There's Something About St. Tropez (56 page)

“We could have stopped at a café and bought some,” Nate complained, glancing over his shoulder at Sara mopping up the seat with paper napkins, while Belinda took a large bite out of a hefty sandwich.

“Turkey, ham and Swiss,” she said, passing it over to him.

“This is Provence, not New York,” he said. “Where d'you get turkey, ham and Swiss?”

“At the local Spar mini-market. They have everything there.” She caught
his tut-tutting frown and said, “Hey, I'm a junk-foodie at heart. Enough of all this fancy French stuff.”

She was laughing at him and Nate knew it. He wished he could simply keep on being impulsive, the way he had when he'd bought the house. It was going to take time but he would get there. Look at Sara. God knows, if she could change, anybody could. He was sure within a year he'd be out of his Manhattan moneyman straitjacket and hanging out at the Moulin, with Malcolm and Roger. And he'd bet his life Sara would be running the place and have them making a profit for the first time.

“Good,” he said, passing the sandwich on to Lev, who took an appreciative bite and passed it over his shoulder to Sara.

“Coffee?” Sara handed a paper cup to Nate, managing to spill it again as Lev curved round the ever-curving road.

“Oh my gosh.” She peered out the window. “Belinda, will you just look at those cliffs?”

They were on a snaking white road leading through a narrow gorge, cliff on one side, sheer drop on the other. Only thing was, Lev hadn't expected to see so many trucks. Obviously, this was a route truckers also used as a shortcut. Keeping well back, he allowed yet another truck to pass.

Belinda hid her face in her shoulder. “I can't even look,” she wailed, managing another peek at the boulder-strewn drop on their right.

“It's okay, Belinda, it'll soon be over.” Sara looked up at the cliff. “Jesus,” she muttered, then remembered Little Laureen would have told her not to take the Lord's name in vain. And you know what, she told herself, that child was right.

A helicopter clattered overhead. Lev peered upward. It was regulation silver color, not red. Still it worried him. They were coming to the end of the gorge, only a couple more miles to go, already the gradient had changed. The helicopter clattered overhead again. Alarmed, Lev glanced up again. Out of the corner of his eye he was aware of a large car approaching. It was maybe a couple of hundred yards away.

Instinct sensed danger. The car had Italian number plates. Now it was coming right at them. The bald, bullet-headed man in the passenger seat was aiming a black semiautomatic.

Maybe two seconds had passed.

“Get down,” Lev yelled, ramming his foot to the metal.

“What . . . why . . .?”

Sara shoved Belinda's head down and threw herself on top of her. Nate
crouched forward, hands over his head, he wasn't sure why since a bullet would pierce anything.

The
rat-a-tat-tat
of gunfire echoed from the cliff, but instead of attempting to avoid the oncoming car, Lev swung the Bentley fast into its path. He saw the other driver panic, tug hard at the wheel, swerve to his left. The semi jerked upward, bullets ripped holes in the Italian car's own roof. And then it toppled, gently, almost in slow motion, over the cliff.

Trucks screeched to a stop. Men got out, stood at the edge of the gorge, looking down at the now blazing car, gesticulating wildly, telephoning the cops, running to the white Bentley, balanced precariously, one front wheel over the chasm.

Inside the car there was a terrible silence. The very air seemed to tremble. It felt as though even a breath would send them over the edge.

“Stay absolutely still.” Lev's voice was quiet, controlled.

Nobody was moving anyway.

Sara was a lightweight but even now, when she knew they might be dead any second, she worried she was crushing Belinda, pinned underneath her. It was the first time Sara had known Belinda to be silent.

Nate remained crouched in the front seat, not even daring to remove his hands from over his head, even though now there were no bullets. He was thinking it was a pity that, when he'd finally found himself, he was going to die.

The big car shivered as the right front wheel slid a couple of inches farther over the edge.

Belinda waited for her life to pass before her closed eyes, the way it was supposed to just before you died. It did not. Instead she was swept by a terrible surge of anger at the husband. Her friends were going to die because he was an insane control freak. Goddamit, he'd even shot at them. The only consolation was that he must surely be dead now. But what sort of consolation was that when she was going to die too? Jasper Lord had achieved his last wish.

Lev kept his foot on the brake. Faces appeared in his window, yelling at him in French. Men flanked both sides. A dozen men were lifting the heavy car. Lev stared down into the chasm as the car trembled again, inches from the ground, floating for seconds in midair. Then it was lowered, like a giant beast, on all four great paws of its tires, back onto the highway.

“It's okay, you can breathe now,” Lev said. Everything considered, he was pretty glad to be breathing himself.

Men were opening the doors. Belinda and Sara tumbled in a terrified heap onto the road. Nate took his head from his hands and looked round, stunned. Lev got out, reaching to shake the hands of the truck drivers who had saved them, just as police cars screamed round the bend, blue lights flashing.

Sara sat in the road, too traumatized to move, but Belinda scrambled to her feet. She peered into the car.

“Damn it, Sara,” she said in a shaky voice. “You spilled coffee all over my leather seats.”

And then she burst into tears.

 

83.

 

 

Hours later, the four of them were still sitting in the emergency room at the local hospital. No one had so much as a bruise. Sara had finally stopped trembling, Belinda had stopped crying, and Nate had finally begun to think he would live to see his new home again.

