He held the gun in front of him, motioning for Havilah to sit down on the bed. Then he went into the boat’s galley kitchen for a damp cloth and began wiping her footprint off his pant leg. He gave Havilah a wry grin when he returned with her cleaned up sneakers.
“What a lively performance you gave. Too bad you had such a small audience. Put them on.” He dropped the shoes on the floor. The sneakers made a dull thud. She didn’t respond.
“Surprised? Havilah, had you not pulled that stunt this morning, you probably wouldn’t be here now.” He closed the bedroom door behind him.
She still said nothing. She was watching the gun and thinking about how his charming flirtations had nearly disarmed her. How clearly that flirtation had enraged the tempestuous Sophie. Damn. She really read men all kinds of wrong.
“Are you upset about my attempts to woo you?” he inquired, as if reading her thoughts. “Those moments were quite unscripted. I couldn’t help myself. Sophie wouldn’t understand. I like pretty women, especially women who I sense are attracted to me but afraid to act on their desires. I wished we’d had the time to get to know one another in Paris when I dropped by your apartment. But you had company escorting you.”
He saw her eyes register surprise.
He stroked her face. “Oh yes, sweet Havilah. I stopped by after I retrieved your call from Kit’s cell phone. It would have been a friendly visit— one fellow from the Félibrige looking up another. Then perhaps you would have easily given me a semblance of the pleasure that I’ve been seeking these past two days. What do you think, love?” He moved in.
“Get the hell away from me. Sophie surely wouldn’t understand this.”
Havilah was still watching the gun in his other hand. He had placed it casually on the bed, though it was still nestled firmly in his grasp. She knew Sophie would be upset, but she would more than likely again direct her rage at Havilah, not Ansell. After that slap in the harbor, she was sure she knew the type. She just hoped that Ansell Neely didn’t know women as well as she did.
His blue eyes narrowed. He grabbed her by her hair, moving her face closer to his. With all this hair pulling, she wished she had braided her tresses.
He made a motion for her to stand up and leave the bedroom and followed close behind her.
“Let’s all have a seat in the salon here, shall we?” Ansell suggested, as if they had a choice. Sophie’s back was to them, but the cockpit chair abutted the salon area. She had also closed the sunroof so she could hear the conversation without straining. Améline was still cursing and offering up idle threats.
“Ferme ta gueule,” Sophie yelled at Améline, telling her in the nastiest way imaginable to close her mouth. At least that’s what Havilah remembered from her undergraduate French grammar classes.
Havilah’s cheeks were still stinging from the slap Sophie had laid on her. She was curious about Sophie’s role in Kit’s murder. She remembered the Parisian said she had made her choice and she had no regrets. Since Neely enjoyed blustering, she thought she’d ask.
“It’s none of your business,” Sophie responded angrily.
They were now in the open water, passing kayakers and swimmers laid out on rocks trying to catch the very last rays of sun, and a few boats. Neely ignored Sophie’s outburst.
“Havilah, I warned Kit. What is it with you hardheaded Astor professors? He had started making inquiries at the Chicago Historical Society over a year ago. Both the Friedrich and Knowlton Foundations are alerted when requests for access to certain collections usually not made available to the public are made. He had piqued my curiosity. He was so hungry for recognition, that one was. What an overrated excuse for a poet! Towdaline was right. Kit was a regional poet. Nothing more.” His envy was embarrassing.
“Sophie proposed she nominate him. So we could keep an eye on him to see where his work was going. I was on the board until I rotated off this year. Hence I had the displeasure along with others to hear his presentation in April. That supercilious asshole mentioned he was looking for an agent to sell his book. He talked about a long introduction. We thought it would just be poetry. He also talked about his Centennial remarks as part of the book. We couldn’t let him present that filth on Thursday, you understand. I told him to stop— so to speak. Twice, I told him. You have those pages now, don’t you, Havilah? I told you to stop as well, didn’t I?”
