Colors of Blood, page 29
But then something I did not expect happened. Freddy went over and spoke to Eugene. Eugene was very respectful, nodding his head and then he looked in my direction. He smiled and, accompanied by Freddy, approached our table. Freddy made the introductions.
When he nodded at me, Eugene’s eyes were skittery. He was nervous, but trying not to show it. He acknowledged a young hot walker at our table with a little wave, and a ‘Hiya.’”
Freddy found two folding chairs and positioned them at the end of the table. “Let’s have a seat, Eugene,” Freddy said.
Eugene sat beside me and Freddy next to Marley. “Now, Eugene,” Freddy said in a low voice, “Tell Miss Dru what you know about Cici Soire’s going away.”
“She let,” he said. I took that to mean left.
“Where did she go?”
He shrugged. “She din’ say, no.”
“She give you no hint what her plans were”
“No, um. Jes let.”
“Did she have a boyfriend?”
He shook his head as if he didn’t quite understand.
Freddy surprised me again by speaking to Eugene in a hashish kind of French. Eugene made small replies, barely audible and not at all understandable—to me. They spoke another fifteen seconds then Eugene shook his head. “No, um.”
Freddy explained, “He doesn’t know anything about her goings and comings once she left Loblolly Farm.”
I looked at Eugene. “Did you see her leave, Eugene?”
He shook his head adamantly. “No um, no.”
Freddy said, “For our part, we all believe that she is riding horses somewhere. These folks come and go at the drop of a hunt cap.”
Marley spoke directly at Eugene. “I’m a federal agent and am looking into the death of Francois Dupain of France. Did you know him?”
Stupefied fit Eugene’s face. Maybe he hadn’t been coached on how to answer questions about Dupain. So he shook his head like the life of the French rider was nothing to him. “No um, no.”
“You didn’t know him when he worked at Loblolly Farm?” Marley asked.
The expression on his face did not change; and I suspected his apparent indifference came from not knowing how to answer rather than the true answer.
“He was an exercise rider,” Marley coached.
Eugene rolled his eyes like maybe a light had come on and shook his head negatively, but he said nothing.
Freddy spoke French again. I know some French but could not catch the rapid words. I did hear the words mort, décédé.”
“No um. Non,” Eugene said, hands held up. “Je ne sais rien.”
I got that and so did Marley.
Eugene laid his head in the crook of his crossed arms on the table.
I hadn’t noticed Abigail leave her cookie post, but suddenly she was beside the table, at Freddy’s elbow. “I must go,” she said, the frail matron now. “I’ve a terrible headache. The heat. The crowds, You know, Freddy, I can’t cope. This is all too much. Eugene you can drive me home.”
Eugene looked up. “Yes um.” He rose eagerly.
Freddy stood. “We’ll all go now.”
Abigail took Eugene’s his hand and led him away.
Freddy said, “Sorry, Miss Dru, Special Agent Parsons. As you can see, he’s not the brightest light under the big top.”
“Thanks for your help, Mr. Lombard,” Marley said. “We shall see you later.”
Freddy glanced away. “It’s an hour before darkness. You’re welcome to come to our place now. My wife will take to her rooms. She does when she’s feeling ill.”
“Then Miss Dru and I will come up now. We can certainly looked for other evidence of what occurred on your property. The warrant is broad enough.”
“I’ll phone Sheriff Whittier,” Freddy said, trying to stay in charge. “He’ll have the lab guys.”
36
I drove and Marley talked.
“Here’s the jet info,” he said. “I’ll say this. They spent a hell of a lot on aviation fuel. Freddy seems to have gone back and forth for the last two weeks in his Citation X.” He paused. “It’s owned by one of the family’s foundations.”
Marley had a thing about the jet in the foundation.
“One of the Abigail Smith foundations,” I corrected him.
“Tis a very fast airplane, the likes of which I’ve traveled on many times. Let’s see here,” he said consulting his notes. “I can go back farther, but I asked Casper, the pilot, about five specific days, those leading up to and away from the nanny’s death. On Day One, Freddy and Roup left Loblolly for Saratoga in the afternoon and returned to Loblolly Farm the next morning, landing at the airport at ten o’clock.”
