Fiona Silk Mysteries 2-Book Bundle

by Mary Jane Maffini

  At least ten eyes zeroed in on my dirty clothes.

  “Chocolate mousse.”

  She shrugged, Frenchly. “It will take about a week.”

  “A week?” I squeaked. This is the problem with spilling dessert on your one good outfit, and then sleeping on the floor. You’re up the creek if you get an interesting offer. Not that I’d had an interesting offer for seven or eight years.

  “Nothing I can do about it, madame. And we cannot guarantee suede. You must acknowledge that you understand this. Sign here.”

  With everyone still watching, I signed, grabbed my receipt and hightailed it out the door and through the puddles, eyes front.

  I got more looks in the Régie.

  After that, I headed straight for Cyril’s cab, giving the Pâtisserie a miss, although I could have done with a half-dozen mille-feuilles. I decided this was not the perfect time to drop into the library and do a little research on the Flambeau. I couldn’t even face the Chez Charlie for a cheap lunch.

  “Do you mind if I swing by the Marina way?” Cyril asked, innocence painted on his face like rouge.

  Oh, sure. Cyril had probably found a way to make a buck driving me along a parade route, past the shops and restaurants near the Marina, where I might have been pointed out as the latest tourist attraction in St. Aubaine, with tourists tossing loonies into Cyril’s outstretched palms.

  I didn’t give a flying fig about Cyril’s plans. Whatever else happened, I couldn’t risk coming face to face with Benedict’s girlfriend, Bridget Gallagher.

  “Straight home and burn rubber, Cyril.”

  Six

  The early evening light gave a soft focus to the memorial gathering in Bridget’s renovated Victorian home on the hill above the Marina.

  “Who is Miz Gallagher, again?” Josey Thring asked as we circulated.

  “Bridget? Oh, she’s an, um, old friend of Benedict’s.”

  “Just that her name never came up when I was inquiring around like you asked me to about Mr. Kelly. Of course, ten bucks doesn’t buy all that much information these days.”

  I wasn’t surprised no one had mentioned Bridget. As Benedict’s longest surviving lover, she was well past the news flash stage. I didn’t point that out. Good thing I didn’t, because Bridget took that moment to hobble over for a chat.

  “What happened to your foot, Bridget?” I blurted.

  “Oh, that. I slipped on my friend Rachel’s stupid stairs on the way to our bridge game. Anyway, I broke my ankle.”

  “That’s all you need right now. It must be painful.”

  “They can give you stuff to kill that kind of pain. And this is as good a time as any to have a fried brain.”

  No kidding. “Oh, Bridget, I’m so sorry.”

  “Not your fault, dear.” She leaned her delicate body on her crutch and issued me a soft, forgiving smile. “I’m sure there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation for everything.”

  I thought so too. Bridget and I have never been close, a holdover from my slight entanglement with Benedict. But since I hadn’t known about Bridget at the time, and since I broke it off when I found out and since she knew that, she’s always been cordial. Even after Benedict’s death, Bridget didn’t hold a grudge.

  “If I can do anything to help, anything at all,” I said. It was awkward standing at my former not-quite lover’s not-quite wake with his not-quite widow, seeking the appropriate commiserative phrase.

  We stood apart from the mourners gathered there to remember Benedict, to read from his poems and more voluminously from their own.

  Josey, who had never been to a memorial gathering for a poet, circulated happily. Of course, Josey had never met Benedict. But she had been repairing the upholstery on my wingback chair when Bridget called to invite me. Being Josey, she’d taken the initiative of answering the phone and graciously accepting on my behalf. And seeing the poet’s memorial as fitting in nicely with her Grade Nine Creative Writing Class, she’d angled an invitation for herself, despite the close-friends-only nature of the event.

  I suppose it was good. In a village this size, I couldn’t have avoided Bridget forever.

  Josey approached respectability with the skirt she keeps for court appearances and her cowlicks dampened down. She looked better than I did. I was stuffed into my ancient, onesize-fits-none navy dress, desperately hoping the buttons didn’t fly across the room and blind some grieving poet. You never have a periwinkle silk blouse and matching suede skirt when you really need them.

