“I once worked here on a Saturday because he had a dinner party that evening. He didn’t go for a run. I think he goes from Monday to Friday.”
A predictable pattern, thought Eulalie. One that anyone could become familiar with.
“So, you arrived for your shift today and Mr. Chirac was already gone. Did you start work?”
“Yes, I sent one member of my team to clean the kitchen and bathrooms, and the other to get started on the bedrooms. I tackled the ground floor and the deck. I was sweeping the entrance when I heard footsteps at the side door. I assumed it was Mr. Chirac coming back from his run.”
“Did he usually let himself in through the side door?”
“Yes, it’s simpler than those huge double doors at the front entrance. Then I heard another set of footsteps, and I thought Mr. Chirac had someone with him.” She broke off and pressed her lips together.
“What did the other set of footsteps sound like?”
“Different to Mr. Chirac’s. His running shoes make a flat sound on the tiles. Sort of paf paf paf. This was a harder, clicking sound. Like, tic tic tic.
“Like a woman’s shoe? A high-heeled shoe?”
She looked struck. “I didn’t think of that, but yes, possibly. Or a shoe with a hard, flat sole.”
“What happened next?”
“I heard a voice shout out, ‘This is for Michelle!’ And then there was the most terrible scream. At the time, I thought it was a woman, but now I realize it was Mr. Chirac when he was being stab… stabbed.” She had to pause to collect herself.
“Are you sure the name was Michelle?”
“Not completely. It sounded like Michelle.”
“Could it have been Rochelle?”
The woman nodded, and tears trickled down her cheeks.
“Was the voice male or female?”
“I’m not sure. It was a hoarse voice. I couldn’t tell. It could have been either.”
“That’s fine. Don’t worry about it. Can you tell me what happened next?”
“I rushed outside to see what was going on.”
“Through the side door?”
“Yes. It was on the latch, so I pulled it open and I saw… I saw…” She sagged in her seat. She had turned pale again.
“Put your head between your knees.”
“No… I’m all right. I saw Mr. Chirac on his knees on the tiles. There was something sticking out of his back. There was so much blood.”
“Did you see or hear anyone else? Someone running away, perhaps?”
“I … I don’t think so. I wouldn’t have noticed. I was so shocked. I screamed for help. I tried to make Mr. Chirac lie on his side, but the knife was causing him too much pain.”
“Did he say anything to you? Anything at all?”
“Nothing. His eyes were glazed. I don’t know if he was really seeing me. I took out my phone and called 911. They could hardly understand me, I was so hysterical. Eventually, they got me to tell them the address of the house, and after that the ambulance arrived quickly. Mr. Chirac passed out before then. I thought… I thought he was dead.” She turned and clutched Eulalie’s wrist. “Do you think he’s dead now? Did he die while we were talking?”
“I think if he had died, I would get a message.” Eulalie held up her phone. “Look. No message. That means he’s still alive. The only reason he’s made it this far is because you heard what was happening and went outside. You probably interrupted the killer before they could finish him off. And you dialed 911 so he could get help immediately. You can be proud of yourself.”
Eulalie saw the cleaner take a breath and make a visible effort to calm down.
“Do you really think so?”
“Definitely. I’m going to go now, but here’s my card. If you remember anything else, please give me a call.”
The woman took Eulalie’s card. “I don’t think I can take much more of this.”
“That’s fine. I’m finished here, so I’ll get out of your way. Thank you for your help.”
Chapter 18
Eulalie left the house, wondering how the cleaner would feel when she had to tell the whole story all over again – possibly many times – to the police.
She turned her Vespa down Cliff Road, passing Detective Wright in an unmarked car heading up towards Edward Heights. The cleaner’s ordeal was far from over.
Eulalie wanted to go to the office and make physical notes of everything that had happened in the investigation. Seeing things written down often helped her to notice connections that she hadn’t seen before. She would grab something for lunch and then lay out her evidence.
As she got to Lafayette Drive, she stopped at a food cart for a six-spice pulled pork sub. It was one of the specialties of the island. She added a fresh fruit smoothie to her order, as a nod to the five-a-day rule. Then she took her lunch back to the office, where Mrs. Belfast was agog to talk about the stabbing.
“That poor man. Do you think he’s going to make it?”
“The thoracic surgeon says its fifty-fifty. If he makes it through the next twenty-four hours, his odds go up. She had to stitch a tear in his aorta. I googled that operation and there can be complications for weeks afterwards. It will be three months before he is back to normal.”
“Do you have any idea who did it?”
Eulalie bent to stroke the cat, who seemed very interested in her sandwich. “You’d swear he hadn’t been fed in a week.”
“What’s that, dear?”
“I’m talking about the cat, not Roland Chirac. Why does he always want my lunch?”
“He always wants my lunch too. He has a healthy appetite.”
“That’s an understatement.” Eulalie straightened up. “No, we don’t have a suspect for the knifing. It could have been a man or a woman. One of the cleaners at the house heard someone shout, ‘This is for Rochelle’. And that’s all we have to go on.”
“So, the attacker thinks Roland Chirac killed his own daughter and stabbed him for it?”
