No Good Deed

by Susanne Matthews

  Tears pooled in her eyes as acid filled her stomach. This had to be one of those realistic nightmares people occasionally had and ended up telling the world about on social media.

  He stepped closer to the bed, his hand reaching out to stroke her cheek, and she fought to prevent herself from shuddering. He was real.

  He smiled, but it was more of a sneer. “My touch still makes you tremble, darling. How rewarding.” He pulled back his hand and slapped her hard.

  She covered the burning section of her cheek, fighting not to cry.

  “Once a tramp, always a tramp. I knew I couldn’t trust you when you insisted on keeping that menial job you called a career. If you did leave me, you wouldn’t do so without this thing, so I had a little insurance added to it. I was surprised at how well it worked, and then when you walked in on my meeting, albeit at a most inappropriate time, it was fate.” He chuckled. “I don’t know why I didn’t think of reversing the microphone before. Your reaction was delightful. Sheer terror. I love it.”

  It was as if a lightbulb went on in her head. “You were there in Dorion? You were the fifth man! You shot me,” she cried. “I could’ve died.”

  “Don’t exaggerate. I knew exactly where to put that bullet. The pain it gave you provided me with months of satisfaction knowing you were getting what was coming to you for disobeying me. Watching you in the cabin was a pleasure. It wouldn’t have taken much longer to drive you insane. On his next visit, Callaghan was going to lure the wolves closer to the chalet . . . but I was deprived of all that by that damn pain in the ass detective.” The smug, satisfied look on his face changed to annoyance. “But that’s done now.”

  Cold filled her. “Done? What do you mean, done?”

  “Since he’s already been declared dead, no one’s going to go looking for him, and once the wolves finish with him, I doubt there’ll be enough left to identify.”

  “I don’t believe you,” she said, fighting to keep panic at bay. “Mike won’t step into a trap.”

  He chuckled, sending shivers along her spine.

  “You think not? Alexa, darling, he already has. Why do you think he brought you here? Nicoli Zabat knew the wedding ring would force him to go back to the chalet for answers. Delorme is like a dog with a bone, but he’s no longer of any consequence.”

  “Are you going to kill me?” Her voice trembled.

  “Of course not. It took me too long to find you, too many failures, but not this time.” His hand traced the scar on her face.

  “The chief inspector knows Mike’s here. He knows the truth about everything,” she continued, praying Richard was wrong and Mike was already riding to her rescue.

  The bedroom door opened.

  “We’re ready, boss.” The man tipped his cap. “Alexa.”

  The man she knew as Callaghan stood next to Richard, and she’d bet the Glock in his hand wasn’t a prop weapon.

  Richard nodded but screwed up his face in annoyance. “Don’t ever call her that again, Rufus. To you, she’s Mrs. Fields.”

  Somehow Rufus fit the rugged man better than the alias Callaghan had.

  “We’ll be right there,” Richard continued as if he hadn’t had a fit of pique. “What did you ask me? Ah, yes. Chief Inspector Doucet. That was a little gift for my friend. Delorme and the SQ have been a thorn in his side for years, interfering with business, and you know how much I hate to see my dividends go down. I used my expertise to level the playing field for him. Now that I have you in hand, our mole has served her purpose. We’ll expose Doucet’s duplicity, and Zabat’s business can continue uninterrupted. Maybe I’ll tell you all about it while you recover from surgery. It was a stroke of sheer genius.” The smugness in his voice made her want to vomit.

  “What surgery?” she asked, afraid to hear the answer. The mole was a woman? Had Mike suspected that?

  “Why yours, Camilla. You left me once, but soon I’ll have my beautiful wife back again.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Do you remember when we met, Camilla? It was about ten years after your accident. Between your disfigurement and the aphasia, your father couldn’t bear the sight of you. By the time he introduced us, you could communicate only with gestures. I never got to hear the sweet sound of your voice.”

  “I’m not Camilla,” Alexa cried, terrified by the madness in his eyes.

