The 13th Fellow: A Mystery in Provence (19 page)

Neely smirked as he saw the lights of recognition in Havilah’s eyes.

“Ce sont ma femme et ma maîtresse
,” he explained loudly to the elderly couple sitting on the terrasse at the tucked away café. The man chuckled slyly; the woman shook her head over the wife and mistress fighting publicly. Havilah was seething.

Neely grabbed the cell phone from her back pocket and tossed into the Mediterranean. She had hoped Thierry got more than an earful. Her eyes darted around the near desolate quai. Neely nudged her onto the boat and directed her to sit down on the white and burgundy leather bench on the deck; in front of the bench was a beautifully crafted table with a teak top. The decking was also teak. The yacht had a sleek interior as far as she could see into it, with stainless steel appliances and some kind of stone countertops, a flat screen television, dark wood floors, and more leather seating. The cockpit was inside.

Neely was taking in mouthfuls of air as he sat down next to Havilah, trying to catch his breath. He was still recovering from her well-placed kick. He waved for her to take off her shoes and step down into the interior. He continued to wave as she passed the cockpit to a door. Blindfolded and bound at the wrists, Améline Fitts sat in a well-decorated stateroom with a porthole, queen-sized berth, and flat screen television inlaid in cherry wood. Soft music played inside the roomy cabin. Améline could have called out until she was hoarse and no one would have heard her over the music, the din of the waves, and the harbor activities. It was a perfect place to hide someone. And now here she was, too.

* * *

“Améline, it’s me Havilah.” Havilah noticed the red marks on Améline’s face where someone had repeatedly slapped her.

“Havilah?”

“Sit down,” Neely commanded. Havilah continued to stand.

“Oh, they got you, too.” Améline’s voice couldn’t hide her disappointment.

“Why is she blindfolded and bound?”

“We had that awful Félibrige board cocktail party to attend at Les Roches Blanches this evening. We couldn’t very well leave her here with instructions to just sit tight until we returned. Now could we? Not Améline Fitts.” He said this as he took Havilah’s sneakers to the kitchen to rinse the rubber bottoms. Clearly he didn’t want dog crap on the plush boat.

Havilah was still dumbfounded about the denouement of the ruckus they had made in the harbor. She hoped the French motto of “Live and let live” wouldn’t be honored after that knockdown dragout brawl. She couldn’t be certain. After Neely’s explanation, the couple had looked on dispassionately. She shook her head. Sophie attended to casting off with the click of a few switches and the release of a rope. She started the boat and pulled forward. As they moved into open water, they passed the lighthouse and the Félibrige Foundation’s Perched Terrace, which you could see from various points in the harbor. Neely removed Améline’s blindfold and pushed her out of the bedroom towards the galley kitchen and cockpit area. He pointed to the sitting area. Améline was cursing and kicking— all to no avail.

He held the gun in front of him, motioning for Havilah to sit down on the bed. Then he went into the boat’s galley kitchen for a damp cloth and began wiping her footprint off his pant leg. He gave Havilah a wry grin when he returned with her cleaned up sneakers.

“What a lively performance you gave. Too bad you had such a small audience. Put them on.” He dropped the shoes on the floor. The sneakers made a dull thud. She didn’t respond.

“Surprised? Havilah, had you not pulled that stunt this morning, you probably wouldn’t be here now.” He closed the bedroom door behind him.

She still said nothing. She was watching the gun and thinking about how his charming flirtations had nearly disarmed her. How clearly that flirtation had enraged the tempestuous Sophie.
Damn.
She really read men all kinds of wrong.

“Are you upset about my attempts to woo you?” he inquired, as if reading her thoughts. “Those moments were quite unscripted. I couldn’t help myself. Sophie wouldn’t understand. I like pretty women, especially women who I sense are attracted to me but afraid to act on their desires. I wished we’d had the time to get to know one another in Paris when I dropped by your apartment. But you had company escorting you.”

He saw her eyes register surprise.

He stroked her face. “Oh yes, sweet Havilah. I stopped by after I retrieved your call from Kit’s cell phone. It would have been a friendly visit— one fellow from the Félibrige looking up another. Then perhaps you would have easily given me a semblance of the pleasure that I’ve been seeking these past two days. What do you think, love?” He moved in.

