Killers of a certain age, p.17
Killers of a Certain Age, page 17
As the clock strikes the hour, tolling twelve times, the bishop appears, his thinning hair combed over his scalp, his cassock billowing behind him as he lopes. He is tall and slender, a little hunched, and could easily be mistaken for an Ivy League academic if it weren’t for his expression. He is wearing a faint smile, his attempt to hide the anger that seethes in him at all times. But the smile never touches his eyes, and he struggles to hide his impatience when Mary Alice calls his name.
“Yes?” he asks briskly. He is teetering on the edge of unfriendliness, but even a nun can be useful sometimes, and as he moves closer, he realizes these nuns are young and remarkably pretty. Something surges in his blood and he sets a smile on his lips. He pauses and waits, his eyebrows raised in gentle inquiry.
“Bishop Sullivan! Oh, Your Excellency, please pardon the interruption. We are from the Order of the Sisters of Peace, our chapterhouse is outside Knoxville, Tennessee. Perhaps you’ve heard of us?”
He doesn’t bother to pretend that he has, but his face relaxes still further at the soft Southern drawl of her vowels. “I’m afraid I haven’t,” he says kindly.
“We are here on pilgrimage,” she tells him. “Our mother superior went to school with your sister,” she hurries on. “And she gave us strict instructions we were to find you and give you this gift.”
The bishop does not bother to ask which sister. He has six, all of them devout Catholics, scattered from Boston to Denver. Mary Alice extends the box and he takes it, his smile deepening.
“How kind,” he says.
“They are fruitcakes, Your Excellency,” Natalie puts in eagerly. “We bake them to support the order. And every one is flavored with Tennessee whiskey.”
“Fruitcakes?” His expression brightens. “Are they moist? I love a moist fruitcake and that’s one thing Italians can’t get right.”
“I promise you,” Mary Alice tells him serenely, “they are as full of flavor and moist as you could hope.”
He is almost jovial now, and he looks at Günther over the heads of the little flock of nuns. “Father, how do you come to be traveling with the sisters?”
Günther smiles vaguely. “Mother Superior was concerned about the sisters traveling alone, Your Excellency. They have never been out of the States before, so I volunteered to act as shepherd.”
“Good man,” the bishop tells him. He glances at the nuns and sees how expectant they are, how bright and young they seem. They are pathetically eager, but he likes how deferential they are. It is a balm to an ego that has been badly bruised in the morning’s finance meetings. The habits are an atrocity, plain and heavy, but his eye is practiced and he can tell the one who called his name has a lush figure shrouded underneath. He speaks impulsively.
“Would you care to visit the gardens? I could show you my favorite fountain and you won’t have to take one of those boring tours.”
The five of them are very still for a moment, and the bishop interprets this as reverence. In fact, they are reluctant because they do not wish to be any longer than necessary in his company. When he dies, questions will be asked. Video cameras will be mined for footage. Witnesses will be interrogated. And they want nothing that will connect them in any way to his death.
“Oh, we couldn’t impose!” Helen interjects, looking so awestruck that the bishop cannot be offended.
“But,” Billie says tentatively, her voice almost inaudible in its modesty, “Your Excellency, we would so love it if you would taste the cake and tell us what you think. Mother Superior will want to know.”
The bishop gives a mocking grin. “Well, if there’s one person I am afraid of, it is a mother superior,” he says, opening the box. He surveys the contents with obvious pleasure. “These look quite delicious.” He takes out one tiny cake and opens the waxed paper, sniffing deeply. “I can smell the cinnamon—and is that clove?”
Mary Alice nods. “It is, Your Excellency. You have quite a good sense of smell.”
He preens and takes a large bite of the cake. He chews thoughtfully before taking another, and finishes the cake before speaking. “You can tell your mother superior that this is the best fruitcake I have ever had. Outstanding, Sisters.”
They exchange happy glances as he starts on the second. “I know it’s greedy to eat them all myself,” he says through a mouthful of cake, “but I’ll worry about that at confession.”
