“You can tell me how one looks at three suspects and knows which one is the murderer.”
“So, you’ve narrowed it down to three, dear?”
“That’s right. The table-tennis player is too young.”
“And you’ve interviewed all of them?”
“I have.”
“And do you have a suspicion as to who it might be?”
“Yes,” said Eulalie. “I do have a suspicion, but I can’t prove it. All I have is an inconsistent statement by one of the suspects.”
“These men – these suspects – do they have wives or family? People who are close to them?”
“Two of them have wives and one is close to his parents. What do you have in mind?”
“I always think that the people who are closest to men like this know what is going on. On some level they know. They might be in denial. They might not know everything. They might be actively working to protect their men. But on some level, they know.”
“You think it might be worth interviewing the wives and families?”
“Without warning, and without the men knowing about it. If they know in advance, the men will prepare them for what they should say. You need to come at them unexpectedly and get them talking before they can consult their men. One of these women knows something, however much she might want to deny it.”
There was an intensity in Mrs. Belfast’s voice that made Eulalie wonder what her connection to this issue was. Had she ever been linked to a violent or abusive man?
“I’m going to try it,” said Eulalie. “Perhaps someone knows more than they think.”
Her phone buzzed with an incoming text.
Chief Macgregor: We’re short-staffed thanks to the governor’s office. Can you come in and help with the car rental companies?
Eulalie slipped her phone back into her pocket.
“Looks like talking to the women will have to wait until later. What’s going on at the governor’s office today?”
“There’s a visit from some heads of state. I think they’re discussing a trade agreement.”
“Oh, right. I read about that. That must be why Chief Macgregor is short staffed. He wants help canvassing the car rental agencies. So, that’s where I’ll be this morning.”
“Have a productive time, dear.”
Eulalie took her Vespa out to the airport where most of the car rental companies were located. There were also a few around the bus terminal in Queen’s Town, but the airport was a good place to start because it was big and anonymous. Chief Macgregor met her there with a six-pack of photographs he had put together to show potential witnesses. It contained current photographs of all three suspects, plus three men of a similar age and build. If this matter ever got as far as prosecution, the courts wouldn’t accept an identification made in any other way.
“Has the governor’s office really taken all your officers for the day?” she asked, noticing the crease that hovered between his brows.
“It really has. There’s a skeleton staff running the police station, but otherwise all available officers are guarding and escorting the trade delegation. I know these trade agreements are important, but it’s inconvenient when you’re in the middle of a murder investigation.”
“How should we divide this up? We don’t want to duplicate each other.”
Chief Macgregor indicated a walkway outside the arrivals terminal. It was lined on both sides by car rental companies.
“There are eight agencies here. You take four and I’ll take four. We’ll show them the six-pack and ask them to check their records for the last three days or so. They can search for the three names or any variation on them.”
“What are the chances our perpetrator used his real name?”
“Slim,” admitted Chief Macgregor. “But we have to try anyway.”
He took the agencies on the east side of the walkway, while Eulalie took those on the west. It was a time-consuming operation. At each new place, Eulalie had to show the six-pack to the staff members and wait while they struggled with their erratic memories. When you rented out cars to the public all day long, it was difficult to remember a random face from a few days earlier.
Then she had to wait while they searched their data base for the names Ronald Coward, Laurent Task, and Thashin Bapanda – or any variation thereof. She asked about a white Chevy Spark in particular, but was prepared to consider any model of vehicle.
All the faces in the six-pack got some level of recognition, including those that belonged to non-suspects. One man was convinced that Thashin Bapanda had rented a car from him two days earlier, but that rental turned out to have been made by another Indian man of roughly the same age.
One woman thought that Laurent Task looked familiar, but on reflection decided that the man she was thinking of was much younger and only slightly similar in the face.
“If you were to believe these people, everyone on the six-pack rented a car in the last few days,” she said when she met up with Chief Macgregor later. “It’s infuriating. I have nothing concrete. Please tell me you did better than I did.”
“Not really. None of the names turned up any matches, except for Ronald. One of the agencies I visited processed three Ronalds in the last few days, but they were all wrong.”
“Yes, I had a couple of Ronalds too. Either these people are particularly unobservant, or none of our suspects has rented a car in the last few days. Shall we go to the bus terminal?”
There were three more car rental agencies at the bus terminal, all of them subsidiary branches of ones at the airport. Disappointingly, none yielded a concrete result.
Chapter 21
“Is it possible that the sex worker you spoke to was mistaken and that the man wasn’t driving a hired car?” asked the chief.
“She never said it was a hired car. I jumped to that conclusion when she described it to me as a late-model white Chevy Spark with a recent registration. It’s the most commonly rented car on the island.”
“None of the suspects drives a car like that. It must have been either hired or borrowed.”
“They are all tall, memorable men. Yet none of the car rental people recognized them.”
“Is it possible that the man in the car was just a regular client? Maybe he really was driving her around prior to getting down to business.”
