“What kind of surprise?”
“I can’t tell you, Miz Silk, or it wouldn’t be a proper surprise. You should know that.”
“I hate surprises. And you should know that.”
Tolstoy gave Josey a nuzzle. He loves surprises, especially if they involve food.
“Boy, Miz Silk, I think you’ll like this one. Just keep driving. It’s not far from here.”
“But where are we going? You know I have to get Liz’s car back to her before too long, or I’ll never hear the end of it.”
“I already spoke to Dr. Prentiss, and it’s okay. She said that we could take our time.”
By that point, we were ten miles from the village, heading along the highway in the opposite direction from Woody’s. What could Josey want to show me?
“But—”
“No buts, Miz Silk. You’re not making this easy for any of us.
I sighed. “I suppose you’re right.”
“Good. Try to go with the flow. And listen, do you think you could pull over and fix your hair a bit and maybe put on some lipstick? It’s a good thing your forehead’s healed.” She squinted at me. “Your eyebrows have grown in not too bad.”
I took my eyes off the road long enough to stare at her, but not enough to get us killed. “Isn’t that out of character for you, Josey?”
“I got my reasons for asking. It’s not like I bug you about beauty stuff all the time.”
I pulled over and tried to arrange my hair using the rearview mirror. I managed to get it under control with the help of a scrunchie that Josey had brought along. She’d produced my one all-purpose lipstick too.
“Don’t ask, Miz Silk. Just humour me, please,” she said. “Hey! Isn’t that Marc-André’s house?”
“Of course it is. I’ve been up here once a week until last month.” I slowed to a crawl as we approached the property I’d looked after for so many months. In all the hassle with the rehab, I’d hesitated to step on his property in case I got arrested. Not seeing Marc-André had been the worst of the whole crazy series of events. “I can’t believe the rehab centre is still investigating those allegations, especially after Paulette blabbed about her part in it.”
“I guess they had to be sure, Miz Silk. But someone’s there now. We should go see.”
“Maybe not, Josey. We have to wait until everything’s cleared up.”
“Miz Silk. Stop the car.”
The car seemed to stop itself. Josey opened the passenger door and hopped out. Tolstoy hopped out with her. Together they trotted down the driveway to Marc-André’s house and auto shop. The sign still said: MA Paradis: Specialisé en voitures européennes. Every time I saw the dusty FERMÉ sign, I felt a catch in my throat.
The door to the house was ajar. Was someone inside? That was too close for comfort after our disastrous discovery at Arlen Young’s house. I didn’t want Josey coming face to face with a burglar. Or worse, some government official sent to take charge of Marc-Andre’s affairs after the rehab fiasco? I climbed out of the driver’s seat.
Josey and Tolstoy had already arrived at the front door. I hustled down to try to minimize whatever bad stuff was going to happen. The front door stood open. “Josey,” I said. “Maybe we should... Josey? Josey?”
Josey and Tolstoy had dashed though the kitchen to the living room. I squared my shoulders and followed, prepared to meet some local thug who was planning to clean out Marc-André’s property.
Tolstoy set up a riff of barking. Too hell with it. If there was a price to pay, I’d just have to pay it. I marched through the small neat kitchen and squealed to a halt at the door to the living room. I didn’t even notice that the place was dust-free, and the dropcloths that I’d used to cover the furniture had been removed. My eyes were on the man on the leather sofa.
“Hello, madame!” With the help of a cane, Marc-André rose to greet me. He wobbled slightly and sat down again. But the triumph remained.
Josey’s grin consumed her face. “Are you surprised, Miz Silk?”
Surprised didn’t quite cover it. I wobbled a bit myself as I moved toward him.
“I have so much to get used to,” Marc-André said.
“Why are you here?”
“I am a free man, madame.”
“Isn’t that great, Miz Silk?”
“I understand that Mademoiselle here is your new executive assistant. She is a very good one. She is responsible for this freedom.”
Josey beamed.
