The Corpse with the Silver Tongue Read Free Page A

gravely that, until more was known about the exact cause of Alistair’s demise, I wasn’t to leave Nice, nor would any other members of our group be allowed to do so, as we were all “persons of interest in a case of an unexplained death.” I gave them my contact details and was “requested” to attend the police station the next morning at 11:00 AM for an interview. As they left me there on my gurney, I thought to myself, What a great way to start a long weekend in the south of France!
    Mind you, if I’d known then just how much worse it was going to get, I might have seen being poisoned and becoming a murder suspect as high spots.

Friday Night
    AFTER A LITTLE NAP, I was wide awake. You know, the sort of “wide awake” that means you’re quite certain sleep is beyond your grasp. All I could do was try to ignore the buzzing machine next to me, and try not to worry about what poison I might have been served at dinner. Not easy.
    My watch told me it was two o’clock in the morning. Nice is nine hours ahead of Vancouver, so it was only five o’clock in the afternoon there—a great time to get hold of people. My cell phone was in my purse, which was jammed beneath my body, but there were signs all over the walls making it clear that I shouldn’t use it, even if I could have managed to get hold of it. Besides . . . who would I call? My mind leapt to Bud. He would be the one to talk to at a time like this.
    For a couple of years Bud Anderson had been the head of Vancouver’s Integrated Homicide Investigation Team, or Mr. I-HIT, as he liked to call himself. I’d been working with him over the past twelve months or so as a “sometimes consultant.” Bud would call me if he thought I might be able to help his team, and I’d profile a victim to help gain an understanding of their life or life patterns. He’d recently taken on a Big New Job. He was setting up a unit to work out the way that gangs and organized crime worked in Vancouver, across Canada, and internationally. All very hush, hush.
    I liked Bud and his patient, supportive wife Jan, but I hadn’t seen much of them since he’d been promoted—or “given the Gangbusters job,” as he put it. A dinner plan cancelled here, a coffee date postponed there. I missed the way he seemed to understand me, and how he supported my not always favorably viewed expertise. I also missed how much Jan spoiled me when I was with them—almost as much as they both spoiled their tubby black lab, Marty. I always got the “human treats,” as she called them, lovely little nibbles made of chocolate and Rice Krispies.
    As I squirmed to get more comfortable on the unyielding gurney, I wished I could hear Bud’s calm, confident, commanding voice. He’d help me gain some perspective. But calling him would have to wait.
    Generally speaking, I’m a “rule observer”: the one and only time I ever parked in a disabled parking spot, I got towed—typical for me. Both my upbringing and my natural defense mechanisms have led me to try to not break the rules, if at all possible.
    So I was on my own. What to do until I was unhooked and released? I resigned myself to reliving the events that had brought me to this situation.
    Frankly, I shouldn’t have been anywhere near Nice, let alone rolled up in a blanket having cheated death. My dear, but annoying, colleague Frank “I’m not afraid of mountain biking down Blackcomb Mountain at the age of sixty” McGregor, our Faculty’s specialist in internet crime, had fallen off his stupid bike and broken his stupid collarbone and his even stupider right leg. So I had been “volunteered” by my Head of Department to fly to Nice to present daredevil Frank’s paper at the symposium. Of course, at the time, I’d jumped at the chance of an all-expenses paid break in the south of France. I mean—who