  “No, you’re not, but you will be. I’ve groomed you, taught you what you needed to learn, and now, the time is right.” He seemed to slip back into the lunacy he’d shown moments earlier. “I created you, the perfect woman—beautiful, obedient, and silent. We had fifteen years together before you foolishly left me, but soon you’ll be back. Everything I’ve done, the money I’ve amassed, and the surgeries I’ve performed, have led to this moment. I’ve tried to bring you back before, but each attempt failed. This time, I’ll succeed, and we’ll disappear together to live out the rest of our days in peace.”

  “No,” she cried, trying to move away from the monster. All the pieces were falling into place now. “You’re insane.” Why hadn’t she realized it? The temper tantrums, the abrupt changes in personality. It had all been there.

  He laughed and moved quickly, burying the needle in her arm. “Sweet dreams, my dear. In a couple of weeks, this will all be over and we’ll be together as we were meant to be.”

  Before she could speak, blackness overtook her.

  • • •

  Mike parked on a side street about half a block from Le Coq D’Or, one of Saint Sauveur’s popular watering holes, a place usually frequented by the locals rather than the tourists. He’d taken the time to change out of his new clothes in favor of jeans and a Canadiens’s hoodie. The scent of the wood fire burning in the hearth welcomed him. The game was on the television over the bar. From here, it looked like the Canadiens and the Sharks, no doubt in San Jose since there wasn’t any score yet. The place wasn’t packed, but it was crowded. Someone stood to leave, vacating a seat at the bar.

  “What can I get you?” the bartender asked.

  “Blonde de Chamblay,” Mike answered, naming one of Quebec’s microbrewery beers. “And some information.” He placed a fifty-dollar bill on the bar.

  The bartender raised an eyebrow, turned around, got the bottle of beer from the cooler, and set it and a chilled glass on coasters in front of Mike.

  “Information about what?” he asked, not touching the money.

  “Nothing illegal if that’s what you’re thinking. My wife and I had an argument a few months ago—she caught me with another woman—it wasn’t what she thought, but she was gone before I could explain. She came up this way to stay at a friend’s house. We’d been talking, you know, working things out, but I haven’t been able to reach her since Saturday. I heard about the storm and someone mentioned a fire in the area. I don’t know the address where she was staying, but it was a chalet outside of town. I need to talk to her—fix this in person, you know?” He tried to look as contrite as he could, his best undercover persona in place.

  “Women. They take everything so personally, eh? My wife goes off on me if I so much as look at another woman. Maudit. I’m a bartender, I tell her. If I smile and wink, add a little pizzazz to a mixed drink, I get a better tip. Sure, I get offers, but I don’t act on them. We lost quite a few towers in the storm. That’s probably why you can’t reach your wife. We’re still on the generator here. They hope to have cell service and power restored by Monday.”

  The bartender moved off to serve another customer and fill the order the waitress gave him. A couple of guys came into the bar, grabbed a table recently vacated by a young couple, and whispered while checking him out. Mike looked away. He had to be imagining it. No one could know he was here, and if by some miracle they did, how would they recognize him? He was letting his imagination get the better of him.

  Wiping a glass as he came toward him, the bartender smiled. “I can’t tell you where your wife is, but I can tell you she wasn’t anywhere near that fire
. I’m one of the village’s volunteer firefighters. By the time we got there, there was nothing left.”

  “Who called it in?” he asked.

  The bartender frowned. “You know, I’m not sure. It was a 9-1-1 call. That’s all I know. Like I said, when we got there, the place was gone.

  “I heard there was a body recovered from that fire.”

  The bartender chuckled. “Where the hell did you hear that? The chalet that burned down belonged to Limoges Studios. It was used in the early 2000s for a television show, a Quebec version of That Seventies Show. The damn thing lasted a couple of seasons, and then, like most of those things do, it died. Not enough fans. Since then, it’s been rented out to various people. No one was using the house at the time of the fire. The caretaker came up every week. We’ve ruled it an accidental gas line malfunction. The pilot light must’ve gone out, and when they got the power running out there again, a spark ignited the fumes. Tragic, but no real loss. They’ll probably get money from insurance and then sell the land for millions.”

