Paradise Interrupted

by Penny Mickelbury

  “Delighted to see you, Carmen, of course, but what has our Miss Gibson done to bring you to police headquarters so early in the morning?”

  And, as if giving a lecture on not so advanced economic systems, the professor, eyes wide and shining behind her thick lenses, told them of the deposit made that morning when the bank opened of more than seven hundred thousand dollars to the personal account of bank manager Christian Leonard by Nicole Collette, a deposit which, by law, had to be reported to the finance ministry because any deposit in excess of ten thousand dollars had to be reported by the bank to the Finance Department. But it had not been reported. And, because she’d been advised by Carole Ann to check accounts and records, she discovered quite a few heretofore unreported deposits of large sums of money to accounts held by Monsieur Leonard, former president Henri LeRoi, Madame Marie-Ange Collette, and accounts in the names of Hubert de Villages and Louis Marchand but controlled by Christian Leonard. In accordance with the finance laws of the island, she had, she said, confiscated all of the money— totaling more than four million dollars— which, if found to be the proceeds of illegal activity, reverted to the Isle de Paix treasury.

  Carole Ann, Yvette and David sat in stunned silence staring at the finance minister, who beamed back at them. Then David and Yvette simultaneously turned their focus to Carole Ann, who had begun shaking her head. “I didn’t know. I swear to you that I didn’t know.”

  “Bullshit, Carole Ann!” David Messinger thundered. “Dr. Anderson just said you told her what to check for—”

  “I told her, David,” Carole Ann snapped, her cold fury overriding his hot anger, for now she was both alert and furious and having been caught by surprise again, “to monitor any deposit made by Nicole Collette, thinking, believing, speculating, that it would be in Nigel Osborne’s name, or in Andre Collette’s name. I had no idea that Christian Leonard was involved!” She closed her eyes and massaged her temples while this new bit of information took its place among the bits and pieces and loose ends. And when she opened her eyes, Yvette Casson was looking into them, a flicker of satisfaction in her own.

  “He’s the last connection to Osborne. He’s the money, and probably the brains.”

  Carole Ann nodded agreement though her face bespoke her confusion, and Yvette questioned her. “I think you’re right about Leonard, but I don’t get it. The man’s a right wing, racist bigot. Why would he accept a job here? Why would he go into business with Osborne?”

  “Greed,” Messenger, Casson, and Anderson replied simultaneously, and Carole Ann knew they were correct. Greed overcame prejudices of all kinds.

  “So,” Yvette said, “I think that’s it. I’ll have Nicole picked up and then I think we got it all,” and her voice sounded the relief that Carole Ann felt.

  “Got all what?!” David demanded to know, sounding both irritated and hurt, as if he hadn’t been included in something.

  “The cancer that was growing here, David,” Yvette replied since Carole Ann was ignoring him. “The evil, the ugly, the danger. Of course, we will have to burn that pot field and stage raids on Armand’s and couple of the other local watering holes, and the sooner the better.”

  Carole Ann welcomed a reason for levity, and she smiled. “I knew some of that crew seemed a bit too eager to go to work. Who was it, Joseph?”

  “And Luc and Thomas and Lise and half a dozen others,” Yvette said, allowing a smile of her own. After the specter of Nigel Osborne, she could find humor in a little marijuana, as long as it was only a little. She stood up. “Dr. Anderson, would you be kind enough to walk with me over to your office, and walk me through, on paper, what you just told us? And David? Do you want to handle the arrests of Nicole Collette and Christian Leonard, or shall I handle it?”

  He cleared his throat and straightened his back and squared his shoulders. “I think I can still make an arrest.” And he turned on his heel and left them.

  She didn’t know how long the pounding had been going on, only that ignoring it didn’t make it go away. Carole Ann stepped into pair of shorts and pulled a tee shirt over her head and, still yawning, padded down the hallway to the door. She opened it to see Denis St. Almain’s back rounding the corner. “I’m awake now, Denis, thank you very much. You may as well come on in,” she called out, suppressing a yawn.

