"We did," Kimmy said. "We were taking Doro's things out to the car."
"Doro?" Sellenger glanced around, saying the name as though it were a joke.
"That's my original name," Frances told him, but offered nothing more.
He looked puzzled but waved Kimmy on.
"We went out and we saw the broken window. We were turning around to come back in and tell…Frances, when Tanya saw the…saw Monsieur Marot."
"He was just lying there in the ditch," Tanya said, her voice quivering. "I started screaming and then Kimmy came and saw him too…and…"
"I'm afraid I just started screaming too. We weren't very helpful."
Kimmy looked abashed.
"We're not used to anything like that around here," Cynthia told her, putting her arms around her daughter. "You can't expect to be calm."
"Kimmy, that was a completely normal response," Frances added. "The only reason we responded the way we did is because we are trained to do so. We've been police officers for quite a long time, so we've seen similar things."
"What happened from there, Chief Superintendent Brennan?"
Again, Sellenger's tone was condescending.
Frances could tell that Edgar was irritated, but he hid it well from everyone else, especially from this rather unpleasant man.
"We heard the girls screaming," Edgar replied calmly, "and went out to investigate. When I saw Monsieur Marot in the ditch, I went down to see if there was anything I could do to help him. My wife joined me and we performed CPR until the medics got here. In the meantime, Madame Denis took the girls inside and called 911. Monsieur Denis stayed outside with us."
"So you haven't looked around or touched anything, other than trampling through the crime scene to assist Monsieur Marot?"
Edgar knew that local jurisdictions had their prejudices and jealousies. He realized that a chief superintendent had the kind of ring to it that made some officers respond with false respect while others tried to exert their own jurisdictional control. But he was not impressed with Sgt. Sellenger's attitude. He sat up straight, his eyes boring into the other man's.
"Sergeant Sellenger, our first priority was the injured man. I had no idea whether it was a crime scene or not. Other than the broken window, there was no sign of a crime and no time to discover if there was one. A fellow human being needed our help and we gave it."
If the sergeant got the message, he didn't show it. Edgar decided that the man was simply a boor.
"Was anything taken from your car, Mrs. Brennan?"
Frances tried to focus.
"I didn't even look," she answered. "We were just concentrating…"
"Yes, on saving a life. Your husband said that already. Okay, let's go outside and take a look then."
"Frances," Cynthia said, ignoring the sergeant. "Nic brought your suitcase and the box of files back in. Why don't you change your clothes? Sergeant Sellenger, this woman is pregnant. I'm not letting her go out there in soaking-wet clothing. Edgar, I'm sure Nic has something you can change into as well. I'm sure you can wait a few minutes more, Sergeant."
Frances and Edgar smiled at one another when the officer acquiesced to Cynthia's authority. After changing into warm, dry clothes, they proceeded out to Frances's auto. Kimmy, Tanya, Cynthia and Nicolas came too, as much for support as additional witnesses.
Broken glass was spread all over the backseat on the driver's side and on the ground around the car.
Frances looked around the interior and in the glove compartment. Everything seemed to be intact.
"I don't think anything is missing."
"What about your Paul Bruneau?" Kimmy asked.
Then Frances remembered. Her sculpture.
"Your what?" the Sergeant barked.
"My sculpture. I forgot about that. I bought it at the Denis's store."
Constable Gardiner went over to the police tape, ducked under it with surprising agility and held up a plastic bag.
Inside, the Paul Bruneau sculpture was covered in mud. She brought it closer for everyone to see.
"This it?"
Frances stared into the bag and then looked back at Kimmy. They both nodded. However, the exquisite little carving was no longer green. It was now brown and rusty red.
The figurine was drenched in blood.
Chapter 47: Emily
The Spring Concert was scheduled for Thursday night. Beginning first thing on Monday, the teachers and students ran madly throughout the halls and the gym. Rehearsing, painting backdrops, singing, shouting and generally displaying their nerves in loud and raucous ways. As a result, the office was overrun with whining students, tired grumpy staff and anxious parents.
May appeared to be more relaxed, so she was once more my constant source of levelheadedness and advice.
Lynda, as a staff member of long standing, was familiar with the emotions that preceded such a presentation, plus the insight of the effects on the office. She was therefore a tremendous help and more than once I thanked my lucky stars for her presence.
In fact, I was able to attend the first dress rehearsal, which the teachers clearly appreciated. They wanted my opinion before they laid themselves bare, so to speak, in front of the parent community.
Much to my amusement, the first presentation was a take-off from a song that I remembered from an old movie, 'Bye Bye Birdie.' Basically, seventh graders had developed a play around the question from the song, 'What's wrong with these kids today?' They went back into the past to demonstrate that really, every generation was pretty much the same.
The clever teacher presented a scene from ancient Greece to show that even in ancient times, kids went to school and sometimes misbehaved.
The narrator got up and announced, "Our word for school comes from the ancient Greek word, skhole. This word meant 'leisure or devoted to learning.' Let's see how devoted to learning the children of ancient Greece really were."
