As the granddaughter of the owner, Eulalie got VIP treatment. She had her own seat at the far end of the polished hardwood bar. It was where she had sat and done her homework throughout middle and high school.
“Hey, girl,” said Gigi Bartineau, the head waitress. “Your grandmother is still in the back, busy with a client.”
“No problem. Don’t disturb her. You can bring me a cane brandy and a plate of nachos in the meantime, thanks.”
“Sure thing.” Gigi winked and walked through to the kitchen.
Eulalie propped her arm on the bar and leaned against the wall. There was a good crowd tonight. It was only eight o’clock, but nearly every table was occupied, and the bar area was full. She gave a satisfied nod. She had money invested in this place and was happy to see it doing well.
It was a minor irritation to know that Angel was in the back telling someone’s fortune. Eulalie had never approved of that side-line. It was hocus-pocus and Angel should have known better. Still, at least she wasn’t doing it out here in the open. A few weeks earlier, Eulalie had walked into the bar to find Angel doing a Tarot card reading right where everyone could see. Tonight, she would be grateful for small mercies.
Besides, she wasn’t in that much of a hurry to see her grandmother.
She dreaded having to tell her about the proposed theme-park, for one thing. And for another, she wanted to enjoy her cane brandy and nachos in peace, without being scolded for her poor food choices.
Eulalie smiled as Gigi emerged from the kitchen with her order. The nachos were still bubbling, and the brandy looked like melted gold in the candlelight.
“Oh, yes. Come to mama. I don’t care if my grandmother makes me eat steamed kale for dinner, it will have been worth it for this.”
“You’d better eat quickly.” Gigi looked over her shoulder. “Angel is finishing up in there. She won’t be much longer.”
“Thanks for the tip. Oh, one more thing. You’ve probably seen on the news about the developer who turned up dead in the forest - Sawyer Blakely.”
“Sure.” Gigi nodded. “I saw something about that.”
“I’m trying to find out who his contacts were on Prince William Island. Could you ask your brothers if they know anything about him?”
Gigi looked thoughtful. “Le Page is usually the one who deals with the overseas contacts. Bobo is the boss, but Le Page has the smoothest manner. I’ll see if he knows anything.”
Gigi’s five brothers were deeply involved in petty crime. Her contacts in the underworld were solid, and her information reliable.
“Thanks, Gigi. Text me anything you find out.” Eulalie turned back to the bar.
“Hey! What happened to my nachos?”
The nachos had somehow metamorphosized into a plate of cucumber spears with tzatziki sauce for dipping. Her cane brandy had vanished, only to be replaced by a modest glass of red wine.
This was witchcraft, and she knew the witch responsible.
“Grandmère!” she demanded. “Show yourself.”
Angel appeared behind the bar, smiling serenely. “Oui, ma petite?”
“Where are my nachos?”
“Those young men in the corner looked like they needed them more than you. They have that youthful metabolism, you know?”
“Youthful metabolism? I’m twenty-eight years old!”
“An excellent time to start thinking about your health.”
“And what about my cane brandy?”
“Red wine is much better for you, chérie. All those lovely antioxidants.”
Eulalie sighed. She felt sorry for herself. After the day she’d had, she really deserved those nachos. Because it was there, she dipped a cucumber spear into the tzatziki and popped it into her mouth. It wasn’t quite as horrible as it looked, but nowhere near as good as the nachos. She took a sip of red wine and started to feel better.
“You know,” she told her grandmother. “I was feeling really bad about the news I came here to tell you tonight, but that was before you stole my nachos.”
Angel took out a selection of glasses and started making up a drinks order for table five. “Talk to me while I work, ma petite. I’m all ears.”
“The dead man – our John Doe – has been identified as Sawyer Blakely from New York.”
“Yes, I saw that.” Angel tapped her smart phone. “Some kind of property developer, wasn’t he?”
“Not exactly. He’s an independent consultant who works for property developers. His specialty is arranging for environmentally sensitive land to be released for development.”
“Sounds fishy.”
“It is fishy. In this case he was hired by a company called Megamoxy. They started out as a rodeo show in Arizona, but now they own theme-parks all over the world. They are constantly looking at expanding.”
“I don’t like the sound of that.” Angel put the finishing touches on the drinks order and handed the tray to Gigi as she swung past on her way to the restaurant.
“It gets worse. Listen to this - they’re planning to build a massive theme-park with a hotel and shops and a casino right here on Prince William Island.”
“That sounds appalling. Where will this monstrosity be built?”
“In the forest.”
Angel’s eyes widened. “But that cannot be correct, mon ange. The whole of the deep forest is protected land. It is not open for development. It is a national heritage site. I helped draw up the legislation myself.”
“That’s exactly what I said. But this is what Sawyer Blakely specialized in – persuading government officials that they should get rid of antiquated legislation standing in the way of progress. His success rate was excellent.”
“In that case, I am glad that someone put an arrow through him. The little weasel.”
