Seven Days Dead (39 page)
Authors: John Farrow
Tags: #Mystery; Thriller & Suspense, #Mystery, #International Mystery & Crime, #Police Procedurals
Sandra has her own questions. “Who burned our car? Yes, I’ve learned about the Jeep. Who kidnapped me?”
“Grace Matheson. She arranged it all. She doesn’t control people who would go out and kill for her. It’s not that kind of gang. She was the only one around willing to commit murder. But she panicked. In a way, just like the reverend panicked in going to her. His downfall was her. She has people she can ask to do things, and she asked a few nefarious Dark Harbour folk to do her bidding for a price. To scare me. To scare you. Run us off the island in the island way. Little chance of that.”
“Speak for yourself. I think I’ve developed vertigo.”
Émile smiles. “You didn’t budge. She fired you up. Anyway, Louwagie will round the others up. That won’t be difficult.”
“So, Émile,” his wife teases him, “you solved two murders today and a suicide. That didn’t take long.”
“Three murders,” he corrects her, “and a suicide. Going back in time, to the death of Maddy’s mom.”
As though out of respect for that woman, they share a quiet moment.
Émile touches Maddy’s forearm and speaks softly. “We’ll go now.”
“I’ll drive you.”
“It’s a short walk. Don’t bother.”
She nods. Then says, “I disrupted your holiday. My dad—my non-dad, my used-to-be dad, whoever he is—he kept a Cadillac Escalade in the garage. Way too ostentatious for me. Take it. To replace the Jeep. That’s not negotiable, but also, accept it as compensation. We’ll get the paperwork done. It’s all yours.”
Émile is about to decline. It’s too much, too generous, and who accepts a luxury vehicle for solving a simple case? Sandra pokes him in the ribs, which Maddy sees, and suddenly Émile agrees. The three laugh at that.
“I’ll come by tomorrow for the keys. I don’t want to trouble you now. We’ll check in with you then.”
Émile and Sandra hug her and depart. They walk across the broad lawn to the road and head downhill. It’s not a short walk around to Whale Cove, and along the way they stop for dinner in the gathering dark.
In a booth at the Compass Rose, Sandra is musing after they put in their orders. “One thing I don’t get still. Pete Briscoe. How bad a man is he, to go fetch the bloody shovel and not tell a soul?”
“He’s naïve and gullible. A combination that Orrock and Grace Matheson took advantage of. I was curious about the story she told him. You see, Pete knew that the fliers cult was in cahoots with his boss, Grace Matheson. She invented some story about them finding the shovel and getting their fingerprints on it, then coming across the body afterward and panicking. Of course, it was her own fingerprints she wanted removed. The fliers threw the shovel away, she told him, when actually she did. They were innocent. If I may say so, our fisherman bought it, hook, line, and sinker.”
Émile is laughing to himself, and she thinks at first that this has to do with his remark. He leans across the table to whisper something else that’s not intended for public dissemination, or even for polite company.
“Something else about Pete. I couldn’t really figure out why he dug so many holes. I sent Wade Louwagie back to ask him. He was trying to get the blood and guts off the shovel, as I thought, but it turns out he was also trying to find the right hole to shit in. Some holes hit rock, too shallow. A few were deep enough but contained worms or other creepy crawly things. He’s sensitive about where he takes a dump.”
She laughs along with him then.
“Also what Wade learned. Pete wasn’t looking to protect the spade when he came running up to us on Seven Days Work. He’d cleaned it by then, and never thought it was so important anyway. He was just protecting his friends from being wrongly accused, in his mind. That’s why he only looked mischievous up there, rather than guilty.”
“He was protecting,” surmises Sandra, “his waste?”
“Precisely. We came along at an inopportune moment. He hadn’t had time to backfill his business yet, and didn’t want us to see what he’d done. So he ran over to us and made up a dog story. Turns out, that slightly embarrassing moment is what did him in. More importantly, that moment helped do Grace Matheson in.”
The old sea rhyme comes to mind, “Red sky at night, sailor’s delight,” for as boats bob in the harbor and the ferry comes in, as tourists disembark, the sky glows a brilliant crimson. A wine for the evening, a darker hue of red, is uncorked and poured. “Let the vacation begin,” Émile remarks with a grin.
“Finally,” Sandra says, and the two clink glasses. “Let’s give it a shot.”
A
LSO BY
J
OHN
F
ARROW
River City
Ice Lake
City of Ice
A
LSO BY
T
REVOR
F
ERGUSON
The River Burns
The Timekeeper
The Fire Line
The True Life Adventures of Sparrow Drinkwater
The Kinkajou
Onyx John
High Water Chants
JOHN FARROW
is the pen name of Trevor Ferguson, who has published twelve novels, both literary and crime, and had four plays produced. He has been named Canada’s best novelist in both
Books in Canada
and the
Toronto Star.
The books in his Émile Cinq-Mars crime series have been read around the world and have received extraordinary critical acclaim.
John Farrow
lives with his wife in the town of Hudson, Quebec. You can sign up for email updates
here
.
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CONTENTS
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
A THOMAS DUNNE BOOK FOR MINOTAUR BOOKS.
An imprint of St. Martin’s Publishing Group.
SEVEN DAYS DEAD.
Copyright © 2016 by John Farrow Mysteries, Inc. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
Cover design by David Baldeosingh Rotstein
Cover photographs © Shutterstock
The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:
Names: Farrow, John, 1947– author.
Title: Seven days dead / John Farrow.
Description: First edition. | New York: Minotaur Books, 2016. | Series: The storm murders trilogy; 2 | “A Thomas Dunne book.”
Identifiers: LCCN 2015050065 | ISBN 9781250057693 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781250086594 (e-book)
Subjects: LCSH: Police—Québec (Province)—Montréal—Fiction. | Murder—Investigation— Fiction. | BISAC: FICTION / Mystery & Detective / Police Procedural. | GSAFD: Mystery fiction.
Classification: LCC PR9199.3.F455 S49 2016 | DDC 813/.54—dc23
LC record available at
http://lccn.loc.gov/2015050065
e-ISBN 9781250086594
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First Edition: May 2016