Tolstoy, on the other hand, was tickled by the visit.
Sarrazin seemed to feel quite at home. Why wouldn’t he? The man had actually seen the contents of my underwear drawer. He casually wedged himself in the kitchen chair and narrowed his eyes. To add insult to injury, Tolstoy snuggled up to him and dropped the Frisbee at his feet.
Sarrazin wanted to talk about my relationship with Benedict. In case I had it wrong about not being involved for nearly eight years. He also wanted details of my activities for the past week.
“Are you sure you hadn’t seen him recently?”
I was.
“And you haven’t been in touch with him, madame?”
“Right.”
“Do you know what kind of car he drives?”
A trick question. The police would certainly know that. “The last time I saw him was about...”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“...he was driving along in some kind of antique MG convertible. I saw it from a distance.”
“Have you seen that car anywhere?”
“No, not for the last...”
“That’s starting to get on my nerves.”
“What do I have to do? Write it in blood?”
“Which reminds me, the dry cleaners called us about your clothing.”
“That was chocolate mousse, and you know it. Your technicians already checked everything.” I couldn’t afford to have my only decent outfit disappear into the St. Aubaine Sûreté’s evidence room.
But this went beyond a wardrobe problem. I had the distinct impression nothing would suit F. X . Sarrazin quite so much as tidying the loose ends on this case by tossing me into the slammer. Which would explain why he was spending a perfectly good Sunday asking questions in my kitchen.
“I imagine I’ll be back.” He left without smiling.
“I’m sorry, Phillip, that you have to call from San Francisco to express your disapproval. It’s too bad you’re embarrassed by the body in my boudoir, as you so amusingly call it. Imagine how I feel.” I’d learned much earlier to hold the receiver away from my ear. I should have learned not to pick up the phone.
“No, I did not have a long and passionate and incredibly sleazy affair with Benedict while we were married.”
Of course, the truth wasn’t far from that. I’d had a long and passionate series of fantasies matched by frequent offers from Benedict, but when it came time for action, I’d wimped out. I’d turned down Benedict’s last proposal to pinch Philip’s new Audi and his credit cards and head for Montreal for a dirty weekend. Instead I’d applied myself to the task of making my marriage work. Go figure.
“No, I will not pick up the cost of your calls. If you don’t want to pay, don’t play.” I hung up in the middle of his response and went back to my cognac. Liz was examining her elbows in the living room mirror. I hoped she wouldn’t sprain her neck.
“That’s just Phillip trying to wear me down so he can offer me a reduced settlement.”
“Got to hand it to the man. He’s a world class tightwad,” Liz said.
“Agreed, but Phillip doesn’t really matter.” Only two people really mattered. F. X . Sarrazin, for the wrong reasons, such as his powers of arrest and his apparent belief that a corpse in the bedroom should lead to a quick slam of the jailhouse doors, and Bridget, who was definitely entitled to an explanation.
“Don’t let him get to you.”
“I suppose I could get the telephone disconnected, although it might be handy to have in an emergency.”
“Funny. Now pay attention. Elbows. Take a gander.”
I peered at Liz’s elbows. I didn’t see anything unusual.
“What about them?”
“What about them? They’re one of the sure signs of age, that’s all. You can hide a lot of stuff with clothes or make-up or you can get surgery. But what the hell are you going to do about elbows that resemble miniature bloodhounds hanging off your arms?”
I could not recall having a single elbow thought in my life.
“Well?” she said. “How bad are they?”
What could I say? They fell short of the miniature bloodhound description, but they did have a certain shrivelled droopiness.
“Don’t be such a coward. How many times have you spotted elbows like these and figured some woman was at least ten years older than she pretended?”
“Never.” For one thing, I didn’t really care how old people were and whether they were pretending to be some other age. For another, all my life I’ve had enough trouble maintaining my beauty rituals of flossing my teeth, keeping my hair from exploding and hunting under my bed for my only tube of lipstick. This elbow thing sounded like a real nuisance.
