by R J Fournier
“It’s strange, that’s for sure, but it doesn’t implicate either of them in the murder.”
“There’s one more thing. I’ve been thinking about what Etienne told you, that he found out where his sister lived only when the police contacted him about the estate.”
“Yeah?”
“Then how did Sophie know she lived here? Her only connection was through Etienne and if he didn’t know where his sister lived…”
“There are a lot of contradictions,” Delyth said after pausing for a moment.
“The question is why are they’re bothering to lie? I’d love to talk with André. I’ll bet he has the key to all this.”
THIRTEEN
Delyth was at her desk trying to think of how to get in touch with André. She wished she could just call Josh and ask, but she rejected the unbidden and unwanted idea out of hand. For one thing, he’d never tell. For another, she’d never call. She was still angry with him for cutting her off for simply doing her job. Yet she missed him more than she’d expected.
She was still trying to come up with a more realistic way to find the nephew when the problem solved itself in a single phone call.
“Is this the reporter who wrote about the persimmon murder?” the caller asked.
Delyth cringed but answered, “Yes. Who’s calling?”
“I’m the nephew.”
“Oh. Fantastic.” This was too good to be true; the very person she was trying to find calling her. “How do I know you’re really Mrs. DuQuenne’s nephew?”
“Of course I’m her nephew. Who else would I be?”
“That’s the point. I don’t know.”
“I could show you my driver’s license. We have the same last name. Here, I’ll take a picture of it and send it to you. What’s your cell number?”
Delyth wasn’t going to give that information to a potential stalker, but she remembered something Helen told her that might help. “What’s the name of your aunt’s dog?”
“Joujou. Except the woman who had her called her something else. Some old-fashioned name like Mazie or Mabel.”
Close enough. “Okay, I believe you. Could you hold just a minute?” She grabbed her headset and plugged it into the phone. Her hands free for her computer, she said, “I’m glad you called. I wanted the chance—”
“The police don’t believe my story. I’m not even sure what my story is.” He paused then audibly exhaled. “I can’t explain over the phone.”
“We could meet someplace to talk,” Delyth offered, but since the police backlash to her article, Ted had kept her on a short leash. “We’re too small to afford an investigative reporter wasting time on stories that lead nowhere,” he’d said. “Stick to your real assignments.” He added that she was “definitely, absolutely, unequivocally” not to pursue alternative theories about the DuQuenne murder. But she wasn’t about to drop the story even if she had to pursue it on her own time. “Can you do it after I get out of work? Five-thirty?”
“I guess.”
“Where’re you staying? I could—”
“That wouldn’t be too good. Maybe your place?”
Delyth thought of the danger in inviting a man who might be a murderer into her apartment and of the pile of dirty dishes in the sink and the clothes strewn over the sofa in that apartment. It was more the dishes and clothes, however, that made her answer, “How about the coffee shop across from the junior college? Do you know it?”
“Sure. See you there.”
She started to describe herself and what she was wearing, but he’d hung up. She tried calling back but the number was blocked.
She wished they had arranged some way of identifying each other. Looking around expectantly for someone else who was looking around expectantly would only draw attention. Even blind dates arrange a sign—an I’ll-be-wearing-a-red-bowtie kind of thing. She decided to call Helen Terfel to ask what he looked like.
“Young, tall, thin and blond!” Delyth said after Helen’s description. “That’s it?”
“I’m sorry. It happened so fast. And the light… I’m not good at describing people.”
“What color eyes?”
“Blue, I think. Light-ish. Not dark anyway.”
“So I’m supposed to look for young, tall, thin, blond, not-dark-eyed man. There can’t be many of those a block away from a college.”
“I could come with you. I could point him out.”
“I don’t know. Two of us suddenly showing up could scare him off.”
“I’ll sit at another table.”
“He’ll recognize you.”
“I’ll wear a disguise. I won’t get in the way.”
In the end Delyth agreed to the scheme. She didn’t admit it to Helen, but she would be glad to have a friend around in case this André turned out to be other than who he said he was.
◆◆◆
Delyth arrived ten minutes early.
Helen was already sitting at the table farthest in the back. She was wearing a plum purple cloche hat pulled down to her eyebrows and a lime green scarf wrapped high around her neck and chin. The sunlight streaming through the floor-to-ceiling windows turned the fruity combination electric. When she took a sip of whatever she’d ordered, she had to pull the scarf down with her free hand to reach her mouth. It was hardly inconspicuous, but Delyth suspected the best way to get people not to look at you might be to look like you’re crazy. She should suggest the ploy to Alice Tuttle.
Delyth was surprised by the number of people crowded into the small shop that late in the afternoon. She needed her two cups of coffee in the morning, but after that she had little interest in caffeine. Few customers lingered, but those who did were ensconced in front of computer screens for the long haul. Delyth ordered bottled water and stood waiting for a table to open up.
In the corner, the plum hat started twitching and a hand pressed to the tabletop pointed toward the door. Delyth nodded and turned to see a young man enter. He was as Helen had described, although she’d failed to mention how cute he was. Delyth walked up to him and asked, “André?”