  Mike nodded. So more disinformation had been fed to the SQ and recorded accordingly.

  “That’s a relief, but I’m still worried about her, you know?”

  “I do. Listen. Where are you staying?”

  “At the Montmorency Bed-and-Breakfast,” he named a small family-run hotel at the opposite end of town from where he’d parked.

  “If you want to find your wife and she’s around here, go and see Laurette at the grocery store. She knows everyone’s business. Do you want another beer?”

  Mike shook his head. “No. Too much beer got me in this mess in the first place.”

  The bartender chuckled and took the fifty.

  “Keep the change,” Mike said. “You earned it.”

  “Thanks. Good luck with the missus.”

  Grabbing his coat, Mike stepped out of the bar and headed toward the B and B, noting the two men who’d entered the bar earlier stood as he left. One of them looked vaguely familiar, but with the magician around changing faces, he couldn’t be sure of anything.

  Pulling his Glock out of his waistband, Mike attached the silencer he’d brought with him, and walked briskly up the street, past three other crowded bars, turning at the corner of the street on which the Montmorency Bed-and-Breakfast was located, and turned down the driveway leading into its backyard. Despite the late hour, the sidewalks were crowded with Friday night revelers, making it hard to be certain he was being followed. Hiding behind an old-fashioned oil tank that had probably served the place for a hundred years, he waited.

  He didn’t have to wait long to be proved right.

  “Maudite merde. Where did he go?” the first man said, his voice rough from too many years of cigarette smoking.

  “I don’t know. Could he really be staying here? Do you think he went inside?” his partner asked. This man was younger with an accent that screamed Jersey Shore.

  They both had guns drawn—pistols with silencers just like his.

  “What do you propose we do? Knock on the damn door and ask? I told you we should’ve stayed closer. He must’ve gone down another street.”

  Jersey Shore grunted. “Look, we weren’t even sure it was him. He didn’t look much like the picture they gave us. I would say that guy was at least ten years younger.”

  “Asshole. If you’re on the run, aren’t you going to change the way you look?”

  “Don’t call me that,” Jersey said, his jaw clenched.

  “Then stop acting like one. You heard the guy. He was asking about the fire. We were told to watch for a guy nosing around about that. He fit the bill.”

  “Fine. If you say so. Christ, it’s cold. Why is it always so damn cold in this country?”

  “You telling me there’s no winter in Philly?” cigarette man asked and chortled.

  “Not as cold as this. Maybe he went into one of the other bars we passed.”

  “You’d better be right,” the gruff voice answered, “because if that was him and we blew our chance to nail him, I’m not going to be the one to tell Zabat. I saw what he did to the last guy who screwed up.”

  The men turned and retraced their steps. Mike released the safety on his pistol. He didn’t have much time. Once they checked the other bars, they would be back looking for him. He needed to be long gone by then.

  Returning to the sidewalk would be suicide—just because he’d seen only two men didn’t mean there couldn’t be more—so Mike opted to jump the fences, moving from yard to yard, grateful it was too cold out for the family dog to be left outside. Within ten minutes, he was back on the side street where he’d left his vehicle. Hurrying back to his rental car, two facts burned holes in his gut. The first was simple. While he hadn’t told anyone he was coming back here, someone had known he would. How? The second, and far more unsettling idea, was that if someone knew where he was, then they knew where Alexa was, too.

  Mike drove far too fast for the road conditions, narrowly missing doing to himself what those two goons in Saint Sauveur had failed to do. As soon as he entered the village of Montebello, he reduced his speed. The last thing he needed was to get stopped. When the gates of the Château came in sight, he raced along the road to the property and parked in one of the temporary visitors’ spots. Forcing himself to slow down, he stepped into the deserted foyer and hurried along the hall to their room. He couldn’t have screwed up again. Not this time. Alexa had to be there.

