Eulalie nearly groaned when she saw the tall redhead with the snooty attitude waiting in the common room. Ignoring her, she went up to Rehana and smiled.
“Are we all here?”
Rehana glanced around at the group of girls and nodded.
“I think so.” She raised her voice. “Okay, let’s go, guys. Remember to stick together. There’s a maniac out there attacking women, and we don’t want to add to his victims. We go in a group and we return in a group. If anyone hooks up tonight, let one of us know that you won’t be returning with us. Let’s be safe out there.”
There were nods and murmurs of assent.
As they trooped down the stairs and into the road, Eulalie remembered that Rehana was a year older than the rest of them, having taken a gap year in Greece. She had apparently appointed herself as the mother hen of their little group of freshmen.
Eulalie wondered if she would ever get used to how light it was. It was nearly eight and still light enough to read. On Prince William Island, the sun rose early in the morning but sank like a stone in the evenings. By seven it was dark, winter and summer.
It was early February here in Cape Town – still high summer. That was another thing she couldn’t get used to. Here, the academic year started in January and ended in November. Prince William Island observed the American system of starting in September and ending in June.
The girls walked in a tight group, as the road carried them down the hill and into the suburb of Observatory.
“Why didn’t we just go to the Student Union?” asked one of the girls.
“I’ve already been there two nights in a row,” said Rehana. “I felt like something different. Besides, Obz Café is cool. A more alternative crowd hangs out there. We’ll meet some upper classmen. I’ve had enough of spotty freshmen for a while. Besides, it’s only a mile and a half.”
Obz Café was certainly very different to the Student Union. The lighting was lower, and the vibe mellower. The students were older, but not necessarily more attractive. Grunge and Goth were the order of the day, with dreadlocks, head-to-toe black, and tie-dyed skirts as the chief fashion statements. In her low-waisted jeans and colorful crop-top, Eulalie felt distinctly out of place.
Some of the students turned when the shiny group of freshmen walked through the door, and there were several eyerolls.
“I feel like we’re invading their space,” said Eulalie. Even Rehana hesitated.
Only the redhead marched in like she owned the place.
“This is a public bar,” she declared. “Besides, I’ve been here before.”
Head up, she sauntered over to the bar to order, confidence oozing from every pore. The rest of them shrugged and followed. Most of the others ordered beer or one of the many flavored alcoholic sodas on offer.
Eulalie hesitated. She wasn’t much of a drinker, but like most islanders – especially those of French descent – she had been initiated into the finer points of wine from a young age. There were good wines on offer at Obz Café, but the prices were eyewatering. Eulalie thought of her budget for the month and knew she shouldn’t go there. She ordered a glass of the house white. It would be dire because it was being dispensed from a box, but if she loaded it with enough ice, she would hardly taste it.
A couple of hours later, Eulalie was feeling no pain. She was three glasses of wine down, and the room spun pleasantly around her. The wine had loosened her tongue and she had enjoyed several interesting chats with the people she had come in with and others who had joined their group.
She stood up and teetered to the bathroom. When she came back, the only empty seat was next to the haughty redhead. With an inward sigh, she sat down next to her.
Apparently unaware of her animosity, the redhead turned and gave her a bleary smile.
“Hello. What’s your name?”
“Loola…” She coughed and continued. “I’m mean, Eulalie. Eulalie Park.”
“Hi, Eulalie Park. My name is Fleur du Toit.”
They shook hands solemnly, as though they were being introduced at a garden party. Then a spontaneous giggle broke from Eulalie.
“What’s so funny?”
“Your name.” The more Eulalie thought about it, the funnier it seemed. She giggled again.
“What’s funny about my name?”
“Sorry…” Eulalie made an effort to pull herself together. “It’s just that… well, I come from a French-speaking country, so Fleur du Toit doesn’t sound like a name to me. It sounds like you’re saying, ‘flower of the roof’.”
