Fiona Silk Mysteries 2-Book Bundle

by Mary Jane Maffini

  A crash shook the wall. I edged towards the storage area, the toilet tank lid in attack position. The thing must have weighed ten pounds. I figured it could do serious damage. I poised ready to swing if I had to and also ready to make a run for the stairs.

  I peeked into the storage area and took my chances with the back of the yellow head. I whacked it with the porcelain lid. Dougie Dolan pitched over neatly, landing on his weapon.

  “Run for it,” I shrieked, “before he gets up.”

  Marc-André lay quiet, blood trickling from his temple.

  I raced up the stairs, howling and swinging the lid. Plates went flying as Sarrazin jumped to his feet.

  “It’s Marc-André. Dolan’s trying to kill him.”

  Sarrazin tore down the stairs. I galloped after him. Behind us, you could hear chairs being knocked over and people screaming.

  As we charged towards the storage area, the door sprang from its hinges. Dougie Dolan was hurled backwards onto the floor. Marc-André leaped towards Dolan, grabbed the gun and fired.

  Dolan crumpled. The sound of the shot screamed in our ears.

  Marc-André’s mouth opened. The gun slipped from his fingers and clattered on the floor as he slid down the wall, leaving a streak of red. He crouched there, his head in his hands.

  I’d never seen a man shot. Dougie Dolan jerked, a red stain spreading on his shirt.

  Sarrazin and I stood still, stunned, just long enough to miss Dolan’s lunge for the gun. Before Sarrazin could grab it, the gun barked again. Marc-André yelped and fell sideways.

  Dolan gurgled. Red froth bubbled from his lips. The gun clattered to the floor.

  I checked frantically for signs of life in Marc-André. Dougie Dolan, the man who had put us all in danger, lay dead.

  And Marc-André’s lifeblood was seeping from his wounds.

  Sarrazin said, “Merde.”

  Twenty-Nine

  Liz rode in the ambulance with Marc-André. Sarrazin rode ahead with a slap-on light transforming his ordinary Ford.

  Kostas and I located Mark-André’s keys and drove the BMW to the hospital. We needed to do something. Sitting in the salle d’urgence waiting for news seemed as good as anything else.

  Sarrazin joined us in the waiting room before midnight, confirming Dolan’s death. Heaving himself into the miserable molded plastic chairs. Giving the giant philodendron in the corner a look of pity. Getting my informal version of events outside the storage room.

  “It was all about money,” I said. “The two hundred and fifty thousand dollars Benedict got. Dolan wanted it. He thought Marc-André had it. Or knew where it was hidden.”

  “Did he?”

  “I have no idea. He didn’t say anything about it to me. He was fighting to save his life. But I would have thought not.”

  “Do you know where it is?”

  “I wish.”

  “You’ll have to come in to the Sûreté tomorrow to fill out a full report.” He picked a pair of dead leaves from the philodendron on his way out.

  As the automatic doors closed behind him, I faced Kostas, saying what I had to say.

  “What about you? Do you know?”

  “I don’t, dear lady. I don’t.”

  “But you did know what was going on.” It wasn’t a question.

  Kostas squirmed. “Some of it, dear lady. Some of it only.”

  “Which one of you wrote the poems?”

  “Marc-André.”

  “I see.”

  “No, dear lady, ye probably don’t.”

  “Try me.”

  “I blame myself. I should never have told him.”

  “Told him what?”

  “The poems were old ones, when Marc-André was learning to write. He outgrew them. Wasn’t all that interested in light and romantic stuff. He began to write more in French than in English. I rescued that notebook from the fireplace just in time. If I hadn’t, probably none of this would have happened. Or at least if I hadn’t left it lying around.”

  Of course. “So, Benedict visited you and found it?”

  He nodded. “I didn’t think anything of it at the time. Talked a bit about Marc-André and how he’d moved on. Didn’t even notice the notebook gone. I can’t tell you the shock I had, dear lady, finding out that scamp had made out they were his own. I think he was trying to get the old girl to bankroll him. You know.”

  “No kidding. And how did Marc-André react?”

