The Gauguin Connection

by Estelle Ryan

  I walked into the living area with strong strides. I knew what I wanted to do and I had decided what needed to be said. All those carefully thought out demands deserted me the moment I looked around.

  “You cleaned.” The shock was clear in my voice. I glanced towards the kitchen in time to see both men whirl around with surprise on their faces. I returned to the inspection of my living space. I walked to the tall bookshelves to confirm what I found hard to believe. I distinctly remembered my books lying scattered on the floor. Said books were back on the shelves, not in the exact order that they had been in, but very close. They were almost perfectly aligned, but I would rearrange them. The effort, though, did not go unappreciated.

  Further inspection showed me that everything that had carelessly been thrown on the floor had been picked up and placed in a logical place. Even the broken African bowl shards had been cleaned off the floor. I was grateful for that, but knew that hours of cleaning and rearranging were ahead of me.

  “I didn’t hear you.” Vinnie spoke from the kitchen and I turned to them. The giant was wearing an apron and didn’t look happy. “Why didn’t I hear you? I always hear everybody.”

  “Are you feeling better?” Colin picked up two plates piled high with food. He left the kitchen and deposited the plates on the dining room table. I frowned at the table when I saw the placemats protecting the polished surface. When I left my bedroom, I had been ready to battle the two of them. But the thoughtfulness the two criminals had shown me with their domesticated efforts robbed me of my fight. I was touched.

  “I’m feeling much better, thank you.”

  Colin moved around the table and stopped in front of me. He leaned a bit forward to inspect my face closely. “You look better. Better colour and your eyes are not so glassy any more.”

  Feeling uncomfortable under such scrutiny, I moved away and gave a dreaded look towards the kitchen. The time had come for me to face the horror of having strangers work in my kitchen. I looked again. “Oh my god. It’s clean.”

  Vinnie smiled at me from the stove where he was making more scrambled eggs. “My auntie Helen was a neat freak. When I was seven, I stayed with her for two years. A lovely woman, but by gad, she had a thing about a clean kitchen. I suppose that stayed with me.”

  I walked into my open-plan kitchen with lifted eyebrows. I had seen last night how those thugs had spilled most of the contents of my fridge on the kitchen counters, on the floor and against the tiled walls. There was no evidence of that now. Never having had any knick-knacks on my kitchen counters to start with, they were now as uncluttered and clean as when I had left my apartment the day before. Except for the kettle. The angle wasn’t quite right. I quickly remedied that and when I turned, both men were watching me.

  “I, um, thank you.”

  “Aw, Jen-girl,” Vinnie crooned, “don’t look so sad. It was my pleasure to help such a pretty lady as you. Now, let me just take these plates to the table and we can eat. Colin, bring the coffee, dude.”

  We settled at the table and I smiled. If anyone had told me a week ago that I was going to have breakfast with two criminals, I would have taken great exception to that. Yet, here I was, sitting at my table and feeling strangely comfortable in the presence of these two rather intimidating men. I gave them a few minutes to start their breakfast before I spoke. “I’ve made a decision.”

  Both men looked up from their plates. Vinnie had curiosity written on his face, but Colin looked wary. After getting to know me a bit in the last week, maybe he thought my declaration might not be good news.

  “Since both of you so ungraciously pushed yourselves into my apartment and into my life, you have forfeited any rights you even think you might have to tell me what to do. In the last week I’ve had my fill of arrogant men and their opinions about me. I’m not helpless nor am I mentally incapacitated. No, let me finish.” I held up my hand firmly when Colin looked like he wanted to go on defence. I really needed to say what I had planned. “I have high functioning autism spectrum disorder that sometimes gets the best of me. The last week has been very trying and has caused some of my control to slip. It won’t happen again.”

  “But it might?” Colin interrupted me quietly.

