Case Files
NEW! The da Vinci Staircase
The da Vinci Staircase (French)
Scent of a Killer
The Purloined Love
Death by Analysis
My Adventures
Notes
Follow-up on my friends and acquaintances from The Adventures of Inspector Canal. Click here
Follow-up on my friends and acquaintances from The Adventures of Inspector Canal.
After reading my Adventures, some of you may be unable to sleep at night, wondering what happened to my newfound friend, Rolland Saalem, the music director of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. Did he end up flying out to Pittsburgh on the old Agony Airlines every week to see one (or both) of the Lipinsky twins, so to speak—Thelma Lipinsky and/or Penelope Pastek?
I can't tell you the whole story, because he swore me to secrecy. But I can tell you that he did make the trip out to the former Steel City several times, and it brought home to him the fact that a life without love was hardly worth living, even if directing was very rewarding to him personally. He soon stopped accepting so many invitations to conduct halfway around the globe, reduced the number of galas he attended, and began somewhat seriously dating a well-known diva by the name of C. di B.
Divas being notoriously prickly, headstrong people, I can't exactly say that they lived happily ever after. But I can say that she seems to have made his life a living . . . life.
The shapely, strawberry-blond Sandra Errand decided to make a go of it with her Chicago-based Martin (the guy who came to her rescue in the French Alps), and has so far had a better track record with him than with any of her prior beaus (yes, for you nosy bodies out there, they did finally tie the knot). Last I heard, she had left the giant multinational she worked for, YVEH (boy am I glad she did!), and moved to Chicago where she started her own fine wines importing and exporting shop. She calls me every now and then for advice on what to buy and what not to, and I’m happy to pass on whatever words of wisdom I can. (At first she tried to e-mail me, but I reminded her that human contact requires a real voice, even when a call is mostly about business. Why is that so easy for people to forget?!) I’m not saying life for her is but a bed of cherries or a bowl of roses, or whatever that American expression is, but I get the impression that she is enjoying herself a lot more than before, and that some of her worries (about losing interest in a man, about always having to play hard to get, and about her own ability to give) have begun to dissipate . . .
Olivetti, the dilapidated Ford Taurus-driving NYPD detective, is still hard at work, keeping the streets of the Big Apple safe for the more usual sorts of white-collar crime (and, no, that wasn’t a slip of the pen). If my sources are correct, he and his ex-wife have been back in touch, though I don’t know to what degree . . . Being Ponlevek's superior officer, he will no doubt contact me again soon with another conundrum on his hands. (I can’t wait!)
Ferguson, my rather brilliant but balding butler, is still fidèle au poste, loyally fulfilling his duties (you see I can translate when I have the time), and plays an important role in one of my later adventures you may not yet have heard of, Death by Analysis, which, by the way, recounts one of my favorite Halloweens ever. He also makes more episodic appearances in Odor di Murderer/Scent of a Killer and The Purloined Love.
Inspector Ponlevek (who believes his name is Czech in origin, but who is really named after a fine French cheese, Pont l’Évêque, from Normandy), reappears in a couple of the later adventures I just mentioned, and you can hear all the news about him there: it’s pretty juicy!
As for New York City Mayor Tobias Trickler, I wish I had better news to relay . . . I'm afraid he never mustered up the courage to deal with his mommy complex (he turned his wife and every other woman he got involved with into a mother figure, sooner or later, and began resenting them and not being able to perform sexually with them), even though I gave him the number of a darned good psychoanalyst—Jack Lovett, my friend from the Scentury Club. You certainly couldn’t say the well-to-do Trickler couldn’t afford Jack’s fee. Instead, after his term in the Mayor’s office was up, Trickler became the host of a television show! Or was it two TV shows? I guess he thought it better to make a fool of himself (even without running for President) than to let the late-night comics and stand-up comedians make a buck by making him look ri-dick-u-less (sp?).
Quesjac
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