Blackbird Fly (37 page)

In the garden she put the two photographs beside each
other. “
Regardez
.” They all squinted at the images.

Josephine said, “
Cette femme n’est pas Marie
.”
Marie-Emilie was dark, like a gypsy, with black eyes and nearly
black hair and a big bosom, she said. She was taller than Weston.
He was very short, like Albert. This woman, this blonde, must be
very small, her eyes are light, her nose is wrong. She is
yellow-haired and not Marie-Emilie, Josephine said
emphatically.

Merle turned the photograph over: ‘Wes and Emilie.’
She pointed to Josephine’s photo. “This is Marie-Emilie Chevalier?
Married to Weston Strachie?”

“
Absolutement.
”

So who was the blonde? Merle asked to borrow the
photograph. Josephine said she had memories in her heart and some
of them weren’t very good ones. She shook hands with Pascal and
Merle, Albert and Annie, then walked her dignified walk, broom in
hand, out the garden gate.

Pascal stared at the photographs. “He must have been
very short for Madame to mention it.”

“
You don’t think it’s possible she
just dyed her hair blond when she got to America?” Merle
said.

“
It is not the same woman,” he said.
The sisters stared at the photographs. Annie shook her head. Albert
shrugged.

“
Where do you suppose the real
Marie-Emilie ended up?” Pascal said.

Annie followed his gaze. “In the
pissoir
?”

A man comes to the countryside in France, as Pascal
told the story, because his wife has a free house, because he
cannot make a living, for a variety of reasons. His wife is not as
pretty or young as the young girls who talk to him on the street.
So he takes one as his lover, makes her pregnant. And dumps her at
the convent, Annie added.

But his dark, gypsy wife wants a child, Merle said.
So she fetches the girl at the convent, cares for her, and the girl
gives them the child.

“
So far only morally repugnant,”
Pascal said, “But the American decides he likes blondes better,
permanently. He finds one, somewhere. He kills his wife, burying
her in the backyard, takes the boy and the new blonde off to
America, where no one has met Marie-Emilie. They pretend the blonde
is the old wife. Marie-Emilie, the gypsy, becomes Emilie, the
blonde.”

“
They didn’t believe in divorce back
then?” Annie asked, sipping wine as they spun it out. “And who was
this blonde?”

“
Divorce was complicated then,”
Pascal said. “France is a Catholic country. But the bones will tell
the real story. For now, I only have my hunches.”

He would try to get information about Marie-Emilie
into the system. He knew a man in forensics in Paris.

“
The blonde was definitely not
Dominique — because she was Justine. Right?” Annie shook her head.
“Would you like to come for dinner tomorrow, Pascal? At eight.
Earlier if there’s a riot.”

“
The national police have arrived.
No more riots,” he promised.

Merle followed him to the door. “Has Gerard been
arrested for the fire?”

“
I’ll tell you about it at
dinner.”

“
And Odile too?”

He tasted of salt, cigarettes, and coffee.
“Later.”

But Pascal didn't show for dinner. They were eating
custard Annie made in the afternoon,
creme sans caramel
, she
called it, when a policeman in camouflage came to the door with a
note. His eyes flicked around the room as if searching for
arsonists.

“
Is it from Pascal?” Tristan asked.
“Read it out loud.”

Merle took a sip of wine. “
Cher
Merle. I am
sorry to miss your fine dinner. There is pressing business
regarding Anthony Simms. Gerard Langois — yes he is arrested —
named Simms his accomplice in the fraud of the cases of wine you
saw at the winery, which were bottles filled with ordinary
vin
du table
. Simms's work was in the news recently — selling
so-called 20-year whiskey which is, in reality, crapola. His
stalking of you brings to mind the wine you said was in your cave.
If you were not joking, this could be a dangerous time for it. It
would be prudent to move the bottles out of the house. Perhaps
Albert has space in his cave. Pascal.”

“
You have a stalker?” Annie
frowned.

“
He came to the winery tour twice,
and took an unwelcome interest.” Merle looked at Tristan. “Did you
ever see him, the Englishman with the funny hair?”

