The Complete H-Series of The Eulalie Park Mysteries

by Fiona Snyckers

  “Quite convenient, thank you. I’ll let you know as soon as I have more information for you.”

  Dr. Autry turned to go. Then she turned back to Chief Macgregor.

  “Don’t forget, we’re having dinner again tomorrow night, Donal. I’ll send you the name of the restaurant as soon as I’ve made a booking. I’m looking forward to it.”

  Chapter 16

  Dr. Autry trailed her fingers across Chief Macgregor’s forearm, smiled again, and walked out the door.

  She left behind a vibrating silence.

  “Another dinner?” said Eulalie. “Tonight?”

  “That’s right.” Chief Macgregor covered the body with a sheet and stood back for Eulalie to pass through the doorway ahead of him. “Dr. Autry felt that we hadn’t explored all the forms of interdepartmental cooperation open to us. She says there’s still a lot we need to talk about in order to foster better relations between our departments. She said that a third dinner might even be needed.”

  Eulalie glanced at his face. There wasn’t a trace of guile in his expression.

  The temptation to reply sarcastically was strong but it would only upset him. As someone living with high-functioning autism, he became upset by situations he didn’t understand and emotions he couldn’t get to grips with. It went against her conscience to manipulate him for her own ends.

  It also went against everything she believed in to fight for a man. If Chief Macgregor chose not to be with her, that was his loss. Eulalie Park chased after no one.

  Yes, she would feel grief if she lost someone she cared about because he chose another woman over her. It might even break her heart. But she refused to play the game of back-stabbing and gossip against that woman.

  Eulalie didn’t believe in bottling things up either. She believed in honesty and in talking about her feelings. It wasn’t right for her to be churning with toxic emotions without telling him about them. She would be like the pot of boiling water that suddenly blew its lid and scalded everyone in sight.

  “You are thinking very hard about a lot of things,” said Chief Macgregor. “I don’t know what any of them are.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I have addressed two remarks to you in a row so far, which you have failed to respond to. Your hearing is excellent, so that suggests you are preoccupied. Also, your face looks crumpled. I believe that’s how people look when they are deep in thought.”

  Eulalie made an effort to uncrumple her face.

  “You’re right. I was thinking a lot of thoughts. I’m going to share some of them with you because it’s the right thing to do.”

  He opened his office door and held it for Eulalie. They went inside and settled down on opposite sides of his desk.

  “I won’t like it,” he warned her. “I don’t like difficult emotions. They make me anxious.”

  “I know. That’s why I seriously considered not talking to you about this. But that’s not right either. I shouldn’t have to carry all the emotional weight in this relationship.”

  He braced himself. “You’re right. That’s not fair. Tell me what it is.”

  Now that she had been invited to continue, Eulalie couldn’t help feeling silly. Not only had she said this before, but it hadn’t sounded particularly grownup the first time around. She wished she hadn’t raised it.

  “It’s what I said before. About how Dr. Autry isn’t really interested in fostering better relations between your two departments. You’re what she wants, and she’s using this as a pretext to get you alone with her.”

  “Yes, but I think you were wrong about that. I observed Dr. Autry closely during our dinner at La Colombe. She showed no sides of crossing over from the professional sphere to the personal one. We talked about departmental matters throughout. I think you were mistaken about her.”

  “I wasn’t, but okay. The other thing I need to tell you is that it makes me anxious to know that you are going to dinner with her.”

  “So, you want me not to go?”

  “No.”

  “Then why are you shouting?”

  “I mean, no,” she continued in a more moderate tone. “I don’t want that either.”

  “So, you don’t want me to go, and you don’t want me not to go either. What do you want?”

  Eulalie sat back in frustration. “I don’t know. I wanted to tell you how I felt, but I didn’t want it to affect what you choose to do. I want to go back to a time when it was just the two of us getting to know each other at our own pace without this added complication.”

  “But, it still is. This isn’t a complication. It’s a… a nothing.”

