While Ms. Pridwin genuinely didn’t believe in ghosts right now in broad daylight with people all around her, she knew she would never have the courage to come here at night. No way. Not a chance in hell.
When their tour of the monastery was over, and the guide had finished answering all the questions that the children had for him, they retired to the tea room for lunch. When everyone was sitting down, Ms. Pridwin did another head count. Seventy-one children present and accounted for. Just a few more hours and they could get on the ferry and go back to Prince William Island. From there, it was just a short bus ride to school where the children would become their parents’ responsibility once again.
Ms. Pridwin fully intended to collapse with a glass of wine that evening. Perhaps she would try out that new bar and restaurant that had opened on downtown Lafayette – Angel’s Place. She might even ask Emil if he wanted to join her.
But first they had to get through the most stressful part of the visit. After lunch, the children were always allowed to blow off steam by running around the ruins and exploring the area before heading back to the ferry. Ms. Pridwin wished she knew whose bright idea that had been. Every year, there was a kid who got lost, or a kid who fell, or a kid who got into a fight. Then it became her problem to sort them out.
Warning the children to stay where she could see them, Ms. Pridwin settled herself on a flat rock and prepared to keep an eye on them. Mr. Foucault was doing the same on the other side of the ruins.
As she watched the children capering around and calling to each other, she failed to notice the new girl and a couple of her friends slip away towards the cliff-face that dropped down to the sea.
The trees were calling to Eulalie. She had been out of the forest for months now – for too long. She had been away from the village, the only home she had ever known.
Grandmère said that this was their home now, but Eulalie missed the forest like an ache in her bones. When she looked over the cliff, she could see a wedge of forest that led away from the strip of sand at the bottom. If only she could go down there and play among the trees for a while, she knew she would feel better. Just for a little while. She would make sure she was back at the ferry at the right time.
“Look!” said Amelie, pointing. “There’s a beach down there. We could have a swim in the sea.”
“But how do we get there?” asked Zeenat. “We can’t climb.”
“I can climb.” Eulalie’s voice was hoarse, her accent strange. “If you walk along the edge of the cliff, the path will curl down to that little beach. I’ll meet you there.”
Zeenat looked doubtfully at the cliff. “You’re not really going to climb down there, are you, Eulalie?”
“I’ll be fine. Go now, and I’ll meet you at the bottom. But be careful. Stay on the path and don’t go close to the edge.”
They set off along the path, glancing back at Eulalie every few seconds. She waited until they had looked away, and then she disappeared. Anyone watching would have said that she slithered down the cliff-face like a lizard. Her movements were as fast and fluid as a stream of water. Within seconds, she was standing on the narrow strip of beach. It was low tide. She knew that when the tide was in, the beach would disappear, and the waves would crash against the cliff-face. But she and Amelie and Zeenat would be long gone by then.
While she waited for them, she dipped her toes in the water and stared hungrily into the forest. She would leave her friends here to paddle in the water while she went into the trees. If they tried to follow her, she would hear them, and she would chase them back to the beach.
She heard voices and looked up to see Amelie and Zeenat walking along the path. They had almost reached the beach. They smiled and waved when they saw her.
Eulalie raised a hand to wave back, but before she could, all the light seemed to drain out of the day, leaving it grey and dirty-looking. All the sound disappeared too, as if the waves had pulled back from the beach. Eulalie could see a tall, robed figure reaching up bony hands and pushing a boulder off its narrow pedestal. The boulder was falling and falling over the short cliff. It was going to hit Zeenat and Amelie.
As Eulalie stood frozen into place, all the light and air came rushing back into the world. Her scream made Zeenat and Amelie jump. She took off running up the path and slammed into them, knocking them backwards several feet so that they landed hard on the rocky ground.
Amelie burst into tears, but the sound was drowned out by a crashing noise as a boulder landed on the pathway where they had just been standing.
Amelie stopped crying as she and Zeenat stared at Eulalie in round-eyed wonder.
“How…? How…?”
“I saw it starting to fall.” Eulalie sucked air into her lungs. “I thought it was going to hit you.”
Chattering voices made them look up. A row of faces looked down at them from the cliff, including Ms. Pridwin and Mr. Foucault.
“That does it!” muttered Ms. Pridwin. “They must find someone else. I am never doing this trip again.”
Chapter 1
“What do you mean you haven’t slept with him yet?” Fleur’s hands were on her hips and she glared at her friend.
“Louder, please,” said Eulalie. “I think those people on the sidewalk didn’t quite catch that.”
“What do you mean you haven’t slept with him yet?” Fleur repeated in a more moderate voice.
“We’re taking it slowly. There’s no rush.”
“No rush.” Fleur snorted. “He’s just not that into you.”
“Oh, he’s into me, all right. He is seriously into me. I’m the one who’s putting on the brakes.”
Fleur looked up from the slices of cake she was arranging on plates. “For goodness sake, why? That man is fine.”
“Now you sound like my grandmother.”
“Angel has good sense and excellent taste. Why are you keeping our chief of police hanging? Is it the nose? I think it makes him look like a Scottish warrior. Like Robert the Bruce or someone.”
