“Don’t look so forlorn, Havilah.” Neely suggested as consolation, “How about a bit of Cassis trivia?” he jovially suggested. “What head of state painted at the Félibrige and stayed at our favorite hotel in Cassis?”
Neither Améline or Havilah answered in clear defiance. But then Havilah thought the better of it. She might as well entertain Neely as a way of stalling.
“Winston Churchill.”
“Correct answer, Havilah.”
“Can Améline and I have a lifeline?” she asked, to humor him.
“You are such a good sport.” Neely laughed a bit too loudly as he quickly downed the last of the martini.
Sophie looked on in boredom. Havilah imagined she was awaiting the opportunity to unleash her mean streak. They all sat in silence for what seemed an interminably long time.
He’s waiting for complete nightfall, she thought. For more cover.
Neely ordered them out of the boat. Havilah recalled sitting up last evening watching the clock and nightfall, anticipating 9:40 p.m. It was close to that time now. There was still enough light for Neely to watch her and Améline drown after their accidental tumble into the water. The four of them ascended the stone stairs and snaked along Port Miou’s craggy cliffs.
Améline stumbled over one of the rocky areas of the ramparts. Her designer heels were not intended for hiking. She cursed at both her captors, who looked at her mockingly. Havilah was plotting.
“I wonder how believable your lame ass motive will be with my hands bound, jackass,” Améline shouted. She squealed as she twisted an ankle and fell on her bottom.
The heels were difficult enough to manage, but having her wrists bound further compromised her ability to balance. Havilah helped to pull her up.
* * *
Ignoring the difficult Améline, Neely surmised, would be his best course of action. He wasn’t ready yet to kick her in the backside and into the inlet— though his foot had been itching. He was tired of her mouth. He couldn’t wait to see the back of her. He laughed aloud shamefully, as that would be exactly what he saw when she went flying off the cliff into the water. Sophie stopped and looked at him contemptuously. He did give a passing thought to undoing her bound wrists, as she was holding up the procession with her dawdling. He found this slow dragging more of a nuisance than her mouth; he again took heart in the fact that he would soon be unburdening himself of it. He untied Améline’s wrists and pushed her forward with Havilah.
* * *
Ansell began waving the gun and complaining about Améline’s sense of fashion appropriateness as if she knew she would be scaling a cliff this evening.
While he blathered on, Havilah saw her chance. She pushed Améline first off the cliff into the dark water. They had not yet reached the highest point on the cliff where massive rocks jutted out from the shoreline and water, so Améline’s fall would not be mortal. All she needed to do was tread water to one of the anchored boats. Havilah attempted to jump in after her but Sophie latched onto her arm. She reached around and whisked Sophie in with her. Améline went down screaming. Several revelers followed suit, yelping and laughing, obviously intoxicated. Ansell Neely began yelling, trying to get Havilah and Améline back up the stairs. He looked as if he was tempted to fire into the water, but in this dimming light he might have hit Sophie who was zealously clinging to Havilah. Thank goodness for small favors, Havilah thought when she glanced over at the caterwauling Sophie.
“Swim, Améline!” Havilah yelled over Sophie’s theatrics. “Get to the nearest boat.”
Havilah hoped the woman could swim. She hadn’t had time to ask. The nearest boat was no more than twenty feet away. It was a large sailboat. The occupants were French and looked and sounded young. They had lit the boat’s deck with candles. It would have been romantic except that they were boisterously passing around bottles of liquor and blasting American hip hop.
“It’s fucking cold,” Améline answered, slapping ineffectually at the water.
The water was cold. Havilah didn’t understand how divers just jumped in from the sides as soon as the weather warmed. Even at the hottest point in the summer, the Mediterranean was fresh to the point of very cool. Améline glided over to the boat and climbed the attached ladder, her high heels occasionally slipping off the rungs. Someone greeted her enthusiastically once she reached the top.