  “It doesn’t feel like nothing to me.”

  “Then let me phone her and tell her that I don’t want to see her tonight, or any other night. I’ll explain that you find it upsetting.”

  Eulalie flinched. “Don’t do that. Promise me you won’t do that. It will make me look like an idiot. Besides, this is your career. It’s important for you to get on well with the medical examiner. I get that – I really do. I didn’t want anything to change when I told you this. I just wanted you to know how I feel.”

  “But knowing how you feel makes me uncomfortable.”

  “Then I’m not carrying it alone. We’re both carrying my discomfort, which makes it lighter for me.”

  Chief Macgregor thought about this. “Okay, I see what you mean. Yes, that makes sense.”

  Eulalie gave herself a shake. “We’re in the middle of a case. We should be talking about the man who is currently lying in your cold room.”

  “You’re right.” Chief Macgregor picked up the phone and dialed the desk sergeant. “Manny, please organize for the body to be transported to the medical examiner’s office as soon as possible. All protocols apply. Dr. Autry is waiting for it.” He looked up at Eulalie. “We’ll know a lot more after the autopsy.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of. What if the autopsy tells us nothing?”

  “It will at least give a good approximation of when he died. We can take it from there.”

  “I’m fairly sure about a couple of things - that this man’s death is connected to the trench that was being dug through the riverbed, and that the trench is connected to the mammoth tusks. The only thing I can’t get my head around is what, if anything, this has to do with Megamoxy.”

  “Possibly nothing.” Chief Macgregor pointed to his wall-mounted whiteboard where he had made notes of the developments in the case. The Megamoxy thread and the mammoth tusk thread were under two different headings with nothing connecting them to each other. The only thing they had in common was proximity. They were both centered around the village in the forest.

  Eulalie took a breath. “I need to tell you about my father.”

  “Your father? He left before you were born, didn’t he?”

  “He did. But listen to this. I showed Angel a picture of the arrow that killed Sawyer Blakely, and she recognized it immediately as having been made by my father. His style is unmistakable. When he left all those years ago, he took his arrows with him. The few that were left in the village got used up and thrown away. There hasn’t been an arrow of his in the forest for the last twenty-eight years. One of the people who knew him best was Antoine. They were boyhood friends. I went to visit him this morning and asked if he had heard anything about my father being back on Prince William Island. He seemed genuinely surprised, but who knows? All I know at this stage is that Sawyer Blakely had an agreement with Antoine to guide him into the deep forest. He was going to pay him twenty-five thousand dollars in cash. He paid five thousand upfront to cover provisions, and the rest would be paid in two further cash instalments. When Antoine arrived at the Four Seasons to meet his new client, a bellhop told him that Sawyer Blakely had gone off earlier that morning with another man. He had been dressed for hiking. The next Antoine heard about him was when he was already dead.”

  “So, someone stepped in and stole the guiding contract out from under Antoine?”

>   “That’s right. And I’m wondering if that someone was my father.”

  “The Prince William Island police department is a member of Interpol. If your father is still using his own name, I can find out what he’s been doing for the last twenty-eight years.”

  Eulalie hesitated. Her chest felt tight. Never once had she been tempted to use her investigative skills to search for her parents. The fact that they had left voluntarily and never come back was enough to convince her to leave them alone. They were gone because they chose to be gone. If they had wanted to come back, or to contact her or Angel in any way, they knew exactly where to find them. Besides, Angel had always been convinced that Eulalie’s mother was dead.

  There had been a certain peace in the decision not to pursue them. Curiosity about their whereabouts never troubled her. The fact of their abandonment was an unhealed wound that she carried inside her always. It made it difficult for her to trust people. She hesitated to seek intimate relationships. But it had never felt like an unresolved issue. Painful yes, but not unresolved.

  Now Chief Macgregor was opening up the possibility of tracking her father down.

