Jacques’s head rolled as he leaned backward with his chair. “Ha! You were looking for something perkier, my friend, like a sex crimes prosecutor? Is that what you’re telling me?”
There wasn’t much of my usual good-natured humor in reserve since first seeing Lisette’s body on the edge of the pond, and I had no interest in performing for the captain, who seemed to be growing ruder by the minute.
“Perhaps the next time you’re in New York, you’ll come visit me in the courtroom. I’m long on facts and fairness and the occasional outrage, Captain, but I’ve never been accused of being sad. Buy me some Dewar’s at the end of the day, I might even convince you I’m having a good time,” I said. “Now, Luc planned an absolutely delightful day for me. If you’ve got any more questions, you’ll find us at the restaurant tonight.
Ça va?
”
Luc fished a business card out of his wallet. “This is my accountant. He knows a lot more about Lisette than I do.”
Jacques was practically sputtering as he saw me reach for the door handle. “But you can’t go yet.”
“You can’t possibly be holding him?” I asked, warming up to the incredulity that often preceded my outrage.
“I’m not holding anyone. I have no idea what happened to this girl. It’s
your
brain I want to pick, Alexandra. I thought you’d help me with this—this situation.”
“Such a strange way you have of asking for assistance, Jacques. The experts are on their way. What is it you need from me?”
“So drowning like this. Is that always murder? Must it be a homicide?”
I didn’t take my hand off the door handle. I saw no reason for Luc and me to involve ourselves in this mystery. “Not necessarily. Most drownings are accidental. People fall out of boats or into deep water and can’t swim. They panic and struggle to reach the surface, and sometimes doing that they exhaust their energy reserves. Or they swallow large quantities of water at the same time that air is escaping from their lungs. Alcoholics fall facedown in three inches of water, and because they’re barely conscious they’re unable to roll over.”
“And the doctors know it’s an accident because…?”
“The totality of the circumstances, Jacques. Sometimes from witnesses, in other cases because the evidence points to only one conclusion. Do you know facts you haven’t told us? Any idea how Lisette got to the pond? I didn’t see a car there. And it’s a long walk in from the road.” I was talking at high speed. “Do people really swim in that water? It hardly seems the site for an accident.”
“Well, no, I wouldn’t think—”
“A few instances of drowning are suicidal. Think Virginia Woolf, Captain.”
“Who?”
“You don’t read enough, Jacques. An Englishwoman,” I said.
“She walked into a river after loading her pockets with heavy rocks, which took her to the bottom and made it impossible for her to survive. Manic depression.”
“So she was sad, too, this Woolf person?”
“Not sad like Lisette,” Luc said. “Mentally ill.”
“And you know this girl wasn’t a psych case? Is that what you’re saying?”
“I haven’t a clue, do you understand? I don’t know anything about her except that she was quite comfortable stealing from me.”
“Then there’s murder,” I said. “Someone may have held Lisette’s head under water until she drowned. An ugly death. If she was conscious when she went down, she would have been struggling, both to breathe and to get free of her attacker. Then the coughing and choking would have begun as she took on water, and convulsions next, before respiratory arrest and death. Minutes, probably. Achingly long minutes during which she knew she was likely to die.”
“So who am I looking for?” Jacques Belgarde put his fingers to his lips for several seconds before he spoke again. “Someone who—”
“Someone? Maybe more than one. Who knows what it took to get her into the park in the middle of the night?” I asked. I didn’t tell him I was reminded of the voices I’d heard when I was trying to get Luc’s door open. “The autopsy will eventually tell you whether she was drinking or drugged. Perhaps there are bruises on her neck, under her clothing.”
“This will spook the tourists for certain. The mayor will be on my ass to solve this one fast.”
“Just like in New York,” I said. “Political fallout is a common side effect of homicide, Captain.”
“Talk to my sommelier, Jacques. Some of the younger guys on my staff may remember who her friends were and who dated her. Maybe they even kept in touch,” Luc said. “Or they might be aware of who else she crossed, besides me.”
There was a knock on the door and Claude Chenier entered,
pushing us farther inside as he extended his hand with several pages of paper in it. “For you, Captain. From Paris.”
