Okay, so no luck ditching the pesky wallet at the Sûreté. Plus I couldn’t get near the Wallingford Estate that morning. Cars and pedestrians were being turned away from the driveway of the building. According to the two people I asked, the place was off-limits because they were shooting En feu!, and the previous day, they’d had problems with overzealous fans.
I tried to talk my way in anyway, but Harriet Crowder’s wallet wasn’t enough to get past security. Strike two, and it was barely noon. I arrived home to find an urgent message from Hélène asking me to come over at once. Tolstoy preferred to remain in his cool basement space, so I headed down the road solo.
She met me at the door. “But, Fiona, I do not understand why you didn’t tell me yourself that you were so worried about this little book.” Hélène Lamontagne looked down her elegantly restructured nose at me.
It wasn’t hard to figure out that she was offended. Not just because of the nose thing, there was also the tapping of the designer shoes. The foot reminded me of the high-heeled blonde who might be undermining both of us. “Because I... Who told you I was worried?”
“Oh, no one.”
“Josey, I suppose.” My first clue was the sight of Josey standing behind Hélène and looking remarkably innocent.
“Josée is just trying to help you.”
“It’s a bit embarrassing.”
“I can see that. You are already blushing.”
“Right. It’s the curse of my life.”
“But why are you embarrassed?”
“I don’t have the vaguest idea of where to begin. I’m reading these piles of cookbooks, and so far I have no idea where to start. Lola can really put on the pressure.”
“I am offering to help you. Sometimes, as Jean-Claude would say, you present quite a challenge.”
“Jean-Claude says that about me?”
“No, no. He says it about situations that present challenges. I would never discuss you with him.”
“For reasons that are obvious to both of us.”
“Malheureusement.”
Unhappily, for sure. “I’m not trying to present any kind of challenge, Hélène. I just really need the money, and I hate the idea of doing a book like this. It’s so not like me. But I have no choice. And I can’t really concentrate. I keep thinking about Marc-André and that accident I saw on Highway 5. The police think I am connected with it in some way. “
Hélène’s face clouded.
I continued. “Maybe that’s just an excuse. I know it’s a matter of getting my head around the fact that some foods are supposed to be sexy or even aphrodisiacs, then getting some recipes that use those foods and linking it all together with a bit of text.”
“That sounds all right, Fiona.”
“No, it’s really not all right. I have to get cracking before the municipality seizes my house or Hydro cuts off the power or my car conks out. Or I need to eat dinner.”
“Mais, voyons donc. You are my friend, and I will be happy to help you. I left some messages today, and I expect to hear from Rafaël and Marietta soon.”
“I appreciate that.”
“She also needs practice cooking,” Josey said, her head held high. “And she doesn’t have any equipment. Or ingredients yet. Plus she needs to, um, ease into the situation. Get her confidence up for when she’s talking to them.”
“I am standing right here while you two are discussing me. Maybe I’d be better off at home in the basement with Tolstoy.”
“Do you have a recipe that would fit in Miz Silk’s cookbook?”
“Oh là là.”
“Come on, Hélène. You’re a gourmet cook. You must have.”
Hélène shrugged modestly. “Well, I have always loved anything flambé.”
“Flambé?” I squeaked. “That sounds really complicated. Don’t you have anything that involves opening two cans?”
Hélène shuddered. “There’s no such thing as a flambé of canned mushroom soup and flaked tuna.”
“Huh. Maybe there should be,” Josey said.
Hélène merely said, “Des bananes!”
Josey’s eyes were like huge blue saucers. “You’re kidding, right?”
“No, I am not kidding, Josée. This is a very elegant dish.”
“But is it sexy?”
“Mais oui! Think of the symbolism.”
Don’t! I thought. Please just don’t.
“What symbolism?” Josey said.
“Never mind,” I said.
“It is very sexy when it is done right, in the proper atmosphere. I used to make these for Jean-Claude, on very very special romantic occasions.”
Josey said, “Ew.” I thought the same but managed to keep it to myself.
Luckily, Hélène missed Josey’s comment because she was checking through the zillion cupboards. I gave Josey a look that was supposed to mean, try to self-censor your comments given where we are.
“I have everything we need,” Hélène said. “Bananas, rum, macadamia nuts, brown sugar. Allons-y!”
This was exciting. I had never witnessed Hélène’s kitchen in use. It was more like something you’d see in a high-end photo shoot. There was the black granite countertops. Then there was the custom glaze finish on the cabinets, subtle and hand-done, a luscious grey-green that defied description. I couldn’t even imagine what that work would cost, or why you would spend that kind of money. It hadn’t occurred to me that Hélène actually prepared food in this dream room.
