The Eulalie Park Mysteries Box Set 2

by Fiona Snyckers

  As she drove, the beaches and holiday resorts gave way to sugarcane fields. The slope of the land flattened out as the cliffs and rocky outcrops of the more scenic southern end of the island gave way to flat, fertile plains.

  After about twenty minutes, she started looking out for the signpost to Robson’s Field. The last time she had been here, it had been a small and inconspicuous board. Now it was a giant hoarding, branded with the logos of Waylon Construction and Megamoxy Theme-Parks.

  She had come here weeks earlier to meet her father for the first time in her adult life. It had been his idea to suggest Robson’s Field as a site for the new jungle theme-park. Neither of them had suspected that her mother was lying buried just a few hundred feet from where they had stood. In a strange way, it had been a family reunion – the first time the three of them had ever been together.

  Eulalie shook her head to dislodge these melancholy thoughts. Her mother wasn’t here. She was lying in a mortuary at the medical examiner’s office. Her father wasn’t here either. He had probably left the island weeks ago. Eulalie still didn’t know what he had been doing for the last twenty-eight years but gathered that it involved international travel.

  She turned off the highway onto a dirt road that had recently been widened and flattened.

  She could see signs of construction now. There were diggers, bulldozers, graders, and trucks scattered across the building site in front of her. As she got closer, she saw that none of them were moving. All work had been suspended.

  The workers in their Waylon Construction overalls were sitting around the site smoking and chatting.

  Another body could mean anything, Eulalie told herself as she parked her Vespa and walked up to them. It could be a hundred and fifty years old - from the days when English colonists had tried to turn this area into farmland. That had failed because of a high salt content in the soil. Robson’s Field couldn’t even support the sugarcane that flourished everywhere else on the island. It had been classified as a brownfield site and quickly approved for construction.

  The body might belong to someone who had died of natural causes any time in the last century. There would probably have been a small farm cemetery here in the days when Robson’s Field was a farm. The possibilities were endless, and they were all preferable to the frightening thought that this body might have something to do with Fauve de la Cour.

  Eulalie noticed a couple of unmarked police cars standing next to a blue and white police cruiser with its lights flashing. That looked like a good place to start. Chief Macgregor was standing by a pile of sand that had recently been unearthed by a bulldozer. He was flanked by uniformed police officers and was talking on his phone. As soon as he saw Eulalie, he ended the call.

  “Thank you for coming. I wanted you to see this. The construction crew were due to break ground in this part of the site this morning. They noticed a patch of fresh digging right here and decided to investigate. Good thing too.”

  “Fresh digging?” said Eulalie. “So that means…?”

  “That the body was left here recently. Yes. Within the last two days, I’d say. Take a look for yourself.”

  He gestured for a couple of crime scene technicians to step forward and uncover what was still partially hidden by the sand. All Eulalie could see was a woman’s shoe – an open-toed pump with a medium heel. It was lime green. Her first thought was that it belonged to a young person.

  The technicians used paintbrushes to shift the sand gently from the body. A third technician stood by and took photographs of every step of the process. As the sand layer slowly thinned, it became obvious that Eulalie’s guess was right – this was a young woman. She was fashionably dressed in an A-line floral sundress with a handkerchief hem that ended just above her knees. She wore a small crystal pendant on a silver chain around her neck. Her earrings were matching crystal studs.

  “We’ve got a phone here, Chief,” called one of the technicians as he brushed the sand from her left arm.

  Chief Macgregor stepped forward to look. Sure enough, she had been clutching a recent-model smartphone in her hand.

  “Who buries their victim with a cellphone?” The technician looked baffled. Eulalie could answer that.

  “Someone who kills for fun and not profit.”

  “I want the chain of evidence kept pristine,” Chief Macgregor warned. “I’m not having some defense attorney poking holes in our case because a crucial piece of evidence like the victim’s cellphone wasn’t properly handled.”

  A technician leapt forward to bag and tag the cellphone.

  “Do you recognize her?” Chief Macgregor asked as the sandy layer was brushed away from her face.

  “I don’t think so,” said Eulalie.

  The woman was in her early twenties, olive-skinned, and dark-haired. She seemed to have come from a middleclass background, judging by the quality of her clothes, her careful manicure, and the high-end cellphone by her left hand.

  “She might be a tourist, but she looks like an islander with that hair and complexion.”

  “That’s what I thought,” said Chief Macgregor.

  “What about missing person’s reports?”

  “We’ll look into that. I try to stay current with missing persons because of my work with Interpol on human trafficking, but I don’t recognize her. Still, if the report came in over the last two days, I might not have seen it.”

  “It shouldn’t be too hard to get an ID for her,” said Eulalie. “Especially since you’ve got her phone.”

  Only the woman’s right arm was still buried in the soil. It seemed to extend under a heavy mound of soil, so the crime scene techs went to fetch spades.

