Deadly Jewels (27 page)

I shivered. I could see Julian, a younger version of Julian, wearing jeans and a cashmere pullover and perhaps awash in the realization that this was the first disaster his family's money and influence couldn't fix. Touching the tiny feet, the tiny hands. Singing in the night. “I'm sorry,” I said inadequately.

“No problem,” he said, his voice light. “I don't talk about it much. And haven't really seen the point, since then, of getting involved.”

“Unless the woman's already married,” I said.

“Yeah, there's that.”

“Explains a lot.”

Time to change the subject. We were driving along the Chambly Canal now, the water serene and unruffled. Trees here had burst into a brilliant symphony of color, reds and yellows and oranges, garish and gorgeous. “Is he dangerous, do you think?” I asked suddenly.

“Who?”

“Aleister.”

“Dangerous in what way? Is he likely to whip out his grandfather's Luger and shoot us? I think not. Is he involved with Patricia Mason's murder? Quite possibly. Does he preside over satanic rituals? Who cares?”

“I think we should care.”

“Why?”

“Don't you think,” I said diffidently, “that there are things beyond simple policing which make a difference?”

He glanced at me. “I have no idea what you're talking about.”

“I mean,” I said, trying to articulate something I was feeling intensely and didn't know how to communicate, “I mean that evil is at the root of criminal activity anyway, isn't it? So any time you have the opportunity to stop something evil…” I let my voice trail off.

He seemed to think about it. “Okay. I don't always even know the motives behind crimes, you know what I mean? Much less looking through those motives for something as abstract as evil.” He braked at a stop sign. “I really need to get myself a GPS device,” he said.

“But evil—”

He interrupted me. “I get what you're saying. And, sure, we see a lot of what you'd call evil. But it's not something you can define, or bottle, or do a blood test for. Lacking all that, I'm still after the motive, the opportunity, the weapon … you know, boring police business.”

I felt like I was losing some sort of argument, and didn't even understand what it was supposed to be. “But if you could stop something evil before it manifested, wouldn't you want to do it?
Before
it became police business?”

“Then it wouldn't be police business.” He glanced at me, exasperated. “I know what you're saying, Martine. But
thinking
something bad isn't against the law. I wish crime didn't exist, but at least once a crime has been committed, the right path is clear. You catch them, you take them to trial and, with a little luck, you punish them. For something they
did
, not something they
thought
.”

“Magic rituals are more than a thought,” I said.

“And they're not against the law.” He scowled at the road. “That's the canal.”

“But there's law, and then there's morality,” I objected. “Would you kill Hitler if you could time travel and go back to his days in Vienna and shoot him before he ever got started? Of course you would.”

“Moral dilemmas are, fortunately, out of my purview,” said Julian. “Do I wish I could have done that? Sure. I'd take him out without a second thought. Does that mean it's legal? Not for one second.”

I started to say something else, and he cut across my words. “Listen, Martine. We're not dealing with Hitler here. We're not dealing with hindsight here. We may just be looking at a bunch of socially inadequate people who get their identities through chanting and burning incense. Which isn't all that far off from
your
religious tradition, if I recall rightly.”

“Catholic monks and nuns,” I said tightly, “do not try to bring back the dead to wreak havoc on the world.”

We rolled quietly up to the building we'd just seen at Marcus's office. It was clearly meant to be a warehouse, sitting right on the canal, probably for ease in offloading onto barges some of the textiles for which the city had once been famous. There was some faded paint high up on the wall that looked like a company name, but I couldn't make out the letters. No number on the side, of course. Doors closed, windows blank.

That didn't matter. As soon as I got out of the car it hit me: someone watching. I scanned the windows but couldn't see anyone there. “Someone's here,” I told Julian.

He nodded, unconcerned. “That's the hope, isn't it?”

The door was rusted in places but had once been a rather cheery orange. There was no bell, no nameplate, no mail slot. And there was something about the door, about the whole building in fact, that reminded me somehow of a creaking old sailing vessel—or a freighter: that was it. An abandoned freighter left to haunt the seas, its crew mysteriously disappeared, its appearance a harbinger of misfortune. A ghost ship.