“That is also what I said. But now I’m worried about whether the deal will go ahead anyway. We need to find out who he was meeting with. Which officials did he believe were corrupt enough to change the existing legislation in favor of Megamoxy? There’s a lot of money at stake here. They are not going to stop just because their independent consultant got killed. He was just the advance guard. More troops will be sent in soon.”
There was a pause as Gigi brought their dinner. Eulalie didn’t have the heart to complain about how healthy it was. At least the dreaded kale was absent. They were having island-style beef skewers with a spicy sauce, on a bed of quinoa with roasted vegetables on the side. If it tasted as good as it looked, Eulalie wasn’t about to complain.
Angel ate in silence, obviously thinking furiously.
“I’m still not convinced that a villager killed him,” she said at last. “But this would certainly be a compelling motive.”
“I know. It’s worrying.”
Eulalie looked up when Gigi stopped at her side. She was holding her phone in her hand.
“News?” asked Eulalie.
“I just heard back from Le Page. He says he knows about the guy who got killed but didn’t have any dealings with him. He says the person to speak to is your friend Jimmy the Knife. My brothers don’t go in for property deals much. They are not in that league. But Jimmy is.”
“Thanks, Gigi. You’re the best.”
Gigi topped up their wineglasses and went on her way.
“Sounds like Jimmy is moving up in the world,” said Eulalie.
“He is always wheeling and dealing, that one. He is never content to sit still. Always, he is on the lookout for the next big thing – the deal that is going to make his fortune. It doesn’t surprise me that he would be involved in something like this.”
Eulalie shrugged. Somehow, she had thought better of Jimmy. He might not have been born on Prince William Island, but he had been here long enough to know what the forest meant to the people who lived there. She wouldn’t have thought he would get involved in a scheme to bulldoze acres of pristine rainforest.
“There was something else I wanted to ask you,” she told her grandmother. “Do you remember that
time when I was about ten when Rael and Sami and I discovered that mammoth tusk in the dried-up riverbed?”
“But of course. It was a huge find. I remember it hanging outside Rael’s father’s hut for years. Whatever happened to it in the end?” She drummed her fingers on the bar top as she tried to remember. “Oh, that’s right. One of the men asked for permission to use it as the central spine of a kayak he was making. After that, none of us saw it again, although I believe the kayak is still going strong. What made you remember that all of a sudden?”
Eulalie opened her mouth to answer when Angel got it.
“That trench you were telling me about – the one someone had dug through the riverbed. Could they have been looking for mammoth tusks? For the ivory, perhaps?”
“It’s a theory. I wanted to know what you thought of it. Does it seem likely to you?”
“There’s a lot of money in ivory, isn’t there?” Angel sipped her wine as Gigi cleared their plates. “And there must be a lot of ivory in one tusk. The one you found was huge. It must have been more than ten feet long.”
“It was twelve feet. We measured.”
“That’s a lot of money contained in one portable item. It was only after we settled here in Queen’s Town that I really understood the lengths people will go to for money. I knew the tusk contained ivory, of course, but it would never have occurred to me to see it as a financial asset. I don’t think it would have occurred to anyone in the village either. Not now and not back then.”
Eulalie agreed. Occasionally, you got a villager who cared about the value of money. Such a person did not commonly last long in the forest. They took themselves off to Queen’s Town as soon as they were legally adults and embraced the western lifestyle. It made no sense to stay in the village if money was important to you.
Her dinner-break over, Angel stood up and resumed her service behind the bar. Eulalie looked at the time.
“I should get going if I want to catch Jimmy while he’s still sober. There was just one more thing I wanted to ask.”
“What is that, ma petite?”
“I went to the evidence lockup at the police station to examine the arrow that killed Sawyer Blakely. It is quite unusual. I took photos of it, hoping you might recognize the carvings.”
“My love, you know more about arrows than I do.”
“I know. Normally I would ask Uncle Virgil, but the arrow was left in the body for the police to find. No one from the village got a proper look at it. See what you make of it.”
Eulalie found the photos on her phone and handed it to her grandmother.
“The carvings are unusual, aren’t they? You must tell me if they ring a…”
Angel’s whole body swayed as she stared at the screen. Eulalie reached out a hand to steady her.
“What is it?” she said. “What’s wrong?”
All the color had drained from Angel’s face. She seemed on the verge of collapse.
Eulalie braced herself with one hand and vaulted lightly over the bar. Without letting go of Angel’s elbow, she pulled up a chair and encouraged her to sit down. She scooped ice into a glass and filled it with water, holding it up for her grandmother to drink.
The color was coming back into her face, which Eulalie was very grateful for.
“I don’t know what came over me,” said Angel. “I felt so faint. But it’s going away now.”
“It happened when you were looking at the arrow. What is it, Grandmère? Did you recognize it?”
Angel glanced at Eulalie’s phone and looked away again. “It had nothing to do with that. It was just a dizzy spell. Already, I am feeling better.”
She struggled to her feet and stood with one hand resting on the bar. “It has gone away now. I am fine.”
“You don’t look fine. And I think it did have something to do with the arrow. Did you recognize it, Grandmère? Please tell me if you did. It is very important for my investigation.”
