Erin Solomon Mysteries, Books 1 - 5

by Jen Blood

  The jukebox was going strong and the party was going stronger when Juarez and I walked through the front door of the VFW. A giant American flag, a slightly smaller Acadian one, and three mounted moose heads were the first things patrons saw on their way inside. Diggs was holding court at a pool table at the center of the action, a pool cue in one hand, cigarette dangling from his lips, fedora perched far back on his head. He winked at me as I joined him at the table.

  “I found the party.”

  Great. I eyed the nearly-empty glass at the edge of the table.

  “Just Coke, Mom,” he said. “I’m soaking up the local color.”

  “I’m happy for you. What’d you do with my dog?”

  He pointed to a pretty, dark-haired girl who couldn’t have been more than twenty, working behind the bar. She had a gap between her teeth, a sizable chest, and a rose tattoo that twisted around her muscular left arm. “Rosie’s taking care of him.”

  Sure enough, when I went over and looked behind the bar, Einstein was lying comfortably at the girl’s feet. He got up as soon as he saw me and ambled over to say hello, tail wagging. Rosie poured two drinks without looking at either one, her eyes on me instead.

  “Il est bon chien, oui? Great dog.”

  “He is. Thanks for looking out for him.”

  She finished pouring the drinks, then said something in French to an older, significantly fleshier woman behind the bar. Apparently her shift was up, because she handed me a couple of beers without asking for our order, poured another Coke for Diggs, and followed me over to the pool table. She sidled up to Diggs with unmistakable interest, nodding toward the table.

  “We playing?”

  I looked at Juarez, who shrugged agreeably. He’d changed from his FBI gear to jeans and a fitted black tee. It fitted very well.

  Diggs racked ’em up while a Nickelback triple-play started on the jukebox. I checked out the bar, where an odd mix of mellowed old timers and hard-drinking youngsters rubbed elbows over beer and French fries drowned in gravy. Luke Saucier—the resident grave keeper—was at one end of the bar, his sister nowhere in sight. He sat apart from everyone else, a beer in one hand and a bowl of pretzels in front of him. I smiled and gave a little bit of a wave in his direction when our eyes met. He waved back, then frowned and focused on his pretzels.

  Once we started playing, I was relieved to find that, despite her age, Rosie wasn’t the kind of girl who needed a man to guide her through every corner shot. I’m no Minnesota Fats, but I can hold my own in a pinch; she made me look like a chump, and didn’t make Diggs look much better. In between, she still managed to cop a feel or flash her cleavage every time she passed Diggs.

  Juarez proved surprisingly good with a pool cue in his hand, himself. He loosened up after a couple of beers, moving with ease around the table as he chose his next shot. I hip-checked him when he rejoined me after his second successful jump shot.

  “Where’d you learn to play like that? I thought you were a good Catholic boy.”

  He leaned in, his breath warm in my ear. “I’m not that good.”

  My game faltered after that.

  Half an hour later, we were getting ready to wrap up our game when Juarez pulled me aside, suddenly serious.

  “That man over there,” he said. “At the bar. Do you know him?”

  I looked in the direction he’d indicated. Luke Saucier was staring at me openly now, something haunted in his gaze. “Diggs and I met him and his sister yesterday—the Sauciers,” I said. “They were friends with Erin Lincoln. I think he’s got some kind of autism, or maybe he’s just slow. He’s harmless.”

  “No.” He shook his head, subtly taking my elbow to turn me a little to the left. “Not that guy. That one.”

  On the other side of the bar, about four seats over from Luke, was a mountain of a man with a full-on Grizzly Adams beard and small, piercing eyes. He dropped his gaze the second I looked at him.

  I snagged Rosie on her next pass through. “That guy at the bar—the one who looks like he had gravel for breakfast and now he’s having trouble passing the stones… With the beard?”

  She followed my gaze, neither of us taking much care to be subtle. “Will?” she asked.

  My heart may have stopped, for just a second there. “Will Rainier?”

  “Oui. He practically lives here. You know him?”

