A Twist of Orchids (29 page)

She took a deep breath. “At least tell me this. Was the buyer Donny O’Connor?”

Maïtre Joffre drew himself up. He gave her a stony look.

“No,” he said severely. “It was not.”

•

Mara left weighed down by the realization that nothing was as it seemed. Christine had no motive to kill her father because she had no claim to the land. Donny’s tie with Montfort-Izawa might have given him a motive, but he was not the purchaser of the Gaillards’
viager.
No one had pushed Amélie down the Two Sisters’ stairs, and the monster was in Joseph’s head after all. So where did this leave her?

In need of a hot bath, a stiff drink, and some decent food.

That night she made a simple omelet with fresh chives harvested from the kitchen garden that Julian had started below the terrace. To her surprise, it did not burn or go rubbery, as her omelets were inclined to do. It rose plump and light in the pan, crisping slightly at the edges. She ate it with a slab of dense country bread and quite a bit of wine. Jazz got a portion. The first food Julian had ever cooked for her had been an omelet. It really was too bad, she thought with a pang, that he wasn’t around to share this one with her.

Mara parked outside Chez Nous that Friday evening in a high state of expectation. She had not seen or heard from Julian for nearly a week. She felt immeasurably let down as she pushed through the bead curtain of the bistro to see that he was not there, that she was, in fact, the first to arrive.

>
Stop worrying, kid
, Patsy’s voice spoke up in her head.
He’s never on time, and you know it.
<

She sat down at their usual table, exchanged brief pecks with Paul, ordered a kir royal, and settled down to wait. Jazz walked around, greeting the other diners, then flopped down in his usual spot in front of the bar.

Loulou turned up a few minutes later. They embraced, and she could see right away that he was primed with news.

“I’ve heard via the grapevine,” he said confidentially, lowering an eyelid. “The lads may have a lead on the rhyming burglar. In fact, they may be closing in on him even as we speak.”

Paul reappeared. The men shook hands, and Loulou ordered a pastis. He said no more until it arrived. Mara knew better than to hurry him. The chubby ex-cop liked to keep his audience dangling.

“You know, I have always thought from the beginning”—he smacked his lips around his first sip—“that there had to be some common element to these burglaries. Now what do you suppose it is?”

Mara drained her drink. “I would have thought the MO was enough. Unoccupied houses, objets d’art, the poems.”

Loulou shook his head. “Turns out all of the burgled houses are insured by the same agency, Assurimax.”

“Oh?”

“The thinking is, the burglar is an employee, someone able to access the company’s client databases. That explains how he was always able to select houses worth hitting, and it explains the scattered pattern of the break-ins.”

“An inside job?” Unwillingly, Mara thought of Sébastien Arnaud, his puppy dog eyes and Airedale hair, his immense lik-ableness, his six children. Did he also have an aptitude for doggerel and computers? She fiddled with her empty glass. “Do they have a suspect?”

Loulou grinned and sat back in his chair. “Oh, I wouldn’t be surprised if the gendarmes know exactly who it is and are just playing the fellow out to catch him in flagrante. And now,” he demanded jovially. “What about you? What new
criminalité
have you discovered this week?” His tone was not entirely teasing. He had come to expect nothing less of her and Julian. He signaled to Paul for another round of drinks.

“If you really want to know,” she said, and went on to tell him about Montfort-Izawa, the Gaillards’ land, the
viager
, and Joseph’s night visitors.

Loulou rubbed his nose with a knuckle. “Tricky things,
viagers.
You’ve surely heard about the case of Jeanne Calmont? Made national headlines a few years ago. She lasted to 126, outliving the buyer, and the buyer’s heirs were stuck with continuing the payments. And there was another case right here in the Dordogne. Fellow bought
en viager
from a widow in her seventies. Well, the purchaser is now a widower himself in his eighties, and the old dear is 103, still going strong and likely to outlast him. Fortunately, the two get on like a house on fire. He visits every Sunday and brings her flowers.”

“Sweet,” Mara murmured absently.

“Speaking of flowers, where’s Julian? He’s very late.”

