Death Dangles a Participle (Miss Prentice Cozy Mystery Series) (22 page)

“What kind of person might be involved in something like that?”

“Someone who moves about the area regularly, I would think,” Alec said.

“And has connections across the border, perhaps?”

“Someone who might need money.”

“That would describe quite a number of us, Alec,” I said.

“True.” He reached for his coffee cup.

“Someone involved in ice fishing?” I speculated thoughtfully.

Alec scratched his head and reverted again to a whisper. “You know whom we’re describing, don’t you?”

I looked around self-consciously. There were only two people left at the long teacher’s table, and they were at the other end.

I whispered, “Out with it, Alec!”

“Etienne LeBow.” He saw my expression and added hastily, “No, Amelia, hear me out.” He began ticking off points on his fingers. “Moves about a good deal, has connections in Canada, always in need of money for those business schemes of his, and as for the ice fishing element, you can see for yourself. Besides, who knows what foreign contacts he’s made over the years?”

“That’s nonsense.” The very idea made my stomach seem to sink within me.

“I know, I like the fellow myself, but what do we really know about his life before he returned to Marie? Think about it, that’s all I’m saying.”

“He’s my business partner, for goodness’ sake. I know all about his past.”

“Yes, but consider the source. Do you really know if what he told you is true? Have you had any of it verified?” He looked at my face and smiled gently. “Ah, I thought not.”

“Oh, Alec, I don’t know. I can hardly bear to think of such a thing. I mean, I think I know him. I know as much about him as, well, as I do about you.”

“Oh, my, y’ve gone quite pale.” Alec reached a hairy hand across the table and patted mine. “Och, I’m sorry, m’dear. Don’t give it a second thought. I’ve let my imagination run away with me again. I was just speculatin’, ye might say.” He had gotten quite Scottish all of a sudden.

I sat up straighter. “No, you’re right, of course. We must try to remain dispassionate. I mean, as you listed those aspects of the guilty person, I found myself thinking—no, I must admit that it was hoping—that someone of the Shea clan fit the bill. And they do, up to a point.”

“A few minutes ago, at this very table, Mrs. Dee told me she spent her Christmas vacation in the Laurentians. Where did she get the money? Bert Swanson also fits. As do I, come to that.”

“Yes, darn it.”

He held up an admonishing index finger. “Dispassionate, you said.”

I smiled at him. “Risky as it might seem, don’t you think we can at least eliminate you from our list of suspects?”

Alec glanced up sharply.

I turned around. Blakely Knight was approaching the teacher’s table, carrying his lunch tray. Pointedly ignoring us, he slid into a seat at the other end of the table.

“Speaking of preferred suspects,” Alec growled under his breath, “have ye given him a thought? He might be pretty good at hand-to-hand combat.” Alec’s own big hands formed slowly into fists as if he relished the idea.

“Do you know about him and Lily?” I whispered.

Alec’s eyebrows came together in a ferocious expression. “Oh, aye.” He stood and picked up his tray. “But I believe we’re finished here for the time being. Must be running along, m’self. I have snow sculpting supplies to purchase. And isn’t that your class bell?”

There was a strange square tent-like structure the size of a one-car garage fashioned from khaki tarpaulins and poles on Chez Prentice’s front yard. A heavy electric cord leading from it snaked to the basement entrance around the side of the house. Muffled sounds emanated from within and all at once, Vern emerged from a flap in the side. He acknowledged me with a relatively polite nod and trudged away, following the cord.

“Hello?” I called as I entered the Chez Prentice foyer. “Anybody home?”

“Here, Amelia!” Marie answered, sounding anxious. “We’re in the kitchen. Come here, you gotta see this!”

I hurried through the dining room.

Sure enough, Marie, Etienne, Hester, and Bert were staring at the wall-mounted television recently purchased so that our more media-addicted guests could watch the news at breakfast.

“This isn’t good,” Etienne said as he stared at the screen.

“Terrible,” Hester agreed, shaking her head as she dried her hands on a dishtowel.

“Isn’t going to help them much,” Bert added. “Stupid kids.”

“What is it?” I stepped forward to see the screen.

Along the bottom, a subtitle read, “Previously recorded” and a reporter was saying, “And here, once again, is footage of what happened earlier today at the suspects’ home.”

