Fiona Silk Mysteries 2-Book Bundle (59 page)

The cowlicks seemed to wilt. She focused her attention on the new binoculars. She ruffled Tolstoy's ears, but she didn't say a word to me, leaving me to ponder my ingratitude.

“Let's go,” I said.

My brand-new take-charge tone would have had more effect if I'd been able to find the keys to Marc-André's Beemer. Luckily for me, they finally showed up underneath the driver's seat.

“Don't look at me,” Josey said. “I didn't put them there.”

Then it hit me. A car could be an excellent place to hide a large envelope or a small package, say a couple of hundred thousand dollars and change. If you didn't trust your local tellers to keep a secret. Or your friends. And most especially if you thought your house might be searched by a pro like Dolan. Of course, you'd have to hide the car too. I'd assumed all along that Benedict's killer had ditched his sports car in the river or something. But what if Benedict had twigged to the fact that Dolan was on the rampage and squirrelled away the MG with the moolah in it? Ready to scoot off into the sunset the minute the coast was clear. No more farfetched than anything else about this whole business. It was just the sort of thing Benedict would do. And it wasn't as if I had any better ideas.

“Tell me, Josey, if you were going to hide a car, where would you put it?”

“Easy. Where there's lots of other cars. Isn't that what they do in the movies? Put them in parking lots? Airports.”

“The police have been looking for his car in the usual places. No sign anywhere.”

“Maybe it's in the woods. Some place far away and inconvenient.”

I shook my head. “Benedict didn't do inconvenient things. To himself, that is.”

“Hey, Miz Silk, what about Paulie Pound's? There's hundreds of cars there. Paulie's always hanging around the Britannia, so Benedict would have known him.”

“Right. But the police have already searched his premises.”

Josey snorted. “Sure, and those St. Aubaine constables couldn't have missed anything.”

Absolutely.

“I suppose if you're an extra hour late for school, it won't be the end of the world.”

“I think this might be more educational,” Josey said.

Long before St. Aubaine was reborn as a scenic tourist trap, Paulie Pound's scrapyard at the old quarry site by the northern edge of the village was a blight on the landscape. Jean-Claude Lamontagne had launched periodic battles to put Paulie out of business and increase the prettiness quotient of the surrounding acreage, which he owned, coincidentally.

Paulie Pound didn't give a flying fig for Jean-Claude. Nor did he give a flying fig for what we did in his scrapyard once the ten dollars was pressed into his already greasy palm. Paulie was on his way to the Britannia.

“You're the Thring girl, ain't ya.”

Josey nodded.

“Remember, I know everything what's in this yard, girlie. It's all numbered. It's all on the computer.”

Josey's eyes bulged.

I got the subject back on track. “So Benedict Kelly was here not too long ago?”

“Yup.”

“Was he here alone?”

“Yup.”

“Did he bring anything in?”

“I never paid him for nothing.”

“Right. Mind if I we look around?”

He spit a steam of tobacco juice into the nearest puddle. We took it to mean we had his blessing.

Heaps of rusted metal, gutted trucks and cannibalized cars stood in rows and rusting piles. But neat rows and neat rusting piles. Every American and Japanese make you could remember for forty years. With the exception of the Edsel. Naturally, there was no jaunty red MG. Half an hour later, soaked to the skin and filthy, we had worked our way past every vehicle right to the bank of the old quarry that edged the scrapyard. No more rows, no more cars. No more good ideas. We were ready to call it quits.

But I'm a patsy for a subliminal message. The sign
CAPITAINE PATATE
on the side of an ancient cube van that had served out its days as a chip wagon for instance. The battered van hunkered on blocks, next to a pathetic pile of useless car parts.

Mmm, fries, I thought.

Josey picked up a broken steering wheel and a car ashtray from the pile. “There's nothing much here,” she said.

“Right. Let's head back home, get cleaned up and then we can head back into town to get some fries at the Chez,” I said. “Before you go to school.”

“Or instead of,” Josey said. “I love fries.”

Tolstoy, who does not care for being wet but is a big fan of fries, barked in agreement.

