Of Merlot & Murder (A Tangled Vines Mystery) Page 8

  Elise laughed out loud at her friend’s antics. “And did you see the look on her face when you mentioned the bit about having an alibi? I thought she was gonna pop a vein. That was a stroke of genius.”

  “Yeah. I got the feeling that perhaps Mr. and Mrs. Toussaint weren’t enjoying each other’s company on Friday night. I also think she had more on her mind than her husband off brooding somewhere when she hurried away to find him.”

  “And if they weren’t together, it will be interesting to find out where they were and what they were doing.”

  C.C. nodded. “Perhaps one of them was drinking wine with the late Mrs. Larson?”

  “Could be, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”

  “Do you think Alain would lie for her? I mean, if neither of them has an alibi?”

  Elise pursed her lips in thought. “I don’t know. He seemed pretty pissed off, but then again, she is his wife. And to give himself an alibi I think it would be a necessary evil—something he would do whether he liked it or not.”

  “Oh, to be a fly on the wall when that conversation takes place.”

  “But if they weren’t together and they try to say they were … well … there’s always someone watching. Somebody will have seen something. We just have to find that somebody.”

  C.C. paused and narrowed her eyes in Elise’s direction. “Are you going to tell Jackson about this?”

  Elise nodded, and then heaved a sigh. “I’ll have to be careful about it, though. He’s so touchy about his investigations, especially after the fiasco with Uncle Edmond’s murder inquiry.”

  “Well, yeah. That and you almost getting yourself killed over the whole thing. Our Jackson didn’t take too kindly to that, either.”

  “I know, I know. But this is different. I’m just asking a few questions here and there, and it’s all to make sure Gram is in the clear.”

  “Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t that how your uncle’s deal started out? Just asking a few questions? Then it was just checking out his house?”

  “Geez, C.C., whose side are you on?” Elise asked with a frown.

  “I’m always on your side, girlfriend. I’m just saying that you need to watch your back.”

  “Okay, okay,” Elise relented. “But it’s not just me snooping around this time, you know. There are four of us in this little sleuthing club. Remember?”

  “Absolutely.” C.C. nodded vigorously. “So, where do we go from here? And how do we get the dirt on the Toussaints?”

  “I don’t know. I guess we’ll just have to keep our eyes and ears open. Now, let’s look at the rest of the list.”

  The two women huddled over Elise’s note pad for a moment before C.C. spotted her first problem. “Hey! What’s Grace’s name doing on here? She wouldn’t hurt a fly. And she already said she didn’t even know the Larsons.”

  Elise laid down her pen and faced her friend. “All right, now I realize that Grace is a friend and that she said she didn’t know the Larsons, but come on, C.C. Did you see the look on her face when Divia’s name was mentioned on Thursday afternoon?”

  “She explained that, Elise.”

  “Yes, she said that Divia was an unusual name, and it is. But her look of recognition is why I asked her about it in the first place. I’m sorry, but her answer didn’t quite cover it for me. And,” Elise said, putting up a forefinger when her friend started to argue, “Toby Raymond had the same reaction to Grace’s name Friday when Jackson and I ran into him and Maddy at The Plough’s booth. And I have to say, his response was much stronger. The man turned positively white.”

  “Did he say why?”

  “No. He blamed it on the heat. But if you’d have seen his face, C.C., trust me when I say that it had nothing to do with the weather and everything to do with name recognition. The question isn’t if they know each other, but how.”

  “Well, you’ll never convince me that Grace had anything to do with Divia’s death. She’s not that kind of person.”

  Elise didn’t reply, but she knew from personal experience that the last person you expected could surprise you in the most hideous fashion in the blink of an eye. In any event, she thought it best to let it go, and the two spent the next thirty minutes concentrating on the other names on the list.

  “Hey, you two.”

  Looking up, they watched Madison make her way around Third Coast’s long line to River Bend’s booth. “Geez, Divia’s death has sure beefed up sales at Third Coast’s booth.”

