“Oui! A man was struck by a car, and the car kept going!”
“What are you talking about?” Alex asked.
“Right there, at the end of Victoria. A hit-and-run,” I said. I turned back to our young doorman. “Did you see it happen?”
“Non, but I heard the sirene and ran to see.” His voice slid to a low, compassionate note. “The man was dead.”
“Dead,” I echoed, shivering at the thought, incredulous that this had happened under our noses, on our first day in Paris. This—and so much more!
“How did it happen?”
The young man raised his palms in helplessness. “Someone said he flew into the air.” His arms went up in an elaborate gesture. “That is all I know. I did not even see the poor man’s face, only his feet—his boots. Like the American cowboy movies,” he said. “The toes with the sharp points.”
CHAPTER 5
* * *
Our taxi had turned onto the Champs-Elysées. The grand avenue sparkled with lights. The sidewalk cafés were packed.
“You can’t assume that in all of Paris, there was only one man wearing cowboy boots,” Alex said, keeping his voice low, as if he thought our swarthy little cab driver wanted to eavesdrop. His tone was not convincing. Not like his earlier arguments.
“But Alex, he called the hotel, asking about me. What could he possibly want with me?” I’d already related the clerk’s information about the phone call.
“Yes, that is disconcerting.” Alex considered for a moment. “It’s not that I’m insensitive, but something had to be off with the man. He might have been a stalker. Now he’s dead.You can relax. Assuming the hit-and-run victim is the man from the train,” he just had to add.
“Do you think we should go to the police?” I ventured.
“No!” He lowered his voice again. “No, my dear. If we were in New York City, maybe. You could add your two cents, which is about all your information would be worth. You don’t know the man, don’t know anything about him. Here in Paris, where we’re unfamiliar with the language and the laws, we might be detained. And for what purpose? No, Jordan, I think you must accept that it’s not likely we’ll ever know who he was or why he was outside our hotel.”
He was right. Right about all of it.
More wild Parisian traffic, and our driver was as wild as the next guy. At last we turned onto a quieter, darker street. Our cab swerved to a stop in front of a modest building, dimly lit. The driver pointed to an inconspicuous sign. “Guy Savoy.”
A minute later, I heard Felicity squeal my name. She came running toward us.
“This must be the place,” Alex said
A tall young hostess in a chic black dress took us up a level to the mâitre d’. As we threaded through the spacious room to our table, Felicity whispered, “Guy Savoy is the chef. He has several bistros but this is his luxury restaurant.”
Luxury it was. The light bounced off the silver. The crystal sparkled. Every detail reflected impeccable taste, even the parchment card with the notice, Please turn off cell phones and beepers, engraved in fancy script in French and English. I’d left my phone in the room charging. I had let it die sometime during the past two days. Alex did not own a cell phone.
“Pretty nice digs, huh?” said Barry. He was wearing a dark, expensive-looking suit, white shirt and white-on-white tie, clothes Felicity had probably chosen for him.
A waiter came for our drink orders. “Now tonight is our treat,” Felicity said. “No argument.” Alex and I did argue, but Barry, with the loudest voice, silenced us. The drinks came, and we toasted all around.
“You look stunning, Felicity,” I said, admiring her emerald green dress.
“You look nice, too, Jordan,” she said. It struck me that both the cocktail dresses she’d sent over for me were red, a color my mother always told me I should avoid, with my auburn hair. Had Felicity forgotten that I never wore red? I didn’t think so.
As we sipped our drinks, Felicity regaled us with accounts of celebrities and heads of state that frequented the restaurant. “Princess Di used to fly to Paris just for dessert at Guy Savoy,” she said. “Isn’t that awesome?”
A few tables away, a swarm of waiters descended upon a man who had just been seated. I exchanged a glance with Felicity. “Dreamboat!” she whispered. I nodded. One quick glance told me that much.Thick salt-and-pepper hair, strong jawline, finely-tailored jacket. Was he a celebrity? Head of state? Probably not. He wasn’t surrounded by an entourage, only by groveling waiters.
