“Well, this car’s been following us for an awful long time, even when we took those wrong turns and doubled back.”
“Are you sure it’s the same one?”
“Sure, I’m sure, Miz Silk. Jeez.”
I checked in the rear-view mirror. All I saw was a long tunnel of green coming to a point in the distance.
“He’ll show up again. Just wait,” Josey said.
Over the next hill, I spotted the entrance to a dirt road. I zipped in and angled the car to get the best possible view of whoever was following us. It didn’t take long.
A sleek black Acura whipped over the hill and swooped past the spot where we were tucked. I got a good look at the driver’s broad cheekbones and black, slightly downward slanted eyes. A face of strong, but not good, character.
“He looks familiar. I know I’ve seen him before. I wonder where. There’s something creepy about him. Josey, could that be the same man you said tried to run me down near the Museum? You got a good look at him, didn’t you?”
“Naw, that was a little guy with a baseball cap.”
Hard to believe, but I was the focus of interest for not one but two men who didn’t seem to represent the Welcome Wagon.
Fourteen
I was tired and edgy, and my leg still ached. Even worse, I was back in the Britannia Pub after nearly eight years, trying to look like I belonged there. It hadn’t been easy shedding Josey, but since the police had a nasty habit of dropping into the Britannia and giving the proprietors a hard time, no one underage slid through the doors. I would have been happy not to slide through the doors either, but it was time to have a chat with the regulars.
First, I checked the surrounding parking areas on the off chance that Benedict’s MG was sitting there. It wasn’t. My plan was to saunter inside and settle in with the local poets, but for some reason, maybe that dead-in-the-bed thing, I felt bashful enough to want a beer first. Lucky for me, I’d found twenty bucks in the pocket of my camel hair blazer, the seventeenth place I’d checked. Of course, I’d had lots of time to find it. Nobody shows up at the Britannia before nine p.m., when the music usually starts. I had enough cash to do a little overdue snooping. I started with a soft drink in order to conserve my twenty for softening up the poets. Too bad I had forgotten that it’s much more expensive to drink soft drinks than beer at the Britannia.
“Never mind,” I said, “make that a Blue.”
I sat by myself at a battered table with a good view of the bar and checked out the scene. I nursed a plate of the Britannia’s famous fries. They reminded me of sitting in the same space shoulder to shoulder with Benedict, indulging his passion for fries. Come to think of it, I’d always paid for those fries too.
The regulars were there, and not just the poets. The roundup included dealers, drunks, sluts, college kids, pool players and a variety of underemployed artists and musicians. I spotted among the regulars Cuddily Cuddihy, the world’s nastiest stand-up comic. Only the college kids had changed over the years.
Josey’s Uncle Mike supported himself with the wall. Three men in jeans and leather jackets sat at the bar, cellphones in easy reach. A fourth man, wearing the jacket to one suit and the pants to another, joined them and sat with his back to me.
In the corner, a pair of twentysomething women in backwards baseball caps defended the pool tables against all comers.
I was distracted from the pool players when the warning buzzer went off in my head. Something about the man in the mismatched suit was disturbingly familiar. I took a look in the bar mirror, and I met his eyes. Goose bumps jitterbugged on my arms.
I was squinting in disbelief when a roar of greeting rose from the assembled poets. If I hadn’t turned my head, I would have missed the arrival of a clump of O’Mafia.
I glanced back toward the bar in time to see the mismatched suit heading out the door. I glimpsed enough to confirm my suspicions. No doubt about it, the same distinctive broad cheekbones and dark slanted eyes. The man we’d seen in the Acura.
By the time I’d raced through the door, the tail lights of the black Acura were fishtailing through the rain.
The Skylark, which can be counted on not to be counted on, refused to give chase.
Naturally.
When I returned to the Britannia, rain funnelled down the back of my neck. My table had been cleared. Blue and fries were history.
I reordered the Blue part and joined the poets. My wet clothes made me irritable enough not to care what they thought about where Benedict’s dead body had been found.
