The Complete H-Series of The Eulalie Park Mysteries

by Fiona Snyckers

  “He might. The trouble is, no-one knows where Antoine is.”

  Chief Macgregor sipped his coffee methodically. Eulalie noticed that he had a little ritual for each sip. He picked the cup up in his right hand, took a sip, transferred it to his left hand, replaced it on the saucer, and nudged it gently until the handle of the cup was back on the right side, ready to be picked up again by his right hand.

  He did it unobtrusively, with a dreamy look in his eyes. It neither fascinated nor repelled her. It was just a part of him – a part of who he was.

  Lift. Sip. Transfer. Put down. Nudge and line up. Repeat. It was almost soothing in its predictability.

  “Perhaps if we knew why he kidnapped Bibi, we could figure out where he was keeping him.” Chief Macgregor finished his coffee and pushed the cup precisely one inch away from him.

  “Actually, I think I might have worked that out.”

  He raised his eyebrows and waited for her to continue.

  “Marcel Faberge was obsessed with getting hold of something called the youth lily. It’s a plant that’s indigenous to Prince William Island.”

  “What did he want with it?”

  “He was going to manufacture a line of anti-ageing products from it as part of his new organic retail business.”

  “The youth lily. Was that its real name?”

  “Yes, but the name is just a coincidence. The plant doesn’t have any fountain-of-youth properties. I checked with a botanist. Depending on who you speak to, it is either a corruption of the French word août meaning August, or of an ancient Swahili word meaning white or pale.”

  Chief Macgregor put the tips of his fingers together. “Etymology is fascinating, isn’t it? I find it interesting to trace back the origins of words and see how many of them came about through a misunderstanding of another word. I wonder which ancient Swahili word …” He caught Eulalie’s eye. “Not important. Please continue.”

  “Faberge was clearly not interested in etymology, but in making money. He needed a regular and reliable supply of the youth lily in order to create his products. The botanist I spoke to told me that the youth lily used to flourish all over the island until climate change reduced its habitat. Now you mainly find it in the deep forest in areas that are shaded from sunlight, but it’s not easy to find.”

  “I think I’m starting to see what happened.”

  “Yes. Bibi has a reputation in the village as the boy who can find anything. If you’ve lost something, Bibi will find it for you. He once found an earring of mine that had fallen in the dirt in the middle of the village. It was a million to one chance. By rights, I should never have seen it again. But I went to Bibi, and he found it for me. What if Marcel Faberge somehow got to hear of this child who could find anything and decided to use him to find the youth lily?”

  Chief Macgregor frowned. “Why wouldn’t he use an adult like Antoine to find it for him rather? If Antoine was ready to co-operate in a kidnapping, surely he would point out a few flowers for the right price?”

  “Antoine hasn’t lived in the forest for more than ten years. He has lost touch with many things. When I was a child, the youth lily bloomed all over. I could have led you to one in a moment. Now, they are much rarer. I didn’t even realize how rare until I spoke to Professor Dupont at the university. Then I got to thinking about when last I saw a youth lily. It must be a year ago at least. If someone asked me where I would find a patch growing in the forest, I wouldn’t be able to answer them. I’m out of touch too.”

  “Do you consider yourself an ex-villager?” he asked.

  Eulalie was surprised by the surge of indignation this evoked in her. She had to be careful not to return a snappish answer.

  “It’s a difficult question. I haven’t lived in the village for sixteen years, so in that sense I must be an ex-villager. But I haven’t rejected the village or turned my back on the people, which a lot of ex-villagers have done. My grandmother and I visit all the time. I suppose you could say we are part-time villagers.”

  “So, Marcel Faberge would have needed a current villager to show him where the youth lily grew. Perhaps he thought a child would be easier to control and manipulate than an adult.”

  “That’s possible.”