“But how did you get here from the rehab centre?”
“Luc brought him!” Josey said.
I turned to find my favourite nurse grinning sheepishly. By this time, I had decided I was probably having one of many dreams about Marc-André, and any minute Woody would wheel through the door, waving a can of Red Bull and shouting for me to get up and face the afternoon.
Josey said, “Isn’t this great? Marc-André is coming home. Luc arranged for a lawyer and an assessment. Luc’s partner is going to come in every day and help him with exercises and nursing stuff. We cleaned the place up, and we’ll move his bed down here so he doesn’t have to take the stairs.”
I was hardly listening. My eyes were glued to Marc-André. He was still pale, but he looked so much better than he had when I’d last seen him.
He smiled. “Sit here, Fiona.”
“And no wonder he couldn’t remember,” Josey said. “That last couple of weeks, Paulette was slipping him drugs before your visits.”
Luc said, “Can’t prove it yet, but we believe that’s why he was having more memory troubles.”
“Josey didn’t mention it to me.”
Marc-André said, “I asked her not to.”
“But why?”
“Because we can’t prove it, and if the problem turned out to be my brain instead of drugs, then I didn’t want you to be disappointed.”
“You mean heartbroken,” Josey said. “You know, Miz Silk, if you got your hopes up that he was really all right, and then...” She cast a quick glance in Marc-Andre’s direction.
He leaned forward. “Things weren’t looking good. You know, I might have slipped back into a coma.”
Josey said, “But now, it’s all good. And I bet that Paulette person is going to jail.”
In that moment, everything else seemed unimportant. The wait for my home to be rebuilt, my bankrupt ex-husband, even the heartbreaking loss of the Colville, who cared? Marc-André was back, and he was going to be fine. Better than fine, and he was already wonderful.
Well, deep in my heart, I knew I would always mourn for the Colville a bit, but this was hardly the time to dwell on that.
“And another good thing, Miz Silk. Marc-André will need someone to stay with him. To keep him company. Just until your house is finished, in case there’s an emergency in the night. Purely platonic. Do you think Woody would mind if you stayed here instead of with him?”
Marc-André smothered a grin.
I said, “Woody will be glad to get rid of me. Better smoking conditions.”
Josey wasn’t finished. “And Tolstoy will be happy here. Plus Marc-André will need someone to drive him, because he’s still not really a hundred per cent. Sorry, Marc-André, but it’s a fact.”
Marc-André shrugged. “I will be a lucky man.”
Josey said, “So you can get your old Beamer out of storage. And I’ll get my 365 in September, once Miz Silk can pay her tab, and then I could take you places too.”
He paled slightly but rallied. A prince among men.
I said, “What will you do now, Marc-André? Will you restart your business?”
“I will have to see how I do,” he said. “My hands do not necessarily listen to my head. And vice versa.”
“You’re a licensed mechanic. You could hire someone, if you wanted to keep it going.”
“Even an apprentice,” Josey said. “Part-time.”
“Right now, I want to enjoy every minute spent outside the walls of the hospital.”
“Jose
y, I’m sorry I resisted. This is truly the best surprise I ever could have had.”
“But Miz Silk, this isn’t the surprise!”
“Well, it’s the most surprising thing that’s ever happened to me!”
“Me too,” Marc André said. “And I was part of it.”
Josey’s cowlicks waved as she shook her head. “It’s surprising. And it’s the happy ending. But, I have to tell you, it’s not the surprise.”
“Okay. I’ll play. What is the surprise?”
“You want to close your eyes?”
“All right, Josey, I’ll close my eyes.”
“Keep them closed.”
I heard her footsteps crossing the hardwood floor.
A swish of fabric and “Ta da! Okay, Miz Silk. You can look now.”
It took a second for it to make sense and longer than that before I could speak.
I said, “What’s going on? How did the Colville get here?”
