The Little Burgundy: A Jeanne Dark Adventure

by Bill Jones Jr.

  “That’s what he told you later, isn’t it—that it was your idea?”

  Rosie wiped her eyes once more. “He didn’t care whose idea it was. He only cared that he got what he wanted.” In a matter of moments, she’d gone from coolly in charge to vibrating with resonant anger. “I tried to stop a hundred times. But he always threatened to tell Mum and then ...” She let the words trail off. The silence spoke volumes.

  “How did it start?” I asked. “Were you flirty with him like you are with me?”

  Dark aimed a barely restrained rebuke at me. “It started with a stepfather having sex with his child. Who cares how it started, Woody Allen? She was just a girl.”

  I’d already guessed the answer, but I also knew that if Dark was going to get this belligerent little beauty to open up, she would need Rosie to see her as being on her side. It was an easy role to play, being just another male asshole who’d blame the girl. I decided to throw in the clincher. I spoke directly to Dark, acting as though our squabble was more important than Rosie. “Look, all I’m saying is if the girl didn’t want a relationship with Rao, she had ample opportunity to leave.”

  Dark and Rosie pursed their lips and shook their heads at the same time. My work was done.

  “He got me drunk the first time,” Rosie said. “I was working in the restaurant, cleaning up. We’d had a huge party, around fifty people, and Arjun and I handled it almost alone. It was some holiday party sponsored by some company or another. He kept pouring me wine, said we were celebrating. I didn’t even know he fancied me.”

  “So you weren’t afraid to be alone with him?” Dark asked.

  Rosie shook her head. “I’d been alone with him hundreds of times. He was me dad, you know? Sure, I used to act flirty with him, but it was innocent. I just liked how pretty he made me feel.”

  “God made you pretty, not your stepfather.”

  That earned Dark a smile. “Anyway, the next thing I remember was waking up on the sofa in his office, hearing him snore. I’d never drunk before either. I felt giddy and awful. It was like I was the woman of the family now.”

  “How long until you tried to stop it?” Dark asked.

  The girl shrugged. “Months, years, I don’t know. I always wanted it to stop. I guess I just didn’t do anything about it for the longest.”

  “Until recently,” I said.

  Rosie stopped and gave me a hard look. “Yeah. For all the bloody good that did.”

  “So he raped you,” Dark said.

  Rosie didn’t answer right away, not with words. Once she’d gathered herself back into her emotional bottle, she said, “He told me I was his and would always be his.”

  “Why didn’t you go to the police?” I asked.

  Dark shot me one of her looks that made me feel like an idiot.

  “And tell them what, that I’d been sleeping with him for years, but now it was rape? Who the hell would’ve believed me? He’d have walked and Mum and me would be out on the street.”

  “Your mother has rights. I’m sure you’d have been taken care of,” Dark said.

  Rosie shook her head again. “Arjun had a prenuptial. All we had was the restaurant, and Mum would get none of it as long as he was alive. Besides, she would have thrown me out if she knew what I did.” Her lower lip began trembling, the first visible breach of her armor. “Besides, I wasn’t even sure it would be considered rape. All I did was close my eyes and wait for him to finish.” The last of the girl’s façade crumbled, and she fell into tears. To my dismay, Dark stood, walked around to the other side of the table and held her, comforting her. After a couple of minutes, I left the room and joined Arnold in the observation room.

  “She’s damned good,” he said.

  I was less convinced.

  “You can’t tell my mother,” Rosie could be heard pleading. “She can’t know about any of this. She’d never speak to me again.” She paused and smoothed her hair with trembling hands. “It would kill her and me too.”

  “Why did you let it go on for so long, Rosie?”

  The girl sniffled and drew herself erect. “As long as I kept him … satisfied, he didn’t hit Mum.” She mustered a bleak, howling scowl of a pointed smile. “Fuck, let’s be honest, okay. The little shit was damned good in bed—at first.” The damaged smile exploded into shards of hot tears. Rosie snatched the hair tie from her head and let her head sag, her hair covering her shame and her face.