  “It doesn’t help us, though, does it? Not when it comes to finding out where he’s being held now. The best I can do is get a list of all the storage units that Marcel Faberge or Faberge Industries own down at the docks. That will narrow our search a bit.”

  When Chief Macgregor had gone, Eulalie felt a strange fatigue creeping up on her. If she had been less distracted by the swift unfolding of events, she might have been suspicious of it. It had been several nights since she’d had a proper, restful sleep. The lassitude sneaked up and ambushed her. She sat at her desk, trying to conduct her own search into dockside properties owned by Marcel Faberge. Soon her head was nodding, and her eyes were closing. She should have been able to fight it, knowing what was coming, but she succumbed to the seduction of sleep, and the avalanche of a vision that hit her out of nowhere.

  How long had he been here? Had it been six cycles of light and dark or only five? His food supply had dried up two days ago. As he feared, the rats and mice didn’t come here anymore. They knew it was a place of death. They could smell the charred remains of their fellows, and were reluctant to walk into the same trap.

  That was bad, but worse was the fact that the water had almost dried up too. Wherever it had been coming from, it was no longer a dependable supply. Water ran down the wall in a scant trickle. Thirst was now his overwhelming enemy. It raged at him day and night. When he wasn’t asleep, he was crouched against the wall trying to catch the scant drops with his hands and tongue.

  It was never enough. Never. Each collection of water was barely enough to wet his mouth.

  And still no one came.

  Why had they brought him here? Why had they plucked him out of his forest home only to abandon him in this dreadful place? He had been so sure that they wanted him for something. The thought of what that something might be made his heart skitter in his chest, but he had never imagined that they would just leave him here to die.

  There was so much he still wanted to do. There were skills to be learned from the adults, and games to be played with the other children. It was hard to believe that he would never do either again.

  One of the men who had brought him here had spoken Guillaumoise. He had told Bibi that it would be better for him not to scream or struggle or make a fuss. He had implied that the other man was being barely restrained from hurting Bibi as long as he was on his best behavior. Bibi could hardly believe that someone who spoke his own language, someone who must have come from the village at some time in his life, could do this evil thing.

  In Bibi’s world, you could always reason with someone who spoke the same language as you did. But this man had been beyond reason.

  The quality of the sounds outside had changed. He was used to hearing the grumble of motors, the high-pitched beeping, the thump of something heavy hitting the ground, and the shouts of people giving orders. Now all that had stopped. It had been replaced by ear-splitting screeches and whines – piercing noises he had never heard before. They had been interesting at first, but that was before the water had dried up to such an extent that he couldn’t think of anything else.

  He was sleeping a lot. It was better to be asleep. While he slept, he could be back in the forest with his mother and his father and all his friends. The forest was warm and comfortable, and the river that flowed through it gave him cool water to drink.

  Being awake was worse. When he was awake, a fire burned at the back of his throat and his eyes felt like sand. He thought he would like to go to sleep and stay in the forest forever.

  Chapter 23

  Eulalie woke up with her heart pounding and a feeling of parched dryness in her throat. She had to blink several times to get rid of the sandpapery feeling in her eyes – a symptom of severe dehydration. Gasping a litt
le, she stumbled to the tiny galley kitchen at the back of her office and poured herself a glass of water. She drank it straight down, poured herself another one, and drank that down too. Only then did she feel vaguely normal.

  Still jangling with terror and despair, she called Chief Macgregor on his cellphone. It went straight to message. She sent him a text, but there was no response. She phoned the police station.

  “Queen’s Town Police Station. How may I direct your call?”

  “Mrs. Belfast, it’s Eulalie Park. I’m trying to get hold of Chief Macgregor.”

  “Chief Macgregor is interrogating a suspect, Ms. Park. He told me he is not to be disturbed for any reason. Looks like you’ll just have to wait.”

  “Mrs. Belfast.” Eulalie tried to keep the panic out of her voice. “The missing child, Bibi, has run out of food. His water is drying up. He will die of thirst within a day if we don’t find him.”

