Queen of the Trailer Park (Rosie Maldonne's World Book 1)

by Alice Quinn

  “Everything all right?” he asked.

  “Sure. Here we all are,” I replied in a high-pitched tone, letting out a tiny nervous laugh.

  “What happened?”

  “Oh, nothing . . . Sabrina was clowning around. She’s been making me laugh.”

  He had several of Sabrina’s dolls and accessories in his hands and was shoving them all into a plastic bag.

  “OK, guys, outta here. Move your butts. I have to leave now!”

  “OK, I get it,” I said, noticing with relief that my voice had almost returned to normal.

  Jérôme looked flustered and muttered, “Come on, come on, we have to go . . .”

  He pushed us toward the exit and closed the door behind him. I noticed he didn’t have to lock it. The door couldn’t be opened from the outside without a key.

  The children were hanging around in the corridor, and I said to him, “Go ahead. No need to wait for us. We know the way out. Borelli’s going to kick your ass if you don’t hurry!”

  “You’re right. I’m outta here! See you soon.”

  He disappeared down the stairwell.

  72

  As we made our way downstairs, my brain was in overdrive. How was I going to get back inside that fucking apartment to hunt around?

  I needed to be sure of something. Why had I panicked so much back there? I had to be sure my worries were unfounded. That it was just me. That my imagination had gotten the better of me. That I was nuts. Totally nuts. Maybe I’m losing it, like Véro. I should call Marion Rosenberg. Ask her what to do.

  Why had he wanted us out of there so quickly? There were too many coincidences. Those Mafia thugs were looking for diamonds. Jérôme had been researching diamonds.

  Why now? He’d never said a word to me about it. And I hadn’t told him about what the thugs wanted.

  Did he want a scoop or something? Did he want to trace the origins? Was this something to do with trafficking? Did he want the glory all for himself? But why? Was it his idea to be the lone hero in all of this? Get one over on his boss? Be top of his class?

  Something told me I should call Borelli on his cell. He respected me now. Maybe even admired me a little. But I didn’t want to screw everything up because of some goofy intuition. I had to do my homework first. If I found something tangible, then I could call him up.

  I put Borelli’s number into my phone in case I needed to find it quickly. I couldn’t be hunting around for a scrap of paper.

  The only option was to ask the concierge to open the apartment for me. I rang her doorbell. I was pretty ashamed. This guy had saved my life. Who was I to be distrusting him like this? What was it with me and men? I never trusted them, no matter how hard I tried.

  The concierge opened the door.

  “Hello, ma’am. I’m a friend of Jérôme Gallo on the third floor . . .”

  “Yes, yes, I know you.”

  That surprised me. I’d only ever been here once, and it had been at night. “Really?”

  “Yes, I saw you pass by here before.”

  Of course. “Well, Jérôme had to run off to work, and I left something inside his apartment. Do you think you could open the door for me?”

  “And then what?”

  Wow. What a great attitude, I thought, although I didn’t say anything.

  She continued, “I couldn’t even if I wanted to. I did have a spare set of keys when the former tenant lived there. However, when Mr. Gallo arrived, he had the locks changed, and he never gave me a copy of the keys. I don’t mind you waiting for him outside his door, but I don’t want the children making a mess of the place, you hear?”

  We took the elevator back up to the third floor. I was in a foul mood. When we were outside his front door again, I took my welfare card out of my purse and tried swiping it through the gap in the doorframe. Nothing happened.

  I heard the sound of a motorcycle in the parking lot. I looked out the window in the hallway, but it wasn’t Jérôme.

  My welfare card looked battered after all that swiping. I was going to have big trouble next time I went down to the Social Security office. There was no way it was going to work in those little machines they have down there.

  My thoughts turned to Jérôme. I now couldn’t get my head around the fact that he’d shot Luc Berger at almost point-blank range. Even though he’d saved my skin, I felt a painful tingling sensation in my heart. Maybe Jérôme wasn’t who I thought he was.