“I’m doing something about them,” Liz said. “And the dewlaps.”
“Me, too.” Meaning I would, from that point on, never check my elbows. Which wouldn’t present a problem. Avoiding the dewlaps might be a little trickier, since you could see them in the mirror. Unless you viewed the mirror dead straight on. Whatever works.
Liz helped herself to another cognac, perhaps in the belief the liver is not a barometer of beauty.
I had a coffee. I needed a clear head to make my plans to rid myself of the bothersome unknowns surrounding the Benedict-in-my-bed problem. I didn’t want the conversation to drift back to some other deteriorating body part, so I changed topics.
“I can’t believe he won that award. Can you?”
Liz shrugged. She picked up her cognac and headed back to the mirror to have another frown at her elbows.
“Who cares, Fiona? You know those things are always rigged.”
Rigged? Literary prizes are always rigged? I was stunned. Like so often in my life, once Liz left, her conversational droppings stayed around to smell up the atmosphere for hours.
Rigged? The Flambeau?
With a note of triumph, Montreal Directory Assistance informed me that Mme Velda Flambeau’s home telephone number was unlisted. The Flambeau Foundation number was not.
The Flambeau Foundation responded to my request for more information about Benedict’s win by asking me to state my name, the date and time and a brief yet meaningful message after the beep.
I stuck my head out the door and, spotting no media, made the trek a quarter mile down Chemin des Cèdres to the Lamontagnes’. Tolstoy came along for the walk, and I took the Frisbee. I tire of the Frisbee long before Tolstoy does, but there were other distractions for him. He likes to piddle his way up the long, elegant driveway leading to the two-storey grey stone building that tells you Jean-Claude Lamontagne has a shitload of money and isn’t afraid to show it. Since Jean-Claude is never home in the day and rarely in the night, I felt I could visit without running into him and having to deflect yet another offer to purchase my property.
Hélène was a bit surprised when Tolstoy and I returned her recycled newspapers. “I hope they were useful.”
“Not as useful as you’ll be. You know everything that goes on with the ritzy and glitzy. What’s the real story on the Flambeau? Could it have been rigged?”
She lowered her voice although we were alone in the sixthousand square foot house. “ Oh là là, Fiona. They are saying Mme Flambeau must have slept with Benedict Kelly to make such a crazy decision.”
“Slept with him? Ha ha. Isn’t she about eighty?”
“Oui, that’s what they’re saying. Et non, she’s not even sixty.”
“Have you never met her?” Sooner or later, Jean-Claude and Hélène meet everybody who is anybody in Quebec.
“No. But I hear from people who know that she is really spéciale.”
Meaning bizarre.
“I hope this doesn’t upset you,” Hélène broke in.
“No, no, I hadn’t seen him for seven years. Eight really.”
“And you seem so dérangée and after all...”
“Of course, I’m bothered. Benedict was murdered. You should hear the rumours about me. And I’m getting framed. Come to think of it, maybe Mme Flambea
u was framed.”
“Oh là là.”
“Hélène. I’d like to talk to Mme Flambeau. Any idea of how to reach her?”
“No.”
“Perhaps you could...?”
“I would love to help, but I am very busy lining up volunteers to sell tickets to the One Act Play Competition. As soon as that’s over, I will have time to make a few extra calls.”
“Right, well, you could put me down to sell a few tickets.”
“Ten?”
“Absolutely.” Ten is a lot of tickets when you think about it, especially if you’re trying to unload them to my friends. “While I’m here, you know anything about this local poet Marc-André Paradis?”
“He is supposed to be very good. Very émotif. He has a car repair shop somewhere on Autoroute 105, but that is all I know.”
I lit up. “Car repair? Excellent.”
