A Twist of Orchids (32 page)

•

Loulou’s face, normally cheerful, darkened when he unzipped the tote and saw what was in it.

“Is this what I think it is? Where did you get them?”

Mara told him. They were sitting in the kitchen of his little house in Duras. She gulped the coffee he had made her. It was how she needed it: black and strong.

“They’re all there, all the stolen bronzes. I don’t know about the rest of Prudence’s things. I assume Christine and Alice have sold them.” Mara stared into the depths of her cup. “I’m in an awful fix, Loulou. If I tell the police, Christine and Alice will go to prison.”

“Mais oui
, that is the idea, usually.”

“I can’t bring myself to do it.”

“You have to. If you don’t, you’ll be an accessory to the crime.”

She shook her head. “Christine’s had a rough life. I’m sure she and Alice did it out of desperation. They were in debt, the sheep farm wasn’t paying, and the only extra money they brought in was from Alice’s weaving. How many tapestries can she make in a year?”

Loulou knuckled his nose. He crossed his arms and looked up at the ceiling. He wagged his head from side to side.

“All right,” he said finally. “Leave it with me.
On se débrouille.
”

Se débrouiller
, to manage, to sort out, was a very useful verb in French. It was what Mara often said when she was landed with an impossible design problem and had somehow to reassure herself and her clients that she could make it all come right. In this case, it was Loulou who was offering to fix things for her. Gratefully, she gave the tote to him.

“And not a word to Julian, please.”

“Ah. You don’t want to look like—how do you say it?—the piece of fruit?”

“Fruitcake,” Mara corrected in English. The translation did not work at all in French.

The Ropax
Bosporus I
completed its voyage from Istanbul to Marseille, docking at 13:10 on Friday. It arrived loaded with vehicles and freight designated as
marchandises diverses:
textiles, clothing, foodstuffs, rolls of carpets, ceramics packed in straw, hammered metalware. In addition to carrying cargo, the
Bosporus I
also provided limited cabin space for a handful of passengers, one of whom was Adelheid Besser.

Twelve days earlier, Adelheid had made the outbound crossing from Marseille to Istanbul, taking on board her specially adapted van. She had spent three days in Istanbul talking about salep, its use in Turkish ice cream, drinks, and health products, and the imperilled state of Turkish orchids. Then she had made trips into the field and to research stations with fellow conferencees, and now she was returning, bearing with her many flats of immature plants, individually potted. They had lived with her during the sea crossing, taking up most of the space in her cabin. Now, as the
Bosporus I
approached its destination, she had loaded them into the cargo space of her Kangoo preparatory to disembarkation and inspection.

•

“They are seedlings of the
Ophrys
and
Orchis
genera,” Adelheid said grandly to the customs officer who poked his head into the back of her van. “I am bringing the plants in for scientific purposes.”

The man held her passport. She shoved more documentation at him. “Here are their phytosanitary papers and CITES permits,
duly issued by the appropriate Turkish authorities. It is all quite in order, as you can see.”

“I have to refer this,” said the customs officer. The matter was outside his area. “Please pull your vehicle to the side and wait.”

“Natürlich
,” muttered Adelheid between tightly gritted teeth.

•

At roughly the same time, a five-year old Rottweiler named Zaza was growing very agitated. She circled and scratched at a wooden crate, one of many that had been off-loaded from the
Bosporus I.
Zaza whined, gazed intently at her handler, and then sat down panting by the crate. The handler called over a colleague, and together the two men checked the origin and destination of the merchandise. Prying open the crate very carefully, they ascertained that it contained six dozen tins of olives. Just as carefully, the customs agents nailed the crate shut again.

“Okay.
Ça va,”
said the first agent, giving the crate a slap. “This can go.”

•

Adelheid sat in her van. Then she got out and stood beside it, tapping her foot impatiently. After a very long wait, another officer appeared. He was a bright young man attached to the Port of Marseille
Bureau à Compétence W
, responsible for the import and export control of live and dead specimens of wild flora and fauna and endangered species.

