by Joël Dicker
Sylvia broke off. Betsy sensed she didn’t want to say more, but she urged her on.
“Ted had great business savvy,” Sylvia resumed. “In the hotel, he had noticed that many of the guests complained that they couldn’t find a really good restaurant in Orphea. That gave him the idea of starting his own. Our father had died in the meantime and left us a large bequest, and Ted was able to buy up a dilapidated building downtown, ideally located. He had the idea of renovating it and turning it into this place, Café Athena. Unfortunately, things soon degenerated.”
“You mean the fire?”
“You know about that?”
“Yes. I heard there was a lot of tension between your brother and Mayor Gordon, who refused to allow a change of use for the building. They say Ted set fire to it to be granted authorization to start work. But the tension with the mayor continued after that.”
“You know, Betsy, I heard all that. I can assure you that my brother did not set fire to the building. He was easily angered, yes. But he wasn’t some small-time crook. He was a smart man, a man who had values. It’s true that after the fire tension persisted between my brother and Mayor Gordon. I know they were seen by quite a few people having a violent dispute in the street. But if I tell you the real reason for the bad blood between them, I don’t think you’ll believe me.”
* * *
Main Street, Orphea
February 21, 1994, two weeks after the fire
When Tennenbaum arrived at the site of the future Café Athena, he found Mayor Gordon waiting for him outside, pacing up and down to warm himself.
“Ted,” Mayor Gordon said by way of greeting, “I see how stubborn you are.”
Tennenbaum didn’t understand at first. “I’m not sure I follow you, Mr Mayor. What’s going on?”
Gordon took a sheet of paper from his coat pocket. “I gave you the names of these companies, and you haven’t used any of them.”
“That’s right,” Tennenbaum said. “I asked for estimates and I chose the ones that gave me the best prices. What’s wrong with that?”
Mayor Gordon raised his voice. “Ted, stop splitting hairs. If you want to start your renovations, I advise you to contact these companies. They’re much more qualified than the ones you chose.”
“I chose perfectly competent local businesses. I’m free to do as I see fit, aren’t I?”
Mayor Gordon lost patience. “I won’t permit you to work with these businesses!”
“You won’t permit me?”
“No. I’ll block the work as long as I have to, by every means at my disposal.”
A few passers-by, intrigued by the raised voices, stopped to watch. Tennenbaum, who had moved closer to the mayor, shouted:
“What difference does it make to you, Gordon?”
“Mr Mayor, please,” Gordon said, placing a finger on his chest as if to emphasize his words.
Tennenbaum saw red and grabbed him roughly by the collar, then let go.
“Think you can frighten me, Tennenbaum?” Gordon said defiantly. “Try to behave with some decency instead of making a spectacle of yourself!”
Just then a police car drove up and Deputy Gulliver sprang out.
“Is everything O.K., Mr Mayor?” he said, his hand on his nightstick.
“Everything’s fine, Deputy. Thank you.”
* * *
“That’s the reason for their quarrel,” Sylvia said to Betsy. “The choice of companies for the construction work.”
“I believe you,” Betsy said.
Sylvia seemed surprised. “Really?”
“Yes, I know that Mayor Gordon was getting kickbacks from the businesses he awarded contracts to. I assume the construction work on Café Athena would have accounted for relatively large sums and the mayor wanted his slice of the cake. What happened next?”
“Ted agreed. He knew the mayor would be able to block the work and make life very difficult for him. Things worked out and Café Athena was able to open a week before the opening of the festival. Everything was going fine. Until Mayor Gordon was murdered. But my brother didn’t kill Mayor Gordon, I’m certain of that.”
“Sylvia, do the words ‘The Darkest Night’ mean anything to you?”
“‘The Darkest Night’,” Sylvia said, taking time to think. “I’ve seen that somewhere.”
She spotted a copy of that day’s Chronicle that had been left on a nearby table and picked it up.
“In fact, here it is,” she said, reading the front page of the newspaper. “It’s the title of the play that’s being performed for the opening of the festival.”
“Were former police chief Hayward and your brother connected in any way?” Betsy asked.
“Not as far as I know. Why?”
“Because the words ‘The Darkest Night’ were used in some strange graffiti that appeared around town in the year leading up to the first festival. The same words were found written in the ruins after the fire in February 1994. Were you aware of that?”
“No, I wasn’t. But don’t forget I only moved here later. At the time, I was living in Manhattan, I was married and I’d taken over my father’s business. When my brother died, I inherited Café Athena and chose not to sell it. It had meant so much to him. I hired a manager. And then I divorced, and I decided to sell my father’s company. I wanted to start over. I moved here in 1998. So I missed all that part of the story, including the ‘Darkest Night’ graffiti. I had no idea about the connection with the fire, but on the other hand I do know who started the fire.”
