Fleur De Lies (12 page)

I had to restrain my feet from breaking out in a happy dance.
Yes!

“They can’t release the body until they run a few more labs. Unknown what’s going to happen after that. I’ve never had a guest die on me before, so this is all uncharted territory.”

A remembered image of Krystal’s snakeskin top photo flashed in my mind. “She suffered a nosebleed on the bus yesterday. Were you aware of that?”

“I thought everyone on the bus was aware of it. Where were you sitting that you missed it? The way she was carrying on, you’d have thought she was about to die.” He hesitated, reassessing his words. “Of course, she
did
die, but—”

“Is it possible that her nosebleed was the first indication that something was going terribly wrong inside her brain?”

Rob lifted his shoulders. “You got me. I’m not a doctor. I provided
her with extra tissue. That’s about all I’m authorized to do.”

Feeling a sudden presence at my right shoulder, I turned my head slowly.

“What’s the purpose of all this extra crap anyway?” whined Bernice as she waved her receiver and earbuds at me. “Isn’t it bad enough that we have to schlep umbrellas because of this crappy weather?”

I stared at her, deadpan.
There was no God. There was no God
.

Rob noted the time. “Would you excuse me?” He ranged a look around the area where the guests had assembled. “I need to make a phone call to see what’s happened with our local guide. She’s running late.”

“So, Bernice—” I ducked quickly to avoid getting my eye poked out by her umbrella. “I was under the impression you’d voted to skip the port walk.”

“You never get it right, do you? The
wusses
voted to ditch the walk.
I
voted to take it.”

“You’re not worried about ruining your orthotics?”

“What orthotics? My feet are perfect … thanks to two over-priced bunionectomies and Medicare parts A, B, C, and D. So what am I supposed to do with all this junk they crammed down my throat at the front desk?”

“This is your receiver.” I plucked the bar soap-sized gizmo from her hand and looped the attached lanyard around her neck. “When you plug your earbuds into it, you’re supposed to be able to hear whatever the person on the transmitting end is saying.”

“Who’s gonna be on the transmitting end?”

“The local guide, I assume.”

She stared down at the added clutter on her chest. “It’s covering up my name tag.”

“Why don’t we join the crowd so we can get further operating instructions?”

“Slackers. What’s wrong with the guides in France that they can’t scream the information at us like all the other guides do?”

We skirted the perimeter of the group until we reached what I deduced might become the front of the pack since it was closest to the stairs that linked the river promenade to the street above. Faces were obscured within hoods and beneath umbrellas, but I was able to pick out Woody and some of the men he’d been sitting with last night. Cal huddled with a few of his buddies in the opposite direction of where Woody was standing. Victor was here with Virginia, which surprised me. I thought he might be too devastated to venture off the boat today, but perhaps a long walk in the rain would help soothe his emotional upheaval. I didn’t see Bobbi or Dawna until I caught sight of their blonde hair in the middle of the group, surrounded by a phalanx of doe-eyed males.

“Could I have your attention, please?” Rob hopped up on a bench with his yellow umbrella. “Our local guide is running a few minutes late, so this is a good time to introduce you to our mobile speaker system. Have you all hung your receivers around your necks?”

Nods. Mumbles.

“Locate the dial on top of your receiver and turn it to channel four.”

Studied silence. Heavy breathing.

“My receiver doesn’t have a dial,” complained an older male voice
.

“Move your thumb,” suggested another guest. “It’s underneath.”

“Is everyone on channel four?” asked Rob.

“What’s on the other channels?” someone called out.

“We’re only interested in channel four. Now, plug your headphones
into the port on the side of your receiver.”

“I didn’t get any headphones,” protested a female guest.

Rob held up the cellophane package containing our audio equipment. “Headphones, earphones. Whatever. Plug the prong into your receiver.”

A woman standing nearby sniggered to her friend as she ripped open the pouch containing a coil of spaghetti wire that resembled string licorice. “I’m glad he explained what’s inside here. I thought it was a mid-morning snack.”

“Is everyone plugged in?”

Murmurs. Head bobbing.

“Now, insert your earphones into your ears in a comfortable position.”