“These are orchids of the
Ophrys
and
Orchis
genera,” Adelheid repeated with slightly less aplomb than the first time she had made this announcement. “I have here all the necessary papers. Everything is in order. My purpose for bringing these plants in is scientific. I am doing research on root regeneration in co-operation with Turkish colleagues related to the sustainable harvesting of salep orchids.”

“Ah oui?
” said the
Compétence W man.
He scanned the flats of
orchids, read the documentation, and turned doubtfully to her. There was something about this large woman that—well—stuck out. The plants themselves were immature, none of them in flower, which made their identification difficult. And that was precisely the problem. There were so many kinds of orchids, and in their early developmental stages they were hard to tell apart. It would be easy to slip another kind of orchid in among the mix—say, something extremely rare that had not been cleared for export, although what this might be the officer had no idea. It required considerable expertise to identify different orchid species correctly. In fact, molecular analysis was really the only certain way of avoiding species confusion. He had not the means of subjecting the plants to anything more sophisticated than a visual examination, and everything appeared straightforward. But he sensed that all was not well.

Madame Besser gazed off into the distance, looking bored while the officer studied the plants, flipping occasionally through a reference manual. She began to tap the toe of her shoe on the ground. The noise got on his nerves, and he raised his head sharply. It was then that he noticed the thin film of perspiration gathering on her upper lip. It was a warm day, and it could be that she was simply feeling the heat, but it set more alarm bells ringing in his head.

The officer smiled. “I’m afraid, madame,” he said pleasantly, closing his manual, “that I will have to ask you to remove the orchids from your vehicle for closer inspection. And it would be helpful if we could go over the origin of these plants and your reasons for bringing them in once more.”

•

Later that same day, in another part of the country, Julian and Mara were returning home after a wearying day of tramping the forested slopes of Aurillac Ridge, looking for
Cypripedium
incognitum.
It was Madame Audebert’s day in again, and neither Julian nor Mara had needed to think twice about leaving the house to her. This time they did not encounter Géraud on their trek, or Serge, for that matter. They did see plenty of flora. The fields and woodlands, the verges of the roads clamored with orchids. Bell-like Helleborine and tightly braided spires of
Limodorum
were beginning to open in the shelter of the trees. Green-winged and Tongue orchids were just coming into evidence. Sun-loving pink Pyramidals, Lady and Military orchids, those sturdy inhabitants of open meadows, now lent their colors to the grass. They also found numerous Aconite bushes, growing along stream beds. They did not find anything that resembled Julian’s mystery Lady’s Slipper.

As they drove, Mara gave vent again to her frustrations, which had nothing to do with flowers. The gendarmes were continuing to ignore the fact that Donny had tried to smother Joseph in his bed. Now that Donny had proved not to be their burglar, he was out free. She imagined the Barbie doll’s eyes, full of gloat.

“He’s getting away with it,” she grumbled. “If there were only some way we could prove our case.”

“Seems to me we’ve exhausted our case,” said Julian. “I ran into Jacqueline Godet at the supermarket yesterday, and she told me Donny and Daisy are returning to Florida next week.”

“Damn! It gives us no time at all. Once they go, the gendarmes will never pursue the matter.”

“Look on the bright side. With Donny no longer around, maybe the Montfort-Izawa project won’t go through. At least not until they can get hold of Joseph’s land legally. And Joseph won’t have any more night visitors. Jacqueline said Madame Tisseuil, his new live-in help, is working out well, by the way. Apparently the woman’s only shortcomings are that she talks a lot and knows nothing about sheep.”

Julian’s own preoccupations lay elsewhere. Osman had been beaten up (he still couldn’t decide if the Turk was as innocent as he claimed), Betul was worried out of her wits, and Ton-and-a-Half was having him, Julian, followed. The fact that Adjudant Compagnon had warned him to stay away from Lokum only raised his suspicions. However, he yearned for Betul’s pastries.