At that moment, our waiter—one of them—made eye contact. Crooking her finger, Felicity summoned him to our table. “Who is that man, over there, all by himself?” she asked.
The waiter didn’t have to follow her gaze. “He is an important patron of the arts, Madame. He dines with us often.” Our guy kept his back straight and his words sharp.
Though I did wonder what the important man’s name was, I was glad Felicity had the good grace not to ask. “Are you ready to see menus?” the waiter said, clearly annoyed at this table of crass Americans. Barry declared that we’d been ready.
With a military turn, our waiter disappeared, and another promptly brought menus. He began to describe the elaborate dishes, in a gracious manner, more tolerant of Americans who didn’t read French than we had any right to expect. Barry interrupted. “Hey, can I get a decent steak here? I’ve been craving a New York strip. Just warm it on both sides.”
“We have the tenderloin medallions, Monsieur,” said the waiter.
“Are they good?” Barry asked.
“Excellent, Monsieur.” Now there was no mistaking the ice in his tone.
Mercifully, Barry waited until the waiter had departed to say, “Only bad thing about this place is the snob factor, you know? Why these guys think they can look down their noses at us, I sure as hell can’t figure.”
“It’s just the French way, Barry,” Felicity said. She leaned toward me, pointing to an item on the menu. “Poached pigeon is a specialty here.”
Alex took her recommendation. Felicity ordered oysters in aspic. I chose sea bass, and Barry had his beef.
Food was the focus for most of the evening. I didn’t order dessert—I had challenged my zipper as far as I dared—but even the coffee was extraordinary. Alex seemed to warm up to the Blakes. Each time he embarked on a travelogue of one of his visits to Europe, decades ago, Felicity listened, wide-eyed. Alex probably didn’t notice Barry drumming his fingers.
The topic of Alex’s book came up, and Barry perked up. “Someday I might write a book. The music business, now there’s a subject. All these artists that make it big—people think it’s luck, but stars get made. People like me make ’em what they are.”
He talked through a mouthful of chocolate torte. “Like this artist I’ve signed. If you can imagine Carrie Underwood singing the blues, that’s her. Blues is real big in France. My girl’s perfect for the International Music Fest next spring, if we can come to terms with the promoters.”
“That’s why we’re in France,” Felicity put in. “Barry likes to work out these performance contracts in person. Plus the trip is deductible, so why not?” She giggled.
Barry ignored her. “Take Elvis. Elvis was all about packaging a product. Colonel Tom Parker made Elvis. Trust me—the kid was not a great musician, but Colonel Tom Parker saw he had a style. This old guy I knew recorded with Elvis before the boy let it all go to his head.” He drained the last drop of wine from his glass, snapped his finger, and called, “Garçon!” Sounding like gar-SAWN, and much too loud. Someone rushed to pour more wine.
“I could tell you plenty,” Barry went on. “I’m talking big names on Music Row. Plenty of behind-the-scenes stuff. I’d change the names so I wouldn’t get sued, or maybe I wouldn’t. If you tell the truth, it’s not libel, right? Whaddya think, Alex?”
Alex’s brow gave a little twitch. He’d often expressed his opinion of people who thought they’d just sit down and write a best seller, a little hobby they m
ight take up, like paint-by-number. He managed a smile, but I caught the edge in his voice as he answered, “I’m afraid I’m not your best source for legal advice.”
“But whaddya think about a book like that?”
Felicity broke in. “Your coffee’s getting cold, sweetie.”
“Well, let’s heat it up!” Barry snapped. “Gar-SAWN!”
Another waiter hurried to our table.
Alex took advantage of the moment to change the subject. “A terrible thing happened outside our hotel this afternoon. A man was killed.”
“Killed?” Felicity gasped.
“A hit-and-run, at the end of the street.”
“Did you see it happen?” Barry asked.
“I must have been in the shower, but Jordan said she heard the commotion.”
“The strange thing,” I said, “is that the victim seems to have been an American that we’d seen in Brussels and at Gare du Nord. And there he was again, on our street.”
Alex darted a glance that told me he hadn’t meant to say anything about that. He wiped his mouth with his napkin. Like a parent making excuses for an errant child, he said, “This business of the lost luggage has put Jordan in a suspicious frame of mind.”
