Reluctant Witness (28 page)

The next chapter started with a routine visit
by Nora’s parents to three coffee plantations up in the hills of
Saint-Claude, to check on the crops just before the expected
harvest. On the way back down the mountain, on the way to
Baie-Mahault, their car crashed into a stone wall. Juliette Hazen
was killed on impact. Poor Jim struck his head on the windshield
and suffered severe head trauma, never regaining consciousness. He
died several days later.

A witness reported seeing a small white
hatchback run the sedan off the road. The local police later found
the car, wiped clean and abandoned three miles away. Was it
murder?

Nora Hazen, as their only child, inherited
more than just her parents’ estate. She also inherited their
problems. Not only had Jim built a very successful international
coffee business, he had attracted the interest of a very powerful
drug cartel that wanted to use his successful business to their
advantage. Chartier, posing as Beaumont, began to take over the
company by seducing Nora. As horrified as I was by the thought that
she was a pawn in a very ugly game, I understood Interpol’s need to
let it all play out. To an agency responsible for halting
international crime, it was an opportunity to catch him in the act,
but if only Inspector Noiret could keep her alive.

“We will use multi-layer,
gas-tight-and-water-resistant plastic liners for all of the oak
barrels,” Alain insisted at the meeting he called to discuss
operational changes. “They will better protect the product during
shipment.”

“It seems like such a waste to change what
has been working for us,” Luc Martin replied, pouring himself a
glass of Perrier from the bottle on the table. As chief financial
officer, he was focused on the profit margin. “We pay an extra ten
percent in labor and material costs.”

“So? We will pass that on to the
customers.”

“But lined barrels?” Guy Cloutier seemed
shocked by the suggestion.

“Oui. It will protect the green beans from
moisture, pests, and fungus. That means our product arrives at its
destination in better condition than it would if we shipped it in
the wooden barrels without it.”

“But, Alain, if we are shipping the green
beans in plastic liners, do we really need to use the oak barrels?
Why not switch to jute bags and reduce our costs?” asked Colette
Maupin, the shipping supervisor.

“You let me worry about that,” said my
husband. “I plan to recover the costs selling the barrels in the
United States.”

“Sell the barrels?” She challenged his
suggestion with disbelief. “People will want to buy these?”

“Mais oui. We shall easily make our money
back on them.”

“Nora?” Guy turned to me, concerned. “You
are the president of Le Papillon. What do you think?”

I started to speak, trying to appease both
men, but Alain cut me off. There was a bitter note in his words,
one that concerned me deeply.

“I have made the decision and it is final.
If you do not think you can live with it, perhaps it is time for
you to seek opportunities elsewhere, Guy.”

“What?”

“You heard me,” was my husband’s sharp
retort. A wave of shock struck me, forcing me to my feet in
protest.

“Alain, Guy has been with this company since
my father started it!”

“Silence!” he bellowed at me, eyes blazing.
Defeated, I sat back down. “It is not your place to tell me how to
do my job, not when I just invested half a million dollars of my
own money into this company!”

“Forget it, Nora,” Guy told me angrily,
rising to his feet. “It is not worth it! I will go!”

The rest of us sat in stunned silence as he
exited the room, fearful of what Alain would do next. I was haunted
by the menacing tone of my husband’s words to me, but it was the
glare he gave Guy that most disturbed me. It was as if I saw the
man I married transformed into Le Scorpion right in front of me and
he was ready to sting the honorable Guy.

That was the last time I saw my father’s
trusted confidant alive. Three days later, a fisherman checking his
lobster pots found Guy floating face down in the water, his boat
three hundred yards away. He had been dead for at least twenty four
hours.

I sat in the back of the Coachmen Freelander
and found myself wondering about those oak barrels. Why did
Chartier/Beaumont insist on using the special liners? Was it really
an effort to improve the flavor of the green coffee beans? I didn’t
think that was likely, but what else could it be? What was Chartier
really doing at Le Papillon?

