“That’s hard to say. From that distance, the pellets might blind you if they happened to hit you in the eye, but they would be unlikely to kill you. But being hit by a hail of pellets while you were standing on a narrow ledge high up in the air? You could have fallen to your death.”
Eulalie raised her eyebrows.
“Someone else would have fallen to their death,” he said. “Maybe not you, but the shooter wouldn’t necessarily know that. It’s not a stretch to call that attempted murder.”
“Maybe. But it could also have been a prank. People get very silly on parade day. And alcohol makes them sillier.”
“I’m going to check how many islanders are registered as owning one of these guns. I’m not letting this go as a harmless bit of fun.”
He wouldn’t, of course. He would do things by the book. The shooter had discharged a firearm in a public space, whether that firearm was a glorified child’s toy or not. Chief Macgregor would make sure he faced the consequences of his actions.
“I’d better get down there to finish my shift,” she said. “I’m on until five o’clock.”
Now that the parade was over, she was scheduled to patrol Lafayette Boulevard on foot, detecting and defusing trouble.
Chief Macgregor stayed at City hall to coordinate the security efforts. Eulalie stepped out into the ongoing carnival that was Lafayette Boulevard on parade day. She walked the route that had been assigned to her and was pleased when it took her into Finger Alley.
If the shooter was part of the Queen’s Town underworld, her best chance of getting to hear about it was right here.
She did a quick circuit of Finger Alley before stepping into the dive bar known as Mo’s. The regulars were all in their normal places. Parade day meant nothing to them when there was beer to be drunk and deals to be done at Mo’s.
“Bonjour, Eulalie,” called Mo from behind the bar. “Can I interest you in a beer and the all-day breakfast?”
Eulalie managed not to wince. The last time she’d had one of Mo’s all-day breakfasts she had felt sick for hours afterwards.
“No thanks, Mo. I’m working until five. Has Jimmy been in today?”
“In and out. Said he’d be back after he checked out the parade.”
She had no difficulty in interpreting this. Jimmy the Knife was a chronic pickpocket and sneak thief who would consider parade day to be rich pickings. If he was out there in the crowd, she should be too, if only to keep an eye on him.
“Thanks, Mo. I’ll go up and see if I can find him.”
She had just turned towards the door when she heard Jimmy’s distinctive high-pitched voice.
“… worst parade day ever. What is the world coming to when a man can’t make an honest living anymore?”
“Slim pickings, Jim?”
He started when he saw her but recovered quickly.
“It’s a total bust out there, girlie. Your boyfriend has turned the place into Fort Knox.”
“He’s not my boyfriend. Take the day off, Jimmy. Everyone else has. Tomorrow it will be business as usual.”
“Business has been bad all round since your boyfriend…” He stopped when he caught Eulalie’s eye. “Since Chief Macgregor came to town.”
“Things are tough everywhere, Jim. Would twenty dollars improve your day?”
“Twenty dollars and the price of a beer would improve my day somewhat.”
Eulalie nodded to Moe who started preparing a glass of Jimmy’s usual.
“What can I do for you, darling?” Jimmy lounged at the bar at his ease.
Eulalie didn’t bother keeping her voice down. She wanted people to know about this.
“I was working security at the parade this morning, stationed on top of City hall.”
“Sure. We saw you. I took a bet with Mo here that it was you up there.”
“Then I hope you collected. But here’s the thing. Someone took a shot at me while I was up there. Do you have any idea who that might have been?”
Jimmy shook his head slowly. “I haven’t heard anything about that.” He looked around the bar. “What do you say, boys? Anyone hear about my girl here being used for target practice?”
Chapter 16
There were a series of head-shakes, and people went back to their beers. Jimmy shrugged.
“There you have it, girlie. The finest minds of Finger Alley don’t know who shot at you. Was it a sniper rifle?”
“This is kind of embarrassing, but it was a BB gun – a pellet gun.”
