by Elaine Macko
Besides aerobics, Ann taught the yoga class. She stood next to me in a violet leotard that showed off her curvy figure and her beautiful skin, which always reminded me of milk chocolate. I wanted to ask her to move to the other side of the room so I wouldn’t feel so intimidated by her flawless figure. I suspected the men who took her classes liked watching her more than they liked the workout. Looking at Ann I knew no matter how many exercises I did, my boobs would never be firm little mounds again. A depressing thought if you dwelled on it too much, so I didn’t. I just bought better bras. I initially signed up for Ann’s classes but after a while I found I never had the time for them. Something always came up, but I also liked working at my own pace with the weights and other equipment.
“Yeah. That was Steven Estenfelder. Do you know him?”
“Not really. I know his family, though.” I moved to another machine and Ann followed. “Is he a member here?”
“No, but he’s been here a few times so I wonder if he’s planning on joining. He’s a member at that exclusive country club in Westport but maybe he’s thinking about changing. If you want to know the truth, which I will deny to my dying day that I told you, I think it’s too pricey for him.”
I wiped the sweat from my forehead. “The country club? How can that be? He’s loaded, from what I hear.”
“I think that’s the impression he tries to project and, don’t get me wrong, I’m sure he has a lot, more than I’ll ever see. But he’s trying to cut back on expenses, I’m sure of it. See that guy over there?” Ann pointed to a beefy sort across the room who was lifting a zillion-pound weight. “That’s Asir. He has a concession at the track in New York. He saw Mr. Estenfelder come in here last week and told me he’s seen him at the track a few times with some guy.”
“Hmmm. Interesting.” So Stuart and Steven liked the ponies. “Oh, good, one of the treadmills is free.” I sprinted across the room and managed to hop on just as an overweight man made his way toward me. He turned with a sigh and I felt a bit guilty—but not enough to give it up.
“I tried to convince management that we need a few more,” Ann said eyeing the treadmill. “They’re the most popular things here, next to my class, of course.”
“Of course.”
“Well, I’ll be off. My class starts in about ten minutes. Sure you won’t do it?”
“Not tonight. But thanks.”
“See ya, Alex. Take care.” Ann walked across the room with just about every male eye on her.
I increased the speed to a brisk walk and set the incline to a steep hill. Across the room, Steven Estenfelder now talked with a young man I knew to be one of the sales representatives for the club. It seemed almost everyone in Mrs. Brissart’s family needed money except for Mrs. Brissart. And who knew if that was true or not? I chided myself for my sudden doubts of the woman but I needed to remain totally impartial in my investigation of her. I suddenly felt sorry for John. He was in an awful position.
After forty-five minutes of hard walking, I relinquished the treadmill to a young man who promptly turned it up to high and jogged his way to a better body.
Steven Estenfelder still sat at the bar drinking a fruity concoction when I walked over and took the seat next to him.
“I didn’t know you were a member here,” I said brightly.
Steven turned to me. A vague look crossed his face momentarily before he placed me. “I’m not.”
“I’m so sorry for your loss.”
Steven took a sip from his glass and wiped a frothy bit of juice from his lips. “Yes, it’s a terrible thing. Kenneth and Lillian are devastated. Not to mention Aunt Roberta.”
I wanted to get home but I also wanted to know Steven’s thoughts on who the killer might be.
“It seems to be the consensus of your family that one of you did it.”
“It would seem so,” Steven said and then drained his glass, wiping a bit more juice from his mouth. “I’m sure the police will figure it all out before too long. Shall we leave it to them?” He gave me a steely stare and placed a ten-dollar bill on the counter and got up. “Nice to see you again, Miss Harris.” He left before I had a chance to ask him if he planned to join the club.
CHAPTER TWENTY
I took the large bowl of salad, with a can of tuna tossed in, to the sofa and placed it on the coffee table. I turned the TV on very low, and picked up the papers I printed a few hours earlier.