He looked up from his second helping of custard. “You
mean Tony?” The sisters exchanged a look. “I told you. He came by
the house when you were gone. Didn’t I?”

“
No. What did he say?”

“
He heard we were selling the house.
Wanted to take a look around.”

“
And did you — did he look
around?”

“
I didn’t think it would hurt.”
Tristan squirmed. “What?! He was just a guy.”

Merle tried to calm herself. “Did you show him the
wine cave, Tris?”

“
You told me not to. So I didn’t.”
He set down his spoon. “He did ask if there was a
basement.”

“
And you told him —?”

“
That we had one.”

Annie stood up. “I’ll go ask Albert.”

“
No! I don’t want to put him danger.
The wine is safest right where it is. Someone might see us moving
it.”

“
Someone like Anthony
Simms?”

“
Exactly. So far only we three know
where the wine is. We’ll just be on our guards.”

“
Plus Pascal apparently. Can you
tell the gendarme about this stalker? Or the inspector?” Annie
asked. Merle bit her lip. That time had passed. “At least tell
Pascal.”

Tristan jumped up. “I’ll go get him.”

He came home at midnight, slightly drunk, without
having found Pascal. He had found some boys from the fencing club
though, and let them buy him a beer or two.

“
Great, just great,” Merle said,
tucking him into bed.

“
At least he has friends here,”
Annie said. “Is he going back to Blackwood?”

His eyes were shut and his mouth open, asleep and
snoring. Was anyone going home? She had no fricking clue what
happened next. She threw her arm around Annie’s neck.

“
No plans tonight. I’m going zen on
you, sister.”

Yves and Suzette closed up their house and drove away
without a word. It was market day but camaraderie was absent. The
farmers who sold at market were friends of the grape-growers,
brothers, cousins, uncles, wives, sisters, and aunts. Whispers of
the arrests were everywhere.

In the garden Annie put a fresh tablecloth on the
patio table and they ate lunch al fresco, trying to keep their eyes
off the crime scene tape, the strips of barren dirt through the
lawn where the water line had gone, and the fading roses dropping
their last petals. Merle closed her eyes, holding the wine on her
tongue to taste all the flavors of France in the essence of
grape.

Tristan went inside with the plates. “Somebody’s at
the door.”

It was a policeman, one Merle had never seen before,
young and spruce and serious under his cap. Behind him were
Josephine Azamar and Albert. The policeman held a small white box
like Chinese take-out.

Albert stepped closer. “These are the ashes of
Dominique Redier.”

Merle held her breath, staring at the box. She hoped
the policeman wasn’t going to hand it to her. Albert said, “We
thought, Josephine thought, that you might be agreeable to burying
the ashes in the garden.”

They buried her at the foot of the elegant,
espaliered pear tree. After Tristan patted down the soil with the
back of the shovel, Albert pulled a cross on a chain from his
pocket and recited some Latin. Annie and Merle bowed their heads
while the gendarme fingered his cap. They shook hands then Annie
saw them out.

Merle stood with Tristan by the tiny grave, thinking
about meeting Justine up at the Shrine of Lucrezia. Did she see
Harry in that face? Or Tristan — her grandson? Should she tell him?
She hadn’t even told him about Sophie yet.

“
Hey, don’t worry, Dominique or
Justine or whoever you are,” he said quietly. “We’ll water your
garden. You just rest now.”

They went to dinner at Les Saveurs that night, a last
splurge before Annie flew home. The meal was exquisite, grilled
lamb, truffle omelet again for Merle who couldn’t get enough of it,
and for the newly adventurous Tristan, who once proclaimed anything
but pepperoni pizza ‘weird,’ a rabbit dish that tasted ‘just like
chicken.’ In the morning Annie drove her rental car to Bergerac to
the train station.

Merle and Tristan spent the rest of the day
rearranging furniture. She put up a lace curtain in her bedroom.
They moved the single bed up the stairs into the finished loft and
put wallpaper on the shelves of the old armoire.

