by R J Fournier
“I should have invited you…“
“Thank you, but I would have cast a pall on your festivities.” She stared away as if lost in thought.
Helen couldn’t think of anything to say, and was beginning to suspect the visit had been a bad idea when Marija broke the silence.
“To be honest, the last real Christmas we had was before Armis died, and he died while Mykolas was in Iraq. Terrible thing to measure out one’s life in deaths and war.” She sighed. “I guess now I’ll have one more death to use as a marker.”
Helen went to sit beside Marija and took her hand.
Marija stared at their joined hands in her lap. “It’s all my fault.”
“You can’t blame yourself, ” Helen said although she was curious what Marija might think was her fault. Her husband’s death? Mikey going to Iraq. Mikey getting arrested for murder? It just didn’t seem a question she should ask.
Marija pulled her hand away, sat up straight. “Are you sure you don’t want anything else? I myself would like a cup of tea.”
“If you’re making some…” She followed Marija into a kitchen as sleek and modern as the room they’d left.
As she filled a kettle, Marija said, “My son won’t let me visit him.”
“That must be hard on you.” Again Helen kept herself from asking the obvious question: why?
“Yes, I haven’t seen him since the day they took him away.”
Wanting to help, Helen asked, “Can I get the cups?”
“In that cupboard." She pointed. “I arranged for a lawyer but she says she can’t tell me anything about my son’s case. Client confidentiality. It makes me worry even more. I imagine…well, I imagine.” She took out a tea ball and filled it with leaves from a glass jar on the counter. “My husband was a jeweler, you know?”
It seemed a complete non sequitur. Helen didn’t respond, hoping Marija’s train of thought would reveal itself. She placed the cups and saucers on the counter.
“I’d help him at the store. We had a store in San Francisco. On Union Street.” She dropped the name in the way people might say Fifth Avenue or Bond Street and Mayfair. “I must have told that DuQuenne woman. I can’t imagine when. She was a dreadful woman, you know. Do you take milk with your tea?”
“Black with sugar, please.”
“I, as well.” Marija pulled out a black lacquer tray for their cups, small spoons and a bowl of sugar. “We rarely talked, yet a year ago she came to the door, and asked if I could help her purchase glass replicas of some jewels in a silver frame she owned.”
“I saw the frame. It holds a painting of the crucifixion. The painting supposedly is three hundred years old.”
“Yes, she showed me the painting and its frame with the jewels removed. I’m no art expert. I can’t tell you about the painting but the frame is a beautiful piece of old craftsmanship. The original gems must have been of equal quality.”
“How could you get them copied if you never saw them?”
“She was a small and suspicious woman. She removed the jewels herself because she feared the jeweler would switch the fakes for the real ones, and she couldn’t tell the difference. I told her my person was completely reputable. She managed to break several of the bezels. I don’t doubt she marred the stones while she was at it.” She paused to pour the boiling water into a black stone teapot then returned the kettle to the stove. “She showed me a photograph of the frame with the stones intact. The jeweler and I had to guess what they were. Of course, we had the frame to determine the shapes and sizes.”
The water in the kettle began boiling again. Marija poured the water from the teapot into the sink, put in the tea ball, then poured in fresh boiling water. Placing the lid back on, she set the pot on the tray. To Helen, the whole process had the meticulousness of ritual. She thought she might like to be the kind of woman who served tea, except she didn’t like tea.
“Shall we drink our tea in the other room,” Marija said as she picked up the tray. “It’s more comfortable.”
As they walked, Helen asked, “Did she say why she wanted to switch the real jewels for glass?”
“She said something vague about her brother coming from France but, to be honest, I couldn’t follow it and I didn’t care. I believe she was sinking into her dotage.” As she set down the tray and sat on the sofa, she added, “I wish, though, I’d never let that woman into our lives. None of this would have happened.”
Helen sat beside her and accepted the cup offered to her. “How do you mean?” she asked.
