An Owl's Whisper (49 page)

Wallener squeezed her hand. “And what, my dear, let you finally confront the past?”

Eva sighed. “It was poor Crickette…Hille. A friend’s final gift. Out of her mind with pain, she threatened to tell everyone what I’d been. In an instant, the past I feared more than death turned from lock to key. Why hadn’t I seen it before? I told Stanley what I’d done and it changed everything. I suppose you could say Hille, in losing her own life, gave me mine.”

“Yes, poor Hille. Poisoned with cancer, but first poisoned with lies.” He shook his head. “Did you know that HM, before fleeing Belgium as the December offensive failed, told Hille he suspected you’d betrayed the cause and ordered her to liquidate you? As I recall, the words he wrote on his order were
slit the Owl’s throat
.”

Eva’s look wasn’t anger or shock, but sadness. “Poisoned with lies—yes, we all were.”

Wallener asked what Henri meant about betraying the cause. Eva told him matter-of-factly about geese with foxes’ teeth and the night Pruvot died, but she insisted she was no hero. When he told her what he knew about Henri Messiaen’s fate, she showed no reaction.

About Crickette’s life in America, Eva told Wallener everything. She ended by saying, “To her credit, when the pain became too bad, Crickette thought first of her husband, Max. I think what mattered most to her was making his pain less by masking her suicide.”

Wallener opened his mouth to reply, then closed it. After a moment of silence, his shoulders sagged and he said, “Perhaps.”

Jess had been at the diner for an hour when Wallener came in, his overcoat buttoned up and a muffler wrapped around his neck.

Jess looked up from the newspaper. “Done?” He thought Wallener looked drained, like a cowpoke who’d spent a long, cold night in the saddle.

“Yes. Done. Sheriff, thank you for your kind hospitality and your help.” He removed his hat and bowed.

The gesture was of another time and place, but Jess found it a charming anachronism. He stood and touched a finger to his forehead in quasi-salute. “So, you got what you wanted?”

“Wanted?” Wallener sighed as if he was considering the word. “Perhaps more than I wanted. Some things are hard to hear. And harder to say. In any case our conversation is ended.”

Jess cocked his head and squinted at him. “Is Eva OK?”

“It is difficult for her to return to such times.” Wallener swallowed. “But yes, Mrs. Chandler is OK, very much so. As I understand your term OK. She now returns to home.” He shook Jess’ hand. “So, tomorrow I take my leave on the morning train.”

“Ya know, Wallener, ’bout forty years ago you and me did our damnedest to kill each other over there in France. I’m tickled pink neither of us succeeded. How about if you come on out to our place for supper this evening? I’ll drink a good pull of rye whiskey to French soil unstained with your blood and you do the same, if you’re so inclined. Then for eats, it’s my wife Carrie’s rabbit stew. Folks say it’s so good the critters line up, hopin’ to be part of it.”

“I would be honored and pleased,” Wallener said. “I’ll only ask that you make no mention to your wife of the specific matters into which I inquired.”

Jess nodded. Then with a pained expression, he added, “One last piece of business to get out of the way, so this evenin’ can be purely social.” He glanced around the café. “Might be best we head back to my shop ’fore I bring it up.”

Sitting with Wallener in his office, Jess fidgeted for a moment, then said, “I got a job to do here, professor, so I need to ask if you see any ties between what you came here lookin’ for and Crickette Conroy’s death?”

Wallener squinted at Jess. “You said your suspect was an old man with no connection to my research?”

After inhaling deeply, Jess blew the air slowly out of his pursed lips. “He’s one suspect, all right. Got him a motive, but a pretty tight alibi, too. There’s someone else, though. Someone I hate suspectin’.” Jess frowned and unlocked his desk drawer. He took out Crickette’s notebook. “Probably shouldn’t show you this, bein’ that it’s evidence. But I reckon a feller can justify it, your expertise and all.” He slid the photograph of the couple with baby Hille over to Wallener.

Wallener looked at both sides of the photo and shook his head. “So many lives ruined.”

“These notes of Crickette’s are what I really need to ask about. Wrote this just before she died.” Jess put on his specs and traced the words with his finger. “
I thought
OUR
dirty black secret was a trump card, but Eva threw it in my face. Was a blinding flash so much to ask? Henri, I remember NBH.
Then she leaves some space and writes in big letters
, TODAY EVA THREATENED TO DO WHATEVER IT TAKES TO SILENCE ME.”
Jess set the notebook on the table and tapped it with his finger. “Black secrets sounds like your bailiwick. I wish to God you could tell me how this doesn’t mean what it sounds like.”

“Poison,” Wallener hissed. “Yes, I make a living studying poison and how it spreads. And this truly is poison. You read words, abbreviations, that catch my ear. Henri and NBH. Sheriff, Henri was the agent HM whom I mentioned earlier. A vile and ruthless man. HM was a member of the Silver Daggers, whose motto was
Wenn sie sterben müssen, nehmen sie die Bastarde zur Hölle mit
. They shortened it to NBH, for the important words
nehmen
,
Bastarde
, and
Hölle.
The motto translates to English so—
If you must die, take the bastards along with you to hell
.”

Jess’ eyes opened wide. “Take the bastards with you,” he echoed softly.

Wallener raised a finger. “Confidentiality urges silence. But truth and justice demand I say more. The records show that for acts against the Nazi cause, one Eva Messiaen was marked for death by HM. Crickette Gigault took her orders from HM.” He made a fist. “Implicating Eva in murder. Obeying HM’s order. They are one in the same.” He crossed his arms and glared at Jess.

“Think I get your drift. Thanks, professor.” Jess brushed his eye with his thumb.