He smiled. “You must be Delyth.” He looked around. “I’d hoped we’d have a place to sit and talk.”
“Do you want anything? Maybe a table will open up while we wait.”
“No, I’m fine.” He continued scanning the restaurant. “Should we try someplace else?”
Delyth looked toward Helen trying to convey the situation with her expression. Helen seemed to catch on, because she beckoned with a quick hand gesture. “It looks like that woman’s leaving,” Delyth said.
Helen fussed with her bag and rearranged her scarf in a caricature of a flighty woman gathering herself up. She stood just as André came up, a move that forestalled anyone else claiming the table.
He stood back to let her by. “Thank you,” he said. Staring at her a moment, he added, “Do I know you?”
Helen kept her head down as if intending to continue the charade, but then pulled her scarf away from her face.
“You’re the woman who was in my aunt’s house that day. I’m really good with faces.” He turned and said to Delyth. Beaming he said to them both, “What a coincidence!”
Delyth and Helen exchanged a look of amazement.
“You should join us,” André added.
Helen demurred; André urged; Delyth looked skeptical; André insisted. After some jostling and André fetching a third chair from a nearby table, they settled down.
“I can’t believe you’re here too. I didn’t know how to get in touch with you. I wanted to explain what I was doing that day. That article made it sound like I was up to no good. Is that what you thought?”
Delyth placed her phone on the table. “Would you mind if I recorded us?” she asked. When André smiled and shrugged, she pressed record and pulled out a small pad and pencil for notes to herself. “Are you even Cécile DuQuenne’s nephew?”
“Sort of.” He looked to Helen. “Her husband was my grandfather’s brother. That
made her my grandaunt-in-law. Right?”
Helen nodded.
“I went to visit a couple times,” André continued, “with my grandfather when her husband was alive. I just called her ma tante. I don’t think she liked children. At least she didn’t like me. We went up, of course, for the funeral when her husband died. We didn’t see her for years after that, not until my pépère died and she came to his funeral. We sort of hit it off then. She was a feisty old bird and I felt sorry for her. My dad and me were the only family she had. At least that’s what she told me.”
“When was that?” Delyth asked.
“Four or five years ago, I guess. After that I visited a couple times on my way back to college. I went to Lewis and Clark, so it was sort of on the way when I drove. And I’d call every couple of months. I’d tell her what I was doing and she’d have all this old person advice that I ignored. But this last year she seemed to be losing it.”
“In what way?” Helen prompted.
“She got all religious.”
“That’s not so strange;” Delyth said. “Older people often do with death looming closer.” She didn’t add that she saw it as yet another weakness of old age, like failing eyesight and arthritis.
“Yeah, okay. But… You know, I think I will have a coffee. Do either of you want anything?”
They both said no and he bopped off to the counter. Even from a distance, Delyth could tell the barista was flirting with him. “What do you make of him?”
Helen removed her hat and scarf and patted at her hair. “Too good to be true. Still, I like him. It’s hard to look into his eyes and not believe him. They’re blue, by the way, with flecks of green.”
Delyth had noticed.
He was soon back. “Hers was the crazy kind of religious,” he said, returning to the conversation as if he’d never left.
“End-of-the-world, fall-out-shelter crazy?” Delyth asked.
“Not like that. When I called her in June, she just kept talking in circles about needing to return it to the convent; the nuns had missed it for so long. It was like she was relating a recurring dream that might have made sense at night but was whacked in the daylight. I talked it over with my dad and decided to drive up to see if she was okay.”
“When was that?” Delyth asked again, wanting to get the timing straight.
“July. I had some vacation time coming so I thought—”
“What do you do?” Helen asked.
Something in her tone suggested genuine interest rather than the third-degree. Delyth wished she could master the technique. If it was a technique. Delyth suspected Helen was falling under the pretty, young man’s spell.
“HR. Executive benefits. It’s boring as hell, but it pays the bills. I’m still not really sure what I want to do—you know, when I grow up. I’m thinking about going back to school to be a social worker.”
“What was it like when you got here in June?” Delyth asked to get him back on track.
He took a sip of coffee then stared into the cup. “Sad. Just sad. She’d gone way downhill. She wouldn’t tell me what was wrong. She didn’t seem in pain or anything. Just really frail.”
“How was she mentally?” Helen asked. “Do you think it was Alzheimer’s?”
He shook his head. “Not really. She was pretty with-it, mostly. She was just obsessed with getting it back to the nuns. I asked her what it was, maybe I could help her, and she said ‘the champagne’. You can see why I thought she was losing it. Champagne to nuns? Anyway, she’d written to her brother asking him to help her because his soul depended on it, just like hers. That was the first time I’d ever heard she had a brother.”
Helen asked, “So, this week was the first time you’d met him?”
Delyth wished Helen hadn’t encouraged him to skip to the present. She preferred stories told in order. It was easier to spot inconsistencies.
