Dead and Breakfast

by David Crossman

She stood dumbly for the better part of a minute trying to absorb the significance of the document. Who had slipped it under her door? Why? And what did it tell her she didn’t already know? She studied it again.

  “Miss Rachel Williams,” she read, adding her deductions aloud. “Unmarried mother, which explains why they were put up for adoption.”

  Other than that, there was no new information aside from the statistics, which hardly seem relevant after nearly twenty years.

  “Rachael Williams,” she repeated. “Rachel. Rachel.” She had heard the name recently. No, not heard, read. Where? On another official document. A passport! “Rachel Evelyn Wagner,” she said, and was simultaneously struck by the vivid recollection of Amber and Mrs. Wagner framed tightly in her viewfinder, their countenances mirrored in those unusual eyes. “She’s theirmother!”

  It hadn’t occurred to her instantly, because Mrs. Wagner went by her middle name, Evelyn.

  Caitlin’s knees couldn’t support the weight of the information. She stumbled backward, as if she’d received a blow to the forehead and was intercepted by the bed onto which she collapsed to a sitting position, the birth certificate hanging limply in her hand.

  This little piece of information, if true and not another coincidence . . . no. No. Those eyes. There was no coincidence.

  “Does Amber know?” she whispered, her eyes fixed blindly on the wall. “Does Mr. Wagner know? Why are they all here at the same time?”

  As each question bobbed to the surface, it towed another behind. Had they all known of their relationship before the trip and chosen, for whatever reason, to keep it secret? Or had one of them followed the other? Clearly, if her assumptions were correct, they had kept it secret since.

  “Follow the money.” Michael’s legal mantra dislodged itself from her memory and echoed through her brain. The Capshaw fortune was a powerful inducement to crime. Since the faux Amber already possessed both her share and Gayla’s – or would in a very few years – it must be Mrs. Wagner who was following the money.

  But why? What could she hope to gain? She wouldn’t come into possession of the fortune, no matter how many Capshaws died or went insane.

  “Unless,” Caitlin whispered, her heart racing as she struggled to catch up to the thoughts surging on ahead, “unless she and Amber, or Gayla, or whoever the hell that girl is,do know of one another, and are working together to drive Joanna Capshaw out of the picture – one way or another.” Again she thought of the brief, tense interview she’d captured in her view finder. “So . . . so . . . so what?”

  Suddenly, the impending vote at Capshaw Industries dawned on her. “So Amber has the deciding vote next week. The company will go public, and Amber will have a hundred times her present fortune, of which Mrs. Wagner – if she is Amber’s mother – could expect a windfall.”

  Another accomplice, or the only accomplice? Could it have been Mrs. Wagner in the moat and in Mrs. Griffeth’s fairy photo? Hardly. Her figure might be mistaken for a fairy godmother, but certainly not a fairy, no matter how great the distance or poor the light. Multiple accomplices then. But did it stop at Heather – the most likely candidate – and Mrs. Wagner? What about Delilah? Surely Heather couldn’t be involved without her knowledge.

  Or Mr. Wagner, he had spoken proudly of eighteen years of marriage to his wife. Surely he would know.

  Paranoia began to overwhelm her. What ifeveryone was in on it? What if it was a huge elaborate piece of theater, staged to drive Joanna Capshaw to madness or, better yet, to suicide? Surely there was more than enough money to make them all millionaires many times over.

  Caitlin’s intellect dismissed the unbidden notion as both preposterous and ridiculous, while admitting that it would explain a lot.

  Surely she had never encountered such a strange cast of characters. Farthing, Griffeth, Piper and Tichyara, they were all abstractions – slightly larger than life – like actors in a play.

  But Caitlin was concerned this play was hastening toward a deadly third act, and she didn’t have a script. Nor did Joanna, or Jill. Their role was simply to react in predictable ways and forward the action.

  Joanna hadn’t reacted predictably, though. Assuming the things she’d seen were not figments of her imagination, she had demonstrated a reserve of emotional resource that must have come as a surprise to those demons attempting to drive her beyond the edge of herself.