A shaky, hand-held camera zoomed in on a figure as it scrambled across the roof of a house. Rapidly the figure climbed into a window, pausing just before it disappeared to give a jaunty wave. The camera pulled back and moved down the house to the snowy yard and a still, dark body lying there, apparently having fallen from the roof.

My heart raced. I gasped. “Oh no! Who is it?”

Marie laid her hand gently on my arm. “Don’t worry, it’s okay. Just watch.”

The camera zoomed in closer, moving slowly along the still form, starting with the feet and pausing significantly where the head would be. Instead, however, there was a white athletic sock, apparently stuffed to approximate a head and crudely decorated with eyes, nose, and a leering mouth.

The news anchor said, “As we said, this was shot immediately after our cameraman observed what he thought was a body falling from the roof of the Rousseau house. Fortunately, that body turned out to be a homemade dummy. Here’s a comment by the boys’ father.”

Sure enough, there on the screen was Martin Rousseau, looking more harried and gray-faced than ever, standing in the middle of the rabid crowd of reporters. A microphone was thrust into his face. He blinked and cleared his throat.

“I want to say, I mean, the boys want me to say, that they apologize to you people for the real dumb thing they did this morning.”

The crowd of reporters surged even closer. Their varied, frantically-thrown questions intertwined with one another.

“Why don’t the boys come out themselves?”

“What does their lawyer have to say about this?”

“Don’t they know they could have hurt someone?”

“Are they guilty?”

“Did they kill that man?”

Martin took a deep, weary breath and held up his hand. “Alls I can say is that they’re sorry. We’re all sorry. They’re kids. They did something stupid. That’s all. If you want to know anything more, talk to Mr. Cobb.” He turned and began to move back through the crowd to his front door, his shoulders drooping, ignoring the roar of questions that followed him.

The news anchor said, “And here’s the comment from the attorney for the young men.”

In contrast to Martin Rousseau, James Cobb cut an impressive, handsome figure as he stood on a step outside his office building, slightly elevated above the crowd of reporters. “What happened today is simply an example of what stress and mistreatment can do the minds of impressionable young people, hounded beyond description by a corrupt establishment and a brutal police department. Once we are in the courtroom, we will prove the baselessness of these charges, and once they are exonerated, I will advise Dustin and John Rousseau to begin a lawsuit for false arrest and malicious prosecution against those responsible for this outrage.”

One of the reporters shouted a question, “Isn’t there a witness?”

“We intend to prove that that so-called witness is mentally unbal—”

“I can’t listen to any more,” Marie said, using the remote to turn off the television.

I sat down. “That was J.T. on the roof. I recognized him. What was he thinking?”

Bert poured coffee into his thermos. “Like Martin said, he’s a kid.” He shrugged. “They don’t think.”

“That’s a copout, dear,” Hester said. She hastened to add milk to his thermos.

Etienne began to pull on his coat. “No, it’s not. When you’re young, you do all sorts of silly things.” He had a melancholy look on his face, and I suspected that he was thinking of his daughter and the well-meant foolishness that had led to her death last year. Or was he remembering some long-ago indiscretion in his own past?

“I don’t care. No matter what that lawyer says, a stunt like that just makes the boys look guilty,” Marie said, hastily coming back to the subject at hand. “You can sort of see how they might kill a guy, maybe by accident or something, then panic.” She looked at me. “I know you really think they’re innocent, Amelia, but maybe you have to face facts. Just ’cause you want it to be, don’t make it true.”

Her eyes held a hint of tears. Thoughts of her late daughter were never far from Marie’s mind, either.

I nodded. There was nothing I could say. If someone like Marie could think the Rousseau boys would do such a thing, I dreaded to think what a jury might conclude.

There was a knock at the back door. Etienne opened it to Chuck Nathan, bearing a handsome floral arrangement. Once again I was struck by his resemblance to one of those 60’s radicals: wild hair, scruffy clothing, and all. Yet it was ironically rumored that Chuck could, so to speak, buy and sell anyone in town, a direct result, one presumed, of his hard work and penurious ways.

Our little group welcomed the diversion. Hester relieved Chuck of his burden and invited him to join us for coffee.