I said. “Everyone loves fries. Come to think of it, Benedict used to practically live on them.” Then it hit me, like a clonk on the head with a bar of rusty metal. I crawled over some debris to the back of the chip van and tugged at the handle to the double doors. I didn't expect them to open as easily as they did.

Inside the van, the driver's and the front passenger's seats had been removed, leaving a good-sized space, missing the cooking equipment but still smelling faintly of old grease. The window on the driver's side was broken and jagged. The van was empty, except for a large lump under a tarpaulin. We climbed in and lifted the near end of the canvas. Sure enough, the cheerful red of the little MG shone through, clean and gleaming.

I scratched my head. “How the devil would he have gotten the MG inside this chip wagon? It's up on blocks.”

“Was the car working?” Josey said.

“I imagine it was. Benedict loved that car.”

“Then I suppose he just set up a ramp and drove it in.”

“A ramp? Where would Benedict get a ramp that would hold the weight of a car?”

“This is a junkyard, Miz Silk,” Josey said.

“So?”

“Well, how do you think Paulie Pound gets half these cars here?”

“How?”

“He's got a towtruck, and he's got a flatbed truck and he's got a ramp. Getting stuff moved around is no problem.”

“But Paulie Pound said that Benedict didn't leave anything here.”

“No, he didn't. He said he didn't pay Benedict for anything. That just means that Benedict didn't sell him anything for scrap. He wouldn't sell this beautiful car for scrap anyways, would he?”

“No. And knowing Benedict, he didn't want to pay to store it either.”

“He must have just wanted to hide it.”

“Right.”

“I wonder why he wanted to hide it, though?”

“I have a pretty good idea.”

“What, Miz Silk?”

“He was socking away everything of value to him. His car and his newfound money. Who would think to look here?”

Josey nodded. “Paulie Pound might. But if Benedict was thinking he could get his mitts on a ramp when old Paulie was getting hammered down at the Britannia, easy enough to do. Drive the car right in, put the ramp back. The price is right, and the secret's safe.” She smiled like someone who had a couple of secrets safe herself.

Right.

Perseverance paid off. It was a tight fit inside the van with the car and us, but we managed to crawl into the MG and start our hunt. Shoved down behind the distressed leather of the driver's seat, a neatly stapled Jiffy bag.

I broke a finger nail opening it.

“Is it...?” Josey said.

“Yes! Lots and lots of lovely moolah.”

“Jeez.”

The van doors slammed behind us.

We stood there stunned, then I gradually felt my way to the door and tried to open it. No luck. Someone had wedged it shut.

A minute later, I heard the screech of tearing metal. My head thumped a bar on the side. Josey bellowed.

“Someone's ramming us!”

It took a minute before I could see straight, but then I had barely enough light to make out Josey clutching her knee. Her face was pinched in pain.

“Josey, are you...?”

“It'll be okay, Miz Silk. Just dinged it on the car.”

She bit her lower lip, and her face couldn't have been whiter if she'd dipped it in a flour bin. Ding, my fanny. She was going to need a doctor for that knee.

“But what about you, Miz Silk? Your head's bleeding.”

Oh, good, that meant we were alive for the moment.

Rain battered the chip van. Overhead, seagulls screamed. The back door was jammed. How long before Paulie Pound would head down this way? Months? Years?

The van shook again with a crash. Tolstoy scrambled and barked.

“What if they shove it into the quarry?” Josey said.

“No chance. Whoever it is wants this money. And they will want it nice and dry.” I sounded a lot more convinced than I felt, considering how close we were to the edge. I tucked the envelope under my shirt. “I think they're trying to knock us off the blocks.”

What kind of a lunatic would ram their car into the chip wagon? That gave rise to other questions.

“Josey, do you think that some of these abandoned vehicles could be hotwired?”

“Are you kidding? Paulie would have stripped the engines out of them long ago. There's nothing worthwhile at this end of the yard.”

I managed to get over to the side of the van with the broken window. Carefully, using the tarpaulin to protect my hands, I lifted out pieces of glass, as Josey sat clutching her damaged knee. “We have to crawl out,” I said.