  “I know. It’s crazy,” Elise said. “Where’ve you been? And where’s Ross? C.C. and I would like a break. It’s been pretty slow and I’m starting to get hungry. Plus, we have some snooping to do.”

  “That’s exactly what I’ve been doing. You’ll never guess what I just witnessed.”

  C.C. went on high alert. “Yeah? What? Something juicy?”

  Madison gave them both a sly smile. “Judge for yourself. I just saw Monique Toussaint and Alain’s brother Philippe having a heated rendezvous behind one of the public buildings. And even better, I heard quite a bit of the conversation—and it wasn’t pretty.”

  eight

  “Well, for crying out loud. Spit it out! Don’t leave us hanging,” Elise said as she and C.C. leaned in to hear the details of Madison’s news.

  “Yeah,” C.C. added. “What were Monique and Philippe talking about?”

  “Did it have to do with Divia’s death?” Elise asked.

  “And what do you mean by heated?” C.C. questioned further.

  “Probably some kind of argument,” Elise said turning toward her friend.

  Frowning, Madison put up her hands, seeking to gain their attention. “Whoa, if you’d both shut up for a minute and let me get a word in, I’ll explain. Geez!”

  “Sorry, we got carried away,” Elise said with a grin. “Go ahead. Tell us.”

  Her sister gave her a dirty look but relented and began her tale. “Okay, so I’m down on Restaurant Row getting coffee about twenty minutes ago when I look up and see Monique coming around the corner. She has this really intense look on her face. You know, like she’s looking for something or someone.”

  Elise smiled to herself as she watched Madison unconsciously acting out the story she was telling them.

  “Then she stops and waves toward the other end of the midway and calls Philippe’s name. I look the other way and see him hurrying toward her. So they meet and have this brief conversation that I couldn’t hear, and then they disappear between the booths in the direction of building D, which I thought looked really suspicious—”

  “Wait,” C.C. said, interrupting Madison’s storytelling frenzy. “I thought you said you heard what they were saying?”

  A slow smile spread across Madison’s face. “I did—when I followed them back behind the building.”

  “Ohmygosh, Maddy!” C.C. exclaimed. “Did they see you?”

  Madison rolled her eyes. “Please. Give me some credit, wouldja? I can be very stealthy when I want to be.”

  Elise laughed out loud and nudged C.C. “I can attest to that. More like sneaky, if you ask me.”

  Madison folded her arms and gave Elise a stubborn glare. “Do you want to hear the rest of this or not?”

  Still chuckling, Elise gave her sister a go-ahead gesture with a sweep of her hand. “By all means, proceed, oh stealthy one.”

  Her sister made a face, but continued with her story. “Anyway, I followed them at a discreet distance and watched as they headed around the corner of the building. When I got to the corner myself, I took a quick peek and saw them disappear behind a copse of mesquite and cedar shrubs. Since it provided a fairly good screen, I snuck up as close as I could get.”

  “Wow. Look at you, little secret agent girl,” C.C. commented, giggling. “I think I hear the producers of the next Bond movie calling your name.”

>   “Laugh it up all you want, my friend, but I got results,” Madison insisted. “They couldn’t have moved much farther away because I could hear their conversation pretty clearly.”

  “Okay, but what was the conversation about?” Elise asked eagerly.

  “Impatient much?” Madison replied with a smirk.

  “Maddy!”

  “All right, all right, keep your panties on. So, while I stood there on the other side of the makeshift screen, the two of them started to argue about Friday night and alibis. Well, it wasn’t so much arguing, I guess. It sounded more like a frantic scramble to get their stories straight.”

  “I knew it!” Elise shouted and pointed a finger in C.C.’s direction. “Didn’t I say Monique would be looking for a plausible alibi for the time of Divia’s death? She’s trying to get ahead of the game for when she’s questioned.”

  C.C. nodded and replayed their earlier conversation with the French woman for Madison. “It seemed like a pretty good bet from her expressions and attitude that she and Alain weren’t together Friday night. Instead of catching up with Alain like she said she was going to, she must have high-tailed it to Restaurant Row to find Philippe.”