He declined without any particular grace. “Nope. Can’t. Got lots of deliveries to make.” He looked over at Etienne. “Can I talk to you? About those ads on your fishing shanties?”

Etienne’s face broke into a smile. “Of course! Come with me to the garage; I’ll show them to you.” He finished buttoning his overcoat and the two men left through the back door.

“Ads on the shanties? That’s a new idea, isn’t it?” I asked.

Bert shrugged. “That’s the Frenchman for ya. He’s always comin’ up with stuff like that. Hey, it’s a living. Take the fishing shanties, I mean, shelters—that’s what Etienne calls ’em. We got a waiting list now; people really want to rent
’
em for the contest.”

“Bert, do you consider the sporting goods stores as your competition? I mean with regard to the fishing—um, shelters?”

Bert pulled on his gloves and watch cap. “Nah. There’s people that rent and there’s people that buy. Two different groups, you might say.”

Marie held up a hand. “Wait. Everybody be quiet.”

In the sudden silence, we could hear muffled voices, raised in anger.

We all hastened to the back door and saw Chuck and Etienne in a nose-to-nose confrontation.

“You can’t just pollute the scenic environment like that!” Chuck was shouting.

The florist’s height made him somewhat imposing, but the smaller man was giving as good as he got.

“Pollution, you say; what I say is the free enterprise!” Etienne roared, his index finger waggling in Chuck’s face.

“Capitalist!”

“Communist!”

Muttering epithets, Nathan abruptly turned and stalked out of the yard, leaving his adversary standing there, panting.

Without donning a coat, Marie scurried out into the yard and escorted—or rather, dragged—her husband inside. Etienne was muttering something in French.

“Etienne!” Marie scolded, “
Tais-toi!”

Etienne kissed her forehead. “Sorry,
chérie.
Il est fou, ce type.
He says my advertising will pollute the lake.

“Pollute the lake?” Hester asked. “How’s it gonna do that?”

“It’s like billboards, he says. It ruins the scenery, he says.” Etienne went to the coffeepot and began to pour himself another cup. His hand shook, and some of the coffee sloshed onto the counter. “What a dope.” It was hard to tell if he was referring to Chuck or himself.
“Niaiseux.”

“Sit down,” Marie ordered and hastened to take over for him. “Didn’t you tell him the shelters were temporary? Only there for a few weeks?”

Etienne waved away Marie’s logic. “He knows. He don’t care. I am turning the lake into a junkyard, he says.” He took a big swig from the mug Marie set before him and set it down decisively. “Well, come on, Bert, let’s get busy. If we are making junk, we better make sure it’s good junk.”

Bert grinned and pulled on his gloves. “Right.”

“Miss Amelia,” Alec said breathlessly on my new cell phone’s voicemail after school the next day, “meet me at the diner, would ye please? Right away? It’s verry important!”

I’d known who was calling. Alec had assigned himself a special ringtone. My tiny telephone had played a tinny version of “Bonnie Annie Laurie,” but it had rung in the middle of my two o’clock class. I’d retrieved the message at the end of the day.

“Couldn’t you have told me over the telephone?” I said aloud. Even to myself, I sounded whiney, but I was bone-weary and eager to get home.

He concluded the recorded message as if he’d heard me. “It’s too complex to discuss on the telephone. Please come, soon as ye can!”

I hung up, groaning. I didn’t want to trudge through the snow-covered streets again. On the bright side, the diner was only two blocks away from Chez Prentice and made a widely renowned bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich. A good excuse for a snack for little Cathy or Heathcliff. I bundled up, bid Marie goodbye and headed out.

It was just four o’clock when I pushed through the door of the shiny silver diner. The smell of frying bacon made my mouth water. Danny Dinardi called out a greeting from the grill as I made my way down the aisle with counter and stools on one side and narrow booths on the other, most of which were empty.

“You here to meet the professor?” he said, grinning. “He’s waiting.” Danny jerked his head toward a booth in the furthest back corner where Alec sat, trying to look casual.

Only cowering under the table would have made him look more conspicuously secretive. As it was, he had slid all the way up against the wall, clutching an attaché case to his chest. There was an empty coffee cup before him on the table.