  Rewind. Play. Berger saying, “Mmmaaa . . . Fiyaaa . . . Gaaagaaa . . . lo . . . Oh!”

  Well, what was that supposed to mean? It meant nothing.

  It was getting late. I was just about to give up sliding the card up and down the doorframe when, unexpectedly, it worked. I heard a small click. Whoosh! The door swung open.

  The kids ran inside. I rushed to the computer and plugged it back in. It took about a century for all the programs to update and then another fifty years to connect to the Internet, and a couple of decades later I managed to click onto the Favorites tab.

  Diamond sites: sizes, mines, resale value, valuation, expertise.

  Famous missing, stolen, sought-after diamonds.

  Photos of diamonds. Articles on famous heists. Resale networks.

  Specialist gangs. The Pink Panthers—a gang known for diamond theft. They’d managed to steal pink diamonds worth fifty million euros. They came from Eastern Europe—former Yugoslavia, Poland, Hungary, and Russia.

  I glanced around the room and began laughing. This whole business had gotten out of hand. It was ridiculous. Rosie Maldonne and her intuitions . . .

  Sabrina let out a triumphant yell. She was talking to Simon, showing him the screen. “There, you see, that’th the necklath my pwintheth wearth. Do you thee it? That one!”

  As my mother would have said, when I have one idea in my head, I don’t have much room for any more.

  I stared at Sabrina. “What was that you said, my chickie?”

  “I have the thame necklath, Mom! My pwintheth wearth it.”

  “Oh! And where did you get it? Do you remember?”

  “Yeth, it wath a gift fwom McDonald’th. It wath in the gawbage.”

  Of course. The gold mine. The treasure chest. The magic trash can!

  73

  Sabrina had found her doll’s necklace in the trash can at McDonald’s.

  “And where did you put the necklace, sweetheart?”

  “Well . . . it’th here!” She started searching through the plastic bag in which Jérôme had stuffed all the kids’ toys.

  She pulled every last thing out of the bag, but the necklace wasn’t there.

  Her lips began to tremble. Simon stared at her, always interested in everything she did.

  I was starting to see Jérôme’s “kindness” in a different light. I thought he’d wanted to play with the kids, but now it was clear. This was proof of some kind—but proof of what, exactly? It was hard to get my head around what had just happened. What had I just found out?

  Had there really been a diamond necklace worth a small fortune in that plastic bag? I bet it was worth even more than the cash I’d found. It seemed implausible. So far-fetched. And how did Jérôme even know about it? Was it he who’d done it? Had he taken it off Sabrina?

  Why would something of such value be in a McDonald’s trash can in the first place? It didn’t make sense.

  But my intuition was pretty solid this time.

  Sabrina had found a necklace worth several million euros in the garbage at McDonald’s. The Mafia was looking for it.

  Jérôme was also hunting for it—and evidently he’d found it. At the risk of looking like a complete dumbass and being way out of the loop on everything, I now had to call Borelli.

  But I knew I didn’t have enough evidence here to convince Borelli. I needed to delve deeper into these sites. I had t
o take a look in the chat rooms, on the forums, find out if Jérôme was there, what his username was, and if he’d actually said anything.

  Remorse and guilt hit me head-on. What if my suspicions were only a reflection of my frustration? The fact was, here was another potential lover, and everything was nice between us, but nothing had happened yet. If he had really been attracted to me, we would have gone further, right? So I was hurt and angry, and now I found myself accusing him of something.

  Surely Jérôme was just on these sites because he was a good cop?

  This sense of unease didn’t last long.

  I printed out some of the articles, including the photo of the necklace, and slipped the sheets into my purse. I’d read them later when I had more breathing room.

  Wondering if I could find anything else, I snooped around the place, moving as quickly as I could.

  At the same time, I opened my phone and dialed Borelli’s number.

  A voice I immediately recognized replied. “Yes?”

