The Complete H-Series of The Eulalie Park Mysteries

by Fiona Snyckers

  “That sounds as though it would be out of my league, chérie. They won’t be interested in my few thousand dollars.”

  “Not at all.” Fleur rushed to reassure her. “Peter is actively looking for co-investors. He even asked me if I had a few thousand going spare.”

  “And what did you say?” Eulalie tried to keep her tone casual but knew she hadn’t quite succeeded. Luckily, Fleur’s brain was too fuzzy for her to notice.

  “I haven’t told him about my trust fund yet. I want to know that he really is interested in me for my own sake, and not because I’m a Du Toit of the Cedar Chest Winery. It’s stupid, I know, but it gives me such a thrill to think that he has picked me out of all the titled socialites he has met. I’ll tell him the truth soon, but I want to put it off for a bit.”

  “That is totally understandable,” Angel assured her. “And perhaps if he has me as an investor, he won’t ask you again.”

  “What is he bringing to the table in his discussions with Megamoxy?” asked Eulalie. “Apart from his investment, I mean. Is it his title?”

  Fleur nodded her head in exaggerated agreement. The cocktails were getting to her. “That’s it. His title. It will look good on the… on the… company letterhead for there to be a title. It encourages investor coffidence. I mean, confidence.” Her eyes drooped shut for a moment and then snapped open. Eulalie sent her grandmother a worried look. She knew the cocktails had been strong, but Fleur shouldn’t be passing out already.

  Angel looked at Eulalie and said the Guillaumoise word for sedative.

  Eulalie’s eyes went wide. Had Angel spiked Fleur’s drink? Wasn’t that illegal?

  “What time zit?” Fleur blinked at her watch, trying to bring it into focus. “Having dinner with Peter. Gonna discuss intestment… investment. Maybe tell ‘im about trust. I dunno.”

  “You should absolutely tell him about your trust fund,” said Angel. “There should be no secrets between lovers. Being co-investors in the Megamoxy deal will be a bonding experience for you.”

  “Yes,” Fleur mumbled. “Bonding. Meeting Peter now but I’m so… sleeeepy.”

  “That’s right. Why don’t you put your head down on the bar and have a little nap. It will do you good. We’ll call you when Lord Pringle arrives.” Angel encouraged Fleur to rest her head on the bar. She stroked her hair as though she were a child. Fleur was asleep within seconds.

  Eulalie watched her for a second to make sure she really was asleep. Then she jumped to her feet.

  “You roofied my friend? You have gone too far, Grandmère. That is completely illegal, not to mention immoral.”

  “It might be illegal, mon ange, but it is not as immoral as letting her go off with that appalling man and sign her trust fund over to his dirty little scheme.”

  “Yes, but…” Eulalie hesitated.

  “No buts. Don’t just stand there. We need to get her upstairs before he arrives. If only your Chief Macgregor weren’t at his dinner. We could do with his muscle power now.”

  “He is not my Chief Macgregor.”

  “If you don’t seal the deal soon, ma petite, that will turn out to be true.”

  “You sound like Manny,” Eulalie grumbled.

  “Manny is a sensible man. Let me call one of the kitchen staff.”

  “No need. I can manage perfectly well.”

  Eulalie lifted Fleur’s spaghetti-like arms off the bar and draped them over her shoulder. Then she bent down and coaxed her friend’s weight over her shoulder. She stood up and lifted her into a fireman’s lift. Staggering only slightly, she carried her up the stairs and into her grandmother’s apartment.

  “Put her in your old room. She’ll wake up with a mild headache in the morning, but nothing more than that.”

  Eulalie lowered her friend gently onto the bed on her side and removed her shoes.

  “Fleur is going to kill me for this,” she said as she pulled the quilt over her. “She is going to murder me with her bare hands.”

  “For what? For putting her to bed when she’d had too much to drink?”

  “She won’t fall for that. She’ll know there was something in those drinks.”

