“Hitchhiking,” said Eulalie. Chief Macgregor nodded.
“What do you mean?” said Wright. “You think someone picked her up?”
“Our first victim was also out hitchhiking.”
“That was nearly thirty years ago, Chief. And the ribbon thing could be a coincidence. I like the boyfriend for this one. He fits the profile, and he knows it. He was acting real squirrelly when we questioned him.”
“We’ll interview him again. But first he needs to make a positive identification of the body. Please set that up and supervise it, Detective Wright. If Dr. Autry has begun work on the body, she must hold off until we get the identification confirmed.” He looked at the photographs of Lisa Lavalle that Detective Wright had set out on his desk. “It certainly looks like her. Good work on this case, Detective. Murder can take over from here, but I’d appreciate it if you handle the ID. You can then put the missing person’s docket to bed.”
“How was your morning at the Olympic committee?” Chief Macgregor asked when they were back in his office.
Eulalie rubbed her face. “That went straight out of my mind. It went well, thanks. I thought I was getting a good handle on this case until you found the new body. Now I don’t know what to think. This guy, whoever he is, is clearly not interested in staying under the radar. He knows we’re investigating the first murder, and he doesn’t care.”
“Tell me what you discovered.”
“We found out that the T-shirt the man was wearing sixteen years ago was part of the athlete’s official gear. The coaches and administrators wore different outfits. That doesn’t mean he definitely was an athlete, but it’s a strong indication.”
Chief Macgregor began to take notes. “What else?”
“Five athletes represented Prince William Island at the Olympic Games that year. There was a fencer, an archer, a boxer, a decathlete, and a table tennis player. The fencer is a woman, so she doesn’t count, although I haven’t ruled out her husband. I’m looking at some other family members too.”
“The ages of the athletes would be important.”
“That’s right. It needs to be someone who was in his late-twenties or early-thirties sixteen years ago.”
“What is the minimum age the killer would have had to be when your mother arrived in Queen’s Town all those years ago?”
“That’s hard to say. I suppose about eighteen. I know it’s on the young side – most people don’t start their murdering careers that early. It might explain why he went for a fourteen-year-old girl, though. Perhaps he was only a kid himself.”
“Could it have been an accident?”
“Or an impulse. It might not have been premeditated.”
“And then? He discovered he had a taste for it? A taste he waited twenty-eight years before indulging in again?”
Eulalie got up to pace. She always thought better on her feet. “It doesn’t make sense, does it? If he was eighteen when he murdered Fauve, he would have been thirty when I encountered him in Finger Alley. That feels about right. That would make him forty-six today. Let’s allow for a margin of error of four years in either direction. He could have been as young as fourteen when he encountered Fauve, and he could be as old as fifty now. You don’t get many Olympians older than thirty-four. That’s about the upper limit of their age range. So, we’re looking for a well-built man, six-foot or over, between the ages of forty-two and fifty. I need to see how many of those athletes fit the profile now.”
“Are you going to interview them?”
“First I need to find them. I don’t even know if they’re still on the island.”
“If you want me to accompany you to any of the interviews, just let me know.”
“Thanks, Chief. I might take you up on that. What are you doing for the rest of the day?”
“I’m going to the medical examiner’s office to see if the boyfriend has made a positive ID and whether Dr. Autry has a clear cause of death for us yet. I’ll text you any information I get.
“Are you busy, Mrs. B?”
Eulalie was back in the office.
“Just stuffing invoices into envelopes, dear. I want to take them to the post office first thing tomorrow morning.”
“Good, then you can help me. I’m going to send you some names, pictures, and profiles. The information on these people is sixteen years out of date. I want to know where they are now. It will go faster if we share the list between us.”
“I’m ready and waiting, dear. Are these the people who went to Sydney?”
“Yes, they are. I’m hoping most of them are still on-island.”
Eulalie divided the list into athletes and non-athletes. She kept the athletes for herself. To Mrs. Belfast, she sent Sophie Webb’s husband, Thashin Bapanda’s father, and the coach who had accompanied Jules Chatel to Sydney – purely because photographs of him showed that he fitted the physical profile.
With that out of the way, Eulalie settled down to do a deep dive into the four remaining athletes.
Laurent Task was easy to find. He ran an archery school in Queen’s Town. It was called Task Academy, and Eulalie realized she had driven past it many times on her way towards the industrial area of the island. It was close enough to town to be convenient for parents who wanted to drop their children off for a lesson. His wife was listed as Marie Task, which suggested that he had married the woman who had accompanied him to Sydney as his fiancé.
Thashin Bapanda worked as a teacher at St. Michael’s School for Boys, an exclusive boarding school situated on St Michael’s Cay, a small island off the south-east coast of Prince William Island. The school’s website listed him as a math teacher under their academic staff, and as a boxing coach under their sport staff. He was credited with having introduced the science of boxing to St. Michael’s. It was now their fastest growing sport.
Ron Coward, whose event had been the decathlon, sold used cars right here in town. His business was called Lafayette Motors and it was situated close to Lafayette Drive. It seemed he was still married to the same woman – Elizabeth Coward.