“Get the hell away from me. Sophie surely wouldn’t understand this.”

Havilah was still watching the gun in his other hand. He had placed it casually on the bed, though it was still nestled firmly in his grasp. She knew Sophie would be upset, but she would more than likely again direct her rage at Havilah, not Ansell. After that slap in the harbor, she was sure she knew the type. She just hoped that Ansell Neely didn’t know women as well as she did.

His blue eyes narrowed. He grabbed her by her hair, moving her face closer to his. With all this hair pulling, she wished she had braided her tresses.

He made a motion for her to stand up and leave the bedroom and followed close behind her.

“Let’s all have a seat in the salon here, shall we?” Ansell suggested, as if they had a choice. Sophie’s back was to them, but the cockpit chair abutted the salon area. She had also closed the sunroof so she could hear the conversation without straining. Améline was still cursing and offering up idle threats.

“
Ferme ta gueule
,” Sophie yelled at Améline, telling her in the nastiest way imaginable to close her mouth. At least that’s what Havilah remembered from her undergraduate French grammar classes.

Havilah’s cheeks were still stinging from the slap Sophie had laid on her. She was curious about Sophie’s role in Kit’s murder. She remembered the Parisian said she had made her choice and she had no regrets. Since Neely enjoyed blustering, she thought she’d ask.

“It’s none of your business,” Sophie responded angrily.

They were now in the open water, passing kayakers and swimmers laid out on rocks trying to catch the very last rays of sun, and a few boats. Neely ignored Sophie’s outburst.

“Havilah, I warned Kit. What is it with you hardheaded Astor professors? He had started making inquiries at the Chicago Historical Society over a year ago. Both the Friedrich and Knowlton Foundations are alerted when requests for access to certain collections usually not made available to the public are made. He had piqued my curiosity. He was so hungry for recognition, that one was. What an overrated excuse for a poet! Towdaline was right. Kit was a regional poet. Nothing more.” His envy was embarrassing.

“Sophie proposed she nominate him. So we could keep an eye on him to see where his work was going. I was on the board until I rotated off this year. Hence I had the displeasure along with others to hear his presentation in April. That supercilious asshole mentioned he was looking for an agent to sell his book. He talked about a long introduction. We thought it would just be poetry. He also talked about his Centennial remarks as part of the book. We couldn’t let him present that filth on Thursday, you understand. I told him to
stop
— so to speak. Twice, I told him. You have those pages now, don’t you, Havilah? I told
you
to stop as well, didn’t I?”

Another light clicked on for Havilah. Neely had sent the notes from Nashville while he was on leave visiting the Halstead Library. She squirmed uncomfortably under his gaze.

“But why that bitch?” Améline asked dryly, before Havilah could respond. She was pointing one finger of her bound hand at Sophie.

“Now, now, no name calling. And it’s so rude to point. Améline, that you still eat with that mouth of yours has to be one of academe’s greatest wonders.”

Sophie waved a well-manicured hand at Améline as if to say, “Whatever,” as Ansell stepped out onto the deck. His blond hair was being swept in different directions by the wind.

“Turn off the engine, darling. Let’s set anchor here for awhile. At least until the sun sets,” he shouted into the cockpit. “We’ll need the cover of night to get rid of these two.”

XXIV

Havilah looked down at her watch.
8:00.

“Need to be somewhere?” Sophie threw her head back, giggling. She had turned the captain’s chair to face them.

Havilah ignored her and instead focused her attention on the bloviating Neely.

“As I was saying…” Ansell stepped back into the cabin, picking up where he left off, “his project caused a ruckus among the board members. By the way, Sophie and I met as board members. I found her beguiling.” He paused for a moment as if he were reminiscing silently. “I was appointed, naturally, because of my family connections, as well as my having been a past fellow.”

Havilah wrinkled her brow. Neely turned to look at the sulking Améline.

“You’ve noticed, Havilah, that Améline is still bound at the wrists? The woman is a hellion. No class, with her foul mouth and hitting. She put up such a fight after she realized the boat ride we invited her on did not include a
retour
.” He was taunting Améline with his boyish smile.

Havilah looked over at Améline and they both rolled their eyes. Ansell Neely was an incredible narcissist. He was chatty and friendly, while he casually related events as if they were on some wild adventure; more troubling still, he was recounting his adventures to Havilah and Améline as if they were his friends and not two women he intended to kill.