Marley explained that Day One meant the day Webdog and Evangeline left Loblolly Farm, the day after Francois’s body was found in the woods, although it had not been identified. Casper mentioned that Mr. Lombard was going there to find one of his riders. It appeared Freddy had returned from Saratoga, but made no mention to Mary Celeste specifically that he had tried to find Soire. If he in fact had.
I asked, “Freddy and Roup?”
“Casper said Eugene Roup often accompanies Freddy as his personal servant.”
“Hot walker and personal servant. Interesting.”
“On Day Two Freddy and Roup left for Saratoga’s Shively Field at one o’clock in the afternoon, arriving at three-forty-five that day. Casper did not know the reason for that trip.”
“Maybe,” I said, “that was after I contacted the sheriff of Loblolly Pines, Travis McElroy, about the body found in Hitchcock Woods.”
“Maybe,” Marley agreed. “On Day Three, Freddy and Roup return to Loblolly at eight o’clock, having left Saratoga at five-thirty in the ayem.”
I told Marley that I was in Aiken that day and talked to Freddy. Freddy had told me that Eugene Roup was in Saratoga.”
“Don’t get ahead of me now, pretty lady.”
I asked Marley, “Do you know the miles and how long it takes to fly to Saratoga and back?”
“Yep, Casper said it’s fourteen-hundred-sixty miles, airport to airport. The Citation X can go seven hundred miles per hour. It’s a fast machine. Give it a tailwind and you’re rocketing.”
“Okay, so at most, if you’re in a hurry, it’s two-and-a-half hours. Proceed, Special Agent.”
“That same day—Day Three—with an hour layover, Roup, Abigail, Mary Celeste, Annalie and fly to Saratoga, leaving at nine ayem and landing at twelve o’clock. Headwinds. Casper volunteers Abigail had a meeting at two o’clock with the BET board and carried on about being late.”
“Why did Roup fly to Loblolly then back to Saratoga on the same day?”
“I asked Casper and he said he assumed gofer duties and that Roup was retarded. I cautioned him about political correctness, of course.”
“Roup was at Loblolly for an hour. By the time I got there and spoke to Freddy Lombard, Roup was winging his way back here.”
“So Freddy Lombard and Andy Smith weren’t lying or keeping Roup in a stall somewhere. Maybe they sent him away from prying questions.”
“Could be. I gave the Aiken sheriff plenty of time to call Lombard and alert him that I was coming to town and at some point wanted to speak to Eugene Roup. I thought Travis McElroy on the up-and-up, but he’s got elections, and money to raise there for.”
“Politicians take care of their wealthy citizens and vice-versa,” Marley said, then delivered the coup: “And Day Three—that night—the nanny was murdered. You have no qualms about my saying she was murdered, do you?”
“None
Back to the plane itinerary, we’ve come to Day Four. Casper had landed the plane at Loblolly the night before, the night Annalie was killed. When Freddy Lombard learned of her death in Saratoga, he called his pilot and told him to be at the airport at dawn. He, Andy Smith, Jose and Bryce flew to Saratoga, arriving at eleven.
In the afternoon of Day Four, Bart flew out of Saratoga for West Palm Beach, arriving at seven-thirty in the evening. The next day, Five, he returned to Saratoga.”
“Anyone in the household, and I include workers, could have killed Annalie except Andy Smith—creepy Uncle Andy—Freddy, Jose or Bryce. But any of those could have run me down. Plenty of black trucks on farms. Everyone could have been involved in Francois’s death and Cici’s disappearance. No timelines to their fates.”
“Yet,” Marley said.
“I’m sure with Marleybone, the Fed, on the case, you’ll nail down timelines.”
He looked smug.