Another light clicked on for Havilah. Neely had sent the notes from Nashville while he was on leave visiting the Halstead Library. She squirmed uncomfortably under his gaze.
“But why that bitch?” Améline asked dryly, before Havilah could respond. She was pointing one finger of her bound hand at Sophie.
“Now, now, no name calling. And it’s so rude to point. Améline, that you still eat with that mouth of yours has to be one of academe’s greatest wonders.”
Sophie waved a well-manicured hand at Améline as if to say, “Whatever,” as Ansell stepped out onto the deck. His blond hair was being swept in different directions by the wind.
“Turn off the engine, darling. Let’s set anchor here for awhile. At least until the sun sets,” he shouted into the cockpit. “We’ll need the cover of night to get rid of these two.”
XXIV
Havilah looked down at her watch. 8:00.
“Need to be somewhere?” Sophie threw her head back, giggling. She had turned the captain’s chair to face them.
Havilah ignored her and instead focused her attention on the bloviating Neely.
“As I was saying…” Ansell stepped back into the cabin, picking up where he left off, “his project caused a ruckus among the board members. By the way, Sophie and I met as board members. I found her beguiling.” He paused for a moment as if he were reminiscing silently. “I was appointed, naturally, because of my family connections, as well as my having been a past fellow.”
Havilah wrinkled her brow. Neely turned to look at the sulking Améline.
“You’ve noticed, Havilah, that Améline is still bound at the wrists? The woman is a hellion. No class, with her foul mouth and hitting. She put up such a fight after she realized the boat ride we invited her on did not include a retour.” He was taunting Améline with his boyish smile.
Havilah looked over at Améline and they both rolled their eyes. Ansell Neely was an incredible narcissist. He was chatty and friendly, while he casually related events as if they were on some wild adventure; more troubling still, he was recounting his adventures to Havilah and Améline as if they were his friends and not two women he intended to kill.
“Yeah, yeah, get on with the story, nut-nut. I’m not the one out here whacking and kidnapping people,” Améline spat out, waving her bound hands as best she could to make the point.
“Everyone knew I was a Friedrich and board member on the Philippe Friedrich Foundation. Lowery, Knowlton’s nephew, positively hated what Kit had read for much the same reasons as we did, though we never disclosed our displeasure openly as he had. And no one, positively no one, knew Knowlton’s youthful lover was Sophie’s father, Georges-Guillaume Damas. Damas was a professor at the École Normale Supérieure. He is now a high-ranking politician in the Gabonese government. But many years ago, he left Sophie and her mother, a white French woman, back in Paris. He moved them to Versailles as he acquired more wealth.”
Havilah’s eyes opened wider. She knew Damas’s work quite well. He was a respected authority on contemporary West African politics. He focused on Senegal, Ghana, and Gabon. He had been a brilliant and prolific scholar. He stopped publishing about 10 years ago.
“Professor Damas is your father?” she turned to Sophie with a mix of incertitude and shock. “Has he any idea what you are doing?”
“I was only eight when my father decided to return to Gabon and pursue politics. He traveled back and forth initially. He was ashamed of us, though he kept us up very well in Versailles. He took another wife in Gabon and had legitimate African children. I changed my name when I entered art school at the Louvre. I wanted noth
ing to do with anything African. My father’s obsession with Africa destroyed my childhood. He took the name change as a betrayal.”
Améline snarled, “So this is about your fucking Oedipal complex? Did the word therapy ever enter your vapid, self-absorbed little head instead of murder?” She was trying to writhe her hands out of the binding.
Havilah wanted to burst out laughing, but Sophie actually flinched at Améline’s crude, but spot-on question.
“Tais-toi!” Sophie slapped Améline. Améline shut up momentarily.
“My father is a powerful man with powerful enemies. His youthful indiscretion would destroy his political career. My mother still loves him. He’s my father. I am doing this for him. Of course he does not know. He will be the next prime minister of Gabon.”
