“That’s ridiculous.” Eulalie ignored the fact that this had been her first thought too. “Just because you had an argument with him, doesn’t mean you killed him. If they’re going to investigate everyone who ever had an argument with Marcel Faberge, half the island would be suspects. He wasn’t a popular guy.”
“I know.” Fleur caught her breath on a sob. “But that’s not all. Eyewitnesses say that I threatened him. I don’t even remember. And yesterday I was going around telling people that all my problems were solved.”
Eulalie remembered Fleur’s suddenly cheerful mood the morning before she left for the deep forest.
“You say he was murdered in his apartment. Was that the night after your argument with him?”
“That’s what the police are saying.”
“You would have had to go to his apartment during the night with the intention of killing him.” Eulalie was speaking more to herself than to Fleur. “You would have had to plan it.”
“Yes, but I didn’t.”
“I know you didn’t.”
Fleur’s temper might be explosive, but it didn’t last. She would lash out in a fit of anger and be sorry for it afterwards, but she would never do anything that required planning. You could imagine her throwing a drink in Faberge’s face, or aiming one of her jars of organic honey at his head, but going to his apartment to kill him? No. That wasn’t how she functioned.
“What are you thinking about?” Fleur said.
“Just sorting something out in my head. The only thing we know for sure is that Marcel Faberge is dead and that you didn’t do it. Now we need to figure out why the police think it was you. The fact that you had an argument with him isn’t enough.”
“It had something to do with a knife, that’s all I know. That’s why there is police tape across my front door. They wanted to look at my knives. They even took some away with them. I had to sign for them.”
“When was this?”
“They came in around midday yesterday and cleared all the customers out of the coffeeshop. We’ve been closed ever since. They left the place covered in fingerprint dust.”
“Did they interview you?” Eulalie asked.
“For hours. They kept asking me the same questions over and over.”
“They wanted to see if you would change your story under pressure. They’ll probably interview you again to see how your story holds up after a couple of days.”
“Then I’m screwed. I kept changing my story because I was confused about what I did the night before. At first, I told them all about how I went to Angel’s Place for dinner, and then I remembered that was Monday night, not Tuesday night. I suppose they’re going to lock me up and throw away the key.”
“Relax. It’s normal to be unsure of where you were and what you were doing when the police start questioning you. It’s more suspicious to come out with a perfectly rehearsed story that you deliver pat. What timeframe were they particularly interested in? Did they ask you about the early part of the evening or the later?”
“Both.” Fleur dragged her fingers through her hair. “They wanted to know every detail from when you broke up my fight with Faberge to when I came into work the next morning. And the truth is, I have no alibi. I closed up the shop at about six that evening and went home. No, I stopped for a curry at Island Curries first, and then went home. I listened to a podcast about learning to control your temper. I know, ironic right? Then I did some yoga and mindfulness meditation to a video I found on YouTube. And then I went to bed and slept like a baby. That’s why I was in such a good mood the next morning. But I can’t actually prove I was in bed between midnight and two.”
“Did they specifically ask you about that time?”
“Yes, they did.”
“Then that’s probably when he was killed.” Eulalie stood up. “I’m going to see if I can get a look at the crime scene now. Try not to worry while I’m gone. We’re going to prove that you didn’t do this.”
She gave her friend a hug, and slipped out a side door to avoid the reporters clustered at the front.
Eulalie stopped by the office to look up the address of Marcel Faberge’s apartment. It was unlisted, but she found it by hacking into city council records. He was listed as sharing the apartment with his wife, Stella Faberge. They had two adult children, one of whom lived in Canada, and the other in France. Faberge was fifty-eight when he died, and his wife was fifty-six. It was a first marriage for both of them.
A quick scan of recent news articles told Eulalie that health food was by no means the only new venture Faberge Industries was involved in. They had recently submitted a tender to administer the newly formed national lottery of Prince William Island.
Marcel Faberge also owned racehorses. His highest seeded horse, Marcel’s Pride, was currently embroiled in a match-fixing scandal.
Eulalie couldn’t understand why the police had fixated on Fleur. With business interests like these, it wasn’t surprising that trouble had come looking for Faberge. Their interest in Fleur seemed to have something to do with the knife they had been looking for. Had Faberge been stabbed? There was only one way to find out.
She looked at her watch. Chief Macgregor should be getting into town in an hour or two. She had calculated how long it would take him to climb the cliff-face with equipment. He was an inexperienced climber, and his progress would be slow. Then he would have to get into town using the cable car and funicular railway. He would probably go straight to the police station where his deputies would fill him in on the Faberge murder. She guessed that he would reach the apartment by about six that evening.
Eulalie had no doubt that he would want to walk the scene himself. She had noticed a streak of thoroughness in him. He didn’t seem to have much faith in the competence of the officers under his command, and would probably want to double-check their work.