  Dark stood, removed her sunglasses, and looked at me through the one-way glass as if she could see through straight to my eyes. It was more than a little disconcerting. “Your mother needn’t ever hear about any of this,” she said, still looking at me, “but we’re going to need your cooperation.”

  Rosie looked at her. “Meaning what?”

  “Meaning you have to tell us what you were doing in France when your stepfather died.”

  “I went to buy a proper little burgundy. You can’t get good wine here in London.” Dark blinked but didn’t speak or turn away. Not getting a reaction, Rosie continued. “I already told the police. Look, I am going to say this for the last time. I did not want my mother comforting that man. We knew that bastard was going to die, and he deserved it.” Rosie’s face was a picture of hatred. She’d punctuated every word of her denial sentence as if each were a sentence by itself. “I wanted to make sure he died alone.”

  “You knew he was dying.”

  “Yeah, he … he had stage four cancer, right?”

  Her minute facial twitches and the way she looked away told me she was being deceptive, but it was impossible to tell how. She could have been lying or she could have simply been withholding information. For that matter, she could have been simply pissed off. Contrary to what cops think, liars don’t get squinty-eyed, look away, or act nervous. Some will smile, look you right in the eye, and tell you a whopper. A better way of spotting a liar is by how cooperative they aren’t. At the start, Rosie had been belligerent and uncooperative, the earmark of a liar. We got past that stage, and things smoothed out, until right here at the end of the interview. Her speech all along had been informal and often, grammatically incorrect. Suddenly, when talking about why she went to France, she started speaking in what we in the business call a non-contracted denial. Her little “did not want” was a sign she was being a bit too emphatic in her denial. That, and all the “that man” and “that bastard” phrases, with which she distanced herself from the victim, told me she was lying. I believed her when she said she wanted him to die alone, but there was another reason she went to France than isolating her rapist. As sure as I was of it, I was equally certain Rosie would never tell us what that reason was.

  Dark sensed it too, as she stared at the girl for a few moments, then stood and looked again toward the mirror. She shook her head. I was sure that was for Arnold’s and my benefit. “That’ll be all for now,” she said, and left the interview room without another word. A short time later, she joined us. “She’s lying about France, but she’ll never tell us the truth.” She looked at me for confirmation. I nodded, and she smiled at me.

  “Why do you think she was there?” Arnold asked her.

  “She needed an alibi while her partner killed Arjun.”

  “Are you going to tell us you know who her partner is?” Arnold asked.

  “Non, I can’t do everything.” She turned and left, heading, I was certain, for the exit. Dark wasn’t big on goodbyes, I was realizing.

  “I don’t envy you one little bit, mate,” Arnold said.

  “Yeah, I don’t envy me either,” I said, and ran to catch my partner before she hopped in a cab without me.

  6 - Divide and Conquer

  Neither Dark nor I spoke until we were out of the police station. I needed some air after the closeness and tension of the interview, and fortunately, she felt like walking. We took a stroll in the afternoon sun, stopping to grab lunch at a deli not far from Westminster Abbey. From there we walked aimlessly, mostly along the Thames, neither of us saying a w
ord. I’m not sure how far we walked, but between Dark’s cane and her high heels, we weren’t exactly setting speed records. Before I knew it, we found ourselves at Trafalgar Square standing near a giant, blue chicken statue and watching the cabs and buses spin the wrong way (to my American brain) round the nearby circle. At this point, after nearly two hours of silence, I thought it time to settle the air. Dark had managed to get the results we needed, but her methods had compromised both our objectivity and the subject, in my opinion. She’d seemingly decided Rosie was innocent beforehand, which obviated the need for an interview. Our job was to gather information, not give the subject a plausible cover story.

  Fearing an emotional reaction from my unpredictable partner, I decided to start by discussing what she did well. Jumping right in with the criticisms could set her on her heels and we’d settle nothing. Dark stood ten feet from me, smiling and taking photos of the chicken sculpture with her phone’s camera. She looked up when I approached, and said, “Le grand coq bleu,” which was French for “Big, blue cock.” When I didn’t laugh, her smile evaporated.

