There's Something About St. Tropez (46 page)

“Probably some holidaymakers abandoned him.”

“Or maybe he just lives here. Maybe he belongs to Violette.”

“You're crazy. He can't belong to a ghost.”

Laureen stopped in her tracks. There!” she exclaimed triumphantly. “Now you've admitted it. There
is
a ghost.”

They were standing on the steps outside the kitchen door. For a second Bertrand looked uncertain, then he stooped and searched for the key the janitor usually kept hidden in the terra-cotta pot of geraniums. This time it was there. “There is no ghost,” he said, unlocking the door and pushing it open. As he stood in the silent shadowy kitchen, he wished he believed it.

He could hear Laureen breathing in back of him. “Okay, so there are no stolen paintings in here,” he announced loudly, just to warn any possible ghost he was here.

He walked through the kitchen, hearing Laureen pattering after him in her ballet slippers. He thanked heaven it wasn't the cowboy boots today.

They were in the salon. Anything might have been hidden beneath the white shrouds covering the furniture but they were too afraid to look.

They went back into the hall. The door to La Violette's boudoir was shut. They hovered outside, avoiding looking at each other in case each saw the other was scared. Bertrand shoved his heavy glasses up his nose, ran his hands through his hair. He pushed open the door.

All was silent. And dark.

“Oooh, Bertrand,” Laureen whispered, sounding scared.

He thought of her, laughing with him as they'd sped along the sunny lane on their bikes only minutes before. He knew he had to be the brave one and somehow that memory gave him the courage to step into that dark room and switch on the light.

A chandelier gleamed dimly. Only one bulb was lit but for Bertrand, it
was better than none. He had boasted to Laureen that he'd been to Chez La Violette many times, that he knew it like the back of his own hand. It was true, he had. And he did. Only that was before he had suspected there was a ghost, and before he had believed the robbers might be using it to store their loot.

He turned to look at Laureen, still hovering in the doorway.

“You know what I think?” she said.

“What?”

“We should go to Monsieur François Reynaud, the owner of the stolen artworks, and tell him we believe the thieves took his paintings away on a boat. We'll say we think they're hidden somewhere at Chez La Violette, maybe even in the garden.” The garden was wild enough to hide almost anything. “Then he'll give you the reward for being so clever.”

“Okay,” Bertrand agreed, relieved. “And then he can come and find the stolen paintings himself.”

He switched off the light and closed the boudoir door, then they hurried back through the kitchen. Outside, the dog was still sitting where they had left it.

“Bertrand?” Laureen said.

“What?”

“Maybe the dog's a ghost.”

“Ghosts don't eat old baguette.”

“Oh. Well, I think he must have belonged to Violette.”

He shrugged. “Violette was old, she died years ago. This dog is young.”

“Well, maybe this dog is a great-great-great-great-grandson of Violette's
own
dog?” She wasn't giving up.

The two studied the dog. The dog stared back at them.

“Bertrand.”

“What?”

“Why doesn't he bark?”

“I'll bet it's because he's afraid to.”

Bertrand knew he was right from the way the dog was looking at him, half-afraid, half-beseeching. He knew exactly how that felt.

Steeling himself against that look, he said to Laureen, “We have to go now, and see Monsieur Reynaud, tell him what we believe.”

“And get the reward,” she said, brightening at the thought that soon Bertrand would be reprieved from his cruel mother. She put her hand to her throat, checking that the necklace was still there. Bertrand had rescued it and now she wanted to rescue him. “Let's go,” she said, setting off briskly down the narrow overgrown path to the gate.

The yellow dog walked quietly behind them. When Bertrand turned to close the gate it slipped through, fast as any sleight of hand conjurer's dog. It sat again, watching them.

“He thinks he's yours,” Laureen said.

Bertrand shrugged, steeling himself once again. “He's just hungry,” he replied, climbing onto his bike and setting off, back down the lane.

With a worried glance behind her, Laureen set off after him.

“We can't just leave him there,” she cried. “He's hungry.”

Bertrand wobbled uncertainly, turned his head to look. The dog was trotting behind him, tongue lolling, eyes hopeful. When Bertrand stopped, so did the dog.

“Don't you see?” Laureen's voice was as hopeful as the dog's hopeful eyes. “He belongs to you now. Mac told me he rescued Pirate. Now you have to rescue this dog.”

Bertrand imagined the yellow dog—his
own
dog accompanying him on his nightly Scientific Experiments. He imagined bathing him and combing him so his fur shone. He imagined swimming in the sea with his dog next to him. He would share his food with him, it wouldn't cost anything at all. He didn't stop to think what they would say at the hotel when he showed up with a large stray dog.

“What shall we call him?” he asked.

“Beauty.”

He snorted disparagingly. “Too girly. Anyhow, he's French.”

He remembered that first night at Chez La Violette, when all the strangers had arrived. The Riders on the Storm, he had called them, after the song by the Doors. “How about Storm?” he said.

Then Little Laureen said, “No. He's Yellow Dog.” And somehow that was exactly his name.

And when Bernard called, “Here, Yellow Dog,
viens ici
,” the dog's tail wagged and its eyes lit up. It went and stood next to Bertrand while he tickled its neck and said “good boy.” Then it trotted happily after him as he cycled down the lane, en route to François Reynaud's Villa les Ambassadeurs.

He and Laureen were singing again, “We're off to see the Reynaud, the wonderful Reynaud of Oz,” as they went.

 

66.

 

 

Sunny was on her terrace with her open laptop. She didn't hear the cry of the peacocks or the children splashing in the pool, nor even the clatter, one more time, of the red helicopter overhead, flying even closer to the beach than before. Her attention was riveted on the information Google had just flashed on her screen.