I would certainly not mention the caller who tried to get information about me from the hotel clerk.
“I thought you left the suitcase on the train,” Barry said. “What’s that got to do with the guy who was killed?”
“The two couldn’t possibly have anything to do with each other,” Alex said.
A noise came from inside Barry’s jacket. Around us, heads turned, as if someone had started dancing on the table. Barry whisked out his cell phone and answered with a mumble, as I was processing the depth of the faux pas. A waiter approached, and he was not smiling. “Hold on,” Barry said into the phone, and he left the table, narrowly escaping the waiter, leaving us to offer profuse apologies.
“It is not allowed, you understand.” The waiter was as unblinking as a palace guard. “Please make sure the gentleman understands our policy,” he said before whirling on his heels.
“Stupid!” Felicity said through her teeth. “Why couldn’t he just turn the damn phone off. He’s always got a deal working.”
I had considered finding a powder room, and now seemed like a fine time to excuse myself. I saw the discreet sign Toilettes et Téléphones and turned into a hallway. I heard Barry’s voice and assumed he was talking on his phone in the alcove.
“Give me a little time,” he said, his voice hushed and irritable. “And don’t you ever call me again when you know I’m with my wife.”
As I reached the door for Les Femmes, I heard a woman’s husky voice. “We don’t have time. What can I tell Antonio?”
Barry was not on his cell phone.
I hurried into the ladies’ room. Lucky for me, Barry hadn’t seen me. Lucky for him, Felicity hadn’t decided to visit la toilette. What a jerk! I thought about the woman’s accent. Not French. Don’t had sounded more like don’ta. Maybe Italian. How tempting it was to eavesdrop, but I was probably better off not knowing.
As I washed my hands, the door opened, and a young woman came in. She stood at the vanity beside me, a counter with only one lavatory. I moved. She gave me a quick glance, ran a paper towel under the faucet, and patted her neck and shoulders. “Men!” she said. “You can’t trust them to do anything!” I recognized the husky voice as the one I’d heard in the hall.
“Right,” I said. I had a hunch she didn’t mean workers on construction sites, but that was where my experience with incompetent men took me. She returned a quick smile. I reached behind her for a paper towel. “Excuse me,” I said.
“It’s all right,” she said. Isa all right.
Smooth brown skin, silky black hair, small-boned with sexy curves, late twenties at the most. An Italian beauty. One who knew Barry’s cell-phone number. Poor Felicity. All the personal training in the world couldn’t make her young again.
The night had lost its glitter. A few minutes later, as we made our way down the stairs to the foyer, Barry stumbled. He grabbed Alex, who, to my uncle’s credit, didn’t let him fall. Barry gave a “Wo-oo-ee! Glad I’m not driving. I couldn’t even drive an elevator.”
Felicity yawned. “Good thing we decided to take a taxi.”
I squeezed her arm. “You don’t have to go shopping with me tomorrow, Felicity.You’ve done enough. Really.”
I was surprised that she didn’t protest, shopper extraordinaire that she was. But she merely advised me that I could find everything I needed at the Galeries Lafayette in the Boulevard Haussman.
In our cab, Alex said, “Reminds me of Homecoming, the first time I saw Mr. Blake play the fool.”
Georgia Homecoming. Whatever had possessed Barry to say someone ought to put Uga on a diet?
I said, “The good thing is, we don’t have to see him again.”
Though it was late, I didn’t settle down to sleep for a while. I kept thinking about Felicity and this new, obnoxious husband of hers who was probably cheating on her. It hadn’t occurred to me to wonder what the young woman meant when she told Barry, We don’t have time. Time for what? And what was that about Antonio? Who was he? I began to think maybe her relationship with Barry was business, not personal. Felicity had said, “He’s always got a deal working.” A crooked deal, I’d bet. Comforted, somehow, by this other option, I finally drifted off to sleep.
