Fleur De Lies (20 page)

“That’s the reason you did it?” I flung out. “Because the Nazis offered to pay for your betrayal?”

He studied me with sober eyes. “There you go again. What the devil are you talking about?”

“
I’m
talking about your being a Nazi collaborator. What are
you
talking about?”

“
I’m
talking about being an imposter.”

“A what?” squealed Cal.

“He’s an imposter,” I repeated. “He’s the man who sold out his principles to the Germans for thirty pieces of silver, and his name is Pierre Lefevre.”

“Who?” asked Woody.

I raised my voice in accusation. “Pierre Lefevre.”

“Who’s that?”

Maybe I was pronouncing it wrong. “Pierre La-FEV? La-FURV? La—”

“My name’s not Pierre,” spat Woody.

“Well, you just admitted you were an imposter, so if you’re not Pierre, who are you?”

“Woodrow Jolly the Third!”

Cal threw out his hand in exasperation. “See what I mean? I hope he’s making sense to you, because he’s making
no
sense to me.”

“I’m Woodrow Jolly the Third,” he continued, a pained expression reshaping his features. “But I’m afraid I’m not the honorable, trustworthy guy I’ve always pretended to be.” He hung his head as he hocked the words up from his gut. “I’m a thief.”

Nazi collaborator wasn’t bad enough? He was a thief besides?

“What do you mean you’re a thief ?” Cal fired back. “What kind of thief ?”

“The kind I always taught you to condemn.” He sat down on the
bed across from us, shame running rampant in his eyes. “I take things
from the dead.”

Euww
.

“Jeezuz, Dad! Are you crazy?”

He stared at his hands, shoulders slumped, voice halting. “I couldn’t help myself. It started with this.” He poked his ring. “I just couldn’t force myself to bury it with the guy. What good would it do him anymore? It was way too nice to be locked in a casket and buried. That would have been a terrible waste. It needed to seen, admired. So I … borrowed it.”

“That’s how you justified what you did? By calling it borrowing?” Cal’s chest was heaving so violently, he looked to be in danger of hyperventilating. “You didn’t borrow it, Dad. You
stole
it. You committed a crime!”

“It’s only a crime if you’re caught.” A hint of a smile touched his lips. “I never got caught.”

“JEEZ!” raged Cal. “I can’t
believe
this!”

“I started out small,” he said matter-of-factly. “A ring here, a tie pin there. But you can’t get rich off men’s jewelry, so I cast my net wider. The ladies were a goldmine. Necklaces, broaches, favorite dinner rings, earrings, wristwatches, evening bags, diamond tiaras.”

My Grampa Sippel had been buried with his fishing pole, so I understood the concept of being interred with a bit of your favorite stuff, but still, who were Woody’s clients? Royalty? “You bury women who can’t part with their diamond tiaras?”

“Indeed I do. Straight into the ground they go,
after
I remove the tiara, of course. Society ladies are quite attached to their bling. Considering the extravagant way they insist on being laid out, I sometimes don’t know if I’m preparing them for a wake or a charity ball.”

Cal bent forward, elbows on knees and head in hands. “How long, Dad? How many years have you been desecrating the family name and reputation?”

Woody nodded thoughtfully. “Goes a long way back. Long before you were born. When I was learning the business from your grampa after the war.”

“He never caught you?”

“If he’d caught me, I would’ve stopped.”

“Who fenced the stuff for you?” demanded Cal.

“Fenced it? No one! I’m a one-man operation. A businessman with a reputation as esteemed as mine can’t afford to confide in a middleman. Loose lips sink ships.”

“So how did you convert your stash to cash? Or do you have it all locked away in a safety deposit box someplace?”

“It wasn’t very difficult,” explained Woody. “Pawn shops. Antique dealers. Online auctions. When e-Bay started up, I thought I’d died and gone to Heaven.” Woody bobbed his head at me. “A little undertaker humor.”

“There’s not a pawn shop within fifty miles of where we live,”
challenged Cal. “So where are these pawn shops you’re talking
about?”

“How many conferences do I attend every year, Cal? Six? Seven? Las Vegas. Boston. LA. Chicago. Believe me, it’s not hard to liquidate hard assets. Everyone’s buying.”

“
Jeeeez
,” groaned Cal. “So what now,
hunh
? I just find out my father’s a criminal. What do I do? Turn him in? Keep it under my hat and become an accessory to the crime by withholding information? Did you ever
once
—in the decades you’ve been committing grand larceny—stop to think what would happen to me, or Mom, or the rest of the family if your secret career as a felon was found out?”