We stopped for the night in Branson,
Missouri, a bit of a detour on the road to Boise. Vince had booked
us a pair of rooms at the Hilton Promenade in Branson Landing.
After checking in, we took a stroll down to the lake and then hit
the Ernie Biggs Chicago Style Dueling Piano Bar for dinner and
singing.

I wasn’t normally known for being rowdy, but
Nancy’s penchant for having fun was contagious. Even Vince was
grinning by the time we settled the bill and made our way back to
the hotel just before eleven.

“You think she’s something now,” he confided,
“you should have been with us on surveillances. One time, she
actually managed to catch a mugger just by opening the van door at
the precise moment the whack-a-doodle was running by. She snatched
the purse out of the guy’s hand and gave it back to the little old
lady, all without compromising our surveillance.”

“Hey, if the cops had shown up, that would
have ruined all our efforts to stake out the suspects. I merely
made sure that the problem was contained. And we later sent three
mob guys to jail.”

“Never a dull moment,” Vince insisted.

“You can say that again,” she grinned. “It
beats falling asleep in the seat. Remember the time Dolenz did and
he missed a meeting between the two goombahs? He woke up in time to
see them come out of their social club. Boy, was he in hot water.
The special agent-in-charge was so mad, he transferred him to
Fairbanks.”

“That seems kind of harsh,” I responded, but
Vince cut me off.

“You’ve got to consider the bottom line, kid.
We had put almost two hundred hours into the case, not to mention
tens of thousands of dollars. By falling asleep, Dolenz lost us the
chance to get the evidence we could take to court. It took us
another three months to catch them meeting again. The boss had no
real choice but to make an example out of Dolenz. These weren’t
petty criminals we were sitting on. They were murdering
bastards.”

“Well, when you put it that way,” I nodded,
“I can understand why your boss did what he did.”

“When you’re dealing with bad guys, you’ve
got to be as tough, if not tougher,” he said, opening the door to
the hotel for us. “You can’t let your people slack off, because the
next thing you know, the creeps get the jump on you and you’ve got
dead agents.”

“I never considered it was so tough to be in
law enforcement. Nancy seems so easygoing.”

“Right up to the moment you’re on the wrong
side of the law. Don’t let her sweet smile fool you, buttercup.
Take my word for it -- she’s a tough, old bird.”

“Watch who you’re calling old, vulture
breath!” Nancy pushed the elevator button. “You’ve got a few years
on me.”

Chapter Twenty
Six

Nancy flopped on the bed the minute we got
into our room. “Stick a fork in me, I’m done. I don’t even think I
have the energy to pull on my pajamas.”

“Well, I think I’ll take a hot bath before I
go to sleep. Do you want to use the bathroom first?”

“Perhaps I’d better,” she replied, grabbing a
turquoise cotton outfit from her case. As the door shut behind her,
I grabbed my book from the nightstand and took out my pair of
pajamas from my case, the ones Jojo insisted I get. I smiled,
recalling our conversation back in Virginia.

“My advice is to always wear pajamas on the
road, Marigold, especially because you never know when you might
have to flee in the middle of the night. At least you’ll look
half-way decent if you’ve got some pants on,” Jojo had pointed out.
She drilled home the message with tales of mishaps and unfortunate
incidents involving FBI witnesses, and even an agent or two, who
made the mistake of sleeping in the nude. I decided then and there
I didn’t want to end up being an FBI anecdote, and picked out a
couple pairs of pajamas that looked like street wear.

Nancy stepped out of the bathroom a moment
later, ready for bed. She sat on the edge of the bed and set the
alarm clock before slipping her long legs under the covers and
pulling them up to her chin. “Boy, it must be some book you’re
reading. I’m beginning to think you’re a book junkie. You’ve got to
have your fix.”

“The story reminds me of something that
happened to me a long time ago,” I explained. “I want to know how
it comes out.”

“Interesting,” Nancy nodded. She eyed me
carefully. “You don’t strike me as a woman with a dubious past,
Marigold. You’re too...how can I put this? You’re too ‘girl next
door’ to be bad.”

“I am,” I laughed. “And no, I wasn’t some
mobster’s girlfriend or a hooker, if that’s what you’re
thinking.”

