“Odysseus…” Mrs. Belfast half rose to her feet.
“It’s okay, Lolly. I won’t let it happen.” He turned to Eulalie. “Tell me everything you know.”
So, she did. She gave him all the details she had uncovered of the plot to have Odysseus Pryor arrested and charged as the sole agent of the cyber-attack. She had printed out some of the in-house emails she had discovered and handed these to him now.
As he read them, he whistled under his breath.
“I knew these guys were bad news, but I had no idea they were planning this. They asked me to stay in town another few days to help sew up their deal with the insurance company. Now I see they wanted me here so they could set me up to take the fall for them.” He drained his glass. “I need to leave tonight, Lolly. As soon as I can get myself packed.”
“You won’t get a flight this late,” she said.
“I’m not going to the airport. There are cigarette boats that leave the Port of Prince William all night long. If I can get on one of those, I can make it to Madagascar and fly out of Antananarivo.”
“A cigarette boat? Aren’t they smugglers? Oh, Odie. That sounds terribly dangerous.”
He smiled. “I’ve travelled that way before, Lolly, and I’ll travel that way again. I’ll send you a message when I’m at Ivato International Airport. I think I’ll go and cool my heels in Australia for a while until this all dies down. I’ve had a couple of good job offers there.”
He slapped his thighs and stood up. “I’ll go upstairs and pack now.”
“I’ll come with you,” said Eulalie.
Still holding his gun, she watched as he packed his possessions. She turned her back while he got dressed but stayed in the room.
She watched him bid his sister a fond farewell, and gave him a lift to the docks, riding behind her on the Vespa. She walked him down to Pier 19 and waited while he negotiated with some furtive gentlemen he found there.
She only gave him his gun as he was climbing aboard one of the small, motorized cigarette boats.
“Are you really going to stand there and watch to make sure I leave?” he asked.
She nodded. “Until you’re just a speck on the horizon. I want to be able to tell your sister that you’re really gone.”
“She likes having me around, you know.”
“I know. But it’s stressful for her too. It would be nice if you could arrange to visit at a time when you’re not dodging the law.”
He laughed and stepped off the gangplank onto the boat. “That doesn’t leave much opportunity.”
He held up a hand in farewell as the boat roared to life and began to pull away from the pier.
She stood and watched until it had cleared the harbor and was headed out to the open sea.
Chapter 24
Eulalie knew she had missed something.
Somewhere in the information she had been given was a vital clue pointing to Rochelle Chirac’s murderer, and she had missed it. She knew she had already interviewed the murderer. She was equally sure that it was one of four people – Cole Richmond, Sheena Macintyre, Mick Sorenson, or Rosalind Grier.
One of those people had lied to her or misled her in a way that had diverted her from the truth.
There were various ways in which an investigator could allow herself to be thrown off the scent by a witness. You could become emotionally invested in that witness and in their version of events. You could take what they said at face value and not bother to fact-check it for yourself. Or you could have been asking the wrong questions from the start.
Eulalie knew she was guilty of one of these, but which one?
Every investigator got off track from time to time. There were no real-life Sherlock Holmeses or Hercule Poirots. There were no genius detectives who made astonishing leaps of logic and deduction. A good investigator wasn’t the one who never made mistakes. A good investigator recognized when she had got off track, and corrected course before it was too late.
Eulalie got into the office early the next morning. She wanted some undisturbed thinking time before Mrs. Belfast came in. She knew her secretary would be in a state of emotional turmoil, and that she was empathetic enough to be distracted by it. Her only companion was Paddy the cat who leaped lightly onto her desk, propped himself against her laptop, contorted himself into a pretzel, and began to wash his back.
He didn’t distract her. In fact, she found his presence soothing.
Reviewing her notes on the case, she forced herself to answer some difficult questions.
Had she become emotionally invested in one of the stories that a witness had told her? Yes, she had to admit that she had. When Mick Sorenson told her how she had come out to Rochelle over the summer, Eulalie had been touched by the story. Her heart had bled for the teenage Mikayla who had entrusted her most precious secret to her friend, only to have that friend turn against her.
According to Mick’s version, the fault had been all Rochelle’s. She had pretended to sympathize with Mikayla, even to the extent of lying about wrestling with similar issues herself. Then she had lashed out at her friend, and their friendship had never recovered.
Eulalie saw now that she had taken this story at face value. But what if it had happened differently? What if something else had happened between the two girls – something so terrible that it had led to murder? It was something Eulalie would have to consider.
It was impossible to fact-check a conversation that had happened fifteen years earlier when one of the two people in the conversation had died and the surviving person was trying to mislead you. But perhaps there were other claims that witnesses had made that Eulalie had taken at face value.
She read through her evidence, and one statement caught her eye. Cole Richmond had told her that he had stopped connecting with his students emotionally after a parent had complained that he had tried to interfere in their family life. It that was an official complaint that had been made to the school, there should still be a record of it. She needed to check that, if only so that she could forget about it.
