“We did.”
“Break much?”
“I arranged to have it packed by a reputable professional moving company,” I said. “In the unlikely event that they break anything, their fee includes insurance. I came to ask what to do with it all.”
She stared back, uncomprehending.
“Do you have a truck into which they should load your stuff?” I spoke as slowly and distinctly as I could. “Or would you like for me to arrange to have it all delivered to your farm?”
“Who cares?” she said. “Not the truck. No one to drive it. Send it all. Whatever.”
It took forever, but I got her signature on the paperwork from the Shiffley Moving Company, and then on a very large check. The waiter was nowhere to be found, which was probably just as well. I suspected another whiskey would send Genette into oblivion, and I was grateful to the waiter for postponing his arrival until I’d finished with the signatures. Of course, since she was drunk as the proverbial skunk, I wasn’t sure any of the paperwork would hold up to legal challenge. I’d let Randall figure out how to deal with that.
I tucked the check and the contract into my purse and pondered what to do next. Common sense suggested that I should hurry back to the fair. But it might be a lot easier to get information out of her in her current inebriated condition. I was trying to figure out how to ask a few leading questions—something slightly more subtle than “Did you have an argument with Paul Morot? Or maybe with Brett himself?”—when a figure loomed up beside us.
“’Bout time,” Genette said. But it wasn’t the waiter returning with her refill. It was a young woman—not much more than a girl, really—in jeans and a t-shirt. Clearly the maître d’ wasn’t guarding the entrance to his cave very well today—normally denim was a sure way to get turned away at the door.
“Hussy!” the young woman shouted. “Murderer!”
Genette just stared back at her.
“You couldn’t stand that he was leaving you for me,” the young woman said. “You had to get rid of him.”
Genette put down her drink, took off her sunglasses, and blinked, clearly startled.
“Wha’?” she asked.
“He wanted to be with me and the baby!” the young woman shrieked. “He was going to marry me as soon as he was free! And you couldn’t stand it, could you?”
The young woman pulled something out of her purse and was shaking it in Genette’s face. Genette was visibly having trouble focusing on it, so I leaned around to see what it was. A photograph of a baby, probably a newborn, wearing one of the little yellow knit hats they put on them in the delivery room. “Cranky bishop hats,” Michael and I had called them. I had pictures of Josh and Jamie at that age in identical hats.
“You’re a killer!” the young woman wailed. “Brett said he was going to tell you yesterday, and look what happened!”
I glanced around to see two sleek, gray-haired waiters frozen in shock, while the wine judges had all turned around to stare with unabashed fascination.
“Who the hell are you?” Genette sounded puzzled.
The young woman burst into tears, turned, and began running away.
“Madam!” One of the waiters took a few futile steps in pursuit of the young woman, who increased her speed and escaped into the lobby. The other waiter came over to our table.
“Who was she?” Genette asked. She still sounded more puzzled than upset or angy.
The waiter frowned at us as if he really wanted to ask the same question.
“Does madam require any assistance in returning to her room?” he said aloud.
“I think they’re cutting you off,” I told Genette. “Let me help you.”
“Bastards.” Genette didn’t sound surprised though. More resigned. “Who was that woman?”
She asked the same question at least a dozen times in the time it took me to help her out of the restaurant, through the lobby, out the back door, and down a short walkway to her cottage. By the time I dumped her on her bed, the young woman’s words appeared to have finally sunk in. When I reached to pull her shoe off, she kicked me.
“Why didn’t you tell me he was cheating on me?” she wailed. “After all I did for him!”
She began spitting out a stream of bitter and increasingly obscene invective against Brett and the unknown young woman, all the while kicking viciously in my general direction. After a few sentences, I realized she was starting to confuse me with the young woman, so I decided to get out while the getting was good.
“Sleep in your shoes, then,” I said.
Before leaving, I checked the bathroom, the closet, and the armoire. No chickens, and no telltale signs of recent chicken occupancy. Not that I expected any, but you never knew, and at least I could honestly tell the Bonnevilles I’d tried. I turned the bedside light out, then went to the door. I paused and listened for a few minutes, in case she said anything of interest, like, “Now I’m really glad I killed you, you jerk!” or “And after I stole those bantam chickens you wanted!” But her rant was repetitive and uninteresting, except for the couple of times that she shrieked “I’ll kill him when I get my hands on him!” As if she’d forgotten Brett was already dead.