  “She won’t be too clear on anything that happened this evening. If we tell her she had too many strong cocktails and fell asleep, she’ll believe us. It’s no more than the truth after all.”

  Leaving Fleur sound asleep, they went downstairs. As they got to the bar, Eulalie noticed a man speaking to Gigi at the entrance to the restaurant.

  “That’s him,” she told her grandmother. “He must be looking for Fleur.”

  “That’s a shame, because we haven’t seen her.”

  Gigi was shaking her head as the man became more emphatic in his questioning. She looked up and caught Eulalie’s eye. Looking visibly relieved, she brought him over to the bar.

  “This gentleman is looking for Fleur du Toit,” she said. “I was explaining that we haven’t seen her this evening.”

  “Thank you, Gigi,” said Angel. “You may return to your duties.” She turned to face the man calling himself Lord Pringle and stretched out her hand.

  “How do you do? I’m Angel de la Cour and this is my restaurant. What seems to be the problem?”

  He shook Angel’s hand briefly. His eyes flicked between her and Eulalie.

  “Fleur told me to meet her here. She said she’d be here from six o’clock onwards. It’s now seven-thirty. Where is she?”

  “Fleur hasn’t been in this evening, has she?” said Angel, cocking her head to one side.

  “Not as far as I know,” agreed Eulalie.

  Pringle sighed. “You must be mistaken. I have texts here on my phone telling me that she was coming here with you for a drink.” He jerked his head at Eulalie. “And then a later one saying that she was sitting here having cocktails with you and that I should come and fetch her for dinner.”

  “How strange,” said Eulalie. “I’ve been here since before six and I haven’t laid eyes on her. Perhaps you misunderstood.”

  “I bloody well didn’t. She couldn’t have made it any clearer. She was here. She told me she was here.” He looked around and caught the bartender’s eye. “Hey, you. Yes, you. Has a woman been in this evening? Red hair. Pale skin. About so high.”

  “You are referring to Mademoiselle du Toit, M’sieur?”

  “Yes, yes. Mademoiselle du Toit. Have you seen her tonight?”

  The barman stroked his chin and stared up at the ceiling, as though seeking answers. “No,” he said at last. “I haven’t seen her at all this evening.”

  Eulalie watched as a tide of angry color swept into the man’s cheeks.

  “Are you trying to make a fool of me?”

  “No, M’sieur.” The barman looked startled. “Why would I do that? You asked me a question and I answered it.”

  “That’s what that waitress at the front said too, but I don’t believe it. She was here – I know she was.”

  “If I were you I would be wondering why my girlfriend had given me false information about her whereabouts,” said Eulalie.

  “Oh, yes.” He rounded on her. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you? I’ve seen the way you look at me ever since the moment we met. Don’t think Fleur and I haven’t discussed it. You don’t trust me. You think I’m up to something. Well, I have news for you. Fleur doesn’t trust you. She knows you are out to undermine me and she resents it. Good luck trying to repair your friendship with her. That’s probably why she didn’t come here – if indeed she didn’t. She didn’t want to spend the evening with you.”

  Eulalie was surprised at how much this hurt. Even understanding where it was coming from, she still felt the sting.

  “Calm down, mon brave.” Angel reached up and patted his cheek in an unmistakably patronizing gesture. “You are causing a scene, and we don’t tolerate scenes here at Angel’s Place. This is a respectable establishment.”

  “Where is she?” He pulled away and paced the bar. “You can’t hide her from me. I wi
ll find her in the end. I will keep sending her messages until she answers. She can’t hold out forever.”

  Grateful that she had taken the precaution of switching Fleur’s phone off, Eulalie glanced at her grandmother.

  “That’s enough.” Angel snapped her fingers and the barman appeared at her side, along with two strapping waiters. “This gentleman was just leaving, boys. Kindly escort him to the door.”