“So, it was a kid? Probably over-excited and firing into the air.”
“That’s what I would have thought too, except for two things. The gun was modified into a long-range shotgun, and the shooter was a marksman. He fired twice and would have hit me both times if I hadn’t ducked.”
Jimmy nodded. He was familiar with Eulalie’s propensity to duck before danger arrived. He considered it one of her least endearing qualities.
“So, someone was trying to hurt you. Who’s mad at you this week, Eu?”
“No one. I’m adorable.”
“Yeah, right. You have a knack for making people pissed at you. God knows I’ve wanted to take a shot at you myself, on more than one occasion. The difference is, I know I’d miss. This must be someone who doesn’t know you very well. Who do you know who would even own a rifle like that?”
Eulalie had a vision of Damien Hodge’s office with its dartboard, PS4, mini-golf set, and executive toys. He was exactly the kind of person who would own a BB gun.
“I have some ideas,” she admitted.
“See? That’s more like it. What cases are you working on this week?”
“Do you remember that girl who disappeared off Monk’s Cay five years ago? Jessica Manilow?”
“Sure.” Jimmy made the sign of the cross so quickly that only another Catholic would have spotted it. “Who’s interested in that after all this time?”
“The lady at the youth hostel where she was staying has never been able to make peace with it. She thinks the police have put it on the back-burner.”
“She’d be right about that.”
“Yes, she would. She hired me to look into it. It occurred to me that one of the boys who was with Jessica that night is a toy and gadget freak. It wouldn’t shock me to hear that he owns a BB gun.”
“There you go then.”
“I don’t know.” Eulalie wriggled her shoulders. She glanced at her watch. She still had a few minutes before she needed to be back on Lafayette Drive. “He struck me as essentially harmless. Like an overgrown kid. I could see him thinking it’s funny to take a pot-shot at me, but he wouldn’t have thought through the consequences.”
“Sounds like a real genius. Who is he?”
“The CFO of Hodge Consortium. Damien Hodge.”
Jimmy slapped a hand on the bar counter. “Him? What a waste of a good mark.”
“You know him?”
“Sure, I know him. Everyone in my line of work knows him. A guy like that in charge of all that money? That’s practically an open invitation to someone in my business.”
“He has minders, though.”
Jimmy slapped the bar again. “Exactly! That’s the tragedy of it all. He has minders who keep him away from the likes of me. From the likes of you too, I would imagine.”
Eulalie nodded. “I can’t get near him. I’ve started questioning him twice and both times we were interrupted. Once by his father, and once by this major domo type called Carson Fairweather.”
“I know exactly what you mean. Still, if you can’t go through him, go around him. There were other kids there that night.”
Eulalie nodded. Maybe she did need to take a closer look at Pete Costello and Chuck Weston.
“While I’ve got you here, Jimmy, what do you know about Monk’s Cay?”
“That’ll cost you another beer.”
Eulalie signaled to Mo, and Jimmy smiled a contented smile.
“Right. Monk’s Cay. What do you want to know about it
?”
“I want to know about any smuggling activities that might be happening there.”
“We’ve tried, girlie. Lord knows we’ve tried. A little cay like that – out of sight of Prince William Island, and so close to Logan Cay? Not to mention all the ghost rumors to keep away the locals? It would be perfect. The trouble is, you can’t get good help these days. You show me one criminal who’s prepared to work on Monk’s Cay overnight and I’ll give you a million bucks. They’re all superstitious as hell.”
“Did it never occur to you that someone had got there before you?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, that Monk’s Cay is already being used as a base for smuggling. By someone else.”
“No kidding? Who is it? The Russians? Or, no - the Chinese?”
“I have no idea. All I know is that it’s being used to store something – something like large, heavy crates.”
“And now that your hubby is investigating brandy smuggling, you think it’s connected.”
Eulalie flexed her fingers. “He’s not my hubby.”
Jimmy glanced at her steel-tipped nails. “Keep those claws to yourself, girlie.”