I stuck a bud in each ear and winced. Hard plastic. Odd shape. Uncomfortable fit. This should go over well. I sidled a glance at Bernice who was so entangled in audio wire, she looked like the poster child for self-strangulation. As I helped her sort through the jumble of cords, Rob’s voice suddenly erupted inside my head. “TESTING … ONE, TWO—”

YOW
!

I hit my volume control and dialed it back to a level that wouldn’t cause my brain to explode.

“Are we supposed to be hearing something?” Woody called out.

Rob’s breath hissed softly in my ears. “Can you hear me now?”

“Why can’t I hear anything?” asked Woody.

“I hear a philharmonic orchestra,” enthused a nearby guest.

“
Ride of the Valkyries
?” asked her friend.

“You hear it, too?”

“It’s my cell phone.”

Cal sprinted over to his dad. “Have you turned your volume up?”

“How do I do that?”

Cal made the adjustment.

“Testing … one, two, three,” said Rob.

“
YOW
!” cried Woody.

“Do these receivers put us at risk of being electrocuted?” a woman fretted.

“Only if you’re struck by lightning while you’re wearing one,” teased Rob.

“Is that a yes or a no?” she huffed.

“Sorry,” Rob apologized. “To clarify, you cannot be electrocuted by your receivers. You can stand waist deep in water, and nothing, I repeat, nothing will happen other than you’ll get really wet.”

“Why do they look like garage door openers?” questioned a man in the back. “Will they actually open garage doors?”

“What about reproductive health?” asked one of Woody’s cohorts.
“Can wearing one of these things decrease our sperm count?”

“
Uhhhh
…”

“Is medical research going to find out years from now that these receivers cause cancer?” queried a man near the front.

“How come these things don’t have touchscreens?”

“Can we take photos with them?”

I smiled broadly, tickled I wasn’t the one having to field their questions.

“My receiver’s a dud,” bellowed Bernice.

“Are you tuned in to channel four?” asked Rob.

“Yup.”

“Is your volume turned up?”

“Yup.”

“And you can’t hear my voice?”

“Not through your stupid earphones, I can’t.”

I looked over her equipment, finding the problem immediately. “Okay, Bernice. Here’s the thing. In order to hear anything through your earphones, you actually have to insert them in your ears.”

She pushed her features into a scowl. “Go ahead, genius.” She shoved
her hair out of the way and angled her ear toward me. “Make my day.”

I shifted my gaze from her earphones to her ear.
Oops
. I cupped my hands around my mouth and called out to Rob, “Is there a way to insert earbuds around hearing aids?”

“
Uhhhh
…”

“Do these things carry the ESPN sports channel?” asked a man standing by Woody. “I want to find out how the Cubbies did against the Brewers.”

“Your receivers aren’t broadband radios,” barked Rob. “They
can’t open garage doors. They won’t take pictures. They
will
allow you to hear what our local guide is saying, and that’s
all
they’ll do. If
you’re unable to insert your earphones comfortably into your ears”—
he bobbed his head as if considering the options—“then stand close enough to our guide so you’ll be able to hear her without them. Any questions?”

“What’ll I do if my receiver short circuits my pacemaker?”

Oh, God
.

I heard a
splat, splat, splat
of footsteps rushing in our direction and turned to see a woman with a canary-yellow umbrella scurry past me toward Rob.

“And here she is now,” Rob announced in a voice that was thick with relief. “Our local guide. Come on up here so people can have a look at you.”

She hopped onto the bench beside Rob and tilted her umbrella back, favoring us with a wave and a bright smile.

Oh my God! Madeleine Saint-Sauveur!

eleven

“In 1348, the city
of Rouen suffered the worst outbreak of bubonic plague in its history.”

Madeleine’s voice crackled in my ears as we gathered around her in a courtyard surrounded by ancient two- and three-story buildings.

“History has given the catastrophe many names: the Great Plague,
the Great Pestilence, the Black Death. By the time it had run its course
in Rouen, three-quarters of the city’s population lay dead, which presented a gruesome problem for the living: With parish cemeteries having run out of burial space, where could so many bodies be interred?”

