Coldwater Revenge by James Ross (e novels to read online TXT) 📗

“Billy tried to make trouble for him too,” Bonnefesse added.

“How?”

“Not trouble, I think. Pranks. Phone calls. Billy could get very excited.”

“Did he ever mention a Dr. Hassad or a U-Labs?”

Bonnefesse hesitated. Tom watched his eyes move up and to the right. “I don’t think so.”

“Did he hang out with … for want of a better word, foreigners?”

“Quebecois?”

“People from parts of the world where Americans are unpopular.”

“That is everywhere, no?” Bonnefesse shook his head sadly, his voice almost weary. “Billy told me once of a friend he had when he was a boy. A foreigner, as you say. The friend was older than Billy, and really just after the sister. When Billy understood he was just le barbe, he was very hurt. ‘The beard’, is that English?”

“Sort of.”

“Billy distrusted dark people after that. It limited his social life, I told him frankly.”

Tom took a deep breath. He felt like he was thumbing a skinny phone book with no idea what to do once he got past the Z’s. “How about Joe Morgan?”

“Ba, ba, ba, boom!” Bonnefesse did a drum roll on the top of the wooden table. Tom held onto his latte. “Le Super Trooper!!”

“Right. Did Billy try to make trouble for him, too?”

“Never! Billy thought he was very handsome.”

Tom lifted the paper cup to his lips. The liquid was cold. In the absence of an inspiring alternative, he decided to opt for candor. “You’re going to have to help me here, Gérard. I don’t know if you know anything useful. But is this name dropping giving you any ideas?”

Bonnefesse spread his hands.

“Let me ask you this, then. If I said there was a reason why you brought me here… why you simply didn’t tell me you knew nothing and end our conversation there in your shop. What would you say?”

“That I thought you might be interesting?”

“A reason related to Billy. I’m guessing here. But I’m asking you to guess, too. What do you know about Billy, that you really want to tell somebody? That you think somebody should know. Tell me.”

Bonnefesse looked away and then nodded. “He was happy.”

“Happy?”

“Yes. In the last few months Billy was very happy. I had never seen him such. Almost as if he were in love.”

“Go on.”

“I was jealous.”

“Did you ask him about it?”

“Of course!”

“And what did he say?”

“Lies, I think.”

“What did he say, exactly?”

“He said that he was going to make a lot of money, soon. And that he was going to make everyone who was ever hurtful to him suffer badly.”

“When did he say this?”

“A month passing.”

“Did he give details?”

“No. But he was truly excited. I was happy for him. I thought maybe he had made peace with the sister.”

“That might have gotten him money. But what about the revenge part?”

“Just talk, I think. Or maybe he was going to make sport with the priest again.”

“Father Gauss?”

“Yes, I think. Billy called him the Father Gas. He said he had pictures, but I didn’t believe him. He would have showed them to me.”

“So you think this was about Billy and his sister? Or maybe Father Gauss?”

“No. Now that I tell you this, I can see it was something else. But I don’t know what.”

Tom could feel his focus begin to fragment as it did lately whenever the subject turned however obliquely to Susan.

“You are thinking of something?” asked Bonnefesse.

“About happiness. It’s a recurring theme lately.”

“I don’t think now that Billy found it. Excitement yes. But the happiness is not so loud.”

“What do you mean?”

Bonnefesse bubbled his cheeks and raised his brows in a Gallic mime. “Happiness is quiet, you know? Friends. A little shop that fills a need. Enough money, but not too much.”

Tom made a mental note to add the sex shop owner’s idea of happiness to his thickening recipe book. “Maybe if I can find what Billy was so excited about, it might lead to his killer.”

Bonnefesse’s expression was distant, but his voice was serious. “Be careful, Monsieur. Whoever killed Billy is a vicious person. No one should die like that. Not even a little prick like Billy.”

* * *

It was time to head home. Tom retrieved the rental car, suppressing an impulse to thank the window mannequin for guarding it so vigilantly, and began to weave through streets sclerotic with Friday night traffic. Near the Champs-de-Mars he pulled next to a fire hydrant and tried Gauss’ number again.

“Couvent de San Gabriel.”

“Père Gauss, s’il vous plait.”

“Attendez.”

There was a click on the line, a long wait, and then a voice in English demanded briskly, “May I help you?”

“Hi. This is Tom Morgan. Father Gauss asked me to call.”

Silence.

“Hello?”

More silence. Then, “How do you have this number?”

“Father Gauss gave it to me.”

More silence. He had the impression that he was listening to a hand palming the mouth of the receiver. Then, “I don’t understand how that could be.”

“The machine in the room I was switched to earlier today has Father Gauss’ voice on it. The body that goes with it should be there somewhere.”

More silence. Then a dial tone.

CHAPTER 20

Couvent de San Gabriel—Betty Ford North to those in the Chancery who had occasion to call upon its services—had a reputation for austerity and discretion. But the order of nuns that ran it sometimes neglected to follow Chancery guidance on the treatment of cases sent there. Monsignor Marchetti had been dispatched to make clear what was required in the matter of Father Gauss.

Marchetti felt cold in the spare, under-heated space that was the facility’s administrative office. Sixty was still a few years away, but days and places like this seemed to age both body and soul. Sœur Dion might have been as young as forty or half as old again. Marchetti couldn’t tell. The nuns of San Gabriel clung to the traditional black habit, making estimates of age, and sometimes gender, difficult. He tried not to overestimate her level of experience with men like Gauss.

“He’s like an old union boss,” Marchetti explained, “or a tenured teacher who can’t