“What are you talking about? Fleur is a French name.”
“Yeah… no. It really isn’t. It just means flower. And du Toit might have been a surname once, but it isn’t anymore. It means ‘of the roof.’ Have you got a middle name?”
“Aimée.”
Eulalie laughed until she choked.
“What now?” demanded Fleur.
“Aimée means ‘beloved’. Your name is Beloved Flower of the Roof.”
For a moment, it seemed as though the snooty redhead was going to take offense, but then a great snort of laughter broke from her. Soon, both girls were laughing so hard they were clutching their sides and wiping away tears.
“Wait till I tell my mother,” howled Fleur. “She makes such a big thing of our aristocratic French heritage. I can’t wait to see her face. Beloved Flower of the Roof!” That set them off again and they dissolved into paroxysms of laughter.
“Do you know what we need?” Fleur said when they recovered.
“Nope.” Eulalie focused on her face with a great effort. “What do we need?”
“Shots. Call the bartender.”
Donal
Trainee Constable Donal Macgregor and his training officer, Tutor Constable Duncan Burns were responding to a call in the leafy neighborhood of Morningside in Edinburgh. It fell outside their usual ambit, but they had been the only unit available when the call came in.
Burns drove, and Donal rode shotgun.
“It’s over there on the right, sir.” He pointed to a house with a dark-blue paneled door.
“I see it, lad.” Burns slowed down. “Is this your first missing person’s case?”
“Not exactly, sir. We had a child that had wandered off from his mother in a shopping center the other day. We found him easily enough. He had gone to ground in an ice-cream shop.”
“This is rather different, son. A senior citizen who has gone missing from his home. What are your initial thoughts, Trainee Constable?”
“I prefer to keep an open mind, sir. I don’t want to assume it’s one thing, only to find out that it’s something completely different. That wastes time.”
Burns frowned. He couldn’t decide if Macgregor was being insolent. The lad was difficult to read. But his face was open and guileless, and, above all, respectful. He decided to give him the benefit of the doubt.
He gave a short laugh. “An open mind. Nothing wrong with that, lad. Let’s go in.”
As they got out of the car, the front door opened, and a woman emerged. She was about forty years old and well-dressed. She looked worried.
“Mrs. MacDiarmaid?” asked Burns.
She hurried towards them. “Yes, thank you for coming.”
“My name is Constable Burns, and this is Trainee Constable Macgregor. It’s your father that has gone missing, is that correct?”
“That’s right. He went to the corner shop two hours ago to buy cigarettes, and he hasn’t returned. I’m so worried. Anything could have happened to him.”
Constable Burns sent Donal a subtle nod, telling him to take over. He wanted to watch the lad’s technique.
“Was your father on foot, Mrs. MacDiarmaid?” asked Macgregor.
“Yes. He doesn’t drive anymore. He’s seventy-five and not in the best of health. His eyesight isn’t what it was. He gets around well enough on foot or I’ll drive him wherever he wants to go. He’ll hop on the bus too, no problem.”
“Have you confirmed with
the shopkeeper whether your father got there?”
“I have indeed, Constable. Mr. Sanjay said he left there two hours ago with his pack of Camel Plain.”
“Did Mr. Sanjay notice which direction your father was walking in?”
“He says he was serving another customer and wasn’t paying attention.”
“Mrs. MacDiarmaid, has your father ever gone missing before?”
“No, never. That’s what makes this so particularly worrying. He never wanders off.”
“First time for everything, hen,” said Constable Burns. “Sounds like he’s getting a touch of the old…” He tapped his right temple with his forefinger.
“Dementia? Oh, no. He’s as sharp as a tack, I assure you.”
“They all are, hen, until they aren’t, if you follow me. Ten to one we’ll find him wandering around the Community Gardens with no idea how he got there.”
Donal waited for his superior officer to stop talking.
“Does your father carry a cellphone, Mrs. MacDiarmaid?”