Wallener stood next to Jess and put a hand on his shoulder. “Only by chance did we both survive the woods of Belleau. And by chance did I come here just now. Chance, sheriff—we should stand in its awe.” He patted the shoulder softly. “I think we’ll both sleep well tonight.”

Knowing Heads From Tails

Wallener made quite a dinner guest. The man appreciated good food and a good laugh. He got along pretty well with neat rye whiskey, too. Said it paired up
sehr gut
with his pipe smoke.

But even while sharing food, drink, and laughter with such a fine fellow, Jess worried that not much had changed: Even if Crickette had been out to get her, it didn’t mean Eva was clean. If Crickette couldn’t have killed herself, she was murdered—someone else was involved. And at the moment, Eva was the only someone else he had. There was also the note he’d found in Crickette’s dead fingers. Revenge is planned, not something you pull off, scribbling damning lines moments away from death. Besides, what could
It was Eva
mean other than the obvious?

Jess saw Wallener off on the Burlington liner the next morning. On the way back to his shop he passed Doc’s office. He stopped for a moment and gazed at the name
Fletcher,
painted in black letters with gold trim on the glass of the door. As he stared, things Doc had said about Crickette at the death scene and after the
post mortem
traipsed across his mind. One of them,
with the blast she took, it would’ve been over quick
, looped over and over like a needle stuck on a phonograph disk. Then it hit him. He dashed inside.

Jess had to wait while Fletcher finished seeing Mrs. Dirks about her sugar diabetes, but he did get to go in ahead of three other patients by telling the receptionist he’d come on official business. Without taking off his coat, he pulled a chair close to Doc and sat. “You told me Crickette died pretty quick after the shotgun blast, right?”

“Pretty damn quick—like probably before she hit the ground. Merciful that way.”

“You said probably. Any chance she coulda wrote something after she was shot?”

“Why ya asking? See
Harry
written in the snow that night?” Doc shrugged. “S’pose anything’s possible, but that shotgun blast damn near cut the woman in two. I’d give a million to one she couldn’t have written a single letter.”

Jess jumped out of his chair. “Doc, you just shot a mess of holes in one helluva piece of evidence I been wrestlin’ with, and I’m pleased as Punch you did.”

Doc glared at Jess. “Pleased I torpedoed your investigation?”

“Always thought that evidence had a tinny ring to it. Led me down a dark alley. Real dark.”

“What evidence, Garrity?”

“Sorry. Police business.” Jess tipped his hat. “
Adios
, pardner.”

He turned to go but paused at the door. “There is one more thing. You said Crickette was begging for mercy. ’Cause she had powder burns and pellet wounds on the left arm. But I didn’t see any wound on her left hand at the crime scene. How does that figure?”

“Jeeze, Garrity, I dunno. Maybe she wasn’t begging for mercy…what if she was struggling with the killer? Grabbed the barrel, trying to fend him off. That’s when she got it. That would explain the clean hands.”

Jess pictured the end of the gun barrel in Crickette’s left hand. “I reckon.”

“Now if that’s all your cockamamie questions—scoot. I got patients to see.”

Crossing the street to his office, Jess found a shiny new quarter in the snow. My lucky day, he thought. He was whistling as he pushed the coin into his watch pocket and went inside.

Jess leaned back in his chair, considering what Doc told him. If Crickette died instantly after she was shot, clearly she’d written
It was Eva
on that pink slip of paper earlier. So, unless she was a fortuneteller, it couldn’t mean the obvious. But if not that, what? It didn’t seem likely she wrote it outside in a raging blizzard. She must’ve scribbled it at the house before leaving. With Max there. He might know something about it. Jess decided to call Max, but he’d have to tread carefully—he didn’t want to have to explain
It was Eva
.

It took eight rings for Max to answer the telephone.

“Sorry to bother you, Max. I was just wonderin’ about something. Might’ve happened just before Crickette left the house the morning she died.” Jess shifted the receiver to his other ear. “She didn’t jot something on a slip of paper, did she? A reminder maybe? Or a note about Eva doing something for her?”

“Don’t know of her
writing
anything about Eva. Like I said before, she
told
me Eva was coming over. When you asked about a suicide note, I believe I mentioned those love notes we used to write each other. She called ’em
billets-doux
. Ain’t that the sweetest word? Didn’t I tell you I wrote her one after she went out the door? Hid it with her hairbrush? That ring a bell? I did it ’cuz I thought I saw her writing me one before she left.”

“You saw her writin’ something?”

“Thought I did. We’d write these
billets-doux
and hide ’em for each other to find. Half the time she’d put ones for me in the sugar bowl. I called ’em
sugar from my Chérie.
I wrote mine on blue sheets of paper and she used pink ones. Before she left that last morning, I spied her writing on one of her pink sheets and figured it was a
billet doux
for me. Only I never found it.”

“Whether or not you found something on paper, Max, I’m sure she wrote a love note to you on her heart that day.” Jess surprised himself, coming up with that.

“That’s what I figure, Jess. Thanks for saying you think so, too.”

After he hung up, Jess took a moment to let it all sink in. The two damning pieces of evidence against Eva, Crickette’s journal and the note clutched in her lifeless hand, now had more holes in them than Swiss cheese. But Eva wasn’t out of the woods, not by a long shot. Because, no matter how Crickette did it, by getting her friend to pull the trigger, she both ended her own suffering
and
put Eva behind the eight ball—since the law doesn’t look kindly at being a party to murder, even if you were duped and/or pressured into doing it.

Jess sharpened three pencils and took out a yellow pad of paper. He put on his specs and wrote out where his investigation stood on evidence and suspects.

—