Eight
I could understand why Mme Velma Flambeau, keeper of the Flambeau fortune, might want an unlisted number, but it seemed an unusual thing for a mechanic to have one. I was on my tenth attempt to find a telephone number for Marc-André Paradis when I decided on another strategy. I slipped into my old jean jacket, tucked my hair under a Blue Jays cap and started up the Skylark.
Five minutes later, I pulled into Auto Service Tom et Jerry, formerly Tom and Jerry’s Service Station. I filled up the tank, although I wondered if that was an unwise investment considering the Skylark’s terminal condition. Inside, I used my credit card to finance the unwise investment.
As soon as Tom recognized me, he swept a couple of newspapers underneath the counter and pulled out his spray container of Windex.
“Oh, hi, Fiona,” he said, “what’s new?”
“Nothing at all.”
He blinked. Furtiveness did not become him.
“Tell me,” I said, “you guys ever hear of someone named Marc-André Paradis? Supposed to run a repair shop up the highway a bit.”
“Paradis? Yeah, he does high-end imports only.” He flicked a glance toward the Skylark.
“Not for me, of course. I’m happy with you guys. Naturally.” Not that my car runs right or anything.
“Not for you?”
“A friend was asking. She has a...Saab.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
“She should try the Saab dealer then. Paradis only takes people on referral.” Tom’s tone indicated he thought this was a pretty good idea. You could get a higher grade of customer. Not one driving a Skylark, for instance.
Sarrazin made me nervous. Not just because he was in my living room at nine in the evening when you’d think a rural detective should be off duty. Not just because it hadn’t been all that long since his last visit. Not just because he seemed to have spent the day trying to tie me closer to Benedict’s death, if that was possible. He also made me nervous because he was a one-man crowd.
He shook off his umbrella and headed straight into my living room, cutting off my suggestion we talk in the kitchen.
I hated that. My living room is where I relax with my dog in front of the fireplace, where I read, where I lose at Scrabble, where I laugh with my friends. I didn’t want it contaminated by a bear with the power to arrest me.
At least I had support; Liz had dropped in for a drink for the third time that day. She took one look at Sarrazin and headed straight for the front door.
“Time for me to make my house call,” she said. Since when did Liz make house calls?
“Where are you going?” I whispered. “Stay put.”
Talk about feeling betrayed. Maybe Liz was my alibi, but if she hadn’t insisted on tying one on for her forty-fifth, I would have been curled up in bed in my flannel pjs that night and, assuming no one would have killed Benedict before my astonished eyes, I wouldn’t have needed an alibi in the first place. All to say, the least she could do was hang around when the police pulled out the rubber hoses.
“You know, this is getting serious, Fiona. It might be time for you to get a lawyer,” she said, closing the door in my face.
Sarrazin glared at the Scrabble game as he lowered himself onto the Queen Anne chair. Naturally. The larger the man, the more likely he will be to sit on the only small, delicate chair in the room. I took my place in the wingback.
Tolstoy greeted Sarrazin with a wagging tail. I did not suggest coffee this time. There are limits.
Sarrazin loosened his size seventeen collar and cleared his throat before frog-marching me through every minute of the night of Benedict’s death. One more time. Exquisite attention to detail. Had I gone to the Ladies’ Room in Les Nuances? How long had I been gone? Had Liz gone anywhere? Had we seen anyone we knew?
What made me nervous were the questions backing into the afternoon of the same day. Where had I been? Who had I seen? When? What about my note they found in his cabin?
Here. There. Nobody. Who knows? And, damn, what note?
“I don’t know anything about a note.”
“Funny, it has your signature.”
“It can’t have my signature.”
“You sure?”
“Of course, I’m sure. I hadn’t been in touch with him for...” I was distracted by his bearlike smirk. “What does it say?”
“You tell me.”
“I’ve told you... Wait a minute. Maybe it was an old note.”
“Nice try. Too bad it was dated March 14th. This year. Not seven years ago. Not eight either.”