  Not yet, but I planned to. I started toward the bar, but Juarez caught me by the elbow and reeled me back in. “Where are you going?”

  “You heard her: That’s Will Rainier. I’m going to talk to him.”

  Juarez pulled me a little farther aside. “I’ll talk to him tomorrow. Not here.”

  “Are you nuts? He’s half in the bag, not expecting it, and he’s in a public place. In my world, that’s what we call a perfect storm. I just want to ask him a couple of questions.”

  Juarez shook his head. “Just trust me, all right? This isn’t the way to go about it—I’ll have a conversation with him, but this isn’t the time.”

  “So you have a conversation with him some other time. I’m talking to him now.”

  I started toward him again. Juarez blocked my path. Over his shoulder, I could see Will Rainier watching the entire exchange. This time when he realized I was watching him, he didn’t look away. His eyes had all the warmth of a rattlesnake, and none of the charm.

  “Listen to me,” Juarez said. “Whatever we may know, I don’t want to tip him off until I’m able to confirm a couple of things through my office and do a proper interview. Tomorrow. Away from here. If you want to find out what really happened to your father and his sister, you need to trust that I know what I’m doing.”

  I caught Diggs’ eye. He was watching all of this with great interest, waiting to see what I would do next. I looked at Rainier one more time. His mouth quirked up in a faint half-smile, as though he knew exactly what was happening.

  I nodded. “Yeah,” I said to Juarez. “Okay, fine. I’ll wait until tomorrow.”

  “Good. Thank you.”

  We got back to the game, but from that point on every time I looked up, Rainier was watching me. Juarez was clearly aware, but he seemed dead set on questioning him on his own Feeb timeline. I was a good girl, though, and minded my own business through the entire game. Sure, there may have been the occasional furtive glance, but otherwise I showed remarkable restraint. We surrendered the pool table to the natives at a little after ten and stopped to refuel. Rosie chose a booth for us at the back, in front of a wall of photos with the words Never Forget written in red, white, and blue above them.

  Juarez slid in beside me, Diggs across from us. As the night progressed, the music had gotten louder, the patrons considerably rowdier. A knot of women in skin-tight jeans and tank tops were on the dance floor gyrating to Lynyrd Skynyrd, but Will Rainier still only had eyes for me. Luke Saucier took off at some point, and then the former sheriff, Red Grivois, showed up and took the stool beside Rainier. The two exchanged a manly nod, but otherwise I didn’t see them speak to one another. Mostly, Red drank steadily with his eyes on the bar while Rainier drank steadily with his eyes on me. And still, I stayed away.

  When Rosie returned from fetching refreshments for the gang, she nodded toward the wall of photos beside us.

  “I thought you might be interested in this.”

  It took me a minute to understand what she meant. Most of the pictures were of fallen soldiers with painfully young grins and buzz cuts, dating as far back as WWI. Two of the pictures were set apart from the others, however. Below them was an inscription written in calligraphy on a faded piece of blue construction paper:

  Taken by the devil

  Returned to the angels

  Now safe with Jesus

  Erin Lincoln and Ashley Gendreau smiled back at us.

  “I see what you mean about the resemblance,” Rosie said to Diggs, looking from me to the photo of Erin Lincoln and back again.

  “So, you know the story, too—you’ve heard of both g
irls?” I asked.

  “Oui,” she said. “They were a little before my time, but everyone’s heard their stories.”

  “Rosie’s grandma is kind of the local historian; Rosie’s following in her footsteps,” Diggs explained. She downed half her beer and turned a pretty pink at Diggs’ attention. “So, I was hoping maybe you could answer something for us,” he continued, his focus entirely on her. “Lincoln isn’t exactly a common name around here, and we didn’t see anyone dating farther back than Wallace Lincoln in the graveyard out by the Sauciers’ place. Do you know where he came from?”

  “Non,” Rosie said. “There was talk—a lot of rumors over the years. But my mémère said Wallace Lincoln had no family when he came here. Just the wife and kids.”

  Another mystery. Wonderful.

  “Sarah Saucier said Wallace Lincoln was a bigwig in town,” I said. “Do you know what he did?”