“Please don’t be mad, Miz Silk. I was worried about it. I knew how much you loved it and how it belonged to your aunt and how that husband of yours wanted to take everything from you. And I was afraid that the electrician would damage it. Or steal it. So when I packed up the stuff for electrical panel repairs, I put the painting in Uncle Mike’s truck. He didn’t know anything about it.”
“Right.” Otherwise my beautiful painting might have sold for the price of a couple of bottles of Johnny Walker at the Britannia.
“But the police routinely check your cabin for, um, stuff, Josey.”
“I told Uncle Mike I had to deliver something to the new tenant here.”
Since there’d never been a tenant at Marc-Andre’s place, I figured I wasn’t the only one who didn’t trust Uncle Mike one thousand per cent. Some people shouldn’t be made aware that a nice house like Marc-Andre’s remained unoccupied for nearly ten months. Josey may be loyal, but she’s also practical.
“And you kept it with the furniture under the dust covers?”
“No. I hid it in the attic. Just in case. I was going to tell you, but then when everything burned up, I thought it was better if your ex didn’t know. In case the cops never got all the money sorted out, he might still come after it.”
I said, “The Colville looks great in this room. It should stay here.”
“Well,” Josey said, “I have to get going. I’ll call my Uncle Mike. Gotta get to school. I have an exam in about an hour. Hope he’s sober.”
Luc looked alarmed. Of course, he was new to Josey’s ways, “I’ll take you, Josey. My car’s parked behind the garage. We’ll be in touch, Fiona, about the home care schedule. I’m glad you used the oyster recipe in your book. Good luck, you three.”
Tolstoy’s tail thumped the floor.
As they pulled out of the driveway, Marc-André turned to me. “I was disappointed to hear that our relationship was purely platonic.”
“Is it really?” I said. “I had no idea.”
Epigraph
Liberty, equality, privacy. You can keep fraternity.
-Fiona Silk
Dogging Your Footsteps
When walking your pooch
Make sure you take care
To scoop up the poop that is sure to be there
Wherever you choose to be strolling beware
For the ooze on their shoes could drive others to tear
Out your hair
-Benedict Kelly
One
I wasn’t expecting a man in my bed. Especially not one who brought his own bottle of Pol Roger and two champagne flutes and had the good taste to have a Chopin nocturne playing on the stereo. But there he was. Light from my bedside lamp washed over Benedict Kelly’s bare torso as he lounged against the headboard of my antique four-poster, his famous lips curved in a smile.
I sagged against the foot of the bed and squinted at him. No question, it was Benedict, all right. Naked as a jay.
Being more or less three sheets to the wind myself, I leaned closer to get a better look and hiccuped softly in surprise. The light warmed the pale blue sheets, glinted off the glass in Benedict’s hand and illuminated Tolstoy, my so-called watchdog, zonked out at the foot of the bed, snoring.
On my bedside table, a yellow rose lay next to a box of chocolate truffles. Looked like Benedict believed candy was dandy, even though liquor was quicker. That night, he wasn’t taking any chances. The rose must have been for insurance.
It somehow crossed my soggy mind that good champagne, roses, music and soft lighting were not really Benedict’s style. He’d prefer to seduce you with a shot glass of Jameson whiskey, take-out fries and a promise to get your poems published.
But I had to admit, Benedict had never looked better. Rumpled and Irish and wild, with his grin a little more crooked than usual.
Too bad he was dead.
No. That couldn’t be. I reached over and touched his face. He was too cold to be alive. I fumbled for a pulse. No pulse. I crumpled on the floor and passed out, maybe from the shock of that cold cheek, maybe from my night on the town, it’s hard to say. When I opened my eyes again, a rosy dawn streaked the sky. A hangover drilled in my head. Tolstoy continued to snore, a smile on his sleeping Samoyed face, dreaming of Frisbees, most likely. And Benedict still grinned from the bed. As dead as ever.
I hoisted myself up by the footboard and gave Tolstoy a little shake. He whimpered but didn’t wake up.