  “Yes, it might, but let’s work on the assumption that it won’t happen again.” I really was not planning to rewrite every single one of Mozart’s compositions. Or having another episode. “Here is what I decided. You are here. You cannot unlearn what you know about this case. We cannot turn back time, so we’ll have to find a way to work this thing out together. But, and this is a big but, you will not tell me what to do. You will not treat me like a delicate little blossom. You will not take over my life. Colin, you are right. It makes sense for Vinnie to be my bodyguard. Vinnie, if it is acceptable to you, you can move in, but you will adhere to my house rules.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” If I wasn’t so determined to take back control by making them see how serious I was, I might have appreciated Vinnie’s expression more. The large man looked like a ten year old getting a tongue-lashing from his mother.

  “You can stay in the spare bedroom. For the duration of your stay, you will keep the door closed at all times, so that I can’t see into the room. You will clean up after yourself. You will speak normal English to me so that I can understand you. You can drive me to and from work, but you will not go in with me. You will not go anywhere with us when Colin is with me. One of you at a time is enough. When I am in my study or bedroom and the door is closed, you are not to disturb me. Understood?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Vinnie swallowed. “If there is an emergency–”

  “You’re more than welcome to disturb me, but only in a true emergency.” I wavered. “Maybe we should define what a true emergency is. I don’t want you to disturb me for something inane.”

  Colin looked thoroughly amused. “I’m sure that won’t be necessary. Vinnie here will only disturb you with life and death emergencies. Right, big guy?”

  “Right.”

  This felt surreal. I had made my decisions based on the facts as I had them. Colin had trusted me with not one, but all five of his home addresses. I knew that he knew that I would not think twice about handing that information over to the authorities, if he betrayed me. Or if Vinnie betrayed me. With that much power in my hand, I could not convince myself that he would have brought Vinnie into my life and into this case if he didn’t have full confidence in his friend.

  I did not have that kind of confidence in either of them, but I had unshakable confidence in my ability to read people. It was this ability that had helped me make this decision. Not that it was an easy decision. I trusted Colin and decided to trust his judgement concerning his friend.

  “Colin.” I turned my gaze on the thief. His amusement about the conditions I had placed on Vinnie disappeared the instant I turned my attention to him. Apprehension was written all over his face now. I felt immensely empowered by intimidating two criminals. “You will stop treating me like I’m going to fracture into tiny little pieces. You will not, under any circumstances, tell anyone else about this case or bring anyone else into it.”

  “It might happen that we’ll need more help, Jenny.”

  “No one else, Colin. Take it or leave it.”

  His lips thinned while we glared at each other. I knew the exact moment I had won the stare-down. He blinked and exhaled angrily. “I’ll take it. For now.”

  I was going to argue the point further, but decided against it. “Since Vinnie will be with me, there is no more need for any listening devices. You will remove them from my apartment. All of them.”

  “Agreed. Anything else?”

  “Yes. If you placed those devices, does that mean that you know how to find others? Ones that aren’t yours?”

  “I’ve already checked your apartment for other bugs,” Vinnie said past a mouthful of toast.

  “We did that right after we determined that you would be okay,” Colin explained. “The way those guys
disappeared made me think that they were professionals, so we searched your apartment.”

  “Did you find anything?”

  “No.”

  “Are you sure?” The thought had come to me in the shower and it really disturbed me that people meaning me harm could be listening in on my life. Colin listening in on my life was an unacceptable invasion of my privacy, but somehow I didn’t mind it as much. What had my life come to that I was actually asking about surveillance devices in my apartment?

  “As sure as death and taxes.”

  I stared at Vinnie until he seemed to understand my look.

  “I meant that I’m one hundred percent sure.”

  “Thank you.” Maybe I should buy a slang dictionary. But I didn’t think it would be a sufficient aid, not with Vinnie’s language. We continued eating in silence for a few minutes. “Could you now please tell me why you didn’t phone an ambulance? How were you able to ascertain that I was going to be okay?”