“It’s not the nose. He’s an attractive man. I’d have to be blind not to see that. The trouble with Chief Macgregor is that he’s moving too fast.”
“It sounds as though you are both moving really slowly.”
“Not like that. I’m talking about other stuff. He has already picked out a shortlist of names for our three children. That’s three children. In his mind, we’re already married and living in a ranch house in Sea View. I’m afraid that if we actually sleep together he’ll be picking out engagement rings. That’s why I’m trying to slow things down.”
Fleur handed a tray with three slices of cake and three cappuccinos to her head waiter. When she turned back to Eulalie, she looked thoughtful.
“A conundrum, and not a common one. But then Chief Macgregor is a bit different to the average bear.”
Eulalie nodded. “We’re having a good time in the meanwhile. We’ve had a couple of dates. We’re enjoying each other’s company.”
Eulalie’s phone vibrated on the bar counter.
“It’s from the office.”
“New client?” Fleur asked as Eulalie read her message.
“Yes, actually. We’ve had a walk-in. I’d better go.”
She put money on the counter for her latte and said goodbye to her friend. She walked briskly down Lafayette Drive towards Bonaparte Avenue, the side street where her office and apartment were located. There was a time when walk-in clients arriving at Eulalie Park Private Investigations would have encountered a locked door and a ‘Back Soon’ sign. But a few weeks earlier Eulalie had hired a full-time receptionist.
Lorelei Belfast had been the secretary at Queen’s Town School when Eulalie started there in middle school. Then she had worked at the police station for years until she’d reached the compulsory retirement age of sixty. She had not been looking forward to a life of bridge and bingo and had been only too happy to take up Eulalie’s offer of a job.
Once deeply suspicious of Eulalie, she was now he
r biggest fan.
Eulalie checked her reflection as she walked into the office. Her hair was behaving itself. She had tied it back into the nape of her neck that morning and it was showing only limited signs of wanting to break free and take over the world.
She put down the go-cup of coffee on Mrs. Belfast’s desk. “It’s the caramel macchiato from Sweet as Flowers.”
Mrs. Belfast’s eyes lit up. “Thank you, dear.”
Eulalie turned to introduce herself to the client.
“I’m Eulalie Park. How do you do? Sorry to keep you waiting.”
The woman, who had been sitting on the couch that Mrs. Belfast had insisted Eulalie buy for the reception area, sprang up and shook her hand.
“Nancy Shrike. Don’t worry about it – it was less than five minutes. Thanks for seeing me without an appointment.”
“No problem. Let’s go into my office. Would you like tea or coffee, or something cold?”
“Just a glass of water, if that’s okay. I’m nervous enough as it is. I feel weird about being here.”
Eulalie was used to clients feeling weird about being in a private investigator’s office. She nodded at Mrs. Belfast who got up to prepare the glass of water. Then she ushered the client through to her office.
Nancy Shrike was about fifty. She had the nut-brown skin of someone who spends a lot of time out of doors. She had a lean surfer’s body and waist-length hair that had been bleached almost white by the sun. She was wearing one of the colorful wraparound skirts that you could buy near the beach, and an olive-green tank top. Her feet were in leather sandals, and she wore earrings that were so long and dangly they brushed against her shoulders. An elaborate dragon tattoo peeked out of her tank top and wound its way around her upper arm.
She was a very distinctive figure.
“You run the Hitch-a-Ride youth hostel down on Cinq Beach, don’t you?”
The woman nodded, causing her earrings to sway and vibrate. “That’s right. Have done for the last twenty-five years. It’s a living. As long as you don’t mind cleaning up college students’ puke several times a week, it’s all good.”
After twenty-five years, her accent had become overlaid with the rhythms of the island, but underneath it, Eulalie could hear something else.
“You’re originally from the USA? Somewhere in the Midwest, maybe?”
The woman laughed. “You’re good. I’m from Ohio. I came out here on spring break when I was twenty-one, and never left. Thirty years later and I’m still here. I started off as a chamber maid at the youth hostel and ended up taking it over when the previous owner died.”
They paused as Mrs. Belfast came in with the glass of iced water.
“What can I do to help you today, Ms. Shrike?” asked Eulalie.
“Call me Nancy. This is the bit that’s making me feel weird. I want to hire you to find out what happened to someone who disappeared five years ago. It’s someone I’m not related to and barely knew. That’s weird, right?”
“I’ve had stranger requests.” Eulalie smiled. “Why don’t you tell me about it from the beginning?”
“Okay. Yes, you’re right. From the beginning. It started in April five years ago. That’s one of our busiest times of the year because it’s when the spring breakers descend. They’re mostly spoilt kids from rich families, because it’s a long way to come. But you get some regular kids too. It’s just the flight that’s expensive. Once they get here and stay in a place like Hitch-a-Ride, it becomes very affordable. This girl was one of the regular kids. Her name was Jessica Manilow.”
Eulalie thought the name sounded familiar but couldn’t remember why.