“I got him one, but he never uses it. He just couldn’t get the hang of all those buttons. It’s probably lying next to his bed with a dead battery, as usual.”
“Is there any chance he had an engagement this morning that he forgot to tell you about?”
“I suppose that’s possible. He’s usually very good at telling me where he’s going, but it is possible that he forgot.”
“You bet he forgot,” said Constable Burns. “Probably forgot his own name too. You sit tight, hen. We’ll check out the public parks. We’ll bring him back to you in a jiffy.”
“Are there friends your father sees regularly, or places he frequents for lunch?” asked Donal.
“He’s fond of the Copper Kettle on Tipperlinn Road. He and his friends from the regiment meet there for lunch sometimes, but he always tells me when they’re getting together.”
“Mrs. MacDiarmaid,” said Constable Burns. “I’ve been in this business long enough to know a case of dementia when I hear one. You sit tight, like I said, and we’ll…”
“May I have a word, Constable Burns?” asked Donal.
Burns heaved a sigh but allowed himself to be drawn to one side.
“You said you wanted me to deal with this, sir. You wanted to observe my witness-handling techniques.”
“I know what I said, lad, but the truth is, you’re wet behind the ears. While we stand here flapping our gums, this lady’s poor father is probably freezing half to death on a bench in the Community Gardens, unable to remember his own address. We need to go and find him.”
“But Mrs. MacDiarmaid says he has been showing no signs of dementia.”
“The relatives are always the last to notice, lad. The truth is, everyone likes to think their situation is special and unique, but they’re just like everyone else. Let’s go and find this poor bugger before he does himself a mischief.”
“May I make a suggestion, sir?”
Burns sighed again. “Fire away, sonny.”
“Why don’t we split up? I’ll check out the Copper Kettle and other cafés on Tipperlinn Road, and you check out the parks. You’ll take the car of course, sir.”
“Very well, lad, very well. You’re lucky I can remember being a trainee myself. I used to think I knew it all too back in those days.”
Half an hour later, Donal was having tea with Mrs. MacDiarmaid and her father. He had found the old gentleman finishing lunch at the Copper Kettle with his friends from the regiment. He had left a message for his daughter on the fridge telling her where he was going. The message had worked loose from its fridge magnet and drifted to the ground where it had landed upside down under the pantry door.
Father and daughter were both apologetic about the trouble they had caused.
Donal assured them that it was all in a day’s work, and that peace of mind was the reason they paid their taxes, after all.
A sharp blast of a horn told him that his superior officer was waiting for him outside. He had sent a text message to Constable Burns letting him know the moment he had found the missing senior citizen.
Donal said goodbye to Mrs. MacDiarmaid and her father and went outside to face the music.
It made no sense to him, but his experience of human nature told him that Constable Burns was likely to be annoyed with him for having solved the case. One’s superior officers didn’t like to be proved wrong. Once Donal had figured that out, his life had become much less complicated.
It was a relief to find Constable Burns in a placid mood.
“You got lucky today, son. Nine times out of ten I would have been right, and you would have been wrong. Today was that one in ten exception. I still think the fact that he didn’t tell his daughter where he was going is a sign of creeping dementia, but they’ll find that out soon enough.”
Donal opened his mouth to tell Constable Burns about the note that had drifted off the fridge door but closed it again. Superior officers didn’t like being corrected by their juniors.
Buoyed up by Constable Burns’s relaxed attitude to being proved wrong, Donal decided to confide in him about something that had been worrying him since the night before.
“Constable Burns,” he said, as they drove back to their local division. “May I speak freely?”
“Of course, lad. Of course, you may. As your tutor, I’d expect nothing less. What’s troubling you?”
“I’ve been conducting an investigation into financial irregularities in the annual budget of our police station. Last night, Inspector Petrick came to my lodgings and warned me not to continue with my efforts. I decided not to listen to him and went on to examine the budget late into the night. Sir, I’m concerned that it is worse than a few careless irregularities. I think we might be dealing with wide-ranging fraud, and I have to wonder why the Inspector tried to warn me off.”