  Neither man had the decency to look guilty. Colin spoke. “I overheard the men talk when they were leaving. They seemed to have an argument about the injection they had given you. They were arguing about your weight and that the dosage might have been too much. That is when the Spaniard said that Midazolam was not lethal in that dosage. You might just sleep an extra two hours. They were, however, hoping that it would affect your memory. I know about the drug and knew that they had no reason to be lying, so you were going to be okay. How’s your memory?”

  I narrowed my eyes and focussed on my recollection of the previous night’s events. “It seems to be fine. I remember everything, I just feel groggy. What is Midazolam?”

  “It’s a fast acting drug, potent in its sedation. It’s quite common, but should have worked out of your system much sooner than it has. It could be the muscle relaxing qualities that made you sleep so soundly.”

  It was an extremely restful sleep, despite the slight headache. I didn’t want to know how Colin came to know so much about Midazolam. We were not done with the previous topic though. “What was the other reason?”

  “For not phoning an ambulance? Surely you can guess. If the emergency services were in your apartment and had seen the way it looked, the police would’ve gotten involved.”

  “And how were you and Vinnie going to explain your presence here, right?”

  “Right.” There was a long silence while it seemed they were waiting for me to respond.

  “Well, you made a very logical decision.” I couldn’t fault them for those reasons.

  “Tell us what happened,” Colin said.

  “How much detail do you want?” I often bored people with the detail in my observations. Knowing how much was expected, I could censor myself.

  “Everything,” Vinnie said before he put an impossibly heaped fork of scrambled eggs in his mouth.

  I told them in the finest detail everything from my suspicions that Colin was making a mess to opening the door and later being shoved by the German. “He was the leader of the group. They were deferring to him the whole time. The two Russians had very aggressive body language, even more so than the other two.”

  “Wait,” Vinnie interrupted. “How do you know all these things? You can tell that the German was the leader by his body language?”

  “No, by the way the others were positioning their bodies and waiting on him for their cues.”

  “But how do you know all this?”

  “I read people.”

  “What does that mean?” Vinnie leaned forward.

  “It means that our faces, our bodies, give away all our secrets. I know what every muscle movement in your body is saying. These are limbic responses.” I saw the blank look in Vinnie’s eyes. “It is the most basic part of our brains, and it controls the most basic of our responses.”

  Without any indication what I was about to do, I picked up the basket with baguette slices and threw it at Vinnie. His reaction was as expected. First, his eyebrows lifted and his eyes enlarged with shock a millisecond before he reached out and caught the basket. One slice hopped out of the basket and rolled away from the table. For the purpose of this illustration, I didn’t mind the breadcrumbs or the bread on the floor. I was going to clean my entire apartment tonight in any case.

  “Hey! What was that for?”

  “To show you a limbic response. We have no control over these responses. Even someone like me with expert knowledge can’t control it. Sure, there are certain responses that I can attempt to control, but if you were to throw that basket at me without me reading any cues of what was about to happen, I would most likely have done the same. No, actually I think I might have ducked.”

  “You’re an expert in this?”

  “I’m rated as the third most proficient in this field.” I noticed the surprise in his eyes. “Third in the world.”

  “I told you she was smart.” The pride in Colin’s voice didn’t make sense to me. Why would he be proud of me? I was nobody to him.

  “So you can read me? Colin?” Vinnie’s whole demeanour screamed of his discomfort and he shifted uncomfortably in his seat. I smiled at his attempt to reach a neutral position. His stiff arms placed on the table only served to reveal his discomfort.

  “Yes, but let’s get back to the topic.” I didn’t want all that focus on me. I told them the rest. “I read these men and learned quite a lot. Like I said, the German was the leader. The shorter Russian was a very aggressive man and the taller one didn’t speak much. The Spaniard was the one who injected me.”

  “Bastard.” Vinnie just about spat the word out.

  I smiled at him and continued. “Their accents and their teamwork made me wonder who they could be working for.”

  “You said that two of them wore the exact same outfit?” Colin asked.