“What are macadamia nuts?” Josey said, seizing the moment.
“Think expensive,” I muttered.
Of course, Hélène had to give Josey a sample of macadamia nuts. Hélène is as kind as she is elegant. She makes up for the fact that Jean-Claude reacts to Josey like he found a scorpion in his shoe. Jean-Claude is the only person I’ve ever met who could take such a dislike to a young girl. Especially one like Josey, industrious, cheerful, loyal and honest in the things that really matter.
Perhaps that is why Hélène bends over backwards for her. She never refers to Josey’s impoverished background or criminal relatives. Packages appear for Josey from time to time. Clothing that Marie-Eve, the Lamontagne daughter, has outgrown. Food that might go to waste. Sporting gear. Even Josey’s now-rickety bicycle had come from Hélène at one time.
I’ve tried to get Josey to stop calling Jean-Claude “his lordship”, but she still automatically curls her lip when she spots him. But Hélène had said Jean-Claude was off at a shareholders meeting, so the mood was light.
Josey and Hélène got the ingredients assembled as I stood there, useless as a garden gnome. Still, it was fun to watch them, and possibly even educational.
“Can I do anything?” I said.
“Better not,” Josey said.
“I feel a bit guilty, since this is all to help me.”
“Oh là là. Just sit over there. Perhaps you can take notes.”
Taking notes sounded good to me. Hélène extracted a nonstick pan from a drawer that held dozens of pots and pans. She measured out the brown sugar into one designer measure and the rum into another. Josey poured the macadamia nuts into a third one.
“Voyons. What can we serve this in? Oh, I know!” Hélène selected four long-stemmed martini glasses from a glass-fronted cupboard. “This will be elegant.”
“Are you sure I can’t do something?” I said plaintively.
“We’re sure,” Josey said.
“Can you get two tablespoons of butter, Josée?”
Josey scrambled over to the French-door fridge and opened it. She picked out a pound of butter, unwrapped it and flipped two tablespoons into the non-stick pan. Absolutely nothing went wrong.
I sulked. I could have fetched the butter.
“Don’t look like that, Miz Silk,” Josey said. “You said yourself that cooking is not your best thing.”
“True, but I can’t believe the two of you don’t trust me to get the butter. I have to start small.”
Hélène glanced up. “Did you write everything down?”
I hesitated. I hadn’t, of course. “I’ll remember.”
She reeled off the few ingredients this recipe required. “You might not. What if you forgot the rum? It won’t flambé without that.”
Josey shook her head. If her expression was anything to go by, this flambé experience was a big hit with her. “Are we really putting it in those fancy glasses, Miz Lamontagne?”
“As soon as it’s ready. We have to flame it first.”
“Right.”
“And because this is supposed to be romantic, we will put it on a tray with something pretty.” She bent down and opened a drawer filled with table linens. She pulled out a piece of sheer, sparkly fabric.
“C’est beau,” she said, arranging the fabric on a black lacquered tray. She set the martini glasses amid the folds, pulling them here and there to make a pleasing backdrop. A trip across the room, and three crystal candle holders with votives were added to the tray.
“That’s neat,” Josey said. I imagined she was working out a plan for using that sort ofthing in THE THRING TO DO. Romantic desserts on request. “Do we put the glasses on that too?”
“And before that, we have to put the ice cream into the martini glasses. Here’s the ice cream scoop. I have wonderful French vanilla ice cream, and this scoop makes a nice shape.”
“I can do that,” Josey said, racing back to the refrigerator and opening the lower freezer.
“Hang on,” I said, “are you telling me that you two don’t trust me to carry a container of ice cream?”
“Take good notes!” Josey said. I did my best not to roll my eyes. She added, “Really good notes. I want to be able to do this again.”
I wrote down Get ice cream from freezer.
Even though Hélène trusted Josey to get the ice cream, she clearly thought that scooping appropriate scoops was a higher level job. I had to admit that Hélène did that as well as everything else she put her hand to. That is to say perfectly.
Josey lit the candles instead.
Hélène poured the rum over the bananas and swirled it around the pan. I was pretty sure I could have done that too. She took a barbecue lighter from a drawer and flicked it. Nothing happened. At last, something that Hélène didn’t get right the first time. Three more attempts and still nothing.
“Oh là là. They are supposed to be child-proof. What does that make me?”