  “Their conversation makes perfect sense now. I thought at the time that it seemed like something had happened to get Monique really fired up, but didn’t know what. From the sound of things, Philippe was mostly wringing his hands during the whole thing and trying to calm her down.”

  Elise turned to her sister. “What exactly was said? Did you hear where they were Friday night?”

  “Did they say anything incriminating?” C.C. asked.

  Madison shook her head. “No, they didn’t say anything about Friday night, but Monique said that they ‘were in trouble’, and if Alain ‘found out’ he wouldn’t be inclined to cover for her. To which Philippe assured her that no one, least of all Alain, had any proof of what they’d done, so she needn’t be too worried.”

  “Ah-ha!” Elise turned and gave C.C. a high-five. “What did I tell you? That sounds suspicious for sure. Did they give any details? Did you get an idea of what she meant or if it was connected to Divia’s death?”

  “Unfortunately, no,” Madison replied.

  “Crap,” C.C. said with disappointment. “I guess it was wishful thinking to have expected them to out-and-out confess. It couldn’t be that easy.”

  “They actually never mentioned Divia’s name at all, but Philippe alluded to her when he said that Monique had been ‘unwise’ to engage ‘the Larson bitch’ the way she had—that it would only come back to bite them in the end.”

  Elise laughed. “And how did Monique react to that?”

  “She sure as heck didn’t like it, I can tell you,” Madison said with a shake of her head. “She doesn’t seem to take criticism very well. Anyway, he spent the next few minutes backpedaling and trying to make amends. ‘I’m sorry, cheri. I’m just trying to be the voice of reason, ma petite.’” She giggled. “It was pretty pathetic the way he became this simpering doormat for her rampage.”

  “Though it’s not a clear confession, it could definitely be what they were talking about,” C.C. said. “It sounds pretty incriminating.”

  “What does?” Ross asked as he came up to the booth to stand next to Madison.

  The three women spent the next fifteen minutes filling him in on the morning’s events to bring him up to speed.

  “Okay, I’ll admit it does sound like Monique and her brother-in-law were up to something shady,” he said when they wound down. “But to be honest, it seems more like a lovers’ spat to me.”

  “What?” C.C. asked in a doubtful tone.

  “Well, think about what was actually said,” Ross continued. “If Alain ‘found out’? ‘No one, least of all Alain, had proof of what they’d done’? They could easily be talking about an affair.”

  “Man, that would take some stones to give your husband and his married lover grief while you were doing the horizontal mambo with his brother,” C.C. replied with a sour look on her face.

  “Be that as it may, and I hate to say it, but Ross is right. Their conversation doesn’t really connect them to Divia’s death in any way, at least not from what Maddy heard.”

  “Well, Philippe did say something else that was promising,” Madison said. “He said he’d kept her secrets and protected her up to this point, and that he’d do whatever it took to make sure the truth wasn’t revealed.”

  “Wow. That’s a little more like it, but until we know for sure what they were up to, we keep digging. We also have more suspects on the list to check out.”

  Ross leaned down onto his elbows on the booth counter. “Look, I don’t want to be the wet blanket on this whole down-low investigation, little sister. But we have to remember that we don’t know for sure Divia’s death was foul play.”

  Elise gaped at her brother. “She died of cyanide poisoning, Ross. How can that not be foul play?”

  “Ah, ah, ah,” he said, shaking his finger at her. “We don’t know yet how she died, El. We don’t even know for certain that cyanide was present. So far, it’s all just guesswork.”

  He put up a hand as she was about to let him have it. “And before you take my head off, yes, it does look like that’s what happened. And even though Jax has his suspicions, I will remind you of what he’s always so fond of saying. Follow the evidence. Until he gets the confirmation back from Austin, we can’t take anything for granted.”

