Laughing, she bent over and gave the dog a big hug.
She answered my next question before I could ask. “Papa drive me. He return in two hours, when my lesson is finished.”
I couldn’t help but feel disappointed that her brother hadn’t brought her. “Let’s get started,” I said, walking into the living room. “I don’t have anything prepared, but we can concentrate on the exercises in the next chapter. Do you have your English language book with you?”
She extracted the hardcover book from a large canvas bag along with a spiral notebook. “I work on them when I am sick. You check them, please.”
I corrected her. “You are speaking of doing something in the past, therefore you must use the past tense, ‘I worked’. Remember, we covered it a couple lessons ago.”
She smiled shyly and repeated her last sentence using the past tense perfectly, then she reached back into her bag. “I don’t, non, I mean didn’t forget. I brought you some nice vegetables from Papa’s garden.” She pulled out not one, but two very plump heads of Boston lettuce and a bag of vermillion tomatoes. Which I was very glad to see. Since her accident, I’d been subsisting on the puny, unripened produce from the Migiskan General Store.
After I had safely deposited them in the fridge and added more logs to the fire, we began the lesson. With the dog happily ensconced by her feet, we quickly went through the exercises she’d completed and started on those of the next chapter. By the time we’d finished, it was time to add more logs and put the kettle on for tea.
Usually, at this point I moved onto the conversational part of the lesson, using the topic of the just completed chapter as the focal point. Today I thought we might diverge and talk about what was uppermost in my mind. It seemed to be on Yvette’s mind too, for she started the discussion by asking how John-Joe was. I told her all that had happened since his initial arrest.
When I came to the details of his latest escape, I watched her concerned interest change to worry.
I asked, “You like John-Joe, don’t you?”
She blushed and mumbled, “Yes.”
“How long have you known him?”
“Not long. I meet, non, non, I met him two or three months ago. He is Pierre’s friend. Very nice man, I think.” She blushed again and started to pick at the cuticle around the nail of one of the exposed fingers of her broken arm.
I noticed the cuticle around her other fingers was similarly torn and bleeding. Poor child. I hoped it was the trauma of her accident that was causing this stress and not, as I suspected, her father or her older sister.
“Did you ever go out with John-Joe on a date?”
“He come to my house once, but Papa tell him to go away. Papa does not like me to go on dates with men. He thinks I am not old enough.”
“The correct tense is ‘came’ and ‘told’,” I said. “You certainly look old enough to me. Do you mind telling me your age?”
I’d put her age at about twenty-one or two and was surprised when she answered, “Twenty-seven.”
“And you’ve never had a boyfriend?” I asked.
She shook her dark hair and started to say no, then corrected herself. “I tell you,” she said. “You are my friend. When I was very young, I loved a boy and wanted to marry him. But Papa found out and sent me away to a convent.”
“What happened to the boy?”
“I don’t know. I never saw him again.” Poor child, I thought, for that was how I viewed her, a halfformed woman who’d never been allowed to live her own life. Who knows? If John-Joe were to get out of this intact, perhaps I could become the go-between. Maybe Yvette didn’t have the sexual energy that Chantal exuded, but she did have a virginal innocence that could be attractive, and she had the fresh prettiness of an unsophisticated country girl.
“You must have liked convent life, though. I gather that you’ll soon be returning to one.”
Her eyes flashed surprise. “Who tell you this?”
“Your brother.” Her answering laugh hinted at un-Yvette-like confidence.
“He makes a mistake. I stay on the farm with my papa. He needs me.”
While I would argue over her father’s need, I was glad she wouldn’t be disappearing behind the high walls of a nunnery. Even though she would no doubt continue to be under her father’s restraints, perhaps over time I could help her loosen some of these bounds.
“You mentioned Pierre’s name,” I said. “Did you know him before the trail clearing?”
“Yes, he is a cousin of Papa.” My face must have registered surprise, for she continued, “He is son of the son of my grandfather’s sister. How do you call this person?”
“I guess you would call him a second cousin. Do you know him well?”
She shook her head. “I do not know he is such a cousin until he come, no, came to the farm to see Papa two or three years ago.”
“Do you see him often?”
“Maybe every two months.”
“Has he visited you since the trail clearing?”
“He was to visit last Friday. But he not come.”
Good. Further substantiation that he’d taken off after the murder. “What do you know about him?”
“Nothing. I not speak with him. He visit with Papa. He like to help him with the work on the farm. One, two time he bring his girlfriend.”
“Thérèse?”
“Yes. Why do you ask me these questions?”
I didn’t want to tell her my suspicions about Chantal’s murder, so instead I said, “I think Pierre might be a drug dealer.”
She turned startled brown eyes towards me. “Drug?”
“Marijuana, maybe heroin. In fact, your brother mentioned that you saw a plastic bag containing marijuana being passed between John-Joe and Pierre.”
“I remember. It was in the morning, when we work on the steep trail near this Kamikaze Pass. John-Joe give Pierre some money for this bag.”
“Are you sure it was Pierre taking the money, not John Joe?”
“Oh yes, I saw Pierre put it in the small envelope I give you.”
Thankfully, her brother had misunderstood her.
Yvette continued, “And Pierre say to John-Joe, “It is the very best B . C . bud.” She paused. “Do you know what is this B . C . bud?”
“Yes, it’s a variety of marijuana that is grown in British Columbia.” At last, proof that Pierre was a drug dealer. But it didn’t make him Chantal’s killer.
She