“I’m really good at that, Miz Lamontagne! Let me.” Josey reached for the lighter and relieved Hélène of it. “There’s a trick to it. You hold it here and then you press this, and presto.”
“Et voilà!” Hélène said.
Josey leant forward to light the rum mixture. The sauce and bananas caught and flamed beautifully. “Wow!” she said. “This is cool!” She held the flaming pan in her hand.
“What the hell is going on here?”
I jumped from my perch at the sound of Jean-Claude’s booming voice. Josey leapt sideways. Her arm hit one of the martini glasses, which toppled the next one. That crashed into the third. I raced across the floor as I saw the domino effect about to happen. Splintered martini glasses one, two, three.
Hélène stood still, her eyes wide, her hand over her mouth.
Josey hung onto the handle of the pan with the still-flaming mixture.
As I sprinted toward the tray, the third glass hit the first candle and knocked it over. The candle tipped, in slow motion it seemed. The gauzy fabric ignited in a whoosh. Flames snaked across the granite counter. Others shot up, licking at the cupboard doors. One leapt and caught Josey’s sleeve. She yelped and dropped the pan. Sauce, bananas and flames rippled across the floor.
Hélène shrieked.
I grabbed a pair of decorative dish towels and smothered the flames on Josey’s sleeve. There were tears in her saucer-sized blue eyes. I slapped the towel at the rest of the flames, which were leaping up the cupboard surfaces. I shouted. “Where’s your fire extinguisher? And someone call 911.”
Jean-Claude reached under one of the many sinks and extracted an extinguisher. He sprayed foam on every surface in reach. Josey grabbed the phone and dialed 911, gasping out where we were and what was happening.
Hélène still stood, hands still on her mouth, burgundy nail polish stark against her ashen face.
Jean-Claude hadn’t lost his command of the situation. “What the hell are you doing? Trying to destroy my kitchen? Well, you are damn well not going to get away with it. Tabernac. ”
Hélène gasped. If you add up all the swear words in the English language, they might equal tabernac in shock value. But probably not.
I said. “We are trying to stop Josey from being burned alive.”
“Exactly,” Josey said. Her eyes were still a bit teary, which told me that the burn on her arm must hurt like hell.
“Well, you had no damn business being in my house in the first place.”
I reached deep into my small store of courage. “Get a grip. We were all having fun here, and an accident happened. I’m sorry about the damage. We’ll be leaving now. Josey should see a doctor.”
“You are not going anywhere until the police get here.”
“Wrong,” I said. “She needs medical attention fast.”
He sneered. “Let’s let the police decide who needs what.”
“But Miz Silk. Maybe we should have stayed. You heard his lordship. He’s going to press charges because we left the scene of the crime. What if he uses that against you to get your house?”
I gripped the steering wheel of the Skylark as we rocketed along Chemin des cèdres toward the village. “It’s all right, Josey. There was no crime. And you need medical help. Please don’t make any snippy remarks to Liz. We’re lucky she’s back in the office after her move.”
“What happened to your eyebrows?” Liz said as we bypassed the patients in her waiting room and hustled in. “You look—”
“Nothing. We’re here about Josey. You have to check her arm. Josey, climb up on the table please. I’ll help you,” I said. “It’s a bad burn. I thought about the emergency department at the St. Aubaine hospital, but I figured you’d be faster.”
“Hard to be slower. But seriously, Fiona. What happened to your eyebrows?”
“Miz Silk got singed putting out a fire. It was all my fault.”
Liz snorted. “Why does neither of those things surprise me in the slightest? You know what? There are easier ways of shaping your eyebrows.”
I bit my tongue. After all, we had jumped the queue in the office. “It was not her fault. It was an accident. No more arguments, Josey.”
Liz said, “I despair of both of you. Looks like she has second degree burns. That’s a lot better than third degree. Essentially, there’s not much we can do except to keep the wounds covered and apply antibacterial ointment to prevent infection. Fiona, you’ll have to watch out that it doesn’t get infected. If it does, then you get her in to me pronto for antibiotics. Josey, you listen to this. If you ignore the signs of infection, you can end up needing IV antibiotics, probably in the emergency department. The same goes for you, Fiona. I’ll give you antibacterial ointment too. Use it and watch for infection. Keep your hair off your forehead.”
Josey said, “We’ll watch out for each other. Thanks, Dr. Prentiss.”
Liz loaded us up with antibiotic cream samples. “Stay out of trouble. Just this once,” she said as we left.