  “He bought one of the local lumber mills,” she said. “Came from away, moved in, and hired half the town. Fired half the town, too. Nobody liked him too much. People here have long memories—most anyone would say the same. Everybody liked the girl, though.”

  Rosie gave us a little more background info from there, sprinkled in with the occasional juicy tidbit and a lot of sexy innuendo directed at Diggs. Eventually, her spiel devolved into a rant about the boys in town and how little they knew about the ways of the world. According to her, other men—presumably scruffy tow-headed reporters of a certain age—were much more her speed.

  “We should probably talk about what’s happening tomorrow,” Diggs interrupted, heading that particular topic off at the pass. “The big trek across the border.”

  “I have a meeting in Montreal at eleven a.m.,” Juarez said. “There’s a pilot meeting us at a private airstrip at seven-thirty.”

  “What about Einstein?” I asked. “Can he fly on your fancy government charter?”

  Juarez didn’t look over the moon about that idea.

  “Rosie dog-sits,” Diggs said. “Don’t you, Rose? You think you could handle Einstein for a few hours?

  She nodded eagerly, but I was already hedging. “I don’t know. He can be kind of high maintenance.”

  “What are you talking about?” Diggs asked. “I’ve never met a lower maintenance dog in my life. He’ll be fine.”

  “I worked at the vet’s up the road for a couple years in high school, until I realized how much more I could make working here. I can handle it.”

  “It would actually be better if I didn’t show up in Montreal with two reporters and a dog,” Juarez said. “Two reporters is hard enough to explain.”

  “One reporter, actually,” Diggs said. I started to protest, but he held up his hand. “I’ve got a lead I want to check out in Quebec City. And Juarez said it himself—two reporters will be hard to get through the front door. This way, you can check out the hallowed inner sanctum at le Laboratoire, and I can do my thing without freaking my sources out by showing up with the Feebs.”

  “Shouldn’t I be with you when you’re checking out these leads, though?” I asked.

  “A few of those leads have to do with my own stories, actually,” he said. “Contrary to popular belief, we can’t all spend every waking minute trying to track down your dad. There is one guy I’d like you to talk to, though. I was thinking maybe we could rendezvous in the city after you two finish up with the bones in Montreal. If Juarez can entertain himself for an hour or two, we can run through those interviews together.”

  With the logistics set for the day to come, I waited until Diggs, Juarez, and Rosie were deep in conversation before I politely excused myself to take a powder. The moment I said, it, Diggs’ eyes were on me. I waited, holding my breath to see if he’d say anything. He stayed quiet, but it was clear that he knew exactly what I was up to.

  In all fairness, I did actually go to the restroom. I just took a little bit of a detour on the way back. Wonder of wonders, I wound up right beside Will Rainier.

  I took the stool beside him, ordered myself a fresh beer, and leaned past him to talk to Red Grivois, seated on the next stool over.

  “Hey, Red,” I said. “Great place you’ve got here.”

  Red looked at me like he expected me to singlehandedly infect the entire establishment with a nasty case of feminine itching.

  “It’s late,” he said. “You should probably get on home.”

  “That’s all right,” I said. I took a slug of ice-cold Molson Golden and set it down a little too hard on the bar. “I’m kind of a night owl.” I looked at Rainier. “What about you—Will, isn’t it? You a man of the night?”

  He sipped at his own beer. His mouth twitched. This close up, I realized that I’d underestimated his size—he was monstrous. Monstrous and bearded and dark-eyed and drunk. Just the kind of man you don’t want to bother when he’s drinking alone on a Saturday night.

  “Depends on the company,” he said.

  I let that slide. “I think you knew my father. Jeff Lincoln?”

  He took another drink and nodded meditatively. “That I did.”

  “And you knew his sister—Erin Lincoln?”

  Red started to get up, clearly intending to intervene. Rainier slapped his hand over the old man’s arm before he could stand. He did it so quickly I barely saw him move. Red stayed where he was.

  “Yeah. I knew Erin, too. What’s it to you?”