I found the association Mrs. Brissart’s ancestor had with Napoleon fascinating. It was almost like reading a history book, but with real people, people I had a connection with, if one wanted to stretch the facts quite a bit. I read the pages and paused when I came to the murder of Raymond. It brought a sudden sadness to think such a wonderful and long friendship and partnership ended so tragically. How difficult it must have been for Raymond’s wife, alone in a foreign country and not speaking the language. I picked up the papers again and reread the passage.
In 1820, Lucien’s young, beautiful wife gave birth to their first child, Pascal. While she attended to the increasingly luxurious home fires, Lucien and Raymond diversified their holdings and opened a fastener factory having the foresight to see iron-ore deposits would not last forever.
Raymond’s family would also expand. But luck and good fortune would not last for Raymond. Sometime around 1837, Raymond Thiry was found murdered by factory workers arriving for their day. Robbery was the assumed reason behind the murder. The men kept a hefty amount of cash in the company safe and on the morning of Raymond’s murder, the cash had disappeared.
This event had a profound effect on both the Cournet and Thiry families because of the way all business agreements had been drawn up between Lucien and Raymond. Both men reverted to “Tontine,” an agreement by which all assets, jointly owned, would automatically revert to the survivor. The Cournet family invested their personal holdings wisely. The Thiry family, sadly, had not been quite as fortunate.
Lucien, devastated by the murder of his friend and business partner, did the decent thing. Though under no obligation to the Thiry family with the death of Raymond, he had always promised his friend that, should anything ever happen, he would take care of his wife and two children. As Raymond’s wife neither spoke English, nor had any idea of the men’s business transactions, Lucien handled all arrangements for her. The years passed; Lucien held to this agreement but with the education of the oldest, a male child, completed, he felt his obligation paid and thus broke ties with the Thiry family entirely.
Meanwhile, Pascal, now grown, took over the fastener factory and the ever-growing investments of the family. Pascal’s own son, Julian, was born in 1857 but by then both of Pascal’s parents were dead. In the ensuing years Julian, too, proved to be the businessman his father and grandfather before him had been, and eventually the reins passed on to his own son, Edouard. Female children born along the way were inconsequential as far as business matters went and thus ignored.
Edouard’s wife, Miriam, bore three daughters, effectively ending the male rule of the Cournet family. Roberta arrived first and five years later came May and June.
Edouard and Miriam bought a magnificent retirement home outside of Farmington situated on a large parcel of land. The land now belonged entirely to Roberta Brissart, but the acreage adjoining it was owned by all three sisters equally.
I put the papers down and took a few bites of my salad. An image of the Brissart home on the TV caught my attention and I turned the sound up. A reporter said the police had no leads as yet. An image of Roberta at some charity event flashed across the scene and the reporter went on to say how respected she was in the community. The scene changed again, this time back to the newsroom, where the anchor said even in Indian Cove the time had come to lock our doors.
I turned the sound down again and looked over the pages one more time. An hour later, I came to the conclusion that though exciting, what with the Napoleon connection, nothing in Mrs. Brissart’s family history would bring about a murder in modern
times. Not by Mrs. Brissart. Not by anyone. And if there was nothing here, then it seemed totally obvious to me, and would soon be to the police after I got done with a certain detective, that Mrs. Brissart had absolutely no reason to kill her grandson.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
With Chantal back, I regrettably returned to my office and a mountain of paperwork. All hopes of Chantal staying on in New York a few more days to care for her mother-in-law diminished last night when she called to tell me that her mother-in-law was driving her so crazy that she had come dangerously close to breaking the woman’s other leg, and just had to come home early.
Sam and I spent most of the morning going over more figures for turning our agency into a professional employer organization, or PEO as it was referred to. It felt exciting to think about a major expansion, but I worried about the faithful clients we already had.
