“Scarlett, what was your impression of the woman?” Viv asked.
“Initially, she seemed as cheerful as her yellow front door,” I said.
“Porte jaune?” Suzette asked. I think I was speaking too fast for her and I glanced at Harry and he nodded that the translation was correct.
“Yes, her front door was painted a very happy shade and she seemed to be as well, until I went back the second time and then she seemed rather surly and grumpy,” I said. I made an effort to speak more slowly so that I didn’t lose Suzette.
“Why the change in attitude?” Nick asked.
I shrugged. “She insisted she didn’t know Will but I got the feeling she was hiding something.”
“I have Alistair running a background check on her,” Harrison said.
We all looked at Viv, who blushed a pretty shade of pale pink. She cleared her throat and looked at Harry and asked, “How is Alistair?”
“He’s fine,” he said. There was an awkward silence as everyone in the room glanced between them, waiting for more. “And he would likely strangle me if I didn’t tell you what he told me, which is that he misses you.”
Viv’s faint blush turned fiery hot. She lifted her cup to her lips and I had a feeling she was wishing that the tea was straight whiskey. She averted her gaze so I assumed any discussion of Alistair was closed.
“Right. What’s our next move then?” Nick asked.
“We’re going to split up,” Harrison said. “We need to visit the Brouillard family and the Musée de l’Or as both had an interest in the painting. Since we think the painting is linked to Viv’s husband disappearing, I figure if we find the painting, we find the husband.”
“Seems reasonable enough,” Andre said. “Who gets the museum and who gets the family?”
“I’ve thought about it and I think the best pairings are Nick and Scarlett at the Brouillard estate, and Andre and I at the museum,” Harrison said. “Nick, you can pose as an art collector and inquire about a few of the pieces that the family has offered for sale. Andre and I will go to the museum and talk to the curator in charge of the collection in which the Renoir was supposed to belong. Any questions?”
“If Nick is posing as the art collector,” I said, “then who am I?”
“His assistant,” Harrison said.
“Um, sexist much?” I asked. I gave him a look that let him know how unhappy I was with that.
“You need to see the bigger picture,” he said.
“Ha! That one’s good enough to frame, mate,” Andre said.
Nick burst out laughing and I frowned. Really? Puns now? Viv seemed lost in thought but Suzette was smiling at the boys’ antics.
“Oh, don’t get riled, Scarlett, it’s the state of the art,” Nick said.
Harry and Andre both laughed and my frown deepened.
“This conversation is as exciting as watching paint dry,” I said.
All three men went abruptly serious, but Suzette giggled, cementing her place in my heart forever.
“What do you want me to do?” Viv asked.
Suzette and I sobered immediately as we all turned to look at Viv. She looked so forlorn that I instantly felt horrible for making light when she had so much worry weighing upon her.
“You are to keep teaching,” Harrison said. “We still don’t know what Emile St. James’s part is in all of this, but it’s a good bet that he’s going to be watching you.”
She nodded. “I’m the decoy then.”
“Exactly,” he said. He moved to give her a half hug. “I know this is hard, but it’s for the best.”
She looked unhappy but accepting.
“Should I do an American accent?” Nick asked. Then he gave an example. “Nick Carroll, rich Hollywood mogul, pleased to meet you.”
“Not bad,” I said. “But I think you’ll have better luck as a snobby Brit.”
“Truly?” he asked. “I quite fancied myself as a mogul, or perhaps a Texas oilman. You know ‘Howdy, partner’ and all that.”
Nick’s Texas accent was thick enough to spread on toast and I had to press my lips together to keep from laughing.
“No,” Andre said. “You’ll cock it up by saying ‘mate’ or some other such thing. Besides, you’d need a cowboy hat to be a true Texan.”
“He’s right,” I said. “They don’t go anywhere without their hats or boots.”
Nick looked put out but I glanced past him and noted that Andre looked vastly relieved. I turned my head to hide my smile.
* * *
As luck would have it, one of the apartments opened up and Nick, Andre and Harrison rented it from Suzette. On the one hand, I was sorry to have Harrison leave the sofa in our little apartment. On the other hand, it was probably for the best since I was already spending so much time with him, and having finally admitted my feelings for him to myself, being in close proximity with him was straight-up torture.
After a dinner that Nick cooked in their small apartment, Viv went right to bed. I suspected she was going to have a nice cry, but when I listened at her door, I didn’t hear anything. Maybe the constant stress and worry had simply tuckered her out. Not to mention, the toll teaching her class was taking—that had to be exhausting as well.