I felt my head swim as the implication sank in. Benedict hadn’t been the only target of this murder. Someone wanted me in the role of murderer. And the police thought that was just ducky.
I managed to say, “I believe I have a right to know what was in this alleged note.”
“Sure, why not? It said, Many thanks for all your trouble, xoxoxo, Fiona.”
Not what you’d call romantic. In fact it was just like a thousand thank you notes I have written in my life, although not a single one of them would have been to Benedict. So what was that about?
When Sarrazin left, he took a sample of my handwriting and signature. “You understand why I’m interested,” he said on his way out.
I tried working to get my mind off the prospect of getting arrested.
A seductive rivulet of rain snaked sensuously down Cayla’s capacious cleavage. Her hair was plastered against her head, her lips parted. Around her the storm raged.
“Darling,” Brandon gasped, “at last I’m out of that damned neck brace. I’m longing to...”
Cayla arched. A shudder ran through her. Her eyes closed, her nose seemed to pinch. She opened her mouth.
“GEEYAAAAACH,” she sneezed.
“Bless you.” Brandon wiped himself off. “Are you...?”
“CHEESH, CHEESH, CHEESH,” she sneezed.
“...coming down with a cold?”
“Ub course. I’b cubing dowd wid a code,” she snarled. “Why else would I be sdeezig?”
Oh dear, Brandon thought, turning away bitterly. Sneezing did not become her.
You jerk, Cayla thought. If I could stick by you when you were in that hospital trussed up like a Christmas turkey and snivelling at the nurses for pain killers, you’d better be able to...
Despair slunk through my being. My novel was crap. The only positive thing I could think about it was that those two world class whiners, Cayla and Brandon, did not exist outside of the manuscript, and at least I could be rid of them once I completed the cursed thing. If I hadn’t desperately needed the advance to purchase a replacement for the Skylark, I would have deleted the two of them from the hard disk with a smile on my face.
“What’s the matter, don’t you like writing?”
I jumped. Josey! I hadn’t even realized she was in the house.
“Of course, I love it.” Not strictly speaking true, since my latest incoming cheque had been a royalty cheque for $12.62, and with every word I typed I asked myself if the world was trying to tell me something.
“I wondered, bec
ause your mouth gets all shrivelled, and your eyes get kind of slitted. And I heard you hissing.”
“How did you get in?” My heart was still thumping.
“You always ask me that. Anyone could open that lock.”
Right. Get the geedee lock changed, I reminded myself.
“Can’t you see I’m working?” I have to admit this was mean-spirited of me since Josey was soaking wet and showing a definite slump in her shoulders.
She gave me a look that could slice and dice. I felt a jab in my conscience. After all, I wasn’t the only person in the world. Just the most miserable.
“Sorry, Josey.” But I was talking to her back.
“You should do something soon about this lock before someone comes in and kills you too.” The door slammed behind her.
I caught up to her at the end of the driveway, just as she was getting on her bike. I talked her back into the house. I made a fire, some cocoa and a couple of grilled cheese sandwiches. I endorsed the cheque for $12.62 and lent her some dry clothing and a squall jacket before sending her off to dig up all that was fit to print about the totally unavailable Mme Flambeau.
I felt better after that. Which only meant I was psychologically unprepared for my next visitor.
The news that Benedict’s body had been released to Bridget and expeditiously cremated was only exceeded in awfulness by her idea of the subsequent step.
“You can’t be serious, Bridget.” I was so stunned I forgot that it’s not nice to leave visitors teetering in the rain while you reel in dismay.
She swayed on her crutches at my front door, clutching a plastic bag from Forty Shades of Green. Her skin was so pale, you could practically see her skinny little bones.
“Of course, I’m serious. Rachel took care of the whole shebang. I couldn’t handle it myself.”
“I don’t mean the cremation. I mean the, um, other thing.”
Fiona Silk Mysteries 2-Book Bundle Page 28