What about the questions she had been asking? Could she have got off track there?
As she read through the statements she had been given by people who knew Rochelle, she realized that they all remembered a different version of the girl. Only one characteristic stayed the same no matter who was telling the story. It was all there in the notes – ‘loose lips’, ‘blabbermouth’, ‘couldn’t keep a secret’, ‘not to be trusted’. They remembered her as someone who gave away people’s secrets. That was why she had been the last of her circle to be inducted into the club.
What secret had she known? What piece of information had she been about to reveal that was so damaging it had got her killed? This was more than just teenage skeletons. This was something big. A secret someone would kill to protect.
“Morning, dear.”
Eulalie looked up as Mrs. Belfast came into the office. The cat scrambled to his feet and jumped off the desk to greet her.
“Morning, Mrs. B. How are you feeling today?”
“All right, I suppose. I’ll miss Odysseus, but I’m glad he avoided the trap those awful Failsafe people were setting for him.”
“I printed out proof that they were behind the cyber-attack. I’ll hand it over to Chief Macgregor this morning. That will spike their guns.”
Mrs. Belfast gave a satisfied nod. “And you’re sure Odysseus really did leave last night?”
“I watched him get on the boat myself. It pulled out of the harbor and headed south-east towards Madagascar.”
Mrs. Belfast’s cellphone vibrated in her hand. She glanced at the screen. Then she held it up for Eulalie to see. It was a selfie of Pryor standing in front of the departures board at Ivato Airport in Antananarivo.
“He says he has a flight to Sydney at ten o’clock.”
“Excellent. Now I need to get to the high school. There’s something I want to check there.”
Eulalie was shown into the headmaster’s offi
ce and invited to make herself comfortable while she waited. It was strange to think of her middle-school class teacher as inhabiting the principal’s office, but she had heard from Angel that he was good at his job.
“Ms. Park.” Foucault’s voice caused her to turn around. “Sorry to keep you waiting.”
“Thanks for seeing me, Mr. Foucault. And please, make it Eulalie. That’s what you used to call me in the old days.”
“Fifteen years ago. It seems like a lifetime away. What can I do for you today?”
“Do you remember Cole Richmond who used to work here?”
“Of course. I got to know him when I transferred from the middle school to the high school about ten years ago. It must be two or three years now since he resigned. I believe he went into corporate coaching, or something like that.”
“Yes, exactly. May I ask what your impressions of him were when you were both teaching?”
“He was pleasant enough. He knew his subject well, and he was a good teacher. He was quite detached, though. You could see that this was just a job for him, not a passion.”
“Can you remember a time when he wasn’t like that?” asked Eulalie. “A time when he took more interest in the students?”
The headmaster shook his head. “Not after I joined the high school.”
“Okay. Can you tell me what happens when a parent makes a formal complaint against a teacher at the school? What is the procedure?”
“That’s all laid out in black and white. We request a meeting with the parent to air their grievance in full. Then we meet with the teacher concerned so that they can give a full reply. Then we set up a committee to decide whether a disciplinary hearing is called for. If it is, it’s presided over by someone from the Education Board at the governor’s office. The teacher concerned is entitled to representation, as are the parents. It is all very open and above board, and the proceedings of the hearing may be requested in full by anyone who has a legitimate interest in reading them.”
“What about fifteen years ago? Were the same procedures in place then?”
“No, this is a recent development. It was created by my predecessor in consultation with the Education Board. I inherited the system when I took over two years ago.”
“How far back do your records go? If I wanted to know what happened to a complaint made by a parent fifteen years ago, would there still be a record of it?”
“Not a digital record, unfortunately, but there should be a paper trail. We have digital records going back ten years. Any longer than that would involve drawing a file.”
“I’m interested in a complaint that was made against Cole Richmond any time between ten and fifteen years ago. He told me about it himself. A parent complained that he had become too involved in their child’s life and was trying to interfere in their family circumstances. He was rapped over the knuckles by the school. After that, he changed his teaching style completely. He just came in to do his job. That’s how I remember him from my high school days.”
“Anything like that should be in his personal file. Normally, I would regard that as confidential, but he has resigned from teaching and this is a police investigation. I can get my secretary to pull his file for you if you like?”
“Yes, please.”
He left the room, leaving Eulalie to reflect on how a person could grow into a job. Emil Foucault had seemed very young to her when she was at school. He had seemed more like a kid himself than an authority figure. Fifteen years had done much to increase his air of gravitas.
“Here it is,” He came back into the room, carrying a folder. “What did you say that complaint was about? The one that the parent lodged?”
“Something about him getting too involved in a student’s personal life and trying to interfere in their family relationships.”
Foucault face was grim. “That’s one way of putting it. Another way would be to say that he was sleeping with a student in his class and her parents reported it.”
There was silence in the office as Eulalie digested this information.
“Why wasn’t he fired on the spot?” she said at last. “There should have been a criminal inquiry, not a disciplinary one.”