“I was worried that she’d already been buried and no one notified me. So, I called the medical examiner. I mean, ultimately that’s who I talked to. I really didn’t know who to ask. They’d waited for her brother to identify her, which was crazy because he hadn’t set eyes on her in years. They released her body to him and he had it cremated. They didn’t know what happened after that. They told me I needed to ask her brother. They gave me his number but when I called I got the feeling if it weren’t for her property he wouldn’t have come at all. He definitely didn’t care for his sister. He said he should have let them bury her in a pauper’s grave. Actually, he said une fosse commune.”
“You speak French?” Delyth asked.
“Just what I learned in school. My mother was American. We spoke English at home. But he said une fosse commune so often I remembered it and looked it up later.”
“I thought Etienne could only speak French.”
“His accent was really hard to understand, but between his bad English and my bad French we understood each other. I told him I wanted to give her a proper burial. On the phone he said, ‘Tu feras ce que tu veux.’ But when I got here, he told me he was going to dump her ashes in the gutter. ‘Where she belonged,’ he said.”
“So you fought?” Helen asked.
“I was pissed, yes. He’s a bully. He ordered me off his property. I have more right to that house than he does. He might be her brother, but morally I’m her next of kin. I was the only one who cared a damn for her.”
“Is that why you were looking for a will that day we bumped into each other at her house?” Helen asked.
“Oh, that.”
“Had she promised she’d leave you her estate?” Delyth asked.
“No, not in so many words.”
“Yet you flew here the day after she was killed to look for a will?”
“No, I drove.”
“Okay. You drove here the day after she was killed to look for a will.”
“I drove up because she’d asked me to. She called saying she wanted me to go to France for her, that she couldn’t trust her brother, not anymore. She wouldn’t explain. Like I said, I thought she was losing it so I didn’t press her. I said I’d come up, but I couldn’t get away; the end of the year is our busy time at the office. I left after work on Friday. I didn’t know she’d been murdered until I got here.”
“That doesn’t explain what you were looking for,” Helen said. “The very next day you ducked under police tape and broke into your aunt’s house.”
“I didn’t break in. I had a key. Besides, you were there too.”
“Only because you were. I thought you were the police.”
He laughed. “I guess we’re both criminals.”
“Okay, okay,” Delyth said. “But what were you looking for?”
“Something telling me what she wanted me to do. A letter or something. Returning champagne to a convent wasn’t much to go on. What champagne? What convent?”
“So your intention was entirely altruistic,” Delyth said. “You were only looking out for what your aunt wanted?”
“And to see if she’d left a will. She could have left instructions in a will. And I hoped it mentioned me.”
“Did it?” Delyth asked.
“I didn’t find anything.”
Or, Delyth thought, you found one that left everything to someone else and destroyed it. The sheriff’s press release said they’d checked out his alibi but, even if he wasn’t the killer, he still could be involved somehow.
“Could it have been about the painting up in her bedroom?” Helen asked. “Sophie said it was three hundred years old.”
“For real? Three hundred? I just thought it was some old print. The frame was all tarnished and someone had yanked the stones out. I didn’t think—”
“The stones were missing?” Helen asked. “When was this?”
“Like forever. I don’t remember when I was a kid, but definitely when I visited a few years ago. Now that you ask, I seem to remember that a few were still there. Little ones. I can’t be sure. I didn’t spend a lot of time in her bedroom.”
“Yet Sophie took a picture of it with all the stones in place just a couple months ago,” Helen said in the distracted tone of someone thinking out loud.
“Where’d they come from?” André asked.
“The bigger question is, where are the real ones now?” Delyth said.
“We know the ones in Sophie’s photo must have been fakes,” Helen explained for André’s benefit.
“No way,” André said.
“Maybe the killer didn’t know,” Delyth said. Helen and André looked at her. “It could be a motive for murder.”
“But so far everyone said they knew they were fakes,” Helen said, “except our boy here.” She patted him on the forearm. “Do you think it could have been a burglary gone wrong?”
“How do you know all this?” André asked.
Helen and Delyth looked at each other.
“We ask a lot of questions,” Helen said.
Delyth leaned toward him. “Here’s a question for you. Why exactly did you want to talk with me?”
“I hoped you could help me get my aunt’s ashes so I could give her a real burial.”
“I thought you said her brother intended to throw them in some gutter.”
“He said that’s what he was going to do. He hadn’t even picked them up. He hated her so much, he doesn’t care.”
“Shouldn’t you talk to the crematorium? If Etienne doesn’t want her ashes, they’ve got to do something with them. I’m sure they’d be glad to have you take them off their hands.”
“But he’s on record as next of kin. He even paid to have her cremated. The crematorium won’t release her to anyone else without his release. But now he’s ignoring her. And me. It’s like he’s playing one last joke on her to get even.”
“I don’t know how I can help.”
“I thought you could write an article about it. You know. Murder victim victimized a second time kind of thing. It could get the authorities to pay attention and do something about it.”
“What they’d probably do is force Etienne to take the ashes, and he’d throw them out like he threatened. I don’t see any way around the fact that Etienne gets to say what happens to her remains.”