Six days late, by Mara’s count, with no attempt to contact her. Nor had she tried calling him again. It was as if they had entered into some kind of non-communication agreement. Mara felt a knot of anxiety tighten in her gut.

“Um, I’m sure he’s just been held up,” she said.

Paul placed another pastis before Loulou, and a second kir royal in front of Mara. He asked if Julian was planning to show. It was going on for nine.

“Maybe you could order now,” he said bluntly. “Mado wants to close the kitchen pretty soon.”

They both chose the thirty-seven euro menu. Mara glanced out the window. A fog was gathering. No van came rocking to a halt outside the restaurant, no figure hurried toward the door. Julian had never failed to appear for their Friday nights at the bistro, except on the night of the storm, of course, and she had been with him then. Even if he were coming from a job at the other end of the region, even if he had sometimes turned up looking a little soiled because he’d had no time to run home and clean up, he still made it. Could he have forgotten? She was almost certain he was staying away purposely. But how could he just do that, without a word of explanation to her? She dug in her bag for her phone and then thought better of it. Julian absolutely must not think she was hounding him.

Loulou was studying her.

“Is everything all right?” he asked. “Between the two of you?” His voice had a kindly solicitousness to it that made Mara’s reply catch in her throat. Loulou reached across to take her hand. She burst into tears.

•

Julian woke with a start in the old leather armchair in which he had fallen asleep.
Merde
, it was past nine o’clock, and he should
have been at Chez Nous more than an hour ago. There was no time to change, no time to shave. He had meant to arrive on time—in fact, early, to have a few moments alone with Mara to say whatever it took to put his unexplained absence right. “Look, I’m sorry I haven’t been in touch. Awfully busy.” It would have sounded lame, he knew. She wouldn’t have been convinced, but he had hoped it would do for the moment. Now, he wasn’t sure she would even still be there for him to sound lame to. He gave a sharp whistle for Bismuth and ran for the van.

•

Mara’s tears were drying up, but she occasionally hiccuped into the capacious handkerchief Loulou had gallantly offered her.

“Maybe it’s my imagination. Maybe Kazim’s death is what’s still getting him down. But somehow I think it’s more than that. The problem is, he won’t talk. I’m afraid …” she trailed off.

“You’re afraid …?” prompted Loulou in a fatherly way.

“I—I don’t know how well this living together is working out. I think”—the tears welled up again—“I’m afraid Julian wants to break things off.”

“Ah,
non
,” Loulou assured her vigorously. “Julian cares very much for you. He would never do that.”

“I think he would. He’s essentially a loner.”

“He is lonely,” said Loulou wisely. “As are you. There is a difference, you know.”

Was that all that bound them, Mara wondered, their common sense of isolation? How did the song go? Two lonely people together? France, for all that it was the land of
amour
, could be an unnerving place for a single expatriate.

Just then Bismuth bounded in the door. He was followed a moment later by his owner.

“About time,
mec.”
Paul slapped forearms together with Julian in a kind of wrestling hold.

“Sorry, I fell asleep.”

Hugging, Mara had read somewhere, was good for you. It released oxytocin into the system and gave you a feeling of well-being. Hastily, she blew her nose, stood up, and hugged Julian hard, taking in his familiar smell, the aura of dampness that he brought with him from outside. A great sense of relief filled her. He had fallen asleep. It was as simple as that. It was almost as if the past anxious week had not really happened.

Julian, who had been braced for testy comments about tardiness and poor communication, was pleasantly surprised at the warmth of Mara’s embrace. He returned it enthusiastically. She seemed so happy to see him. But why was she crying? They both held on, enjoying their arms around one another. The Time Out, their bodies said, was over, even though their minds puzzled over how they had got there.

Loulou cleared his throat. The two of them sat down. Mara’s eyes were still a little moist, and her face had gone quite pink. Julian looked both pleased and slightly flustered. His right cheek bore the impression of whatever he had been sleeping on. He waved aside an aperitif and ordered straight away. He was starving. And exhausted. Gobbling a piece of bread, he told them about his run-in with Géraud. As a result, he had been getting up early to put in a few hours searching out likely habitats for his orchid before proceeding with the less interesting but equally pressing business of earning a living. And then continuing with the search after work until the light failed. It was like holding down two full-time jobs, and the orchid search part of it, as Mara well knew, involved leagues of walking.