“Keep your hubby comments to yourself, and I will.”
“The point,” said Jimmy, “is that it’s impossible to get staff who are prepared to work on Monk’s Cay at night. If these imaginary smugglers of yours have succeeded in doing so, they must have brought in workers from overseas. And even then, if they had seen and heard what we did the last time we were there they would refuse to go back.”
Eulalie gave him a curious look. “What did you see and hear, Jimmy?”
He ducked his head. “It sounds daft talking about it now in broad daylight in a crowded bar.”
“Try me. Monk’s Cay creeps me the hell out.”
“It’s not so much the things you see and hear, because afterwards you can tell yourself you were imagining it. And none of you can agree on what happened anyway. It’s more the feeling it gives you. It’s like a feeling of dread - of being watched by something…”
“Malevolent,” supplied Eulalie.
“Exactly. Something on the island that doesn’t want you there. Afterwards, in the cold light of day you feel stupid because you can’t put yourself back into that feeling of dread, but the one thing you know for sure is that you’re not going back there at night.”
There was a pause and one of the men at the bar counter piped up.
“Is that Monk’s Cay you’re talking about?”
Jimmy nodded.
“You wouldn’t catch me back there, Jimmy old son. Not for all the tea in China.”
“Indeed,” said another man in French. “Nor for all the garlic in France.”
“There you go,” said Jimmy. “Everyone agrees – stay away from Monk’s Cay.”
Eulalie thanked him and went back outside to resume her patrol. She ate a late lunch while on patrol, first buying a cone of Cajun-spiced fries, and then a hot dog. And finally – because Angel made her, a little cup of fruit salad.
She kept her eyes open for trouble. She was looking for firearms in particular, but there weren’t many to be seen. An open-carry license was hard to come by on Prince William Island, and a concealed-carry license almost impossible. Eulalie had an open-carry license which she had to renew every second year. Only police officers of detective grade or higher qualified for concealed-carry licenses.
Criminals, of course, tended to do whatever they liked, but gun crime had never been much of a problem here.
Eulalie doubted that she would spot someone walking around with a BB gun in their hand, but she kept her eyes open just in case. She also kept a lookout for Damien Hodge, but there was no sign of him either.
The brandy-tasting tent sponsored by Hodge Consortium had one or more members of the Hodge family in it at any one time, but Damien seemed to have disappeared. She hoped he wasn’t off practicing his marksmanship on someone else.
At five o’clock, Eulalie went off shift. She reported to city hall to give back her headset and to participate in the handover to the nightshift who would keep the streets safe for revelers until the next morning.
Each dayshift officer did a quick verbal report of any problems they had encountered during the day, and the night officers made a note of it. Eulalie mentioned the motorcycle gang and the discharge of a pellet gun into the air. She reminded everyone to keep a close eye on Finger Alley, noting that the visible policing strategy had been successful in deterring criminal activity.
Then she went home to collapse, too tired from her day in the sun to take Fleur up on her offer of a pub crawl along Beach Road. She felt as though she had seen enough of the bars on Beach Road to last her a while.
Eulalie got home and poured herself a glass of wine. She stretched out on the couch with her iPad and watched a couple of episodes of a Scandinavian crime drama.
Then curiosity got the better of her and she switched to Google.
What exactly had happened on Monk’s Cay all those years ago?
There were several websites with information, including Wikipedia, but there was only one reliable enough for her liking. It went right back to the founding of the monastery in the seventeenth century and discussed the Monk’s Cay way of life in detail.
As the level of wine in her glass dipped lower, Eulalie found herself increasingly absorbed in the daily life of the monks, with all their power struggles and intellectual achievements.
While nominally under the control of the Benedictine order in Rome, the monks of Monk’s Cay had been fairly independent. Their leader was an abbot, who often held the position for decades. His rule seemed to have been as absolute as that of any emperor.