  “Jérôme?”

  “Rosie, is that you? What do you want?”

  “Uh, I want to talk to Borelli. I thought this was his cell number. Is he there?”

  “He’s in the john. You can give me your message and I’ll pass it on.”

  “Sure. OK. Uh . . . It’s about Michel.”

  “Michel? Véronique Lambert’s ex?”

  “Yeah. I remembered something. I think I might be able to tell you where he is.”

  “Don’t bother. He’s here at the precinct. He’s sitting right in front of me.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. He heard a report on the radio and came in of his own accord wanting to make a statement.”

  “Oh, OK then. Good. See ya.”

  We both hung up at the same time. My heart was pounding. I was going to have to play my cards close to my chest.

  Without warning, I heard the key in the lock. Sweet Jesus. I thought I was going to die of a heart attack.

  I shut down the Internet, grabbed hold of the nippers, put my finger to my lips, and looked at Sabrina and Simon. We moved as silently as we could to the balcony.

  I heard the front door opening, the sound of objects being placed on the sideboard, then footsteps moving toward the spare room.

  I opened the patio windows, and we squeezed onto the tiny balcony. I sat down with the children around me. We did our best to hide behind one of the shutters.

  From the floor just below us, I could hear The Who. My generation, baby.

  They were young people who represented their generation. They didn’t want to end up like the old.

  I felt reassured. Mom had finally found a way to reach me. I felt less alone in the hornet’s nest. Plus she’d given me a bit of a buzz—a little courage.

  Footsteps in the bedroom.

  The sound of the chair next to the computer scraping across the floor.

  The computer being turned on.

  It had to be him. He’d said he was down at the cop shop when he’d picked up Borelli’s phone, but he must have been in the stairwell. He’d lied to me, just like he’d lied to Borelli earlier. That’s the advantage of having a cell, I guess. We can say we’re anywhere. And we can be anywhere.

  He knew Borelli had given me his number. He must have taken Borelli’s phone to intercept the messages.

  He knew I had a gut feeling. He knew I was on the brink of discovery. He wanted to be the first to hear what I had to say. I bet it had been easy for him to walk off with Borelli’s cell. It could have been lying on a table somewhere. No doubt he could distract his boss a little later and put it back where he’d found it.

  And now here we were. Totally stuck. I couldn’t exactly call my usual savior, could I? And I couldn’t call Borelli now.

  How much longer could we hold out here? Not long. The kiddos would crack up eventually. There was no way they could stay this quiet for long. He must have come back to delete his Internet history, erase his favorite sites and whatever else he’d been up to. He’d have to make it impossible for any of that stuff to be found on his hard drive. Every shred of info on the bling had to be destroyed.

  I took out my cell and looked for Ismène’s number.

  74

  Please pick up. She picked up.

  “Ismène Jourdain speaking.”

  I whispered, “Ismène, it’s me—”

  “Hello? Hello?”

  “Ismène, it’s me, Cricri—”

  “Hello? Hello?”

  Obviously she couldn’t hear a thing. She was pissed, cursing, throwing out insults. Just as she hung up, I said, forgetting where I was and that I was supposed to be quiet, “Christ alive, Ismène. It’s me. Stop fucking around! Wash your fucking ears out now and then!”

  I couldn’t believe I’d shouted like that. I froze. Petrified.

  The window opened wide. The kids screamed in terror. They didn’t know what was going on. It was as if they were pretending they were being attacked by a monster. This clearly pissed Jérôme off further. He scowled at me, a distressed expression on his face.

  “Cricri . . . You shouldn’t have done that. What are you doing here? Get inside.”

  “No! I won’t come in!”

  “What do you know? Out with it. I’m not dumb, you know.”

  I didn’t like the way he was looking at me. He looked like one of the big boys had taken away his favorite toy. A glimmer of annoyance in his eyes. Of anger. Of reproach. Of disappointment. Of resignation. Of sadness.