Just before six, Eulalie was waiting outside the door of Marcel Faberge’s penthouse apartment. Six o’clock came and went and she began to doubt her calculations. But at six-thirty she heard the elevator doors swish open, and Chief Macgregor emerged. She was pleased to see that he was on his own. That would make matters easier.
His eyes widened when he saw her standing in front of the police tape.
“What are you doing here? How did you get through security downstairs?”
He saw Eulalie glance at a window that opened onto a rooftop terrace, and his eyes widened ever further. They were six floors above ground. Then he remembered how she had gone up that cliff like a cat, and knew she would have made short work of a six-story building.
“Never mind how you got in,” he amended. “What are you doing here?”
“Your officers have decided that my best friend is their number-one suspect in the Faberge murder. I think they’re wrong, and I’d prefer it if they stopped bothering her. If that means I need to find them another suspect to chase after, then that’s what I’ll do.”
Chief Macgregor gave her a thoughtful look.
“I can’t let you into the apartment,” he said. “This is a police investigation. We can’t have civilians walking about and contaminating the scene.”
“First of all, I am not a random civilian, as I mentioned before. And secondly, I saved your life. I could have left you there in the forest to take your chances with the crocodiles. Instead I facilitated your access to the village. Without me, you would have been escorted back to Queen’s Town and not allowed anywhere near the parents of the missing child. You owe me one, Chief. I have no intention of contaminating your crime scene. I know your sweepers have already been through the apartment. All I want is a chance to look at it myself.”
He hesitated. This was a by-the-book guy. Eulalie had realized that about him from the start. He wasn’t one to make exceptions or bend the rules. Gratitude might be enough to compel him to let her into the apartment, but there was no way he would give her ongoing access to the Faberge murder investigation, which was what she really wanted.
“How about this?” she said. “You would like to broaden the activities of the police department to include the village, correct?”
“Correct. It’s one of my top priorities. The village is part of the Prince William Island community and has been ignored and sidelined for too long.”
“You and your officers will get no cooperation from the village community – you realize that, don’t you? They might even decide to move to a different part of the forest in order to avoid you. You’d never find them.”
“They’d do that? They’d move the entire village?”
“In a heartbeat. They’ve done it before and they’ll do it again. What you need is a liaison to act as go-between. You need someone to communicate directly with the Council of Elders on your behalf.”
“You mean someone like you?”
“Why not? Can you think of anyone better suited to the job? All I’m asking for in return is occasional access to your ongoing investigations. I’m a private investigator, and I’d work better if I had the cooperation of my local police force. We can share information. I’ll keep you up to date on anything I find, and you can do the same for me.”
Eulalie could almost hear his brain ticking over as he calculated the advantages and disadvantages of this arrangement.
“Even if I agreed, I’d have to get it approved by the governor’s office,” he said at last.
“Of course.”
“Leave it with me. I’ll see what I can do.”
Eulalie felt like doing a victory dance, but kept her expression neutral. “Thank you.”
She had wanted an arrangement like this for years. Chief Macgregor’s predecessors had never been interested in working with her. This was the first time the police department had been headed up by someone who was genuinely interested in including the village in his duties.
As she watched, he used his master key to gain access to the penthouse. They stepped inside to be confronted with the usual disorder that resulted when crime scene investigators had been through a place.
“Talk me through it, Chief,” she said.
“On Tuesday, Stella Faberge attended a ladies’ charity dinner and auction. As far as she knew, her husband planned to spend the evening quietly at home. She left a lasagna in the oven for his dinner and dismissed the servants for the night. She went out with four friends who were also attending the dinner. They rented a limousine to take them to and from the event.”
“Was there any contact between Faberge and his wife during the course of the evening?”
“She texted him at about eleven to ask whether she should go as high as five thousand dollars for a set of crystal wine glasses. He gave her the green light and she bid successfully on the item. My officers tell me both their phones bear this out.”
“So, he was still alive at eleven. What time did Stella get home?”
“At one-fifteen. The limousine had already dropped off one of her friends and she was second on the list. They had an arrangement whereby the limousine would wait until the person had got inside their house or apartment and texted the others that everything was okay. But when they dropped off Mrs. Faberge, no such text arrived. They were just trying to phone her when she came running out of the building screaming. The time lapse from the limousine dropping her off to her emerging again is no more than nine minutes.”
“Could she have done it? Could she have killed him in that space of time?”
“Unlikely. He had a plastic bag over his head. It was taped around the neck to cut off his air supply. His hands were tied in front of him with rope and he was stabbed twice through the heart. The timing doesn’t work. She would have had to take the elevator up to the sixth floor, let herself into the apartment, murder her husband in this elaborate way, and take the elevator back down again, all in the space of nine minutes.”
Eulalie agreed that it seemed unlikely.
Chief Macgregor showed her where the body had been discovered on the bed in the master bedroom. She commented on how little blood there was, and he explained that the stabbing might have been superfluous. The victim was either dead or nearly dead from suffocation at the time he was stabbed, so blood loss was minimal.
“What was he stabbed with?”
