Deadly Slipper (26 page)
Authors: Michelle Wan
At that point, Jackie appeared, cell phone clamped to his ear. He was a short, square man in his fifties, dressed in swimming trunks and a pool robe, which was open at the front, exposing a hairy chest and a creased belly. His skin was tanned to a deep mahogany, his lips were full, and his eyes took in Mara appraisingly as he ended his conversation and switched off.
They introduced themselves and raised the matter they had ostensibly come about:
“We’re thinking of landscaping our property,” Alain lied with surprising fluency. “This fellow Julian Wood gave us your name. Said he’d done work for you. Must say I’m pretty impressed with what I see. I take it you’d recommend him?”
“Sure,” said Jackie. “Mind you, he’s not cheap. And he took his own sweet time finishing.”
“How long ago was this?” asked Mara.
Jackie shrugged.
“Parbleu!
Fifteen—no, fourteen years ago. Eighty-nine, it was.”
Yes, Mara thought, the timing fit.
“Do you”—Alain looked around him—“still use him?” Someone had to maintain the place.
“Pas question!
Not at his prices. I have a gardener come in from the town.”
Jackie showed them out, leading the way with Mara. Alain lingered behind with Ingrid. Together they paused to inspect a flowering bush.
“So,” Jackie said, taking Mara’s left elbow to steer her unnecessarily along the walkway, “you’re interested in gardening?”
“Oh,” she extemporized, “it’s really more my husband.”
Jackie let his large, square fingers slide lightly down her arm. He raised her hand. “No ring? Pretty woman like you needs a ring. People might get the wrong impression.”
“These visible signs of ownership, rather passé, don’t you think?” Mara parried, rather smoothly, she thought, and freed herself from his grasp. At the same time, she seized the opening he had provided. “Speaking of that, Monsieur Ménard, I think I used to know your wife.”
He stopped to study her carefully. “Which one?” he asked bluntly.
“Which—? Oh. Julie. You were married to Julie Ménard, weren’t you? Or have I made a mistake?”
Jackie Ménard’s stare was now coldly assessing. “No mistake,” he said after a moment. “But you couldn’t have known her very well or you’d have heard. She took off. Left me. Years ago.”
“Oh dear.” Mara contrived to look genuinely flustered. “I’m terribly sorry.”
“I’m not. Quite frankly, she was a bitch in heat.” He turned on his heel and walked on.
Bingo. Mara turned to shoot a triumphant glance over her shoulder. She was in time to see Ingrid jump as Alain slid a hand casually over her protuberant and inviting bum. Men, Mara thought, only partly amused. So much for disapproval.
•
> … So you see, Patsy, the evidence is stacking up against Julian. He worked for the Ménards at the critical time, and he said nothing about it when Loulou mentioned that Julie was one of the missing women. For that matter, he had to be pushed before he’d admit that he’d even heard about Bedie and Valérie Rules. But Valérie lived just down the road from him. She probably walked past his house to and from school every day. He could have given her a ride, and then, who knows what happened. As for Bedie, I suspect she bought his wildflower book and contacted him from the information on the cover. He’s a local orchid expert. It’s also unlikely that she found the Bird’s-nest Orchids on her own. Much more probable that Julian took her there.
There are other things, too. He really did look pretty rattled when I turned up, as Alain said, like a face out of the grave, asking him to help me find a woman he might have murdered. His past is pretty cloudy. Paul told me that all of the women in his life seem to have dropped out of sight. And although I’m sure Julian genuinely wants to find his mystery Lady’s Slipper, I think he faked the orchid hunt to throw suspicion on Vrac and the de
Sauvignacs. It’s true that the
pigeonnier
is on La Binette land, but apart from that, we only have his word that he actually reconstructed Bedie’s trail leading from there to Les Colombes. And, finally, I’m now convinced that he purposely “lost” me in the swamp and stalked me in the forest. His version of fun and games. Oh, and by the way, do you remember what you said about psychos going off their medications? When I was searching his house, I checked his bathroom cabinet. I found some pills, something something
acétaminophène.
Does this mean anything to you? <
Patsy wrote back:
> For Pete’s sake, Mara, what have you got by the tail? Look, you need to understand that you could be dealing with a seriously sick and dangerous person. Corner him and he becomes a land mine. Hidden but highly explosive. Be sensible and turn this over to the fics!
