The Eulalie Park Mysteries Box Set 1

by Fiona Snyckers

  “What about the other brothers?” Chief Macgregor asked. “What feeling did you get from them?”

  “Their alibis are uncertain because no one can agree on who exactly was in the blue drawing room at the time of Emma’s murder. The old man, Josef Egger, is the only one everyone seems to agree on.”

  “So, he has an alibi and no motivation?”

  “Oh, he has motivation, all right. He tells everyone who will listen how Emma threw out all his late wife’s clothes and possessions from the house in Switzerland. She put them on a bonfire. Just thinking about it makes me indignant on his behalf. I would have offered to hold his hat while he threw her over that widow’s walk.”

  Chief Macgregor stared at her for a moment, struggling to read her tone of voice and facial cues.

  “You’re joking,” he said at last. “You are joking, aren’t you?”

  “I am,” she agreed. “But I can understand why old Josef might have had a grudge against Emma. As for the other two, Richard and Joe, they don’t seem to have known her very well, or to have had strong feelings about her. Their wives are another matter. Emma had a knack for annoying her fellow women.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means the men of the family could retreat to their factory and ignore the bad feeling that was being generated among the women. The Egger men are all about living a quiet life and devoting themselves to work. They are preserving a legacy for the male line and want to be left in peace to do it. So, when Emma insulted Lily’s clothes or Jane’s shoes, the men dismissed it as trivial, not realizing how much resentment was festering among their wives. Emma even managed to annoy her husband’s sister-in-law, Priscilla. She sold some sentimental items belonging to Mark’s late wife Mary to pay for her drug habit. You can see why she wasn’t a popular lady.”

  “And what about the church angle? The Blessed Redeeming Savior, or whatever they call it? I know you looked into that.”

  “It wasn’t a particularly solid lead – more of a feeling on Mark’s part. He was the one who wanted me to pursue it.”

  “That Pastor has been on our radar for a while now,” said Chief Macgregor. “We suspect her of a being a scam artist, but we can’t prove it.”

  “You’re not wrong, but she’s not doing anything illegal, unless it’s illegal to use your gift of persuasion to separate people from their money.”

  “By ‘gift’, you mean …?”

  “A gift in the sense of my gift?” she finished for him. “Yes, I’m afraid so. It doesn’t work on everyone, but it works on enough people to have made her a rich woman.”

  “Did she get any of the Egger money?”

  “Only what Lily made Joe donate at the memorial service for Emma. A check for fifty-thousand dollars.”

  “Fifty-thousand dollars?”

  “I know. It’s a lot of money. But it’s a drop in the ocean compared to what Pastor Ellie’s parishioners leave to her after they die.”

  “Why do you think Mark was so suspicious of her?”

  “He’s not one of the people that falls under her spell when she starts speaking, so he can’t understand the attraction. I think he resents the influence she has over his family and wishes his brother didn’t have to pay up to the BRS every time Lily asks him to.”

  “And have you had any more thoughts on Emma’s ex-husband, Michael?”

  “He certainly hated her enough,” said Eulalie. “She was a thorn in his side and the main factor preventing him from living the life he wanted to with his children. Now she’s gone, and he has the green light to buy a house in the suburbs and have his children live with him full-time. It’s just the alibi that worries me. It’s pretty iron-clad.”

  Chief Macgregor sat down at his desk. “So, what’s next? What’s your next move?”

  “I have to track down the payment made to Antoine from that overseas bank account. If that is also end-to-end encrypted, I might not get very far, but I have to try. I want to revisit the scene as well. Then I guess I’ll just keep re-interviewing suspects until someone slips up, or Mark pulls me off the case. Perhaps your officers will solve it first.”

  The expression on Chief Macgregor’s face suggested that he did not consider this likely. Eulalie couldn’t help smiling.

  “You have to make a choice, Chief. You are either going to have to upskill them, or fire them all and hire a new lot.”