  Bridget took my arm, and we turned and limped into the dining room, away from the clusters of poets, fellow drinkers, plus Benedict’s former and more recent lovers. We stood by the huge oak table decked out with smoked salmon canapés, vegetables and pâté, shortbread cookies, Nanaimo bars, maple mousse, scones, four kinds of jam and an immense earthenware pot of tea. Too bad I’d lost my appetite. I couldn’t even look at food. I stared out the window instead. I watched a bevy of damp reporters, at least one forlorn street person and the now familiar burly form of Sarrazin taking shelter under a tree. I wouldn’t have been surprised to see the coroner out there batting her eyelashes at him. But then again, the rain would have ruined her hairdo.

  Wait a minute. A street person? Since when did we have street people in St. Aubaine? Particularly on a hill with only houses? Puzzling about that was a welcome diversion from thinking about the police dogging my footsteps. I was distracted from my distraction when Bridget started to cry. Of course, on her, crying looked good.

  The tears couldn’t diminish her pale, Irish prettiness. The copper waves, the warm blue eyes, the dusting of freckles, the pointed cheekbones, all that still worked well. Bridget was designed to wear black. If she had dewlaps, they weren’t showing.

  “Anything at all. Just name it,” I said. Bridget brought out my latent guilt. She’d stuck by Benedict for years, drying him out, paying his bills. Not like me, putting him out of my mind and getting on with my life. Not even giving him a call on St. Patrick’s Day.

  She squeezed my hand. “Don’t worry. Some day we’ll find out who killed him and dumped him in your...”

  I certainly hoped so. I’d already charged a new mattress and bedding to the tune of nine hundred smackers. Not to mention how the discovery of Benedict’s body had polluted my social life and caused the police to regard me with bearlike eyes. Worse, my wonderful little house no longer felt secure.

  Bridget turned to me and took a deep, fluttery breath.

  “Do you think it could have been your ex-husband?”

  “I’m sorry, Bridget. You’d have to know Philip. He might murder someone, but he’d never touch a dead body. He won’t even empty a wastepaper basket without putting on rubber gloves.”

  “Maybe he wore rubber gloves.”

  “No, no,” My voice rose. “He’s in Vancouver on business. Anyway, Philip never even knew Benedict.”

  “Maybe he found out. People can criss-cross the country in less than a day. Surely, you must want to know who killed him.”

  “Of course I do. Although I already know Philip didn’t.”

  “But who else would have wanted to kill him?”

  Just about anyone, but only if they knew him. I couldn’t say that, so I didn’t say anything.

  “What about your current boyfriend?”

  Again with the boyfriend. “From the unlikely to the nonexistent.”

  Perhaps I was a bit snappish.

  Bridget teetered a bit. “Forgive me, I know it must be dreadful for you. Everyone thinking that either you did it or...”

  “I was with Liz in full view of the world.”

  Bridget’s best friend, Rachel, edged into our space, blinking behind her owl glasses and gently took Bridget’s arm. Bridget allowed herself to be led away.

  “I particularly like all the poets,” Josey said, sidling up to me the second Bridget hobbled off.

  I liked all the poets, too. Especially since they’d accepted my explanation that I simply had no idea ho
w he’d ended up in my bed.

  The poets were remembering the time Benedict got roaring drunk and tried to scale the Centre Block of the Parliament Buildings in the buff, aiming for the Peace Tower. Opinion was divided on whether or not Benedict had been tossed naked into the clink after that or dragged down, wrapped in a blanket and saved by his loyal followers. I wasn’t sure which version I preferred.

  “Is Bridget a poet?” Josey popped back into question mode.

  “At one time. But she felt the need to make a living. She has the wonderful Irish shop at the Marina, Forty Shades of Green. Remember those gorgeous Irish coffee glasses I treated myself to for my birthday? Bridget special-ordered them for me from Dublin. Of course, that was when I still had money in the bank.”

  Josey whipped her head around. “She needed to make a living? Don’t poets make a living?”

  “They have day jobs. They’re teachers and bureaucrats and carpenters and librarians. And...accountants.”