  “Ridiculous!” she said aloud, jumping to her feet. “I’m the one who’s going insane.”

  The possibility though, once admitted, could not be driven from her mind, no matter how absurd. In fact, it was amplified by its very absurdity, coloring all her subsequent thoughts, which evolved in a colorful procession entirely of their own volition and quite apart from any conscious effort on her behalf.

  Whomever put the fax under her door, expected her to respond in a predictable fashion, which she was determined not to do. Rather than react to the information in the fax, she would investigate the document itself.

  Where had it come from? The sender’s telephone number at the top of the page had been torn off. Other than that, there was no indication of their identity. Easily remedied, she’d simply have Jill reprint it.

  “Its been deleted,” said Jill, scrolling through the computer window in which the titles of incoming documents were displayed. “Hang on, let me check the trash.” She double-clicked on the Recycle Bin icon.

  “Empty, “ she said after a quick glance. “One more chance.”

  “If it’s deleted, it’s gone isn’t it?” said Caitlin anxiously.

  “Ain’t necessarily so,” said Jill. Opening a utilities window she double-clicked an application icon labeled ‘Undelete’. “The last ten files deleted are stored in memory, to give you a chance to reclaim something you may have deleted by accident.” Ten titles appeared in the window, the uppermost was simply a phone number. “There it is. 01 country code. That’s the U.S.”

  Caitlin read the next three numbers aloud as she jotted them down. “6-1-7. That’s the area code. Massachusetts. Let me use your cell phone,” she demanded, scratching down the rest of the number.

  “It’s in my car, the little compartment between the seats. But why not use the one in the kitchen?”

  “Too many ears,” said Caitlin, already halfway to the door. “Shut that down so no one will know what we’ve been doing.”

  Caitlin could feel her blood pressure rise as she sat in the car and listened to the phone ring on the distant end of the line. It was answered by a machine.

  “You’ve reached the offices of Farthing Confidential Services,” said a pleasant woman’s voice. “Our hours are 9 to 5 daily. If you’d like to send a fax, press the pound key and begin transmission. If you’d like to leave a message . . . ”

  Caitlin pressed ‘end’. “Farthing Confidential Services,” she repeated. She glanced at her watch. “Lunchtime.” She rapidly pressed a familiar series of numbers and seconds later Lavida was on the line, her voice calm and reassuring.

  Caitlin told her quickly about the fax and Farthing Confidential Services.

  “Sounds like a private investigator,” Lavida said after a brief pause.

  “That’s what ‘confidential services’ means?”

  “Very likely, unless he runs an escort service.”

  Caitlin laughed at the notion. “Hardly the type.” There was a protracted silence. “What is it, ‘Vida?”

  “If he’s there on business, which seems likely given the fax, someone hired him to do a job.”

  Suddenly ‘confidential services’ took on a sinister perspective. “He could be a paid killer,” said Caitlin. She had no difficulty whatever imagining Jeremy Farthing as an assassin. “Or he could be the one orchestrating this whole hideous sideshow.

  ‘Confidential services’ could mean anything!”

  Lavida laughed gently. “If that’s the kind of business he’s in, he’s hardly likely to have an office and an answering machine.”

  True. “Then wh
o would have hired him? What’s he doing?”

  “Good questions all,” said Lavida.

  “And why did he want me to see that fax?” Lavida said nothing.

  After a while, Caitlin was reminded of previous business. “Did you find out the name of Gayla’s roommate at Dartmouth?”

  “What?” said Lavida slowly. She’d apparently been deep in thought. Caitlin repeated the question. “Ah, yes. In fact, I had a note on my desk when I got back from lunch. It was a Brianna Chase. Ring a bell?”

  If just one thing, one stinking piece of evidence would make sense, Caitlin thought. “No.”

  “The initial, B.C. A lot of times people operating under an alias will use their own initials’.”

  A quick review of Caitlin’s mental checklist turned up no B.C. “No.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Me, too.” she sighed a deep, unsatisfying sigh. “Well, back to the drawing board. Let me know if you find out anything about Farthing Confidential Services, will you?” Caitlin knew Lavida had more pressing things to do. She also knew those things would take a back seat to her request. It made her uneasy to use their relationship in such a fashion, but she had no choice.