Of course, as you can imagine, the poets were no help at all. Some of them recognized me. I recognized some of them. None of them admitted to recognizing the man in the mismatched suit. They all admitted to being thirsty.
Even though I was good enough to spring for a pitcher of beer and switch to water myself, not one of them uttered a single useful piece of information about Benedict throughout the evening, although they talked non-stop when they weren’t waving for refills or failing to stop belches. No one recalled having read While Weeping for the Wicked, although someone remembered Benedict had once written “An Ode to Yellow Snow”. No one remembered the words, but everyone thought the idea showed brilliance.
At midnight, I called Cyril Hemphill and offered him an IOU for fifteen bucks to ferry me home. He added a ten dollar after-hours fee.
Back on Chemin des Cèdres, having declined Cyril’s kind offer to save me the price of a new car by being permanently on retainer as my driver (money under the table, of course), I reflected on what I had accomplished to date. Not that much. My total achievement was two small gifts delivered to one retired teacher and one book of poetry delivered to one poet and artist-in-wool. Unfinished business included not knowing who was following me and where I had seen him before, not knowing if I’d really been run down on purpose and by whom, not knowing who’d killed Benedict and why, and not knowing much of anything else.
“So much for taking action,” I said to Tolstoy. But Tolstoy was zonked out on the rug, snoring.
I slipped my new Sue Foley CD into the player.
After a quick trip to the washing machine, I leaned back in my wingback chair and felt comforted by the nice booze and the nice boozy music. Between that and the hectic day and the throb in my leg, I should have been out cold, but I found myself too revved to sleep. I sat there stirring a slowsimmering idea about planting Cayla and Brandon in a small pink cottage with roses and border collies and teaching her to make fries. This might tie up the book for me. I picked up my glass and trotted towards my study to fiddle with my story. Tolstoy declined to follow. Perhaps he was miffed about not getting to enjoy the fun at the Britannia.
I settled down to work when it hit me like a water bomb. My desk was not the way I’d left it. Who had touched things? Not Josey. She was the type to add to order, not subtract from it. But piles of paper had been shifted, files moved. Not a lot, but enough.
A chill replaced the feelings of warmth and comfort.
What about the police? Would they have shifted things? No. I’d logged a lot of time at my desk since the police left. A quick inspection in the other rooms, and I was sure. The small signs were there. The sleeves of a sweater refolded too neatly. A book upside down. Someone had done a thorough search. But not a single thing appeared to be missing.
The Colville, which was the only item of real value I own—if you don’t count the Queen Anne chair, my Aunt Kit’s Spode, the silver and the antique brandy snifters which made up the rest of my inheritance, along with my small annuity— was still hanging on the wall.
My drop-dead emergency roll was still stuffed in a shoe with a pair of socks pushed in over it. Now the socks were stuffed in backwards. Whoever had searched my house wasn’t after my fifty bucks or my piece of highly desirable Canadian art. And someone didn’t want me to know they’d been there.
I sat back, chilled. The man in the bar. He’d had plenty of time to search the place while I was wasting hours with the p
oets.
Did I have enough to call the police? I tried to imagine informing F. X . Sarrazin that someone had rearranged my desk. Either he wouldn’t take it seriously, in which case I’d be a two-time loser, stupid as well as violated; or he would take it seriously, in which case the police would be back to disrupt my fragile privacy again. Talk about a no-win situation.
That kind of decision just screams “make me in the morning”. I took my Courvoisier and my useless watchdog and went to bed.
The next morning, Sarrazin was not at his desk when I called. Probably busy ferreting out ways to shake my unshakeable alibi. On the upside, the Skylark responded to the jump start from Cyril Hemphill, on credit, naturally. Further upside, our new buddy Kostas O’Carolan had finagled an appointment with the poet, Marc-André Paradis.
On the downside were the locks on my doors. “Easy enough to get in here, everyone can see that,” Josey reminded me before I’d finished my first cup of coffee.
Josey was right. Why hadn’t I had the locks changed yet? Because this Benedict thing had really fried my brain, that’s why. I decided not to leave Tolstoy alone in the house until the lock problem was fixed.
