world. Those guys have short fuses. Faberge had already lost some important people a lot of money with that new horse of his. I’ve heard that his horse might not run next month at the Met. If I were you, I’d find out who stands to benefit the most from that.”
Chapter 9
Eulalie had time to kill before she needed to be at Trixie’s at midnight.
It wasn’t a good time to follow up on the Russian connection, or the horseracing angle either. Both of those would have to wait until morning.
The way she saw it, she had two loose ends dangling that could still be taken care of this evening. The one was her unsent message to Chief Macgregor. The other was the question mark still hanging over Marcel Faberge’s campaign to put Fleur out of business. Why was he so keen to get rid of her as a competitor? Was it just spite, as Jimmy had suggested, or was there more to it than that? If Eulalie were going into the fountain of youth business, she would probably cultivate relationships with existing retailers, so they would agree to carry a line of her products in the future. Faberge’s scorched-earth policy made no sense.
And how had he known what Fleur was planning before it had been made public? Did he have a mole in her organization? Sweet as Flowers had long since closed for the day, so that would also have to wait until morning.
A chat with Chief Macgregor could be combined with dinner, and also happened to be exactly what Eulalie felt like. She checked the time. Eight-thirty. She had heard that he often worked late. There was a good chance she would catch him in his office.
Eulalie walked along Lafayette Boulevard - the tree-lined walkway that ran on either side of Lafayette Drive - enjoying the transition to nighttime. Lights were coming on all over town. The trees along the boulevard had fairy lights wrapped around their trunks, and loops of light strung between the lampposts. They were twinkling into life, giving the whole boulevard a festive air.
The sidewalk cafés were full of people enjoying sundowners and watching their children play around the fountains that were dotted up and down the boulevard. It was no wonder the tourists kept coming back for the café culture and outdoor nightlife of Queen’s Town.
It would be pleasant to meet Chief Macgregor at one of these little cafés, or even at Angel’s Place. But he was a known workaholic, so if he wouldn’t come out to dinner, dinner would come to him.
Eulalie considered her options. There was a food truck two blocks away that specialized in floury pancakes stuffed with pulled chicken and marinated in a creole sauce. She picked up two of those, along with traditional strips of deep-fried dough soaked in syrup for desert. Then she headed to the police station.
As she walked through the door, she was blinded by the flash of a pair of cat’s-eye spectacles.
“Mrs. Belfast?”
“Why yes, Ms. Park. It’s me.”
“Why are you here so late?”
“When the boss is here, I’m here.”
Eulalie could only admire that kind of dedication, but she was pretty sure it was against the law.
“You don’t have to do that, you know. He’s exploiting you.”
Mrs. Belfast fluffed her beehive. “Stuff and nonsense. It’s called loyalty, and having a good work ethic.”
“The desk sergeant is sitting right there.” She waved at him. “Hi, Manny.”
“Hey, Eulalie.”
“Not to mention the night staff,” she went on. “You should go home now.”
The cat’s-eye spectacles flashed. “Here I am, and here I stay until the boss says differently.”
“Sure. Whatever. Could you tell him I’m here to see him?”
“For pity’s sake, tell your secretary to go home,” Eulalie said as she walked into Chief Macgregor’s office.
“Why, what time is it?” He looked up fro
m the piles of paper on his desk.
“It’s nearly nine. There are labor laws, you know. She must be sixty if she’s a day.”
“I got caught up.” He buzzed through to Mrs. Belfast’s desk and told her to go home for the day. Then he turned back to Eulalie. “What can I do for you, Ms. Park?”
“Have dinner with me.”
Was she imagining it, or did he go a bit pink in the cheeks?
“Oh, I don’t know about that. I still have a lot of work to get…”
“I brought it with me.” She held up the food bags.
“Ah … well, in that case …”
He leapt to his feet and started fussing with the paper napkins and plastic knives and forks that had come with the food. Eulalie could have sworn he was trying to lay the table.
