PURSUIT IN PROVENCE
A JORDAN MAYFAIR MYSTERY
PURSUIT IN PROVENCE
PHYLLIS GOBBELL
FIVE STAR
A part of Gale, Cengage Learning
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Copyright © 2015 by Phyllis Gobbell
Five Star™ Publishing, a part of Cengage Learning, Inc.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination, or, if real, used fictitiously.
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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Gobbell, Phyllis C.
Pursuit in Provence : a Jordan Mayfair mystery / Phyllis Gob-bell. — First edition.
pages ; cm
ISBN 978-1-4328-3026-7 (hardcover) — ISBN 1-4328-3026-0 (hardcover) — ISBN 978-1-4328-3021-2 (ebook) — ISBN 1-43283021-X (ebook)
I. Title.
PS3557.O17P87 2015
813™.54—dc23 2014041372
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First Edition. First Printing: March 2015
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Printed in the United States of America
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PURSUIT IN PROVENCE
CHAPTER 1
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At the Bruxelles Midi station, people pressed in from all the ground-level tracks, funneling into a deep stairwell. A crush of bodies pushed me forward and downward, propelling me away from Alex, my seventy-two-year-old uncle. Halfway down, I looked back and caught sight of him struggling with his luggage. As I watched him maneuver his bright red duffel attached to his new rolling suitcase and his ancient leather briefcase hanging by a worn strap from his shoulder, the thought struck me: My own load was too light.
“Alex! Where’s my suitcase?” I called out, catching the side railing. I managed to pull myself over and stand my ground. Alex looked baffled.
I checked myself: Carry-on, purse, but no suitcase-on-wheels. “I’m going back to the train,” I wailed.
Against the flow, I threaded my way back up the stairs. Alex was doing his best getting turned around with his unwieldy load. Though not exactly fit, he’s no tottery old man people can push around. “Excuse me, please, this is an emergency!” he said, sounding like the Georgia old-stock gentleman that he is. No one paid him any attention. “Ex-cuse me,” he said, with more authority. Now he was getting his elbows into it.
I reached him and grabbed his briefcase and bulldozed ahead. At the top of the steps, I exhaled a noisy breath of relief. The train was still there. I ran toward the car that had been ours, toward the large window that gave me a good view inside. Another flutter of hope. My suitcase was in the bulkhead, exactly where I’d left it.
I pulled at the doors. No! They were already locked, which meant the train would lurch forward any minute.
A young man with olive skin and large, dark eyes occupied the seat next to the bulkhead. “Please help!” I shouted. His eyes grew even wider. I tried my bare-bones French: “Au secours! S’il vous plait!” No luck with English or French, but how could he fail to interpret the wild motions I was making toward the suitcase?
Alex had caught up with me. He was breathing hard, his plump cheeks flushed. His glasses had slid down on his nose. “Raise the window! Pass the suitcase out!” he called. The young man made no move.
“Hey, creep! Get the lady’s bag!” came a booming Texas drawl. Next to me, a big rugged cowboy-type struck the window with huge fists. He’d been on the train with us. His face had been hidden behind the French newspaper Le Monde, but I recognized the fancy boots, black shirt, and ten-gallon hat. I thought I remembered him from somewhere else, too. The plane, maybe? Or the airport?
“Dammit! Get the bag, kid!” he yelled.
The kid jerked down the window shade.
The cowboy rushed to the other end of the car and shook those doors, as a low rumble came from the train. The cowboy slammed his fist into the door with a force that should’ve crushed his knuckles. “Sonofabitch!” he roared to no one in particular.
The wheels were already turning. I stepped back. I was able to take one last sorrowful look at my suitcase as the train advanced on the track.
We were supposed to be in Paris.
A big round clock high above the platform displayed the time: 9:37 A.M. It was Monday morning. My watch still showed 3:37-in-the middle-of-the-night A.M. Eighteen hours since I had left Savannah, Georgia.
First we’d missed the direct flight from Atlanta to Paris, and now my luggage had vanished, all my belongings for two weeks in Provence. Not a promising beginning to a trip I’d been a little skeptical about, all along. A trip to celebrate turning fifty ought to be taken with friends—a getaway with the girls—or a lover, assuming one had a lover. But here I was with my seventy-two-year-old uncle who had insisted his doctor would not let him travel alone, and his book deal hinged on this trip. I adored Alex, but at this moment I was wishing he had simply brought an assistant.
Gravity pulled at the skin of my neck and around my eyes and mouth. I imagined my face sagging like a wax model set too close to a flame.
“There’s nothing more we can do here,” Alex said, making sure his duffel was secured to his suitcase. “We need to report the loss. I guess we’ve missed the nine forty to Paris.”