Eulalie considered this. “I don’t think so. There were too many details about the encounter that link to the man I met in Finger Alley. The baseball cap pulled down low over his eyes. The desire for her to talk about her personal life. That’s too much of a coincidence. Besides, it takes a lot to make an experienced sex worker panic. Most of them have a high tolerance for unusual situations. Something made this woman throw herself out of a moving car. We need to take that seriously.”
“Agreed,” said Chief Macgregor. “But what about our suspects? What if our perpetrator is not one of them?”
“That’s always possible, but they are the best leads we have at the moment. I have a strong feeling it’s one of them, but I’m not sure which one yet. And my suspicions are irrelevant without proof. I wish I knew why he was acting so irrationally after years of tightly controlled behavior.”
Chief Macgregor checked his watch. “I have to get to the governor’s mansion now to give a speech on safety and security to the trade delegation. They want to know that law and order are strong on the island before they bring their business here. Thanks for working the car rental agencies with me. At least we’ve covered that base.”
“Even though we didn’t get a result.” But Eulalie refused to be daunted. “I still have the wives and families to interview. Mrs. Belfast thinks one of them knows something.”
“She might be right.”
“You don’t know anything about her background, do you?”
“Who, Mrs. Belfast? No, I don’t. I wasn’t the one who hired her. She was already in place as personal assistant to the chief of police when I started there. I know nothing about her personal life
. Why do you ask?”
“Just the way she was talking about men leading double lives, and their wives knowing something about it even if they try to deny it to themselves. It sounded personal. As though she might have gone through something like that herself.”
“Why don’t you ask her?”
“I don’t feel comfortable probing into her personal life. I’m her employer. She might take it the wrong way.”
“One thing we can be sure of is that she doesn’t have a criminal record. That would have been checked before she was brought in to work at the police station.”
Eulalie thought of her gentle secretary with her cats-eye glasses, beehive hair, and animal-rescuing tendencies. “That’s a relief. I thought she was a hardened criminal.”
“Then why did you hire…” He caught himself. “That’s a joke.”
Eulalie gave him a kiss on the cheek. “Certainement. You had better go to your meeting. Knock ‘em dead, Chief. We need all the investment we can get on the island.”
Chief Macgregor got into his unmarked police car and drove off in the direction of the governor’s mansion. Eulalie contemplated her next move. Catch them by surprise, Mrs. Belfast had said. Don’t give them a chance to get their stories straight. That was exactly what she would do.
She took out her phone and called Lafayette Motors. She concentrated on strengthening her French accent until it was the most noticeable thing about her voice.
“Oui, bonjour,” she said when the receptionist answered. “Is Mr. Coward available for me to speak to, please?”
“I’m afraid not, Mademoiselle. If you want to speak to him, you will need to make an appointment. He spends most of the day out of the office. Right now, he is on a test drive with a client. Can I set up an appointment for you to speak to him?”
“Non, merci. I will phone again later.”
She ended the call. She had no idea how long Ronald Coward had been out on the test drive. He could come back at any moment, as he had on the occasion she had interviewed him. But that had been at the end of the day, whereas this was late morning. She would take a chance and visit his wife now.
She rode her Vespa to the car dealership and asked to see Elizabeth Coward. The woman came out of her office, and recognized Eulalie instantly.
“You’re the lady from the police,” she said. “Is something wrong?”
“Not at all, Mrs. Coward. I just wanted to ask you a few more questions, if I may.”
The woman sighed. “I thought we were finished with all that.”
“Not quite. We are more convinced than ever that the murders are linked to the time the Olympic delegation spent in Sydney. You were with them, Mrs. Coward. I would very much like your opinion.”
“You’d better come into my office then.”
She led Eulalie to a small room and closed the door behind them. This was an encouraging sign. Even if her husband came back during the interview, he wouldn’t immediately see what was going on.
Elizabeth sat at her desk opposite Eulalie and faced her with the air of someone about to take unpleasant medicine.
“What do you want to talk about?”
“I get the feeling that your time in Sydney is a bad memory for you, Mrs. Coward. Can you tell me why that is?”
“Isn’t it obvious? It was one of the most humiliating times of my life. I was treated like a common criminal. It was supposed to be an adventure for both of us – a kind of second honeymoon, even though we hadn’t been married all that long. We both knew it was likely to be the only chance we would get to see Australia. It was such an exciting time. For Ronald to be representing his country in the decathlon was a dream come true. His qualifying stats were so good that it seemed as though he could do really well in the heats, and maybe even reach the finals. But just to have qualified for the Olympics at all was a miracle. It was fun to go to briefings by the Olympic Committee, and for him to be kitted out in his official Olympic gear. I can’t even tell you how excited we were.”
“It sounds like you had high expectations for the trip. How did the reality live up to that?”
“I’ve often thought about that. It wasn’t one particular thing that went wrong. It was more like several little things on top of each other. The flight was longer than we expected. We had to change planes twice – once in Dubai and once in Singapore. We flew coach, and Ronald was disappointed. He thought the committee should have paid for an upgrade to business class for the athletes. So, we were exhausted and jetlagged when we got there. We found that our accommodation in the Olympic Village wasn’t as comfortable as we’d hoped. It was very basic - almost like dormitories - and the food wasn’t great. We were starting to feel really disappointed.”