“Who?” Betsy said, her heart suddenly pounding.
“I mentioned that Ted got into bad company in Ridgesport. There was a small-time crook named Jeremiah Fold, who extorted money, and who had some kind of quarrel with him. Jeremiah was a dubious character, a lousy guy. He’d sometimes show up at the Palace with a bunch of girls and his pockets bulging with banknotes. He’d drive up on a huge motorcycle, making a lot of noise. He was loud, vulgar, often stoned. He’d flash his money around, treat whole tables full of people to an orgy of eating and drinking, and throw hundred-dollar bills at the waiters. The owner of the hotel didn’t like it, but he didn’t dare stop Jeremiah from coming because he didn’t want trouble from him. One day, Ted, who was still working there, decided to step in. Out of loyalty to the owner, who had given him his chance. After Jeremiah had left the hotel, Ted set off after him in his car. He eventually forced him to stop at the side of the road. He told him he wasn’t welcome at the Palace anymore. But Jeremiah had a girl on the back of his bike. Probably to impress her he tried to punch Ted, and Ted smashed his face. Jeremiah was humiliated. Sometime later, he came to see Ted at home, with two of his toughs, and got them to beat him up. Then, when Jeremiah found out Ted was planning to open a restaurant, he came to him and demanded to be made a partner. He wanted a commission to let the work continue, then a percentage of the profits once the restaurant was open. He had sensed the potential.”
“And what did Ted do?”
“At first he refused. And one night in February, the building went up in smoke.”
“And that was this Fold’s doing?”
“Yes. On the night of the fire, Ted came to see me at three in the morning, and told me the whole story.”
* * *
Sylvia Tennenbaum’s apartment in Manhattan
Night of February 11, 1994
The telephone woke Sylvia. It was 2.45. It was the doorman. Her brother was downstairs. He was saying it was urgent.
She had him sent up and when the elevator doors opened, there was Ted, ashen-faced, barely able to stand. She settled him in the living room and made him tea.
“Café Athena has burned down,” Ted said. “I had everything in my constrction cabin there, the plans, my files, months of work gone up in smoke.”
“Surely the architects have copies?” Sylvia said, anxious to calm her brother.
“No, you don’t understand!” Ted said. “This is really serious.”
He took a crump
led sheet of paper from his pocket. It was the typed note he had found behind the windshield wiper of his car when he had rushed out of his house after being called about the fire.
Next time it’ll be your house that burns down.
“It was arson?” Sylvia said, horrified.
Ted nodded.
“Who did it?”
“A man called Jeremiah Fold.”
“Who is he?”
Her brother told her how he had forbidden Fold to come back to the Palace, the fight they had, and what had happened subsequently.
“Jeremiah wants money,” Ted said. “He wants a lot of money.”
“You have to go to the police.”
“That’s impossible right now. Knowing Fold, he will have paid a guy to do this. The police will never be able to pin it on him. At least not now. The only thing it’ll get me is more reprisals. He’s a psycho, and it’ll only get worse. Best-case scenario, he’ll burn down everything I own. Worst-case, someone will end up killed.”
“And you think that if you pay, he’ll leave you alone?”
“I’m sure of it. He loves money.”
“Then pay him for now. We have enough money. Pay him, wait for things to calm down, and then go to the police.”
* * *
“So my brother decided to pay, at least for the time being, to resolve the situation,” Sylvia told Betsy. “His restaurant meant so much to him. It was his pride and joy, the mark of his success. He hired the companies Mayor Gordon told him to, and regularly transferred large sums of money to Fold to stop him sabotaging the work. That way, Café Athena was able to open on time.”
Betsy was more than intrigued.
“Did you tell all this to the police at the time?”
Sylvia sighed. “No.”
“Why not?”
“My brother came under suspicion for the Gordon family murders. Then one day he disappeared, and eventually he was killed in a car chase with the police. I didn’t want to blacken his name any more than it was blackened already.”
* * *
While Betsy and Sylvia Tennenbaum were at Café Athena, Kirk Hayward was making his slow way down Main Street. Seeing a suitable patch of bare wall, he stopped and from a shoulder bag he took a pot of glue and a brush and stuck up one of the posters he had just had printed.
CASTING CALL
In preparation for the performance of
THE ORPHEA FESTIVAL PLAY
“The Darkest Night”
THE DIRECTOR SEEKS ACTORS –
WITH OR WITHOUT EXPERIENCE
Auditions Monday, July 14, 10 a.m. at the Grand Theater
A few hundred yards away, Jerry and Carolina Eden came across one of these posters as they strolled on Main Street.
“An audition for a play,” Eden read. “How about going along? When you were little, you had ambitions to be an actress.”
“But not in some small-town play,” Carolina said.
“Let’s try our luck,” Eden said, making an effort to stay enthusiastic. “You never know.”