 

Von Müller

A noble German family, barons from the fifteenth century. Later became major players in Bismarck's unification of Germany, thereby gaining themselves even more landholdings in Westphalia as well as properties in the cities of Hamburg and Düsseldorf, all of which were lost in World War II, as was the grand family home, a palace known modestly as Haus Müller. The family was never prolific and by the 1920s was reduced to the Baron Wilhelm August von Müller and his wife, the Baronin Lisel Hannah von Müller. There was one son, Kurt Wilhelm August von Müller (b. Jan. 8 1920)
.

Kurt von Müller was a musical prodigy and a career as a concert pianist was predicted but came to nothing. He achieved a small amount of fame as an accompanist to a well-known singer and actress, but this was not to last long
.

In July 1944, Kurt von Müller was arrested and accused of spying and collaboration with the French. He was living in Paris at the time and was a German Army officer, working with the Reich. He escaped,
it was said, with the aid of his lover, La Violette, but was caught and executed the following year
.

The Baron and Baronin von Müller had been killed in an air raid on Hamburg a few months previously. Their only son, Kurt, was the last of the von Müller line. With his death the title of Baron died out. The family's much diminished estates were broken up into small parcels. Kurt von Müller had willed them to the workers on his lands, whose families had been working for the von Müllers for decades.

 

Sunny inspected the von Müller crest surmounting the piece. An eagle and a fox on a checkerboard shield. It was the same as the one on the ring.

She went into her room and took the blue velvet box from the top drawer of the chest, hidden under her cashmere sweater. She put the ring on her finger, thinking about Kurt von Müller, the German who had collaborated with the French, in a new twist on the old story. And about La Violette, who had loved him. Had Kurt, her lover, given her this ring before he died? To remember him by? Then, later, they had arrested her too. But for what? She sighed. There seemed to be no answer.

The gold ring felt cold on her finger, and, suddenly chilled, she took it off and put it back in its box. There must be an answer to what had happened to Violette, and the only place that answer could be was at Chez La Violette. Somehow, everything always seemed to come back to that.

Thinking of the villa, and about the way it must have been for Violette when all the world seemed young and everybody was in love, Sunny remembered that faint haunting scent that hung in the air. It was Violette's special perfume, she was sure of it. And since Violette had lived here, and since the best perfumers and growers of flowers for the expensive scents of the world were in nearby Grasse, surely one of those perfume makers would still have it? Or at least know where to find it?

Thanking heaven for the computer age, Sunny looked up perfume makers. Ten minutes later, she was on her way to Grasse. Alone again, because Mac was with Lev checking out the boat slips at Port Grimaud for the
Blue Picasso
, which had not been seen in the bay since the night Caroline drowned, and Mac wanted to know why. He said he knew Valenti was involved and he wasn't about to let him get away with it.

Sunny went first to say goodbye to Belinda and Sara, who she found playing bridge with Billy and a roped in middle-aged Frenchman with a bristly black mustache and sparkling blue eyes. At least they sparkled whenever he
looked at Belinda, which Sunny noticed, even in the short time she was there, was quite frequently. Belinda looked despondent, though.

“I can't even go out on the beach now,” she whispered to Sunny, at the same time holding up her cards carefully to show her her winning hand.

“You're not the only one,” Sunny said, remembering she had not yet been out on the beach once. She was in St. Tropez and her new bikinis lay in the drawer, wasting away, while Mac sought out killers and she sought out perfume and an old woman's secrets.

“Where's Little Laureen?” she asked Billy.

His ten-gallon hat was back on his head, despite Belinda's best efforts, and Sunny noticed he was keeping a keener eye on Belinda and the Frenchman than on his cards.

“Little Laureen's gone for a bike ride with that French kid. He's her new best friend. Nice kid, though. Looks like he could use a friend or two. And so could my Laureen.”

“Nate's gone to check on his new house,” Sara added, looking as though she were wishing she was with him instead of playing bridge on the hotel's pretty patio. But it was her duty to keep Belinda company. Keep an eye on her. Make sure she didn't do anything crazy—like running off into St. Tropez again.

Sunny told them she was off to Grasse to look at the perfumeries, and Belinda advised her to stick to the single-note perfumes. “They don't get any better than at some of the small producers here,” she said.

Of course, Sunny thought, driving the autoroute to Cannes one more time, then taking the turnoff that led into the hills high above the city, and to the famous perfumeries, that was exactly where she should go. To the smaller places, ones that had been there for a century or more.

The first she found was set back in a flower-filled garden, a splendid turn-of-the-century mansion with a stone portico and smart striped awnings over tall windows. The young man at the glass reception desk was very polite, very correct, and very sad that no they did not make a violet perfume. In fact there was only one place that did, as far as he knew, and he knew everybody in the Grasse area. It was in a village close by.

He directed Sunny to
Les Belles Auteurs, du Fleurs de Parfum
, a lofty title that turned out to be a tiny atelier, a studio on a small side street in a nearby village. She entered through a low stone arch, crossed a tiny cobbled courtyard and found herself knocking on the firmly closed wooden door that bore the stress and strains of age.

After a while there was the sound of footsteps, then the door opened a crack.

“
Qui est là?
”

It was a woman's voice. “
Pardon, madame
.” Sunny struggled to find the correct words that meant “I'm looking for a maker of violet perfume.”
“Mais, je cherche un producteur d'un parfum particulier. Le parfum de violette. On me dit que votre établissement est
the sole
producteur.”