Sophie was now clawing and pulling at Havilah, both of them treading water. Havilah was hoping to tire her out, but her clothes and sneakers were already heavy from the water. She was tiring herself. Havilah took one good swing at Sophie’s determined face. Then she remembered that slap, and she head-butted her to the nose. Sophie promptly let go, blood gushing from her nostrils. She could hear Améline, who was now on the party sailboat, whooping.
“Hit that bitch again, Havilah!”
“Call the damn police!” Havilah yelled back. Did Améline have a drink in her hand?
“Au secours,” Havilah screamed out. But Sophie, sufficiently recovered from the blow to her face and the shock of her bloodied nose, was screaming over her. Her screams were indecipherable from Havilah’s urgent pleas, which were all drowned out by Ludacris’s My Chick Bad. The boaters were laughing and pointing at the women as if they thought they were playing some weird game of black woman drowning. These people were clearly high out of their minds. Finally, Améline tossed out a ring buoy while someone held her drink. She was so petite and weighed down by her wet clothes that she nearly fell in with the buoy, which only had the effect of inciting gleeful cheers. Havilah, who had dislodged herself from Sophie’s death grip, dog-paddled ever so slowly to the buoy, until at last she made it to the party boat.
* * *
Ansell Neely glided swiftly down the stone steps and jumped back on the Errant Lover. He called to Sophie, who seemed more determined to stop Havilah than to save herself from capture. A dozen or so police with flashlights were starting to emerge from various points at Port Miou. Some were atop the steps that Havilah and Améline had been forced to climb, while others stood on the limestone bridge that connected one side of the inlet to the other. A helicopter was flying over the inlet, flooding the calanque with bright lights.
“Sophie!” he called again, to no avail. His voice was hoarse from repeatedly calling for her.
He turned over the engine and headed out of the inlet towards the sea. An inflatable high horse-powered speed boat followed him out towards Port Pin, the second of the eight watery inlets, while the helicopter hovered above giving the officers on the boat light to keep Neely in their sights.
* * *
An officer jumped into Port Miou and rescued Sophie Fassin from drowning. She was waterlogged and fatigued from fighting and treading water. Havilah and Améline were shivering from the cold water as the warm breeze passed through their wet garments. Someone made them both pastis to generate some heat, and gave them blankets. Havilah usually hated the licorice-smelling drink, but it did warm her insides on the way down her throat. While they waited for the police to retrieve them from the boat, she watched the irrepressible Améline drink and dance with the sailboat revelers. She was celebrating her death-defying escape, while Havilah wondered where Thierry Gasquet was.
XXVI
Ansell began to maneuver the boat recklessly. He thought he had made a clear departure for another inlet until he saw Thierry Gasquet behind him in another souped-up inflatable boat. He had unfortunately bought the “old friend from Paris” story because Gasquet had been elegantly attired in black civilian clothing when Neely first saw him and Havilah leaving her apartment in Paris with the uniformed officer. He had initially hoped to beguile the lovely Havilah with his charm; but the police had obviously arrived at her Paris apartment first. And throughout these past few days in Cassis, he had still hoped to romance her into forgetting about this Kit business, but that bothersome Thierry Gasquet stood in the way of those plans. He now understood that Gasquet was with law enforcement. The boat had the insignia of the French National P
olice and was flying the French flag whose colors were flashed into view from the helicopter’s aerial lighting.
He reached for his waterproof knapsack. He had made it to the seventh inlet, Sugiton. He turned around, heading back towards the open water, only to veer the boat towards one of Sugiton’s cliffs. Ansell Neely jumped out and off the front of the boat into the waves of cool water. The Errant Lover crashed into a craggy side and exploded. Neely knew the terrain well, even at night. He ran up the small sandy beach towards the Grand Randonnée 8, the switchback-filled footpath that led to the port city of Marseille. He shed his wet clothes and put on the dry ones in the knapsack. He tossed the clothes into the night. He assumed he would have had a fairly large head start on the police. He had estimated that it would be at least morning before they discovered they could not locate his remains from the explosion. He would be in Marseille in less than five hours, where a small, chartered plane scheduled for Marrakesh would be waiting. To better navigate the footpath, he turned on the MagLite flashlight that he had used to incapacitate Kit Beirnes.