While many of the abbots were popular and beloved figures, some were detested and only managed to hang on to their positions by forming powerful strategic alliances.
Eulalie reached for her wineglass and found it was empty. She got up and helped herself to a refill.
“Whoops!” Her head spun slightly. She hadn’t eaten dinner and it had been a large glass of wine. She thought about warming up some soup but didn’t really feel like it. She was still full after all the parade day food she had eaten.
She topped up her wineglass. It wasn’t as though she was going anywhere except straight to bed.
She read on.
“I have here,” said Brother Francis. “A decree from the Holy See in Rome confirming and ratifying this act of justice that is being carried out here today.”
His voice thundered over the sound of the waves crashing against the cliffs. The assembled monks shivered as the wind blew against their robes, threatening to dislodge their cowls.
“The vengeful hand of God will not be stayed as we right the terrible wrong that has taken place within our holy walls. This disease that has infiltrated the sanctity of our refuge must be stamped out and crushed. Only by plucking it out at the root shall we eradicate it. Satan has come among us and there will be no mercy for him.”
The younger monks glanced at each other. It had not escaped their notice that Brother Francis was waving the declaration from Rome at them, but not letting anyone read it. His rhetoric was fiery and his tone vengeful, but it was difficult to whip up enthusiasm for his cause.
These things happened. They were part of monastery life, and no one thought too much about them. As long as the monks concerned were discreet, where was the harm? A lifetime was a very long time to devote to religious study, and sometimes these slips happened.
None of their previous abbots had made such a fuss about it, although some had been stricter than others. But Brother Francis had nailed his colors to the mast from the very beginning. His sermons had been fiery disquisitions about Sodom and Gomorrah, and the evils of the flesh.
Gossip was as much a feature of life at the monastery as anywhere else, and rumors had circulated that Brother Francis himself would have felt quite at home in the fleshpots of Sodom and Gomorrah.
Much
like the man who wanted to remove the mote in his brother’s eye while ignoring the plank in his own. Brother Francis had made what he called ‘unnatural contact’ between monks his chief enemy. It was the thing he was determined to root out at all costs.
And now it had come to this. The cost was going to be the life of gentle Brother Sebastian.
Brother Sebastian had been part of the community for thirty years, ever since he had joined as a boy of sixteen. His contribution to the community was incalculable, his scholarship unmatched. He was the only really sound Egyptologist in the monastery. Not only could he read and translate hieroglyphics, but his depth of understanding of ancient Greek and Latin, and even Aramaic were unrivalled. His work had been singled out for praise as far afield as Spain, Rome, and Russia.
And now his life was to be snuffed out because of an indiscretion with one of Brother Francis’ spies.
The spy looked pale and sick. He had merely been trying to curry favor with Brother Francis by reporting Brother Sebastian. He had not expected to see it culminate in an execution.
The young monks tutted and shook their heads, but there was nothing they could do. Brother Francis commanded too powerful a faction in the monastery. And he had that supposed authority from Rome (although no one had read it). His position was unassailable. Anyone who stood up against him was liable to find himself dangling from the end of a rope like poor Brother Sebastian would shortly be.
Brother Francis’s thugs brought Brother Sebastian forward. The poor man was the soul of bravery, but he was starting to show signs of strain now. Deep lines were etched into his brow and the sides of his mouth, carved there by the bitter taste of betrayal.
The gibbet stood starkly against the boiling grey sky. The noose swayed in the wind, fluttering almost playfully. Brother Sebastian’s arms had been bound behind his back, and a black hood sat ready to cover his face.
Almost everyone on this rocky outcrop of land knew that an appalling miscarriage of justice was about to occur but were powerless to stop it.
“Lord, we rejoice in your presence here today as we eradicate Satan from the heart of our pious brotherhood. Your will be done as this act of exorcism takes place. Brothers!” he roared. “Bring forth the evil-doer.”
The Complete H-Series of The Eulalie Park Mysteries Page 57