A Twist of Orchids (21 page)

Betul came out from the back room. She stared at Julian, haggard with grief.

“I’m sorry,” Julian repeated. “But please understand that I was working against the odds. Kazim was dealing drugs. He was an addict.”

“No! No drugs!” Osman’s luxuriant mustache seemed to rear up in a denial of its own. “Never drugs.”

“He died of an overdose.” Julian pressed home the unwelcome truth. “But I promise you one thing. Adjudant Compagnon isn’t
satisfied that the Périgueux police have the full story on what happened to your son. If it turns out he’s right, I swear I’ll do everything in my power to help him find out the truth.”

Julian was not prepared for the father’s reaction.

“You keep nose out!” screamed Osman. His entire body went rigid. His face turned the color of chalk. “Go away and keep nose out. No one ask your help. Get out. Don’t come back!”

Betul burst into tears and fled to the rear of the shop.

Julian left. He stood outside on the sidewalk, shaken by the torrent of raw emotions he had just witnessed. Betul’s tears wrenched his heart. But it was the image of Osman’s face that troubled him more. He knew the man. Something had happened to frighten him badly. In fact, to Julian he had seemed more terrified than grieving.

•

Later that week, Jacques Compagnon held a briefing with his gendarmes at the Brames brigade headquarters.

“You all know my view on the Ismet case. Luca is running drugs again. So far, he’s kept it underground and out of sight. Kazim Ismet worked for Luca, ran afoul of him, and was killed on Luca’s orders. Now, Kazim’s death might just be Luca’s first mistake, and it may be the link we’re looking for, provided we can make it stretch far enough.” Hands clasped behind his back, the brigade head walked back and forth across the front of the meeting room. The fact that the space was very cramped meant that he had to turn every two or three strides, which was a little dizzying for him and his audience.

“The problem is, all we have is a voice recording possibly implicating Luca’s sidekick, Serge Taussat, and that’s tenuous. As you know, the police in Périgueux have found nothing to tie Taussat to Kazim or to that skip. You’re also aware that, as far as they’re concerned, the boy died of a self-administered OD. His
pals dumped his body and took off. Case closed. However”—Compagnon paused to face the room squarely—“not for us. I don’t need to remind you that I’ve never believed Luca to be as clean as he looks. So”—the adjudant pivoted and walked in the other direction—“we continue to keep our ears to the ground. Just in case something breaks.”

“Sir,” asked a female gendarme named Lucie Sauret, “where does Monsieur Wood fit in all of this?”

Compagnon scowled. “Wood’s relationship with the case is limited to the fact that he’s a friend of the deceased’s parents, and they asked him to find their son and persuade him to return home.” The adjudant puffed out his cheeks and expelled a lungful of air. “I’ve never liked this picture. In the first place, they should have come to us about Kazim.”

Sauret ventured, “It’s the way with a lot of foreigners,
mon adjudant.
They distrust the police, and they’re afraid, so they try to handle things their own way.”

“If they had come to us,” Compagnon said bitterly, “their son might be alive today. He might also have given us the information we need to put Luca away.”

“Do you think that’s why he was disposed of, sir?” Sauret asked. “I mean, not because he was cheating Luca but because Luca thought he represented a liability?”

“It’s a distinct possibility. Which means”—the adjudant’s nostrils flared—“our Monsieur Wood’s amateur, bungling questions about the kid’s whereabouts could have put a draft up Luca’s backside and may be what got Kazim killed.”

“Now—” Compagnon paused to refer to a white board covered in point-form notes. His face went from a scowl to a ferocious grimace. “Any updates on our rhyming burglar?”

Someone else spoke up: “No trace of any of the stolen items, sir. And no new activity.”

The adjudant nodded. “However, there has been an interesting development.” He set off on another brief journey across the front of the room and pivoted around. “But before I fill you in, let me put the question to you. Is there anything in particular that strikes you about the burglaries?”

Fifteen faces regarded him intently.

Lucie Sauret said, “There’s seems to be no geographical pattern to the break-ins,
mon adjudant.
There were the three around Brames, but the rest were scattered all over the place.”

“All of the houses broken into so far have been insured by the same company, Assurimax,” offered Albert.