He shook his head. “I thought about it once, a long time ago, but it made me so nervous I never thought about it again.”

“The idea of spending the rest of your life in jail too intense for you?”

“Jail I could handle. What scared me was the thought of having to tangle with the IRS. They’d probably want to do an audit.”

Cal snorted. “You’re guilty of grand theft larceny, and all you’re worried about is an audit?”

“You would be, too, if you never saved receipts.”

“Well, I hope you made lots of money as a thief because you’re going to need every red cent to pay your legal fees …
if
they don’t freeze your accounts and shut down the business. Our business.
My
business. You’ve ruined
everyone’s
life, Dad. Are you happy now?”

“I poured every penny I made back
into
the business,” defended Woody. “A state-of-the-art computer system. Additional viewing rooms. New vehicles. Top-of-the-line caskets and vaults. That’s where the money is, Cal. Hardware! But what do you do? Encourage
everyone
who walks through the door to be cremated. I’m surprised you’re not encouraging clients to go coffin free with some kind of cockamamie green burial. I’ve sunk a million dollars into this business only to be sabotaged by you at every turn!”

“Million dollars?” Cal looked stunned. “Where did you get a million dollars?”

“The economic boom in the nineties. People were paying top dollar for gold and gemstones, so I was pulling in money by the bucket loads.” He shrugged. “I’m not proud of it, but the truth is, I’m a damn fine thief.”

Cal groaned as he buried his face in his hands again.

“Could we return to the discussion about your ring?” I asked
during the lull.

Woody looked me square in the eye. “Just so you and I are on the same page, I might be a thief, but I’m no Nazi. I fought hammer and tong against the Nazis, for crying out loud.”

“I believe you.”

“I’m glad someone does,” droned Cal.

“I realize it was decades ago,” I continued, “but do you remember anything about the man who owned the ring?”

Woody nodded. “He was dead.”

Cal’s groans turned into a whimper.

“I understand that,” I persisted, “but is there anything else you can recall about him? Age? Cause of death? Name?”

He closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead as if he were massaging a memory out of his brain. “Yup.” He pinched his eyes tighter. “Pine casket, Model number P-628. No frills service onsite. Burial in Rosewood Cemetery.”

I gawked at him, dumbstruck. “You remember the model number of his casket?”

“Baseball managers remember balls and strikes. Funeral directors remember caskets. We’d just purchased that line. The gentleman had the honor of being the first client to occupy one.”

“First client to occupy your low-end pine caskets,” taunted Cal. “First client to be robbed of his possessions. He was a man of many firsts.”

“He had a closed casket,” Woody reminisced. “That’s what made it so easy. And there were no family members clamoring to view the body, so it was like taking candy from a baby.”

“Why was the casket closed?” I asked.

“Bad car accident. No one would’ve wanted to see the way he ended up. He was a pretty young fella, too. Mid-forties, as I recall. Got the impression he must have been a loner because he sure didn’t have many people pay their respects. The man he worked for took care of the arrangements. Angelo Agnelli. Remember him, Cal?”

“The jeweler? Sure. He kept a dish full of candy on the counter just for us kids, so we’d always stop by his store on the way to the movies every Saturday.”

“The man who died worked for a jeweler?” I felt suddenly energized.
Now
we were getting somewhere. Of
course
a jeweler would work in the jewelry industry. It’s what he knew! Duh?

Woody nodded. “Yup. Old Angelo turned out some of the finest pieces of jewelry I ever lifted off a corpse.”

Cal covered his eyes. “
Jeeez
.”

My heart began pounding double-time. “Is he still alive?”

Woody shook his head. “We laid him to rest thirty years ago in our Mahogany roadster, Model number M-24. Our very finest casket at the time.”

“Oh.” That would make talking to him about his one-time employee a little out of the question then. Nuts. “I don’t suppose you recall the name of the man who died in the car accident.”

“Of course I do.”

“REALLY?”

“A funeral director never forgets a client’s name. His was Peter Smith.”

Which was obviously not the name I wanted to hear. Not un
less … “Is Pierre French for Peter?”

Cal shrugged. “Stuff like that is above my pay scale.”

“Well, it’s not above mine,” said Woody. “Pierre, Pedro, Pietro. They all mean Peter.”

“So if Pierre Lefevre had needed to escape France during the war, he could very well have made his way to America, started a new life, and changed his name to Peter Smith.”

“Or Jones,” said Cal. “That’s just as generic.”