  It was only that morning that she had found out about the arrow. Tomorrow she might find out what had happened to him. She didn’t feel ready for any of it.

  But this wasn’t for her own sake - it was for the sake of the case. She reminded herself that she was always and above all a professional.

  “Do it.” Her voice sounded rusty. “I’ll do some digging on my side too. If he has ever used his real name to apply for credit, buy a property, get married, apply for citizenship, or travel across international borders, I’ll be able to trace him.”

  “Right… yes.” Chief Macgregor scribbled in his notepad. “I’ll get onto that.”

  He looked up as a thought struck him.

  “What?” she said.

  “I just realized that this must be difficult for you. You’ve had no contact with him your whole life. Would you rather I hand it over to Detective Wright? As the head of Missing Persons, it’s his job to track people down, however long ago they might have disappeared.”

  If anything was needed to put steel in Eulalie’s spine, this was it.

  “Absolutely not,” she said. “I can handle it. It won’t be easy, but I’d rather find the information myself than have someone else do it. Especially if that someone is Detective Wesley Wright.”

  “Okay. Now, what about this other person you told me about? This man who is going around calling himself…” He picked up his phone to check her text. “Lord Peter Pringle? You suspect him of being an imposter?”

  “I do, and I’m very sure I’m right. Now only do I think he’s not a member of the British aristocracy, I think he’s not British at all. His accent is good, but there are occasional slips. And there are odd gaps in his knowledge. I made a reference to the House of Lords, and he didn’t know what I was talking about. He claims his family’s stately home on a huge estate is in Surrey.”

  “Surrey?” Chief Macgregor’s Scottish accent was more pronounced than ever. “I suppose it’s possible, but I wouldn’t say likely. If I were to choose a place for my fictitious family mansion, I’d probably pick Berkshire or Yorkshire. Somewhere less developed than Surrey.”

  “That’s exactly what I thought. Finding out who he really is won’t be easy. I don’t even have a photograph of him but perhaps we can find out if he has used that alias anywhere else in the world. He’s got the accent, the outfit, and the aristocratic patter. It’s quite possible that he has used that identity before.”

  Chief Macgregor scribbled another note.

  “If there were tusk hunters active in the forest, they must have had a plan for getting the tusks off island,” he said. “Elephant tusks are hard enough to move across borders undetected. Mammoth tusks can be up to three times bigger. They must have had a plan for selling the ivory.”

  “I didn’t think of that, but you’re right. Getting them out by sea is probably easier than by air, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Definitely. They’re too big to hide on an airplane.”

  “Perhaps they planned to get them out via Monk’s Cay or Logan Cay?”

  “It’s possible, but we shut those smuggling operations down so recently I can’t imagine that they can have been rebuilt this quickly.”

  Just weeks earlier, Chief Macgregor and Eulalie had been instrumental in breaking up a brandy-smuggling ring that was using the small cays off the east coast of Prince William Island to store and distribute their contraband. The coastguard had been keeping a close eye on the chain of offshore islands ever since. Eulalie agreed it was unlikely that they could be used to get illegal tusks out of the country.

  “It looks like I’m going to have to ask Jimmy about this after all,” she said.

  “Jimmy the Knife? I thought he would have been your first port of call. Why are you reluctant to ask him about it?”

  “Because if I’m wrong about this and nobody knows anything about mammoth tusks in the riverbed, then I will have alerted Jimmy to the fact that there might be a king’s ransom worth of ivory just waiting to be collected.”

  “I see what you mean, but I don’t think you’re wrong about it. Why would outsiders be digging a trench through the riverbed if not for the ivory? It’s the only thing that makes sense. Talk to Jimmy. If someone is looking for help in getting twelve-foot tusks off the island, Jimmy will know about it.”

  “You’re right.”

  Eulalie stood up, so he stood up too.

  “And don’t worry about tonight,” he said. “About my dinner with Dr. Autry. My skin doesn’t recognize hers. Her touch is alien to me.”