  “He was mad as hell when he recognized a stanza of one of his own poems on the radio when they announced the Flambeau Prize. You can imagine.”

  I could. “What happened then?”

  “He was going to confront Benedict, especially since everyone told him Benedict had been bragging about some big deal. But he never got a chance. That Dolan did it for him.”

  “And why did Dolan come after Marc-André?”

  “I can’t be sure, but I think somehow, someone might have let it slip he was the real poet and rightly steamed about it. Word must have leaked out.”

  I had a pretty good idea who “someone” might have been.

  “And where did I come in?”

  “Ah, dear lady, I feel a bit ashamed, now. Our fondness for you isn’t in the least bit simulated. Of course, we didn’t know you at first, but we decided we’d have to find out about you. Play along with the scattering. In case you were not what you claimed to be. I mean, he was found... Do you know what I mean? We weren’t sure, but we wanted to keep an eye on you.”

  “That’s why the attention? That’s why you got me the car?”

  He nodded a miserable little nod.

  I wasn’t in a position to lecture. I’d used them as much as they’d used me.

  “One more thing. What is your real name?”

  You would have thought I’d slapped him. It took a very long time for him to answer. “Hector Baggs. My mother always called me Heckie. Not much of a name for a poet and an artistin-wool. Not like Seamus Heaney or Benedict Kelly or Marc André Paradis. It was nothing but a handicap. I’d no choice at all but to change it into something more interesting.”

  “So you’re not from Ireland?”

  “Not in the least, I’m afraid not. But then, no one’s perfect, dear lady.”

  It was three in the morning before Liz was able to determine that Marc-André had a chance. Aside from the good news, I was glad to see her, since Hector (my mother always called me Heckie) Baggs and I had not been the most congenial company for each other.

  “We can go home,” Liz said. “They won’t let anybody see your precious poet yet. And certainly not you, Little Miss Kiss of Death.”

  I dropped Kostas off at Evening’s End. What was an extra half hour drive on slippery back roads in the driving rain with Liz snoring in the back seat? I wasn’t in any hurry. I wouldn’t be able to sleep anyway. I declined Kostas’s offer of protection.

  “Dolan’s dead now. I’ll be okay.”

  I declined Liz’s offer too. For all the good it did me. She insisted on coming home with me. I couldn’t sleep and wasted the rest of my night at the computer.

  “Darling,” Brandon sputtered, struggling to keep from slipping on the slimy rocks. “Can you ever forgive me? I can’t imagine living my life without you.”

  Cayla studied him silently, the sea wind whipping her hair like a rebellious halo. Tears stung her amazing azure eyes. He was so handsome and so faithless and, so...unable to take care of himself.

  How long, she thought, would he even survive if he tried to live his life without her? He’d get trampled by the first runaway horse he encountered or he’d slip into an abandoned mine shaft under the main street or he’d stroll through a plate glass window or...

  “Angel bug, please answer me. This is it. The big commitment. Heart and soul. For all time. Violins. Orange blossoms. Matching towels. Theirs and theirs. Can’t you see it, Cayla? Say something. I can’t...” His face crumpled with barely suppressed emotion. “I can’t face my bran flakes every morning withou
t you.”

  Cayla reached her hand across the windswept rock to touch him. His presence electrified her. Her breathing became fast and shallow.

  “Oh, Brandon,” she cried, as they sought each other greedily, hands and mouths touching. “Brandon, darling, be careful of the sea weed. Eaaaaaaughhh!”

  “Darling, it’s really quite shallow here,” Brandon said, emerging. Water dripped from his nostrils. “And quite romantic, don’t you think?”

  Sure, why not, Cayla thought, as she clung to him and wiped the sea water from her eyes, I can always buy another sweater if this one shrinks.

  “Snuggle bun,” Brandon coughed, as they sank together beneath the playful waves, their hearts beating as one, “wouldn’t it be wonderful to be married here?”

  “I think inland might be better,” Cayla said, spitting out a bit of sand.

  “Darling, whatever you want. I’m so happy we’re...”

  “Brandon,” Cayla asked when they surfaced for air.

  “Hmmm?” He nuzzled her damp ear.

  She traced the lines of his nose, stopping short of the nostrils, which were draining.