  “I can assure you Chief Macgregor is well aware of the urgency of the situation. He is doing everything he can.”

  “No, you don’t understand. We thought he had more time, but he doesn’t.”

  Mrs. Belfast sighed. “I don’t know what you expect Chief Macgregor to do about it. Unless you actually have new information about the whereabouts of the boy, I’m afraid I’m going to have to bid you good…”

  “No, wait!” Eulalie’s dream was coming back to her in pieces. “I do have new information. There is construction going on nearby. He used to hear the sounds of a busy loading deck, but now he can hear drills and angle grinders. He doesn’t know what they are, but they are ear-splitting.”

  “Nevertheless …”

  “No, listen, this is very important. It’s a place that was a busy loading deck until a couple of days ago. Now they’ve started construction there. And we know it’s most likely a storage unit owned or rented by Marcel Faberge or Faberge Industries. That should narrow it down. That should be enough for us to find him.”

  “I will leave a message on Chief Macgregor’s desk. He will get to it in due course.”

  “He wants his mother,” said Eulalie. “He misses his mother and his father, and his friends. He dreams of being back in the forest. He dreams of the river that runs through his village and how cool the water would taste. He imagines lying on the bank of the river with the mud pressing into his chest, and scooping the water into his mouth with both hands. He sleeps most of the time now, and dreams of the forest.”

  There was a long silence.

  “Mrs. Belfast?”

  “You’re an empath.”

  “What? No, I’m not.”

  “Yes, you are. You’re one of the empaths of Prince William Island. I didn’t think they were real. I’ve heard of them, but I didn’t think they existed. And I’ve lived here my whole life.”

  “But I’m not. I mean, I just know things sometimes. Don’t give it a name. Especially not that name.”

  “I thought you were a phony. You and that grandmother of yours. I thought you were trading on the whole hocus-pocus thing. Now I’m starting to think you are real.”

  Panic clutched at Eulalie’s throat. “The only thing real about me is that I’m a real private detective. All I’m asking for is some professional courtesy.”

  “I’ll give Chief Macgregor your message.” The mockery was gone from her tone. “The moment he steps out, I’ll give it to him.”

  “Thank you. In the meantime, if he’s looking for me, I’ll be at Faberge Industries, talking to the deputy CEO, Jean-Luc Hugo.”

  Eulalie wasn’t sure if she preferred the sarcastic Mrs. Belfast, or the awestruck one. But as long as the police started looking in the right place for Bibi, it didn’t matter.

  She phoned ahead to Faberge Industries to book an appointment with Hugo. His secretary said he would be happy to meet with her. A thought struck her as she was in the elevator on her way up to his office. She sent a text to Chief Macgregor.

  Eulalie: What happens to Faberge Industries after the estate gets divided up between the widow and children?

  She probably wouldn’t get a reply in time, but she found she very much wanted to know the answer.

  “Ms. Park!” Jean-Luc was as urbane as ever. “Welcome again. It’s only a few days since you were last here but so much has happened that it feels longer.”

  “You mean like your son getting arrested for breaking and entering at the premises of Sweet as Flowers?”

  “He has been released on bail.”

  “So I hear.”

  Eulalie resisted the urge to say anything more. She let the silence stretch out between them.

  “He’s young and impulsive, that boy. He was wrong to do what he did, but …”

  “According to him, he was acting on your instructions.”

  “Okay, yes. I already admitted as much to Chief Macgregor. We became aware that Marcel had set up surveillance cameras and microphones in the restaurant and office of Sweet as Flowers. He had also installed hacker software on their computer system as an act of industrial sabotage. He wanted to put them out of business. He wanted to be the only organic retailer in town.”

  “So I hear, too.”

  “I was horrified when this came to my attention. This wasn’t how I wanted to run Faberge Industries. Not to mention the fact that it was a criminal act. I couldn’t knowingly allow it to continue.”

