Treasure of Saint-Lazare (2 page)

“I come from generations of Appalachian men, most of them farmers and almost all of them soldiers. But if my Scots ancestors had come here instead of to West Virginia, I guarantee every one of us would have been happy. I’m completely at home here, and here’s where I intend to stay.”

He was peering suspiciously at a slightly loose button on the left sleeve of his jacket just as Eddie’s tall silhouette filled the open door, then stood aside to let Jen Wetzmuller enter the lobby. He followed, pulling her wheeled suitcase.

“Bonjour, Madame, bonjour, M Grant. Welcome back.” M Duval said seriously, no smile. His hand came from beneath the counter holding two envelopes, which he handed to Eddie. “You have a little mail today. Not much.”

“Thank you. M Duval, allow me to present Madame Wetzmuller, who is visiting me and my mother for a few days. Her father and mine were close associates during the war.”

“The Luxor is very pleased to have you as its guest, Madame,” M Duval said gravely. “Please ask for anything you need.” Surprised by his formality, she muttered a barely audible “merci,” then managed a tight smile and a dip of her head.

Eddie bypassed the large winding staircase he normally took to his apartment on the top floor, instead leading Jen toward the elevators to its left. He pressed the button marked 7 but the elevator did not move until he entered a code into the keypad above. “Remember the code, 6161,” he told her.

As they rose, he reflected that Jen had retained the fresh air of youth he’d admired in 1988. She wore a traveler’s outfit of white blouse and pleated blue skirt, and had coaxed her hair into a shape he had not seen in Paris for several years. With difficulty, he brought it back from his very small store of fashion knowledge —
coupe à la Jeanne d’Arc
— pageboy cut, that had been its name, and it had been popular in the U.S. twenty years before. Despite the June warmth she had a sweater over her shoulders. The skirt fell precisely to the top of her knees, and her legs were as attractive as he remembered. She wore a delicate perfume he couldn’t identify, except to remember that it was different from the one she’d worn in 1988. Under the perfume there was the delicious woman smell he’d immersed himself in during their three days together.

She looked up at him and said gently, “It’s been a very long time. I never expected to see you again.”

“Nor did I. But I could never forget those three days in Sarasota.”

“They were memorable, weren’t they?” She smiled at him for the first time, a generous open smile that lighted her deep blue eyes and told him his disappearance was forgiven, if not forgotten. The weight of mortal sin lifted from him.

She broke the silence as they passed the fifth floor. “What happened after?”

“Pretty much as planned. I went into the Army, served in Desert Storm, then came home to Paris.”

“Did you ever marry?”

“Yes, once. You? My wife died.”

“That is sad. I married once, for three years. A big-time cardiologist who wanted a younger wife. It lasted until he found another blonde trophy.”

“Then you’ve stayed in Sarasota?”

“God knows why. It’s a beautiful town but no place for a single woman my age. It’s a huge, deep pool of blue-collar men looking for college-educated women and, surprisingly, finding them. I’m almost too old for that group now. I suppose I’ll sign up for the club of unhappy middle-aged divorcées and widows who understand deep down they’ll spend nights alone for the rest of their lives.

“You’re selling yourself short. We’re only forty and you still look like the girl I knew back then. It’s far too early to start wearing black and sitting in a rocker on your front porch.”

“Thanks for that. You haven’t done badly yourself. You still have all that black black hair I admired. And you still carry yourself like a West Pointer.” She smiled again.

They stood in silence until the elevator stopped. The door opened and she stepped out into a small lobby decorated in Second Empire style. A marble table held a large bouquet of yellow flowers, which complemented the blue walls.

“Just one door?”

“This floor was an afterthought some time after the building was built. It’s a little smaller than the others, which is the reason the city has winked at it. The French are pragmatic about that sort of thing. If it pushes a little over the edge of the law but doesn’t hurt anything, they generally close their eyes. It was a little risky, but I decided to turn the entire floor into my own apartment.”

“How did you work that?”

“I needed a place to live seven years ago. This old hotel needed a lot of work but the owners didn’t have the money to do it, so I bought it.”

He opened the door and with a sweep of his arm invited her inside, following with the suitcase. They walked down an entrance hall hung with bright oil paintings. She recognized one of them, a streetscape at dusk showing an early twentieth-century trolley passing the square of Châtelet, and stopped to look at it.

“Is that an Éduardo Cortès? I had one of them in my gallery. I hated to sell it.”

“I remember that painting, and this is one almost like it. My father gave it to me as a wedding present. It’s the only thing I kept from that part of my life.”

“Will you tell me about it?”

“Later. It’s not a pretty story.”

She knew not to pursue the issue. They continued into the living room, where he invited her to sit in a gray leather armchair to one side of a fireplace. He sat in its twin opposite her. A glass wall faced southeast over the city, with the spires of Notre Dame in the distance.

All the furniture was upholstered in muted shades of gray and beige except for one armchair on the opposite wall, which was a brilliant cardinal red. Jen first thought it was an error, but with a second look realized it was the bridge between the low-key furniture and the two dozen striking oil paintings that lined the wall from floor to ceiling.

“What a beautiful room. And you have a lovely view, like your mother’s.”

“Thanks. At Place Vauban she has Les Invalides and Napoleon’s Tomb across the street, I have Notre Dame on one side and the Champs-Elysées on the other. I’ll show you more of the sights a little later, but I think we should get business out of the way first.”

“You’re right.” A sigh. “Roy is dead. Killed ten days ago by a hit-and-run driver just a couple of blocks from home.”

“I was sorry to hear that. I remember him as a kind and interesting man.”