  “I will find her,” Pringle said as the men hustled him to the exit. “And when I do, she will be done with you forever.”

  Chapter 19

  You hate this bastard of a forest.

  Your clothes cling to your skin in a clammy embrace of sweat and cotton. You would give anything – anything at all – for a moment’s relief from the heat and humidity. But no breeze penetrates to the forest floor.

  The trees close in on you from all sides. Above your head, you can’t even see the sky - just a greenish haze where the canopy of trees has snapped shut. In front of you, there is no semblance of a path. Behind you, the trees gather in your wake. The forest has swallowed you whole.

  You are grateful for your guide, even though he is a bastard too. He can see a path where none exists. Somehow, he can tell direction in this eerie, disorienting place. He has never put a foot wrong. He has never had to pause to regain his bearings. There is something sadistic in the way he pushes you on and on and on even when you are long past the point of exhaustion.

  You are convinced he takes pleasure in forcing you up into the trees when he says that the ground below is impassable. You are sure he is doing it for his own amusement. It probably entertains him to see you reeling around like a drunk from exhaustion.

  The longer it goes on, the more you hate him with every fiber of your being. And yet you look for him anxiously whenever the angle of the trees hides him from your sight. You feel a spurt of relief every time he reappears.

  If he were to disappear – to leave you here – you know you would break down and cry. That only makes you hate him more.

  You start to think affectionately about the pistol you have strapped into a holster under your clothes. Part of you has been wanting to discard it for days as it chafes and scratches against your skin. But another part dreams of pulling that pistol out and shooting your guide right through his black heart if he orders you to climb a tree just one more time.

  In the beginning, you managed to maintain a level of dignity. You kept your complaints to yourself. Real men don’t whine. But that didn’t last long. You found that it gave you relief to vocalize your frustrations. Now you moan all the time. You are losing track of whether you have said something out loud or merely thought it.

  “I hate this damn place. I wish I had some napalm. I wish I had a flame thrower. I’d burn every tree to the ground. These bugs are eating me alive. How can you stand it? Why do they leave you alone and swarm around me?”

  Your guide laughs. He actually laughs - the sadistic son of a bitch.

  “I gave you something to rub on your skin yesterday,” he says in his strange, difficult-to-place accent. “You declined. You said you would use your own bug spray. How is that working out for you?”

  You glare at him. “You caught a bunch of grasshoppers, mashed them between two rocks, and spread the juice on your skin. That is disgusting. Of course, I declined.”

  “They were locusts, but why split hairs? The point is that it works. The people who live here learn to do that as small children. That is why the bugs never trouble them.”

  “I don’t care,” you grumble. “I’m not that desperate.”

  On and on you walk. He is taking you to see an old riverbed. You would have seen it yesterday, but the savages who live around these parts were close by and he wouldn’t let you approach them. You wanted to give them some of the beads and trinkets that you brought to trade, but he insisted that these people would not be tempted by them. And so, you had to spend another night in this cursed place. Now, you are trying again to approach the riverbed. You haven’t told him why you want to see it. You haven’t told him why you are here at all. He doesn’t seem particularly interested.

  When you get to the riverbed, you can see that others have been here before you. You were afraid of this. The secret of the tusks is out. Naturally, it would bring the ivory hunters running. He tells you he can only see signs of one man, and that man seems to have disappeared. It was probably the Russian bastard who sat in on the negotiations in New York. He used to be your friend, but no longer. You wonder where he could be hiding and what you could do to eliminate him from the hunt.

  A king’s ransom in ivory… tusks fourteen feet long… of course the hunters will come ...

  Did you think that, or did you say it out loud?

  “Tusks?” says your guide. “Preserved in the silt of the riverbed? But of course.”

  Apparently, you said it out loud.

  He seems distressed by the thought of the fortune hunters who will come here to this benighted place, attracted by the ivory. This is the first time you have seen him rattled or upset. You jump at the chance to taunt him like a starving dog jumps on meat.