Marija picked up her cup and stared into the deep amber liquid.
Waiting for Marija to answer, Helen sipped her tea. She had to struggle not to grimace at the tannic concoction.
“I’m being foolish, of course,” Marija said at last. “There’s no connection between that and Mykolas…what’s happened.” She looked up at Helen. “But you must tell me about your Christmas. I can at least enjoy the holidays vicariously.”
They spent the rest of the visit talking about Helen and her family. When they laughed over her grandsons’ antics opening presents, Marija commented, “I guess I won’t have grandchildren now.”
“You mustn’t say that. I’m sure Mikey will soon be found innocent.”
“If I were a believer, I’d say, ‘As God wills.’ As it is, well…”
Helen left soon afterward. She felt sorry for Marija Vitkus. She understood her need to keep up a front, but she was put off by her sangfroid. No other word was appropriate for such glacial self-possession. And what was the point of telling the story about the fake stones? For that matter, where were the real jewels now? She suspected she wasn’t the only person to ask that question.
NINE
Delyth was the one who’d said she didn’t want to celebrate Christmas. She’d declined several invitations for Christmas dinner, saying she already had plans. Her plan was to stay home by herself. It was only because Josh insisted that they’d gotten together the day after Christmas. “Boxing Day,” Josh had said. “The right day to exchange gifts.”
Yet she was disappointed with the bottle of expensive perfume he gave her. He should have noticed she never wore perfume or scents of any kind. In retrospect, though, the sweater she’d given him seemed just as trite, just as much a what-you-give-to-someone-you-hardly-know kind of gift.
Delyth was also the one who’d insisted she wanted a casual relationship. “I’m not in a place in my life,” she’d said, “for those obligations, for those expectations.” It had been her experience that expectations only led to disappointment.
And Josh did disappoint. He chose to volunteer to work on New Year’s Eve, saying he never enjoyed all that alcohol-driven hilarity. She spent it with take-out pizza and a bottle of champagne, but the bubbles released no mirth. He called at midnight. She didn’t answer. His message was upbeat. His tone asked, “Where are you?”
She blamed the holidays and memories of her mother’s frenetic attempts to create some kind of Christmas fantasy. It’s hard to overcome that much childhood indoctrination, she told herself. No wonder I can’t think straight.
Josh called again the day after New Year, asking if she wanted to get together.
She hesitated then said, “Gee, I’d like to but I’m real busy at work. A lot of people haven’t gotten back. I’m swamped trying to fill in.”
“Oh, well, maybe next week?”
After they’d hung up, she felt bad for withholding sex because he didn’t invite her out for New Year’s Eve, when she never even hinted that she wanted him to. She didn’t feel bad enough to call him back.
Through all this she’d actually been busy filling in for the reporters who took vacation days between Christmas and New Year, too busy to think much about the DuQuenne case. Helen Terfel had called the day after Christmas to tell her that Cécile DuQuenne had bought glass replicas for the gems in the silver frame. Helen was convinced that the real jewels were a better motive for the killing than persimmons. Delyth pointed out that the only person so
far who knew about the switch was Mrs. Vitkus. It was no great leap to assume her son knew as well. It would only make the case against him stronger. Even so, Delyth promised to look into it when she had the time.
The same day Josh had called, when Delyth was planning on an evening of television and feeling sorry for herself, Alice Tuttle stopped her on the way out of the office, inviting her to dinner. Alice was a stringer for the Redwood Post who wrote occasional food reviews. She liked going to restaurants she was reviewing with another woman because, as she said, “Two women alone at dinner was a good test for the quality of service. Or lack of it.”
Alice knew five languages and was strikingly beautiful, which turned out to be a disadvantage in her work as a food critic, as it made her too easily recognizable. She’d been forced to don a string of unflattering disguises when she visited restaurants in her official capacity. That evening she’d chosen a short gray wig combed into pigtails, a bulky sweater and black, cat’s-eye glasses emblazoned with rhinestones. “The getup has to be so extreme that people remember the outfit rather than the person wearing it,” she explained.