  “Right now, the governor’s office is not giving me the green light to do either of those things. It’s embarrassing to admit, but I’m hoping you will solve this case, just so we can put it to bed. Otherwise, I can see it going into the open unsolved files.”

  Eulalie stood up and folded the blanket he had wrapped around her shoulders, draping it neatly over a chair. Then she walked around the desk to where the Chief was sitting. Moving slowly, her eyes asking for permission every step of the way, she lifted her hands to rest them on his shoulders. This time, instead of staying passive, he cupped her face with his own hands and pulled her closer for a kiss. His lips were gentle and undemanding, as though he knew this were not the time to start something that neither of them was prepared to finish tonight.

  When she pulled back, her breathing was just a little faster than it had been.

  “Goodnight, Chief.”

  “Goodnight, Ms. Park.”

  She turned and walked out of his office.

  Chapter 24

  Time slowed down when you were falling to your death.

  You noticed things that you might once have taken for granted. Like the inky blackness of the night sky and the wash of stars on a clear, moonless night. You noticed the shards of glass that fell with you catching the light from the artisanal wrought-iron lamps you’d had specially made for the exterior of the house. As you saw the little specks of glass sparkling in the lamplight, you acknowledged to yourself that you had made a mistake there.

  You feel the rush of air whistling past your ears as you fall, and the dreadful rollercoaster sensation of dropping into nothingness. You had it all, you realize. You had everything you ever wanted, and you threw it all away.

  The strangest thing is how little regret you feel. Because even though you had it all, you still weren’t happy. You had started to realize that you never would be.

  Then the concrete paving of the courtyard rushed up to meet you, and your consciousness was blotted out forever.

  Eulalie Park lay on her back. She wasn’t moving. The regular rise and fall of her chest had stopped. She was no longer breathing. Her blood pressure dropped fast, and a blue tinge crept into her lips. Her heartbeat slowed down until it became undetectable.

  The hush of the early morning was split by an insistent WAH WAH WAH siren.

  Suddenly her chest convulsed, and her lungs drew in air with a rattling gasp. Her heart began to thud, and she sat up with wild eyes, completely disoriented.

  The siren assaulted her ears. WAH WAH WAH. She reached out a hand to grab the phone next to her bed and cancel the alarm. She really needed to choose a less terrifying alarm tone. As the siren disappeared and silence rushed in to fill the void, Eulalie collapsed back against the pillows, sucking in air as though she had just swum a mile. Her heart still hammered in her chest. She tried to slow her breathing down to bring it under control.

  The horror of the dream clawed at her, threatening to pull her under again. She gripped the bed with both hands, trying to anchor herself in reality.

  She remembered an old superstition from her school days. It said that people who dreamed they were falling always woke up before they landed. If you didn’t wake up, the tale went, you would die and never wake up at all.

  Eulalie had never given much credence to that story - until now. She could still feel the howling rush of the air against her body as she fell into the void. She could feel the obliterating force of her body smashing into the concrete, shattering bones, brain, organs. She could remember the snuffing out of her consciousness in an instant.

  She let herself reme
mber it – let herself relive those feelings. Then she sat up and went to her desk to write down what she remembered.

  The horror of it stayed with her as she got ready for the day. Not for the first time, she wished that these dreams of hers didn’t come at such a heavy price. But this was something new. This was the first time she had inhabited the consciousness of a dying person, and become aware that she could die too from that empathic connection.

  As the sugar high of a small mountain of Cheerios hit, her natural optimism reasserted itself and she started to think about what the dream had to tell her.

  A mistake. Emma knew she had made a mistake. Something connected with those twirling shards of glass sparkling in the lamplight. Something that had caused her death.

  It bothered Eulalie that her last thoughts had not been about her children or husband, but about the lifestyle she had thrown away and how she wasn’t going to miss it very much. She wondered if those who had been hurt, wounded, insulted, and belittled by Emma over the years would have taken consolation from the knowledge that she was not a happy person. Perhaps – perhaps not. Eulalie could never tell them. She could never explain how she knew this.