On Tuesday morning, here in the shopping capital of the universe, not optimistic that I’d ever get my suitcase back, I put way too many Euros on my credit card. I bought the least expensive rolling suitcase I could find, pretty much like my other one, and I filled it up. Our hotel arranged for a courier to return Felicity’s clothes to the Raphael.
That afternoon, I joined Alex at the Louvre. We barely scratched the surface of the museum collection. Alex had to pull me away from Pei’s pyramid; I was so absorbed in the much-celebrated irony of the sterile glass skylight, there in the center of the plaza, surrounded by the expanse of early French Renaissance and seventeenth-century architecture. Brilliance or heresy? I didn’t bring up the debate, but Alex did. “What’s the saying: ‘The Louvre will satisfy all tastes—except bad ones’? Now some would say the Louvre will satisfy all tastes.” Another time, I might have argued in favor of Pei’s design, but this time I opted out. We had to hurry to Nôtre Dame. Too little time to give the landmark its due.Too little time in Paris.The little taste was like one square of a Hershey bar. But Provence beckoned me.
Early Wednesday morning, Alex and I boarded the high-speed train, the TGV, for Marseilles. It was a fast four hours through the French countryside, a vast plain bathed in sunshine. Round hills with cliff outcroppings as rugged as the Rockies, where the ancient heavings of the earth had pushed them up and out from the plateaus with their horizontal bands of rock. Here and there an old abandoned farmhouse.
In Marseilles we rented a car. Another hour westward, through less rugged terrain. The fertile plains appeared to be growing ochre-colored houses. Our hotel was easy to find because Fontvieille had only two main streets, one in and one out. Just past the town center, we came upon L’hôtel du Soleil, a stucco building that, on first glance, looked like hardly more than a pension. We parked in the gravel parking lot. Scrubby bushes flanked the entrance.
“You must remember, now, this is not Paris,” Alex said.
A moment later, I was delighted that it was not Paris.
CHAPTER 6
* * *
Shafts of sunlight fell across the hardwood floor. The ceiling was exposed wood beams. L’hôtel du Soleil was simply furnished, like a French country home, with wrought iron tables, sofas covered in floral chintz fabrics, ladder-back chairs, hooked rugs, baskets, and stoneware. In an instant, I took it all in and immediately felt at home.
We had a glimpse of a blustery, red-faced man with a black handlebar mustache standing behind the reception desk, making elaborate gestures as he spoke in rapid-fire Fren
ch to a young woman with dark hair spilling down her back. But seeing us, he turned into the hospitable host. He emerged from his station, his arms spread wide.
“Monsieur Carlyle? Madame Mayfair? I am Jean-Claude! Bienvenue!” His accent was much thicker than we’d encountered in Paris, his presence so overpowering that we were reduced to nods and monosyllables as he checked us in. He had our credit card numbers from the travel agent, so check-in consisted mainly of presenting our passports. “A call came for you, Madame,” he said, as he turned to a pegboard behind the reception desk and seized two doll-sized yellow tennis shoes with keys attached.
“Did the caller leave a message?” I asked.
“She said she would call later.”
“One of your daughters?” Alex suggested.
I remembered that I’d promised to call Catherine, the daughter at Emory, when we reached our destination. Another daughter? No. “They’d call my cell,” I said.
Jean-Claude handed the keys to the young woman. “My daughter will take you to your rooms,” he said. “S’il vous plait, you must tell Bettina if anything is not to your satisfaction.” Slim and graceful in form-fitting pants and loose shirt, Bettina looked about Catherine’s age. Very pretty. Were there any girls in France who weren’t pretty? This one, however, was blinking back tears. Her father spoke to her in French, a reprimand, I gathered from the tone. She ran her finger along dark, long lashes, managed a feeble smile, and led the way up the stairs, through an arched opening.
“I bring your luggage bientôt,” Jean-Claude called.
We followed Bettina down a dim hall. When we reached number seven, she said, “Yours, Madame.” She turned the key and opened the door on a spacious room. “Voilà,” she said, without enthusiasm. She pointed. “Télévision, téléphone, climatisation. Enjoy, Madame.” Pleasant enough but distracted.
Pursuit in Provence (A Jordan Mayfair Mystery) Page 3