“So we’ll take the next one.” I confess I sounded testy. I was beyond tired. I felt as slow and heavy as wet concrete. Alex pursed his lips, but he didn’t scold me. Wise move. If Alexander Carlyle, travel writer who had visited countries on five continents, had not misplaced his passport in Atlanta, just long enough for us to miss our flight, we would already be checked into our Paris hotel, and I would already be checked into my bed.
“Let’s find the Railtour office,” Alex said.
As we turned from the tracks and headed to the stairwell, I looked around for the cowboy who had appeared so eager to help me retrieve my suitcase, but he was nowhere in sight.
CHAPTER 2
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Just a moment ago Alex had looked every day of his seventy-two years, a pudgy man struggling with his luggage. Now he was Alex-in-charge. “If we split up, I can get us some coffee while you report your loss.” He spoke kindly enough but the words “your loss” made me wince inwardly. My fault, my carelessness.
“Fine,” I said.
“I’ll be right over there,” Alex said. A coffee shop must have magically appeared in the dista
nce. I hadn’t noticed until then, but Alex, the savvy traveler, had it all figured out. He motioned overhead. “Just follow the signs to the Railtour office.”
Maybe I could handle that.
It was no use replaying our last eighteen hours, but I couldn’t help myself. We should have stayed in Atlanta and waited for the flight to Paris on Monday. “Brussels is just an hour-and-a-half train trip from Paris,” Alex had said. “We won’t have to lose a day.” I didn’t resist. A little side trip to this charming European capital ought to be something an architect would enjoy.You’d think.The bowels of the train station were not what this architect had in mind.
We should have taken a taxi to Bruxelles Midi instead of the commuter train. “The train is very easy!” the official at the airport declared. Yes, it was easy enough. Less than thirty minutes to Bruxelles Midi, dreary nineteenth-century buildings flying past us. Shirts flapping on sagging clothes lines. Graffiti spray-painted on walls. The train took us through a gray, cheerless part of the city. A glimpse of tall narrow houses, once elegant, with heavy-paneled, intricately-carved doors that would cost ten thousand dollars in the U.S. today, if you could even get them. All mostly a blur. I didn’t want to remember Brussels this way.
The signs led me to the Railtour office, as Alex had promised. The official who took my report looked no older than my son Michael, just turned nineteen, but his English was fluent, the essential requirement. He listened with an attentive expression as I said, “I was so tired. I dozed off, and next thing I knew my uncle was nudging me, saying, ‘Get up, Jordan. This is our stop.’ I grabbed my carry-on and just walked off the train without my main piece of luggage.”
The young man probably wouldn’t have believed that I used to have my five children and their belongings in tow everywhere I went, and nothing got by me. The young official insisted that certainly I would get the suitcase back. Just fill out a few forms.
“Can’t you radio to the next stop?” I asked. “Can’t you call ahead now?”
“We will do everything possible, Madame,” he said, making no move to do anything. He sounded much older, all at once, and resigned, as people tend to become when they hear complaints every day.
“But you need to call now,” I said.
“You will fill out this report of loss, please.” He tapped at a line on the paper. “Please write the address where we should send the suitcase.” I decided he was older than I’d thought. He’d had this job for a while, long enough to become jaded.
By the time I’d filled out the forms, I was sure the train would have made half a dozen stops. My hopes of seeing my suitcase again were fading fast.
I joined Alex at the coffee shop, where he had claimed a table. He’d brought back two croissants and two cups of dark brew that looked as thick as roofing tar.
“Espresso?” I asked.
“Just coffee. Europeans like it strong,” Alex said. “Probably too strong for you.You’d better take it with a little milk.” He set a small, decorative cream pitcher next to my cup.
I gave a tight smile. OK, my worldly-wise uncle had traveled in Europe, even if it had been a long time ago. Best to listen to him, but my mind insisted: Just don’t push it, Alex.
The potent coffee temporarily energized me. The croissant was fresh-baked, an unexpected delight at a train station. I began to plan ahead. “I’ll have to go shopping first thing in Paris,” I said, with resignation. My bag, my new traveling clothes, my old favorite jeans, my strappy evening shoes and a cocktail dress for Paris that I’d paid through the roof for—all gone. My sketch book and pen, too. I felt a stitch in my chest. How ridiculously sentimental I’d been to bring the leather-bound sketch book and Waterman pen, as if they might mean to me what they’d meant twenty-five years ago when a bright young med student in Atlanta had given them to me, making me promise that when I returned from Venice, I would marry him.
“Things are expensive in Paris,” Alex said, with a woeful look.
“What choice do I have?” I pointed to my carry-on case. “Toothbrush, cosmetics, one change of clothes. Nothing I could wear to a nice restaurant, and I’m assuming when Felicity and Barry said dinner, they didn’t mean McDonalds.”
Alex put his fingertips to his temple and for the first time on this frustrating trip, he sighed. “Ah, yes, your friends,” he said with forced civility.