“
Bon
,” said Compagnon. “Both good points. Although the fact that Assurimax”—he began his return trip—“is the insurer is not necessarily remarkable in itself. Assurimax is the largest company in the region.”

Laurent stirred. “
Mon adjudant
, the burglar is selective, and he always seems to know which houses to hit.”

Compagnon paused mid-stride, rocking back slightly on his heels. “Good thinking, Naudet. So what does that tell you?”

Laurent frowned. “Well, it wouldn’t be hard to figure out which houses are closed up for the winter. But how does the burglar know which ones have things worth stealing?”

“That,” said Compagnon, looking pleased, “is the question. And the new development. If all of the houses were insured by Assurimax, and if someone were able somehow to access the client files of the different company branches, then wouldn’t this person be in a good position to pick and choose?” He looked about him. “So who are we talking about?”

“An Assurimax employee?” someone said.

“An agent?”

“A temp who moves from branch to branch?”

“An IT technician?”

“A hacker?”

“Excellent,” nodded the adjudant. “As we speak, a specialized team is looking into it, and it may be just the thing to crack this case wide open! Meantime, our task is to concentrate on the jobs pulled in our jurisdiction, to stay alert to any possible further attempts, and to work in concert with other units. Our man may have moved out of our territory, but I don’t need to tell you how important it is to hammer this joker’s ass. He can’t be left to think he can poke fun at the
Gendarmerie nationale
and get away with it.” Compagnon did not refer to the specifically personal content of the last poem. He did not need to.

Mara was delighted to discover maple syrup at the supermarket in Siorac. It came in a little plastic jug with a red maple leaf insignia. For a moment, she was overcome by this small symbol of home found so unexpectedly on European soil. She held the jug to her, plunged into a childhood memory of her mother’s pancakes, light as angels, she and her sister Bedie as little girls, carefully pouring on the thick, sweet, shining syrup until the soft sponge of each pancake could absorb no more. It brought a lump to her throat.

That was how Daisy found her.

“Are you having a private moment in Sauces and Condiments, or can anyone shop here?”

Mara jumped and nearly dropped the jug.

Daisy wore a beige silk culotte-suit under the Aquascutum raincoat. A Hermès scarf that might easily have been tagged at three hundred euros was thrown casually over one shoulder. Her sugary perfume rode on the air. As much as ever, she reminded Mara of a superannuated Barbie doll.

“Oh,” said Mara, burying the maple syrup in the bottom of her shopping cart. Obscurely, she felt that if Daisy saw the precious little jug she would somehow take it over, too. “I thought you’d gone back to Florida.”

“We come and go,” Daisy responded breezily. “My work takes me back and forth. Donny’s, too. I’ve been meaning to get in touch, so I’m glad I’ve run into you. We’d like you to come over for dinner. You and—I forget his name.”

“Julian.”

“Julian. Of course. Will sometime this week do? I’ll give you a buzz.”

•

And that was how Mara and Julian found themselves a few days later in the O’Connors’ expensively reconstructed (not by Mara) house in Grives, sitting at right angles to each other on adjoining sections of a low-slung, moss-green leather sofa. Their knees almost touched. They had been given champagne and strips of smoked salmon skewered around little slabs of brie. The champagne, which stood in a ceramic cooler on a glass-topped table before them, bore a very good label.

“Sláinte,”
said Donny, flourishing his Irish heritage. He was all welcome and bonhomie, a big man eager to please.

“Chin-chin,”
said Daisy, her red mouth pulling wide around the words.

Mara raised her glass.
“Santé.”
She was unable to match Daisy’s elastic smile.

Julian said, “Cheers.”

Neither of them had particularly wanted to accept the invitation. But Daisy had followed up with frightening efficiency, and Loulou had had to cancel their normal Friday dinner at Chez Nous. So there they were.

Through the windows Julian could see a seven o’clock sky that held the sun like a golden seine. He would have much preferred to be outside, breathing air that everywhere held the sweetness of lilacs. Instead, he was stuck indoors with a man who bored him slightly and a woman who couldn’t remember his name, whose heavy scent gave him a headache, drinking pricey champagne and about to eat a meal that Donny, who did the cooking, assured them would be “easy.” Easy to make, or easy to eat? Julian wondered. Maybe it meant something you didn’t have
to chew. Donny wore an apron with big red letters that read “Keep Out. Danger Zone” on the bib.