As the play unfolded to show typical student antics, I drifted off in thought. Leisure, I laughed to myself. What was I going to do with it when I retired? Would I stay devoted to learning? Would my days be filled with reading, running, traveling and going back to my love of sewing? Or would I be bored?
Again I laughed to myself at the last question and tried to pay attention once more. One 'ancient Greek' was in the midst of pulling the hair of the girl who sat in front of him. A little manipulation of the facts there, I thought. In ancient Greece, no girls ever went to school.
Speaking of manipulation, I decided to go backstage. I had coerced Christopher D'Aubigne, Sydney's brother and one of our bright, well-behaved graduating students, into being the stage manager. It was pretty much a thankless job. All of the students were nervous and irritated. They often took it out on the one trying to keep them on time, still and quiet.
But Christopher was a calm, mature boy who had a great sense of humour, as well as a confidence that belied his years. I elected to make my way backstage and see how he was responding to my coercion.
Naturally I got stopped a few times before I made it to the hallway and the backstage door. By the time I reached the steps, the ancient Greeks had been replaced by the First Nations People.
Duncan Otiquam, our Native Studies teacher, stood just outside the drapes at the edge of stage left, his back to me. He gave whispered lines to the lead, who was overcome with nerves.
A knot of students, waiting to go on, formed a semicircle just past the curtains. In front of the stage, the grade seven teacher, Michael Poitevin, could be heard shouting directions. Christopher D'Aubigne was at the center of the semicircle, looking calm and collected.
As I mounted the stairs, unseen and unheard amid the chaos and tension, I noticed Cate Sanderson. She stood sideways, tucked just inside one of the curtain folds, her hands stiff at her sides, her shoulders hunched.
From deeper inside the stage drapery, hidden from my view, someone reached out and squeezed her breast.
I practically leapt up the final steps and lande
d right at her shoulder. Both people inside the fold jumped guiltily. I opened the drapes a little further, until I could distinctly see the other student.
Her brother. Aaron Sanderson.
Incensed and slightly out of control, I hauled them both by the arms off the stage and into the hallway.
Students milled all around us, surging by on a wave of sound, but I was too angry to notice. The three of us were encased in my fury, surrounded by the strength of my rage and horror.
I had to breathe a few times deeply, shakily, before I could speak.
"Follow me, both of you."
I took them across the hall to a storage room, where the smell of paper and glue and the silence of the little space calmed me down somewhat.
They both stood with their shoulders hunched, but Cate's eyes were downcast, tears streaming down her cheeks.
Aaron, however, had the effrontery to look right up at me.
My anger returned.
"Aaron, I would like you to explain why you were assaulting your own sister," I stated coldly.
"Assaulting?" he replied, his voice disdainful and incredulous, as though I were accusing him of jumping off the roof.
"Yes, assaulting. Touching her breast without her consent is assault. Even if you had her consent, it's unacceptable in my school, not to mention that it's incest."
I bit down on the words, barely able to contain myself. I wanted to slap him, to wipe the satisfied smug look off his face, to shake him into realizing how badly he had just treated his own sister.
Cate continued to weep silently, stiffly, the only movement the trail of tears as they dripped down onto her thin white blouse, making tiny puddles that bled into the material.
Aaron stood straighter, his eyes level with mine, alit with anticipation and delight. He almost shivered with the pleasure of engaging me in battle. His tone, when he spoke, was condescending and high pitched, more sneer than response.
"I am not the one who should be charged with assault, Mrs. Taylor. First, you should call the authorities on your precious Christopher D'Aubigne. He's the one who touched my sister inappropriately. She told me about it and I asked her exactly what he did. She placed my hand on her booby and said, 'He squeezed like this.'"
He held his hand aloft, so close to my own chest that I could feel the waft as he crushed the air with his fist.
"What you saw was me trying to establish whether or not my sister had been improperly treated. Second, I would welcome it if you called Chief Superintendent Brennan and Ms. Ogemah, because I want them to see what their cherished principal did to me."
Again, he held his arm straight out. I could see the red welts around his wrist, which presumably I left when I dragged him from the stage.
I drew in a ragged breath. I knew my face was red and that inside, I was shaking badly. But I also knew that it was paramount for me to establish my authority with him.
"Good idea," I said. "Let's get Chief Brennan and Ms. Ogemah here right now. I will also call your parents, along with Christopher D'Aubigne and his parents. Follow me to the office."
I turned toward the door and heard Cate's strangled voice. I stopped and looked back at them, my arms crossed.
"No, please, Mrs. Taylor, Christopher didn't do anything."
Aaron shifted, trying to block his sister from my view, but she struggled around him until she stood right beside me.
"Aaron likes to humiliate me. That's what he was doing and I was letting him. And those marks on his wrists are from his altar rituals, not from you. Look, I don't have any marks on me and you pulled me too."
She held emaciated delicate arms out to me, hands up, her wrist bones bulging. "I can't take it anymore. I have to tell you. Aaron does…"
Without waiting for the last words to be uttered, he charged her. His hands gripped the thin girl by the neck, pushing her backwards, smashing her head with the force of his anger into the shelves behind. Packages of paper tumbled to the floor, while a bottle of paint splashed gobs of blue all over the tile.
