Deadly Jewels (11 page)

 

CHAPTER TEN

I stopped at a Provigo on the way home for some groceries; I shop differently when the kids are in town. Don't think for a moment that good behavior can't be elicited through a few well-placed bribes, including ones of an alimentary nature: it can. I'm living proof.

There was, naturally, bad news at home.

“I'm sorry,” Ivan was saying. “I know it's not convenient, but there's really never a time that's convenient, is there?”

I stared at him. “I don't understand. You have to go to
Boston
?”

“Just for the day. I'll be back Sunday, well before the kids leave.”

I felt bewildered. Ivan did, in fact, travel for his work, but the trips were usually planned quite a while in advance, and almost never at a time when Lukas and Claudia were in town; Margery was good at being flexible around our schedules. “Why? I don't understand.”

“There's nothing to understand.” He clearly didn't want to talk about it. “Margery needs to talk to me without the kids around.”

“So she can call. She can Skype. She can come here sometime during the week. Why do you have to go now?” I was sounding petulant, and didn't like it. But, seriously? I was dealing with an ancient murder, someone tailing Patricia, Jean-Luc about to have a coronary if he didn't get to crow about all this, and now I was going to have to be in charge of entertaining Ivan's kids because Ivan decided to go to Boston and talk to his ex?

“It's not that long,” Ivan said. “We were going to go to the Insectarium tomorrow anyway, you can just do it without me.” He caught my look. “Unless you were planning on working,” he said suddenly.

I felt defensive. “Part of the day, anyway,” I said. “It's only because—”

“Sometimes,” he interrupted, “once in a while, Martine, mine has to come first.”

“That's completely unfair,” I said. “I don't expect my stuff to always come first.”

“No,” he said. “You just have a hissy fit when it doesn't.”

“I'm not having a hissy fit!” Here's a thought: if you have to scream it, then you probably are.

There was an exaggerated sigh behind me. “Oh, look,” said Claudia. “The grown-ups are acting, like, real grown-up again.”

Yeah. That helped a lot.

Even Lukas was in a bad mood. “We had to stay in Dad's office all afternoon,” he informed me over the spaghetti dinner that I'd assembled hastily, banging the pots as much as possible to vent. “It was
bor
-ing.”

“I'll bet it was,” I agreed.

”Why do you have to go to Boston?” Claudia asked her father.

“I have something I need to do there,” Ivan said. He wouldn't meet my eyes.

“Can I come with you? You can drop me off at Mom's house. That way I don't have to go eat bugs with Belle-Maman and Lukas.” Lukas stuck his tongue out at her.

“No,” said Ivan. “I'll be back Sunday. Your mother isn't expecting you until the usual time. She might not even be home.”

“So what? I'm old enough to, like, stay alone in the house, you know.”

“I'm sure you are. You're not coming.”

“What kind of bugs do we eat at these things?” Lukas asked.

“I think they're called insects,” I said, trying hard to stay engaged with him. It wasn't his fault I was angry with his father. “And I don't know which ones. I've never been to a
dégustation
before.” I tried to rally some enthusiasm. “It'll be an adventure, won't it?”

Claudia scrunched her hands up under her oversize sweater sleeves, a gesture she'd taken to doing a lot lately. “Yuck. I've totes lost my appetite. Can I be excused?”

“Yes,” I said and “No,” said Ivan simultaneously. We glared at each other.

Later, as we were getting ready for bed, he tried being conciliatory. “I'm sorry. I didn't even ask you how things went today with Julian.”

“Things went fine,” I said shortly.

“So it's just an archaeological thing? Nothing for you to worry about?”

“Nothing for me to worry about.” I snapped out my light.

*   *   *

The truth was that Julian hadn't quite known what to do with Patricia's find. “I guess someone should tell someone in London,” he said. “But damned if I know who should tell whom.”

“You mean about the murder?”