The memory of the day I talked to Freddy Lombard and Andy Smith at Loblolly Farm thrust itself into my head. We’d been discussing the body that was probably that of Frank Dupain in the woods when I told them that Cici Soire came from France looking for Frank. Freddy had said my daughter got to know Soire pretty well. I’m sure if Mary Celeste knew Soire was here looking for someone who had worked here, she would have told me. Then the sheriff asked him where Cici Soire was? Freddy answered: In New York. Went for the Saratoga meet. I told her to go with the grooms, but I’ve heard from my people that she left our barn to work in the track’s shedrows. It happens. She’ll be back with us come time to do the works.
Then, Andy Smith had given me a lesson on the cultural difference between his niece and Soire. The asshole.
I said to Marley, “Lombard had been going back and forth from Saratoga to Aiken for weeks preparing for the big meet and the whole time he was pestered by his daughter, yet he could not come up with a suitable answer for Soire’s whereabouts. You know why?”
“It’s easy to guess,” Marley answered. “He was diddling her.”
“Diddling,” I said and laughed. “You’re just an old-fashioned, goody-two shoes, Marleybone Parsons. But that’s a good guess. He told me he ended the relationship and she went off, leaving her boots as an ‘up-yours’ gesture to the family. Why the entire family? Why not just him?”
“I’ve been forced to change my mind. She’s alive,” Marley said.
“But where?”
“How this? He’s killed his nanny sweetie and has Miss Cici in the wings, perhaps the Citation’s? The mile high thing, don’t you know?”
37
We pulled up to the eerie Dutch Colonial. The Jeep Cherokee from the Lombard barn was parked in front. “I saw that Jeep at the barn this morning, but not when we were touring the backstretch and admiring the decorations this evening.”
“So you wonder who was driving it?”
“I wonder no longer.”
“Me, neither.”
“He didn’t run me off the road in Aiken,” I said.
“No.”
The house’s front door flew open and Mary Celeste ran out. I felt a blood-curdling chill that she was being chased. But then she held out her hands and bounced up and said, “Daddy says we’re going to the scene of the crime and look for clues. The sheriff’s coming, too.” If she were older she might have rubbed her hands together with glee. Instead, she leaned against my rental car and grinned as if we were intent on finding the pot of gold.
At the same time a big Mercedes crept up the lane with Abigail behind the wheel. She drove it around to the side of the house. A big black pickup with darkly tinted windows drove behind them. Eugene driving. That truck was like several pick-ups riding on oversized tires that they had at Loblolly farm. One of which, I believed, had driven behind me and succeeded in running me off the road. But Eugene Roup wasn’t driving it if he was flying up to Saratoga. My intuition was trying to break through with some esoteric notion and I reached up and pulled off my sunglasses. Marley smiled and winked. It never gets old with him, my eye patch. My cell phone played Mozart and the music conjured another kind of song. Not classical, though, but the fog in my head would not let the tune or lyrics break through. I swiped the front of the cell phone and answered, “Call you back in a minute.”
“Please do. Got news.”
Marley said, “Thy love calls, making me feel like Mary Head in this triangle.”
“Think Revenge Marley,” I said.
It was minutes before the Dutch Colonial’s front door was opened and Freddy stepped outside. “Sorry folks, I need to see to Abigail. You go on, and when the sheriff arrives, I’ll come with him to the ridge.” He looked at his daughter. “Mary Celeste come inside.”
“Oh please, I want—”
“I said come inside.”
I said, “I’d like to take a look at Gush Fault below the ridge.”
“Fine with me,” Freddy said. “It’s public property.”
“Then we’ll meet you at the ridge with the forensic crew,” Marley said.
“Fine. You know the way, right?”
“Yes,” Marley said.
I drove back the way we’d come and, at the split, turned to go down the hill along banks of Gush Fault on a road of rocks and sand. Appropriately, the car rocked side to side. “Narrow,” Marley said.
A quarter of a mile in, we stopped. Marley had been here with Freddy and the sheriff and so he knew the exact spot where her body had been found. He said, “Can’t say there’s anything to see.” We got out. He pointed toward a smooth boulder that began at the side of the road and spanned into the middle of Gush Fault. The huge brown stone was slick from the swift rushing waters of Gush Fault. “Marley said, “This is a spring fed creek. The temperature here was fifty-two degrees. It’s shallow and the sun was behind the clouds. The sheriff said it could rise to sixty on a hot day.”