  He was grinning when he turned back toward her. He looked more rested than she did, though he couldn’t have gotten much more sleep than she had. But of course, he now no longer was a fugitive, and no doubt having that weight lifted from him brought calm. “How can you sleep in the midst of so much excitement?” he asked, following her in and into the kitchen. “Excitement. That’s what that was!” She yawned again and opened the refrigerator. “I suppose I should thank you for waking me. I’ve never heard of anybody succumbing in their sleep to hunger, and I am ravenous.”

  “Then put on some clothes and let’s go! Dinner with the Aunties, my treat!”

  On the drive to Aux Fruits de Mer, and over dinner at Odile’s table, he explained how he’d ended up on the beach the previous night. He’d been living in the woods, he said, watching Osborne’s drug camp for several days, and he could tell by the frantic activity that a major move was underway. He knew he couldn’t prevent it, but he wanted to amass enough information to lead to the arrest of whoever was in charge, with the hope that would help clear his name. He explained that he knew Nigel Osborne’s name from his DEA days, but that the two had never met because Osborne was undercover, and he was based in his home country with the entirety of the Caribbean his turf, while Denis was undercover only in Washington, and Isle de Paix was his only island assignment. “I got sick to my stomach when I realized that Nigel Osborne was who you were asking me about. But once I knew who he was, I knew who his connections were in D.C. They may have cut him loose, but knowing how the agency works, I knew that nobody wanted their name used in the same sentence with his.”

  “So, you were planning to blackmail the DEA into exonerating you?”

  He scowled. “And you had a better idea?”

  She shook her head at him. “Catch the bad guys and make them come clean, which, by the way, we did, Denis.”

  “Yeah, after I’d been living in the woods eating nuts and berries for what seemed like years! I’m just glad you caught them before the rainy season,” he said darkly, and she laughed.

  “Osborne did admit everything, you know,” she added.

  “Of course he did! The bastard is going to hang! He’d say anything to save his neck at this point, including telling the truth, for a change.” His scowl deepened, then, abruptly, he face relaxed into a more thoughtful expression. “I’d like to have been a dust ball in the corner when he realized that the new government here not only wouldn’t play ball with him, but it had cops that were looking to lock his ass up! That Chief Casson is really something,” he said admiringly. “And that Messinger is one tough customer. I heard that he refused to allow the Coast Guard to bring Osborne and his crew back here, had them delivered directly back to Trinidad, at the expense of the Trinidadian government!”

  Carole Ann found herself enjoying a view of David through the eyes of another. She’d probably get along much better with him when she and Jake returned in January, and he had the day-to-day contact with David while she worked with Roland Charles and Jackie LaBelle. And she felt the tug of pain and grief that she knew would nudge at her for a long time whenever she thought of Philippe Collette, who easily would have been excused had he terminated the GGI contract. “I have no just cause,” he had said when she presented the opportunity. “You and your company have served this government well. I hope you will continue.”

  “You suddenly look sad,” Denis said.

  She shrugged and changed her expression and the subject. “What are you going to do with yourself now that it’s safe to come out of the woods?”

  A sudden boyish look overtook his face and he ducked his head. It was a moment before he met her eyes. “I asked Chief Casso
n for a job.”

  Her surprise was complete, and so was her approval, and she promised him a good reference if he needed it and if Yvette wanted it.

  “President Collette is the one you’ll have to convince,” he said darkly. “He knows I’m not dirty, but he’s thinking that anybody with any connection to all this...” He trailed off, looking again like a young boy. “Anyway, the Chief said it would be up to him and she’s hopeful, since he hasn’t said no.”

  “I’ll be happy to speak with Philippe,” she said, “and once you meet him—”

  “Once I meet him, what?” Denis pressed, looking at her curiously.

  Once you meet him, you’ll know that Henri LeRoi is not your father, she thought, but coming face-to-face with the man at a job interview is not the time and place for such discovery.

  “Carole Ann, what’s wrong?”