* * *
Thierry Gasquet watched the explosion from a safe distance. He couldn’t believe it had ended with Neely crashing into the cliffs. In his mad dash, the professor had obviously underestimated how close he had been to the cliff walls. Gasquet guided his boat at a safe distance around the wreckage to the shore. Other police boats followed his example. The bright lights from the two overhead helicopters were like nearly blinding spotlights. He put his hand up to his forehead and squinted into the dark Mediterranean. He heard one of the officers call for divers for Neely’s body and a clean up crew to attend to the floating debris and spillage.
“Hervé!” Gasquet called out after three hours into the clean up.
“Oui?” the English-speaking mouse-faced lieutenant responded absentedly.
“Regardes!” the agent shouted and pointed. Gasquet ran his flashlight up the sandy beach. There were fresh impressions that shouldn’t have been there because of the tide.
“Si, si, je les vois!” a different officer yelped, rapidly nodding his head and acknowledging that he too saw the impressions.
The three of them ran up the beach. At the entrance to the forested footpath, they saw men’s clothing.
“Marseille!” Hervé barked.
“Oui. Marseille-Luminy. There’s an airstrip there. We need one of the helicopters. Allez! Allez-vite!” Thierry shouted to the officers.
* * *
He was winded but he was almost there. Ansell Neely had hatched an alternate escape plan two days earlier after he’d overheard the conversation between Améline Fitts and Havilah Gaie at the dinner. He had taken the Errant Lover out late Monday evening and Tuesday morning and run her at full speed. He’d chosen his place of disembarkment and had his supplies packed. He would have taken Sophie. However, Ansell Neely was not especially bothered that she had been left behind. He had grown tired of their tortured relationship, her withholding of affection, her pettiness. She was tempestuous and spoiled.
He tapped his watch. It lit up blue. 60 minutes to go. He’d been at it three hours and thirty minutes. The footpath was treacherous at night with its switchbacks, swelled tree roots that extended onto the narrow path, and the stray rocks that occasionally tripped him up and slowed him down. He felt a light stinging in his hands and face; sweat dripped into the thin scratches made by the unwieldy branches of the Aleppo pines.
* * *
The officers landed the helicopter at the airstrip in Marseille-Luminy. Thierry was relieved when he saw a small plane. Its lights were dimmed and the door was opened, awaiting its passenger. He knew it was about four hours by foot in daylight to Marseille on the hiking path. Ansell Neely, from what he had observed, was fit. Even without the assistance of daylight, Thierry figured Neely could make the route in that time, give or take thirty minutes. He now had to assume the murderous professor had practiced the route given his elaborate back up plan with the chartered plane. Neely, it seemed, had left very little to chance.
The agent directed two officers to the conveyance to question the pilot, while he and Hervé trotted towards the GR8 footpath’s terminus.
“Regardes-toi! Écoute!” Hervé whispered sharply and impatiently as he tapped Thierry’s shoulder. He pointed in the direction of the flashes of light through the foliage and the sound of rustling leaves.
Thierry nodded. Suddenly the light was gone and the rustling stopped. A dark figure emerged slowly from the forest.
“Monsieur Ansell Neely, arrêtez-vous!” Hervé shouted and passed his flashlight quickly over the professor-poet.
Neely turned and scurried back onto the GR8. Thierry Gasquet followed. The agent aimed his gun into the darkness and moved deliberately on the footpath. The path was unobstructed and wider at this end; he could barely feel the worn tree trunks underneath his feet and the trees and bushes seemed to turn away from the path. He figured that he was probably a minute or two behind Neely. He held his small penlight steady, the light’s tiny circumference making bright dots on the rocks and the pine trees along the way. He was closer to Neely than he initially guessed, only a few paces behind, it seemed, when he saw a bright round light clearing the murderer’s path. The path went dark. He heard a voice call out.