“How could I possibly recognize it? I already told you I know nothing about arrows.”
Eulalie forced down her frustration. It was impossible to argue with her grandmother while she was still so shaky, but she was definitely hiding something. Something about the arrow had triggered this reaction. She wasn’t physically ill – she was in shock.
As Angel’s legs trembled and she once again lowered herself onto the chair, Gigi came over with a double espresso. Angel accepted it gratefully.
She sipped her coffee and looked up at Eulalie.
“I need to be on my own for a while, chérie. I need to think. You should go and talk to Jimmy now. Tomorrow… tomorrow will be different. I will be able to speak to you then. Just give me tonight to get my thoughts together.”
It went against the grain to leave her grandmother while she was still so unsteady, but Eulalie had to respect her wishes. Besides, she would be well looked after by Gigi who adored the ground she walked on.
“Okay,” she said. “I’ll go now, but I’ll be back tomorrow morning to see how you are doing.”
Chapter 11
Eulalie left Angel’s Place in a state of unease.
The feeling of dread that had been dogging her for days felt as though it were snapping at her heels. She had been anxious ever since Rosa had told her that the Guides had seen a threat coming. Normally, Eulalie was well able to disregard prophecies and premonitions. They were a load of nonsense, as she was happy to tell anyone who asked.
But it wasn’t so easy when she was the one having the premonitions.
They weren’t visions exactly. It was more this sense of dread that had now become so strong she could no longer ignore it.
Angel’s reaction to seeing the arrow hadn’t helped. What did it mean? What could it possibly mean? Did she recognize those carvings? Did she know who had made the arrow – who had fired it? Was it someone important to her?
These were the questions that buzzed in Eulalie’s head as she turned onto Lafayette Boulevard and strode along the sidewalk, barely acknowledging the greetings of friends and neighbors. She walked fast, as though something were chasing her. The only way she could deal with this sense of dread was to stay active, to accomplish something.
Her goal was Finger Alley. It was the hub of Queen’s Town’s underworld. A narrow gap between two buildings on Lafayette Drive, it widened into a cobbled alley that was lined on either side by dive bars, massage parlors, betting shops, and tattoo parlors. Many of these were money-laundering enterprises or fronts for less legal activities.
Finger Alley had its residential area too. This consisted of a series of tumble-down tenements that housed a mixture of squatters and rent-paying tenants. One of these was Majestic Towers - home to a small community of people who had been expelled from the village in the forest.
Eulalie had a feeling she would be paying them a visit before the night was much older.
As she stepped into Finger Alley, she made an effort to pay attention to her surroundings. A group of thugs had once got the drop on her right here when she had been so preoccupied that she hadn’t sensed their approach until it was almost too late. Finger Alley was not a good place to be caught off your guard.
The narrow mouth of the alley was damp and cold. Anyone turning down it by mistake would think they had entered a dead-end and turn back quickly towards the light and noise of Lafayette Drive. You had to walk on further – against your better judgment – to reach the part where the people were.
Eulalie was a respected figure in Finger Alley. When she had first started out as a private investigator, the respect she had been shown was a direct consequence of her relationship to her grandmother. Angel de la Cour was as well known in the lowest echelons of Queen’s Town society as she was in the highest.
It had taken time for Eulalie to build up a reputation of her own, but by the end of her first year in business she was known as a straight-shooter – an investigator who worked on the side of the law, but could be trusted not to snitch, not to betray a confidence, and not
to give up her sources. She was also known as someone that it was highly undesirable to attack. She was strong and fast and had excellent reflexes. Finger Alley was full of bully-boys who had come off second best in their encounters with her.
Just the fact that she came from the village in the forest was enough to make most people leave her alone. Finger Alley would sooner poke a tiger with a short stick than tangle with one of the villagers. They were known to be adapted for survival in a way that the town’s folk couldn’t understand.
“Bonsoir, Eulalie.”
“Hola, amiga!”
“Good evening, Ms. Park.”
The greetings reached her in multiple languages. Queen’s Town was nothing if not a melting pot, with Finger Alley as its hottest point.
Eulalie returned these salutations in her usual friendly fashion but didn’t stop to chat. Her goal was a dive bar known as Mo’s. That was Jimmy the Knife’s unofficial headquarters. If his friends and associates wanted to consult with him, they would find him there. The etiquette of beer-buying would depend on who was doing whom a favor. Eulalie was looking for information, so it would be incumbent on her to buy Jimmy a drink and to pay for the information too. She fully intended to claim this back as an expense from the police department.
As she approached the entrance to Mo’s, the street lights seemed to brighten, and she had a sudden image of Jimmy slipping out the backdoor and disappearing among the maze of alleyways behind Mo’s Bar.
Eulalie changed course immediately, breaking into a half-jog and skirting the side of the building until she reached the service alley at the back. There she flattened herself against the wall and waited.
A shadow appeared in the doorway and Jimmy’s rat-like countenance peered into the gloom. Eulalie stepped forward and seized him by the scruff of the neck, causing him to jump about a mile.
The Eulalie Park Mysteries Box Set 2 Page 9