Finally, there was Jules Chatel who worked in the actuarial department of a major insurance company – Queen’s Town Life.
It was a relief to find that they were all living locally. The only question was which of the four she would interview first. There wasn’t much left of the day, so it would have to be somewhere close by.
She opted for Ron Coward’s used car dealership. With a bit of luck, the man himself would still be there that afternoon.
Chapter 13
Eulalie thought about creating a cover story for herself. She could be a woman looking for a good deal on a used car, or a young mother wanting archery lessons for her child. But who would she really be fooling?
If one of these men was the person who had accosted her in Finger Alley all those years ago, he would recognize her instantly.
She had grown up hearing how much she looked like her mother, although she had her father’s eyes. Eulalie had no photographs of her mother. Photography was largely rejected by the villagers, although some photographic images had surfaced over the years. Instead, there were pencil and ink artists who made hyper-realistic portraits of every villager throughout their lives. Three had been done of Fauve de la Cour – one when she was about five years old, another when she was ten, and the last shortly after she had given birth to her child.
Angel kept the originals, but Eulalie had copies which she had framed as a triptych and kept by her bedside, next to similar images of her father.
The portrait of Fauve at the age of fourteen was especially striking. When Eulalie looked at it quickly, she could almost believe it was a picture of herself. Only the eyes were wrong. Had Fauve mentioned her to the killer, she wondered. Had she mentioned the tiny baby she had left behind during her ill-fated trip to Queen’s Town?
The man must have known who she was all these years, Eulalie realized. He must have watched her grow up. Prince William Island was a small place. It was the
easiest thing in the world to keep an eye on someone. He would know about her private investigation business – about her office on Bonaparte Avenue, about her relationship with the chief of police. He would know everything about her.
There was no point in a cover story. The only people she would fool would be the innocent men – the ones who had nothing to do with the deaths.
She would go in as herself. If Ronald Coward was the man she was looking for, he would recognize her. Maybe – and this was her secret hope – she would recognize him too. Maybe she would know him after sixteen years. She hadn’t seen his face, but something might tell her that this was the man she was looking for.
As she rode her Vespa out towards Lafayette Motors, Eulalie wondered why he had never tried to carry out his promise that she would join her mother when the time was right. When was the time going to be right? When she was fourteen? When she was older?
Of course, Eulalie wasn’t as easy to catch by surprise as her mother had been. According to Angel, Fauve’s empathic qualities had been highly developed. She had known when people were sick, or sad, or pregnant before they knew it themselves. But she had never had Eulalie’s early-warning instinct that alerted her to danger before it occurred.
Eulalie tried to imagine someone swinging something at the back of her head – an iron bar, perhaps. She saw herself ducking out of the way. There was no way she could be caught by surprise like that. Had he tried over the years? How many times had she stepped out of the way, got off the street, refused to get into a car? Had any of those times been him?
No, she wasn’t as easy a target as her mother – poor fourteen-year-old Fauve, alone and confused in a strange place, suffering from postnatal depression, and believing that hitchhiking was a clever answer to her problems.
Eulalie squeezed her eyes shut as the pain of it hit her. If it took her the rest of her life, she would find justice for her mother.
She pulled up in front of Lafayette Motors and parked her scooter. The dealership was still open but showing signs of winding down for the day. It was nearly five o’clock. She walked into the office and went up to the front desk where a young woman was playing solitaire on her computer. Eulalie took out her police liaison identity card.
“Hello. My name’s Eulalie Park. I’m here on police business. I’d like to speak to Mr. Ronald Coward please.”
The receptionist’s eyes went wide as she looked at the card.
“He’s out on a test drive with a client. I’m calling Mrs. Coward.”
“That’s not necessary. I’ll wait for him…”
But she had already pressed a buzzer.
An office door opened and a smartly dressed woman in her early forties came out.
“What’s the problem, Marcie?”
“Are you Mrs. Elizabeth Coward?”
“I am. What’s this all about?”
She glanced at the card Eulalie was holding. “Is there a problem with a vehicle we sold?”
“No, it’s nothing like that. I just need to speak to your husband.”
“He’s out on a test drive, Mrs. Coward,” said Marcie.
“Then he’ll be back within ten minutes. Perhaps I can help you in the meanwhile. I’m involved in every aspect of my husband’s life.”
The woman led Eulalie to a seating area clustered around a tea and coffee station. They sat down on imitation leather seats.
“Mrs. Coward, did you accompany your husband to the Sydney Olympic Games?”
“Sydney?” Color rushed into the woman’s face. “Is this about the magazine? After all these years. How many times do I have to tell you people that it was a mistake?”
It took Eulalie a moment to remember what she was talking about. The shoplifted magazine from the concession stand in the Olympic Village. No charges had been pressed.
It was on the tip of her tongue to reassure the woman that this had nothing to do with that when it occurred to her that the misunderstanding could be useful.
“You know Prince William Island has a zero-tolerance policy for shoplifting?”