  Unlocking the door, he saw the bedroom door was closed. He wanted to scream her name, but if she was asleep, it would scare her half to death. One of them terrified right now was enough.

  When he opened the closet, his breath caught in his lungs. Her coat was gone. Looking around quickly, he saw nothing else that was hers—no crutches, no wheelchair, not even the knitting basket he’d bought her.

  “Lex,” he shouted.

  Throwing open the bedroom door, he flipped the light switch. The bed was turned down just the way it had been when he’d left, the chocolates artistically arranged on the pillows. But those were new chocolates, since she’d eaten the others while he’d still been there. He stepped into the bathroom, pristine as if it had never been used, but he’d showered before dinner and knew she’d planned to do the same before going to sleep.

  Like in the main room, there was no wheelchair, no crutches. Her red suitcase was gone from the stand, and the drawers she’d filled only hours ago were empty. Everything that pointed to her being in the room was gone, including the doll that never left her side. All of his things were still there, including the two burner phones taped to the underside of the drawer and the tablet. Her e-reader was gone, too.

  He was on his way out of the room when the one thing out of place caught his eye. The brandy bottle wasn’t where he’d left it. It sat open on the counter, a faint trace of the caramel-colored liquor inside the glass beside it. Fear gripped him and tore his heart apart.

  Richard.

  Leaving the room, Mike hurried toward the lobby, stopping in L’Excaliber. She wouldn’t be there, but he needed to check. In the foyer, he walked over to the reception counter.

  He smiled disarmingly at the woman.

  “Oui, monsieur. How can I help you?”

  “Yes, I’m Lucien Gravelle in 1123. I seem to have misplaced my wife.”

  The young girl frowned and turned to the computer screen as if Alexa would be there.

  She smiled at him, implying all was right with the world. “I see from your registration that you arrived alone this morning. Perhaps madame simply hasn’t arrived yet?”

  Mike frowned and nodded. Once more, computers had been manipulated to say what the magician wanted them to say.

  “She must’ve missed her connection.” He managed to make the words sound normal, despite the fact terror clawed at his insides. “Thank you.”

  He hurried back to the room and packed as quickly as he could. Using the same door as earlier, he left the hotel, searching for blood or Alexa’s body, praying he w
ouldn’t find either. As he was about to get in the SUV, that strange sense of something wrong grabbed him. Instead, he unlocked the rental car and started the engine. Once settled behind the wheel, he called the emergency number Andy had given him years ago.

  “Oui?” an electronic voice answered.

  “I need to talk to Phoenix. It’s an emergency.” He rhymed off his cell number and drove away from the hotel, heading back toward Montreal.

  He’d failed. Why had he insisted on doing things his way? The promise he’d made not to let Richard or the magician get her was broken, as were so many promises he’d made in his lifetime. Just like with Thea, he’d put his need for answers above her safety, and look what had happened. The monster had her.

  He drove like a madman, paying scant attention to the road, almost hitting a deer. The phone rang. Pulling over to the side, he answered.

  “Richard has her,” he said, choking on the last word.

  “What the hell happened?” Andy asked.

  Quickly, Mike explained about Montebello, going to Saint Sauveur, the men following him, and finding Alexa missing.

  “Maudit Calice. Tête de pioche. You always did have to go off half-cocked. Why the hell would you do something like that?”

  “Damn it, Andy. It isn’t as if I left her on purpose, knowing he’d come and get her,” he said through gritted teeth, his anger giving him some backbone again. “Henri said the SQ maintains I died in that fire, and some frigging stiff was wearing my wedding ring. I needed to know.”

  “And do you? Do you know any more than you did before?”

  “No,” he admitted. “I do know it’s all propaganda made up and put online. When we catch these sons of bitches, I want to get my hands on their tech guy.”