A large rectangle of grass occupied the center of the square, and in the middle of this, nearly camouflaged within the leafy canopy of a dozen hardwoods, rose a crucifix that was both tall and painfully slender.

“The task of burying the victims fell upon parish priests who understood they needed to dispose of the bodies quickly to prevent more disease from spreading. So they decided to do so in a most unfortunate manner.” Madeleine made a sweeping gesture that included the entire courtyard. “They buried them in a mass grave. Here. At Aitre de St. Maclou.”

Gasps, followed by uneasy silence. Eyes slowly drifted to the pav
ers beneath our feet. “You mean, we’re standing on them?” asked Woody.

Madeleine nodded. “
Oui
, monsieur.”

Woody shook his head. “Damn. That’s just wrong.”

“
By the time another plague struck two hundred years later,
the cemetery could no longer provide in-ground burial, so facilities were expanded above ground to the buildings around us. Three of the galleries were completed in 1533, and for nearly two centuries, they were used to store the bones of Rouen’s dead, stacking them from floor to ceiling on every floor and in the attic space. To this day, few people walking along Rue de Martainville, with its upscale artisan shops and sidewalk cafés, realize that the antiquated wooden doors at number 186 are the unlikely entrance to the site of an ancient charnel house.”

“Us folks in the profession never say charnel house,” Woody spoke
up, an air of authority in his voice. “We call it an ossuary, a place that holds the bones of the dead.”

“How come I’ve never heard that word before?” asked Bobbi Benedict.

Virginia Martin regarded her without mirth. “Perhaps you should expand your friendships to include people who can use
words longer than one syllable.”

Unh-oh
. Truce over.

“So if an ossuary holds bones,” said the woman who’d been going to eat her earbuds as a morning snack, “what’s the purpose of a mausoleum?”

“A mausoleum is a grander structure,” offered one of Woody’s buddies. “It’s a free-standing monument that encloses the body of the deceased. Like the Taj Mahal.”

“I thought a crypt enclosed the body of the deceased,” argued another woman.

“It does,” said Woody. “There’s a lot of terminology connected with—”

“But if a crypt encloses the dead body, what does a vault do?” asked a man wearing a wide-brimmed bucket hat.

“I think a vault is the same thing as a tomb,” said the woman standing next to him.

“So if the Taj Mahal is a mausoleum,” questioned a man who was standing near Bernice, “what does that make the pyramids? Mausoleums, vaults, crypts, or tombs?”

“It makes them overrated tourist attractions,” crabbed Bernice. “Like this place.”

Dawna folded her arms across her chest and stomped her booted feet on the ground to ward off the chilly moistness in the air. “I don’t know about the rest of y’all, but I’m gonna be cremated when I die. And I don’t want to end up in any musty old mausoleum for all eternity, so I’m gonna have my ashes scattered in a place that’s near and dear to my heart.”

Bernice smiled dourly. “Where? The cosmetic aisle at Wal-Mart?”

Dawna sucked in her breath, looking almost too horrified to form words. “The National Firearms Museum in Fairfax, Virginia, which just happens to be the world headquarters for the National Rifle Association. I’m gonna spend eternity with the folks who’re gonna defend my freedoms against the excesses of a tyrannical government.”

“Dream on,” mocked Bernice. “If your ashes get scattered on the floor of some fancy museum, you’ll be spending eternity at the bottom of an industrial strength vacuum cleaner bag in a landfill on the outskirts of DC.”

“You’ll need documentation to have your cremains transported legally,” asserted Woody. Unzipping the side pocket of his jacket, he removed a small leather case. “My card,” he said as he handed her his business card. “Don’t hesitate to contact me if you have any questions, although I can say with absolute certainty that cremation should be your choice of last resort.” He waved the case in the air. “Anyone else want one?”

Oh, God
.

The rain had stopped about ten minutes ago, allowing us to collapse our umbrellas, but dark clouds still loomed overhead, threatening to drench us at any moment.

“Do these buildings serve any purpose now?” asked Victor.

“
Mais oui
,” chimed Madeleine. “The galleries have become the home of Rouen’s Fine Art Academy.”