Dinner turned out to be slices of fresh foie gras pan-fried in butter.

“You know,” Donny said, as he dished out at the table, “all this talk about the cruelty of force-feeding is way exaggerated, far as I can see. In the first place, it’s no worse than the way we keep battery hens back home. At least the ducks and geese here get to walk around a bit before they’re slaughtered. And then they only use migratory birds that gorge naturally. Just building on what nature set up in the first place. Heck, a lot of people argue foie gras is part of France’s cultural heritage, like the Louvre.”

Julian said he couldn’t imagine any animal, migratory or not, liking food funneled down its gullet until its liver swelled to obscene proportions. Mara kicked him under the table.

“Hey,” Donny offered, half rising, anxious to conciliate. “If you’re not okay with this, no hard feelings. I’d be glad to do you an omelet.”

“No, no. I’m fine,” Julian backed down, feeling the moral coward. He went through this struggle every time. The foie gras, meltingly delicious, was served with bread and chubby spears of white asparagus, another abnormality as far as Julian was concerned: white asparagus was grown in the dark. A normal green salad followed. Donny put everything on the table at once, North American style.

“Now, I know,” their host said apologetically, “the French like all these different courses. Back and forth from the kitchen with clean plates and new knives and forks. Never could get into it myself. I like my food out where I can see it.”

A little later he held up his glass and said, “What do you think of this Sauternes? Isn’t it a beaut?”

Donny talked about property deals he had going in the States,
the Caribbean, the Gulf Coast. “Land speculation’s all a question of timing,” he told them seriously. “And patience. The trick is buy low, hold, sell high. I’ve even got a sweetheart of a project on simmer in Buttonville, Ontario. That’s near Toronto. Your neck of the woods, Mara.”

“I’m from Quebec,” she said with her mouth full. She had no trouble with foie gras, indeed was wiping up the rich remains with bread.

“Ah well, it’s all one big, snowy country.”

Donny omitted the cheese course and cut straight to dessert, large squares of baklava, oozing honey, that Julian recognized immediately.

“Now these are great,” said Donny, breaking into his with a fork. Paper-thin bits of pastry shot everywhere. “Buy ’em at the market in Saint-Cyprien. There’s a Turkish stall there. Woman and her son. She makes everything fresh.” He chewed, swallowed, and frowned. “Though to tell you the truth”—he poked the baklava critically with his fork—“I think she’s losing her touch. This is definitely not as good as I usually get.”

Donny was clearly unaware that the son’s market days were finished. Julian thought of Betul in mourning. Another surge of guilt made him put down his fork.

“Listen,” Daisy addressed her guests once the preliminaries of the meal were over. “I need to cut to the chase. The reason I asked you two over is that I wanted to talk to you about Joseph.” She was completely candid, taking no pains to disguise the fact that she had an agenda independent of the pleasure of Mara and What’s-His-Name’s company. “I want to know how he’s doing, and I can’t get a straight answer from that nurse.”

“As well as can be expected,” Mara said cautiously. She knew Daisy was still pressuring Jacqueline Godet to recommend that Joseph be bundled into a nursing home.

Daisy tossed her head. “Oh, boy. What does that mean?”

“He has good and bad days.”

“Listen,” Daisy said a little aggressively, “my father had Parkinson’s. I know what the disease is like. He was a wonderful man, my daddy. Successful, outgoing, active. Parkinson’s changed all that. He had private nursing care, of course, but I visited him every day until his death. I’m not happy about poor old Joseph all on his own with no one to look after him. We go back a long way with the Gaillards: 1975. They were running a kind of bed and breakfast on their farm then. Donny and I wanted a rural experience, and we stayed with them the first time we came to the Dordogne. Their house wasn’t exactly comfortable—you know what it’s like—but they needed the cash, and the cooking was terrific, so we came back year after year until they closed the B and B and we bought our place here. That’s how we became friends. I happen to care a lot about what happens to Joseph.”

“But it’s really not your call,” Mara told her bluntly. “Or anyone’s but his. You’ll have to let him make his own decisions. And right now he wants to remain in his own home, on his own land. As soon as extended home care is arranged for him, he’ll be fine.”