Natalie gives him a shocked expression. “Oh no, Your Excellency! These were baked especially for you. Mother Superior would be very upset if she thought you gave them away.”
He finishes the second cake and closes the box. “You can tell your mother superior that there is no chance of that. These are mine and I plan on hiding them from everyone. In fact, I won’t have time for lunch today, so I’m very sure they’ll be gone before the hour is up.”
They exchange happy smiles again and Günther looks around. “Sisters, are you ready to go? I think we’ve probably taken up enough of His Excellency’s time.”
“Of course,” Mary Alice says, dropping her eyes. They take turns murmuring their thanks to the bishop, who raises his hand in a hasty blessing as they leave.
He opens the box and takes a bite of the third cake. It will be three hours before his stomach starts to cramp unbearably and the vomiting and diarrhea begin. When he is completely dehydrated and his consciousness is failing, he will be admitted to a hospital in Rome under the care of a physician who will never think to test for thallium. If he had, he would have prescribed doses of activated charcoal and Prussian blue to stop the cramping and hair loss. But since he does not, the bishop will grow progressively sicker for three weeks, until his heart gives out and he dies. The press release, phoned in from a source that is not the Vatican, will list the cause of death as pancreatic cancer. The doctor who treats him understands the meaning of the mysterious deposit into his bank account. He simply signs the death certificate and asks no questions. He never corrects the press release, and neither does the Vatican. It will be another two years before the collapse of an Italian bank reveals the extent of the corruption within the finances of the Holy See, and whispers of money laundering will continue for decades to come. But a certain bishop’s scheme to sell arms to a brutal Southeast Asian regime under the cover of missionary supplies will end, and an energized rebellion will succeed in establishing a fledgling democracy for the first time.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
It took the better part of the first day to get Benscombe in fit state for habitation. It was grim to see what had become of the place. The gardens were a tangled mess, the house was so damp that wallpaper was falling off in sheets, and the less said about the plumbing the better. We stowed our gear in the house, divvying up the smaller bedrooms upstairs. Nobody even suggested taking Constance Halliday’s room. The pill bottles from her last illness were still on the bedside table along with the book she’d been reading when she died—Angela Carter’s Book of Fairy Tales. We doubled up in the smaller bedrooms, brushing aside the worst of the cobwebs and throwing open the windows to the cold winter air.
After Minka and Akiko arrived, we made a trip into Poole to Marks & Spencer, Boots, and half a dozen other places to get supplies to make the house livable. Food, firewood, wine, office supplies, extra sweaters and socks—we piled the back of the cars as full as we dared. We swept the dead beetles and mummified mice out of the kitchen and mopped the floor until our feet stopped sticking to it. Helen had unearthed a few rolls of clearance holiday wrapping paper in the back of a pound store and we thumbtacked long sheets of it over the crumbling wallpaper, giving us a clean surface to write on. Natalie heated up the chicken and leek pies we’d bought while Mary Alice made a salad, and the six of us ate, more to fuel ourselves than out of any real enjoyment. After Minka headed off to play a video game and Akiko went upstairs with Kevin—still hungover from his travel tranquilizers—Helen opened a set of markers also from the pound store. They were Barbie knock-offs in violent, sparkling rainbow shades. She made neat lists under each of our names detailing what we were responsible for researching or securing, reading aloud as she wrote.
“Akiko and Minka, maintaining home base and comms,” she said, ticking off home base and comms from the list. Nat and Mary Alice scooped ice cream for our dessert.
“Are you writing things down just to check them off?” I asked.
She shrugged. “We can’t leave anything to chance. Besides, it makes me feel productive to cross things off. After Kenneth died, there were days I wrote get out of bed in my planner just to be able to feel like I’d accomplished something.”
She stepped back and we surveyed her work. Mary Alice and Nat left the ice cream and came to join us. The entire plan was there in shimmering hot pink ink.
“It looks like a My Little Pony murder plot,” Mary Alice said. “Jesus, is that glitter?”