She had trouble sleeping that night without Annie.
The lawyer’s words careened her head. When would they arrest her?
Where was her passport? Where was Anthony Simms — had he been
arrested? The moonlight shone on her bed again, just like it had
months before. Now it seemed like the natural glow of France, just
something that was there. No longer soothing, now it seemed cold
and calculating like looking for its chance to illuminate the
inevitable.

“
Mom, wake up. Mom!”

She bolted upright. “What?”

“
Something’s going on at Albert’s.
Look.”

“
What time is it?”

They pushed up the garden window and leaned out into
the night. Tristan said it was past three. Lights blazed at
Albert’s, then, suddenly the house went dark again. Tristan
whispered, “I thought I heard glass breaking.”

“
Get some clothes on.”

Hastily dressed they went out the back door, through
the gate, and down the alley. Merle had a strange urge to hold
Tristan’s hand but instead held his sleeve at the elbow. The night
was still and lit only by stars. They knocked on Albert’s door. The
shutters were closed so it was impossible to tell what was going on
inside. Tristan pounded on the door shutters and called the old
man’s name.

No answer. On her cell phone she dialed the emergency
number, 1-8. Where did it go? She tried in broken French, to
describe a break-in, an old man alone, Malcouziac. She read his
address off his door. The operator, an efficient woman who seemed
to understand, said the message would be forwarded to the local
police.

Tristan ran back from the corner. “I saw somebody —
in the backyard.”

“
Oh, hell,” she muttered, following
him to the mouth of the alley. Her heart pounded in her chest.
Tristan was at Albert’s gate, pounding. “The police should be here
soon.”

“
Damn it, Albert! Open up!” He
rattled the wooden gate. “Hey, old man!” To his mother he said, “I
was going to go over the wall but it might have that broken glass
on top like ours.”

“
Let’s go back to the front and wait
for the cops.”

On Albert’s street, after they knocked on his door
again, lights went on across the street, a man’s head came out the
upstairs window, scolding. “
Taisez-vous! Nous dormons
!”

“
Pardon, monsieur
,” Merle
called. “
Peut-être un cambrioleur
.” A burglar,
perhaps.

The man disappeared then opened his door with a
younger version of himself. The two joined them in the street. The
boy looked familiar — was he one of the tabac gang? His name was
Henri, his father was Louis.

“
Vous êtes les Americaines
,”
Louis said, nodding, as if he knew all about them. “
Les
flics
, they are very slow in the night,” Louis said in
heavily-accent English. Merle was happy for the company, especially
after the two boys ran off to check the alley again. In a moment
there was a shout from the cross street. She looked at Louis, with
his baggy eyes and disheveled hair.

“
Come, madame.” They jogged to the
corner. The street was empty. They walked around the houses to the
alley, also deserted. “Where did they go?”

“
Let’s check his gate
again.”

Louis was ahead a few steps. He turned. “Is this your
jardin
?”

Merle stared at her open gate. She had locked it, she
was sure. Did Josephine Azamar open it? In the middle of the night?
She pushed it wider, looking around the yard. The yellow light from
the kitchen windows spilled onto the ground, framing the dark box
of the pissoir. “Tristan?”

“
Madame!” Louis yelled. “
C’est
Pére Albert
!”

She spun around. Albert’s gate was ajar too. Louis
had opened his back door and was bending over a prone figure.

“
Albert!” He had a gash in his head.
“Get me a cloth.” Louis stood over them, fixated at the sight of
the priest, unconscious. She pushed him aside, grabbing a cloth at
the sink, wetting it, then holding it to the wound. “Can you hear
me? Albert! Louis, call the police again!”

The sound of a motorcycle engine announced the
gendarme. He roared up the alley and jumped from his bike.
Jean-Pierre Redier wore his street clothes, unless leather pants
was a night uniform. “Call an ambulance!” Merle yelled. Oh, what
was the word? “
Les services d’urgences! Vite!”

The gendarme took a long moment looking around the
kitchen, then pulled out his cell phone and punched in the number.
“Breathe, Albert,” she whispered. His chest was rising. He was
alive.