The Marble Mask (18 page)

“Was there anything besides the letter?”

“I am sorry, no. Nothing that she gave us.”

“Okay, thanks. I’ll see you soon.”

I hung up and watched the others silently, waiting for someone to voice my own misgivings.

Tom Shanklin spoke first. “I’ve had cases a week old that didn’t fall together this fast.”

“Me, too,” Willy said.

“It’s the belt-and-suspenders aspect to it that bugs me,” Sammie added. “I could buy the stomach contents leading to the waiter and then to the old hotel and the suitcase, but it’s a little weird having a little old lady pop out of nowhere with the same information just in case we screwed up.”

“None of what we found was bogus, though,” I countered, more for argument’s sake. “Not as far as we can tell. We all dug through the contents of that barn—it was real dirt, real cobwebs, real mildew coating the suitcase. Does anyone here think any or all of that was recently planted?”

No one responded.

“It feels wrong,” Willy finally said.

“No argument,” I told him. “But I can’t see what choice we’ve got—not yet. It
looks
like Marcel knocked off his father. We’ve heard two different stories so far: that he was wet behind the ears but set to inherit the throne, and that he was blindly ambitious and didn’t trust his father’s intentions after his brother died. Whatever the truth, he did take over, did prove himself a good manager, and did make a bundle over the next five decades. In retrospect, all good, old-fashioned motives for murder. What bugs me is what’s happening now. If we are being used to frame him for a piece of ancient history, why now?”

“Same reason he actually might’ve killed his own father,” Auerbach suggested. “Only now it’s someone else wanting access to the throne.”

“I’d agree with you if he didn’t have terminal cancer. Jean Deschamps might’ve lived for years, which could’ve made a young heir impatient. But Marcel is counting the days. Why an elaborate frame when Mother Nature’s almost done all the dirty work?”

Sammie suddenly leaned forward in her chair. “Because it’s a different script this time,” she suggested. “We’ve been thinking it’s somebody inside the Deschamps camp doing this, just like it was fifty years ago. What if the pressure’s coming from outside? Could be the Hell’s Angels or the Rock Machine
are
behind it all, trying to destabilize the passing of the torch by using us to bust Marcel and destroy his inner circle, killing Tessier as extra insurance in the meantime. I know they weren’t around when Marcel’s dad was murdered, but it’s not impossible they got in cahoots with whoever’s been keeping Jean Deschamps on ice.”

“Too fancy,” Willy said shortly. With anyone else, he would have driven the point home more sarcastically. I was struck by his delicacy.

I also agreed with him. “It makes more sense that somebody inside is pulling the strings,” I said. “I don’t know how, why, or if Tessier’s death ties in, but I’m inclined to keep that separate for the time being. Both Picard and Guidry are old enough to have played as big a role in Jean’s disappearance as Marcel. How ’bout pinning this on one of them?”

But Shanklin shook his head. “That puts you right back where you started. Marcel’s about to die. Assuming his son Michel does wind up in his seat, he’ll need both those guys to learn the ropes—they’re guaranteed jobs for life. Why mess that up? Plus, Tessier was killed by an Angel after years of peaceful coexistence—just before the Angels are slated to go to war. That can’t be a coincidence.”

I ran my fingers through my hair and stretched. “Okay. So we have no idea what’s going on. But we have leads, evidence, and a trail to follow. Let’s at least follow it and see where it goes. Could be we’re making ourselves nuts here for no reason.”

But I didn’t believe that for a minute. Nor, I thought, did anyone else. Something wasn’t right about all this.

Gilles Lacombe was on the phone when I was escorted into his office the following day. He smiled and waved me to a seat, still rapidly talking in
Joual
to whoever was at the other end.

Then he hung up, leaned back, and locked his fingers behind his head. “Joe. It is good to see you again. I have been talking to the
procureur
, and it looks okay for the warrant. We made a list of enough specific items that we should be able to search the whole house. Thank you for faxing me what you found in Stowe. It is incredible that we both were told about the
valise
of Jean Deschamps, no?”

“Incredible might be the right word. Could be we’re being led around by the nose.”