Well, we'd started with treasure ships. Perhaps we were coming full circle.

Julian, plagued by no such fantasies, pounded on the door and immediately pulled his hand away. “Fuck me!”

“What is it?”

“
You
try knocking. That thing is solid.”

Before I could say anything, the door opened.

I don't know what I expected, really. Despite having seen him in casual khakis in the photos, the warehouse itself built up tension. Aleister Brand was anticlimactic in almost every way: he was about Julian's height, clean shaven, with blue eyes (of course) and brown hair that had just started to recede. “
Oui
?”

Julian said, in English, “Are you Aleister Brand?”

“Who is inquiring?” His voice was lightly accented but not, I thought, from French.

Julian pulled out his identification. “
Détective-lieutenant
Fletcher,” he said.

The man looked at the ID and lifted his eyes to Julian's face, as though assuring himself that it was the same person. “From the Montréal police,” he said. “How interesting. Are you not away from your jurisdiction here?”

“I am,” said Julian, unruffled. “But I'm only here for a conversation.” He paused. “For now.”

“I see.” He crossed his arms over his chest and leaned against the doorjamb. “A conversation about what?”

“Let's start with you,” Julian suggested. “Are you Aleister Brand?”

The light eyes rested on him, briefly, then moved back to me. “I am,” he agreed. “I have not yet met the young lady.”

Odd way to refer to me, I thought. I was clearly older than Julian, probably close to Brand's own age. “I'm Martine LeDuc,” I said, wondering why it felt as though I were handing him something precious, something significant, in giving him my name. “I work for the city, also.”

“I see.” There was a hint of amusement in his voice now. “And what would you like to talk about?”

“Can we come inside?” Julian asked.

“I think not. It's a lovely day, and there's no reason for me to invite you in.”

Julian started to say something, but I interrupted. “I met your mother,” I said, hoping to surprise him, catch him off guard.

Nothing. If I was rattling him at all, he hid it well. “Yes?” he said politely, as I'd paused.

“She told me that she worries about you.”

A lift of the eyebrows. “And?”

“And I thought you might be concerned about her,” I said, floundering. He wasn't giving me anything to work with here.

Julian asked, “Where were you last Thursday afternoon between two and six?”

Aleister transferred his gaze, lazily, to Julian. “My,” he said. “That sounds like you're asking me for an alibi, detective.”

“Something like that,” Julian agreed.

“You know that I don't have to give you anything of the sort,” he said pleasantly. “But because you have come all this way, I will. On Thursday I spent the afternoon and evening here at my home.”

“And a cozy one,” Julian commented, looking at the forbidding windows.

“Thank you.”

Julian's eyes came back to Aleister. “Anyone confirm that?” he asked, almost conversationally.

“Any number of my friends,” he said. “We were having a little—get-together, I think you'd call it.”

“What would
you
call it?” I asked.

That limpid blue gaze again. “An evening with friends,” he said.

“And you wouldn't mind supplying their names?” Julian had taken out his notebook. I could feel his discomfort. He wanted to be in the place, looking around. He wanted to find something he could sink his teeth into. Drugs lying out in the open. A stolen diamond in the center of a circle. A law being broken. Anything. I wanted to tell him to stop visualizing: if I could pick up on his thoughts, then what did he expect from Aleister Brand, celebrated mind reader?

“I would be very happy to supply you with my friends' names once I am legally compelled to do so,” Aleister answered. “Otherwise, I think we shall respect their privacy. I don't believe that I have broken any laws, Detective.” A flash of a glance my way, amusement. “Accuse me of something if you'd like, or let me get back to my work.”

“And what work would that be?”

“I am a journalist, Detective. As I'm sure my mother told Mrs. LeDuc.” He stepped back into the shadows and began to close the door.

“We'll be back,” Julian said, clearly running out of things to say.

“I shall look forward to it.” The door was partway closed. “Oh, and Martine?”

A sharp thrill of cold running down my spine at the casual use of my name. “What?”

“You can say yes to the children.” And then it shut for good.

I turned to Julian, fear coursing through my body like adrenaline. “Did you hear that?”

“Come on, let's get out of here.” He was already halfway to the TT.