  As they dug her arm out slowly and carefully, Eulalie had a sudden conviction that she knew what it would look like.

  “There’s going to be a red ribbon tied around her wrist.”

  Both crime scene technicians stopped what they were doing and looked at her.

  “What?”

  “Like Fauve, you mean?” said Chief Macgregor. “Are you sure?”

  “No, but I have a strong feeling.”

  “Be careful with that arm,” he warned his staff.

  They threw down their spades and completed the rest of the excavation with small hand trowels.

  As the last layers of sand were brushed from the victim’s right arm, it was clear that Eulalie was right – there was a red ribbon tied to her right wrist.

  “Leave it in place,” said the Chief. “When you finish processing the scene, get her ready to be transported. We need her back in town for the medical examiner to take a look at as soon as possible.”

  “With all due respect, Chief,” said a voice behind them, “Everyone here heard your girlfriend say that there would be a red ribbon around the victim’s wrist. And now we can see that there is. That’s information known only to the killer, sir. I want to place that on record.”

  It was Detective Wesley Wright, the head of Missing Persons. He was the only member of the Queen’s Town police force that Eulalie did not get along with and the feeling was mutual. He must have arrived while they were watching the digging.

  “Noted, Detective Wright.”

  “Sir, only the murderer or someone working as an accomplice could have known that.”

  “It’s similar-fact evidence from another case, Detective. The other body was also buried here in Robson’s Field, so Ms. Park naturally considered the possibility that they might be related. Looks like she was right. I suggest you start going through your case files. Somebody must have noticed that this woman was missing. If we don’t get a hit through fingerprints or facial recognition software, we’ll be relying on you.”

  Eulalie lowered her voice. “Her face is unmarked. What are the chances she was also hit on the back of the head?”

  As the technicians lifted the body onto a stretcher, Chief Macgregor asked to see the base of her skull. Sure enough, there was a bruised and bloodied area that suggested she had been hit from behind.
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  Chapter 12

  Eulalie drove behind Chief Macgregor’s unmarked car all the way back to the police station. The body had been loaded into a separate van belonging to the medical examiner’s office. Dr. Autry was on standby to start working on it.

  Eulalie’s mind whirled with conjecture as she drove. She knew a fresh corpse when she saw one, and this was about as fresh as you could get. Judging by the limited amount of insect damage, the body had been buried the night before – possibly only hours before the workmen came on shift. The killer must have known that his handiwork would be discovered quickly. That might even have been the point of burying her there.

  Dr. Autry would be able to tell them when the woman had died, probably narrowing it down to a window of an hour or two, based on corpse lividity, body temperature, and fluid settling. Eulalie knew a little about such matters, but not enough. Dr. Autry, for all her annoying habits, was a first-rate medical examiner – Harvard trained and very conscientious. It was a privilege to have her working on Prince William Island.

  At times like this, Eulalie was grateful to have her. At other times, like when she was trying to lure Chief Macgregor away on romantic beach picnics, she was less appreciative.

  Back at the police station, she went straight to Chief Macgregor’s office where he was unwrapping a food delivery that his secretary had just brought in for him.

  “I ordered extra for you,” he said as she walked in.

  “Thanks.” She eyed the logo of the restaurant. “I think.”

  He looked up. “What’s wrong?”

  He followed the direction of her gaze. “Oh yes, Roots and Shoots deliver now. Isn’t that great?”

  It came out sounding very Scottish. “Isna tha’ grea’?”

  Eulalie laughed.

  “What?”

  “Just thinking how Scottish you sound today. Sometimes you seem to be picking up the local accent, but then you say something that makes it sound like you just stepped off the plane from Edinburgh.”

  “I’ve only been here eighteen months. It’s a bit soon to have changed my accent.”

  Eulalie prodded a brown paper bag with her forefinger. “What do we have here?”

  “I know Roots and Shoots isn’t your favorite but look – I ordered you a nice hot pea soup with gluten-free bread and real butter. That’s okay, isn’t it?”

  Eulalie pressed a hand to her heart. “You had me at gluten-free.”

  He stared at her for a moment. “That’s sarcasm.”

  “It is. And you’re getting better at recognizing it. But seriously, thank you for lunch. This doesn’t look bad at all and I appreciate the fact that you didn’t order me a salad.”

  She lifted the lid off the pea soup and inhaled the fragrant steam. No, not bad at all. The bread looked a bit dense for one who had been raised in the French tradition of bread-baking, but once she had spread it with fresh butter, it was quite edible.

  They ate in companionable silence, tacitly delaying discussion about the case until after their meal. Chief Macgregor set his coffee machine to make two cafés au lait and they got down to business.

  “Are we dealing with a copycat or is this the same killer from twenty-eight years ago?”