Lacombe was unperturbed. “Perhaps. But do we care? It cannot be so bad to put a spoon in the soup and move it around a little. It might be a good time to invite your own
procureur
up here to meet ours. I think we will put the fire under Marcel Deschamps and see what happens.”

· · ·

Surveillance reports had told us what to expect. For days, the comings and goings at Marcel’s home had been recorded on tape and logged. When we finally had all the paperwork and people we needed, including Kathy Bartlett and her Canadian counterpart, we waited until the middle of the night and then hit the house without fanfare, surrounding it before politely ringing the doorbell.

It was a Sûreté operation. Paul Spraiger, Gary Smith, Kathy, and I all stood back while the initial contact was made and only entered the building after the all-clear had been given.

There’d been no reason to expect violence or resistance, as there might have been at the Angels’ compound, but as I walked down the familiar hallway, heading toward the library, I could tell we hadn’t been admitted with grace—several Deschamps bodyguards were being pinned facedown on the carpeting, at least two of them exhibiting bruised or bloody faces.

The scene in the library was similarly ruffled. In place of the icy charm we’d been exposed to before, there was now turmoil and rage. Shouting at Gilles Lacombe were Pierre Guidry and a young man whose resemblance to Marcel stamped him as Michel, the family’s heir apparent. Lacombe stood looking like a man suffering the mildest of discomforts, a polite smile on his face.

Paul Spraiger didn’t bother translating word-for-word but merely said, “According to them, Marcel’s at death’s door upstairs and can’t be disturbed, this search is illegal, and we should wait for Picard so we can all be told that our jobs are history.”

I acknowledged the familiar refrain and took advantage of being a mere spectator to study Michel Deschamps. I’d expected someone soft and pliable, given the rumors, and was surprised by the real article. Lean and muscular—now lacking the wimpy mustache I’d seen in the picture of him—he was certainly attractive enough to fit a playboy image, but watching his aggressive body language, I had my doubts he was anyone’s pushover. In fact, the degree of anger he was venting made me wonder how downright violent he could be. It suggested the lineage we’d assumed was rotting away might be made of hardier stuff.

Or maybe it went beyond simple hardiness. The more I watched him, the more his body language made me think of someone on the edge, although of what I wasn’t sure. But his eyes seemed slightly wider than they ought to be, his movements a little jerky, as if held under tight constraints, and his tone of voice, although I couldn’t understand a word right now, bordered on the hysterical.

Lacombe eventually saw Paul and me standing there and disengaged himself, transferring the argument to the two prosecutors. He led us back into the hallway and shut the door. “They are not so well mannered when they are surprised. I am guessing we will get no coffee this time. Would you like a tour of the house? Maybe we can talk with Marcel before those two know what we are doing.”

The hallway led to a sweeping staircase—ornate, curved, and hung with gilt-framed oil paintings. Upstairs, the luxury was maintained by a second passageway, lower ceilinged and lacking chandeliers but flaunting more paintings, antique furniture, and a row of elaborately carved closed doors.

Uniformed police officers were milling about, going in and out of various rooms in search of the items specified in the search warrant.

Lacombe asked one of them a question and then motioned to us to follow him.

We arrived at an enormous bedroom, hovering somewhere between Louis XIV and Hollywood, where Marcel Deschamps sat propped up in a bed the size of a polo field, his emaciated, pale, hairless body looking all the more fragile in comparison. The strength of his voice as he tongue-lashed Lacombe, however, removed any fears that he’d die right in front of us. It even occurred to me that our visit might possibly be therapeutic, since the angrier he got, the pinker and more normal his face became—and reminiscent of his son’s downstairs.

For his part, Lacombe chose to silently tour the large room like a tourist in a quiet museum. It was an odd scene—we and several search team members wandering around as if totally alone, being screamed at nonstop in a language I couldn’t understand by a man who increasingly reminded me of a choleric chicken.

It didn’t last, of course. As Lacombe had presumably calculated, Marcel’s very real medical condition eventually caught up to him, and he collapsed against the small mountain of pillows behind him, gasping and wheezing, his body spent, his face shining with sweat, and his eyes—as at our first meeting—radiating with heat and frustrated purpose. If a candle really does burn brightest just prior to guttering, then all the energy this man had left resided in those eyes.

