A Fatal Grace

Then she leaped back into bed, smoothing the sheets on her lap. Maybe she should take a taxi back to her office. But then she remembered she did have someplace to go. Someplace important.

There was a sale on at Ogilvy’s and a pair of boots she wanted to buy at the Inuit arts store along rue de la Montagne.

It wouldn’t be long before she had her own line of clothing and furniture in stores across Quebec. Around the world. Soon all the arrogant chichi designers who’d mocked her would be sorry. Soon everyone would know about Li Bien, her own philosophy of design and living. Feng shui was passé. People were crying for a change, and she’d provide it. Li Bien would be on every tongue and in every home.

‘Have you rented a chalet for the holidays yet?’ she asked.

‘No, I’m going down tomorrow. Why’d you buy a home in the middle of nowhere anyway?’

‘I had my reasons.’ She felt a flash of anger at him for questioning her judgment.

She’d waited five years to buy a place in Three Pines. CC de Poitiers could be patient if she had to, and if she had a good enough reason.

She’d visited the crummy little village many times, networking with local real estate agents and even talking to shop clerks in nearby St-Rémy and Williamsburg. It had taken years. Apparently homes didn’t often come up in Three Pines.

Then a little over a year ago she’d had a call from a real estate agent named Yolande Fontaine. There was a home. A great Victorian Grande Dame on the hill overlooking the village. The mill owner’s home. The boss’s home.

‘How much?’ CC had asked, knowing it was almost certainly beyond her. She’d have to borrow against the company, mortgage everything she owned, get her husband to cash in his insurance policy and his RRSP.

But the real estate agent’s answer had surprised her. It was well below market value.

‘There is one little thing,’ Yolande had explained in a cloying voice.

‘Go on.’

‘There was a murder there. And an attempted murder.’

‘Is that all?’

‘Well, I guess, technically, there was also a kidnapping. Anyway, that’s why the house is so cheap. Still, it’s a great buy. Terrific pipes, mostly copper. The roof is only twenty years old. The—’

‘I’ll take it.’

‘Don’t you want to see it?’ As soon as the question was out Yolande could have kicked herself. If this moron wanted to buy the old Hadley house sight unseen, without inspection or exorcism, then let her.

‘Just draw up the papers. I’ll be down this afternoon with a cheque.’

And so she had. She’d told her husband a week or so later, when she’d needed his signature to cash in the RRSP. He’d protested, but so feebly it would have been impossible for a casual observer to even recognize it as a protest.

The old Hadley house, the monstrosity on the hill, was hers. She couldn’t have been happier. It was perfect. Three Pines was perfect. Or at least it would be, by the time she was finished with it.

Saul snorted and turned away. He could see the writing on the wall. He’d be dumped by CC as soon as the next photo assignment of her in that dreadful hick village was complete. It was for her first catalogue and he’d been told to get pictures of her frolicking among the natives at Christmas. If possible he had to get shots of the locals looking at CC with wonder and affection. He’d need cash for that.

Everything CC did had a purpose. And that purpose came down to two things, he figured: it fed her wallet or her ego.

So why had she bought a house in a village no one had ever heard of? It wasn’t prestige. So it must be the other.

Money.

CC knew something no one else did about the village, and it meant money.

His interest in Three Pines perked up.

‘Crie! Move, for Christ’s sake.’

It was almost literally true. The fine-boned and swaddled issue of a trust fund and a beauty pageant was struggling to be seen behind the drift that was Crie. She’d made it out on stage, dancing and twirling with the rest of the angel snowflakes, and then she’d suddenly stopped. It didn’t seem to matter to anyone that snow in Jerusalem made no sense. The teacher, quite rightly, figured if anyone believed in a virgin birth they’d believe there was a snowfall that miraculous night. What did seem to matter, though, was that one of the flakes, a kind of microclimate unto herself, had stalled in the center of the stage. In front of the baby Jesus.

‘Move, lardass.’

The insult slid off Crie, as they all did. They were the white noise of her life. She barely heard them any more. Now she stood on stage staring straight into the audience as though frozen.