There was silence in the car.
Donal turned to look at his superior officer, but the man’s face was set like stone.
Chapter 2
Eulalie
Fleur summoned the bartender with a sweep of her hand and ordered a round of tequila shots for her and Eulalie.
Eulalie had never had tequila before, but this struck her as an excellent idea. When the order arrived, it consisted of some pale gold liquid in a couple of short, fat shot glasses, a small plate of powdered salt, and a pair of lemon slices.
Eulalie peered at these items. “Whazzat for?”
Fleur waved her hands in the air.
“Lick your hand, see?” She demonstrated. “Then sprinkle some salt where you licked.”
She waited while Eulalie followed suit.
“Then you lick the salt and down your shot.” She mimed the action. “Don’t sip it, dude. You’ll regret it. When you’ve downed it, you bite into the lemon wedge. It’s an experience.”
Copying Fleur, Eulalie licked the salt, knocked back the tequila, shuddered, and sank her teeth into the lemon.
“You know what we need?” said Eulalie, once her eyes had stopped watering.
“What do we need?”
“Another round of those.” And she ordered another round from the bartender.
It was close to midnight when Rehana came up and tapped them on the shoulder.
“We’re going back to the dorm now. You guys are seriously wasted. Come along now.”
“Don’t wanna go back yet,” mumbled Fleur.
Eulalie licked her thick, dry lips. “Belov’d Flower an’ I will come later…”
“No, you must come now. We’re walking back together, remember?”
“Oh, yes…” Eulalie said. “The murderer guy. Well, don’t worry. I will look after my belov’d flower and get her home safely.”
“We will… we will take the bus back,” said Fleur. “Runs until… two o’clock.”
Rehana rolled her eyes. “Okay, but don’t miss the last bus back to campus. If you do, call campus security to come and get you.”
She and the other girls left, just
as Eulalie’s fourth round of shots arrived.
“She’s such a… a worrier,” said Fleur. “We’ll be fine.”
“Course we will. You wanna know why?”
“Yes.” Fleur dabbed her finger into the salt and licked it. “Why?”
“Because I will keep you safe with my shoop… with my shooper powers.”
Fleur looked impressed. “Have you got shoop… I’m mean superpowers?”
“Yes, I do. I have them.”
“What are your superpowers?”
“Well…” Eulalie frowned as she tried to remember. “I can… I can see into the future.”
“Thass wonderful!” bellowed Fleur, thumping her hand on the table. Several people turned to look. “I mean, that’s wonderful,” she continued in a lower voice. “You can tell me the lottery numbers for next week.”
Eulalie shook her head emphatically. Then she stopped because it was making her dizzy.
“Nah… doesn’t work like that. I can only see a… a few seconds into the future.”
“A few seconds?” Fleur laughed until she was bent nearly double. “Whassa good in that?”
“Hmmph.” Eulalie sulked. “I thought it was pretty good.”
Another thought occurred to her.
“Wait, I thought of ‘nother shooper power. I have dreams too.”
“You do?” said Fleur.
“I do.” Eulalie nodded solemnly.
“Me too! What are your dreams about?”
“I sometimes, like, dream I’m someone else. I can see what they see and stuff like that.”
“Thass a shooper power, all right.”
At two o’clock, they settled their tab as the bartender called last rounds. Fleur stared at her watch, trying to bring the face into focus. “We’ve missed… we’ve missed the last bus. Must phone… campus security.”
Eulalie made a sweeping gesture that almost toppled her over. “No campus security. We can… we can walk. I’ll keep you safe with my shooper powers.”
This struck Fleur as perfectly reasonable, and the two of them reeled out into the night. The fresh air made them stagger.
The Complete H-Series of The Eulalie Park Mysteries Page 67