In the sudden calm, Lacombe gently sat on the edge of the bed, his hands in his lap like a doting nephew, and began to speak.

Paul translated: “Monsieur Deschamps, we have warrants both to search this house—and any other property you might own—and for your arrest for the murder of your father in 1947, in Stowe, Vermont.”

Deschamps closed his eyes briefly, as if to summon additional strength, before reopening them and commenting in an exhausted whisper, “I have never been to Stowe and I did not kill my father.”

With unexpected tenderness, Lacombe reached out and laid his hand on Marcel’s. “Don’t worry about that. We’ll talk later. Preserve your health.”

There was a knock at the door, and a police officer gestured to Lacombe. Behind him we could see Gaston Picard, dressed as if ready for the races at Ascot. Lacombe exchanged a few words with the cop and then gestured to us to come over.

“I will now have to talk with these people. You may stay if you like, but you might also like to look at Marcel’s office down the hall. I will be there soon in any case—it is where much evidence will be found, I think. At least I hope,” he added with a smile.

We began taking his advice, filing past Picard, Guidry, Michel, and the others without comment, when suddenly Michel exploded, bursting from behind his elders and flying at Lacombe with his arms out. I saw the flash of those wide eyes, the glitter of saliva on his lips as he shoved me aside, and then saw Lacombe smoothly lean out of the way, grab one of Michel’s wrists, and use his own momentum to hurl him up against the wall, where our police escort pinned him in place, mashing his cheek against the ornate wallpaper.

Picard began to say something to him, but it was a short command from the bedroom that instantly calmed things down. Like a trained Doberman, Michel dropped from attack mode, becoming silent and compliant. Lacombe nodded at the cop to let him go, and everyone resumed their demeanor of moments ago. It had been a jarring and odd display, and as Paul and I continued to move away, I began to seriously wonder about the mental health of this crooked clan.

Paul and I followed the officer down the hall to a room as English in appearance as the bedroom had seemed French. Here the walls were all dark wood paneling, the windows leaded glass, and the shelves filled with as many books as we’d seen in the library. There was an empty fireplace, lots of indirect lighting from heavily shaded lamps, and a scattering of rugs and overstuffed leather furniture that tinted the air with an essence of old wool and saddle soap. There was also a wall covered with stuffed animal heads and exotic ancient weaponry.

“Reminds me of some pictures I saw of the Playboy mansion once,” Paul said as we entered. “Very hormonal—not unlike what we just witnessed.”

The search team technicians were most earnestly at work here, and we ended up standing in the middle of the room, watching the equivalent of a three-dimensional training film as they slowly took the place and its contents apart. Lacombe had joined us by the time they’d reached the point of sounding the paneled walls for hollow spots, one of which they found among the animal heads and weaponry.

After some discussion and the use of an electronic sensing device, one of the search team worked her way back to the oversized desk across the room and located what looked like a television remote. She hit a button on it, and we all watched as one of the wall panels moved back slightly into a cavity and then slid from sight to one side, revealing a trophy wall of a wholly different nature.

Before us, mounted on a felt-covered surface, was an artful array of modern pistols, rifles, and shotguns, knives, blunt objects, a single garrote, and even something that vaguely looked like a bear trap. Some of the items looked factory-fresh and never used, others like debris left behind by a war—stained, rusted, and ruined with use.

But the item that caught all our eyes almost as soon as it was revealed was modest, domestically practical, and curiously homely by comparison.

Carefully suspended against the dark green surface, surrounded by weapons designed to crush, maim, and mutilate, was a tool almost dainty in contrast, its fancy silver handle reminiscent of the butt end of an orchestra conductor’s baton.

It was an ice pick.

I SLOWLY SLID MY STOCKINGED FEET UNDER GAIL’S
bottom, careful not to spill the mug of soup cradled in my hands. We were sitting opposite one another on an overstuffed couch in her condo outside Montpelier, wrapped in heavy terry cloth robes, our legs entwined, our bodies tired and pampered from making love and sitting too long in a hot tub afterward. I’d taken a short break from the investigation to allow Lacombe and his bunch time to build a case against Marcel Deschamps, and to report our progress to Bill Allard in Waterbury, just a short drive from Gail’s.