“She was also from small-town Ohio, so we bonded over that,” said Nancy. “She had been raised by a single mother who had recently passed away, so she was all on her own. She was a sophomore at Ohio University. I think she said she was pre-med.”
Nancy took a folded piece of paper out of her pocket to consult.
“I wrote down everything I could remember. I figured I should be prepared when I came to see you. Only I never did. I made this list a year ago, and never got around to using it. I feel like a busybody. Like this is none of my business and I should just butt out.”
Her fingers folded and unfolded the piece of paper.
“So, she was here for spring break,” said Eulalie. “Was she on her own or was she part of a group of friends?”
“It was a package tour, so she was part of a group of about thirty kids that were saying at Hitch-a-Ride. She seemed to be on good terms with most of them, but I couldn’t see one that she was really close to. I’ll admit, I took her under my wing. There was something sad about her, if you know what I mean. I think it came from having just lost her mother. I felt sorry for her and tried to look out for her. The first couple of days she stuck close to the youth hostel and didn’t go out much. Then someone organized a clambake on the beach and I persuaded her to go.”
Nancy fell silent, and Eulalie read guilt in her face.
“I’ve regretted that so often,” she said. “So many times, I’ve gone back in my head and told her not to go to that damn clambake. If she hadn’t gone, she wouldn’t have met those boys. And if she hadn’t met those boys, well…”
“If she hadn’t met them at the clambake, she would probably have met them somewhere else,” said Eulalie. “You know what the spring breakers are like. They all go to the same parties and bars and bonfires and picnics on the beach. They end up running into each other again and again.”
Nancy’s eyes were haunted. “I’ve tried to tell myself that, but I can’t stop seeing that single act of mine as somehow precipitating everything that came next.”
“Jessica went to the clambake and met some boys?”
“That’s right. Two local boys and one kid from somewhere else… I don’t know… Maine, or somewhere like that. And from that moment on, she was a different person. She stopped drooping around the place looking miserable. Her eyes sparkled, and she had a mile-wide smile. She left the hostel with those boys every morning and returned way after midnight. My role as substitute mother was over. Those boys became her whole world.”
“That’s natural enough.”
“You’re right, but I had a bad feeling about the situation. I felt that because her mother wasn’t there to tell her to be careful, it had become my responsibility. She just laughed at me and said they were having fun. If I’d known what they were planning for that last night, I might have locked her in her room.”
Her eyes filled with tears. Eulalie nudged a box of tissues closer to her.
“She was a young adult woman who was answerable to nobody except herself. You couldn’t have locked her in her room or talked her out of doing something reckless with a group of boys she was infatuated with.”
“Infatuated – that’s a good word.” Nancy sniffed and dabbed her eyes. “She would have done anything those fools told her to.”
“What did they tell her to do?”
“Steal a boat from the yacht club and take it across to Monk’s Cay. They were going to light a fire on the beach and toast s’mores and drink beer.”
“Well, that’s not so bad. Kids have been doing that forever. Although, not so much recently. Not since…” Eulalie stopped.
“Not since a group of four kids went out to Monk’s Cay and only three returned,” Nancy finished for her.
“Was that her? Jessica Manilow? I thought the name sounded familiar.”
Nancy nodded. “It was her. She was the girl who went out for a late-night jaunt with some college guys and never came back.”
Eulalie tried to remember the details.
“There was a massive search for her, wasn’t there? I remember boats and helicopters going out at first light to search. They even took sniffer dogs to the island. They never found a trace of her, did they?”
“Nothing. It was as though she had disappeared into thin air.”
“I remember the locals thought that her body would wa
sh up on the tide eventually. People expected it.”
“I expected it too,” said Nancy. “I thought if I could just know that her body had been found, I’d be able to put it behind me, but it never happened.”
Eulalie watched in compassionate silence as the woman wept into her tissue.
“What would you like me to do?” she asked when Nancy was calm again.
“Find her! I want you to find out what happened to her and where she is now, even if it is just her body. An adult person doesn’t just vanish off the face of the earth like that. Not without help.”
“You suspect the boys she was with?”
“I never trusted them. Not once. They claimed something attacked them on the island, and they had to flee for their lives. They said they became separated from Jessica and were forced to leave without her. Cowards! What kind of boys leave a helpless girl alone like that? I’ve never believed their version of what happened. Never.”
“What do you think happened to Jessica, Nancy?”
Clients always had a theory. It helped to know what that was from the beginning.
“You’re going to think I’m crazy.”
“Try me.”
“I think she’s still alive.”
I wasn’t what Eulalie had been expecting.
“You see? You do think I’m crazy.”
“Not at all. You just took me by surprise. Do you think she staged her own disappearance?”
Nancy sat forward, abandoning her scrap of tissue. “It’s possible, isn’t it? She had no family, no close friends, no one who would miss her when she was gone. There was no one to come looking for her and asking awkward questions. She wanted to reinvent herself – to start over. This was the perfect way to do it. She could disappear, be presumed dead, and pop up somewhere new under a different identity. It happens all the time.”
The Complete H-Series of The Eulalie Park Mysteries Page 45