“About the theft,” Patricia said unexpectedly. “Once the jewels were placed in the vault, that more or less ended the English participation in the process. Well, there were Bank of England people who went with it, but they didn't spend the whole war in Montréal. Anyone who had access to it was Canadian, so the thief must have been Canadian, too.”

Julian shook his head, his headlamp moving as he did. “Not necessarily,” he said. “Anyway, it doesn't matter what nationality they were, if the killing was done here, it's ours, one of our
crimes contre les personnes
. But it's one hell of a cold case.” A slight pause. “Still, we have people who like doing those.”

“And you're going to bring them down here.” Patricia's voice was flat: she knew already.

“I have to. This guy—and it's most probably a guy—was murdered in Montréal; we have a duty to investigate. And we've got to get London involved, which probably means first getting Ottawa involved.” He sighed; Julian was no lover of governmental red tape. “This may be great news for your dissertation, but it's gonna cause a lot of sleepless nights for somebody, and a lot of work for the rest of us.”

“Well, I'm not apologizing,” she said. “It's still good for me, and it's good for you, too, Martine, right?”

I considered. What had sounded like the perfect PR coup—“Montréal Saves Crown Jewels from Hitler's Clutches”—was muddied a little with the emergence of this possible Montréaler who'd helped himself to some of said crown jewels. I wasn't really sure how to spin that into something useful. Not yet, anyway. “The jewels were in his pocket?” I asked Julian instead. He'd been squatting by the bones for the past ten minutes; he'd better have learned something. It seemed colder in the room than it had the day before.

“Not so much, I don't think,” he said.

“What?”

“Well,” he said reasonably, “someone shot him, probably right here, to get what he had. So why didn't they take it?”

“Maybe they did,” I said. “Maybe there were more to begin with and they missed a couple.” There were two stones, I could see now, winking in the light. I hadn't gotten close enough to count them before.

His light swung around to shine in my face and I put up a hand to shield my eyes from it. “Seriously? You think that somehow someone killed this guy, went through his pockets, and
missed a couple
?”

“He swallowed them,” Patricia said.

Julian nodded and the headlamp did its bobbing thing again. “That would be my bet,” he said. “And not right in front of whomever shot him, either, or they'd have opened him up right here. He must have done it before.”

I stared down at the bones and the sharp bright glitter they protected. “What are they, anyway?”

“Diamonds,” said Patricia. “Those are diamonds.”

“There you go,” Julian said comfortably. “A girl's best friend.”

*   *   *

I didn't tell Ivan about the body. Not about the body, not about the diamonds, not about the thoughtful look on Julian's face when he talked about Patricia Mason being followed. Despite whatever our argument was kicking up between us, I didn't want to worry him.

On Saturday morning he left without our having said more than a handful of words to each other. Claudia was once again hiding inside an oversize sweater and Lukas was giving her as much grief as possible. I suggested that we make crêpes at home before heading out to the Insectarium. “You know how to make crêpes?” asked Lukas. Apparently I hadn't done so in recent memory.

“I have mad skills,” I informed him.

“Ohmygod I can't believe you just actually said mad skills,” Claudia said dramatically.

Her reaction puzzled me. “I've heard you say it.”

“Well,
yeah
”—she managed to draw the word out into at least three syllables—“but I'm not, like,
eighty years old.”

Lovely. “Come on,” I said, carrying on undaunted. “You can put Nutella on yours.”

Nutella is one of those buy-the-kids'-affections foods, destined to please no matter what storms were raging.
Dieu merci
, it seemed to still work. Claudia even consented to help with the batter, while Lukas was soon, more or less, expertly flipping them out of the pan.

The Insectarium is in the eastern part of the city, part of a complex that also houses the botanical garden, with the Biodôme and the Planetarium not far away across the street. The whole of it is now called the
espace pour la vie
—area for life—and was constructed originally for the 1976 Montréal Olympic Games while incorporating the American pavilion as the Biodôme. I could almost hear François telling his passengers, “The safest games there ever were, since they were the first ones since Munich.” Now transformed, the Biodôme was gutted twice by fire before it was decided that its moveable roof should cease moving.