“A stainless-steel chef’s knife with the initials SF engraved on the handle.”
This was what Eulalie had been afraid of. SF stood for Sweet as Flowers and was engraved on all the cutlery Fleur used in her coffeeshop.
“I know it looks bad,” she said. “But that knife could have got into this apartment in several different ways. People are always stealing Fleur’s cutlery. It’s so pretty they can’t seem to help themselves. She is always losing knives and forks from the coffeeshop due to theft. She even used to sell sets of cutlery a few years ago, especially the knives. There wasn’t much profit in it, so she discontinued the line. But the point is, there could still be any number of her knives in circulation.”
“Would she be able to tell me whether she had ever sold a set of knives to Stella Faberge? A receipt of the sale would be especially helpful.”
“I doubt it. Fleur is a good businesswoman, but her record-keeping doesn’t go that far back. If she still has receipts from three years ago, I’d be surprised.”
“I’ll ask her anyway when I interview her in the morning.”
“Can I have access to the murder book while you speak to her?”
He took a moment to think about it. Then he said, “Sure.”
Eulalie held out her hand to seal the deal with a shake, and nearly withdrew it when she remembered that some people with Asperger’s Syndrome were tactile defensive. To her surprise, he took her hand readily. His skin was warm and dry, and touching it gave her a swooping sensation in her stomach.
Chapter 5
It gave Eulalie great satisfaction the next morning to go up to the reception desk of the Prince William Island Police Department and ask to be let into the Chief’s private office.
For years she had been engaged in a one-sided feud with the department’s administrator - Lorelei Belfast. Mrs. Belfast’s previous job had been as school secretary at Queen’s Town Middle School, which was where she had taken an apparently instant dislike to twelve-year-old Eulalie Park.
She had seemed to disapprove of the wild-haired forest child who joined the school suddenly in the middle of the year, and never lost an opportunity to scold her. Then she had transferred to the police department, and her dislike had gone with her. For the past six years, she had taken pleasure in denying Eulalie access to the chief of police, the deputy chief of police, and all senior officers.
Mrs. Belfast had been the stone wall that Eulalie couldn’t get past no matter how hard she tried.
It was good to be able to stand in front of her now and tell her now that Chief Macgregor had authorized her access to the Faberge murder book.
Mrs. Belfast quivered from the top of her beehive hairdo to the bottom of her sensible court shoes. “I don’t see why he would do any such thing, young lady.”
“There’s a new sheriff in town, Mrs. B. A new broom. Who knows what changes he might make? I am no longer persona non-grata around here, for one thing. You’re looking at the new liaison between the Prince William Island Police Department and the village in the deep forest. In turn, Chief Macgregor has agreed to share information on certain cases with me. And the first of these is the Faberge murder. Can I have the key to his office, please?”
“I suppose this is because of that South African girl - your friend who owns the candy shop. I knew she was trouble the moment I laid eyes on her. You can always tell. It’s that flaming red hair.”
“That’s an old wives’ tale, Mrs. B.” Eulalie decided to overlook the number of times she had blamed Fleur’s temper on her red hair herself. “Fleur could no more murder someone than she could fly to the moon, and I’m going to prove it. Would you like to phone Chief Macgregor to confirm that I’m allowed into his office?”
“That’s not necessary.” Mrs
. Belfast heaved herself to her feet and picked up a key on a wooden handle that was hanging from a row of hooks behind her. “As a matter of fact, the chief left orders that you were to be admitted to his office and given sight of the murder book.”
“He did? Then why did you have to give me a hard time about it first?”
A smirk appeared on Lorelei Belfast’s painted lips. “Habit.”
Eulalie paused to relish the moment as she untied the purple tape that bound the murder book together. How often had she seen these green-backed folders with their purple tape and wished she could take a look at one? And now she was holding one in her hands.
It was surprisingly bulky considering that the investigation had only just begun. More of Chief Macgregor’s influence, she guessed. The Queen’s Town police station had never been known for its thoroughness.
Eulalie took out her phone and began to take photographs of every page of the murder book. When she was finished, she sat down and started reading.
The first few pages consisted of verbal and written statements from several witnesses, including the first officer who had responded to the scene, the murder detective who’d arrived shortly after that, Stella Faberge (the wife of the deceased), the three friends of Mrs. Faberge who had been in the limousine with her, the limousine driver, and the doorman of the apartment building where the Faberge’s penthouse was located.
There were photographs of the crime scene, including several studies of Marcel Faberge’s body in situ. Eulalie paid particular attention to these. He was lying on a large bed that looked to be king-size at least. He was lying way over to the left, like a man who had been accustomed to sharing a bed his whole adult life. He wore a white vest and a pair of loose boxer shorts.
It seemed as though he had been neither intending to go out nor expecting company dressed like that.
A transparent plastic bag was fitted over his head and taped into place all around his neck. It was a careful, thorough job.
The Eulalie Park Mysteries Box Set 1 Page 5