The impatient patients in the waiting room probably got a thrill when they saw the local cops show up looking for the two people who had elbowed their way ahead of them. I heard one woman mutter something that translated roughly into “pushy English people getting what they deserve.”
Sgt. Sarrazin regarded us with a frown. “Are you really that surprised to see me, madame?”
I was, actually. In fact, the whole day so far seemed like a weird variation on Groundhog Day in that Josey, Sarrazin, Liz and Hélène just kept turning up and nothing ever got any better.
Josey said. “We’ve been expecting you. It’s just that Miz Silk’s eyebrows got a bit singed.”
“Josey has a bad burn,” I said. “Anyone else but Jean-Claude would have driven her for medical help rather than calling you.”
“That explains it,” he said, whipping out his little white notebook.
“It was an accident,” I said.
“My fault,” Josey said.
“Let’s start at the beginning. Is there a place here we can talk?”
Liz had stuck her head out the door to see what the discussion was about. She said, “Not here, there isn’t. Not enough chairs for the walking wounded as it is.”
I shot Liz a look. “I don’t think Josey’s in any shape to go to the Sûreté. Anyway, she hasn’t done anything. I can go with you.”
“Neither of you has to go to the Sûreté,” Sarrazin said. “I just need to ask you some questions about the fire.”
Josey leaned over and whispered. “They always say things like that, Miz Silk. Then when they get you behind bars, watch out.”
Sarrazin sighed. “Now that the secret’s out, I guess I won’t get to work you both over with my rubber hose.”
Josey raised her chin. “I want my lawyer.”
“Get lawyered up if you want. Or just tell me what happened.” He glanced at Liz scowling in the doorway. She was probably his doctor too, so maybe that was a factor in his decision. “We can go to the Chez.”
“We’re broke,” Josey said.
“The Chez will be great,” I said at the same time.
“I’ll try to minimize the brutality,” Sarrazin countered. “I’ll even buy the fries.”
“How about poutine? Miz Silk really likes poutine.”
“Don’t push your luck.”
As the door swung closed behind us, I pictured everyone in the waiting room yanking out cell phones to spread the latest news.
The Chez was great, if you didn’t mind having two dozen witnesses to your police grilling. Lucette, everyone’s favourite server, zoomed right in. Sarrazin ordered three large fries and three Pepsis, without consultation. It’s hard for a normal person to polish off the towering plates that they serve at the Chez. But Tolstoy adores fries, so I’d be popular when I finally crawled home and enticed him out of the basement with the leftovers.
“Make mine with gravy,” Josey called after Lucette.
“Let’s talk about the fire,” Sarrazin said.
“It is why we’re here. We’re only here because you both are obviously injured. So let’s get started. I am puzzled about why you would be at the Lamontagne residence. Everyone knows that you and Jean-Claude don’t get along.”
“Hélène is my friend. I don’t have to get along with Jean-Claude. Usually, I avoid him.”
“It was the cookbook. Miz Silk has to write one because of her taxes, and it has to be,” she glanced at Sarrazin, “romantic. Otherwise Jean-Claude will get his filthy mitts on her house.”
“I’ve already explained about the cookbook, Josey,” I said, not wishing to discuss it in detail with Sarrazin.
He rumbled, “And I’m not sure how it connects to the fire at the Lamontagnes’ house.”
“Miz Lamontagne was showing how to make a flambé. I guess his lordship likes them. We were testing it in her kitchen, because Miz Silk’s stove isn’t working too good. It’s completely my fault,” Josey said.
I interrupted. “It’s no one’s fault. It was an accident. If you had to blame it on a person, it would be Jean-Claude himself. Hélène and Josey were just flaming the rum when he showed up without warning and started shouting. A candle was knocked over. The decorative fabric just ignited. Whoosh! A tower of fire.”
Josey said, “In the future, we might want to change how we make that recipe.”
Sarrazin rubbed his forehead. “M. Jean-Claude Lamontagne seems to believe there was malice aforethought.”
“Malice aforethought?” Josey snapped. “What exactly did his lordship say happened?”
“He implied it was done deliberately to damage his recently upgraded kitchen.”
“Deliberately?” I squeaked.
“He claims the damage is over fifty thousand dollars.”
Josey inhaled. “That’s crazy. Jeez, it was just a small fire. He put it out with the extinguisher.”
When I caught my breath, I said, “And it can’t possibly be that amount. They’re cupboards, not the Sistine Chapel.”
“What did Miz Lamontagne say about it?”
“Not much. She was very quiet. I think she might have been in shock about the whole thing.”