“How were Ronald and the other athletes reacting to this?”
“The others didn’t seem to mind so much, but they weren’t doing a really difficult event like the decathlon. A decathlete’s body is a finely tuned machine. Anything can put it off – a bad night’s sleep, unsatisfying food, anything. And poor Ronald is so sensitive. Things started to go wrong as soon as he went out onto the practice field. The other athletes seemed to be managing more easily than he was, and he immediately suspected that their accommodation was better than ours. It upset him so much, the poor darling. It was so unfair. Then things began to go wrong in the heats, and Ronald knew the other athletes were all against him. It affected his performance. He was eliminated early.”
“That must have been hard for him,” said Eulalie.
“Oh, it was. Especially when he saw that girl – the fencer, Sophie Webb - go all the way. Her event was so much easier than his, and she was only up against women. Of course, Ronald felt it was unfair.”
“It must have been difficult to stay cheerful with all this happening. I imagine you were working hard to give your husband the emotional support he needed.”
Elizabeth’s eyes were unfocused, as though she were staring into the past.
“It was hard to keep his spirits up. He wasn’t interested in seeing the bright side of anything. Everything upset him – even me. It got to a point where I couldn’t say or do anything right.”
Eulalie touched her arm sympathetically. “That’s hard. It must have led to lots of arguments.”
The other woman’s eyes came back into focus, and she stared at Eulalie.
“How did you know that? I didn’t say anything about that.”
“A couple of people I’ve spoken to say they heard the two of you arguing while you were in Sydney. They say the arguments became really intense at times – bordering on violent.”
“What? Who said that? It’s not true.”
“Isn’t it, though? Is it really not true?”
Elizabeth’s eyes filled with tears. “It wasn’t Ron’s fault. He was under so much pressure. I know I can be irritating at times. You could hardly blame him for losing his temper. He never hit me, if that’s what you’re thinking. If anyone says differently, they’re lying.”
“Is that why you took the magazine?”
“Absolutely not! That was an accident, as I’ve explained before.”
“There are psychologists who say that there are no such things as accidents.”
Elizabeth opened her mouth to issue a blistering retort, but no sound came. Instead, the tears began to roll down her cheeks.
“I don’t know what came over me. I was at the concession stand, and I wasn’t carrying any money. I used to love glossy magazines back in the day before everything moved onto the internet. There was a gorgeous Vanity Fair there. I really felt as though I deserved it after the horrible time we’d been having. It was the last copy left, and someone else was hovering nearby to buy it. I knew if I went back to our room to get the money, it would be gone. So, I waited until I thought no one was looking, and I slipped it into my bag. I had hardly gone a couple of steps before a security guard tapped me on the shoulder. I was utterly devastated. I knew this would kill Ron after everything he’d been through. So, I pretended
I’d put it in my bag by mistake. I acted as though I was as horrified by the whole thing as they were. Well, I didn’t have to act. I was horrified at what I had done. Thankfully, they decided not to make an example of me. They let me pay for the magazine, and no more was said.”
“But it came to your husband’s ears?”
“Yes, it did. And that’s when we had our worst fight of all. Ron blamed me for everything that had gone wrong on the trip. He said he should never have let me come. He said I’d brought him nothing but bad luck. If I hadn’t been there, he might have got into the finals. It was dreadful.”
“How has your husband been since you got back from Sydney? Does he still go through phases of being angry with you?”
“Well, of course. That’s married life for you. Ronald hasn’t always been lucky. He never got the fortune or recognition that he deserved. And yes, sometimes it has been my fault. When you’ve had to deal with as much disappointment as Ron has, it’s natural to lash out. It’s just part of the give and take of married life.”
Eulalie watched her face carefully.
“Would you describe your husband as a good man?”
“I most certainly would. He’s a good husband, a fair, responsible boss, and a fine member of the community. And he doesn’t have so much as a traffic fine against his name.”
“Okay.” Eulalie stood up. “Thank you for taking the time to speak to me.”
“It’s a pleasure. I don’t see how this is going to help you catch anyone, but I’m happy to be of service.”
Eulalie left the office and stepped into the reception area of Lafayette Motors. Ronald Coward was standing at the front desk, helping a client to fill in paperwork. He was a big, broad man. His physical appearance was enough to intimidate anyone. She wondered who exactly he had been using it to intimidate lately.
Then she hopped on her Vespa and headed back to Lafayette Drive.
As she drove, she reflected on the glimpses she had been given into one woman’s marriage to a spoilt man-baby. Everything that had gone wrong in his life, he had managed to blame his wife for. He rewrote every situation in his own mind to make himself blameless and to shift the responsibility onto someone else. He was also noticeably paranoid.
The Complete H-Series of The Eulalie Park Mysteries Page 114