“Could be. Or someone is trying to put Chirac in the frame for his daughter’s disappearance. Dead men tell no tales. He wouldn’t have been around to deny it.”
Mrs. Belfast shook her head. “That’s a wicked thing to do.”
Eulalie took her lunch into her office and began to make notes. The stabbing had blown her investigation apart. Either Roland Chirac had been at the center of his daughter’s disappearance all along, or someone was trying very hard to distract her and the police from their investigation.
If Roland Chirac really had murdered his daughter fifteen years earlier, what would his motivation have been? According to him, he had just raised the possibility of her coming to live with him fulltime. He had never been much of a family man. He resented the drain on his finances that came with having an ex-wife and two daughters.
Rochelle had been the only one who really loved him and clung to him. Had he realized that with her gone, there would be nothing keeping his ex-wife and other daughter on Prince William Island? Could he really have been cold enough to eliminate the one child he was close to in order to improve his financial position?
There was no doubt that his fortunes had flourished after his family left. He was now living on a scale he couldn’t even have dreamed of in his downtown apartment days. Most of that was due to the boom in alternative energies on the island, but some of it could be attributed to the fact that his expenses had dropped dramatically when he no longer had a family to take care of.
Eulalie knew that when women went missing or were killed, it was almost always a close male family member who was responsible. The fact that he was her father made him more likely to be guilty, not less. Detective Wright thought so too and would probably feel that his suspicions had been confirmed by the stabbing attack.
But who would want to avenge Rochelle after all these years?
Eulalie made a note to check on the whereabouts of Rochelle’s mother and sister. Perhaps they had returned to the island when the investigation
had been re-opened.
Then there was the time capsule that had been dug up on hatching day. Who could have left that note? It was written in a round, schoolgirl’s hand. Why would the murderer leave a clue like that to be unearthed fifteen years later? If it weren’t for the note, the investigation into Rochelle’s disappearance would have stayed dormant forever. If Roland was indeed responsible for her murder, why did he hire Eulalie to look into the case? She had a reputation as a closer – as someone who solved cases.
The police department was still trying to shake off a reputation for being incompetent. Chief Macgregor had turned the department around, but it was still understaffed and working hard to regain public trust.
Eulalie knew that perpetrators often liked to participate in investigations into their own crimes. They joined search parties for people they had abducted. They contacted investigators for the sense of importance it gave them. Perhaps that was what had motivated Chirac to hire her?
She threw her sandwich wrapper in the bin and took a sip of her smoothie.
What about the people Rochelle had been close to in the year before her death? That included her friends and the teacher who had tried to help her. Did any of them blame Roland for her death?
They were a typical group of disaffected teenagers, except for one thing. They were procuring drugs for a mobbed-up contact. Rochelle had been their newest recruit and she had disappeared within months of being introduced to the club. Causing people to disappear was Mafia 101.
A number of people had mentioned that Rochelle talked too much – that she was bad at keeping secrets. Had she been about to blow the whistle on the club? Was that enough of a reason to have her killed?
Jimmy the Knife thought that Luigi Giacomo was responsible for the student drug ring back then. By all accounts, Luigi had not been above disposing of snitches. But even he would have needed a good reason to kill someone. Prince William Island had never been the wild west. Fifteen years ago, when the Queen’s Town Police Department was notoriously corrupt, murders had been rare on the island.
Rochelle would have been able to finger one low-level drug dealer at most. It didn’t seem like sufficient reason to have her killed.
It was a cold lead, anyway. Luigi Giacomo had been dead almost as long as Rochelle. When he died, the mafia’s influence on Prince William Island had died with him. There was still organized crime on the island, but it was run by the Russians and the Triads. They dealt in drugs and human trafficking. Their activities were concentrated around the Port of Prince William because it was an important center for shipping in the Indian Ocean.
All three of Rochelle’s friends felt a residual hostility towards her. There was Sheena who said that she and Rochelle were ‘frenemies’ and described their relationship as a roller coaster. It was she who had made the first contact with the dealer and got the club up and running.
Eulalie made a note that she was also homophobic and had described Mick Sorenson as a ‘pervert’. What if she had found out about Rochelle and Mikayla’s sleepover? Could she have reacted violently?
Then there was Rosalind Grier who still resented Rochelle for having hooked up with her boyfriend. Eulalie remembered how intensely she had felt everything as a teenager. What would she have done if someone had got off with a boyfriend she was madly in love with at the time? She could imagine herself feeling murderous, but not acting on those feelings. What if Rosie Pike had been a girl with fewer scruples? Could she have had the determination and ingenuity to kill Rochelle and dispose of her body so successfully that it hadn’t been found in fifteen years?
Then there was Mikayla Sorenson. It must have hurt her deeply to have gathered up the courage to come out to her best friend, only to have that friend react with ridicule and disgust. They had dealt with it at the time by ignoring each other. Mick still remembered it as a painful incident. Was it possible that they’d had another confrontation in October – one that had ended violently?
