And he saw clearly that he’d made a mistake.
Walking back to the flower bed he called Beauvoir and Lacoste, who quickly joined him.
From his pocket he again brought out the one dollar coin. Then he tossed it into the air and watched as it fell to the freshly turned soil, sat briefly on top of a chunk of dirt, then slipped off to be buried by earth that crumbled in after it.
“My God, it did bury itself,” said Lacoste. “Is that what happened?”
“I think so,” said the Chief, watching as Lacoste picked the coin back up and handed it to him. “When I first tried it I was kneeling down, close to the dirt. But if it fell during the murder it would have dropped from a standing position. Higher up. With greater force. I think when the murderer grasped her neck her arms shot out, almost a spasm, and the coin was flung away from her body. It would have hit with enough impact to dislodge the loose earth.”
“That’s how it got buried and how we missed it,” said Agent Lacoste.
But Beauvoir suspected the Chief was also thinking something else. That Beauvoir had fucked up. He should have seen the coin and not have it found by four crazy women worshiping a stick. That wasn’t going to sound good in court, for any of them.
* * *
The women had left, the Surete officers had left. Everyone had left and now Peter and Clara were finally alone.
Peter took Clara in his arms and hugging her tight he whispered, “I’ve been waiting all day to do this. I heard about the reviews. They’re fantastic. Congratulations.”
“They are good, aren’t they,” said Clara. “Yipppeee. Can you believe it?”
“Are you kidding?” asked Peter, breaking from the embrace and striding across the kitchen. “I had no doubt.”
“Oh, come on,” laughed Clara, “you don’t even like my work.”
“I do.”
“And what do you like about them?” she teased.
“Well, they’re pretty. And you covered up most of the numbers with the paint.” He’d been poking in the fridge and now he turned around, a bottle of champagne in his hand.
“My father gave this to me on my twenty-first birthday. He told me to open it when I’d had a huge personal success. To toast myself.” He unwrapped the foil around the cork. “I put it in the fridge yesterday before we left, so we could toast you.”
“No wait, Peter,” said Clara. “We should save that.”
“What? For my own solo show? We both know that won’t happen.”
“But it will. If it happened for me, it—”
“—can happen for anyone?”
“You know what I mean. I really think we should wait—”
The cork popped.
“Too late,” said Peter with a huge smile. “We had a call while you were out.”
He carefully poured their glasses.
“From who?”
“Andre Castonguay.” He handed her a glass. Time enough later to tell her about all the other calls.
“Really? What did he want?”
“Wanted to talk to you. To us. To both of us.
He tipped his glass and clinked hers. “And congratulations.”
“Thank you. Do you want to meet with him?”
Clara’s glass hung in the air, not quite touching her lips. Her nose felt the giddy popping of the champagne bubbles. Finally released. Like her, they’d waited years and years, decades, for this moment.
“Only if you do,” said Peter.
“Can we wait? Let all of this settle down a bit?”
“Whatever you’d like.”
But she could hear the disappointment in his voice.
“If you feel strongly, Peter, we can meet with him. Why don’t we? I mean, he’s right here now. Might as well.”
“No, no, that’s OK.” He smiled at her. “If he’s serious he’ll wait. Honestly, Clara, this is your time to shine. And neither Lillian’s death nor Andre Castonguay can take that away.”
More bubbles popped, and Clara wondered if they were popping on their own or had been pricked by tiny, almost invisible needles like the one Peter had just used. Reminding her, even as they toasted her success, of the
