The Case of the Faithful Frenchie

by B R Snow

  “Like I said, Mrs. C., it was an accident.”

  “Yes, dear. Of course, it was,” my mother said, then looked at me. “Well, darling. Did you learn anything tonight?”

  “Quite a bit actually.”

  “And?”

  “Mom, it has been a very long day, and I’m beat. So let’s debrief tomorrow.”

  “I’ll swing by the Inn in the morning,” my mother said.

  “I’ll be there.”

  “I think heading for home is a great idea,” Summerman said. “Are you ready to go, Josie?”

  “I am,” she said, wiping her mouth. “Dinner company excluded, that was delicious. Thank you, Mrs. C.” Then she looked at Summerman. “What is it?”

  “I’m just checking to make sure your steak knife is still on the table,” Summerman deadpanned.

  “You’re not funny, Summerman.”

  “Disagree.”

  “Hey, watch it. That’s my line.”

  Chapter 9

  I dragged myself out of bed early the next morning, fixed a travel mug of coffee, and headed for town hoping to catch Jackson in his office before the final day of Parade of Pirates festivities got underway. I found him packing boxes in his office. He looked up when he heard me come in and shook his head.

  “Your mother told you, didn’t she?”

  “So, it is true?” I said, sitting down on the other side of his desk.

  “It certainly is,” Jackson said, continuing with his packing without looking up at me.

  “Jackson, taking over the grocery store won’t do a thing to get your parents back together.”

  “I know that,” he said, flipping through an old notebook before tossing it into the trash.

  “Then why on earth did you tell my mother that?”

  Jackson grabbed a large box from a shelf and dropped it on the desk in front of me. Immediately, he started rummaging through it and mumbled something I didn’t understand.

  “What did you say?”

  Jackson paused and looked at me.

  “Because I’m having a hard time telling people I’m leaving because I suck at this job,” he said, selecting several items and tossing them in the trash bin.

  “Don’t say that. You’re a good cop, Jackson,” I said.

  “Tell that to all the dead people around here,” he said, then stared off into the distance. “Maybe a shared interest in exotic lettuces will be just the thing I need to convince Chef Claire that I’m her guy.”

  Jackson, along with Freddie, our local medical examiner, had both been vying for Chef Claire’s affection for months. And while they’d both become very close friends with her, it was obvious to everyone, except Jackson and Freddie, that was about as far as their relationship with her was going to go.

  “Jackson, we’ve just been having a rash of tragic events around town lately,” I said.

  Tragic events? I was beginning to sound like my mother.

  “A rash? Yeah, I got a rash all right,” he said, adding a folder to a stack of papers he apparently had decided to keep. “Clay Bay could use a pair of fresh eyes, and Abrams is great at what he does. And it’s not like I’m going anywhere.”

  “Okay,” I said, nodding. “You’re a big boy.”

  “Thank you,” he said, glancing up at me before turning to grab another box. “So what else is on your mind, Suzy?”

  “What makes you think there’s anything else on my mind?” I said, taking a sip of coffee. “Can’t a friend just stop by to make sure her buddy is doing okay?”

  “She can. It’s just that you rarely do unless you’re snooping.”

  “If that didn’t have some grain of truth to it, I’d be offended, Jackson,” I said, laughing. “We had dinner with the Winters family last night.”

  That got his attention, and he slid the box to the far corner of his desk and sat down. He put his feet up and put his hands behind his head. I had to admit that it was the most relaxed I’d seen him in weeks. I provided some of the highlights from last night, and he listened closely. I finished with an overview of how Roxanne sustained her injury, and he stared at me wide-eyed.

  “Josie stabbed her?”

  “It was more of a poke,” I said.

  “Like a warning shot?”

  “There you go. A warning shot,” I said, nodding. “Josie swears it was an accident.”

  “Well, that is possible. I know I’d never reach in front of her when she’s eating,” Jackson said. “So, what’s your take on the Winters clan? Do you think one of them was behind the robbery and Buggy’s death?”