  “Yes, Cayla,” he gasped.

  “You do have insurance, don’t you, darling?”

  “You know,” I said to Liz as the sun came over the horizon. “There’s supposed to be good money in cook books. I’m thinking of making the switch.”

  Liz agreed. “Cookbooks? Good idea. Then I suppose it won’t matter if you sleep alone.”

  With Dougie Dolan dead, I was safe at last, a good feeling. As a bonus, I was yesterday’s news. No one had picked up on the toilet tank lid as a front page teaser. Instead, the media hounded Sarrazin and hung out in front of the hospital. I raced around St. Aubaine with impunity. I felt great—except for worrying about Marc-André.

  I got home to find Josey sitting in the porch swing, wearing the binocular case and struggling with ten different colours of wool and a new pattern. “I heard from Kostas this morning that Marc-André is going to be all right.”

  “Let’s hope. And you’re supposed to be in school.” I said without much enthusiasm.

  “I made you a present.”

  “School. Now.”

  “It will only take a minute, and then I can concentrate on getting to school.”

  I considered that. “All right. What is it?”

  “Go ring your doorbell.”

  “Please, Josey, I’ve had a rough night.”

  “Jeez, Miz Silk. Don’t make such a big deal about everything. Just press it.”

  I walked to the door and pressed.

  Josey’s disembodied voice echoed. “Miz Fiona Silk cannot come to the door right now, but leave a message after the beep and she’ll get back to you, if she feels it is sufficiently important.” The machine beeped.

  “You’re amazing, Josey. This is the nicest thing anyone’s ever done for me.”

  Her cowlicks stood on full alert. Triumphant.

  “And to show my appreciation, I’m going to take you to school in a decent car for once.”

  The cowlicks seemed to wilt. She focused her attention on the new binoculars. She ruffled Tolstoy’s ears, but she didn’t say a word to me, leaving me to ponder my ingratitude.

  “Let’s go,” I said.

  My brand-new take-charge tone would have had more effect if I’d been able to find the keys to Marc-André’s Beemer. Luckily for me, they finally showed up underneath the driver’s seat.

  “Don’t look at me,” Josey said. “I didn’t put them there.”

  Then it hit me. A car could be an excellent place to hide a large envelope or a small package, say a couple of hundred thousand dollars and change. If you didn’t trust your local tellers to keep a secret. Or your friends. And most especially if you thought your house might be searched by a pro like Dolan. Of course, you’d have to hide the car too. I’d assumed all along that Benedict’s killer had ditched his sports car in the river or something. But what if Benedict had twigged to the fact that Dolan was on the rampage and squirrelled away the MG with the moolah in it? Ready to scoot off into the sunset the minute the coast was clear. No more farfetched than anything else about this whole business. It was just the sort of thing Benedict would do. And it wasn’t as if I had any better ideas.

  “Tell me, Josey, if you were going to hide a car, where would you put it?”

  “Easy. Where there’s lots of other cars. Isn’t that what they do in the movies? Put them in parking lots? Airports.”

  “The police have been looking for his car in the usual places. No sign anywhere.”

  “Maybe it’s in the woods. Some place far away and inconvenient.”

  I shook my head. “Benedict didn’t do inconvenient things. To himself, that is.”

  “Hey, Miz Silk, what about Paulie Pound’s? There’s hundreds of cars there. Paulie’s always hanging around the Britannia, so Benedict would have known him.”

  “Right. But the police have already searched his premises.”

  Josey snorted. “Sure, and those St. Aubaine constables couldn’t have missed anything.”

  Absolutely.

  “I suppose if you’re an extra hour late for school, it won’t be the end of the world.”

  “I think this might be more educational,” Josey said.

  Long before St. Aubaine was reborn as a scenic tourist trap, Paulie Pound’s scrapyard at the old quarry site by the northern edge of the village was a blight on the landscape. Jean-Claude Lamontagne had launched periodic battles to put Paulie out of business and increase the prettiness quotient of the surrounding acreage, which he owned, coincidentally.