  As she finished her coffee, she moved to the window to look out over Bonaparte Avenue.

  The storm had passed over, leaving Prince William Island washed clean by its ferocity. The sky was an intense blue, and sunlight sparkled on the raindrops that still clung to the leaves of trees. Debris from the storm littered the road and every gutter. She could hear the sound of bulldozers grinding up and down Lafayette Drive clearing a path for traffic and pedestrians.

  Even here in Bonaparte Avenue, two city council workers in reflective yellow jumpsuits rode street-sweepers up and down and cleared the gutters of rubbish.

  Chief Macgregor’s plan was working. No doubt there had been much foot-dragging and resentment, but in the end the whole of Queen’s Town would be surprised and pleased to see how quickly the effects of the storm could be cleared.

  The Prince William’s Day parade was in ten days. It looked as though Queen’s Town would be ready for it.

  Eulalie’s plan had been to visit Antoine at Majestic Heights in Finger Alley. He wouldn’t appreciate being woken at this hour, but that was tough. She needed access to his computer and other electronic devices to try to trace the payment that had been made for his attack on her the night before.

  Then she had intended to return to the scene on Edward Drive to see what insights that could give her. After that, she had planned to begin the re-interviewing process.

  The dream had changed all that.

  Antoine and his computer could wait. She needed to go back to the scene of Emma’s death. But this time she wouldn’t be looking at general impressions. She would be looking for something specific.

  It was a real shame that the dream had waited until after a tropical cyclone to visit her. The chances were good that the evidence she was looking for would be long gone.

  Eulalie glanced at her watch. It was seven o’clock. Hopefully the staff at the Egger residence would be too busy serving breakfast for the family to have started their clean-up operations in the courtyard yet.

  Driven by a sense of urgency, Eulalie ran down the stairs and hopped onto the back of her Vespa. The morning traffic had not yet got properly underway, although it was gathering momentum. It was seven-twenty when she announced herself to the guard at the gatehouse. They would all be tired of her by now, but she was working for Mark, which gave her a pass to come and go as she pleased. After today, Mark might not be quite so pleased to have her in his house. It wasn’t likely that he would appreciate the direction her investigation was taking.

  Talia met Eulalie at the door. Her smile of welcome was strained.

  “You have just missed Mr. Mark. He left for work a moment ago. You probably passed him on the road.”

  “Was he on his way to Eggerton?”

  “That’s right. Mr. Joe too. They went together. Perhaps you’d like to come back this evening when they are home?”

  “Ne t’inquiete pas, Talia,” Eulalie said, switching to French. “I don’t need to speak to anyone. I just want to take another look at Madame’s bedroom and the place where she fell. I will be out of your hair in no time.”

  The housekeeper let Eulalie into the house and left her to her own devices. Eulalie was on her way up the stairs when Lily popped up on the landing.

  “You again? What are you doing here? Wasn’t Emma murdered by drug dealers?”

  “The police haven’t decided yet. Is that what you’ve heard?”

  “Pastor Ellie told us at Bible study yesterday. She said Emma was addicted to prescription pills and that was what killed her. The police have been questioning her dealer. Pastor Ellie told us that those who live by the sword shall die by the sword. She said that Satan hides inside pills in order to contaminate your body from the inside.”

  “Okay.”

  Lilly’s face glowed with fanaticism. “Vaccines too. That’s why my children are building up their immune systems naturally. Pastor Ellie says it’s the only way.”

  Eulalie looked around. “Your children aren’t here this morning, are they?”

  “Of course, they are! Where else would they be? They’re playing in the garden.”

  No wonder it was so quiet.

  “I’ll let you get on now,” said Lily. “Are you going up to Emma’s room?”