  “Yes. I’m convinced it was a uniform of some kind. The other two had similar outfits, but not like the uniforms. The two with the uniforms had covered up the insignias on their sleeves with duct tape. When I was fighting with them, I managed to pull the tape from one of their sleeves. I managed to get a good look at it.” Then, as if to myself, I said, “I will have to search on the internet for that logo. I have never seen anything like it before.”

  “Could these idiots have been from Eurocorps?” Vinnie had eaten all his food and was looking around for more. He turned, shrugged at the baguette slice on the floor, picked it up and placed it on his plate after half-heartedly blowing at it. How uncivilised.

  “I doubt it. Russia isn’t part of Eurocorps, so how could they be on the same team? Only the Spaniard and the German could be in Eurocorps. Hey,” Colin sat up with a sudden realisation. “Maybe their logo is one of Eurocorps’ units.”

  “That is very possible, but I don’t know the units. I’ll have to ask Manny about this. There is also the question of why they were here.” I only managed half the portion of scrambled eggs on my plate and pushed it away. I reached for my coffee mug. “They said that they were looking for my computer, but I can’t believe that it was only that. Why would they tear up my entire apartment for a computer? What do they think is on it?”

  “It’s an intimidation technique.” Vinnie sounded completely convinced about this. He looked longingly at my half-empty plate. “May I finish this?”

  I felt unsure about this level of familiarity. Nobody had ever eaten off my plate. “Um. Sure.”

  His eyes lit up and he pulled the plate closer. “Thanks, Jen-girl.”

  “Why do you say it was an intimidation technique?” I asked him.

  “I...” He coughed and tried again for neutral body language. “It has been done many times and is apparently very successful.”

  “You’ve used it before.”

  It looked like Vinnie was going to have some sort of facial seizure. I took pity on him. “Vinnie, I’m exceptionally good at reading people. There isn’t much that you can hide from me. If you prefer, I will keep all my observations to myself.”

  Colin was quiet throughout t
his and I suddenly wondered why he never appeared uncomfortable with my intellect or observations. It was quiet around the table while Vinnie took a long sip of coffee, obviously weighing his options.

  “This is very strange for me,” he admitted.

  “Welcome to the last week of my life. I have a thief as a partner and a giant as a body guard.” I sounded as despondent as I felt. Why they thought it funny, I didn’t know, but both the men chuckled.

  “I suppose that makes us even then.” Vinnie smiled warmly at me. “I think this is going to be a lot of fun, Jen-girl. I’ll keep you safe and you can teach me a few things about reading people.”

  “Does this mean that I can speak freely?”

  Vinnie nodded, but Colin was the one who answered. “It’s settled then. Jenny, have you given any thought about how these men knew about you? Did they let on that they knew about me?”

  “I thought about this and honestly have no idea how they knew about my involvement. Only a handful of people know about the case being worked on and that I’m working on it. But then again, you tracked me down, so it couldn’t have been so difficult.” I really didn’t like that idea. As much as I loved the age of technology and information at one’s fingertips, it gave the bad guys too much to work with.

  “Getting your address is easy enough. What concerns me is that they were asking about your computer. What do they think is on there?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t like to speculate.”

  “I would like to speculate,” Vinnie said and promptly continued. “I think that one of these crooks in the EDA or Eurocorps discovered that there was an investigation going on and wanted to find out what you’ve discovered so far.”

  “The men who were here last night are most definitely not Manny’s insiders,” I declared. “With everything that we have uncovered so far, I have to agree with Manny that his insiders are people in top positions. These guys were soldiers, not top management, not officers.”

  “Which only means that they were sent here by the insiders to find out what you know.”

  “Oh, I don’t know.” I really didn’t feel comfortable with this kind of wild speculation. I would rather stay with facts, observations and everything that I so carefully memorised last night. A memory surfaced. “Oh my god! I totally forgot about this.”

  “About what?” Colin sat up straighter and moved a bit closer to me.

  “Last night while I was trying to remember the code to my safe, I overheard the Russians arguing. They said something that stuck with me. And later, just before the guys left, they repeated the same thing. They said someone was not going to be pleased with the lack of success they had in my apartment. The name they used for this someone sounded like Peerosh.”