They were halfway through a tough kale salad and doughy Neapolitan pizza when Alice said, “Alain told me they found Cécile DuQuenne’s brother.”
Delyth knew Alain Deshayes was one of Alice’s male friends, the one who worked for the French consulate. “And how does he know that?” she asked.
“The consulate often helps in finding next of kin when a French citizen dies here.”
She had a piece of kale caught in her front teeth. Delyth grimaced and pointed to her own teeth. Alice took a sip of water and swished it around then grimaced back at her. “Gone,” Delyth told her.
“Thanks. Anyway, he arrived right after New Year.”
“From France?”
Alice nodded.
“No relatives in the States?”
“Not that they can tell. She had no children and Etienne—the brother’s Etienne Cheyne—confirmed there were no other siblings.”
“Then who were the niece and nephew?” She had to back up and tell Alice about Sophie and André.
“Maybe they don’t exist. Your friend could have made the whole thing up.”
“I don’t see her as the type to lie, especially to the police. She’s much too bourgeois.” Delyth didn’t know why she’d used the word. It made her sound like a college sophomore. To erase that impression she quickly added, “You know, they could be on the husband’s side.”
“Whose husband?”
“The DuQuenne woman.”
“Did she have a husband?”
“I presume so.” She had a thought. “Where’s Cheyne staying? At the house?”
“No. It’s mainly a technicality, but until he proves his relationship to the deceased in front of a judge, he has no legal right to be in the house. Why?”
“He could be a story. Fleshing out the victim, what she was like. Readers have a morbid interest in that kind of thing.”
“I don’t know, but I could find out. How’s your French, by the way?”
“Terrible. Why?”
“The old man doesn’t speak English. Alain thinks he understands more than he lets on though.”
“You have to help me.”
◆◆◆
Delyth figured if Alice’s French wasn’t enough to persuade Etienne Cheyne to talk with them, her good looks would. Of course, that meant Cheyne had to see her in person. So, rather than trying to set up an interview over the phone, they showed up unannounced at the motel where he was staying.
When they arrived, the desk clerk said Mr. Cheyne was not in his room.
“It’s almost dinner time,” Delyth told Alice. “He’ll probably come back soon. We should wait.”
Alice smiled at the desk clerk and asked if he’d point Cheyne out. “We’ll be in the bar.”
The desk clerk beamed. “Of course.”
“A smile’s cheaper than a twenty,” Alice said once they were out of earshot.
They found a table with a clear view of the lobby, ordered wine and waited, looking up whenever anyone entered. They didn’t need the desk clerk’s enthusiastic nod to recognize Etienne Cheyne when he walked in. Short and with a sun-creased face, he wore a tweed sports jacket and pointy dress shoes. No American would dress like that, Delyth thought. He looked ready to stroll down a boulevard. “Go get him,” she told Alice.
Instead Alice waved a hand and called, “Monsieur Cheyne?”
He came up to the table and smiled at her. “Oui?”
The two of them had a quick exchange in French. He glanced at Delyth when Alice introduced her then chose the seat beside Alice. There was another flurry of French. All Delyth caught was “bouteille de vin.” Etienne shrugged. Alice ordered him a glass of wine, “red, French preferably.”
“Does he know we work for the Post?” Delyth asked.
“I explained everything to him.”
Delyth started by saying she was sorry for his loss. He watched her mouth then turned to Alice as she translated.
Etienne scowled and rattled off many more words than Alice’s translation: “They weren’t close. She left more than thirty years ago. They haven’t talked since.”
“It’d help if you gave the flavor of what he said,” Delyth half whispered, “not just a summary.”
Etienne smiled.
“What was she like, your sister?”
Alice translated.
Etienne answered then raised his glass as if making a toast.