  “I’m not sure,” I said. “But why would Buggy have been in the bank in the first place if his family wasn’t somehow involved?”

  “Maybe he just needed the money.”

  “But if he’d been in that vault when the second explosion went off, Buggy would have been blown to bits, right?” I said.

  “Probably,” Jackson said. “Freddie’s convinced that he went inside the vault after the second explosion.”

  “But if it wasn’t the explosion, what killed him?”

  “I’m not sure,” he said, shaking his head. “Talk to Freddie.”

  “I will.”

  “I have no doubt,” he said, flashing me a quick smile.

  I ignored his reference to my chronic snooping and continued.

  “Did you get the list of people who had safe deposit boxes at First National?”

  “I did,” he said, nodding.

  “And the Winters had one, didn’t they?”

  “They had one, yes.”

  “In the old man’s name, right?”

  “Did someone tell you that last night at dinner?”

  “No,” I said, pleased with myself that I was right. “Actually, it was a guess.”

  “Well, it was a good one,” Jackson said, reaching into a drawer and extracting a folder. “The box was initially set up forty years ago by the old man.”

  “Forty years?” I said, my mind racing. “How old was Buggy when he died?”

  “Fifty-eight,” Jackson said.

  “And how old was he when the family disowned him?”

  “Eighteen,” he said, giving me a look that included a touch of admiration. “You don’t miss a trick do you?”

  “I have my moments,” I said, running through a variety of questions in my head. “So, Buggy left the family and then his father got a safe deposit box?”

  “The actual date when Buggy left is a bit fuzzy, but that’s the theory were working with.”

  “And nobody else in the family knew about the box?” I said.

  “Apparently not. And when I asked the old lady about it, she went ballistic when she heard about it.”

  “I can believe that,” I said. “I got a good look at her temper last night. So, if nobody knew about the safe deposit box all that time, somebody must have discovered it after the old man died, right?”

  “I’m sure somebody did,” Jackson said.

  “Who was it?”

  “I can’t be sure, but I have my suspicions,” he said, glancing at his watch.

  “Caspian?”

  “The one that looks like a ghost? No, I think it was one of the brothers.”

  “Brock?”

  “Yeah, the mean one,” Jackson said, his eyes shining as he removed his feet from the desk and leaned forward on his elbows.

  “You’re going to miss being a cop, Jackson,” I said.

  “Yeah,” he said, nodding. “Some of it. But whenever I do, I’ll just start hanging out with you.”

  “Funny,” I said, finishing my coffee. “Why do you think Brock was the one who found out about the safe deposit box?”

  “Because a week after the old man died, he went into First National.”

  “And he opened the box,” I said, nodding.

  “No,” Jackson said. “That’s the interesting part. He went into the bank to open a new safe deposit box in his name.”

  “Really?” I said, surprised.

&
nbsp; “And the person at the bank who helped Brock out said that he never even mentioned the box his father had.”

  “You need two keys to open one of those, right?”

  “Yeah, you do,” Jackson said. “The person who owns the box has one key, the bank has the other. And both of them have to be used to unlock the box.”

  “Maybe Brock couldn’t get his hands on the key to his father’s box.”

  “That’s not a bad guess. The person at the bank said he asked a lot of questions about how the process worked. She also said that Brock spent a lot of time looking around once they were inside the area where all the safe deposit boxes are located. Like he was casing the joint.”

  “Casing the joint?” I said, frowning.

  “Her words, not mine,” he said. “Maybe the bank employee just watches too many cop shows.”

  “I know the problem. So Brock wanted to get a feel for the place but not let on that he knew anything about the box his father had?”

  “Maybe,” Jackson said, giving me a small shrug and sitting back in his chair.

  “That was pretty clever.”

  “Or maybe his father had, in fact, left him some things he wanted to safeguard,” Jackson said.

  “Is that what he told you?” I said, raising an eyebrow at him.