I slid back to the floor and asked myself the key questions. Who had drugged my dog, killed my old flame and left me to inform the St. Aubaine police about the dead poet in my bed?
Two
The detective from the St. Aubaine Sûreté followed a pair of jumpy patrolmen, who were used to shoplifters and speeding tourists but who had never seen a corpse before. I’d expected the police to bring reassurance and restore equilibrium.
Not this guy.
He was slightly smaller than a grizzly, with the same type of personality. First thing in the morning, and he already had a good start on his five o’clock shadow.
His name was F. X . Sarrazin. He addressed me as madame, but he must have learned English from his mother to speak it that well. He stalked around the four-poster. His dark looks grew darker, and his seventeen-inch neck swelled. My socalled watchdog followed him, wagging his tail. Tolstoy was fully recovered, and he does love strangers.
Sarrazin glowered at the sheets and at Benedict and at me. I’d seen him around St. Aubaine, which, when the tourists aren’t in season, is small enough to see everyone, whether you want to or not. He seemed to hold me personally responsible for disrupting the routine of the St. Aubaine constabulary.
Every two minutes he wrote in a little white notebook. Something told me I wouldn’t like the contents. Perhaps he had trouble believing I didn’t have the slightest idea how Benedict had gotten into the house. Perhaps he found it hard to accept I hadn’t seen Benedict for seven, maybe even eight, years. Perhaps he thought this was exactly the kind of social clumsiness you could expect from the English.
He didn’t seem keen on my unknown murderer theory. Probably because not a single person had been murdered in the eighteen months since I’d moved back to St. Aubaine. When I’d dialed 911, I must have ruined some perfect local record.
Let’s just say I found it difficult to communicate with Sergeant Sarrazin. Everything about him aggravated my hangover, but in particular the way he had of humming “I can’t get no satisfaction.”
I was glad when the coroner arrived and distracted him. I escaped to the kitchen and made coffee. While it perked, I stared out the window through a curtain of rain. My two dozen maples were still green, but the stand of oak had changed to gold. An early start to the famous Gatineau autumn.
Then it hit me. Benedict would never see the Gatineau colours again. I leaned against the counter and closed my eyes. Until Sergeant Sarrazin thundered into the kitchen and sniffed the air.
“That coffee?”
I carried two mugs of very strong, very French roast to t
he pine table without making eye contact with him. I was concentrating on keeping my hands steady. I was no fan of the late Benedict Kelly, but his death had left me seriously shaken. It was bad enough to have Benedict’s body still lying in my tiny, perfect converted cottage on the Gatineau river. It made matters worse having some cranky detective making himself at home in my kitchen. Especially since he kept picking the dead leaves off the philodendron in the corner.
He turned away from the plant, flipped to the next page of the little white notebook and clicked the top of his ballpoint. That would make a nice note: “Suspect fails to water plants.” Just the kind of crime you’d expect in St. Aubaine.
“What did he do?” Meaning Benedict.
“He was a poet and a philosopher,” I said.
“Is that a fact? But I meant what did he do for a living.” He picked up the mug and glowered at it.
I glowered a bit myself. My hangover clanged. I was distressed by Benedict’s death. I really wanted to go to sleep, not to cope with someone who looked like he’d been interrupted mid-hibernation.
“I don’t know, Sergeant. I’ve told you already I haven’t seen him for years. Seven, no, eight, to be exact.”
“So you don’t know what he did for a living?”
“I’m fairly certain he was still a poet and a philosopher.”
And a lounge lizard, some people would have added.
“Where’d he live?”
“He used to have a cottage up past LaPêche. I haven’t seen him for seven or eight...”
“Yeah, yeah, you’ve made that point.” He turned his head so he could glare out the window at the maples.
I’d stopped thinking of him as Sergeant Sarrazin and switched to plain Sarrazin. It let me feel a bit more in control.
“How’d he get here? You drive him?”
“I didn’t drive him. And I have no idea how he got here.”
Fiona Silk Mysteries 2-Book Bundle Page 24