> P.S. To answer your question, the something
acétaminophène
is probably the French version of prescription-strength Tylenol. Maybe our boy suffers from bad headaches. Not surprising if what you’re telling me is true. <
> Don’t worry, Patsy. I intend to hand this over to the cops. And I don’t plan on taking any stupid risks. According to Loulou, this predator has always
chosen his victims so that he can’t be linked to them. That’s why he’s never been caught. I figure too many people have seen me in Julian’s company and know about Bedie for him to try anything. Nothing more serious than his sick games of cat-and-mouse, that is. <
> Mara, don’t count on it. Moreover, being careful also means not jumping to conclusions. Above all not trusting anyone. And while we’re on the subject, there’s something I think you’re overlooking. Julian isn’t your only candidate for stalker. Alain de Sauvignac was also there in the woods. I know you think you fell into his arms. Or did he lunge out and grab you? <
Mara was sitting very upright on the same hard wooden chair she had occupied two months ago in Commissaire Boutot’s office at Périgueux Police Headquarters. This time she was there at the Commissaire’s invitation. He sat facing Mara across his desk. With his baggy eyes and wilting mustache, he looked more melancholy than ever. Nevertheless, he had been listening to her with evident interest for thirty minutes. While she spoke, he rolled a blue pencil between his palms. His hands were dry, and the friction of the rolling made a scratchy, rhythmical sound. Loulou, who had set up the interview, was strolling about the office, chuckling softly at framed photographs of former
commissaires
, as if sharing a private joke with each of them. He paused to squint at a book on a shelf. It proved to be a biography of master thief-catcher Eugène François Vidocq—Boutot was something of a classicist when it came to crime.
“Alors, madame
, your information is interesting,” the
commissaire
said when she had finished. “As long, of course, as it is sans spurious embellishments.”
Mara blushed at his reference to the faked initials. “Did you check Scott’s statement to find out if Bedie had a copy of Julian’s wildflower book?”
Boutot was cautious. “In his
déclaration
Monsieur Barrow did state that your sister had taken with her a Michelin guide to Périgord-Quercy and a book on wildflowers in the Dordogne.”
“I knew it!” Mara exclaimed.
Boutot shook his head. “We can conclude nothing from this. Even if she had a copy of the book, it doesn’t follow that she met up with Monsieur Wood. Indeed, I must point out that much of your so-called evidence against him is circumstantial.”
“Maybe.” She was undaunted. “But when so many things come together, as they do here, I think the coincidences stop being mere chance.”
Boutot considered this, temporarily ceasing his pencil rolling. He dipped his head from side to side. “In fact, we have begun inquiries. Loulou has forwarded a rather interesting theory.”
“Landscaping,” pronounced the chubby
ex-flic
, bustling over. “You see, at first I thought our perpetrator chose his victims at random along major roads. I now think the link is landscaping. Julian is a landscape gardener. What better than to use his jobs to size up potential victims? Moreover, the distribution of the disappearances suggests the perpetrator was someone who moved around a lot. Julian’s work—
mon dieu
—it takes him all over the region. He also has a van. Handy for transporting bodies.”
Loulou plopped himself down on a chair next to her. “Look at it this way. Landscaping lets him get
near his victims, observe their habits in situ, as it were. Picture that he’s trimming the hedges around the house.” He pumped his arms together in an enthusiastic hedge-clipping motion. “The target gets used to seeing him about. He’s just the nice English fellow who tends the garden. That meets the criterion of trust. Child’s play for him to get to know her routine, follow her somewhere, or even make an assignation, and
paf!”
Loulou slammed his right fist into his left palm with a look of shining satisfaction. The
commissaire
winced.
“Of course,” Loulou conceded, “we still need to find out if our man also worked for Valérie Rules’s parents and the Charlebois woman.” He looked at his former colleague. “Any feedback on that, Antoine?”
Boutot sighed. The pencil started up again. “Monsieur and Madame Rules are now divorced, but one of my men spoke with the wife, who says they never employed a gardener and she’s never heard of Monsieur Wood.”