  I knew it was all being tallied in Josey’s head. We hadn’t heard the end of this poetry business. “So you know all these people?”

  “Hmm, it’s been a long time since I spent any time with Benedict, but I recognize the faces. The men were all part of what we used to call Benedict’s O’Mafia.”

  “And the lady with the big eyes and the brush cut?”

  “Abby Lake. She’s another old friend.”

  “And the chunky one?” I felt a bit disloyal recognizing Rachel immediately. In fact, except that her body was shorter and her hair a bit longer, and she had a pale moustache instead of a five o’clock shadow, she looked like Sarrazin with glasses.

  “Rachel Kilmartin. An old friend of Bridget’s.”

  “She a poet?”

  “No, she runs L’Auberge des Rêves, that nice bed and breakfast by the river. And she’s a caterer. She made all this wonderful food.”

  “Bed and Breakfast? And catering.” New sidelines and career possibilities always appeal to Josey. It took a while before she directed her attention back to the lady poets.

  “What about the lady with the long red braid and all the silver bracelets?”

  “Zoë Finestone. A poet and a sculptor.”

  “Wow. She looks like a witch. A big beautiful witch.”

  She did.

  “She’s sure giving you the evil eye,” Josey said.

  Right again.

  “I wouldn’t want her mad at me, that’s all I can say.”

  Absolutely.

  “Okay, so these people were Benedict’s real good friends.”

  I couldn’t tell Josey every woman there, with the likely exception of Rachel, at one time or another had been one of Benedict’s lovers. Especially Zoë and Abby. From what I’d heard, Abby was very, very close to Benedict right until his death.

  “And what about you? Were you another old friend?”

  “About eight years ago, I was his student in a writing class.”

  There’d been a lot more, but nothing suitable for her slightly protruding ears.

  “Jeez,” Josey said, “is Bridget all right?”

  Bridget slumped against a wall, white as toothpaste. I rushed to catch her before she collapsed.

  “It’s okay. I’m fine now.” Her hand gripped mine.

  People milled around us, munching on the food, chatting, laughing and crying. Sometimes all at once.

  Bridget breathed deeply and started to relax. Until Abby Lake reached out and touched her.

  When Abby hugged Bridget, she had to bend to do it. Abby hadn’t changed in all the time I’d known her. Lean and strong, with long bones and a dancer’s body, she showed distinct signs of weight training and had only the barest suggestion of pale hair. The hairless look accentuated her huge green eyes and peach skin. The eyes swam with tears. And her nose glowed the tiniest bit red.

  “Thank you, Bridget.” She didn’t acknowledge my presence.

  The knot in Bridget’s jaw stayed after Abby left. Her nails practically perforated my arm. “I’m sorry. But that woman really gets up my nose.”

  “This is too much for you.”

  “Oh, no. I love all these people. Except her, of course. And that Finestone creature. The rest were Benedict’s special friends.” If her nails dug any deeper, I was going to need stitches.

  I scanned the room full of gentle, laughing, crying people. One of the O’Mafia tuned a fiddle. A smaller balding man beside him sported an accordion.

  “Benedict had a lot of good friends.” The better friends had been expatriate Irish, like Benedict always pretended to be himself, only with class and morals.

  The room hummed with music. Even people with tears in their eyes tapped their toes.

  “He had hundreds of friends,” Bridget said. “Everyone loved him. He had no enemies.”

  He’d had at least one. “No one you can think of who would have...?”

  “Poor Benedict. It’s so unfair. Things were finally going so well for him.”

  “You mean with the Flambeau and all? All that money.”

  “Mmmm. Too bad he never got it, he would have been in hog heaven. Think of that party.” Bridget couldn’t stop herself from grinning. The grin became a chuckle and grew to a laugh.

  I found myself joining her. A quarter of a million dollars. That would have been a party all right. I pictured champagne corks popping and streamers floating over St. Aubaine and giggling, naked girls being chased into the bushes.

  “He didn’t get the money?”

  Bridget’s grin slipped off her face. “The announcement was made, but the official presentation of the cheque and the award was scheduled for October 1st in Montreal.”