I yanked my phone out of my bag. “Unless Smith isn’t as generic as we think.”

“Who’re you phoning?” asked Woody.

“No one.” I pulled up my keypad. “I’m Googling.”

I typed “French Surname Meanings,” found a genealogy website, and scrolled down a long list of surnames until I reached the Ls. “ ‘Lefevre,’ ” I read aloud. “ ‘A derivation of the French occupational
name Fevre, which described an iron-worker or’ ”—my heart skipped
a beat—“ ‘smith. From the Old French “fevre” meaning craftsman.’ ” I glanced from Cal to Woody. “The name Smith wasn’t generic to Pierre. In fact, it was probably very dear to him, because it described the profession he’d allowed to flourish in France. Metalsmith.”

I inhaled a deep breath. “Gentlemen, I believe we may have just identified the traitor who escaped from Pointe du Hoc the morning of June 6, 1944.”

BAM BAM BAM!

We shot looks at the cabin door. Cal stood up. “Hold on,” he
yelled. “I’m coming.”

When he pulled the door ajar, Jackie rushed into the room,
breathless with frenzy. “I wanted you to be the first to know. The police have nabbed Krystal’s killer.”

“Because of your phone call?” I asked expectantly.

“I never got to complete my call.”

“Then how did they know to arrest Virginia?”

She fisted her hand on her hip and regarded me archly. “They haven’t arrested Virginia. They’ve arrested Victor.”

seventeen

“WHAT?”

She held up a scrap of paper and recited from it as if she were Lady Macbeth speaking through a breathing mask. “Ethyl biscoumacetate.”

I stared. Woody stared. Cal stared.

I decided to pose the question that was causing all of us to stare. “What?”

“It’s the drug that killed Krystal. It’s a blood thinner, and Victor was taking it to prevent stroke, because he apparently has issues with atrial fibrillation.”

“Victor’s the killer?” I mentally picked my jaw up off the floor. “Not Virginia?”

“I’m only repeating what Rob just told me in the strictest confidence, so you can’t tell anyone else. But I have to tell someone because I’m about to burst. Victor was carrying a huge quantity of the drug with him, way more than he’d need for the trip, so he had enough to take out several people. Which means … he probably had a long hit list, and
my
name might have been next up!”

“But … why would he kill Krystal, or
any
of you? Aside from being frustrated by your backstabbing, whining, and snarky insinuations, he genuinely seemed to like all of you.”

“How should I know? Rob didn’t say
why
Victor did it; he only said that the authorities have him in custody at the hospital
for
doing it. His name was on the list of guests slated to be interviewed, so the police apparently searched his cabin while he was being treated, and that’s when they found his stash. They also found a miniature mortar and pestle that would have been perfect to crush tablets into powder form, so that puts another nail in his coffin.”

Woody tipped his head. “Excellent analogy.”

“Okay,” I conceded, “but if Victor killed Krystal, who tried to kill Victor?”

“Rob said the police don’t think anyone tried to kill him. They’re speculating that he deliberately overdosed to throw suspicion away from himself.”

Cal nodded. “The police were definitely stepping up their in
volvement in the case, so maybe Victor felt the noose tightening and panicked. Heck of a stunt though. Blood thinner’s nothing to fool around with. He could have bled to death.”

“So when’s he supposed to have dosed himself ?” asked Woody.

“I vote for dinner,” said Jackie. “I bet he dumped the crushed tablets into his own soup.”

“But no one knew the police dragnet was tightening until Rob made his announcement before dinner,” I reminded them. “Victor was already in the lounge when that happened, so he had to have been carrying the stuff with him already to pull it off.”

“And if that’s the case … it means he
definitely
had plans to use it.” Jackie went white with the implication. “On one of his dinner companions.” She riveted a look at each of our faces. “On one of us.”

“But we still don’t have motivation,” I complained. “Even if Victor pulverized a thousand blood thinner tablets into powder, it still doesn’t explain why he’d want to kill any of us, and certainly not four women whose sales efforts have kept him a wealthy man.”

“Maybe it has nothing to do with wealth,” offered Jackie in a tentative voice. “Maybe it has to do with the other thing Rob told me in the strictest confidence that I’m not supposed to tell anyone.”

I waited a half-beat.

“Okay, I’ll tell you, but you can’t tell
anyone
else. When the police did a background check on Victor, they were able to verify some of his work history, but prior to 1950, they came up with nothing. Prior to 1950, there’s no record of Victor Martin. It’s like he’d never been born.”