  “That’s exactly what he told me. A couple of family heirlooms he’d been asking for. Some photos, other personal family items.”

  “Did you buy his story?” I said.

  “What do you think? You had dinner with them last night. Did anyone around the table give you the impression they had any fond memories they wanted to remember about growing up in that family?”

  “No,” I said, shaking my head. “It sounded like they all have a lot of memories, all of them bad.”

  I turned around in my chair when I heard the muffled shouts coming from one of the jail cells that sat behind a locked door down the hall from Jackson’s office. I recognized the language but couldn’t understand what the woman was saying.

  “That I won’t miss,” Jackson said, shaking his head in disgust. “She’s been going non-stop since I brought her in last night.”

  “What did she do?” I said, listening for another outburst.

  “It was the usual stuff. Public drunkenness, resisting arrest, with a little vagrancy thrown in.”

  “Vagrancy?”

  “Yeah, she’s a mess, and I guess homeless. I think she might have some mental issues as well. But it’s hard to tell. I can’t understand a word she’s saying.”

  “I think I can help you out with that, Jackson.”

  “That’s right. I completely forgot. You’re fluent in French,” he said, getting out of his chair. “Let’s go.”

  I followed him down the short hallway into the area where the three small jail cells were located. I saw a woman sitting on her bed staring down at the floor. She glanced up when she saw us, and she focused on me. Given her filthy, disheveled appearance and her rat’s nest hairdo, I put her age somewhere between twenty-five and fifty. Several layers of dirt and other substances would have to be washed away before I could make a better estimate. It appeared she’d been crying and long rivulets of dried tears had formed on her cheeks.

  “Bonjour,” I said. “Comment allez-vous?”

  “J'ai été mieux, merci,” she said with a small shrug.

  I was sure she had indeed been better. But finding someone who spoke her language seemed to relax her a bit, and she stood and approached.

  “Je m’appelle Suzy.”

  “Claudine,” she said, sliding her filthy hand through the bars.

  I returned the handshake as I searched for a reasonable question. Her eyes, although calmer than when we had come in, were still wild, and she pulled her hand back and began scratching her arms.

  “She’s been scratching like that all night. I think she’s going through withdrawal of some sort,” Jackson whispered.

  “Look at her arms, Jackson,” I said, glaring at him. “She’s got a thousand mosquito bites on her. You’d be scratching up a storm.”

  “Maybe you’re right,” he said. “But we can’t be too careful. Ask her what she’s doing in Clay Bay.”

  Deciding his question was as good as any I had, I turned to her and smiled.

  “Pourquoi êtes-vous en ville?”

  “Je cherche.”

  “What did she say?” Jackson said.

  “She said she’s searching,” I said. “Que cherchez-vous?”

  “Je cherche mon chien,” she whispered.

  A lightbulb went off in my head.

  “What’s she looking for?” Jackson said.

  “She’s looking for her dog.”

  “Well, she’s got a funny way of showing it,” Jackson said. “She ended up a fistfight with a couple of drunk tourists.”

  “She doesn’t look like she’s been in a fight,” I said.

  “That’s because she won,” Jackson said, chuckling. “She knocked the stuffing out of both of them.”

  “Did they press charges?”

  “No, they were too embarrassed,” Jackson said. “Their buddy got them in a car and drove them out of town before I changed my mind about locking them up.”

  I looked back at the woman called Claudine.

  “Quel genre de chien avez-vous?”

  “J'ai un bouledogue français,” Claudine said.

  “S'appelle Otto?” I said, smiling at her.

  “Oui. Otto,” she said, her eyes pleading. “Savez-vous où il est?”

  “Oui,” I said, nodding. “Je l'ai. Et il est en sécurité.”

  “Très bien,” she said, beaming and softly clapping her hands.

  “I got most of that,” Jackson said. “The bulldog we found in the vault is hers?”

  “Apparently,” I said, nodding at Jackson to follow me as I walked out of earshot of the prisoner. “What are you going to do with her?”