  Paulie Pound didn’t give a flying fig for Jean-Claude. Nor did he give a flying fig for what we did in his scrapyard once the ten dollars was pressed into his already greasy palm. Paulie was on his way to the Britannia.

  “You’re the Thring girl, ain’t ya.”

  Josey nodded.

  “Remember, I know everything what’s in this yard, girlie. It’s all numbered. It’s all on the computer.”

  Josey’s eyes bulged.

  I got the subject back on track. “So Benedict Kelly was here not too long ago?”

  “Yup.”

  “Was he here alone?”

  “Yup.”

  “Did he bring anything in?”

  “I never paid him for nothing.”

  “Right. Mind if I we look around?”

  He spit a steam of tobacco juice into the nearest puddle. We took it to mean we had his blessing.

  Heaps of rusted metal, gutted trucks and cannibalized cars stood in rows and rusting piles. But neat rows and neat rusting piles. Every American and Japanese make you could remember for forty years. With the exception of the Edsel. Naturally, there was no jaunty red MG. Half an hour later, soaked to the skin and filthy, we had worked our way past every vehicle right to the bank of the old quarry that edged the scrapyard. No more rows, no more cars. No more good ideas. We were ready to call it quits.

  But I’m a patsy for a subliminal message. The sign CAPITAINE PATATE on the side of an ancient cube van that had served out its days as a chip wagon for instance. The battered van hunkered on blocks, next to a pathetic pile of useless car parts.

  Mmm, fries, I thought.

  Josey picked up a broken steering wheel and a car ashtray from the pile. “There’s nothing much here,” she said.

  “Right. Let’s head back home, get cleaned up and then we can head back into town to get some fries at the Chez,” I said. “Before you go to school.”

  “Or instead of,” Josey said. “I love fries.”

  Tolstoy, who does not care for being wet but is a big fan of fries, barked in agreement.

  I said. “Everyone loves fries. Come to think of it, Benedict used to practically live on them.” Then it hit me, like a clonk on the head with a bar of rusty metal. I crawled over some debris to the back of the chip van and tugged at the handle to the double doors. I didn’t expect them to open as easily as they did.<
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  Inside the van, the driver’s and the front passenger’s seats had been removed, leaving a good-sized space, missing the cooking equipment but still smelling faintly of old grease. The window on the driver’s side was broken and jagged. The van was empty, except for a large lump under a tarpaulin. We climbed in and lifted the near end of the canvas. Sure enough, the cheerful red of the little MG shone through, clean and gleaming.

  I scratched my head. “How the devil would he have gotten the MG inside this chip wagon? It’s up on blocks.”

  “Was the car working?” Josey said.

  “I imagine it was. Benedict loved that car.”

  “Then I suppose he just set up a ramp and drove it in.”

  “A ramp? Where would Benedict get a ramp that would hold the weight of a car?”

  “This is a junkyard, Miz Silk,” Josey said.

  “So?”

  “Well, how do you think Paulie Pound gets half these cars here?”

  “How?”

  “He’s got a towtruck, and he’s got a flatbed truck and he’s got a ramp. Getting stuff moved around is no problem.”

  “But Paulie Pound said that Benedict didn’t leave anything here.”

  “No, he didn’t. He said he didn’t pay Benedict for anything. That just means that Benedict didn’t sell him anything for scrap. He wouldn’t sell this beautiful car for scrap anyways, would he?”

  “No. And knowing Benedict, he didn’t want to pay to store it either.”

  “He must have just wanted to hide it.”

  “Right.”

  “I wonder why he wanted to hide it, though?”

  “I have a pretty good idea.”

  “What, Miz Silk?”

  “He was socking away everything of value to him. His car and his newfound money. Who would think to look here?”

  Josey nodded. “Paulie Pound might. But if Benedict was thinking he could get his mitts on a ramp when old Paulie was getting hammered down at the Britannia, easy enough to do. Drive the car right in, put the ramp back. The price is right, and the secret’s safe.” She smiled like someone who had a couple of secrets safe herself.

  Right.

  Perseverance paid off. It was a tight fit inside the van with the car and us, but we managed to crawl into the MG and start our hunt. Shoved down behind the distressed leather of the driver’s seat, a neatly stapled Jiffy bag.