  Eulalie lifted a hand to stroke Chief Macgregor’s cheek. His face was smooth and rough at the same time. Smooth skin, rough stubble. It made her want more. She lifted her fingers so that they disappeared into his short brown hair. He tilted his head until his face was cradled in her hand.

  “What about this?” she said. “Does your skin recognize this?”

  His hand came up to capture hers and to hold it against his cheek. Then he turned his head and pressed a kiss into the palm of her hand.

  “It does,” he said. “It knew you from the moment we first shook hands.”

  “We’ve been dancing around each other for months now, Chief. Maybe it’s time to stop dancing and get serious.”

  “You mean get married? Good idea. We can set a date and invite my sister and …”

  Eulalie nearly choked on her own tongue.

  “I’m not talking about marriage, Chief. One thing at a time. I meant sex.”

  One of his rare smiles swept across his face and his hand tightened on hers.

  “That works too.”

  As Eulalie left the police station on one of the hottest days of the year, she decided that she had at least given the chief something to think about besides Dr. Stephanie Autry. Feeling pleased with herself, she decided to stop in at the office. She wanted to know whether Mrs. Belfast had any leads for her in the governor’s office. After that, she would go and visit Fleur. It was quite possible that the man calling himself Lord Pringle had let slip some clues about his real identity and his reasons for being on Prince William Island.

  The only challenge was how to question Fleur about this without making her suspicious.

  Chapter 17

  “Good afternoon, Paddington.” Eulalie bent down to scratch the cat’s head on her way into the office. He was sitting upright in his tartan and wicker basket, watching the passing parade that was Bonaparte Avenue on a weekday afternoon. He responded with a creaky meow.

  “I’ve got something for you,” said Mrs. Belfast the moment she walked into the office. Her eyes were shining with excitement behind her cats-eye spectacles.

  “That’s great, Mrs. B. Let’s hear it.”

  Eulalie put a sweetened latte and an oversized macaron on her secretary’s desk. She had stopped off at the bakery on her way back to the office.
/>   “That looks lovely. Thank you, dear.” Mrs. Belfast took a sip of the latte and sighed happily. Then she leaned forward in her seat. “At first I could find nobody who struck me as suspicious. You know what a tight ship the governor is running these days. After all those years of graft and corruption, Governor Montand does background checks on everyone he hires. They are all squeaky clean. No convictions, no brushes with the law, no debt-defaulters. I feared that today would be the day I disappointed you.”

  “You could never disappoint me, Mrs. B. If you found nothing, it means there is nothing to find. I might have been wrong about there being a mole in the governor’s office.”

  “But that’s the thing.” Mrs. Belfast sounded excited. “I don’t think you were. As soon as I started thinking laterally, I found something interesting.”

  She tapped at her keyboard and then turned the screen so that Eulalie could see it.

  “FAKE NEWS!” Eulalie read the scare capitals at the top of the screen. “What Big Ecology doesn’t want you to know! Is this… a climate change denier?”

  “Yes! I remembered what you said about looking into people who believed that protecting the environment is a waste of time. This guy blogs about how the evil mavens of alternative energy are faking climate change in order to sell their wind pumps and solar energy panels.”

  “Really?” Eulalie gave the screen a dubious look. “He sounds like a nut.”

  “He’s a complete nut, but he also happens to work in the governor’s office.”

  Eulalie clicked on the About page of the blog. “This is anonymous. He calls himself the Climate Warrior. How did you find out who he was?”

  “I traced the IP address.”

  “You traced the IP address? Mrs. B! You’re a genuine internet sleuth. That’s exactly what I would have done.”

  Mrs. Belfast blushed.

  “It was that advanced computer course you sent me on. I did all the optional homework they set, and this was one of the things I learned.”

  “This is great. Anyone who believes that the government is controlling the weather and creating artificial hurricanes at sea is quite likely to think that destroying a few hundred acres of rain forest on Prince William Island is a fine idea.”