  Eulalie nodded. “That’s the question. Did the media ever get hold of the detail about the red ribbon? You were going to keep it under wraps.”

  “We were, and we did. I haven’t seen it mentioned in a news report, but I can’t swear that it didn’t leak. The discipline in my department has improved, but it’s still not as good as I’d like.”

  “Even Detective Wright didn’t know about the red ribbon.”

  “Yes, that’s a good sign. Leaks can be selective, though. A murder detective could say something to his wife who could mention it to a colleague. You never know how these things get out. But let’s assume that today’s killer is the same person as your mother’s killer, or nearly connected to him. What was the point of what he did?”

  “That’s what I’m wondering. Maybe he was sending us a message. He obviously knows my mother’s body has been discovered. That suggests he never left Prince William Island. Or if he did, that he has come back. You’d think that the discovery of Fauve’s body would have sent him into a panic. After twenty-eight years, he must have thought he was safe. He probably was safe even after her body was found. It was the coldest of cold cases. I wasn’t more than fifty percent hopeful that we would solve it.”

  “Now he’s left us a fresh corpse with plenty of new evidence and potential witnesses.” Chief Macgregor sipped his coffee. “It was the act of someone who either wants to get caught or is very confident of not being caught.”

  “Or someone in the grip of such a compulsion that he can’t help himself. But if that were the case, there would have been more bodies over the years. Nobody who has such a compulsion to kill goes twenty-eight years between murders.”

  “That reminds me. I’ve requested a team of cadaver dogs and handlers to go over Robson’s Field. If there are any more bodies, we’ll know about it soon.”

  “I didn’t know there was a K9 unit on Prince William Island.”

  “There isn’t. I’ve requested them from South Africa. They should get here tomorrow morning. I’ve ordered Waylon Construction to suspend operations and get off the site until the dogs have been over it. They’re not pleased, but that can’t be helped. I’ll have a team guarding the site until the dogs get there, so at least their equipment won’t be stolen.”

  “I’d be interested to watch them work. I’ve never seen a team of dogs and handlers in action. It sounds like something we should try to get going here on the island.”

  “I’ve already asked the governor’s office for funding to start training dogs in search and rescue. There are always tourists who go hiking in the mountains and get into trouble. We could save more lives if we had a team of dogs.”

  “That would be brilliant.”

  “I thought I would have had a response by now, but there’s been nothing so far. Perhaps when they see that it costs the same to fly a team of dogs and handlers here from South Africa for one day as it does to train dogs for a year they’ll see sense.”

  Chief Macgregor’s phone buzzed with an incoming text.

  “We have a tentative ID on the body. Do you want to come along to missing persons to hear what they’ve found?”

  Eulalie stood up. “Sure. I bet Detective Wright can’t wait to see me again.”

  “No, he will be very displeased that you are still here. He doesn’t like you at all.”

  “What the hell is she doing here?” demanded Detective Wright.

  “This case is connected to our first victim who was positively identified as a villager,” said Chief Macgregor. “Ms. Park is our liaison officer for village matters. It should be obvious to you what she is doing here.”

  “I’ve just heard that the first victim was identified as her mother. It’s obvious to me that she is too close to the case to be useful.”

  “Once again, your opinion is noted, Detective.”

  “That’s not good enough. I want to place on record that…”

  “How’s the shoulder, Detective Wright?” asked Eulalie. “Still keeping you awake at night?”

  Detective Wright shot her a look of intense dislike, but dropped the subject. Out of the corner of her eye, Eulalie saw him rolling his shoulder. A few weeks earlier, Angel had convinced him that his shoulder was very painful. He had called it a hex, but Eulalie preferred to think of it as the power of suggestion.

  “What have we got?” asked the chief.

  “A missing person’s report came in this morning. It was waiting for me when we got back from Robson’s Field. A twenty-two-year-old woman by the name of Lisa Lavalle went missing from her hotel after a fight with her boyfriend.”

  “So, she was a tourist?” asked Eulalie. “I had her pegged as a local.”

  “Leave the detecting to the experts, missy. She was born here, but her family moved a
way when she was a child. She was in Queen’s Town on holiday with her boyfriend to show him the sights. Seems they got into a fight last night. He had been checking out other girls or something. Can you believe that bitch? Why does anyone come to a place like Prince William Island if not to check out the talent, am I right?”

  He looked around the room, expecting a laugh. He was greeted with frosty silence.

  “Anyway. She threw a hissy fit and wanted to go to the airport to change her ticket and fly home, but he refused to give her the key to the rental. She swore she’d hitchhike if she had to and slammed out the room.”

  “Didn’t he follow her?”

  “He said he thought she would come back so he went to bed. They had both been drinking, and he was tired. When she wasn’t there in the morning, he phoned the airport and confirmed that she never made it. He says he spent the morning driving around looking for her, before he came in here and filed the missing person’s report.”

  “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.”