  With thanks, she rang off and for a long time sat in the close silence of Jill’s car, wandering through her thoughts, foremost among which was the unshakable foreboding that something dreadful was about to happen.

  “The final act,” she said aloud, the theater analogy superimposing itself on her stream of consciousness. It was bitterly apt. She was nothing but a spectator who had stumbled on stage without a clue where she was or what she was doing there. While her bumbling about may have forced some hasty improvisation on the part of the players, it hadn’t altered the theme of the play, or its impending denouement.

  But whose play was it? And for whose benefit?

  The sound of a car pulling up the drive mercifully interrupted her thoughts, which were taken in quite another direction when she recognized Jean-Claude as the driver. She climbed out of the car and waited for him on the walk. He greeted her warmly with a kiss to each cheek, lingering longer than custom required. She could so easily have melted into his arms, weeping, that only with great effort did she give the hands which held her firmly an obligatory squeezed and pull away.

  “This is an unexpected surprise,” she said. “You’ve come to see us off?”

  Jean-Claude averted his eyes for just a moment. “I have news for Mr. Farthing. But the phone is not working at the station, so I thought I would it deliver it in person.”

  He raised his eyes to hers. “Of course, I suppose I could have used the telephone in the patisserie next door, or this . . . ” He removed a cell phone from an interior pocket of his jacket. “Technology ruins a good excuse,” he said and smiled the smile that had become so much a part of her thoughts lately. He was an emotional gatecrasher who had entered her life uninvited. But his presence, though unsettling in the extreme, was not unwelcome.

  “I’m glad to see you,” she said, trying to conceal the burning honesty of the statement. “What news?”

  “About some of the guests, I’m afraid.”

  Caitlin’s heart skipped a beat. “Is anyone hurt? “

  “Oh, no. No.” Jean-Claude replied quickly. “It is the American girls.”

  “Heather and Delilah?”

  “Yes. Just so.”

  “They’re all right?”

  “Yes. But very unhappy and afraid, as I’ve had to detain them.” He explained as they walked to the house.

  Chapter Twenty-Six–Dark Council

  Jill stared blankly from Caitlin to Jean-Claude back to Caitlin. “Detained? Why?”

  “It seems they were aiding and abetting the murderer the police were looking for.”

  Jill collapsed on a stool by the counter.

  “They met at the bar in Beauleaux three nights ago.” said Jean-Claude. “Before the murder. The next day, he commits the crime and goes into hiding, in the barn where we found him. The one, Madam, on the Michaude farm, at the top of the orchard.”

  Jill knew it well. It stood nearly on the path she often took to Beauleaux. Long unused, it had become a picturesque ruin, its once-proud lines now slightly akimbo as it submitted to the pull of gravity and the robe of vines that drew it inexorably to the earth. “I went that way only yesterday morning,” she said in a daze.

  “Yes, I know,” said Jean-Claude almost apologetically. “You were being watched.”

  The look in her eyes begged explanation.

  “Farthing,” said Caitlin, feeling it better to lump all the bad news together in a few hurried sentences than drag it out as it seemed inevitable that Jean-Claude was about to. “He followed the girls – Heather and Delilah – over the hill night before last.”

  “When we thought we’d lost him?”

  “Yes.”

  Jill shuddered visibly at the realization that Jeremy Farthing might have been following her.

  “Why?”

  Caitlin looked to Jean-Claude, who shrugged. “He wouldn’t tell us,” he said. “Only that it had to do with some other business.”

  “Apparently they bundled up some food and were taking it to this . . . fugitive,” said Caitlin.

  “Depardeau.”

  “But why would they do such a thing?” said Jill.

  “For them it is romantic, no? The mind of young girls,” Jean-Claude philosophized with another shrug. “Who can’t fathom it, eh?