  “What about Ashley Gendreau?” I asked. “Did you know Ashley Gendreau?”

  That sly little half-smile never left his lips. He kept looking straight ahead, sipping at his beer. “Yeah,” he said. “I knew Ashley Gendreau. You plan on going through the whole phone book this way? It’s a small town—not a lot of people, but I know all of ’em.”

  “I think it would be best if you moved along, Ms. Solomon,” Red said to me.

  Rainier smiled more widely. “Solomon, huh? That’s nice. Got a nice ring to it. You don’t have to go on my account, Miz Solomon. Stay right here, no skin off my balls.”

  Lovely.

  He turned to face me. His eyes had a feverish quality common to those with a serious drug problem or some very dark demons. My guess was that Will Rainier had probably battled both in his day.

  “You come on back to my place, little girl, and I’ll tell you all about who I know and how I know ’em.”

  I heard someone clear his throat behind me. When I turned, Juarez was standing there with his arms crossed over his chest and a colossally unamused look on his face.

  “We missed you over there,” he said. “Why don’t you come back to the table?” Technically, it was a question. He didn’t make it sound like I had much choice, though.

  “Why don’t you leave her alone, Pablo?” Rainier said. “Girl wants to talk to me, there’s not much you can do about it, is there?” He turned to Red. “When’d we start letting wetbacks in here, anyway? This still America, or did I miss a memo?”

  “Erin,” Juarez said.

  That unconcerned half-smile Rainier had been smiling before had gotten harder. I stayed where I was regardless.

  “That weekend Jeff and Erin Lincoln went missing in 1970, where were you?” I asked. Juarez looked like he was about to physically eject me from the conversation. And possibly the planet.

  Rainier pretended to think about it for a minute. “1970, huh? That was a long time ago, you’re gonna have to refresh my memory. Which weekend was that, now?”

  “They found the boat Saturday, September 27th,” I said patiently.

  He thought some more. “September 27… Yeah, I think old Hank Gendreau and me were up in Quebec that weekend. Had a little rite of passage that Saturday night, if you know what I mean. Pretty little thing, too.” He winked at me, then licked his lips. “Come to think of it, she looked a little like you.”

  The words had enough meaning behind them to push me back for a second. Before I could respond, Juarez took my arm, clearly intent on getting me out of there. Rainier got off his stool with surprising speed
and pushed Juarez back. He was big enough that just about anyone but Juarez would have probably hit the floor; Juarez barely budged. Red Grivois got up off his stool, as did half the bar. At our table in the back, Diggs had his hand wrapped tight around Einstein’s collar to keep him from jumping into the fray.

  I stayed seated for the moment, uncertain what the best move might be. Red tried to steer Rainier toward the door.

  “Come on, Will. I’ll give you a ride home—you can go sleep this off before things get ugly.”

  Rainier shook his head. “You go on. The day I let a spic and a Jew girl chase me out of my own bar’s the day I retire from this whole fuckin’ planet. I told you,” he said to Juarez. “Back the hell off. We’re having a conversation.”

  Juarez ignored him completely, his attention focused on me instead. Daughtry was playing in the background, but nobody was dancing anymore.

  “Are you ready?” he asked.

  “Yeah, fine,” I agreed reluctantly. “Let’s go.”

  I hopped down from my stool, but I’d gotten no more than a step before a big, meaty hand closed around my upper arm. Before I felt so much as a gram of pressure, Juarez whirled. He struck once with the heel of his hand, and Rainier went down like a sack of Aroostook’s finest russets, blood pouring from his nose.

  Rainier held one hand over his face. With the other, he started to push himself back up off the floor.

  “Don’t,” Juarez said, his eyes steady on Rainier’s. Rainier thought about it for a second, then sat back down. It was a very Eastwood moment. Juarez looked at Red. “See that he gets home safe?”

  Red nodded. “Will do.”

  Juarez started to walk away, but I didn’t move until he returned and physically herded me back to the table like a willful little lamb. He didn’t say a word, and he definitely didn’t look happy. He wasn’t the only one, though. The second we were back to the table, I pulled my arm away.