  He argues that the forest is too thick and dangerous for tusk hunters to come here. You point out that someone has already been here. Then you tell him everything.

  You tell him about the bulldozers that will shortly come to raze the land. About the fires that will be set to clear the vegetation. About the graders that will flatten the trees so that building can happen on top of their fallen corpses. You tell him that Megamoxy is unstoppable. That they always get their way. You boast about the casino, the shops, the food court, the theme park. You gloat about the air conditioning that will soon replace this appalling humidity.

  You can see that you are getting under his skin. He is becoming riled. You see that you have power over him, so you push it further.

  You tell him that the casino is going to be built exactly where the village is now. You tell him you have connections in the governor’s office that will give the order for the villagers to be forcibly evicted from the forest.

  You have reached a clearing now. It is mercifully cooler, with a slight stirring in the air that brings relief. You are emboldened by the drop in temperature and a lifting of the claustrophobia that has plagued you since you entered the forest.

  Your guide is getting angry now – angry and aggressive. You’re not afraid of him anymore. You’re not afraid of being left by him. It has occurred to you that you are just a few hundred feet away from a whole village of people who could guide you out of this forest if need be.

  All the hatred you have kept bottled up comes to the surface. You think about how pleasant it would be to wipe that smirk off his face.

  You pause, leaning your weight against a giant of a tree. You pull your shirt out of your belt and reach under the waistband to where the holster rests against your hip. Your hand closes over the butt of the pistol.

  When you look up again, your guide is gone. He was right there beside you and now he is gone. You look around. He is not human. He flits in and out like a ghost.

  You pull out the pistol and turn in a circle. Where is he?

  When you see him again, it is at a distance. He is standing in the shadows holding something dangling from one hand. It takes you a moment to recognize it as a bow.

  Just as you raise your pistol to fire at him, something punches into your chest with unimaginable force. You sag against the trunk of the tree and look stupidly down at your chest. There is nothing there. Nothing but a space through which your life essence is draining. Your arm drops, and the pistol falls from your nerveless grasp. You don’t know what happened, but you know it was a mistake to taunt the man with the dark eyes.

  Eulalie could feel the roughness of the bark against her back. She could feel the breath and blood leaving her body. She closed her eyes and let herself sink away.

  Tiny pin-pricks of pain against her chest brought her back.

  She opened her eyes, gasping
for breath. She was lying in bed on her back. The cat was digging its claws into her chest.

  “Okay,” she whispered. “It’s okay. I’m back.” As she stroked him, his claws relaxed, and he began to purr.

  She lay there for a moment getting her breath back and trying to ground herself in the present. The weight of the cat on her chest helped. It pressed her down into the here and now until she felt as though she belonged.

  Normally she would jump up and make a written record of everything she had seen, but not this time. She sat up and reached for her phone - she should text her grandmother. Then she put it away again. There could be no record of this – either written or electronic. She wouldn’t even phone Angel. She would tell her face to face, or not at all.

  Eulalie fed the cat and went through her morning routine of showering, eating breakfast, and getting dressed as quickly as possible. Over breakfast, she picked up her phone and looked at the message she had sent the night before. It was addressed to Chief Macgregor, telling him to check whether there really was such a person as Lady Mary Coke, and whether she had recently been the victim of a plausible fraudster. It also told him about the meeting happening at midday today between all the major stakeholders in the Megamoxy bid.

  As she read over her message, a reply arrived. It said simply, “On it.”

  Eulalie nodded. The pace of this investigation was heating up. If the police department could find out who Pringle really was, it would free her up to find out how Megamoxy was planning to get its bid approved by the governor’s office.

  Because that was the focus of her efforts now. She knew who had killed Sawyer Blakely. That was no longer a mystery, or even particularly important anymore. It was self-defense. That was all she needed to know. Only one thing interested her now, and that was saving the forest she loved and the people who lived there.