“The police think it may not have been an accident, but aren’t sure yet. I’m here because of something that was important to him. When I went to find his will, there was one other envelope in the bank vault — addressed to your father. It looks pretty old.”

She paused and took a deep breath, then drew a heavy beige envelope from her purse and handed it to Eddie. On it was written in blue ink, in a European script, “For Artie Grant. Please hand deliver to him as soon as possible.” It listed his mother’s address on the Place Vauban, where his parents had bought the penthouse apartment shortly after they were married in 1952. Eddie was born 16 years later and grew up there.

“I caught a flight from Tampa as soon as I could. I had only the address on the envelope, no telephone number, so when my plane arrived I took a taxi straight there and met your mother. She asked me to pass the letter directly on to you. She handled it like it was radioactive.”

“Margaux believes in letting the past stay in the past.”

And in this case I agree with her, Eddie said to himself. Anything that involved Roy Castor was bound to deal ultimately with the immense quantities of art and other treasure the Nazis stole during the war, much of which had never been found. For a time it had been Artie’s holy grail as well, but he’d eventually turned his attention elsewhere.

Eddie dropped the envelope on his lap, willing it to disappear. When it did not, he picked it up like something distasteful he’d found on the street, touching it only with his thumb and forefinger.

“Was it sealed?”

“I wasn’t about to fly all night to deliver a dirty joke.”

“Tell me what’s in it.”

“A short letter, very cryptic, one paragraph. I don’t understand it, but I can tell it refers back to their work at the end of the war. It’s not exactly a code, but an outsider would have a hard time getting it — I certainly didn’t. I don’t know a lot of details about my father’s war duties, but I know that after the Germans surrendered he and your father worked in Munich helping find stolen paintings. I know there was one special painting that interested him more than any other. Maybe you’ll understand it better.”

“Or maybe Mother will.” Eddie unfolded the single sheet of rich beige stationery, heavy and stiff as though Roy had chosen it to last a long time. There was no date, but the paper had American dimensions, not European, so Eddie knew it had been written while Roy was in Florida. Just great, he thought. That narrows it down to the last thirty years or so.

“Dear Artie:

“The young fellow has disappeared into a dead end. I think the long-necked bastard planned to wind up in Paris and sent him there but he may also have used the underground railroad. Ask your round-heeled contact. Maybe you can find more than I could.

“Roy”

“What the hell does that mean?” Eddie asked, puzzled.

“I don’t know. But he thought it was important enough to make sure I’d find it and get it to you. And he didn’t want to give up the chase during his lifetime — otherwise he would have mailed it, maybe years ago. We have to find out.”

“We need to get on it right now. If your father was murdered there may be other things going on we need to know about. We’ll start with my mother. She’s the best one to fill you in on what your father and mine did together during the war, and she knows a lot more about the history of the time than I do. After all, she lived through it.”

He read the letter again from start to finish. “I’d like to look at this more closely and think about what it might mean. Would you like to rest before we talk about it? You’ve been traveling a long time. And we’d like it if you would join us tonight. There’s a long-standing dinn
er with my mother on the schedule.”

“We?”

“Margaux, of course. Then there’s our friend Philippe Cabillaud, a semi-retired executive in the Paris police. When you arrived Margaux told him about it and he offered to bring his daughter, who’s a history professor at the Sorbonne. She should know something about the lost art.

“My mother is bound to have more insights than either of us. And Aurélie, Philippe’s daughter, has solid connections in the intellectual world here. Even though it has a really high BS level, it is very intellectual.”

“I won’t say it sounds like fun, but thank you for inviting me.”

“You can use the guest room to get ready for dinner. I’ll show you a sight or two on the way to the restaurant.”

As she followed him down the wide central hall past the formal dining room, Jen glimpsed exercise equipment behind a half-open door. “You’re still a weight lifter?” she asked.

“A casual one. I walk a lot and do some lifting a couple times a week, play some tennis. Not as much as I used to.”

“It seems to be working.”

He pushed open the door to an elegant bedroom, classically decorated except that the heavy brocades and mahogany popular in old Paris had been updated to light fabrics and woods, accented with brass. He twisted the handle of a wide double window and opened both panels into the room.

“In Sarasota we’d call that a French door. It’s far too big for a window,” Jen said with a little laugh. She leaned out over a waist-high protective bar set firmly into the thick stone walls, all that separated her from an eight-story drop to the tree-shaded courtyard below.

“There’s almost no air conditioning in Paris,” Eddie said. “With windows like this, we don’t regret it more than two or three days a year. And we’re too far north for many bugs, so no screens.”

She looked across the courtyard and asked, “How many people have this view of Notre Dame?”

“Not many. It’s beautiful this time of day, with the sun shining from behind us on the towers and the spire. From the front of the building you can look up the Champs Elysées to the Arc de Triomphe.” He turned toward the door.

“We need to leave in an hour and a half. Please make yourself comfortable, and plan on staying here while you’re in Paris.”

As he closed the door, Jen tried to sort out what she knew about Eddie Grant. For one, he looked much like the pictures of his father Roy had shown her. Artie had been tall and Eddie was a bit shorter, a touch under six feet. Like his father, he had a large head topped by carefully cut and brushed black hair, so black its highlights appeared purple, long by American standards but fashionable in Paris. His hands were large, like those of a basketball player or a pianist — Jen hoped he was a pianist but they hadn’t talked about either music or sports during their three days together. It was the end of the day, but his navy blazer showed little wear. Neither did his gray slacks or checked shirt. Even the tie was still tightly knotted. It was, she thought, a man’s outfit of the sort she hardly ever saw any more in Sarasota, and missed.