I shared all these fun facts with Lukas and Claudia as we parked the car. They were remarkably underimpressed.

I saw him first as we were standing in line to buy our tickets. Claudia was already complaining that she could feel something crawling down her back. “I'm sure that some of them, like, get away.”

“And they all want you,” said Lukas, gleefully.

I was turning to tell Claudia that it was all in her mind when a middle-aged man, a belted black raincoat stretched across his considerable belly, caught my eye. In a city with a sizeable Orthodox and even Hasidic presence, it wasn't unusual to see a man in a yarmulke, but it was unusual for him to be staring so intently. Specifically, at us.

Orthodox Jewish men just don't stare at women.

“Did you know that if we were at the top of the stadium observatory and looked down on the Insectarium, we'd see it's in the shape of an insect?” Even as I was asking the question I was moving unobtrusively so that I was standing between the kids and the man in the black raincoat.

“Which one?” Lukas wanted to know.

“Which what?”

“Which insect, Belle-Maman! Which insect is it shaped like?”

“Do you know,” I said, “I have no idea.” I risked a glance back, part of me assuming that he'd have disappeared, or turned to chat with his own family group waiting in line, assuming that I was reading dark meanings into everyday occurrences.

No such luck. Still there, still staring, and my stomach tightened. Surely there was no danger here, not on a Saturday afternoon at a tourist attraction. The sun was shining; a child laughed nearby. I wished I could believe in the light.

I paid the entrance fee and the special tasting fee, and pulled the kids in far more quickly than they'd anticipated. “Ow, Belle-Maman, don't, like, grab me like that!” snapped Claudia.

“Get over here,” I hissed, and both of them, surprised, obeyed. That was a first. We walked briskly through several rooms, not looking at the exhibitions, not looking at anything, my hands holding their forearms. I looked back once, and he was there, hurrying after us. Damn.

I pulled the kids into the first darkened room we came to, with lit glass display cases showing off wings, antennae, larvae. “Stay here. Do you hear me? Stay in this room, stay right on this spot, and don't leave. If someone tries to make you move, scream. As loud as you can.”

I would have to remember that tone of voice: I'd never elicited such complete attention and acquiescence before. “What if they know the secret word?” asked Lukas.

Distracted, I repeated, “Secret word?”

Claudia tossed her hair over her shoulder. “You know, Belle-Maman, you told us a long time ago that if anyone, like, ever came and said that we should go with them because you were in the hospital, we should ask them for the secret word. And if they didn't know it, it meant you hadn't sent them after all.”

I stared at her. So she'd actually listened? I'd instituted the secret word years ago. “I don't think I still remember it, Claudia.”

A sigh. “It's aardvark,” she said disdainfully.

“Aardvark,” I repeated, nodding. “Good word. Good idea. Don't go with anyone who doesn't say ‘aardvark.' But don't worry, it's not going to happen and in any case, I'll be right back.”

Lukas's eyes were as huge and round as saucers. I put my arms around him and gave him a fierce hug. “Stay with your sister,” I said. “I really will be right back, Lukas. I promise.”

“Okay, Belle-Maman,” he said in the tiniest voice.

“Take care of him,” I said to Claudia, decided against hugging her, too, and slipped through the doorway.

The man in the black raincoat was rushing along now, his short legs pumping. I waited until he was almost in the doorway, and when he was about to pass me I stepped out in front of him. “
Bonjour, monsieur.
Is there something I can help you with?”

He reared back like a frightened horse. An overweight frightened horse. One hand went to his chest. “Ack. You almost killed me, there, with your ‘
bonjour, monsieur'
. What is it you're wanting? Hmm? Is it me to have a heart attack? This will make you happy?”

“I'm wanting,” I said carefully, “to know why you're following me and my children.”

He produced a handkerchief and mopped his forehead. “Your children, no, I don't need to follow them. But you, yes, you I am following. You are of great interest to me. You, I need to learn more about.”