“Yeah, see, they put all that stuff in with the food, but if you’re me it goes straight into the recycling bag. This is food that is meant to be eaten by hand.” She picked up her chicken wrap and took a big bite out of it.
Chief Macgregor looked dubious. He picked up a knife and fork and sawed off a tiny corner of his wrap. He popped it into his mouth and chewed thoughtfully.
“Mm, excellent. But you’ll have to indulge me. I can’t enjoy food unless I’m eating it my way.”
“I get it. Routine is important to you.”
“It is.”
While they ate, Eulalie brought him up to date on her investigation. She told him about Jean-Luc Hugo who thought that Jimmy the Knife had done it, and about Jimmy the Knife who thought that the horseracing fraternity had done it. She even told him about the thugs who had tried to beat her up, and the fact that they had spoken Russian. This made his eyes widen.
“Three thugs in Finger Alley? Are you all right? Why aren’t you hurt?”
“I can take care of myself. They on the other hand were a bit hurt. If you’re interested in tracking them down, you might check which emergency rooms in town were asked to stitch up large men with Russian accents this afternoon.”
Chief Macgregor gave her a level stare. “You were unarmed?”
“Yes.”
He looked down at her fingers. Then he clasped one of her hands in his and raised it slightly to examine her fingernails. “Are they razor-tipped?”
“Steel-tipped,” she said. “They won’t hurt anyone during casual contact, like shaking hands, but they’re very useful in a fight.”
“You’re a surprising woman, Ms. Park.”
Eulalie popped a syrupy strip of dough into her mouth and smiled. “I choose to take that as a compliment. By the way, I wanted to ask what happened to Marcel Faberge’s electronics both at home and at his office? Everything seemed to be cleaned out.”
“Yes, we took the lot.”
“Any chance you could let me take a look at his laptops?”
Macgregor shook his head. “Absolutely not. Everything has been signed into evidence. I don’t have the power to release it on my own, even if I wanted to. Those rules were handed down by the governor’s office. I can’t bend or break them.”
“That seems extreme.”
“Governor Montand was a personal friend of Marcel Faberge. He is taking an interest in this case and doesn’t want any exceptions to be made with the evidence.”
“Okay.” Eulalie appeared to accept this. “I’ll have to come at it a different way. I wouldn’t want to get you into trouble with the governor.”
Chief Macgregor tapped the piles of paper on his desk.
“The governor’s office already has me under the whip. I have to rationalize staffing, make budget cuts, and modernize our software. Sometimes I feel like I’m drowning in red tape. I’ve delegated the Faberge case to two of my murder detectives, and the child kidnapping to Missing Persons. They are giving it their full attention.”
“It sounds as though you’re not going to bed yet either?”
“No, I still want to put in a few more hours. What about you? Isn’t your working day over?”
“Not even close. After this, I’m going home to get changed. Then I’m heading over to Trixie’s at midnight. Want to come?”
His face twitched into a frown. “You’re talking about that bondage bar off Lower Lafayette?”
“That’s the one. If Marcel Faberge’s preference for kinky sex was not shared with his wife, he might have been indulging his tastes elsewhere. Trixie’s is the place to ask.”
“I don’t understand,” said Chief Macgregor. “Why would Stella Faberge pretend to be familiar with that part of his life if she wasn’t?”
Eulalie shrugged. “Embarrassment? A feeling of shame that she didn’t know about it? They say it’s the part of an extramarital affair that stings the most - that feeling of having been taken for a fool, of being the last to know. I think she was trying to save face.”
He nodded as he processed this.
Eulalie stood up and swept the paper food bags into the bin. Then she walked around the desk to where Chief Macgregor was sitting. Moving slowly, she put her hands on his shoulders and looked him in the eye, giving him every chance to object or pull back. He didn’t.
She leaned in and kissed him briefly on the lips. The spark that ignited between them was so clear she knew he had felt it too.
This time the upward twitch at the corner of his mouth was unmistakable.
“Thank you for dinner, Ms. Park.”
Eulalie was smiling as she walked out the door.