  “Like what?” Vinnie’s whole face crinkled in concentration.

  “Peerosh,” I repeated. “It stuck with me because I could hear the fear in their voices when they spoke about this man.”

  “You’re sure it was a man?” Colin asked. The air was now tense around the table.

  “Yes. The one Russian told the other that Peerosh was going to have one of his screaming fits when they told him what took place here. And when they left, I heard the Spaniard say that Peerosh would want an immediate report and asked the German what they were going to tell him. Both times they used masculine personal pronouns.”

  “Was that all they said?”

  I closed my eyes to recall those terrifying moments. My eyes shot open. “The German was angry at the two who were speaking Russian. He said that he would be the one to deal with Peerosh. Then the Spaniard said they should all just relax. Peerosh had big plans for the flower house.”

  “The flower house?” Vinnie asked. “That’s just weird. I wonder what kind of plans they were talking about.”

  “None of it made sense to me, but I am very certain of what I heard.”

  “Peerosh?” Colin whispered to himself. He leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. He repeated the word a few times before he sat up and looked at Vinnie. “You remember when we were in Budapest a few years ago?”

  “That time when we–”

  “Yes, that time.” Colin interrupted him. “You loved the red pepper paste.”

  “Piros magyar etterem.” Vinnie turned to me with a dreamy expression. “Oh, Jen-girl. It’s the most wonderful thing to cook with. Traditionally the Hungarians put it in soups or use it in preparing meat dishes. They even use it as a condiment. You have to try it.”

  Colin waved Vinnie’s enthusiastic recommendations away. “Piros is the Hungarian word for red, written differently, but pronounced peerosh. Jenny, remember I told you about my friend being killed in Budapest in 2006? Maybe there is a connection. Maybe the insider’s nickname is Piros.”

  “Those are a lot of maybes.” I didn’t like maybes.

  “Check the EDA database for that word.” He spelled it for me. “Maybe something will come of it.”

  “Another maybe.” A niggling feeling kept pulling at my subconscious. The moment Vinnie had started with his explanation something registered. I just had to access it. “Oh my god! Red is Piros.”

  “Yes?” Colin drew out the word, asking for elaboration.

  “Red. Piros. Red.” How could they not see it? I wished I had my computers, especially my notepad. “Colin, do you remember the top page of my notepad?”

  He frowned. “That’s the page with the Russian murderer’s rantings.”

  “Yes. Nikolay Chulkov shouted that the red will end all twenty-seven daffodils. No one will escape the red.” I was so excited, my face flushed. “What if he wasn’t saying ‘the red’, but Red. As in the name, Red. The name, Piros? This guy was Russian. There are no definite or indefinite articles in Russian. So when he translated it to French, he might have used articles when he shouldn’t have.”

  “But who would be named Red?” Vinnie asked.

  “Piros,” I corrected. “These thugs were speaking English, but they used a Hungarian word.”

  “If that’s the correct word,” Colin interjected.

  His logic stole some of my excitement. “True. But, if that’s the case, then we have a strong connection between the murder of Danielle, the other artists, the thugs who broke into my place and this Piros.”

  “How are you going to verify it?” Colin asked.

  “I don’t know yet.” I glanced at my watch and winced. “I have to go. It’s already past eight and I have a lot of work to do today.”

  “What are you going to look into today?” Colin asked.

  “Yesterday I couldn’t check the cruise ships properly, so I’ll do that today. And of course I’ll have a look at this Piros person.”

  Vinnie got up and started clearing the table. “Let me just get this and we can go.”

  “Oh. Yes, of course.” How could I have forgotten that I now had a driver and personal bodyguard?

  “Jenny, please be careful.”

  I turned to Colin to dismiss his worries, but stopped myself on the inhale. Concern was etched on every possible space on his face. I didn’t know how to feel about this, nor was I equipped to deal with such sincere concern. When I spoke my voice sounded strained. “I will. You too.”

 

  Chapter TWELVE