“Ah,” said Loulou with a vigorous wag of a forefinger, “but in that instance perhaps he didn’t need to work for them. He only lived a couple of kilometers away. He would have had ample opportunity to approach the kid.”
“To the mother’s knowledge, Valérie didn’t know him, either. But maybe, as you say, he noticed the girl and events proceeded from that. As to the other, old Madame Charlebois died a couple of years ago. So there’s no way of knowing if she or her daughter,
Mariette, employed our suspect. However, I have someone questioning the neighbors.”
“But in any case, Julian’s link to the Ménards is solid,” declared Mara. “He worked for them the same year Julie Ménard disappeared. We’ve established that.”
“Bien sûr
, we are also reexamining the Ménard affair,” the commissaire assured her. “All the same”—he thrust his chin in Loulou’s direction—“I have a little problem with your landscaping theory.”
“What problem?” demanded Loulou.
“It doesn’t explain Madame Dunn’s sister or the Dutch tourist whose body we found in the Quercy woods. Neither of those two had any connection with landscaping. Your idea, moreover, implies a certain amount of planning. Yet the Tenhagen woman was probably hitchhiking, suggesting a random encounter. Mademoiselle Bedie was probably a chance meeting, too. Valérie Rules?” He shrugged. “And Mariette Charlebois, who knows?”
“In Bedie’s case the link was orchids,” Mara said. “Maybe Hanneke Tenhagen had an interest in orchids as well. Have you looked into that?”
The
commissaire’s
hands paused again. His mournful gaze fixed on her. “No. We didn’t know about the orchids at the time. But it’s an interesting angle to pursue. However, what about the other missing women? Were they also interested in orchids?”
“Pooh,” said Loulou with an explosive breath. “I
think we’re making it more complicated than it needs to be.”
Boutot cast a weary look at the chubby ex-lieutenant. “And your idea is?”
“Why, simply that, in addition to using his landscaping contracts to size up his victims, our man also seized his openings as they came, whether his victims were clients or strangers, as in the cases of Mara’s sister, who might have approached him; the Tenhagen woman, who was hitchhiking; or
la petite
Valérie on her way home from school. As for Mariette Charlebois, maybe he did work for them.”
The
commissaire
shook his head. “I still don’t like it. It’s too messy. In my experience,
mon vieux
, serial killers almost always adopt a consistent approach. That’s not the case here. It’s almost as if”—this time Boutot put the pencil down; his baggy eyes were unhappy—“we’re looking for two different people.”
•
Patsy e-mailed Mara:
> Well, I’m glad you’ve quit playing cops-and-robbers and turned this over to the professionals. But listen, kid, if landscaping really is a thread running through all this, and if we’re looking at a four-or five-year cycle of events, then I’d say your killer is overdue for another victim. I think you’d better forget about Bedie for the moment and concentrate on Julian’s client list and who could be his next target. <
My
god
, Mara thought when she read Patsy’s message.
Prudence.
Julian had been digging around her property for the last three weeks. And hadn’t he said something about a rockery? Where else had she seen rockeries? Was Julie Ménard buried beneath a hundred tons of Mediterranean stone?
Mara keyed in Prudence’s number. Come on, come on, she whispered as the phone at the other end rang. And went on ringing.
•
Mara pulled up in front of Prudence’s house with a screech of brakes. She raced to the front door and hammered on it with both fists.
Prudence took her time opening. She was wearing another of her Quimper-style smocks, and her hair and nails, as usual, were perfect.
“Oh,” said Mara, taken aback. “Are you okay?”
“Fine. Why shouldn’t I be?
Entrez.
Or do you just want to stay out there and beat down my woodwork?”
“I called you.” Mara followed her inside. “You didn’t answer.”
“I must have been out in the back. Inspecting the trenches.”
Mara said, “Prudence, about those trenches. I—I need to speak to you. Do you have any idea why Julian is digging them?”
“Something to do with drainage for my rockery. But if you’re really that turned on by technical details, why not ask the expert?” In a lower voice, she added, “Lover Boy is here.”
“Here?”
“Hullo, Mara,” said Julian quietly, stepping into view. “Why should that surprise you?”
“It doesn’t,” said Mara. She took a deep breath and faced him squarely. “That is, I came to have a word with Prudence. Privately, if you don’t mind.”