“I can't. I can't move my knee.” Tears trickled down her cheeks. “Why is this happening?”

But at least whoever was ramming us had stopped. Hoping like hell whoever that was didn't know about Josey and Tolstoy, I squeezed through the window to run for help.

She held the revolver steady as she got out from behind the wheel of Marc-André's beautiful Beemer, now with its front end seriously crumpled, and approached the side of the van. Her ankle must have hurt like hell, but somehow I thought she had other things on her mind.

“Bridget!” I shrank back against the side of the van.

She smiled, but I didn't like the cold light behind her smile. “Tell her to get out.”

“She can't,” I said. “She's hurt her knee. She needs a doctor.”

Bridget laughed. “A doctor?”

“Leave her alone. She has nothing to do with any of this.”

“Shut up,” Bridget said. “It's time for Benedict's lost love of a lifetime to join him. But first, I'll have that money.”

Hatred twisted her lips and eyebrows. Everything that had been beautiful about Bridget had vanished.

Rain slapped at our faces and drenched our hair. I didn't have to know anything about guns to know the one Bridget gripped with both hands meant serious business.

“I was never Benedict's lost love. But I am your friend.”

Her clothes were soaked and her hair plastered to her head.

“Friend,” she spat.

I reached out to her. The twitch of the gun made me jerk my hand back.

I met her eyes. “I can imagine what you went through.”

“Can you? I loved that little shit for more than thirty years. Every time he got drunk, he'd cry about you or some other lost love. What did I get? Taken for granted, ignored, betrayed.” The muscles on her jaw knotted. “Do you know what happened after all that time?”

I shook my head, and water sluiced down my neck. But I did know. I could read it on her white face, in her burning eyes. Bridget's love had mixed with twenty years of laundry and vomit and bailouts and lies. It had twisted into hate.

“Bridget,” I said, “I understand.”

“No. You do not understand,” she shrieked. “Have you ever made your lover's bed and found some other woman's panties?”

She was right. I wouldn't have handled that well.

“That wasn't the worst of it. I got used to the women. He needed variety and excitement. Even so, I believed he and I were it forever, and the other women would come and go. But the bastard,” she said, gasping for the words, “the bastard...”

I shook, soaking wet, silhouetted against the sheer grey rocks and dead cars, a target for her rage against a dead man.

“I didn't fit into his plans. I was good for laundry and cheques and making excuses to his friends. I was good enough to praise him and his idiot poetry. But not good enough to share the Flambeau money.” The hand holding the revolver trembled.

“Oh, Bridget,” I said.

“But you didn't know that, did you?”

I shook my head.

“Only Abby knew. He told her when they were in bed.”

“But...”

“Oh yes, I heard him. In his squalid little hovel. He was supposed to have been in Kingston giving a lecture on poetry at Queen's University. ‘Integrity and the Irish poet', he called his talk. Isn't that a laugh? I wanted him to have something to eat when he got back, so I went to his place.”

Her eyes glazed. “The Queen's lecture was a lie like all the other times. I heard them talking and laughing. About the Flambeau money. About what they'd do with it.”

Behind me, I heard Josey moving inside the van. Or maybe it was Tolstoy.

“I waited, you know, for him to tell me. How I wouldn't have to spend eighty hours a week on my business any more, always scared this would be the week I couldn't cover costs. He never mentioned sharing the money with me. Never mentioned me at all. That's when I knew I hated him.” Her words echoed over the quarry.

“And you had Dougie kill him?” “That was a mistake. Dougie was an idiot and overheated as always. Like a walking time bomb. I wanted him to shake the story out of Benedict. Tell us where the money was. Not to kill him, at least not then.”

“Right,” I said.

“Such a shame about poor Benedict,” Bridget laughed. Bridget laughing was creepier than Bridget sneering or crying.

“But Dougie always despised Benedict, didn't he?” I said, playing for time.

“Oh, he did. Very much. Just hurt him, I said, enough to find out where he's stashed it, but don't let the beating show on his face.”