Felicity and Barry Blake were already in Paris. Felicity and I had been sorority sisters at the University of Georgia, a hundred years ago. Barry was her relatively new husband. Relatively new in the music business in Nashville, and relatively successful, I gathered from Kyle Delaney’s reports. It’s funny how things work out. Felicity and I were not what you’d call close. If not for Kyle, she and I wouldn’t be getting together in Paris. If, if. If Kyle hadn’t gone to work for Barry Blake. If Holly, my oldest daughter, hadn’t gone to Nashville to live with Kyle.
“You might have to cancel,” Alex said, with a bit too much optimism. There was no mistaking his coolness about this dinner, and for good reason. He’d met the Blakes last fall at the Georgia Homecoming alumni reception, when Barry was disgustingly drunk. Not that Barry was the only one at that gathering who was loud and obnoxious, but he was surely the only one who didn’t understand the significance of Uga, the bulldog. His suggestion that Uga needed to lose weight did not go over with loyal Georgia fans. Alex was not impressed.
I shook my head. “Felicity would just say, ‘I’ll be right over with one of my dresses.’ She’ll have a dozen extra outfits.” One thing Felicity and I’d had in common in college was our size. No other sorority sisters were five-ten. Most of our sisters actually qualified as petite, a fact which had bothered Felicity much more than it bothered me.
Maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad idea to borrow a dress from her for tonight, I was thinking, but then I remembered Felicity’s sculpted body at the Georgia game. She was a knockout. Give her trainer credit—she looked a lot more like a sweetheart of Sigma Chi than a candidate for AARP.
Felicity might offer a dress, but I’d never get it zipped. I felt a sudden urge to suck in. Maybe we could get out of dinner with the Blakes.
CHAPTER 3
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The train to Paris was quite comfy. Europeans know how to do trains. I thought I’d be able to nap, but the coffee was too stimulating or maybe the circumstances too nerve-racking. In the end, I was glad not to miss the scenery, especially after we left the environs of Brussels, and villages nestled beneath terraced hillsides began to crop up.
This was the trip I’d been planning since spring. A celebration of that mid-century crossing, which had transpired without much fanfare in May, lost in a muddle of graduations. With five children, I always had one graduating from somewhere. This year the count was three. Two from high school, one from college. On the flight back from Julie’s graduation from Cornell, I was feeling a little blue or maybe just a little sentimental. Graduations do trigger nostalgia, and fifty is not a favorite birthday.
Somewhere in the air between Ithaca and Savannah, I had promised myself a real vacation. I considered London, where I could speak the language, or Venice, where I’d spent a semester when I was twenty. I considered the little village in the Swiss Alps that was featured in the airline magazine. A few days later, when Alex was in town for a board meeting, one of his many boards, he treated my family to lunch in celebration of the three graduations. I might have asked his advice, since he’d been everywhere and now wrote for popular travel and leisure magazines, if he hadn’t been so excited about his new book deal and a trip of his own to Provence. Not to mention that we had photos and stories from the graduations to share.
That evening, he called and said, “I have a brilliant idea!”
Now, as the train snaked through the countryside toward Paris, I glanced at Alex. An impressive man, my uncle, with his full head of hair the color of gunmetal and strong, squarish facial bones, very Anglo-Saxon. He showed little sign of jetlag. Obviously, he had the knack for travel—
except for the part about misplacing his passport. I tried to recall how he’d convinced me to travel with him to Provence. He would be writing a “how to travel in Provence” guide. Where to eat, what to see, the must-dos and what-you-should-avoid. A book like that by Alexander Carlyle was bound to be a success. He’d assured me, “I don’t need a nursemaid.You can pursue your own interests, as long as we keep the same travel schedule.”
I said I’d think about it. He said, “Reuben tells me I shouldn’t make this trip alone.”
Reuben Trauger was his doctor, an old classmate, too. “Are you sick?” I asked.
“Sick? Certainly not,” Alex growled. “Nothing like that.”
“But you always travel alone,” I said.
He reminded me that although he’d traveled extensively in Europe as a younger man, it had been ten years since he’d been out of the United States. His recent trips were seldom longer than a few days, sufficient for an article, but not for this full-length travel guide. He needed two weeks in Provence, and considering the rigors of air travel these days, he’d simply be better off traveling with a companion.
“Your nest will be empty in September,” he said.
Maybe that was the clincher. I had believed my nest would be empty.
The train slowed to pass through a small village. Church spires rose above red tiled roofs. A spotted dog ran along the railroad tracks, trying to keep up with the train. An old man hoeing in a small patch of garden gave us a broad wave.
I reclined my seat and settled back to take it all in.
I woke, startled, as I had done on the commuter train when it pulled into Bruxelles Midi. A thought zipped through my mind— must not forget my suitcase— and then reality struck me. My shoulders sagged. “Do you think I’ll ever get my suitcase back?” I asked Alex.
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