“Julian, did you
hear
that?”

For someone who didn't believe in magic, he was moving very quickly. Already in the car. Already starting the engine. “Come on, Martine.”

I slipped in beside him, my heart pounding. “He knows about Lukas and Claudia. How does he know about Lukas and Claudia? Are they in danger? Oh, my God, Julian. What have I done?”

“Nothing.” We nosed our way out of the driveway. “You haven't done anything, Martine.” He sounded irritable. “His mother may have called him, and he looked you up. Maybe he keeps files on people anyway. And he's obviously good at reading people; he saw your tells. That's all. There's no magic there.”

I'm not married to a casino director for nothing. “I don't have tells,” I said. I was lying to myself, of course. Everybody has tells.

“Everybody has tells,” Julian said, unaware of echoing my thought. “Don't let him get under your skin, is all I'm saying.”

I looked at him. “Seems like he got under yours.”

He did look shaken, and I wasn't sure that I understood why. What else had he expected? For Aleister Brand to say, yes, you're right, I shot her? “Let's get something to eat,” I said impulsively. It had been three hours since Chez Cora, so chances were good that Julian would have his appetite back, and I needed to sit somewhere where I didn't feel my life was in danger. Julian's TT—with Julian driving—didn't qualify.

We were driving along the canal toward the highway and he abruptly turned in to a parking lot. “Okay,” he said.

The restaurant had clearly just opened for lunch, but already there were tables occupied, a good sign in terms of the food. I didn't care; I was still trying to recover. Should I tell Ivan? Should I keep the kids away from Montréal until this business was sorted?

We were seated and I blinked at the menu. “This place is called Le Capitaine Pouf?”

“Apparently so.” He was scanning the drinks offerings. “I need a beer.”

“Or four,” I agreed, and we put in those orders right away. Only French-speaking, I noted; Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu didn't seem to have Montréal's tendency to bilingualism. “How did you come by the name?” I asked the server in French.

“A long story,” she said, not unkindly. “What will you have to eat? Our specialty is fish and chips.” We both ordered it, and she left.

The man at the table next to ours leaned over. “I can tell you about the name, if you wish,” he said.

I was about to decline, politely, when Julian roused himself. “Yes, tell us,” he said, and cut me a glance. Something going on here.

He seemed pleased to be asked. “It's a popular drinking game,” he said. “Well, at least, popular among students. It goes like this. One person is chosen to be Capitaine Pouf. The others buy the drinks for as long as he plays without making a mistake.”

Sounded like a deal to me.

He glanced around and, needing refreshment, took a swig of his own beer before resuming. “He is given a glass of beer, and says, ‘
Le capitaine Pouf prend sa première verre de la soirée
.
'
” I glanced at Julian, but he seemed to have understood about the captain drinking the evening's first glass. Probably had played it many times himself.

“He grabs the glass between the thumb and forefinger of one hand, drinks the beer down in one draught, wipes the beer off his upper lip or moustache with one forefinger, once for the left side and once for the right, wipes the beer from that finger, once on his left knee and once on his right, gives one satisfied sigh (or belch, if he can), and raises his posterior from the chair once in order to fart (although he need not necessarily do so), the last action in the sequence supplying the ‘pouf' part of the name.”

It was an exhausting narrative; he had to refresh himself again. I thought that if I was doing any serious drinking I'd never remember all those rules. Julian, with a glance at the man's glass, signaled the server for a refill. “
Merci
,” our new friend said in acknowledgment. He wasn't finished. “Then the second glass of beer arrives. He repeats exactly the same sequence of actions, in exactly the same order, but this time he says,
‘le capitaine Pouf prend sa deuxième verre de la soirée,'
grasps the glass with his thumb and two fingers, drinks the glass off in two draughts, wipes his lip twice on each side with two fingers, which he then wipes twice on each knee, belches and rises to fart twice. If he hasn't made a mistake, it's on to
la troisième verre
, three fingers, three gulps, and so on. As soon as he makes a mistake—any mistake—he is out, and it's somebody else's turn to be Capitaine Pouf.” He looked at us with pleasure. “It's fun,” he said.