“It says here the auditions are on Monday. How long are we staying?”
“I don’t know, Carolina. As long as we have to. Please don’t start, we only just got here. Do you have other plans? Going to college, maybe? Oh no, I forgot, you’re not enrolled anywhere.”
Carolina pouted and resumed walking ahead of her father. They came to Cody Springfield’s bookstore. Carolina went in, and stared fascinated at the shelves. On a table, she spotted a dictionary. She picked it up and leafed through it. One word led to another, she let the definitions parade in front of her eyes. She felt her father’s presence behind her.
“It’s been so long since I last saw a dictionary,” she said.
She put the dictionary under her arm and started searching in fiction.
Springfield came up to her. “Are you looking for anything in particular?”
“A good novel,” she said. “I haven’t read anything in a while.”
He noticed the dictionary under her arm. “That’s not a novel,” he said with a smile.
“It’s much better. I’ll take it. I can’t remember the last time I looked through a paper dictionary. I usually use spellcheck when I write on my laptop.”
He sighed. “A strange century we live in.”
Carolina nodded. “When I was little, I went in for spelling competitions. My father trained me. We’d spend all our time spelling words. It drove my mother crazy. There was a time when I could be hours reading the dictionary, memorizing the spelling of the most complicated words. Go on, choose a word.”
She handed the dictionary to an amused Springfield, who took it and opened it at random. He looked down the page and said:
“Holosystolic.”
“Easy: h-o-l-o-s-y-s-t-o-l-i-c.”
He gave a mischievous smile. “Did you really use to read the dictionary?”
“Oh, yes, all day long.”
She laughed and her eyes gleamed.
“Where are you from?” Springfield said.
“Manhattan. My name’s Carolina.”
“I’m Cody.”
“I love your bookstore, Cody. I would have liked to be a writer.” Her face clouded over.
“Would have? What’s stopping you? I’m sure you’re not even twenty yet.”
“I can’t write anymore.”
“Anymore? What does that mean?”
“Not since I did something very serious.”
“What did you do?”
“It’s too serious to talk about.”
“You could write about it.”
“I know, that’s what my shrink says. But it won’t come. Nothing comes. I’m all empty inside.”
That evening, Eden and Carolina had dinner at Café Athena. Eden knew that Carolina had previously liked the place and had hoped to please her by taking her there. But she sulked all the way through the meal.
“Why did you drag us here?” she said, putting aside her seafood pasta.
“I thought you liked it,” her father said.
“I mean Orphea. Why did you drag me here?”
“I thought it would do you good.”
“You thought it would do me good? Or did you want to show me how much I disappoint you and to remind me that it was because of me you lost your house here?”
“How can you say such a horrible thing?”
“I ruined your life, I know!”
“Carolina, you have to stop blaming yourself. You have to move on, start over.”
“Don’t you understand? I’ll never be able to make up for what I did, Daddy! I hate this town, I hate life!”
Unable to hold back her tears, she took refuge in the toilets so that nobody should see her crying. When at last she came out, after twenty long minutes, she asked her father if they could go back to the Lake Palace.
Eden had not noticed that there was a minibar in each of the two bedrooms that made up the suite. Carolina noiselessly opened the door of the cabinet, and removed a miniature vodka bottle from the little fridge. She poured out the whole bottle and took a few sips. Then, rummaging in the drawer where her underwear was, she took out a vial of ketamine. Leyla said it was practical and more discreet like this than in powder form.
Carolina broke off the end of the tube, emptied the contents into a glass, stirred it with her fingertip and swallowed it all.
After a few minutes, she felt a sense of calm rise within her. She was lighter, happier. She lay full length on the bed and gazed up at the ceiling. The white paint seemed to crack open slowly to reveal a wonderful fresco. She recognized the house in Orphea and longed to walk around inside it.
* * *
Orphea, ten years earlier
July 2004
There was a great deal of excitement at the breakfast table in the Eden family’s luxurious summer home on Ocean Road.
“Acupuncture,” Jerry Eden announced.
Carolina, who was nine, lifted the end of her nose and made a mischievous
pout, which gave rise to an enchanted smile from her mother. With the spoon in her bowl, the girl moved the cereal letters around and steadily spelled out the word:
“A-c-u-p-u-n-c-t-u-r-e.”
As she uttered each of the letters, she placed the corresponding piece of cereal on a plate next to her. She gazed at the final result, satisfied.
“Congratulations, sweetheart!” her father said, impressed.
Her mother laughed and clapped. “How do you do that?”
“I don’t know, Mommy. It’s like I see a photograph of the word in my head and it’s usually right.”
“Let’s try another one,” Eden said. “Rhododendron.”
Carolina rolled her eyes, making her parents laugh, then spelled the word. The only letter missing was the “h”.
“Almost!” her father said.