  Eulalie said that she was and continued up the stairs.

  She met Priscilla Bosworth coming down carrying a wheeled cabin bag.

  “Oh, that’s right. You said you were leaving today.”

  The woman looked preoccupied but paused for a moment.

  “That’s right. I fly out at seven-thirty this evening. I change planes in Dar-es-Salaam and then fly direct to New York City. Then it’s a long car journey back upstate. I won’t get home until tomorrow evening. I can’t wait to see my kids.”

  “Will you be back one of these days, do you think?

  “I don’t know. Queen’s Town doesn’t have great associations for me, as you can imagine.” Her mouth twisted into a smile. “Perhaps I’ll be back in a few months for Mark’s next wedding.”

  Eulalie smiled, and Priscilla continued down the stairs.

  When she reached Emma’s bedroom, Eulalie headed straight out to the widow’s walk. She wanted to recapture that feeling the dream had given her – that feeling of having made a mistake.

  She leaned over the parapet and looked down at the courtyard below. She tried to reconnect with that feeling of falling. She was pleased to see that the courtyard was as unkempt as she remembered. No effort had been made to clear the storm debris, and it looked as though it hadn’t been swept in a while.

  She walked down the stairs to the kitchen and let herself into the courtyard. Then she looked back up at the widow’s walk and tried to calculate where a piece of paper would land if it had drifted down from there. It was impossible to tell. The fact that it hadn’t been picked up by the crime scene technicians suggested that it had drifted away from what they would have considered the immediate impact site.

  She searched around the courtyard, paying particular attention to the gutters that ran along the sides of it. She lifted up branches and peered through leaves, hoping for a glimpse of something that might have been paper. Two false alarms got her hopes up. One was a shopping list that must have blown out of the kitchen, and the other an old piece of newspaper that had probably been used to wrap vegetables.

  Then her eye was caught by the flutter of something blue trapped high up in one of the trees. She jumped and plucked it out gently between her fingers.

  It was very much the worse for wear after the storm the night before. The colors had run, and the paper had become pulpy. Eulalie turned it over in her hands. It was difficult to tell what she was looking at. She held it up to the light. In the right lower quadrant of the page she could just make out the lower half of a woman’s body – a woman wearing a bathing
suit of some sort, possibly a bikini.

  Eulalie smiled to herself. She knew who had killed Emma.

  The trick was going to be to prove it. This piece of paper would not count as evidence by any stretch of the imagination. The murderer would have to confess, and Eulalie was beginning to get the glimmer of an idea as to how she could make that happen.

  The law offices of Manfred Anheim were as imposing as ever. Eulalie and Chief Macgregor sat opposite Anheim at his massive mahogany desk. Nobody had spoken for some time, but they all kept checking their watches. Two o’clock had come and gone.

  Anheim shifted in his seat and drummed his fingers on the desk.

  Everyone tensed when there was a knock at the door.

  “Come in,” he commanded.

  The door opened, and Priscilla Bosworth walked into the room.

  Manfred Anheim stood up to shake hands with her. “It’s good of you to join us, Mrs. Bosworth. I know you must be anxious to get on with your packing. Emma’s will is due to be read out next week, but since you are one of the beneficiaries, we decided to process your bequest today. We would like you to sign for the items in person before you go back home.”

  Priscilla sat down between Eulalie and Chief Macgregor. He was in plain clothes and she glanced at him without a flicker of recognition.

  “I don’t understand. Why would Emma have left anything to me? I hardly knew her.”

  “Apparently,” said Manfred, consulting a document in front of him. “These were items belonging to your late sister. Strictly speaking, of course, they passed into the possession of Mr. Mark Egger after your sister’s death. But since he and Emma had an agreement that everything contained in the house was hers, they actually belonged to her.”

  Priscilla blinked. “They never belonged to Mary in the first place. They were my mother’s possessions that she left to both of us on the understanding that we shared them.”