“I like it,” Natalie said loyally.
“I find it hard to take us seriously as agents of vengeance when our plan looks like a kindergarten craft project.”
Helen capped the marker and held it out. “If you would like to take over, Mary Alice, be my guest,” she said.
“We’re tired and jet-lagged,” I said, taking the marker from Helen. “We’re going to sit and eat ice cream and drink wine and see if we can find any holes in this,” I said, pointing to the notes under Günther Paar’s name. It was thick with detail, while the section under the heading thierry carapaz was less comprehensive. Under Vance Gilchrist’s name there was a wide expanse of white.
“What’s that?” Mary Alice asked, peering at the emptiness.
“That blank space represents what we don’t know yet. We’ll get there.”
The ice cream helped settle everybody’s mood, but the wine did the heavy lifting. By the time we’d finished off two bottles of extremely bad Rioja, we were feeling much chummier.
“God, this wine is terrible,” Helen said, pouring out the last of it. She upended the bottle, looking for any stray drops.
“It’s getting the job done,” I told her.
Natalie took the bottle and looked at the label. “Monos Muertos. What does that mean?”
“Dead Monkeys,” I answered, pushing my glass away. “We’ve been drinking dead monkey wine.”
Natalie shrieked and dropped the bottle.
“It’s not made from dead monkeys,” Mary Alice said. “It’s a marketing gimmick.”
“It’s nasty,” Natalie answered.
“Not as nasty as that bathroom upstairs,” I said. “We’ll need to get that sorted out so we can at least shower without worrying about tetanus or Lyme or rabies.”
“None of which they have in the British Isles,” Helen said. She sighed. “I know the house is a shambles and it’s freezing and I’m ninety percent sure there’s a dead rat under my bed upstairs, but I am still glad we came back. I’ve missed this place.”
We looked around the kitchen. When Natalie had been looking for plates, she’d found a stash of jam jars and stuck candles in a dozen of them. She’d clustered them on the mantelpiece, next to an aggressively ugly cuckoo clock, a china shepherdess with most of her fingers broken off so she was flipping the bird, and a basket of dingy wool balls stuck with a pair of vicious-looking knitting needles. But the candlelight had softened the cracked walls and the dirty windows and the fire Mary Alice had kindled in the fireplace had warmed the room and made it seem almost cozy.
Draining the last of her wine, Helen grabbed a fresh marker from the pack—a juicy green that smelled like watermelon—and went back to the wall. problems, she lettered neatly.
We worked through the night, going over the plan and back again. Günther, blessedly, was a creature of habit. He always did a post-holiday detox at his favorite health spa. A few clicks around their website and we had all the information we needed, including a map of the property and a smiling photo of the spa staff in plain black scrubs—austere and businesslike.
By the time dawn worked its grey light through the kitchen windows, we were finished. The details had been plotted out on the murder wall, as Natalie had taken to calling it. We stepped back and surveyed it, plugging various holes and running the plan backwards and forwards until it was smooth as butter in a Texas summer.
“Holy shit,” Mary Alice said, eyes skimming the wall. “I think it’s going to work.”
“Damned straight.” I grinned at her.
“We just have to decide who’s running point,” Natalie said.
Mary Alice raised her hand. “Me.”
She had her stubborn face on and I understood why. If she could get out there and do something about the situation we were in, it would go a long way towards making her feel like she was getting her life back.
We all nodded agreement and she went on. “Helen, we’ll need a second pair of hands—”
“I’ll do it.” I cut Mary Alice off quickly.
Natalie spoke up. “I think that should be up to Helen.”
“I don’t. I said I’ll do it,” I countered.
“Jesus, what did you have for breakfast? A bowl of Honey Bunches of Bitch?” Natalie grumped.
Helen put a hand to her arm. “It’s fine. If Billie wants it, she should do it.”