In the background was Cole Richmond. As a young teacher, he had felt compelled to try to help troubled teenagers. Rochelle had been one of those he had taken under his wing. Then a complaint from a parent had put an end to his desire to play the Good Samaritan. The man Eulalie remembered from high school had been completely hands-off in his dealing with the students. He had taught them biology and that was it.
Was it possible that it wasn’t a parent’s complaint that had spooked him, but an encounter with Rochelle that had gone horribly wrong?
Eulalie wrote the word, ‘Accident?’ in her notes. She needed to consider the possibility that Rochelle’s death had been the result of a heated encounter that had got out of hand, rather than cold-blooded murder. There was enough anger simmering among the people who had known Rochelle for this to be plausible. Even after fifteen years, that anger still lingered.
She made a note of Pastor Ellie’s name, and drew a picture of a knife next to it. It was true that the knife used to stab Roland Chirac was a hand-held dagger, rather than a throwing knife, but knives were knives. Someone who was comfortable throwing them might also be comfortable using one to stab someone.
Eulalie lowered her pen and stared ahead with unfocused eyes. The question now was which avenue she should pursue next.
Tracking down Roland Chirac’s ex-wife and daughter was a high priority. So was talking to Chirac the moment he regained consciousness, if he ever did. There was a possibility that he had managed to get a look at his attacker. She also wanted to find out whether Pastor Ellie had an alibi for the time of the attack.
She had already re-interviewed Rosalind Grier, and she should probably do the same for Mick Sorenson and Sheena Macintyre. Neither of them had told her about the club the first time she spoke to them. It would be interesting to find out what else they were withholding.
Eulalie groaned when she remembered her insurance fraud investigation. She had wanted to spend some of the day staking out the internet café in the hope of intercepting Pryor.
She glanced at her watch. It was three-thirty. There were only a few hours left of the working day. Roland Chirac remained unconscious, and the police were still processing the evidence from the scene. She could afford to spend a few hours surveilling the internet café.
She opened her door and called to her receptionist. “Is your brother more of a morning person or a night owl, Mrs. B.?”
“Definitely a night owl, dear. Noon is the crack of dawn for him.”
“Perfect. Thanks.”
Maybe he would still show up at the internet café.
Eulalie opened her desk drawer and pulled out a zip-lock bag containing her stake-out kit. She slipped it into her messenger bag, along with a bottle of water.
“I’ll be out for the rest of the afternoon, Mrs. B. Can you find out for me whether any known associates of Luigi Giacomo are still living in Queen’s Town? Preferably senior operatives.”
“Are you talking about the mob boss? The one who died a few years ago?”
“That’s him. I want someone who can reliably remember what Luigi was thinking and doing fifteen years ago.”
“No problem, dear.” Apparently, it was as simple as consulting the Yellow Pages. “Do you want me to set up a meeting for you with this person?”
“If possible. Anytime and anywhere, but preferably soon.”
“Consider it done. Have a good afternoon.”
Eulalie stroked the cat who was people-watching in his wicker basket outside. Then she hopped on her Vespa and made her way to Robespierre Lane. She left her scooter in a side road and walked the rest of the way.
Her goal was not the Internet Worx Café, but the building opposite it. It was four stories high and had a flat roof with a low parapet. Bypassing the entrance to the building, Eulalie walked around the side and began to look for a drainpipe. It was only when she got to the service alley at the back of the building that she saw it – a sturdy metal gutter that ran all the way up to the roof.
Slinging her messenger bag cros
s-body over her shoulder, she grabbed the downpipe and began to climb. To anyone watching, it would have seemed as if she were being pulled upwards by invisible ropes, so quickly did she ascend. When she reached the top, she was pleased to see no sign of a rooftop garden or anything else that might entice someone inside the building to come up to the roof.
Best of all, it commanded an excellent view of the entrance to the Internet Worx Café.
Eulalie sat on the parapet with her legs dangling into the void and prepared to wait.
Chapter 19
Watching the entrance closely, she phoned the café and spoke to the same clerk she had dealt with previously. He told her that Odysseus Pryor had not been in since they had last spoken.
If this was true, that meant that he had either left the island or he would be coming in shortly. She was hoping for the second scenario.
The third possibility was that the clerk was simply lying and had already warned Odysseus to stay away. This wasn’t the only internet café in town, but it was the most discreet. It would be inconvenient for him to have to give it up.
She opened the zip-lock bag and checked out her supplies. She had caffeine pills for alertness, and water for hydration. She had learnt that this was preferable to cups of coffee because it cut down on the need for bathroom breaks. She had strong mints to suck on to keep her focused.
She had sunscreen and a hat, both of which weren’t necessary because she was sitting in deep shadow. She had a pair of binoculars that would help her identify facial features at long range. She also had a small but high quality digital camera. Her proper photographic equipment was back home in her apartment. She found that she used it less frequently now that she had given up investigating matrimonial disputes.
When she was just starting out as a PI, following cheating spouses around town had been her bread and butter. She had invested in an excellent camera with a long lens and variable exposure for night-time photography. Matrimonial work had paid the bills, and also put her on the radar of various attorneys’ firms that had begun to use her for other investigations.
The Complete H-Series of The Eulalie Park Mysteries Page 132