_____

“Did you read what’s on this leaflet what they slipped under our door last night?” asked Nana as she caught up with me at breakfast the following morning.

We’d set sail at midnight and were scheduled to arrive in Vernon, pronounced VerNON, in a couple of hours, where we’d board a bus to tour Claude Monet’s famous lily pond and gardens in the tiny village of Giverny. I’d slept only sporadically last night, so I’d opened up the restaurant this morning, hoping to load up on enough caffeine to keep me functional throughout the day. The last person I’d expected to see at this early hour was Nana, but I was tickled for her company. She always had a way of making things seem less troubling than they actually were.

“I read it, all right,” I said as she seated herself in the chair opposite me. “But that’s not even half the story.”

The leaflet informed us in a nutshell about the unfortunate departure of Victor Martin and his wife from the tour, but soft-pedaled the hard facts so as not to implicate Victor more than they had to. “Although Mr. Martin is expected to recover fully from the hemorrhage he suffered in the restaurant last night,” the notice read, “he will remain in the hospital for observation until an undetermined date. We will keep you updated about the investigation into Ms. Krystal Cake’s death as new information is released.”

“What’s the other half of the story?” Nana asked as she consulted the menu.

“I wish I could tell you, but I’ve been sworn to secrecy until such time as the information becomes public knowledge.”

“Don’t you fret none about it, dear. Better you keep your word. That way you don’t gotta rassle with a guilty conscience.” She stabbed an item on the menu with her finger. “I’m gonna order the waffle. I wouldn’t mind toodlin’ around the buffet, but we’re gonna be doin’ a lot of walkin’ in them gardens this mornin’, so I’m gonna pace myself.”

“I’m doing the buffet. I haven’t eaten anything since the soup course last night.”

“Speakin’ about last night”—Nana lowered her voice—“have you heard the latest?”

“Tell me what you’ve heard, and I’ll tell you if I know.”

“Victor might not be who he says he is on account of no one can find no information on him ’til a few years after World War II.”

My mouth fell open. “Whotoldyouthat?” I leaned over the table, my words running into each other. “WasitJackie? Shewassupposedtokeepitquiet. Ican’tbelievethis!”

“I run into Bernice in the corridor. She knew a lot of stuff that wasn’t on the leaflet.”

“How did she find out? I was assured that
no one
knew about Victor’s identity problem other than Rob and Jackie.” I bobbed my head. “And Woody. And Cal. And me.”

“She was in a rush to get to the lounge to reserve a seat for this afternoon’s watercolor lesson, so she didn’t have no time to waste on a long chat. It was more like a hit and run.”

“
Never
ask Jackie Thum to keep a secret,” I warned, “unless you’re okay with it showing up on CNN as breaking news.”

“Bernice got it right then?” asked Nana.

I heaved a sigh. “According to what Rob reported to Jackie, yes, Victor’s origins before 1950 seem to be in question.”

Nana gave me a blank look. “So what’s all the fuss about?”

I frowned. “You don’t find that troubling?”

“Nope.”

“Why not?”

“Because he’s even older than I am, and folks back then did
things different. There weren’t no records in duplicate or triplicate. If the court buildin’ or the local church burned, a fella might have a heck of a time provin’ he was ever born. Stuff got misfiled. Clerks mighta had bad handwritin’, so names got copied wrong and accidentally changed. And don’t get me started on what happened to them folks what come through Ellis Island. Their names don’t look nuthin’ like the names they started out with before they crossed the ocean.”

“So you think the French police have come up empty because of a filing error?”

“There wasn’t hardly no government buildin’s left standin’ in Europe after the war, Emily, so the last people in the world what should
be surprised by gaps in a fella’s personal records are the French
police.”

“Did Bernice tell you that Victor has actually been arrested for murder?”

“Yup.”

“Does it make sense to you that Victor would kill the woman who was probably the top sales rep in his company?”

“Nope.”

“So can you understand why the police would want to delve into his background to look for clues that might explain
why
he might have wanted to kill the goose that laid the golden egg?”

“Bernice told me the only evidence them police officers got against
Victor is that he had a big honkin’ bottle of them blood-thinner pills in his cabin.”

“Right. Enough to take out a whole host of people.”

“Well, I got a little story for you. Your grampa spent so much time sittin’ on his duff ice fishin’ one year, he got a big ole clot in his leg, and what they give him to dissolve it was a blood thinner. Called it Warfarin. It come in a big bottle, filled to the brim, on account of the dosage changed from week to week accordin’ to how much was in his bloodstream. So some weeks he took two or three tablets every day, and other weeks he took only one. But they didn’t want him to run out, so that’s why they give him so much. So if Victor was like your grampa, the only reason he mighta had so dang many pills in his bottle was simply because his doctor mighta wanted to make sure he had enough.”