“Thierry Gasquet, is that you out for a night hike?”
The agent didn’t respond. He was trying to orient himself in the direction of the voice given the switchbacks. When he found it, he began creeping slowly towards Neely.
“I know it’s you. I had hoped to get the diversion past you, Officer Gasquet. It seemed I nearly had. It was quite an explosion, wasn’t it?”
“Yes it was,” Gasquet responded, only because the voice seemed to shift directions.
Ansell Neely was clearly in a garrulous mood.
“When did you suspect me?”
“Monday after the dinner.”
“That soon? What gave me away?” he snorted rather loudly.
“Besides Améline, you were the only Félibrige alumni in France. You lied about just arriving from Austin, Texas. You landed in Paris the week before and then disappeared. You were also on the flight from Avignon to Paris-Beauvais the night Professor Beirnes was killed.”
* * *
Sophie, he spat in fit of pique. She had assured him that his name would not be on the passenger manifest. She had obviously intended to use his being an accomplice as future protection.
“That’s all circumstantial evidence, as we say in courts of law in the United States. It was all Sophie anyway. She was responsible for the hit and run on that agent in New York. She has a mean streak, that one. I never intended to harm anyone.”
Thierry was silent. “You certainly harmed Professor Lathan Beirnes.”
“You are quite ungrateful, Officer Gasquet. I’ve provided you a juicy piece of the puzzle.”
“No, you’ve just implicated your errant lover in a crime because she implicated you,” he responded.
Neely was stunned to silence for a moment. “How did you know about the boat?”
He wondered what trail of breadcrumbs Sophie had left to lead the police to the calanques and the boat.
“Your book of poetry. The Errant Lover just happened to be registered to a Sophie Daniel, otherwise known as Sophie Fassin, daughter of Georges-Guillaume Daniel Damas. And the GPS tracker on Professor Gaie’s cell phone led to the sea where you evidently threw it out from the boat. Professor Gaie also called me. I heard her call out Sophie and your name.”
“I didn’t anticipate Havilah’s wiliness. It’s Professor Gaie now, is it? Had I had as much time with her as you, we would have surely been on a first name basis.”
Neely was pissed about Havilah Gaie’s theatrics in the harbor. He had been improvisational but clearly not before Havilah had the opportunity to turn on her tracking device and call Mister Frenchie. He hadn’t even seen her making a phone call. And certainly he hadn’t thought the technology could be traced in the sea. He should
have disassembled the damn thing before tossing it.
* * *
The usually cautious agent lurched in Ansell Neely’s direction, brushing up against a tree. He saw Neely turn upon hearing his approach. The professor-poet fired a shot, grazing Gasquet’s arm. He then scurried down the footpath, shaking branches and rustling leaves in his wake. Despite the injury, Gasquet pursued Neely through the shadows. He could see a glimmer of blue from Neely’s watch in the distance. He squeezed off a shot. Neely stumbled. He fell. Gasquet heard Neely’s gun explode and hit the ground with a loud thud. The stray bullet hit the professor. Neely let out a whoop and then moaned.
The agent flashed his penlight in the professor’s eyes. “I need a doctor, you French bastard,” he snarled.
XXVII
Thierry called for the emergency service and Hervé, whose radio he had heard in snatches in the forest. He inspected Neely’s wounds. A shot to the ankle, and the second stray bullet hit his calf on the opposite leg. He could neither stand nor walk.
“You’ll live,” Thierry told him as he ripped the professor’s pant legs to create ties at the wounds to staunch the bleeding.
“Hey! These pants are expensive,” Neely protested.
Thierry slightly increased the pressure on the ties, which had the effect of making Neely whimper in pain.
Hervé had arrived. He stood over Neely, who was trying to loosen the ties.
“We need his gun,” Thierry explained.
“Oui, je vais le chercher,” the officer ran his flashlight up and down a bush or two. “I shall look for it,” he repeated in the British-accented English he’d obviously learned in a European international school.
The 13th Fellow: A Mystery in Provence Page 16