Page 72 - Labelle Gramercy, Detective

Road Kill

She nodded to her counterpart, who slowly led the old man
around the table. The cassette player had shut itself off at the end of
a tape, and not a sound could be heard other than the gardien’s
shuffling slippers. He abruptly stopped behind Harry Hofbrauer’s
chair and began speaking rapidly to Coulibaly. The latter then said
two words in French to Labelle, clearly intelligible to the rest of us:
“That’s him.”
Harry Hofbrauer twisted his neck around, trying to see what had
transpired behind his back. His eyes narrowed and he pounded on
the table. “What the hell is going on? Who are these people? Get
them out of my house!”
“No,” said Labelle. “You’ve just been identified as the person who
left Lon Durer’s party, drove off in Lon Durer’s vehicle, and returned
twenty minutes later.”
“That’s not possible!” A vein was throbbing on Hofbrauer’s
forehead. “This man is blind!”
“Indeed he is. But he knows the sound of his employer’s Land
Rover, and nobody else in this country eats those garlic-and-onion
chips but you, Harry. The odor they give you is as distinctive as a
fingerprint and as impossible to disguise. Monsieur Coulibaly will
now take you into custody.”
“Like hell!” Hofbrauer was on his feet. “This is all your doing,
Labelle Gramercy!” He grabbed a short spear mounted on the wall
behind him; it did not look like a toy. Fueled by desperation and
alcohol, he charged around the table and thrust the weapon at
Labelle. It all happened so quickly that I still can’t reconstruct the
exact sequence of events, but I did see Labelle sort of bend and turn
and bring her arm down sharply. The next instant the spear was
clattering on the tile floor and Harry Hofbrauer lay next to it, blood
gushing from a gash on the back of his head. I looked up and saw
Frank Bean standing over the fallen man, an empty Jolibrew bottle
grasped in his hand by the neck.
Labelle dropped to one knee and checked Hofbrauer’s vital signs.
Then she looked at Frank and shook her head. “You really should
leave these matters to the professionals, Mr. Bean.”
“But he was going to kill you, just like he killed Sally!”
She smiled, but her eyes weren’t laughing. “Oh, he wanted to, all
right. But it’s a moot point. The case is closed, now. Mr. Tate?” I

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