  “Well, if she can’t come up with the two hundred bucks to pay her fine, I guess she’s going to have to sit there for five days,” Jackson whispered. “But since that’s her dog, it means she could be connected to what happened at the bank.”

  “I guess it’s possible,” I whispered. “But it seems highly unlikely. Her head seems pretty scrambled.”

  “Scrambled people do stupid stuff all the time, Suzy,” he whispered.

  “I know. But she doesn’t seem dangerous, does she?”

  “Not yet. Why? What’s on your mind?”

  “I thought I’d pay her fine, and take her home with me to get cleaned up and reunited with her dog.”

  “Are you out of your mind?” Jackson said, barely managing to control his whisper. “You find a homeless person and just want to rescue her?”

  “I rescue dogs all the time, Jackson,” I said, staring at him. “Why does it seem odd that I might occasionally want to do the same thing for a person?”

  Jackson blinked several times, then cleared his throat.

  “But what if she turns out to be a nutjob?” he said, sneaking a glance at the cell.

  “Then I’ll do my best to see that she gets the help she needs,” I said.

  “Unless she does something to you before you get the chance to help.”

  “You saw the look on her face when she heard that her dog was safe, didn’t you?”

  “I did. But still, Suzy. Are you sure you want to do this?”

  “All I’m going to do is help her get cleaned up and get her dog back.”

  “Detective Abrams and I will need to question her, so she’s going to have to stick around for a couple of days.”

  “Hang on,” I said, heading back to the cell. “Si je vous emmène ŕ Otto, promettez-vous de rester en ville jusqu'ŕ ce que la police vous interroge?”

  “Quelles questions veulent-ils me poser?”

  “She wants to know what questions you’re going to want to ask her,” I said to Jackson.

  “Tell her we want to ask her about the robbery, her relationsh
ip with Buggy, and what, if anything, she knows about the Winters family.”

  “That would be fine with me,” Claudine said in perfect English.

  Jackson and I stared at her. Then she gave us a small smile and a shrug.

  “When you’ve been on the street as long as I have, you learn not to talk to cops unless it’s absolutely necessary.”

  “And being fluent in French is a great way to avoid it, right?” I said, laughing.

  “Oui.”

  “This is exactly the sort of thing I won’t be missing,” Jackson said, opening the cell.

  Chapter 10

  On the drive home, I learned that Claudine had grown up in France and battled depression from an early age. She’d eventually been diagnosed with a host of mental conditions that included ADD and bipolar disorder, then, at fifteen, had discovered drugs and alcohol. After having pyromania added to her list of maladies after she’d unsuccessfully tried to burn down her parents’ house, she parted ways with her family with a pocketful of cash and a plane ticket to Montreal her father had been more than happy to provide.

  I did my best to follow the main thread as she recounted her life story, but she was all over the place. I was able to piece together the fact that she had landed in Montreal seven years ago at the age of seventeen, and had been living on the street almost the entire time. I glanced over at her in the passenger seat and had a hard time believing that the world-weary woman next to me was only twenty-four.

  “Otto is going to be so excited to see you,” I said.

  “I can’t wait,” Claudine said, bouncing in her seat either out of excitement or from a collection of mosquito bites hidden somewhere under her ratty clothes. “You really own a place for dogs?”

  “I do. Along with my business partner, Josie. She’s the one who found Otto. Then he bit her hand.”

  “Oh, no,” she said. “Otto would never do that unless he was threatened or scared to death. Is she okay?”

  “She’s fine,” I said, my mind wandering for a moment to the condition of Roxanne’s hand. “If you were living on the street, how did you end up with Otto?”

  “Buggy gave him to me,” she whispered, staring through the windshield with wet eyes.

  I glanced over at her as I pulled into our driveway, then turned the engine off. I had been trying to figure out a way to ease into the question of whether she knew Buggy. But since she had tossed it out, I decided to follow up before we headed inside.