“He said she was a she-devil. He used some words I didn’t understand then tipped his glass in salute. That’s all the flavor I’ve got.”
“What did she do to make him so angry?”
Alice asked.
He answered.
“He doesn’t want to speak ill of the dead.”
It seemed to Delyth he already had. She decided not to press him about it; nobody wanted to read about a murder victim who deserved her fate. “How did he find out about his sister now if they had no contact?”
“The police tracked him down. He doesn’t know how. They said he would inherit her property. He wanted to come and see for himself.”
“So he has no other brothers or sisters.”
Again a flood of words that Alice translated as “No.”
“What else did he say?”
“I’ll tell you later.”
Delyth took a sip of her long neglected wine. “How about Sophie Poirier?” She caught a slight raise of his eyebrows as if he recognized the name. “Do you know her?”
“He never heard that name.”
“She said she’s your niece, that she comes from your village.”
“Perhaps. It’s not a village anymore. He doesn’t know all the people who live there. He is sure she’s not his niece.”
“And André DuQuenne?”
“DuQuenne is the name his sister was using. It is a common name where he’s from. He’s not sure whether he knows an André DuQuenne.”
Etienne said something more to Alice. She didn’t translate. They talked in French. Etienne smiled. Alice laughed.
Delyth studied her wine. Thinking about it, she realized that the interview wasn’t a total waste of time. Etienne had corroborated that Sophie wasn’t from his side of the family. Given André’s last name, he was likely related through Cécile’s husband. She would try to check if Sophie was also. Even if they were, why had they showed up so soon after the murder? Where were they now? And why weren’t the police searching for them? The police in this case meant her sometime lover. He would just have to understand she was doing her job.
“Do you have any more questions?” Alice asked, interrupting Delyth’s thoughts.
“I guess not. Can you think of anything?”
They stood to say good-bye. Etienne capered toward the elevators like an aged Leprechaun.
“What was that all about?” Delyth asked as they walked to the car. “You talked a hell of a lot.”
“H
e was flirting. I had a hard time keeping him on topic.” She paused and smiled. “He’s an old charmer.”
TEN
Helen didn’t see the article in the morning Post until she and Frank were reading and watching the news before dinner. The headline read “Neighbors Criticize Police Investigation.”
The first paragraph referred to the “persimmon murder," which took Helen back to the shed and the crown of persimmons surrounding Cécile DuQuenne’s head. Shaking her own head to dispel the image, Helen said, “That should give that detective a kick in the pants.”
“Remember that the wheels of justice turn slowly,” Frank responded.
Helen didn’t have to answer. Frank had heard her complain many times that Mikey pleaded not guilty at his arraignment more than a month before, and since then she hadn’t heard or read anything about the case. She made several calls to Marija and went over once, but Marija didn’t know anything more. “He still won’t let me visit and his lawyer claims confidentiality,” she’d told Helen.
“I’m proud of you all the same, hon,” Frank told Helen without taking his eyes off the local weather report. “You thought the authorities weren’t doing enough, and rather than just talk about it you did something.”
“All I did was have someone over for coffee and cookies.”
“It worked.”
Helen wasn’t sure how well it had worked. There was an article in the newspaper, but that didn’t change anything. She considered what more she could do to prod Detective Griffin. When nothing came to mind, she decided to get up and start dinner.
“I’ll be in to help in a minute,” Frank said.
“Don’t worry. Stay and watch the news. It won’t take me long.”
But she was interrupted on her way to the kitchen by a knock on the door. She opened it to find Sophie standing there leaning on a crutch.
“My God, do you know that everyone is looking for you?” It came out stern and demanding, like a parent confronting a child who’d stayed out after curfew.
“Why would anyone be looking for me? Who is looking for me?”
Helen realized that no one in an official capacity was looking for her, but this was a chance to find out why she’d disappeared so mysteriously. “Would you like to come in?" She pointed to the black boot. "What happened to you?”