  I spoke. “I never said, but you did a damned good job in there. I couldn't figure out what Rosie’s game was, but you seemed to guess right away.”

  “It wasn’t a guess.”

  I inhaled deeply to steady myself and plowed on. “When did you figure out she blamed herself?”

  She shrugged. “When did you decide you would like to sleep with her? Some things happen right away, non?”

  I felt my pulse begin to accelerate. “Look, I was doing my job. If she wants to play flirty, I let her and see where it’s taking us.”

  “And where exactly did it take us?”

  “It took us to her liking me so that your setting yourself up as her opponent was effective.”

  Dark folded her arms and her brow furrowed. A group of tourists approached, took a photo with the chicken statue and left. My partner remained immobile, stubbornly in their way, while I moved off. After a minute or so, she neared me, though still standing more than arm’s length away, leaning on her cane. She spoke softly; I had trouble hearing her over the noise of traffic and the din of squawking birds worshipping their giant, blue god.

  “So, you think I could not have gotten her to talk without your trying to get in her pants?”

  “Goddammit, Jeanne, that is enough. I am a professional and let the subject expose herself. Not everyone follows your let’s give the world a hug interrogational style.”

  “Well, then perhaps you will not have my help in the future.” She crossed her arms once again, holding her cane to her chest like a security blanket.

  “Jeanne, I know we’ve had kind of a complicated relationship, but I don’t think we should let our feelings for each other color what happens during work hours.”

  I couldn’t see her eyes, but I didn’t think she was looking at me. Her body was rigid and her jaw clenched, but when she spoke again, her voice was even. “I am sorry to bruise your ego, but you can sleep with anyone you want. However, I will not work with you if you are going to be unprofessional.” She turned to me, her face painted with indifference. “It is as simple as that.”

  “Okay, I get that for some reason you don't want me to have a love life, but all I did in there was my job. I didn’t think that confused girl was the mastermind behind some complex poisoning any more than you did. I let her attraction to me form a bond so that we could get to the truth.” I closed the gap between us, so that I wouldn’t have to keep shouting to be heard. “If you want to talk about unprofessionalism, talk about your hugging a damned suspect in the middle of an interview.”

  She looked up at me quickly enough that her sunglasses became askew on her face. She puffed a couple of times like a mini-dragon, straightened her shades, and spoke again. Her voice was as calm as an icy sea. I suspected a monster serpent swam beneath that frozen surface. “Mr. Foster Cain, I understand that you are a top agent …” she punctuated the word “top” by rapping the foot of her cane heavily on the pavement, “… but you must learn to keep your sexual urges in check.” I expected her to call me Agent Double Oh Negro any second. The woman knew I was a contractor, not a government agent; she was just trying to piss me off. Dark tilted her head up at me with a smug set of her jaw that infuriated me. I wanted to take her then and there, right under that damned chicken she was so enamored with. I’d show her some “sexual urges.”

  Instead, I took another step toward her, until we were standing practically eye to chin. “Why should I keep myself in check?” I asked. “Apparently, I have you for that. No sense in both of us being in charge of my love life.”

  I was almost certain I saw the hint of a smile cross the woman’s lips. More than ever, I began to suspect those damned sunglasses were a ruse. “Rosie did not want you, Foster. She was pretending.”

  “Yeah, right. And so was Iris, I suppose.”

  “Ta vie d'amour stupide n'est pas mes affaires!”

  I caught about half of that. She caught my confusion and translated.

  “Your stupid love life is none of my concern. But if your desire for your silly little burgundy interferes with my investigation then I shall have to request a more suitable partner.” She twisted her lips into a soured pucker and nodded as though we’d agreed on her rant.

  “Your investigation?” I took a final step toward her and made a point of lowering my voice in counterpoint to her increased pitch. The toes of my oxfords were touching the pointy tips of her pumps. She defiantly placed her cane in front of her, held with both hands and with the base planted between my feet. “Tell you what, Jeanne. If you need a different partner while you cry with victims, hug criminals, and make your wild-assed guesses, then I'll call Hardesty and make arrangements. In the meantime, I have an actual investigation to carry out.”