“I don’t suppose you could help me?” he turned to her. “I hate to ask, but now that Géraud knows I’m looking around Aurillac, the orchid will be at his mercy if he finds it before I do. It would go a lot faster with two.”

Mara’s chin went up. A small voice, aggrieved, rang out in her head. While she had anguished, he had not communicated with her because he was too busy searching for his orchid? She took a deep breath to expel the “no” that was already forming in her mouth. And then she saw his face, boyish with hope and yet doubtful. They both knew that the last time she had gone on an orchid hunt with him she had been charged by a wild boar. She brushed aside remembrances of past searches, opted for generosity, and said, “I wouldn’t think of letting you out on your own.”

His look of amazed delight made her feel pleasantly heady. Or maybe it was the champagne cocktails. They agreed on a hunt the next day.

Then Julian told them about his encounters with Adelheid and Serge.

Loulou raised his head sharply. “You’re sure it was Serge following you?”

“Positive,” Julian said with his mouth full with bread. “I was on my way to Adelheid’s house, and this car was behind me. I didn’t pay any attention to it then, but it was waiting for me on the roadside when I came out. A black Mercedes. I got a good look at the driver. There’s no mistaking that face. Not to worry, though.” He swallowed. “I managed to shake him in the end.”

“But how does he know your car?” Mara asked. “Julian, I
am
worried.”

He considered the question. “Good point. Unless … I don’t know. There was a sneaky little bloke who followed me to my van the day I was asking around after Kazim in Périgueux. Maybe he was one of Luca’s boys.”

“This isn’t good,” muttered Loulou. “If Serge knows your car, he probably knows a lot more about you. Where you live, for example. I’d say Serge was tailing you from the time you left your house yesterday morning.”

Julian’s eyebrows jerked upward. Had
both
Géraud and Serge been following him? It would have been comical, except that Serge did not look as if he had much of a sense of humor. Or—the thought struck him forcefully—had Géraud’s unwelcome presence actually saved him from something more unpleasant than a cross-country chase?

“Well, no harm done,” Julian said uneasily. He reached for another piece of bread and watched Paul hurry by, carrying platters of
steak-frites
, sizzling and mouth-wateringly appetizing, as only Mado could make them. “God, I’m ravenous.” He had ordered the same thing, and this teaser—the smell of grilled meat and fried potatoes—was almost more than he could bear.

Mara gave him her news. As she told him about the
viager
and the information she had been able to pry out of Maïtre Joffre, Julian’s eyes strayed to a neighboring table where a woman was breaking into a steaming pastry shell.

“Hmm.” He stroked his beard thoughtfully. “I’d say that leaves both Christine and Donny well out of it. All the same, it might be worthwhile finding out who did purchase the
viager
—” He broke off in eager anticipation. At last Paul had come out of the kitchen and was heading their way. “Just because it’s not Donny, it doesn’t follow that someone else isn’t interested in getting rid of Joseph to sell his land to Montfort-Izawa.”

Loulou nodded. “
C’est logique.
A very good point.”

Someone else? Mara recalled the
notaire
’s face as he told her that Donny was not the purchaser. His expression had been stony. Or stonewalling? The closed look of a man who shaves the truth very fine, of someone whose practiced answers hid as much as they revealed. Mara froze, her drink halfway to her lips. Suddenly she had a pretty good idea who the buyer was. Not Donny. Daisy. She was the one with the money, and she could have made the purchase in her own name. Which meant that the O’Connors had
a stake in Joseph’s life after all. All that feigned concern and the talk about getting him into care was so much eyewash. Then a horrible thought struck her. She jumped up, pulling Julian out of his chair just as Paul was placing their first course on the table.

“Hey, just a minute,” Julian objected, indignant at having his meal snatched from him, or more precisely, him from it.

“Come on,” she shouted, heedless that everyone in the restaurant was gawking at them. “Sorry Loulou, sorry Paul, this can’t wait.” She bellowed for the dogs and dragged Julian with her out the door.

“Do you mind telling me what this is all about?” Julian demanded as she started up the engine.