  Elise heaved a sigh and really wanted to give him a hard shake, but she reminded herself that he was just stating facts and so decided not to hurt him. “True,” she finally said with reluctance. “But I want to make sure Gram is in the clear when the reports come back, just in case.”

  “Hey, I’m with you on that,” he replied with a nod. “But even if those reports come back listing cyanide as the cause of death, it still doesn’t mean someone actually killed Divia.”

  “What are you saying?” Elise laughed. “She accidentally poisoned herself with cyanide? That seems a bit much, don’t you think?”

  “Not accidental. Don’t be stupid,” he replied with a frown. “I’m saying she could have taken her own life.”

  Madison spoke up with annoyance then, surprising everyone. “Oh, come on, Ross. Don’t you be stupid. Divia Larson would never have taken her own life in a million years, and you know it.”

  “I agree,” Elise said. “Not a chance in hell.”

  “And I would normally agree, as well,” Ross nodded. “But there are the text messages and the phone call to Gram to think about.”

  “What about them?” Madison asked.

  “Well, Divia wanted to talk to someone urgently about something she couldn’t or wouldn’t discuss with Garrett or Toby. Gram told me she sounded pretty upset.” He shrugged. “Maybe she’d done something that she couldn’t get past, something she saw no way out of.”

  “And you think she would just give up and commit suicide?” Elise scoffed. “I don’t buy it in the least.”

  “I think she was way too vain and too much in love with herself to do something like that, no matter what she’d done or how bad she thought things would get,” Madison added. “Suicide is a desperate way out, and although Divia was many things, she definitely wasn’t the desperate type.”

  “Yeah,” Elise chimed in. “Our Divia was no coward. She wouldn’t have chosen suicide over manipulating her way around whatever problem she was having.”

  Ross stood and put up his hands in surrender. “Look, all I’m saying is let’s keep our focus on the objective here and not get ahead of the evidence, okay? This was supposed to be just us keeping our eyes and ears open, maybe making some discreet inquiries. Let’s not forget the fiasco of Uncle Edmond’s murder and how snooping around almost got you killed, El. That’s something I don’t want to ever live through again.”

  Elise looked at
C.C. She didn’t need to hear what her friend was thinking because it was written all over her face. She’d voiced the same basic sentiment earlier.

  Reaching over, Elise took Ross’s hand. “Trust me when I say that I have no desire to live through anything like that again, either. So your point is well taken. We’ll keep our focus on just finding out where everyone on the list was Friday night and leave the rest of it up to Jax, okay?”

  He nodded reluctantly. “Okay. So, who else is on your list?”

  Elise picked up her pad and read off the names. “Monique, Alain, and Philippe, Toby Raymond, Grace Vanderhouse, and Garrett Larson. Of course, there could be others we don’t know about yet, but those are the most obvious suspects.”

  “Again, I still don’t understand why you think Grace should be on that list,” C.C. said with a pout. “She is the sweetest thing, and I’m telling you that she doesn’t have it in her to kill anyone. Besides, she was in Austin on Friday night, remember? She was supposed to have dinner with us and had to cancel because something came up with the restaurant.”

  “Then find out for sure that’s where she was and we’ll take her off the list,” Ross said. “Simple enough, right?”

  C.C. grumbled a bit, but let it go just as Madison piped up about Toby Raymond.

  “And why would you put Toby on the list? Or Garrett, for that matter? Toby was at dinner with us when Gram called. And Garrett was in Austin. Don’t you think that lets them off the hook?”

  Elise was grateful she didn’t have to respond when Ross spoke up and took the heat off of her.

  “Maddy, I’m sorry, but Toby came late to the restaurant, remember? He arrived just before Jax got Gram’s call. And as for Garrett, we don’t know for sure where he was. I’m sure Jax will check out his story and clear him if he can. But again, as we found out with Uncle Edmond’s homicide investigation, they always look hard at immediate family first.”

  Elise’s heart went out to her sister. It was obvious Madison was having a hard time with the notion that Toby was still a suspect. And she suddenly became aware that Madison had gotten much closer with him than anyone had understood.