This wasn’t Eulalie’s first time going under cover. She had quite a wardrobe to choose from. She wanted to blend in rather than stand out, so she pulled on a pair of fishnet stockings with a couple of holes carefully ripped into them. Over this went a short black leather skirt and a corset-like bustier in shiny purple. This gave her a degree of cleavage that she never aspired to in normal life. She scraped her hair back into a high, tight ponytail and lashed on several layers of make-up. Then she stepped into a pair of thigh-high black stiletto boots that would have her feet weeping for mercy by the end of the evening.
She looked herself up and down in the full-length mirror. “That’ll do.”
Eulalie took a cab down to Lower Lafayette, having decided that her Vespa was too well known for undercover work. The door to Trixie’s was firmly shut, but the presence of a large and muscular bouncer outside, along with the sound of pounding music, told her it was open for business.
The bouncer checked her out with a skeptical eye.
“Password?”
“Angel sent me.” At most places in Queen’s Town, that was all the password you needed.
Trixie’s was no exception. The bouncer conferred with someone inside, and opened the door to let her in. Eulalie headed straight to the bar, ignoring the gyrating bodies on the dance floor. In her experience, if you wanted information, you asked the bar staff. They knew everything. In this case, the bar was being serviced by a woman of about forty with multiple tattoos and piercings. She greeted Eulalie with a raised eyebrow.
“Little off the beaten track, aren’t you, baby girl?”
Eulalie frowned. “What gave me away? My outfit’s good, isn’t it?”
“Your outfit’s great. It’s just that I got a call from my girl Angel this afternoon telling me to look after her grandbaby. So here I am, looking after your ass.”
“I appreciate it. You wouldn’t be Trixie, by any chance?”
“I would.” She inclined her head.
“Nice to meet you.” They shook hands.
“I’m looking for information,” said Eulalie. She took out a head-and-shoulders picture of Marcel Faberge and slid it across the bar. “Have you ever seen this man in here?”
“Sure. He was a regular.”
Eulalie leaned forward, trying not to broadcast her excitement.
“What was he into? Or rather, who was he into?”
Trixie picked up a glass and began to polish it. “He liked women. I know a couple of our trans ladies had a crack at him, but he wasn’t interested. You know there are no payin
g customers at Trixie’s, right?”
“Sure,” said Eulalie. “Angel told me. Just a group of like-minded people looking for some consensual fun.”
Trixie seemed to relax. “That’s right. So, Marcel didn’t visit pros as far as I know, but he did have regulars. One of them is in tonight, if you want to speak to her.”
“That would be great.”
Trixie texted something on her cellphone, and within minutes a tall, imposing woman appeared at the bar. Her outfit put Eulalie’s to shame. If Eulalie’s clothes said dominatrix-lite, this lady was the real deal.
She nodded when she saw Faberge’s photograph. A spasm of something that might have been grief passed over her face. “I heard he died. I was real sorry about that. He was a nice guy.”
“I’m looking into the possibility that someone he met here might have been involved in his death,” Eulalie explained. “Do you think that’s a possibility?”
The woman who had been introduced as Victory looked dubious.
“I suppose anything’s possible, but I don’t think it’s likely. Marcel never got intimately involved with anyone. He loved his wife, but he needed the release that he could only get here. He used to pop in once or twice a month. Some of the girls complained that he liked to take things too far, but we quickly sorted out who shared his tastes and who didn’t.”
“Did he prefer the dominant role or the submissive?”
“The submissive, always. Sometimes he liked to take the role-playing further than the woman was comfortable with, but they always sorted it out in the end. I never had any trouble with him, and I don’t know of anyone who did. He preferred it if we didn’t leave marks on him – for his wife’s sake, you know? That made it easier to rein him in. But apart from that, he really liked taking things to the brink. Not everyone enjoys that, but there were enough girls here who did. He probably spent more time with me than anyone else, so I know what I’m talking about.”
Eulalie took in Victory’s strong features and general air of command. It was difficult to imagine her being emotional or volatile, but you never knew.
The Complete H-Series of The Eulalie Park Mysteries Page 9