“That makes sense.” She flipped on the
television. “You’re probably a little too honest for your own
good.”

“I am?”

“Yeah. You don’t really have a poker face.
You show your emotions.”

“Oh,” I said. I was surprised. No one had
ever told me that before. Maybe that’s why I was beginning to
appreciate Nancy. She wasn’t shy about sharing her wisdom. “I guess
I’ll work on that.”

“It comes in handy when you’re dealing with
predators. They love the smell of fear. They get their kicks from
making women quake. But everyone is vulnerable in some way,
Marigold. Just remember that the next time you’re terrified and
make sure to look for it.”

I thought about that as I filled the tub. In
all my years of being in witness protection, no one had ever taken
the time to explain things like that to me. Was it just because I
was in danger at the moment that Nancy felt compelled to give me
pointers? Did she see it as a way to help me help myself in an
emergency? I entered WitSec when I was so young -- maybe the
marshals just assumed I knew all these things, so they never
bothered to teach me the finer points of hiding in plain sight.

Slipping into the soothing water, I wondered
Nancy would help me wash my hair in the morning. My ear was healing
nicely and I was almost done with the antibiotics. I made a mental
to ask Rocky about making an appointment for the stitches to come
out. Where would I find a doctor who would attend to me without
asking for answers about how it happened?

Flipping open Vanilla Orchid Magic, I got
right back into the story. What would happen at Le Papillon Coffee
and Spice Company now that Alain had taken over?

Guy’s funeral mass was two days later at the
Basilique-Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Guadeloupe on Place
Saint-François. I drove myself to Basse-Terre in the Renault and
parked around the corner from the cathedral. My heart was heavy. I
didn’t believe for a moment that his death was an accident. It had
come too soon after the deaths of my parents, and by then I already
suspected Alain had a hand in a number of other disturbing
incidents involving Le Papillon Coffee and Spice Company employees.
Claiming he had important business to attend to elsewhere, my
husband declined to accompany me. I was secretly relieved. Guy
wouldn’t have wanted him there, pretending to care.

Arlette and the three Cloutier children were
devastated. I wrapped my arms around the grieving widow as she sat
in the first pew and held her close, wishing I could trade places
with her. Why should such a good man die, when I was married to Le
Scorpion? It just wasn’t right.

My horror at losing my business mentor, my
family friend, clung to me through the rest of the day and into the
evening. I dined with my husband on the terrace, barely interested
in the stuffed crab. I found it nearly impossible to contain my
tears, so great was my grief over losing Guy. When Alain informed
me that he would leave for a business trip in the morning and
expected to be away for two weeks, I nodded.

“Do you not care that I will be absent?” he
demanded, sounding like a petulant boy.

“At the moment, I do not care about anything
at all,” I replied woodenly.

“Force yourself to care, Nora, if you know
what is good for you.”

We had a bitter row, one of our worst, and
the angrier Alain got, the bolder I became. I wanted him gone from
my life. I wanted him out of Le Papillon for good. How could I be
free of a man who had just sunk so much money into the company? I
felt trapped.

Unable to speak of my true feelings, lest I
betray the investigation, I left the table and hurried into the
house, my fingers curled into clenched fists. I wanted to be away
from him, but he grabbed me by the arm as I crossed the living
room.

“You think it is that easy to get rid of me,
chérie? You think you will just dismiss me, like a servant?”

“Tout fini!” I retorted. “I am all done
being your wife!”

He struck me across the face with such force
the blow sent me reeling backwards. I fell into the wing chair and
sat motionless, stunned. “I will tell you when it is ‘tout fini’,
Nora, and you will do as I say! This is my house!”

“Your house? I think not! I bought it. It is
my name on the deed!”

“Not any more. I own it. You see, you gave
me power of attorney over your property just last week.”

“I did no such thing!” I cried.

“Careful, love,” he hissed at me. “You are
showing signs of having a nervous breakdown! You’re beginning to
forget what you did.”

“Liar!” I screamed. Alain smiled.

“Alas, I have witnesses to support my claim.
I will get you committed, ma petite.”