“What became of the bones?” asked Cal.

“In the eighteenth century, the buildings were earmarked to become a school for poor boys, so the bones were removed to—”

BONG
bong
BONG
bongbongbong
BONG!
DING
bong
ding
BONG!

“… outside the …”
BONGBONGBONG
!

I gazed at the church spire towering above the rooftop of the galleries and realized that even though Rouen was a city of medieval houses, winding passageways, and sidewalk cafés, it was mostly a city of church bells that rang out with riotous abandon at any odd minute on the hour. Even earbuds and receivers were no defense against the cacophonous clang.

“Could you repeat that?” Cal yelled out to Madeleine. He waved his hand toward the distant spire. “The bells.”

She nodded happily. “In the eighteenth …”
bong
…
bong
…
BONG
BONG … “poor boys …”
ding
… DING … DING …
dingding
…

Yup. This was going well. I unplugged my earbuds, which were wedged in my ear canal as comfortably as a couple of peach pits, and wandered away from the group to shoot a few photographs.

The four buildings that boxed in the square were an architectural mixture of half-timbered masonry panels, long banks of framed
windows, and decorative wooden columns carved in chilling,
graphic relief. Spooky skulls grinned down at me with empty eye sockets
embedded with eight hundred years of soot and grime. A ghoulish chain of crossed bones marched above the window frames, vying for space with coffins, burial shrouds, gravediggers’ shovels, and the Grim Reaper’s scythe. Aitre de St. Maclou might have appeared less gloomy in full sunshine, but with its macabre history and the overcast sky, it seemed as if a veil of gray haze had descended upon the entire complex, tarnishing the view.

“Do you want to have your picture taken with the mummified cat?” asked Cal as he headed toward me.

I zoomed in on a skull and snapped my camera shutter before turning to him. “Excuse me?”

“The mummified cat. Full-grown, I might add.” He pointed toward the entrance. “They discovered it in the wall when they were doing some repair work, but instead of removing it, or walling over it again, they slapped a glass panel over it so it can be on display for the tourist crowd. I’m a dog guy myself, but that doesn’t mean I can’t feel for future hordes of grossed-out cat lovers.”

“How did a full-grown cat get inside the wall?”

Cal shrugged. “It has an Edgar Allen Poe feel about it, doesn’t it? Madeleine says certain felines were thought to embody the devil. Black cats, mostly, so some overly superstitious zealot probably entombed the thing to help ward off evil spirits. And, yes, rumor has it that this particular creature was black.”

BONG … BONG … BONG … BONG … BONG
…

Cal rolled his eyes. “You think it’s like this every day, or only on Sundays?”

“Are you taking pictures?” Woody called out as he hustled toward us.

“Of what?” asked Cal.

“The mass grave! What? Too obvious for you?” Woody eyed the courtyard in the same way P. T. Barnum might have eyed the Feejee Mermaid. “There’s money to be made here.”

“Geez, Dad, will you give it a rest?”

“You know what your problem is, Cal?” scolded Woody. “You don’t think like a funeral director. You think like an accountant. We’re standing on a mass grave. Think of the presentation we could put together comparing the barbaric burial customs of our ancestors to the humane practices offered by funeral homes today. Give it historical context, stir in some subtle marketing, add a pinch of a discount, top it off with a followup call after potential clients have let our offer bake in their brains for a week. We could be looking at the windfall of a lifetime.”

Cal skewered his dad with a sour look. “Always pushing the envelope, aren’t you?”

“Someone has to. Leaving the marketing decisions to you will probably throw us into bankruptcy.”

BONGbong
bong
BONGBONG
bongbongbong
BONG … BONG …

“I’m not going to use a human disaster of this magnitude to fatten our pockets,” Cal shouted over the symphony of ringing bells. “Using this place for your personal advertising is not only crass and in bad taste, it’s sacrilegious! So if you want pictures, get Walt or Ed to take them.” He shot a curious look around the courtyard. “Where are they anyway?”

A hint of alarm flickered in Woody’s eyes before he brushed off the question. “None of your business where they are.”

“Did they stay on the boat?”