“I do.” Nobody argued. I wasn’t about to rat Helen out for losing her nerve in Jackson Square, but I wasn’t willing to gamble the success of this mission either. She could take a back seat until she’d proved herself.
Our plan meant another errand run and a fair bit of preparation. I started with the jar I’d unearthed in the garden shed—an old glass carboy that somebody must have kept for brewing cider or storing wine. I scrubbed it out with a long-handled brush and snapped on a pair of vinyl gloves. I filled the carboy with water from the outside tap and opened a fresh pack of cigarettes, breaking off the filters. I used a knife to slit each of the cigarettes, carefully emptying the tobacco into the jar, watching the brown flakes swirl into the water. It was oddly relaxing, disemboweling each cigarette into the carboy. A few of the hardier birds were singing and the winter sunshine was the color of a pale lemon. I might have even whistled a few bars of “American Pie” as I gave the sludge in the jar a good shake and covered it. I set it in a bright patch on the step like I was making sun tea. I would bring it in at sundown and set it on the back of the stove to keep it warm, steeping it as carefully as the best top-leaf Earl Grey.
I went back into the kitchen, stamping my feet and blowing on my fingers, to find Helen making a series of phone calls.
“What are you doing?” I whispered.
“We tried to make a booking online, but the spa is full,” she muttered.
I opened my mouth but she made a shushing motion at me as someone apparently picked up the phone on the other end. “Yes, is that the Spa at Courtempierre-les-Bains?” Helen had adopted a cut-glass English accent, deliberately mispronouncing the French in a way that only British aristocrats can get away with. “This is Lady Henrietta Ridley and I am ringing to see why I haven’t yet received a confirmation email of my booking. Ridley. Ridddddddley,” she said, drawing out the syllable in apparent annoyance. “What? Of course I am certain. My assistant, Cassandra, made the booking last week. For all I know, you are the person with whom she spoke. Now, kindly confirm my booking.”
There was a faint series of squawks from the phone, and Helen cut in sharply. “My good man, do not make excuses. The booking is for four ladies, myself and three companions. We wish to take the waters and perhaps a little light massage, but that is all. We will be coming to rest. I presume you can accommodate that?” More squawks. “I realize it is a busy time of year, but it is hardly my fault that you have lost the booking. By all means, yes. Put me on hold,” she finished acidly.
“Are we getting rooms or not?” I hissed. She looked at me, frowning, and shrugged her shoulders. The entire enterprise hinged on being able to get access to the spa. Minka was sitting opposite with the laptop we had picked up for her in Poole. I signaled her to pull up the spa’s feed on social media. The latest post was an image of a snowy landscape with a thermal pool gently steaming against a crisp blue sky.
I skimmed the comments—hearts, praise hands, little emoji with towel turbans—until I found what I needed. Can’t wait to see you this weekend for my hen party! chirped Debbi Williams, followed by a chicken emoji and heart eyes. I went to her profile and found her location listed as Cardiff. A few more clicks and I saw the engagement pic, Debbi glowing in the arms of a pleasant-looking guy as she flashed a small, bright diamond at the camera. A few posts later was a group photo of Debbi with five other girls captioned, My best mates and bridesmaids! Six girls altogether, which meant at least two rooms and probably three. It would do just fine.
I scrolled back to the spa page and clicked the link in their bio to their website. Just then Helen started to speak again. “Yes, I am still here, and I intend to be here until you find my booking.” I made a frantic gesture at her to keep stalling, and she launched into a genteel tirade while I kept hitting buttons until I found the link to the phone number and dialed.
I motioned to her that it was ringing and she broke into her own rant. “Go and answer that other line immediately. I cannot hear myself think. Yes, I will hold.”
The desk clerk answered my call in French and German but switched to English immediately, his voice harried.
“Yes, this is Debbi Williams from Cardiff. I have a booking for this weekend for a small block of rooms for a hen party. I’m afraid I have to cancel. No, I don’t have the confirmation number handy, but I suppose I could look. It might take a few minutes . . .” I trailed off, but the desk clerk cut in.