I eyed her skeptically. “You don’t think he was hoarding them so he could use them to kill people?”

“If he was hoardin’, it’s on account of that’s what the druggist give him.”

“But why would the French police arrest him if they weren’t sure of his guilt?”

“You ever seen them Peter Sellers movies where he played a bumblin’ police inspector by the name of Clouseau?”

“Years ago. But Peter Sellers didn’t portray a typical police inspector, Nana. His role was way over the top. An exaggeration.”

“Don’t matter. He was French. ’Nuf said.”

“
Bonjour
, ladies.” Ivandro greeted us with carafes of regular coffee in one hand and English breakfast tea in the other. “Coffee? Tea?”

“Tea,” Nana and I said in unison.

“Have you made your breakfast selections?”

“Buffet for me,” I said as he filled our cups, “and the waffle for my grandmother.”

“Very good.” He lingered by the table, smiling. “I hope breakfast this morning will be more peaceful than dinner last night. The gentleman is still in the hospital, yes?”

I nodded. “He may be there for a while.”

“And his wife also? The maid removed their belongings from their cabin this morning, so I assume they will not be returning?”

“Apparently not.” I glanced at Nana. “If they’re staying behind in Rouen, they obviously can’t have their stuff continuing on to Paris without them.”

He leaned in over the table. “You have heard the rumor about the gentleman?”

“Which one?” asked Nana.

“That he may not be who he says he is?”

I gasped. “Does the whole ship know? I can’t believe this! Who told you?”

“I do not know the names yet, madame.”

“Six-foot brunette? Huge designer bag? Sucks all the oxygen out of the room?”

“She was five-feet tall. Sandpaper voice. Wire-whisk hair.”

“Bernice,” I hissed.

“I’m sorry, madame. Please do not take offense. I was only making conversation. When I come to work here, Patrice says to me, ‘Ivandro, you may grow bored with this job, because nothing ever happens.’ But since I’m here,
everything
happens. A lady dies. A gentleman is rushed to hospital. I would welcome to be bored.”

“I assume you haven’t been working on the
Renoir
long?” I asked.

“I have been here as many days as you. The kitchen staff was short one waiter, so Patrice put in a good word for me, and here I am. He and I cycle together on the same team, so we are what you call, good buddies.”

“Are you and him trainin’ for that big race where them fellas wear yellow jerseys and take dope?” asked Nana.

He laughed. “The Tour de France?
Non
, madame. We may travel the same roads, but we are not in the same class.” He brandished his coffee carafe toward the ship’s bow. “I scold him last night because
I
am serving the gentleman who is rushed to hospital while
he
is serving drinks to the man who has decided to camp out next to the bar. I tell him I would like
his
work schedule so I can find time to be bored. Now I place your breakfast order, madame.” He tipped his head at Nana. “Please excuse.”

I cupped my hand around my mouth. “He was talking about Irv Orr,” I whispered. “I don’t think he’s had a sober moment since he boarded.”

“I seen him in the lounge all day yesterday knockin’ back cocktails,” said Nana. “I don’t rightly know if he’s even stepped off the boat to see nuthin’ yet. How come the bartender don’t cut him off ?”

“Probably because he’s not attempting to drive a vehicle. Oh, before I forget.” I pulled the note with Solange’s contact information out of my shoulder bag. “Could you text this to Osmond at your earliest possible convenience? He specifically asked that you do it because he appreciates your discretion and knows you won’t blab to everyone.”

“You bet.” She studied the note. “Is this the lady what he met durin’ the war?”

“Yup. I tried to
hand
him the note yesterday, but he wouldn’t take it.”

“’Course he wouldn’t take it.” She yanked her cell phone out of her pocketbook. “He’s gone paperless.”

As I watched her thumbs fly over the screen, I mulled over what she’d said about Victor and the mysterious gap in his background. Was it as innocent as she suggested it might be? Or had Victor Martin deliberately tried to hide something in his past? Something that might explain why he’d want Krystal dead.

My mind drifted back to Virginia Martin, who had every reason in the world to want Krystal dead, but who was under no suspicion from the police. She would have had just as much access to Victor’s blood thinner as he had, wouldn’t she? At least, that was
my
thinking, but I wasn’t a member of the French police force.

Maybe the incompetency of Inspector Clouseau was closer to the truth than I realized.