Sam leaned more and more in the same direction and instead of going all out all at once, we felt it a better business decision to just grow at a slower pace. We didn’t want to become a people mill. We specialized in fitting the right person to the right job and didn’t want to lose that personal touch. We decided that in the end, if our business grew then we would already have a good head start on becoming a PEO.
“Sandwiches are here,” Millie said as she came into my office. She volunteered to fetch something for all of us while Sam and I finished up our meeting. “Sorry I’m late, but one of my earrings fell out and I had to go back to look for it. I found it, thank goodness.”
Today our young assistant added a pair of pumpkin earrings to the ever-growing Halloween ornamentation popping up all over the office. The earrings lit up and it was a bit disconcerting to be looking at Millie and see two winking pumpkins smiling back.
I took two stacks of papers off my desk to make room for the assortment of stuff Millie picked up. Thank God she gave up her penchant for health food. The tofu egg salad minus the eggs was bad enough, but even Millie decided she wasn’t cut out for a healthier life style after her first bite of a seaweed burger.
“Oh, great. Lots of stuff. I’m famished.” Sam eyed the assortment spread out before her.
“Sam, when aren’t you hungry? Ever since I’ve known you, you’ve been eating.”
“She’s been like that ever since we were little. One pork chop never did the job for our Sam, no sir. She always wanted at least two and then she’d take mine and clean up the bone. It was truly disgusting.”
“Hey, I like food. Food’s good.” Sam reached for half a pastrami, two pickles, and a wedge of a club sandwich.
I satisfied my appetite with the other half of the pastrami and a pickle. “Guess who I saw walking into Paulson’s Professionals?”
“What were you doing at Paulson’s Professionals, and do we need to use their full name? I feel like I’m talking about some new strip joint,” Sam said.
“You’re not too far off,” I said. “They rented office space in a tacky office in a strip mall.”
“So who did you see at Pau…I mean at that other agency,” Millie asked with a quick look at Sam.
“None other than Beth Amena.”
“Beth Amena? She can’t even type,” my sister said around a mouth full of sandwich. “And did we establish what you were doing there in the first place?”
I licked pickle juice from my finger. “Spying. I wanted to see what they looked like. I’m happy to say the parking lot looked pretty empty. But this doesn’t mean we’re out of danger yet. They’ve already got Beth, and who knows who else jumped ship. Enough. I don’t want to talk about the competition anymore.”
“What’s everybody doing this weekend?” Millie asked with a straw in her mouth making the words come out a bit distorted.
“Anything that’s not connected to the murder or other temp agencies,” I said a bit wistfully.
“I read something this morning in the paper. They said no arrests have been made yet,” Millie said.
I thought about the small bits and pieces I knew about. Nothing when you added it all up. “For a moment I thought maybe the housekeeper might be a major suspect,” I said through a bite of pickle.
“Of course!” Sam exclaimed. “It’s always the butler.”
“There is no butler. And the housekeeper didn’t do it either, I’m sure of it.”
“How can you be so sure?” Millie asked.
“I talked with her yesterday and you should have seen her,” I said, as I leaned back in my chair and put my sandwich on the desk. “She looked so frightened.”
“Frightened?”
“Yeah, Sam. Really scared. Wouldn’t you be? A member of the family is killed. It looks more and more like it had to be someone close. And then you find out the real victim was supposed to be Mrs. Brissart. It could happen again, though they’re being very careful about what they eat in that house.” I sat forward again and took a small bite of the sandwich and reached for another pickle.
“Maybe she looks frightened because she knows you’re on to her.”
I stared at my sister and rolled my eyes. “Geesh!”
“Who do you think it is, Alex?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know, Millie. Without knowing who the real victim was supposed to be, it’s kind of difficult to sort through everything. But you know,” I began after taking a bite out of my second pickle, “the more I think about it, the more it doesn’t fit that Mrs. Brissart was supposed to die.”
“Really?” Sam cut a wedge off one of the other sandwiches.