By the time we’d collected Kostas and driven along Highway 105 to see Marc-André Paradis, the Skylark was hot, dusty, smelly and too small for the crowd. Josey and Kostas and Tolstoy were dressed for the chill morning drizzle instead of the noon-time sun. The smell of warm dog and raw wool was making me feel the heat even more. Not to mention my concern about getting punctured by flying knitting needles if we were rear-ended. At least Kostas put away his knitting once the temperature in the tin can reached the slow simmer.
Josey sat in the back, allegedly to give Kostas the comfort of the front. I suspected it guaranteed a strategic position for comments on my driving and suggestions for alternate routes.
“We’re here now.” Kostas wiped his brow with a red handkerchief. “And you’ll see, it’ll be well worth the trip.”
“Excellent. We’re lucky this lemon made it to the mechanic.”
“And an excellent mechanic he is. He’s brought me own vehicle back from the brink of Hades more than once, dear lady.”
I chose not to mention that Kostas’s ancient car was on blocks in his front yard. It didn’t matter. It wasn’t Marc-André Paradis, the mechanic, who interested me. It was Marc-André Paradis, the poet.
“Marc-André was a great friend of our Benedict’s. Odd our Benedict didn’t leave a package of something for Marc-André.”
It was odd. “Perhaps he hadn’t worked out all his bequests. Not expecting to die so soon.”
“Perhaps, perhaps.” I could tell Kostas didn’t really believe it. “Sure now, he even took the other young lady over to see Marc-André not two months a...” I think he bit his tongue closing his mouth that fast, so it was a while before he reached over and touched my hand. “I am so sorry, dear lady, does this bring you pain?”
“Just the usual headache,” I said.
He blinked, and I saw my opportunity. “Who was the young lady?”
Kostas squirmed. “Can’t say I remember her name.”
“Fine. Forget her, then. Was Benedict driving the red MG?”
He quivered with relief. “Indeed he was, dear lady.”
“Did he seem excited about anything?”
“He was that, my dear lady, he was.”
“Hmm. Do you know anything about it?”
“He told me he was about to strike gold. And he’d be buying the rounds for years to come. We both liked the sound o’that.”
Naturally, they would have.
Fifteen
The first time I saw Marc-André Paradis, I tried not to stare. I peered around the small aluminum pre-fab garage instead of gawking at the man inside it. Spécialisé en voitures européennes, the sign said. Two Mercedes, an old Beemer and a green Jaguar were parked by the side. Classy company for the Skylark.
I’d imagined Marc-André Paradis to be scrawny and covered with grease, chain-smoking Gauloises, with a stubby pencil behind his ear and a demented poetic light in his eye. I wasn’t expecting the man we found, and I sure wasn’t expecting the effect he had on me.
I tried to look casual. I twisted my head to examine an old 10W40 poster on the inside of the door. What colour were his eyes? I’d never seen eyes that colour before, but I remembered the shade from the paint chips Josey had presented when she’d wanted to change the colour in my living room. Peacock Blue. The Peacock Blue had sounded wonderful, like floating in a vast calm lake. Josey had favoured Midnight to add drama. We’d settled on French Vanilla. You could get that same calm water feeling by falling into those eyes. Not that I could let myself look into them.
I heard Josey mutter something to me.
Kostas slapped Marc-André Paradis on the back. “This lovely lady here is Miz Fiona Silk from St. Aubaine, and her charming companion is Miss Josey Thring, also from the same place.”
Josey radiated pleasure. It’s not often she gets called charming. I tried to manage “lovely” but failed, partly because I could feel myself flushing. I hate flushing. I always turn an extreme shade of puce. The official colour of false pretenses. I figured this time would be no different.
“Good morning.” Josey held out her hand to shake Marc André Paradis’. “Nice of you to see us.” From Josey’s glance, I got the message loud and clear to smarten up.
Why was I wearing my oldest denims and a faded turtleneck the one time in my life when my clothes might have made a difference? Where was periwinkle when you really needed it?