“That was fast,” Belgarde said to his young officer, lighting another cigarette.
“We can’t be sure, sir. It’s just a name check and a guess at the girl’s age.”
Chenier backed out as the captain glanced at the documents, then looked up at Luc and shook them in his direction. “The National Police. They seem to know your Lisette Honfleur, too. They share your low opinion of her character.”
“I didn’t say I had an opinion, Jacques. I don’t know—”
“Is that her criminal record?” I asked.
“It is indeed,” Jacques said, coming out from behind his desk and bending over to scoop up one of the skulls, spinning it around to examine it more closely. “Not that it tells us why someone targeted you with these human remains, Luc, but maybe we know where they came from.”
“What does it say?”
“Two arrests, both fairly recent. Shoplifting from a boutique on the Left Bank, and last year, theft and vandalism from the catacombs.”
“The Catacombs of Paris?” I looked at the discoloration of the stack of bones in the crate at Luc’s feet. The idea that they might have been hundreds of years old, stolen from the underground ossuary created in miles of caverns and tunnels that once housed the stone quarries beneath the city’s streets, made more sense than that they were a recent find. “Why would anyone want to steal bones of the dead?”
“Not to worry, Alexandra,” Luc said, shaking his head. “It’s only the French who would make a tourist attraction of our mass burial practices for the poor. Don’t try to put a good reason to it.”
“But someone is connecting them to you,” I said. “From the remains of—what?—six million humans on public display?”
“Minus these three or four gentlemen,” Jacques said, poking
the wine crate with the toe of his tall black boot. “A token from the ‘empire of death,’ as the ossuary was so aptly named. What is it, Luc? What message was Lisette sent to deliver?”
Luc squeezed my hand, urging me to exit Belgarde’s office. “When you figure it out, Jacques, I’m sure you’ll let me know.”
“I’m glad, Alexandra, that you asked Luc to call these bones to my attention.”
“He would have done it anyway,” I said, thinking to myself that it was later rather than sooner as I’d asked him to.
But the captain couldn’t let us go without a parting shot. “So at three this morning, Luc, when you didn’t pay any attention to what Alexandra asked you to do, where did you go instead?”
My head rested against Luc’s back and my arms encircled his waist. I wore a helmet as I always did when riding behind him on his Ducati.
“Are you okay?” he asked, starting the engine. Like so many Europeans, Luc favored his motorcycle for trips to Cannes, allowing him to weave between cars stuck in heavy seasonal traffic and park almost anywhere in town.
“I’m fine.” Luc knew me well enough to call my bluff. When we’d said good-bye to Jacques Belgarde, he had left me outside the police station to go to the restaurant to make sure everything was in order for the luncheon service. I returned to the house and tried to work Lisette Honfleur out of my thoughts by swimming laps in the pool. The temperature was brisk enough to refresh me after the turn of events during the night.
“You don’t sound fine. Did Jacques get to you?”
“No, Luc. It’s not about him. I’m ready to go, really. We can talk later.”
It was noon on a spectacular day as we started out from the old village. I remember how tightly I clutched Luc the first few trips down from Mougins’s crest several visits earlier, as he navigated the
steep roads on his powerful bike. The twenty-minute ride to Cannes was all downhill, past farmhouses built centuries ago, bordered by tall cypress and olive trees that lined the route to the highway.
“It’s the girl, then.” He was speeding up now, leaning left into the first curve of the descent.
“Of course it’s Lisette,” I said, picking up my head though my words got lost in the wind. I wanted to know as much as Luc did—whether she had a family and who would deliver this devastating news to them; what her background had been that led her to the lifestyle of petty thievery when she’d been offered the possibility of a good job at a chic three-star restaurant; who had brought her to Mougins last night, dressed as though she planned to attend our party.
Now I trusted Luc on the Ducati Multistrada, no longer clinging to him as at first, but taking my cues from his body that I had also come to know so well over time. We shifted from side to side as though one rider guided the powerful machine. There was no opportunity for conversation as we raced onto the highway and sped south, reaching the crowded streets of Cannes, where Luc worked his way through midday traffic jams and commercial loading zones to come to a stop a block from our destination.