Foucault scanned the file.
“It says here the girl was eighteen at the time, so she was over the age of consent. I guess that’s why they didn’t call in the police.”
“But still… how was he allowed to carry on teaching? Why wasn’t he fired?”
“It says here that the recommended course of action was for him to stop seeing the girl immediately, and for her to finish the year as a home-schooled student. He was given a written warning and told not to fraternize with the students anymore.”
“So, the only person who was punished was the girl. She had to leave school and finish her education at home.”
“It was a different time. If that happened today, the teacher would be instantly fired, and I would warn any other school that tried to hire him about why he had been dismissed.”
“Do you know if it ever happened again?”
He flipped through the file. “There’s nothing here about another incident. If it did, it wasn’t recorded in his file.”
“Any other disciplinary dents against his name?”
“No, that was the only one.”
Eulalie stood up. “Thanks for your time, Mr. Foucault. You’ve been a big help.”
He looked pleased, if slightly puzzled. “I’m not quite sure how, but I hope I have.”
Eulalie found a text message from her secretary.
Lorelei Belfast: The four people you wanted to interview can see you today at 12.00 here at the office. I’ll bring in extra chairs and put them around your desk like a conference table.
Eulalie saw that it was already eleven-thirty. She sent a quick acknowledgement to Mrs. Belfast and made her way back to the office with haste.
She walked in to find her secretary putting the finishing touches on the makeshift conference table. Eulalie’s office was tiny at the best of times, and the addition of four extra chairs made it seem cramped. Mrs. Belfast looked up as she walked in.
“Is this the kind of meeting where I should offer tea and coffee, or do you want them to be uncomfortable?”
“Definitely uncomfortable. As uncomfortable as possible. Don’t offer them so much as a glass of water. I’ll be recording them too.”
“Is that legal, dear?”
“You only need consent from one of the parties to a conversation for a recording of it to be admissible as evidence. Be stern and unfriendly, Mrs. B. Wave them through to my office and don’t waste your time on pleasantries.”
By twelve-ten, all four witnesses were seated around the table.
Not one of them looked relaxed. Eulalie decided to kick their discomfort into high gear.
“The first thing I need to know is who put that note in the time capsule and buried it fifteen years ago?”
An invisible jolt seemed to go around the room.
Cole Richmond gave an uneasy laugh. “Whoever wrote that note killed Rochelle Chirac. I don’t think anyone is going to confess to planting it.”
“But that’s the thing,” said Eulalie. “The person who wrote that note is not the same person who killed her. Whoever wrote it didn’t commit a crime. It might be regarded as a minor felony, like tampering with evidence, but it’s no big deal.”
She paused and looked around the table. Then she turned to Rosalind Grier.
“You had every reason to call Rochelle a bitch. She stole your boyfriend and didn’t even want him once she had got him. She threw him away like a piece of garbage when you would have treasured him.”
Rosalind’s eyes were fixed on her face with painful intensity, but she said nothing.
Eulalie looked around again and focused on Mick Sorenson.
“What about you, Mick? You told Rochelle your deepest secret and she threw it back in your face. The two of you never repaired your relationship after that. Did you hate her enou
gh to leave that note?”
Mick gave a half-laugh. “I was angry with her. I felt sorry for her. I felt betrayed by her. But that note makes no sense to me and I didn’t write it. It only makes sense if it was written by the person who killed her.”
“It wasn’t,” said Eulalie. “What about you, Sheena? You let Rochelle into the club against your better judgment.”
Sheena’s eyes flickered around the room. “The club?”
“Yes, the club. We know all about it. We know you were recruiting your friends for Leo.”
“What does that have to do with…?”
“You thought Rochelle couldn’t be trusted, but Leo was putting pressure on you to add new members, and your friends were nagging you to add her. So, you finally did. What happened then, Sheena? Did she threaten to expose the whole thing? You told me she was a blabbermouth. All of you have mentioned that. If she had told someone about the club, it would have collapsed. She would have killed the golden goose that gave you financial independence.”
“None of that happened.”
“She killed the goose just by disappearing, didn’t she? When Rochelle vanished, Leo became skittish, Luigi became skittish, and the club was cancelled. That must have hurt.”
Sheena was very red in the face but managed not to respond.
“You were right, and they were wrong – isn’t that right, Sheena? You knew it was a mistake to let Rochelle in, and you were correct. It was the end of the club. Rochelle killed the club. You’re probably still angry about that. Imagine where you could have been now if Rochelle hadn’t spoilt everything. Not doing hair in some two-bit salon on Beach Road, that’s for sure. I bet you’re angry about that.”
It was enough. Sheena half rose from her chair, words bursting out of her.
“Yes, all right. I wrote that stupid note. I was mad at Rochelle, and I was mad at all of you.” She jabbed her finger at Mick and Rosalind. “You forced me to let her in. I didn’t think Rochelle was dead. I thought she had swanned off to America.”
The Eulalie Park Mysteries Box Set 2 Page 62