“Last I knew, you weren’t their keeper, so they can damn well do what they want to do.”

“What are you trying to hide? They must be doing something you don’t want me to know about, else you wouldn’t have a prob
lem …” Cal narrowed his eyes with sudden perception. “You arranged
something, didn’t you?”

Woody hardened his jaw and stuck out his bottom lip. “What’s it to you?”

“Did you con the purser into letting Walt and Ed give some kind of powerpoint presentation about pre-packaged funeral plans? There were a whole bunch of learning sessions being offered on the boat today. Did you manage to weasel your way onto the schedule?”

Woody’s face turned florid, his voice acerbic. “We all make mistakes in life, Cal. Apparently my biggest was bringing you into the business. I should have recruited your sister instead.
She
gets it, which is more than I can say for you.”

“You want to can me, Dad? Go ahead. Turn my share of the business over to Jody. I’ll give you a month before you come crawling back to me with your tail between your legs.”

“Don’t hold your breath.”

Cal snorted derisively. “If that’s supposed to scare me, it doesn’t.”

“It should.” Woody hitched up his belt and fixed Cal with a sharp look. “I own you, son. You’re just too dumb to realize it. Remember, wills can be changed.”

“Go ahead,” Cal spat. “I dare you.”

“Is Madeleine trying to round us up?” I asked in an attempt to redirect their attention. “Looks like she’s counting heads. Shall we join the crowd?”

“Why not?” quipped Woody. “The damage here is already done.” He caught my eye. “Sorry you had to witness that little scene, Emily. What can I say? My son spends a lot of time acting like the hind end of a horse.”

He strutted off to join the crowd as light rain began drizzling down
on us again. I opened my umbrella and, not knowing what else to say, let fly the first thing that came into my head. “Your sister’s name is Jody Jolly?”

Cal laughed despite his obvious irritation. “Yah. She’s never forgiven them for that particular act of sadism.”

“She’s not part of the family business?”

“Nope. She had no intention of spending her life living under Dad’s thumb, so she got out while the going was good. Studied languages in college and became a translator at the UN. She doesn’t get home much, so I don’t see her too often. Dad’s temper isn’t a big drawing card, and the older he gets, the less control he seems to have over it.”

“He’d never actually get angry enough to make good on his
threat,
would he? I mean, I’ve eaten a couple of meals with him. I’ve seen him in action. He’s more bark than bite. Isn’t he?”

“If you’re asking if he’d ever really cut me out of his will, the answer is, when it comes to the business, he’ll do whatever it takes to make a dime. And if that includes shutting me out and finding a new partner, he’d do that, too. But I’ve paid my dues for more years than I want to admit, so if he decides to give me the shaft, he’ll do it over my dead body.”

I shivered as the drizzle grew into a light shower, but I wasn’t sure if the chill in my bones was a reaction to the dampness in the air, or the venom I heard oozing from Cal Jolly’s voice.

_____

We followed Madeleine down a pedestrian walkway that threaded between a monstrous church on the left and a series of businesses on the right whose storefronts were locked behind sliding metal grates.
The church looked older than the Great Flood, its stone façade black
ened with soot, its lacy spikes and spires and arches resembling the buttercream frosting piped out of a pastry tube. We passed restaurants and bistros with immediate outside seating for customers who dared to brave the weather and sip their cafés au lait with a heavy dose of rainwater. We detoured into a narrow alley between two unassuming buildings and wandered into an Alice in Wonder
land-like rabbit hole that opened up into a trove of unexpected
treasures: a garden of pink hydrangeas tucked behind a wrought-iron fence. A half-timbered house painted the scarlet red and white of a Christmas candy cane. Arcane wooden doors built into a solid brick wall
that was half-hidden beneath overhanging vines. By the time we circled
around toward the ginormous cathedral whose steeple reached halfway to the stratosphere, it was raining so hard, we ran for cover beneath the columned portico of a furniture shop that stood opposite the church. Huddling together, we collapsed our umbrellas, flicked water off our raingear, and detached our earbuds so we could enjoy the symphonic effect of rain pounding eight-hundred-year-old pavers.