Fleur De Lies(103)
“Tell me what you’ve heard, and I’ll tell you if I know.”
“Victor might not be who he says he is on account of no one can find no information on him ’til a few years after World War II.”
My mouth fell open. “Whotoldyouthat?” I leaned over the table, my words running into each other. “WasitJackie? Shewassupposedtokeepitquiet. Ican’tbelievethis!”
“I run into Bernice in the corridor. She knew a lot of stuff that wasn’t on the leaflet.”
“How did she find out? I was assured that no one knew about Victor’s identity problem other than Rob and Jackie.” I bobbed my head. “And Woody. And Cal. And me.”
“She was in a rush to get to the lounge to reserve a seat for this afternoon’s watercolor lesson, so she didn’t have no time to waste on a long chat. It was more like a hit and run.”
“Never ask Jackie Thum to keep a secret,” I warned, “unless you’re okay with it showing up on CNN as breaking news.”
“Bernice got it right then?” asked Nana.
I heaved a sigh. “According to what Rob reported to Jackie, yes, Victor’s origins before 1950 seem to be in question.”
Nana gave me a blank look. “So what’s all the fuss about?”
I frowned. “You don’t find that troubling?”
“Nope.”
“Why not?”
“Because he’s even older than I am, and folks back then did things different. There weren’t no records in duplicate or triplicate. If the court buildin’ or the local church burned, a fella might have a heck of a time provin’ he was ever born. Stuff got misfiled. Clerks mighta had bad handwritin’, so names got copied wrong and accidentally changed. And don’t get me started on what happened to them folks what come through Ellis Island. Their names don’t look nuthin’ like the names they started out with before they crossed the ocean.”
“So you think the French police have come up empty because of a filing error?”
“There wasn’t hardly no government buildin’s left standin’ in Europe after the war, Emily, so the last people in the world what should be surprised by gaps in a fella’s personal records are the French police.”
“Did Bernice tell you that Victor has actually been arrested for murder?”
“Yup.”
“Does it make sense to you that Victor would kill the woman who was probably the top sales rep in his company?”
“Nope.”
“So can you understand why the police would want to delve into his background to look for clues that might explain why he might have wanted to kill the goose that laid the golden egg?”
“Bernice told me the only evidence them police officers got against Victor is that he had a big honkin’ bottle of them blood-thinner pills in his cabin.”
“Right. Enough to take out a whole host of people.”
“Well, I got a little story for you. Your grampa spent so much time sittin’ on his duff ice fishin’ one year, he got a big ole clot in his leg, and what they give him to dissolve it was a blood thinner. Called it Warfarin. It come in a big bottle, filled to the brim, on account of the dosage changed from week to week accordin’ to how much was in his bloodstream. So some weeks he took two or three tablets every day, and other weeks he took only one. But they didn’t want him to run out, so that’s why they give him so much. So if Victor was like your grampa, the only reason he mighta had so dang many pills in his bottle was simply because his doctor mighta wanted to make sure he had enough.”