“Yeah, yeah, get on with the story, nut-nut. I’m not the one out here whacking and kidnapping people,” Améline spat out, waving her bound hands as best she could to make the point.

“Everyone knew I was a Friedrich and board member on the Philippe Friedrich Foundation. Lowery, Knowlton’s nephew, positively hated what Kit had read for much the same reasons as we did, though we never disclosed our displeasure openly as he had. And no one, positively no one, knew Knowlton’s youthful lover was Sophie’s father, Georges-Guillaume Damas. Damas was a professor at the École Normale Supérieure. He is now a high-ranking politician in the Gabonese government. But many years ago, he left Sophie and her mother, a white French woman, back in Paris. He moved them to Versailles as he acquired more wealth.”

Havilah’s eyes opened wider. She knew Damas’s work quite well. He was a respected authority on contemporary West African politics. He focused on Senegal, Ghana, and Gabon. He had been a brilliant and prolific scholar. He stopped publishing about 10 years ago.

“Professor Damas is your father?” she turned to Sophie with a mix of incertitude and shock. “Has he any idea what you are doing?”

“I was only eight when my father decided to return to Gabon and pursue politics. He traveled back and forth initially. He was ashamed of us, though he kept us up very well in Versailles. He took another wife in Gabon and had legitimate African children. I changed my name when I entered art school at the Louvre. I wanted nothing to do with anything African. My father’s obsession with Africa destroyed my childhood. He took the name change as a betrayal.”

Améline snarled, “So this is about your fucking Oedipal complex? Did the word therapy ever enter your vapid, self-absorbed little head instead of murder?” She was trying to writhe her hands out of the binding.

Havilah wanted to burst out laughing, but Sophie actually flinched at Améline’s crude, but spot-on question.

“Tais-toi!” Sophie slapped Améline. Améline shut up momentarily.

“My father is a powerful man with powerful enemies. His youthful indiscretion would destroy his political career. My mother still loves him. He’s my father. I am doing this for him. Of course he does not know. He will be the next prime minister of Gabon.”

Havilah’s eyes widened. She definitely didn’t want to be the one to have to tell Hell-on-Wheels Sophie that this was all for naught; that Lucie-Gisèle “GiGi” Ambourouet, the daughter of the president of Gabon who also had designs on the prime minister post, had already got her go-getting little hands on the photographs as well.

“You’re doing it for yourself!” Améline snorted. “He still supports your pampered lifestyle. You aren’t pulling down that kind of paper as a director at a second-rate museum in New York.”

Another slap left its red marks on her cheeks.

Damn!
was Havilah’s silent reaction. Her head reeled back with that slap as if it had struck her and not Améline.

“I am going to fuck you up in short order,” the novelist blustered. “I am going to make short work of your skinny ass.” She began wrenching her wrists again.

Havilah was not too sure about that. Améline obviously hadn’t processed that they intended to kill them both. Or maybe she had, but she wasn’t going to go out with a whimper. Havilah for her part was trying to rustle up a Plan B. She figured they were trying to set them up in some sort of murderous catfight scenario gone wrong or else these two whack jobs would have just dumped them overboard in the deep sea and watched them drown.

“I hadn’t intended to kill Kit,” Ansell said almost apologetically. “I only meant to threaten him into silence.” And out of nowhere. “I placed him in the orchestra pit with the seven-pointed star so that when he awoke he would know that his rather beaten-down state was about his writings.”

“You broke his fingers.” Havilah engaged Neely to still the escalating antagonism between Améline and Sophie.

“His shoe came off. I placed it in my pocket; and then the idea came to me once he was in the Greek Theater. I wanted to drive the point home for him. Dear, can you do up one of those shaken martinis?” Ansell Neely stood up to stretch. His long limbs contorted and then relaxed.

Havilah could barely contain herself after the shaken martini request. One minute Neely was chatty, the next wistful and regretful, now he was jauntily asking for a drink. She shrieked inwardly at the nonchalance of these two. “What’s to stop someone else from pursuing Kit’s research?” she asked as casually and calmly as one could under the circumstances. “What are you going to do? Kill everyone off?”