We both dismounted and packed our helmets into the saddlebags. Luc reached for my hand and pulled me toward him, and I accepted his warm embrace. He stroked the back of my head. “We’ll talk at lunch.”
I nodded as we headed around the corner to La Croisette, the grand boulevard that formed the iconic image of the French Riviera. Royal palms created a majestic centerpiece as far as one could see in either direction, reminding me that the town had originally been built as a mild-weather winter resort for the very rich more than a century ago. The great hotels—the Carlton, the Martinez, and the Majestic Barrière—looked like elegant fortresses, matrons of an era gone by, on one side of the road, while a brilliantly colorful band of beach umbrellas lined the strip of sand at the water’s edge.
“Are we going to L’Ondine?” I asked.
“That’s your favorite, isn’t it?”
“Far and away.” We had sampled many of the seaside restaurants, but this one was special to me. Luc’s father had taken us there on my first visit. He had a maxim that had served him well in the business: the best restaurant is the one where you are best known.
“That’s where I reserved.”
We were arm in arm crossing the boulevard. Like all the resorts on the Cannes waterfront, the restaurant was down a flight of stairs from La Croisette. Plage L’Ondine had a glassed-in dining room, but we chose always to rent lounges and a large umbrella—eye-catching in a cheerful canary yellow with clean white trim—to sit outside on the beach and swim in the Mediterranean between courses.
The maître d’ was an old friend of Luc’s, who greeted him enthusiastically and kissed me on both cheeks. He led us to our usual spot, telling us that rumors about the success of last night’s dinner had already circulated throughout the food community in Cannes. Apparently the bad news about Lisette hadn’t traveled quite as quickly.
Luc was indeed well-known here. A waiter appeared instantly with a bottle of champagne and a menu for me as we made ourselves comfortable on the chairs. The royal blue umbrellas to our left and the bright pink ones to our right marked neighboring establishments, filling for the afternoon with locals, tourists, and visitors from the sleek yachts that jammed the colorful port.
The waiter filled our glasses and disappeared before we clinked them together. “Cheers, Alex. Ask me whatever you want and let’s get on with the day. Everything else here is perfect.”
“Tell me all you know about Lisette.”
“Darling, you’re more exasperating than Jacques Belgarde.” Luc pushed his sunglasses on top of his head and squared off to me. “I barely had anything to do with her. You know the long days and nights I spend in the restaurant, charming the guests. Well, trying
to, anyway. She was upstairs in the office a few hours, two or three times a week. She always seemed down, like I told him. Her entire demeanor was off-putting to me, so I had no reason to engage her. I thought she was a druggie, too.”
“You didn’t say that.”
“Because I don’t know for sure. Why make it worse for her?”
“It can’t get any worse for her than it is. And you didn’t report that crime to the police.” I wondered whether Luc really had anything to hide from the tax authorities.
“Sip your drink. You’re here to relax and I don’t want all those bubbles to go to waste.”
“When we left the police station this morning and you went back to your office, did you talk to anyone else about Lisette?”
“I wanted to see how many reservations we had for lunch, to make sure all my VIP customers were well seated. I went back to take care of business before I took the afternoon off to attempt to seduce you,” he said, signaling the waiter to come back.
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
“Yes, yes. Okay? Yes, I called Brigitte to tell her about the girl. Is that a problem for you?”
“Of course not.”
“I called her because they had such a tremendous catfight when Brigitte accused Lisette of stealing from me. Everyone in town knew there was bad blood between them. I wanted to see if she’d heard from Lisette lately. I’d prefer Brigitte not be dragged into all this.”
“And did she know anything?”
“Nothing, Madame Prosecutor. Now, is this inquisition going to go on all afternoon, or can we order something to eat?”
“I apologize, Luc.”
“You don’t doubt that Jacques is going to show up at Le Relais tonight, do you? I promise you he won’t be able to resist. It will only cost me a good meal—a big one—with some serious wine, and you’ll know all the dirt he’s dug up by nine o’clock.”
“I’m sure you’re right.”
“You’re like everyone else who comes to Mougins after all. You see our precious hilltop from the highway and you think it’s Camelot. You believe it’s a magical medieval village where time stands still and only good things happen.”