“The most probable reason to kill Mrs. Brissart would be over the land. So why now? They’ve all been arguing about it for months.”
“Because the killer realized that all the meetings and cajoling were fruitless,” Sam suggested.
“But why kill her? What’s the hurry? Couldn’t they just keep badgering her?”
“Maybe it has something to do with the developer,” Millie said. “Maybe he works for a bunch of thugs and they told him he had better get the land now or else.”
“Did you watch a gangster movie on TV last night?” Sam teased.
“You know, she could be right,” I said. “The developer is kind of sleazy.” I momentarily let my mind drift to the business card that J.T. Smit gave me. It might be just the right time to go and check him out.
“Alex, are you still with us?” Sam asked, waving her hand in front of my face.
“Huh? Oh, yeah. Enough about murder.” My words drifted off as I took in the nice assortment of paper growing all around me. “I guess I should come in this weekend and get some of this stuff done, but my heart’s not in it, and besides, Mary-Beth called this morning and she’s at loose ends for the weekend so we’ve decided to go on a picnic. John and I planned on a nice weekend in the country, but he’ll be tied up for some time.”
“Want some company?” Sam asked, as she picked through the remainder of our lunch and began to clean off the desk.
“Sure. But what about Michael and the kids?” As much as I loved my extended family, I really wanted a weekend of girl-talk with Mary-Beth.
“The kids have a school project to finish and after that Michael’s renting some videos and they’ll all get sick on popcorn and candy. Anyway, I planned on doing a bit of shopping. I need bras in the worse way.” Sam stuck her hand through the opening in her blouse and adjusted a strap as if to make her point. “But going off for a picnic sounds much better.”
“Why don’t you come along, too, Millie? We can make it an all-girl day. I’m going to call Meme and see if she feels like getting out.”
“Sure. Why not,” Millie shrugged. “Rueben’s working.”
Sam turned her head slowly, looking at Millie with a do-tell look. “Rueben? Like in the sandwich?”
“No, Rueben, as in Rueben Radford. I met him when I went on that ski trip last January. He felt sorry for me after I broke my leg and he ended up sitting in the lodge with me every day.”
Last Christmas Sam and I gave Millie a ski trip for her pres
ent. She had a wonderful time but on the second day out broke her leg getting off the ski lift. No one could figure out how the heck she did it, but in the end, it didn’t matter. Rueben, another member of her ski club, thought sitting by the fire and drinking mulled wine with Millie was a far better way to spend a skiing holiday.
“So how long have you two been going out? I never heard you mention him before.”
“We just started dating a month ago. It took him a long time to get his courage up to ask me out.”
“So what does he do, and why am I asking all the questions? Aren’t you in the least bit curious, Alex?”
“Yes, but, number one, you’re doing a fine job of being nosy all by yourself, and number two, Millie already told me about Rueben, and he sounds like a great guy.” I reached for the M&M jar and poured a bunch into my hand.
“Hmmm. I’ll put aside my hurt feelings for the moment at not hearing about this before and let you continue. Millie?”
“He’s a funeral director.”
“A what? Are you serious?”
“Yes, I am,” Millie laughed.
“So what do your mother and grandmother think of him?”
“They love him. Granny’s hoping for a discount when she finally departs this world.”
“That’s sick, Millie.” Sam put her hands down on the desk. “Okay, fine. I can take a hint when to shut up.”
“Since when?” Millie and I asked in unison.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
“Number seven twenty-one,” I mumbled to myself. “That must be it.”
After lunch I excused myself and headed for a visit with June. I don’t think I fooled my sister one bit when I told her I had some errands to run, but she didn’t press the issue. Neither May nor June gave me much information at our last encounter. Besides, I wanted to find out about the ancient feud between June and Mrs. Brissart. If I was lucky J.T. Smit might even be underfoot. As long as he wasn’t under June. I didn’t think I could handle that. I pulled into a long driveway and parked my car by the front door.