“I thought these were hot springs.”
“Not this one. It flows out of rock deep in the mountains. In winter the flow stops because the water freezes at the source.”
I saw rings on the water’s surface. “What is it? Trout?”
“Probably. Great fishing here.”
I thought about eating fish that had come out of this creek and creeks like it all over the world, but then, I would never eat if I considered the state in which my food had lived.
Looking at the photograph Marley held, I noted where her head had been positioned. Top against the rock. Her posterior was sunken, her face was out of the water and turned away from me. I could see where the blacksmith’s hammer had crashed into the side of it. The water had washed the blood enough for me to see the white skull. I saw the left leg but the right was under water. I thought again, and said it. “Somebody was really angry with her.”
I looked up at the ridge, at the overhang and noticed the smooth formations of the rocks. “It took millions of years, and a few faults, but the water finally cut through here leaving smooth contours,” I said.
Marley agreed with a grunt. “Ice age helped. This is the headwaters of the Periwinkle River. It runs south into a lake at the Massachusetts border.”
I wasn’t interested in a prolonged geography lesson so I looked up at the ridge and thought I saw a head up there draw back. Maybe the sheriff had arrived. We got back in the car. There was a wide spot under the ridge overhang, wide enough to turn around after some jockeying the steering wheel.
A red spark of light caught my peripheral vision. I stopped. “Marley, glass or something’s over at the bottom of the ridge.”
“I know,” he said. “Lots of broken glass. Kids, the sheriff said, come here with their beer and hunker under the ridge and drink. Who knows what else they do?”
“I can guess.”
He thought a moment. “She could have been murdered under the ridge, right there, and dragged by an already shattered leg to the water. But what shattered her leg?”
I adjust my eye patch, held it out to get some air in. “I was thinking it happened at the swing. She was deep in thought and he caught her off-guard. Then he brought her down here and put her in Gush Fault. Maybe he ran over her leg in getting close enough to get her into the car.”
“But the disjoint at the knee. Separation of the knee and the shin bone. What was that injury caused from?”
“From being pulled?” he speculated. “Could be, coroner said. Many ways to disjoin a bone from a knuckle, including landing wrong and twisting it.”
“Like falling off a swing.”
“You like the swing theory.”
“Yes, because I don’t think she came down here to ponder her past or future.”
He said, “Clever devil, to know that the water would delay the rigors of death—the body’s temperature—and wash any evidence of himself that he left.”
As every investigator knows there are obvious clues and not-so-obvious clues that lead to a crime’s solution. It’s a matter of seeing or touching or hearing or smelling them. Nothing aberrant happens in a vacuum. The causality and connections wait for us just beyond the perimeter of our vision.
I could not get rid of the sense that something bad was about to happen, that an evil presence was with me and plotting to hurt me or someone. I looked at Marley and smiled. He was benignly unfazed.
Up top of the ridge, at the picnic table where I parked the car, it felt hot and dry that evening, but heat lightning flickered against a black sky in the south. Still, I felt a breath of cool air against my cheek and smelled a hint of distant rain. The sheriff or techs had not arrived. I said to Marley, “I need to call Lake back. You’ll excuse me if I sit here, at the picnic table, and do so?”
“Have at it, Miss Dru,” Marley said and walked away, toward the edge of the cliff beyond the swing where the authorities deemed Annalie Ericsson somehow either jumped or fell down to the water below. In their dreams. I knew authorities here wished that had happened and that we were here to prove otherwise. They knew in their inbred simian hearts that Annalie was murdered and why. Maybe the who, too.
***
I held my cell to my ear and spoke to Lake. “Hey, sorry to be so abrupt.”
“We got them,” Lake said. “They thought they were so clever coming through Birmingham.”
“Tell me more. I got a few minutes before we do the luminol thing here at the ridge.”
“What are you looking for?”
“Where she died. Where her head was busted open, where her leg was crushed and disjoined at the knee. It wasn’t the elephantine rock in the water. What would you think if a victim had two massive injuries on opposite sides of her body and no damage connecting the two?”
