Wordzzle 70 - Lucky times ten

You just have to go link up with Raven at her nest and check out the Wordzzle Action.

The Ten Word Challenge: Florida, spit, child bride, operatic, busy, holding pattern, sunflowers, ginger jars, office, superintendent

The mini challenge: music to my ears, plot, powerful, braggart, super model

This week's Episode: Evidence


Charlotte's talks with the inspector had been very fruitful. Though not especially powerful in local politics, he was a long time member of the police and had good connections. These had allowed her to garner the information she required over a few short days. Inspector De Leschampes was enough of a braggart to be susceptible to Charlotte's wiles and had the ear of the superintendent as well. It seemed there was some family connection that allowed the inspector unusual access to the superintendent's office.

The ever calculating Charlotte used all this ensnare the inspector into her plot to give false evidence. She had devised a way to fake the DNA test that would prove she was not Connie Liplin or Constance Lawler. It was clear from her talks with the unwitting policeman that the investigation would come to that conclusion if she failed to intervene. She told the policeman a tale of child abuse, economic ruin and paternal estrangement that had just enough truth in it to gain his sympathy and cooperation.

The upshot of the meetings was that she would give DNA evidence at her estate. The locals had forensic technicians, but the sample would be sent to Paris and then on to the FBI. This would assure the investigators she was not who they were looking for and keep them from troubling her father, who was in a holding pattern between life and death. The cover story would explain the lack of affection and closeness of father and daughter as well.

The real daughter had died in childbirth along with her premature offspring. The father of the child was the Count himself. Charlotte had kept a tissue sample as blackmail to insure the old Count Vignoire's cooperation. Now it would be used for something else. The tissue was from the Count's real daughter and the details of the circumstances of her death would have ruined the family's reputation and that of the Count.

What only the Count knew and would not expose, was that his real daughter was not thought to be his by blood. His wife had taken a lover when the Count found himself to be sterile. Both had known of it and agreed to the solution. The goal had been to have a male child to carry on the line. Instead, she had borne him a daughter and then died when the child was only seven years old. The young girl grew to be the spitting image of his dead wife and the Count had been unable to control his love for the girl. By the time she was 18 he'd hatched a plan to move with her to Florida and make her his child bride. This did not happen. Instead the young girl became pregnant after their first coupling, causing him to revisit his alleged sterility and the lover supposedly needed for his wife to bear him children.

That's when he learned the truth about his deceased wife and the thing that nearly destroyed him. His wife had simply used contraception and had the doctor fake his potency test for a bribe. In truth, his daughter was really his daughter and he had committed incest. Like some strange operatic event, the Count saw his busy and bountiful life come apart.

It was at this point that Charlotte came into the picture. She had offered the Count a way out. On top of that she'd had the money to bring the family back to its previous standard of living. In explaining why he'd gone along with this in the papers in his will he'd said; "after all the sadness and horror of what I'd done, even if unintentionally, Charlotte's scheme was like music to my ears." What he couldn't know was that the will would never see the light of day.

The "daughter" had been kept incognito for many years till Charlotte needed the identity and then brought forth. The foresight and planning that allowed Charlotte to make that kind of move, years before she needed the cover, was part of what made her truly the super model of a diabolical serial killer. She'd been busy for over two decades setting the stage for her triumph. When the time came she could spit in the eye of those who had underestimated her capacity for reinvention and renewal. She'd had the last laugh on all of her tormentors from High School but one, and that one wouldn't escape her forever.

It would be a simple matter to exchange the DNA swabs with one’s of her choosing prior to their shipment to Paris. Then the famous FBI and Interpol and the former Surete (now French National Police) could all investigate till they were blue in the face. They would never come close to connecting her to any crimes. There were so many and so widely dispersed over the globe that no one would ever put them all together and attribute them to one person or group of people, much less her specifically.

Charlotte looked out over the garden’s gloriously golden sunflowers as she arranged the ginger jars in her kitchen. It was time for her to renew her search for Jane Insterham. She’d e-mail her contact in Macapa. Perhaps she’d even go with him into the interior if he had a good lead. It would just have to wait a couple of days till she gave the DNA and then switched the samples. This part she would do personally. Too much depended on it to do otherwise.

RT