  She stepped back a pace, which felt like more of a moral victory than it should have. She looked me up and down, pulled off her shades, and placed them between her breasts. She caught me looking and I immediately realized I’d been tricked. “Well, with my ‘wild-assed’ guess, I know you wore new cologne just for your interview with Rosie, and you wore your special red underwear too. Burgundy and red, perfect together.”

  She was right on both counts. I wrote off the cologne to that damned encyclopedic nose of hers. But I had no idea how she knew about the underwear. Red anything always made me feel more powerful, I guess. While she stood there, looking more cocky than the giant one above her, I convinced myself she might have guessed it from my wearing my red power tie to the interview. The cologne was because, well, I like smelling good. I stood there for too long, not knowing how to respond and finding myself getting more exasperated by this crazy woman every second. Then it hit me.

  “This freaking crazy magnet. That’s what this is about, isn’t it?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “That’s why you wanted to work with me.”

  Her eyes flashed wide, and I saw her briefly clinch her fists. Calmly, she put her sunglasses back on and stepped backward one pace, rising onto the first step that led to the National Gallery. She signaled for me to approach, waving her free hand like an enraged traffic cop. I did so. Instead of eye to chin, we were now nearly lip to lip. I wanted to kill her—after I kissed her. I could see her nostrils flaring like some mad little French bulldog, and my realizing that I wanted her so very badly only made me angrier.

  “Since obviously, we cannot work together, I will talk to Hardesty in the morning for a reassignment.”

  At first, what she said didn’t register, as I was staring at her mouth. When it did, I felt a combination of sadness and relief. “Fine. You do that.”

  I heard a gasp, and before I could say another word, she gave me what I thought was a smug little smile and spun on her heels, ascending the steps to the museum. I didn’t follow her. Instead, I trotted to the circle and flagged down the first taxi I could find. If she wanted a new partner, that was okay by me. Maybe now the real detective work coul
d start. I’d always done my best work alone anyway.

  Um, I meant investigative work.

  ***

  After I ditched Dark, I spent the remainder of the day trying to get a bead on Rosie. Arnold was reluctant to give me her address, so I got our dear Ms. Samuels to secure his full cooperation. By then, I’d lost a few hours and it was almost 4:00 PM, nearing sunset. I got to Rosie’s flat just as the last bits of sunlight faded into drab, misty night. She lived north of the city’s central district, in a residential area called Islington. An hour or so on the Internet told me it was a pricier location than I’d expected of a glorified waitress. It was apparently home to celebrities, politicians, and other muckety-mucks. From the street, her three-story walk-up was unremarkable—one of thousands of old brick structures around the city—but my research pegged comparable one-bedroom flats for around £490,000. Even if she rented, that was quite a load of tips every month. Unless she was rooming with a clown car full of flatmates, it was curious, and in my business, curious usually means trouble. If her upscale address had set off alarms in Arnold’s brain, he never let on. I’d never been to London; maybe that was just the price of living. I made a mental note to do more research on real estate once I got some downtime.

  I piddled around across from her flat for a time, trying to blend into the scenery and pretending to be on a smoke break when people passed. Fortunately, there was a local pub at a diagonal to her building, and people pretty much ignored me. It was the city at night, and most people don’t make eye contact with large men unless they have to. After 45 minutes or so, I saw a light go on in the second-floor unit that I’d calculated must be hers. It surprised me, as I’d been watching the street closely and had not seen her go in. Only then did I realize that I’d not even checked the rear of the building for another entrance. My argument with Dark was still replaying in my head, and the fact that it made me lose focus enough to miss my target only stoked my ire. By this point, I was as determined to prove my ex-partner wrong as I was to find out Rosie’s real story. Dark and I agreed that Rosie likely hadn’t killed her stepdad. Where we differed was how to learn whom she might be protecting. We’d coddled Rosie during the interview, and I thought the best way to get her to talk was to confront her directly. Dark, on the other hand, was God knows where, hugging information out of God knows whom.