Havilah’s eyes widened. She definitely didn’t want to be the one to have to tell Hell-on-Wheels Sophie that this was all for naught; that Lucie-Gisèle “GiGi” Ambourouet, the daughter of the president of Gabon who also had designs on the prime minister post, had already got her go-getting little hands on the photographs as well.
“You’re doing it for yourself!” Améline snorted. “He still supports your pampered lifestyle. You aren’t pulling down that kind of paper as a director at a second-rate museum in New York.”
Another slap left its red marks on her cheeks.
Damn! was Havilah’s silent reaction. Her head reeled back with that slap as if it had struck her and not Améline.
“I am going to fuck you up in short order,” the novelist blustered. “I am going to make short work of your skinny ass.” She began wrenching her wrists again.
Havilah was not too sure about that. Améline obviously hadn’t processed that they intended to kill them both. Or maybe she had, but she wasn’t going to go out with a whimper. Havilah for her part was trying to rustle up a Plan B. She figured they were trying to set them up in some sort of murderous catfight scenario gone wrong or else these two whack jobs would have just dumped them overboard in the deep sea and watched them drown.
“I hadn’t intended to kill Kit,” Ansell said almost apologetically. “I only meant to threaten him into silence.” And out of nowhere. “I placed him in the orchestra pit with the seven-pointed star so that when he awoke he would know that his rather beaten-down state was about his writings.”
“You broke his fingers.” Havilah engaged Neely to still the escalating antagonism between Améline and Sophie.
“His shoe came off. I placed it in my pocket; and then the idea came to me once he was in the Greek Theater. I wanted to drive the point home for him. Dear, can you do up one of those shaken martinis?” Ansell Neely stood up to stretch. His long limbs contorted and then relaxed.
Havilah could barely contain herself after the shaken martini request. One minute Neely was chatty, the next wistful and regretful, now he was jauntily asking for a drink. She shrieked inwardly at the nonchalance of these two. “What’s to stop someone else from pursuing Kit’s research?” she asked as casually and calmly as one could under the circumstances. “What are you going to do? Kill everyone off?”
Sophie moved off her chair and began going through cabinets to assemble her drink-making wares. Neely stared Havilah down and then pointed the gun first at her head, then her chest. His handsome face turned stern, followed by loops of cackles, ending in a pleasant smile. He even lowered the gun. He seemed to revert to his happy go-lucky self. She understood that she would have to contain her impromptu editorializing no matter how deplorable she found Ansell and Sophie.
But Ansell Neely wanted to talk; he needed his motives clearly understood and his actions justified. He had not set out to be a murderer. It was like a switch had flipped once he realized his actions had caused the murder. There was no turning back for him. It seemed he needed Havilah to understand that he was not mad but purposeful. Kit’s death was accidental, theirs would be intentional because her and Améline’s incessant meddling necessitated a coverup. Their prying and poking around would have helped the police connect the dots to him and Sophie. The coverup is often worse than the crime, isn’t that how the cliché goes? She thought shaking her head as she continued to listen to Neely drone on.
He laid out his plan without the slightest irony. “Don’t be dull,” he said after a beat. Sophie handed him a shaken martini. After taking a sip, he continued, “Lowery Knowlton and my family are in the process of closing out access to certain documents. It will be finalized by the end of the summer. It’s done all the time. This,” he pointed to Havilah and Améline, “would never have to happen again.”
Havilah thought of how the helpful Mr. Allen would feel having to inform researchers that they could no longer access various documents in the Knowlton collection.
“What is the Friedrich angle? I see the Knowlton one and even Sophie’s,” she queried.
“Think about that photo you received from Laurent last evening in the lobby, Havilah. I spoke with Laurent before he headed over to Les Roches Blanches. I was coming down the Académie steps when he had stopped by his office to pick up the parcel. He said he was delivering Kit’s mail to you. All I had to do was access our foundation’s permission requests online to see what Kit had ordered this time. I paid you a visit later that night. Now go over those photographs in your head. Can you see young Georges-Guillaume’s face?”