I reached out my own hand, trying not to make eye contact with the blazing blue eyes or even to dwell on his forearm, tan and well-muscled with a sexy touch of grease.
If he thought it strange that Santa brought him a freckled teenager, a panting Samoyed and a tongue-tied goof with dewlaps, he didn’t let on. My only hope to regain my equilibrium was if, when he finally spoke, his voice came out high-pitched or quivery or nasal.
I focused on the gravel. I imagined streams of pheromones, doing triple spins past the garage sign. You are foolish in the extreme, I chided myself. All you are supposed to do is find out whether this man held any murderous, yet playful, resentment toward Benedict.
“You see, Mr. Paradis,” Josey smiled brightly, “Miz Silk’s beat-up old car is practically dead, and she’s a writer, so she doesn’t have two cents to rub together. So we were hoping...”
“A writer of romances,” Kostas said, wiggling his eyebrows. “And, of course, a great friend of the late Benedict Kelly.” Everything but the nudge-nudge wink-wink.
I whipped up my head in time to see Marc-André Paradis rub his chin in speculation. “It was a sad thing about Benedict’s death, madame. And some controversy, I believe.” His voice flowed smoother than Kostas’s Jameson. My knees wobbled.
“You’re aware he was murdered?” Josey said.
I would have kicked her if she hadn’t been a bit too far away.
“A tarrible thing. Tarrible. Tarrible,” said Kostas. “Of course, poor aould Benedict always lived such a life.”
Marc-André Paradis ran his hands through his cropped silver hair. “Of course. We all knew about that.” He didn’t mention my bed, but I figured we all knew about that too.
A brief silence broke out. It was hard to ignore the revolting miasma of dusty, doggy, woolly sweat we brought with us.
One good thing: this Marc-André Paradis might have won the lottery in the looks department, but he was not the original personality kid. So I figured it wouldn’t take more than a couple of minutes to recover from the unfortunate and irrational effect he had on my knees and other selected areas.
I smirked at the prospect of my coming recovery before I noticed Josey watching me with a peculiar expression.
“Are you all right, Miz Silk?” she whispered.
“I’m fine. Fine. Fine. Fine.” I gave a shrill little laugh to illustrate my fineness.
She must have felt the need of a
distraction. She pointed to the window. “That’s sure some view here.”
Marc-André nodded.
“You far from the Findlay Falls?” Her cowlicks stood on alert.
“The trail starts about two miles up the road, mademoiselle,” Marc-André said.
Josey liked that mademoiselle thing. “You been up the trail?”
“Oh yes, it is beautiful.”
“Would you say it’s an educational experience?”
“Certainly. Especially the next day.”
“Miz Silk and I are thinking about going up it.”
We were thinking of no such thing.
Kostas gulped. “Dear lady, dear lady, don’t even dream about it. That’s a long, hard climb.”
“Right,” I said. I hoped there’d be no more talk of the Falls.
Kostas said, “Benedict was a fine friend. We’ll miss him.”
I chose not to add anything to this, since Benedict had been and continued to be even after his death nothing but a crafty nuisance and an all round bother to his friends and former friends and to me in particular. Marc-André Paradis made a grunting sound that may have been meant to echo Kostas’s sentiments or even my own.
No one added anything to the conversation, and for a long minute all you could hear in the room was the faint sounds of traffic from Route 105. And, of course, my own breathing.
“They haven’t found who did it?” Marc-André asked.
“No.” I didn’t mention I probably topped the list of suspects, although I had been hoping to trade places with him.
“I see.” He leaned back against the wall.
We lapsed into silence again, until both Kostas and Josey started to twitch.
“Now then, I hope you’ll be around for Benedict’s scattering, which we three are in the midst of planning,” Kostas said.
“Scattering? You mean his...?”
“Certainly, my boy, certainly, that’s the modern way. No maggots and that sort of thing. The way he wanted it.” Kostas kept nodding his head to emphasize his own words.
Fiona Silk Mysteries 2-Book Bundle Page 33