  “You could always have contacted Fleur du Toit and let her know what your predecessor had done. Then you could have entered the premises with her permission to remove the bugs.”

  Hugo pulled a rueful face. “You’re right. Of course you are. That would have been the correct thing to do, and it is my eternal regret that I didn’t do it. I stupidly thought that I could spare the company some embarrassment by removing the bugs secretly. Marcel created this mess, and I was trying to clean it up. I went about it the wrong way.”

  This was the opening Eulalie had been waiting for. “How many other messes of Marcel’s have you had to clean up, Mr. Hugo?”

  A guarded look came into his eyes. “I’m not sure what you mean.”

  “Shortly after I started investigating Marcel Faberge’s death, three thugs came after me and tried to rough me up. They warned me to stop my investigation. Now one of them is dead – murdered in exactly the same way as Marcel was. He also happened to be the only one of the three who knew who hired them. There’s something neat about that, isn’t there? That struck me as the action of someone who likes to tidy things up.”

  Hugo didn’t rush to defend himself. He seemed to be thinking about what she had said. As Eulalie waited for him to respond, her phone vibrated in her pocket. She took it out and glanced at it.

  Chief Macgregor: Word is there won’t be a Faberge Industries for much longer. Widow and kids planning to sell and get their money out. Remains to be seen if assets outweigh liabilities. There might be no money for them to get.

  “I can see why you would think that,” said Hugo. “But hiring someone to warn you off is not my style. That is the stuff of bad television dramas. I don’t see the point. It’s not as though the investigation hinged on you. The police were also looking into Faberge’s death. They were right here in my office asking me questions the day before you were.”

  Eulalie could only agree, because the same thing had occurred to her. The attack on her made no sense, and never had.

  “Was Marcel Faberge an asset to Faberge Industries?”

  Hugo didn’t even try to hide his scorn. “No, he was not. He built this company out of nothing, but he was busy driving it into the ground.”

  “As his deputy, that must have been hard to watch.”

  “It was. He hired me away from a multinational company in Canada. I thought this was my chance to take on a senior role in a smaller company and use it as a stepping stone to greater things. Instead I found I had hitched my future to an egomaniac who was bent on destroying his own company for the sake of his various wild-goose chases.”

  “Do you think you could re
scue the company now that he’s gone?”

  Hugo’s mouth tightened into a line. “If I were given the chance, I could.”

  “Are you likely to get that chance?”

  “I don’t know. The family want to cut their losses and run. If I could persuade them to give me some time, I could get this company back on its feet and make them more money in the end.”

  “That would look better on your record too, wouldn’t it? You’d be the white knight who saved a failing company, rather than having it sold out from under him.”

  “It would,” Hugo agreed. “I’m not going to apologize for caring about my reputation, Ms. Park. My career comes first – it always has. That doesn’t mean I murdered anyone, though.”

  Eulalie’s next appointment was at the Leonov Corporation. It had been surprisingly easy to secure another meeting with Sergei Leonov. He seemed almost as anxious to speak to Eulalie as she was to speak to him. Also unusually co-operative was Lorelei Belfast who sent a full-color photograph of Henri Popov to Eulalie’s phone when asked to do so. It was an unsmiling, full-face shot that had probably been taken for identification purposes while he was still alive. A moment later, another one arrived. It had been taken during the autopsy.

  Armed with the two pictures, Eulalie rode the elevator up to the control center of the Leonov Corporation.

  “It’s good of you to see me,” she told Sergei Leonov when she was sitting opposite him in his office. “But I have to wonder why you are being so cooperative with a private investigator. People of your seniority normally give me the run-around.”

  “You have to understand our position.” Leonov spread his arms wide. “We are still pursuing our bid to administer the National Lottery. The governor’s office sets a great deal of store by what the local authorities recommend. And you are known to have become close to our esteemed chief of police, Donal Macgregor.”