Instinctively, I reached my arm into the circle of his clutch and pushed hard and upward against the bottom of his chin. His head bounced backwards, his grasp loosened.
At the same time I encircled Cate's waist and freed her from his hands. She went down on her knees in the wet paint, choking and gasping.
Aaron threw a bottle of paint at my head, but I was quick enough to sidestep it, though with the force of the spin, I ended up on one knee in the corner.
The thin plastic container flew downward, sailing just past my head. Bright yellow paint showered the back wall.
Aaron scrambled to the door, yanked it open and was gone. I could hear him screaming with fury, shouting indistinct words and phrases, the sound lessening as he disappeared.
When I lifted my head, all I could see was a group of bewildered and frightened students gaping in the doorway, their expressions aghast.
Chapter 48: Brynstan
The woman's voice was loud and clear in the church.
"Whosoever be of the children of God that giveth any of his seed unto Molech, he shall surely be put to death. The people of the land shall stone him with stones. And I will set My Face against that man, and will cut him off from among his people. Because he hath given of his seed unto Molech, to defile My Sanctuary, and to profane My Holy Name."
She shouted the last, stretching out the words so that each one was infused with far more than a single syllable. They were whole sentences of meaning unto themselves.
"These are the words of the Lord our God, yet none has had the will to carry out God's Command. He commands us to set our faces against these wicked souls, to root out evil, to place the Children of the True Church at the helm."
The vicar forced the young boy up the steps at the woman's feet.
When the child was prostrate, hands folded in prayer, head bowed, the man leaned close.
Long white hair trailing over the boy's head, he whispered, "Listen to the Laws of the Lord."
"At last we have found the Anointed One, the one who will lead the church into the future. For you, the people will destroy those who would not keep the Lord's Ordinances. They will stone them with stones."
The woman came down the altar steps and stood in front of the boy.
"Are you ready to be God's Emissary?" she asked him, her voice reverberating to the high ceilings.
She smiled with pride as her son lifted his arms to the Lord.
Chapter 49: Jacob
After Paul Marot hung up on him on Sunday, Jacob decided to concentrate once more on the paperwork instead of attempting to talk to witnesses.
He returned to the news articles, rereading the sections about the fraud trial of Pastor Robert Janot. The local newspaper editors appeared to be inordinately interested in reporting every word, perhaps because their own investigation had led to the class action suit.
Jacob skimmed over some of the duller parts of the trial, stopped on some of the finer points of the law and generally got the gist of the presentations made by the lawyer. André Johnson had made a good case, but from what he read, Jacob was of the opinion that the judge didn't have much choice but to acquit.
There appeared to be very little evidence that Pastor Janot was fraudulent. Not only did he live fairly frugally, despite an average salary, but any charitable money raised was clearly directed to the main church in Williamsburg.
The records provided by the head office were meticulous and unmistakably demonstrated funds that were used for staff compensation. Forty-three percent was not an extraordinary figure, Jacob thought. The amount included facilities for the churches, such as mortgage, utilities and upkeep; missions, mostly in Africa; church programs, such as picnics, prayer groups, and buses to holy sites; administration and supplies; denominational fees and a small percentage marked as 'other.'
The money from the Brinston Church of Leviticus was funnelled into the missions account and spent on outreach, which included sending preachers to Africa,
Northern Canada and other places identified as requiring evangelizing. In addition, some of the funds were spent on training new recruits and providing food and clothing for needy parishioners.
Although it was obviously a very in-house charity—all funds really went toward obtaining more worshippers, including bribing them with necessities—it was not illegal.
However, the donation amounts were substantial, amounting to hundreds of thousands of dollars. For such a small community, the sum was staggering.
When Jacob finished reading through the trial and the appeals, he was puzzled as to why the complainants took the issue so far. The action seemed vengeful rather than reasonable.
Their lawyer, André Johnson, should have counselled his clients to give up long before ten years' worth of litigation had been spent. They went from court to higher court until they were halted once and for all with a denial of further appeal.
In the meantime, Pastor Janot was steadily ruined. He began to hibernate from the world and even drew his family into hiding. Jacob thought that the class action group had actually accomplished their goal without winning the case.
Added to the Pastor's woes were the constant attacks of vandalism and one assault. Or at least, only one assault that was reported. Jacob sat back and wondered how one man could generate such hostility.
Just as he began to get frustrated with a lack of progress, he noticed an article that appeared to be the last word on the lawsuit. Vincent Pirelli, the editor/reporter who had been credited with starting the action, interviewed the complainants. An entire two pages of the newspaper were devoted to the story.
As Jacob read through the list of names, he was filled with excitement mixed with confusion and dismay. There were five listed and every one of them agreed to be quoted as well as identified: Sarah Goodwin, Paul Marot, Rose Maurice, Michel Pardie and Sandford Haineau.
The Emily Taylor Mystery Bundle Page 58