Elizabeth Coward lowered her voice. “Look, nobody here even knows about that. I’d like to keep it that way. It would undermine my authority as office manager to have this getting out. I will cooperate fully, but please try to understand my position.”
Eulalie pretended to consider this.
“Okay, but only if you cooperate fully.”
“Thank you.”
“Where was your husband last night between midnight and six in the morning?”
“What?” Her face was a picture of confusion. “Why do you need to know that? What is this about…?”
Eulalie held up a finger. “Cooperation, remember?”
“Right, yes. Sorry. He was at home with me. We got back from work at about five-thirty yesterday afternoon. Ron popped to the shops to get me a tub of cream that I needed to make dinner.”
“How long was he gone?”
“Quite a while, actually. He told me the convenience store we normally use was out of cream, so he had to go further afield to look for it. He must have been gone about forty-five minutes.”
“And then?”
“We ate dinner at about seven o’clock. Then we watched TV for a while and went to bed.”
“What was on?”
“It was Netflix. We were watching that show about the Danish doctor. You know the one – Bloodlines or Blood Lives or whatever it’s called. We went to bed at around eleven. And that’s it.”
“Are you sure he didn’t leave the house during the course of the night?”
“Of course, I am.”
“Are you a sound sleeper, Mrs. Coward?”
“Fairly sound. What is this all about?”
“Are you saying there is no way your husband could have got out of bed and left the house without your noticing? You would have felt him or heard him?”
“I… I would have, yes.”
Eulalie noticed the hesitation. “What is it you’re not telling me, Mrs. Coward? I must remind you that you agreed to cooperate fully.”
“Okay. Look, the thing is… my husband I don’t share a room anymore. Ever since he put on weight, his snoring has become unbearable. I wasn’t getting a wink of sleep. We have separate bedrooms, but I know I would have heard if he’d left the house – especially if he had taken the car out. I don’t sleep that deeply. I would have heard him. Definitely.”
“Thank you for your frankness, Mrs. Coward.”
“Please tell me what this is all…”
“Here’s Mr. Coward now!” said Marcie, the receptionist.
Eulalie turned to see the former Olympian walking into reception. He had a client with him – a man of about his own age who shook hands with him and promised to be in touch when he made up his mind about the car. His wife hadn’t been lying when she said he had put on weight. He was still a tall, imposing figure, but the muscle that had carried him to the decathlon event in Sydney had turned into a layer of fat. He wasn’t obese, but he appeared soft rather than athletic.
His red hair had faded to a sandy brown color and his hairline was receding. His freckles had faded too, giving his skin a more even appearance.
Eulalie got no vibes from him at all. He was almost unrecognizable as the Olympic athlete from seventeen years earlier, and he was certainly unrecognizable as the man who had approached her in Finger Alley. Only his size was right.
“Come here a moment, darling,” said Elizabeth. “There’s someone who wants to speak with you.”
He was all smiles as he came up to them. “I think he’s going to bite, honey. He loved the leather trim and the 6-speed transmission. Said it drove like a dream. He won’t find a better price anywhere on the island. As soon as he’s figured that out for himself, he’ll be back.”
“Well done, Ronnie.” She patted his arm. “But listen to me a moment. This is Eulalie Park from the police department. She wants to talk about what happened in Sydney.”
The smile fad
ed from his face.
“Sydney? We put that behind us years ago. We paid for the magazine and no charges were ever filed. What is there to talk about?” He said the last part aggressively, as though he could make this go away by sheer force of will.
Eulalie stood up and moved into his space. “I told your wife that I wanted to talk about your time in Sydney, Mr. Coward. She jumped to the conclusion that I was interested in the shoplifting incident. I’m not. This is a wide-ranging investigation into the deaths of two women – one of whom was killed twenty-eight years ago, and another who was killed last night. At this stage, you are a witness, not a suspect. As such, you don’t have to be formally cautioned. If that changes, we’ll let you know. It’s your choice whether to cooperate with this investigation or not. Your helpfulness or otherwise will be duly noted.”
Elizabeth dabbed at her husband’s arm.
“You should cooperate, Ronnie. I really think you should.”
He looked from his wife to Eulalie, and back again.
“What has my wife already told you?” He turned to Elizabeth. “What did you say to her?”
“Nothing, Ronnie, I swear. I said you were home last night, and you were, weren’t you?”
“Of course, I was.”
“How do you feel about hitchhikers, Mr. Coward?”
“Hitchhikers? What kind of question is that? They’re just irresponsible kids, aren’t they? I never pick them up. Other people shouldn’t either. It just encourages them.”
“So, if you saw a fourteen-year-old girl at the side of the road, you would leave her there?”
“Oh, please. Don’t make it sound like that. This is Prince William Island, not the wild west. There are shelters that people like that can go to. It’s not my problem if some braindead teenager decides to be irresponsible.”
“You didn’t win a medal in Sydney, did you, Mr. Coward?”
The Complete H-Series of The Eulalie Park Mysteries Page 107