Lev was cool. It was all over now. The bodies were too charred to be recognizable, but he'd seen that it was Jasper Lord aiming the semi, and recognized the driver as one of the thugs from the nightclub. There had been two other men in the backseat. Now Lord and the others would be identified only by their dental records.

He'd made himself known to the police, told them the story, gone over the Bentley with them inch by inch until they found the GPS tracking device Lev had guessed would be there, planted under the chassis. Of course that's how Lord had known where to find Belinda. And this time he had not intended to let her get away, even if it meant putting a bullet through her himself. The silver helicopter was soon traced to a tiny local airport. It had been rented by one of Lord's men who had followed the Bentley's progress from the village to the canyon, keeping Lord informed while he drove up to meet it.

Obviously it was reckless behavior, even for a man as narcissistic, controlling and powerful as Jasper Lord, and it was that same obsessive behavior that had brought his end.

Sitting on a plastic chair, sipping a terrible cup of coffee with about six sugars in it, Belinda said, “I thought I cared about him, once upon a time, you know.”

Sara patted her hand comfortingly. “Of course you did. You wouldn't have married him otherwise.”

“Wouldn't I?” Belinda's bright blue eyes were bleak. “You've no idea how many times I've asked myself that question.”

Nate sipped his own cup of bad coffee, no sugars. “So what was your answer?”

Belinda stared into the foam cup for a long moment. “I think it was the diamond necklace in the fish and chips newspaper that did it,” she said finally. “It just, y'know”—she gave a little shrug—“it just seemed to capture the essence of who I was. I thought to myself, Well, here's a man who finally understands me. He knows I'll always be that Essex girl underneath the couture, and I thought that's what he loved.” She shrugged again. “How wrong I was.”

Sara tried a little comforting again. “I'll bet he loved you, once.”

Belinda gave her a withering look. “For God's sake, Sara, of course he didn't. He just wanted to own me. I didn't understand it then, but he bought and paid for me. ‘Love' had nothing to do with it.”

Sara sank farther down in her plastic chair, staring wordlessly at the tile floor.

“Oh,
Saraaaaa
!” Belinda was on her knees in front of her. “The husband was never my friend.
Never
. Not like you. Do you think I'll ever forget what you did for me today? Do you imagine I won't go over and over again how you threw yourself on top of me to protect me? Without even thinking of your own safety? Sara Strange, I will love you forever. You are my best, my very dearest, my most wonderful friend.”

Sara blinked away the tears, and said, “Even though I spilled coffee all over your leather seats?”

Belinda grinned. “Fuck the leather seats.”

A look of shock crossed Sara's sweet face, then “Fuck the leather seats,” she agreed, as they burst out laughing.

Lev had been on the phone to Mac for a long time. “Okay, let's go,” he said finally. “A small plane's waiting at the local airport to take us back to St. Tropez.”

The three looked at each other. “Wanna bet that Mac'll be waiting for us, at our table in the courtyard, bottles of rosé chilling, wanting to know what his Misfits have been up to?” Nate said.

“So, maybe now you can tell him you've found yourselves,” observant Lev said, surprising them.

 

84.

 

 

Two nights later, Mac was surveying his little band of Misfits assembled once again around their long table in the courtyard at the Hôtel des Rêves. They were drinking a gorgeous champagne, vintage Billecart-Salmon rosé—Billy's treat, and the color of overripe peaches. Sunny's head was no longer bandaged but the two black eyes she'd gotten when she fell from the wheel-chair made her look like a raccoon. Mac still couldn't believe the others were unhurt. Especially Belinda.

“That's because Sara protected me,” Belinda said. “
I
still can't believe she threw herself on top of me like that.”

Sara blushed. “I didn't stop to think about it, I just knew the husband was out to get you.”

“He could have gotten you instead.”

“Not anymore, he can't,” Lev said.

Belinda looked worriedly at him. “Why do I feel so guilty that he's dead?”

“It was you or him,” he reminded her. “You're guilty of nothing.” Lev knew that a dozen truckers had already testified the big Italian car had made straight for them, and started firing.

Silence fell. Mac's eyes met Sunny's swollen ones. “I think it's time we all thought of ourselves instead of the bad guys,” he said. “A celebration is called for.”

“More champagne?” Sara said, brightening.

Mac thought Sara had seriously improved since he first encountered her, timid and tearful, humiliated and possibly heartbroken in the driveway of Chez
La Violette. He also noticed that Billy had a protective arm round the back of Belinda's chair. And that Belinda didn't seem to mind. In fact she snuggled into Billy, giving him a plaintive upward glance every now and then that Mac knew was really getting to him. And also, every now and then, he saw that Billy checked the dining room, where Little Laureen and Bertrand sat together at his table in the window, no doubt consuming more spaghetti, though Laureen had now confided that she also liked her spaghetti with just ketchup. Sunny had almost gagged at the thought, but reminded herself kids would be kids.

Bertrand had on the new glasses Billy had bought to replace the big ugly ones with the broken lense. The boy had picked them out himself, plain wire granny glasses that blended in so you actually saw his angular face underneath the thatch of blond fringe. And tonight Little Laureen wore her palest pink tutu with her princess tiara and the cowboy boots—retrieved from the villa. As always, she had on her silver heart necklace, and her star-tipped wand lay on the table next to her. Tesoro was on her lap and Pirate on the floor next to the yellow dog. Despite the flea bath, all the dogs were scratching.