  “So what happens to the money?”

  “Back to the Flambeau fund, they tell me.”

  “That’s too bad.”

  “Sure is. By the way, did I ever tell you how Benedict always called you the lost love of his life? The one that got away,” Bridget whispered with a strange smile.

  I hadn’t known. And I didn’t want to know. I was amazed she could smile, even strangely, if she believed this bit of Benedict’s foolishness.

  I didn’t smile back. “It sounds like the kind of thing Benedict said about a dozen different women. Not meaning a thing.”

  “But he only said it about you. ‘The lost love of his life.’ You were someone special to him. And now he’s dead, and it’s driving me crazy not knowing what happened to him.”

  It was driving me crazy too. Benedict had been cunningly, artfully, decoratively laid out in my bed. Playfully. No one wanted to know who the killer was more than I did. “We’ll know soon. The police are working on it.”

  “The St. Aubaine police? Those clowns? They can’t even track down shoplifters. I know that the hard way. They always get the wrong person.”

  People started to clap and cheer for the musicians. One of the poets, still wearing his raincoat, sang “The Wild Colonial Boy”, backed by the fiddle, the accordion and the clapping of guests. Bridget and I were the only two not singing along.

  It made a heart-warming picture, except for one small problem. The killer knew that Benedict and I had a history. And except for my best buddy Liz, the only people in the world who had known anything about that history were right there in Bridget’s beautiful home, singing.

  Seven

  “I can’t believe you took her to Bridget’s place. What were you thinking of?” Liz tipped my virgin bottle of Courvoisier over her snifter. “ I didn’t even get an invitation.”

  “Don’t pucker your face that way. You’ll get more wrinkles.” While Liz was gasping, I added, “You couldn’t stand him.”

  “So what? I know Bridget. I like her.”

  “But it was only close, close friends of Benedict.”

  “Perfect. Such as Josey Thring, who never even laid eyes on Benedict. You let that girl wrap you around her little finger.”

  “Do not.”

  “Do so,” Liz said.

  Josey’s life is a struggle
to survive despite her criminal, alcoholic and demented relatives. Why shouldn’t I help her out when I can?

  “Anyway, she prodded all the guests for gossip about Benedict.” I didn’t mention the ten dollars or the fact that she didn’t come up with any useful tidbits.

  “I don’t want to talk about it any more. I want to give you a bit of advice about your novel.”

  “What advice?”

  “Yes, well, I think your problems can be explained by sex.”

  “What sex?”

  “Exactly. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. There’s no sex in your life and never has been, so that’s why...”

  “No sex in my life? Never? May I point out I was married for twenty-three, count ’em, twenty-three years to you-knowwho.”

  “I rest my case. Get that look off your face. I’m only trying to help you out. That’s what friends are for. Get some sex in your life. Change your attitude. Fix yourself up a bit. Work from your strengths.”

  “I have strengths?”

  “Sure. Your hair colour. Men like that ashy blonde. And it doesn’t show the grey. I’m sure if you made any kind of an effort at all, you could keep the curl under control.”

  “Wait a minute...”

  “Let me finish. You know what your best feature is?”

  “Dewlaps?”

  “Very funny. Eyes. Your eyes are your best feature. People pay good money to get that blue-violet colour in contact lenses. Try makeup. Play them up a bit.”

  “I don’t think...”

  “That’s right. You don’t think. Now the main thing is to lop off a few pounds. Get from a size fourteen back to a size eight.”

  “Are you crazy? It’s easier for a camel to get through the eye of a needle than it is to get from a size fourteen to an eight.”

  “This is a serious business, Fiona. Give it some thought. Anyway, I can’t sit around talking forever. I have a life.” She flung herself out of the beanbag chair and slipped her skinny little feet into her open-toed shoes. “Remember. Sex. That’s the secret.”

  Like I was in the mood.

  If the door-answering system had existed, I might not have had to face Papa Bear Sarrazin looking like someone had eaten all his porridge. I was a bit long in the tooth for Goldilocks, but I had that weak-kneed feeling of being caught on the spot.