Therefore, on the way home he drove via Brames, parked down the road from the store, and sent Mara in to find out how things were going. While she was there, he said she might as well stock up on a few things: some
borek
, preferably the spinach and eggplant kinds. Then there was a cardamom-spiced flatbread filled with sweet potato that he liked. Oh, and some baklava.

Mara returned to the car a very short time later with no
borek
, no flatbread, and no baklava. She told him that Betul had been trying to get hold of him all day. She was very upset. Mara switched on her cellphone and handed it to him.

“She’s going to call you.”

“What? Now?”

Julian then had the peculiar experience of watching Betul leave the store and walk in their direction to an outdoor pay phone almost opposite where they were parked.

“I can’t talk from the store or house,” Betul said when he answered. “Osman is sure our line is being tapped. He only uses our phones for business. Everything else, he goes out to pay phones. He even drives to different public phones to make sure no one listens in.”

“What’s happened?” Julian demanded. He knew from her hunched, defensive posture, which he could plainly see, that it was something serious.

“I think Osman has found out where Kazim’s girlfriend, Nadia, is hiding. You know she’s been missing since Kazim’s death? Last night Osman went out. I followed him. He made a
call from this phone I’m using now. I heard him say ‘Nadia’ several times, and then he said something about a place called Le Clos de Jacques or Jacquot, something like that. I didn’t hear any more because he stopped talking as soon as he realized I was there. He was very angry.”

“And you think this Le Clos de Something is where Nadia is?” Julian asked.

“Yes.” Betul shifted the receiver to her other hand and turned to look directly at him. “He drove off in the truck very early this morning. He wouldn’t tell me where he was going, and he hasn’t been back since. You know he believes Nadia was responsible for getting Kazim into drugs. I’m afraid”—her voice broke—“he has gone to do something stupid. Oh, Monsieur Wood”—her free hand rose in appeal—“how can I stop him?”

Julian knew the question she really was asking.

“Call the gendarmes,” he suggested without much hope.

“They will send him to prison.”

They would, if Osman had really done the stupid thing that Betul feared. Julian sighed.

“I’ll see what I can do,” he said.

•

The Brames gendarmes, at that moment, had their hands full. Earlier in the day, Loulou La Pouge had communicated something of great importance to Laurent. He had also left a tote bag with his grandnephew. Laurent took one look at the contents of the tote bag and went immediately to inform his commanding officer.

For the first time in months, Jacques Compagnon’s unlovely face broke into a smile. He uttered a string of epithets, briefly (and mildly) translated as: “Well, I’ll be a monkey’s uncle!”

And then the gendarme on duty passed a call through to him.

“Osman Ismet did what?” roared Compagnon.

•

“Have you ever heard of it?” Julian asked Mara as they drove out of Brames.

Mara shook her head.

“She’s expecting me to head him off somehow.”

“It’s a bit late,” said Mara. “He’s had all day to get to Nadia, if that’s what he was planning to do.”

“I know.”

“It sounds like a
gïte
or a
chambre d’hôte,”
Mara said a moment later as they drove through gentle hills lit by a late afternoon light. “They’re often called Le Clos de something. A campsite, maybe.”

“But where is it? We don’t even know where to begin. We can’t comb through the phone book searching for every Le Clos de something. It’ll take ages.”

Mara gave him a look. “Of course not, silly. There’s a much faster way of finding out.”

•

When they returned to the house, they went straight to Mara’s studio. She sat down at her computer and logged onto the Internet.

“If it
is
a holiday spot, they probably have a website.” She squinted at the screen, not even bothering with her glasses.

“Right,” said Julian, who was Internet-illiterate and wished to stay that way.

While she worked, he walked around her studio, hands in pockets, taking in the disorder. There were large chunks of plaster molding stacked in one corner, an ancient stone sink in another. Rolls of material leaned against the walls. Her drafting table was piled high with client files loosely stored in cardboard boxes. She’d had to clear a litter of loose paper from her desk before she could even find her keyboard. He wondered how she
managed to work in such an environment. It was significant that Mara did not let Madame Audebert in her studio. Maliciously, he imagined the cleaning woman suffering a terminal
syncope
in these surroundings.