Evan and Elle - By Rhys Bowen Page 0,55
a big policy on her husband’s life.”
Evan nodded. “Of course there is another option. It’s just possible that someone’s out to get her in a big way.
Chapter 17
Watkins looked up sharply. “You think that could be it? A hate crime? A vendetta?”
Evan shrugged. “We’ve no way of knowing at the moment, have we, but you have to admit it’s just as good a possibility as anything else. Her husband falls off his boat, her first restaurant burns down, and then her second restaurant burns down. Someone could be after her.”
Watkins shook his head. “If you’re right, you’d have thought she’d have got the hint by now and mentioned something of this to the police. She must at least suspect who’s behind it.”
“And may be too afraid to tell the truth. She was pretty upset the first night she came to me with a threatening letter.”
Watkins started to get up. “I’m going to call home and see if they’ve made any progress on the fingerprints on those notes. I bet they haven’t checked them against French lists. And I’d dearly like to know if this really was the beginning of the trail. What made her come to England in the first place? Had someone been threatening them back in France? Had they owned yet another restaurant which burned down over there?”
“Maybe we should just pop over and see for ourselves,” Evan suggested, half joking.
“Go to France? You’re not serious, are you?”
“I wasn’t, but it’s not so far-fetched. You can drive through the chunnel in half an hour these days.”
“Not that we’d have any idea where to begin in France.”
“We know she went to cooking school in Paris, and we know where Philippe du Bois is.”
“Hardly enough to warrant charging across the Channel.”
They broke off as the woman came back with two cups of tea and shortbread biscuits sitting in their saucers. “Here you go,” she said. “How have you been getting along?”
“We found the article we were looking for,” Evan said.
The woman peered at the screen. “Oh, that restaurant fire. I remember it. It was so sad—she’d lost her husband and then she nearly lost her own life. I remember because I’d just lost my husband around that time, so I felt for her.”
“This man drowned, did he?” Evan asked.
She nodded. “He was a very keen sailor, apparently. Anyway, he went out in bad weather and they never found him. Fishermen found a mast floating in the area where his boat had been, but they never discovered either the boat or his body. Of course, that’s not unusual around here. The tides can whisk a body through the Channel and dump it in France or out in the Atlantic.”
“So the husband was never found.” Watkins stared at the screen. “It gets more complicated by the minute, doesn’t it?” He looked up at the woman. “Do you happen to remember when this accident happened?”
She chewed on her lip. “Not off the top of my head. I know it was at least a couple of years before the restaurant burned down and I know it was late in the year to be sailing—around this time of year, maybe.”
“It said in the article that her husband died three years previously,” Evan pointed out. “Go back and try September three years earlier.”
“Go back and . . . who do you think I am, Bill bloody Gates?”
The woman chuckled. “It’s not hard, really it’s not. Here, move over. I’m not supposed to do this for visitors but J’ve got a few minutes to spare. Watch. You just go back a screen, select the year here, and there you are. A five-year-old could do it.”
“A five-year-old does do it,” Watkins said bitterly. “That’s just the problem.”
The woman slid out of the seat and Evan took her place. “Of course, there might not have been a whole article on an accidental drowning. It could just have been an obituary.”
They worked their way through several issues and then finally there it was. “Jean-Jacques Bouchard, Restaurateur.” It was only a a few lines in the obituary column, with a photo above it. Evan stared hard at it.
“I wish the photo was better,” he said.
“Why—do you think you know him?”
Evan took a deep breath. “He looks like a younger version of the man who came into the restaurant that evening.”
“Are you sure?” Watkins peered at the grainy snapshot. The man was squinting into bright sunshine and his curly hair was windswept. He looked like a sailor.
“I wouldn’t swear to it and