  It was the sadness that scared me the most.

  I had to do something quickly, very quickly. I had to let people know we were up here. But the little balcony looked over a small inner courtyard. There’d be nobody passing by for a while.

  “You know I have nothing against you, right?” he said. “On the contrary . . .”

  So now it was “I have nothing against you”? What had happened to my whirlwind romance? Where was my lovesick puppy? My savior?

  “Help! Fire! Help! There’s a terrorist!”

  “Shut your mouth, Rosie, that won’t help. It’s too late.”

  He pulled out a heavy black gun from his holster. It looked so shiny, so new. Well, not brand-spanking new. Let’s not forget he’d used it on Berger.

  “Stop, Jérôme. Come on, you’re not going to kill us.”

  “What do you think, Rosie? You think I want to wind up in the slammer before I’ve barely begun? Do you know what they do to cops in there? No, thank you. It’s no place for the likes of me. All that for one tiny error, an unfortunate accident, a little negligence?”

  “What are you talking about? What error? Your run-in with Berger? But you did that to save me, Jérôme.”

  “Listen up, Cricri. Don’t be cagey with me, OK. I know all your tricks. God, I’m such an idiot. It was just a matter of timing. Why do I have to be such a perfectionist? I didn’t want to leave any traces. What a moron! A risk like that. Just because some stupid trailer-trash slut wanted to play detective? How much do you think your life is worth, Rose Maldonne? Huh? And what about those bastard brats you have there? A hundred thousand euros? Five hundred thousand? A million? Five million? What do you say, Rose? How much do you think you’re worth to me? Do you think I’d get a chance like this and let it all go for the pretty eyes of a dumb whore like you?”

  At least he was being clear now. At least I knew where I stood.

  He looked at me and laughed. He must have seen the hatred in my eyes.

  “Come on. Get back inside.”

  “Go fuck yourself. There isn’t a man alive who I’d take orders from like that. Dipshit.”

  Both of us were clearly using our finest vocabulary in this battle. I took a deep breath, trying to calm down. “Jérôme,” I said plaintively, “Jérôme . . .”

  “Stop! You talk all sw
eet like that and you don’t even know me. You want to know what’s really been going on?”

  “I can’t believe it. It’s you who—”

  “Let me tell you something about what I expect from life. And what I’m prepared to do.”

  “No, Jérôme. Please!”

  I didn’t want him to keep talking like that. It was a dangerous sign. It told me he didn’t really give a shit that I’d found everything out because he was going to eliminate me anyway.

  But he continued, “That fucker Berger saw me with them. He didn’t even understand that he’d signed his own death warrant.”

  His voice broke.

  Now I got it.

  “Mmmaaa . . . Fiyaa . . . Gaaagaa . . . lo . . . Oh!” It became crystal clear: The Mafia! Gallo! Berger had tried to tell me he’d seen Gallo involved with the Mafia. It had nothing to do with Pierre.

  I couldn’t believe it. It was too incredible. How often do these sorts of coincidences happen? Never, right?

  It was so amazing that I wondered if my mother had nudged fate.

  She knew I had to untangle myself from two jams—what had happened to Pierre and the goings-on with the Mafia—and she had intervened to make one cross paths with the other. Luc Berger crossing paths with Jérôme Gallo.

  By an irony of fate, Jérôme could be implicated in his involvement with the Mafia by solving this other case.

  Yes, now I was sure.

  Thank you, Mom.

  I had to let Jérôme know I understood him. Maybe it would calm him down. He was hollering by this point, and I was getting scared.

  “You listen to me, you crazy fucking bitch. Don’t start getting touchy-feely with me. You have no idea what’s going on inside of me, so shut your mouth.”

  That riled me up. “You bastard. Do you actually think I’m interested in your feelings?”

  Sabrina let out tiny yelps every time she heard a curse word. Just then, I heard someone yelling from down below. Maybe there was a little hope after all.