  “May I make a suggestion?” she asked, and when he nodded she continued, “Before you meet with President Collette, ask your fath...ask Monsieur LeRoi his opinion. Tell him you’d have to meet first with President Collette before getting a job here, and tell him why. I think his very unique perspective will be valuable to you.”

  He looked at her strangely, but agreed to do as she asked. He extended Henri LeRoi’s thanks to her, as well as that of his mother and Hazel Copeland. Then he raised glass in a toast to her, and he thanked her for himself.

  She found herself, in subsequent days, unable to categorize her feelings about being thanked for doing her job. Certainly, back when she still practiced law, clients thanked her if she kept them out of jail, but she received those words with little sentiment attached. She was paid extremely well to defend the accused and she was good at it. But being thanked by Denis and Henri LeRoi and Odile and Viviene and Carmen Anderson and, after a fashion, Yvette Casson—what did that mean? Whatever they were grateful for had accrued as a result of her doing her job, even if they were not directly her clients. Did she warrant gratitude? Even Philippe Collette had thanked her for her service to his government, if not on behalf of himself, for she had effectively destroyed a significant segment of his life.

  She recalled in detail her meeting with him. Indeed, she’d most likely never be able to forget it. He was formal and gracious, as always, and so sad that tears came to her eyes when she looked at him. It was the kind of sadness she knew too well, and she had caused it. She had apologized and he had brushed it aside. She’d asked how Marie-Ange was and he’d closed his eyes for a moment, then said that she was heavily sedated, that Maurice never left her side. And, Carole Ann had asked, what will happen to her? And he had looked at her for a long moment before answering: “Nothing.” She had waited for him to explain and he had not. So she had asked how that was possible and he had told her how, in exchange for extradition home to France to face charges rather than execution in Trinidad, Christian Leonard would testify that he and Nigel Osborne were in the drug business together, that it was Osborne who bribed Andre and killed the constables and Paul Francois. Marie-Ange would not figure anywhere in the equation.

  “I’ve lost a son and some of my will to live, and my wife would rather be dead, but she is not, and if that is all that I can salvage from this, I accept it as sufficient.” And then he had turned the tables on her: If GGI no longer wanted to work with him and the Isle de Paix government, he would understand and release them from the terms of their contract.

  “He’s gonna be pretty good at that president stuff,” was Jake’s reaction, along with his unmitigated desire to continue with contract over Carole Ann’s half-hearted reservation.

  “He’s violating the law, Jake.”

  “And you didn’t when you went after the bastard who murdered your husband?”

  And to that she had no response, only thoughts of violence and vengeance that would not leave her alone. You don’t like those thoughts? Change them! she heard Al’s voice whisper in her ear. My husband the Buddhist, she thought with the hitch in her heart she felt each and every time she thought of him. Right again, Al. Almost. She would not think about Nigel Osborne or his fate; but she would think about Philippe Collette and how he would live with his decision to save his wife. And she would think about Marie-Ange, who couldn’t live her Parisian life on Philippe’s Isle de Paix salary once Christian Leonard stole her inheritance. And she would think about Andre. She also would think about Roland Charles completing his road ahead of schedule once the government moved to confiscate the de Village construction equipment.

  And she would think about the first time Philippe Collette and Denis St.Almain looked at each other and saw themselves.

  CA4

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  Also by Penny Mickelbury

  A Phil Rodriquez Mystery

  Two Graves Dug

  A Murder Too Close

  The Carole Ann Gibson Mysteries

  One Must Wait

  Where To Choose

  Paradise Interrupted

  The Mimi Patterson/Gianna Maglione Mysteries

  Keeping Secrets

  Night Songs

  Love Notes

  Watch for more at Penny Mickelbury’s site.

  About the Author

  Penny Mickelbury is the author of ten mystery novels in three successful series, as well as a novel of historical fiction, Belle City, and a collection of short stories, That Part of My Face. She also is an accomplished playwright, and has contributed articles and short stories to several magazines and journals.

  Read more at Penny Mickelbury’s site.