Josey narrowed her eyes. “I bet she’s afraid of him. Everyone else in town is. He’s a real bully.”
“Is that a fact?”
“For sure. And somebody in the tax office must be working with him, because why else are they trying to take Miz Silk’s house for unpaid taxes?
One inch-thick eyebrow rose. “That’s interesting too,” Sarrazin said.
I said, “Jean-Claude does want my property for the new development, but I don’t think he’d actually....” On the other hand, maybe I did. “Josey listened to Jean-Claude accuse us of something that simply wasn’t true at all. She’s had a bad fright, and these burns really hurt. And then the police show up.”
He said, “Yeah, and buy her fries and soft drinks. Make sure you add that to the list of brutal tactics.”
“It’s just unfair. We’re not criminals.”
Sarrazin cleared his throat. “Back to what happened in the kitchen. Lamontagne says at the very least it was careless and negligent use of fire.”
I shrugged. I might have caught it from him. “You can choose to believe me, or you can choose to believe Jean-Claude.” I shot Josey a look intended to stifle a snort.
He said, “You know what I think? I think we’d be laughed out of court if we tried to prosecute you for this.”
I felt a wave of relief. “And that’s the end of it?”
Sarrazin picked up a fry. “The end of it, as far as I’m concerned. But you might want to keep your eye on—”
Josey narrowed her eyes. “His lordship, right?”
Sarrazin said. “I’d be asking myself why a man who could have a perfectly good insurance claim for an accidental kitchen fire would make such a big deal over it and jeopardize his insurance claim by accusing you of deliberately damaging his home.”
I stared at him. “Could he come after me in court? That’s just ducky. I can’t afford to fight him on this.”
Sarrazin gave one of us famous shrugs. “If I were you, madame, I’d be careful.”
I was feeling vague and distressed. The best antidote for that is to take my dog for an amble. I waited until just before sunset. I brought along Aunt Kit’s walking stick for fun, and we moseyed from the house through the woods to the water’s edge. You could just see the water from the cottage. Since it was built in the 1930s, the trees have grown and blocked some of the view. That’s okay with me. I love the walk to the shoreline. I never fail to be astounded at the power of the river to move me. If I could see it from my window, I’d never get anything done.
The shore is rocky. It’s also shallow enough to dip your feet in. That suited me too, after a long and sticky day. I was wearing my waterproof sport sandals. Tolstoy keeps his distance from water, but there was plenty to interest him in the woods.
The last of the evening sun glittered off the little waves. The river is wide and powerful at this curve, flanked by green hills. Just the occasional rooftop can be seen peeking through the cedars or maples on both sides of the bank. It’s pretty much unchanged since the days when logging fueled the local economy. You can almost feel the brawling spirit of the French and Irish loggers who settled the area.
For me, every tree had a memory attached to it. There was the maple where Liz and I had our first tiff. Liz had stomped off in a snit and smacked her head on an oak branch, knocking herself out. I still felt a bit of guilt about that. She was not above bringing up the subject when she wanted something. Then there was the cedar where I used to smooch with Phil, just out of Aunt Kit’s sight.
We’d spent our prom night on that beach, with bare feet in the water, drinking Blue out of the bottle and discovering that cigarettes were not really for us. Liz’s boyfriend from that time was long gone, and eventually Philip would be too. But Liz and I still had a lifetime attached to that shoreline. We’d had our issues from time to time, but they always passed. I shivered at the thought of giant homes hunkered on treeless lawns that stretched to the shore, where huge docks would jut into the river.
I turned as a branch cracked behind me. Josey emerged. Tolstoy bounded toward her, tail waving with joy.
“Oh, boy, Miz Silk. You can’t let his lordship take this away from you.”
I nodded, a lump in my throat.
“This is where I first met you. Remember?”
“Who could forget?”
Josey had been selling lemonade during a heat wave. Or maybe it was selling lawn mowing services. Or possibly dog walking. Whatever it was, it hadn’t taken her long to become part of our lives.
Tolstoy leaned forward to get his ears scratched.
“How can he do it, Miz Silk? It will ruin this whole stretch of the river. Doesn’t he value anything?”
He values money, I thought. And power. And making people bend to his will. “I don’t know.”
“There must be some way to stop him.”
“I’m sure there is a way, Josey,” I said, staring out over the glittering water, “but I don’t know what it is.”
“Yet,” she said.
I spotted the quiver in her lower lip and averted my eyes. Josey is nothing if not proud.
“Yet,” I echoed.