  “I have a theory that he accosted them on the path the night of the murder. That he convinced them he was wrongly accused, but afraid of the circumstantial evidence against him, and enlisted their aid in providing his necessities until the search had been abandoned, and he could escape to Spain where his mother lives. It is only a theory but, given my experience with girls of that age, perhaps not too fantastic. I should tell you about my younger sister one day! These girls, they love the bad boys, no? Oh, la la!”

  “That was the night they were so late,” said Jill, whose look of pained disbelief wrenched at Caitlin’s heart.

  “Mr. Farthing followed you yesterday morning, only as far as the barn, to assure himself you weren’t . . . .” Jean-Claude allowed the implication to hang in the air.

  “Me?” Jill cried, jolted up right. “He must be mad! Surely you can’t think for a moment that I . . . ”

  “Not me,” Jean-Claude said hastily. “It was Mr. Farthing.”

  “Once he assured himself that only the girls were involved, he contacted Jean-Claude,” Caitlin explained.

  “He stepped from the bushes last night, as I was walking back to my car after escorting Caitlin to the door, like a ghost, as I said. It is good I did not have my gun!” He laughed weakly. “He tells me everything.” He traced the pattern of sunlight on the table near the window with his forefinger. “We post men in the woods around the barn and, just after dawn, we move in and arrest him.Ce n’est fait rien.” He snapped his fingers. “My job is made easy.”

  “Not long after breakfast,” said Caitlin, taking up the narrative, “the girls showed up with leftovers from the breakfast table – and were detained.”

  “They confessed?” said Jill.

  “Oh, no!” said Jean-Claude. “They are very cool, these two. Very innocent. They admit to having met him, they cannot deny it. There were too many witnesses that night in the bar. But they claim not to have seen him since.”

  “So, it’s Jeremy Farthing’s word against theirs,” Jill surmised. “That explains all those obtuse remarks about crows at breakfast this morning. The police had come and taken their secret treasure.”

  “So, what now?” said Caitlin, not wanting to the dust to settle on the helpless silence that followed. The question was directed at Jean-Claude.

  “The girls swear they were on a picnic, and they know nothing about the murderer. He swears he had nothing to do with them and, as you say, we only have Mr. Farthing’s word as to their involvement. It is impossible to hold them much longer. That i
s what I came to tell Mr. Farthing. He insists we hold them overnight, that they have no communication with anyone, no phone calls. But . . . ” his shrug now was expressive and powerless, “unlike him, I am bound by the law. Without evidence I am powerless.”

  “Why overnight?” Jill asked.

  The same words had been on the tip of Caitlin’s tongue. Instead, she substituted the suspicion that had been plaguing her. “Something is going to happen tonight.”

  Jill shuddered. “Don’t say that.”

  “What is going to happen?” said Jean-Claude.

  “I don’t know,” Caitlin replied. She turned to leave the room, “but Farthing does!”

  But Farthing was nowhere to be found. Caitlin quizzed the guests, under the pretext that he had a phone call, but no one had seen him.

  “Then I’m afraid I have no choice but to let them go,” said Jean-Claude, when Caitlin returned to the kitchen. He nodded at Jill. “It is only upon Farthing’s word I am holding them. I have only a few formalities to complete. Paperwork is what keeps us French in business, no? Which reminds me, I must have mademoiselle Heather’s passport. She didn’t have it with her.”

  “I’ll get it,” Jill volunteered.

  Caitlin seized her by the arm. “No, wait. You mean, you can’t release them until you have the passport?”

  Realizing immediately what she was up to, Jean-Claude tilted his head and wagged a remonstrative finger. “Now, mam’selle, I cannot do such a thing. Even for you. I mean, it would be different if they were guilty – had beenproven guilty – of something. But . . . ” he spread his hands, “I am bound by law.”

  “Why do you want them to stay in jail, anyway?” Jill asked as she and Caitlin climbed the stairs.

  “Because Farthing wants them there,” whispered Caitlin, pushing open the door to the girls’ room. “And I bet he has a good reason.” She didn’t add that she felt that the more people were out of the way this particular night, the better would be her chances of throwing a monkey wrench in the works of whenever disaster might be in store. The question was: disaster to whom?