Havilah did as he instructed. The boy was tall and brown with light eyes. She did the math. Ansell read the doubt in her face.
“Your father is Friedrich’s son?” she asked Sophie in bewilderment as the Parisian handed Ansell his martini. He gave Havilah the thumbs up and clicked his tongue for her right answer.
“My father was so obsessed with his homeland that he shunned us.” Fassin’s voice quivered.
“You! He shunned you! That’s what you really want to say,” Améline added acidly.
Améline evidently could not stop herself from verbally flogging Sophie. No matter the slaps. The French woman had in point of fact slapped her cheeks a Bloody Mary red and called her “salaupe” more times than Havilah cared to count.
“My great-greatuncle doted on the boy; sent him to France to be educated and all that. Knowlton met him as a child in Africa, when he was working on the documentary bio-pic, A Man on A Mission. Havilah, you see, the stakes were too high. My uncle is a Nobel Peace Prize winner. He had left his wife back in Europe for years. He was a minister, for heaven’s sake. Everyone assumed he had been chaste; that he would have never, given some of his more paternalistic ideas about Africa and Africans, taken one as a petite épouse. An illegitimate mixed-race child would trouble too many waters and muddy up the family name, the Friedrich Foundation and all of its philanthrophies, not too mention that hospital he set up in Gabon. Money and reputations lost like that.” He snapped his fingers.
“I consulted with the family. We had a big sit down. They simply refused to believe the old boy had gone native, that he liked to dabble in the paints. And far worse that he had pimped out his own son to Knowlton, who from the look of those photographs belonged to the Men Loving Boys Association or something on that sordid order. Sorry, dear, I know we are speaking of your father and all. If only Kit had listened,” he harrumphed. “The man had a wooden head and a tin ear.”
Havilah glared hotly at her captors. “So Améline is here because Kit gave her copies of his work the night you killed him.”
“Exactly. We didn’t want any posthumous publications. And we couldn’t be sure what Kit had told her. And it was clear from that night at the dinner that she wanted to talk to you about Kit. A little too pushy for my taste. But here’s the good part, Havilah,” Neely was enraptured with his plan. “Since you two don’t like one another, and particularly since you were not going to give her that job at Astor, you two had a nasty fight and a tumble into the Port Miou calanque after you went there to meet her when she didn’t show up for drinks this evening. Améline is a spiteful, ambitious shrew. So you see she killed Kit as well for reneging.” Neely
clapped his hands and took a bow at his genius.
“No one will believe that about me,” Améline yelled. She was now gnawing at the rope.
“Dear Améline, you so underestimate what people think you are capable of. You did call Havilah this evening after you didn’t show up at Bar de la Marine to confirm a new place and time to meet.” He was delighting in the ingenuity of the set-up.
Havilah thought Ansell Neely had a good point. Améline did have a questionable reputation. The call from Améline’s cell phone to hers would be easy enough to track. Moreover Neely didn’t have to come up with the motive. The police would do that. Motives didn’t have to make perfect sense; crimes of passion are rarely logical and generally imperfect. All Neely had to do was point the police in the right direction, which he had done. And all Havilah could do was hold out hope for an opening, a miracle, or Thierry Gasquet and the rest of the French cavalry.
“Let’s move on, dear, to Port Miou. It will be dark very soon,” Ansell instructed his nautically adept errant lover, as he sipped from the chilled glass.
Havilah peeked at her watch again. 9:00.
XXV
Sophie moored the boat by the steps that descended into the Port Miou inlet. Port Miou was the first of the rocky, water-filled inlets known as calanques. It was always busy, filled as it was year-round with up to 500 small boats, yachts, and revelers. It was also the longest of the sheltered inlets.
When they arrived, music from different directions was playing loudly, and there was already a lively group on one boat while another party was jumping into the water off the rocks. A nice distraction. Havilah understood the plan quite well. It would be difficult to differentiate between shrieks of pain and squeals of delight with such festivities in full swing.
The 13th Fellow: A Mystery in Provence Page 15