I lingered in the living room while Harrison repacked his bag before heading down to his new place. It occurred to me that with the new teams, me with Nick and him with Andre, I wouldn’t be seeing as much of him the next day. Disappointment is a very hollow feeling, isn’t it?
“That’s sorted then,” Harry said as he zipped his bag. He hefted it off the table and set it on its wheels. “I suppose I’ll see you at breakfast so we can finalize our plans.”
“All right,” I said.
We walked to the door together, as I needed to lock it after he left. I took a moment to study him. His wavy brown hair hung over his forehead, and his bright green eyes studied my face as if he had something on his mind but he didn’t know how to say it. I knew exactly how he felt.
I opened the door for him and he dragged his bag out into the hall. He paused and gave me a faint smile.
“Good night, Ginger,” he said.
“Good night, Harry,” I said. “I . . . I’ll miss you tomorrow.”
For a second we just stared at each other, and then because I just couldn’t resist, I rose up on my toes and planted a kiss on his lips. It was swift but no less potent for its brevity, knocking my internal thermostat up into the red zone. Hoo, baby!
I broke the kiss and stepped back. Harry looked like he’d been sucker punched, pretty close, and I laughed as he shook his head as if he was trying to unscramble his brain.
“I’ll miss you, too,” he said. For a second, I thought he was going to kiss me again, but he didn’t. He took a step back, looking as if it cost him quite a lot to make himself do that. And didn’t that just win my heart over even more? Then he waved, and said, “’Til tomorrow then.”
“Tomorrow,” I said and closed the door, locking it behind him. A sigh whooshed out of me that I swear came all the way up from my feet. I tried to remind myself that the hardest thing to do was generally the right thing to do. It was cold comfort, especially in January in Paris in a big bed all by myself.
* * *
“Here’s how we’ll play it,” Nick said. “While Madame Brouillard is showing me the pieces that are for sale, you check out the house, looking for any sign of the Renoir.”
“If the Brouillards stole the painting back, do you really think they’re going to leave it in plain sight?” I asked.
“Sometimes that’s the best hiding spot,” Nick said.
“Maybe,” I said. But I wasn’t convinced.
We were being driven in a luxury car to the Brouillards’ estate. They lived in Neuilly Sur Seine, a very wealthy neighborhood northwest of central Paris. Our driver paid no att
ention to us as we rolled along through the neighborhood, which was filled with enormous estates all belonging to those living much larger lives than the rest of us.
“Nick, what if the Brouillards are the ones who took Will?” I asked. I kept my voice low so that the driver wouldn’t hear.
“Well, that’s a dark twist, isn’t it?” Nick asked. He fidgeted with the sleeves on his jacket, the only outward sign that he was a bit nervous.
Andre had dressed him in a black dress shirt and black suit, shaking his head when Nick had appeared this morning in a purple velvet suit with a silk lime green dress shirt. They had haggled but Andre had won. Thank the fashion gods for that!
Since I was supposed to look like his Girl Friday, I was wearing low-heeled black boots and a slim skirt in dark gray with a white turtleneck sweater. The only thing that livened up the look at all was the wide black belt at my hips.
We pulled into a driveway that had a wrought iron gate, which had been left open. Harrison had someone in his office arrange the meeting and our story was that an investor, Nick, was looking to buy some pieces of art. Because the Brouillards were looking to sell some artwork, it seemed all very coincidental and yet plausible, or so I hoped.
The driver stopped on the circular drive right in front of the house. Three stories of thick cream-colored stone loomed over us. The line of the green mansard roof was broken up by several windows, all of which seemed to be looking down upon us in deep disapproval.
Nick led the way up the wide stone staircase to the front door. It was a massive rectangle of ornately carved wood framed by two half-dead, as in brown and withered, topiary shrubs in pedestal vases, one on each side of it. I wasn’t sure if the brown leaves were caused by neglect or the weather, but I suspected the former. Either way, they were not welcoming.
From the road, the house had looked resplendent, but up close it was easy to see that the black shutters on the windows were desperate for fresh paint, there were piles of leaves collected in the corners of the wide veranda, and a window to the right had a large crack in the pane of glass and it looked as if someone had used clear tape to patch it.
I gathered times were tough for the Brouillards, which made sense given that they were willing to sell some of their famed art collection. Nick rang the bell and we waited. In moments the door was opened by a woman who was short and stout and looked to be somewhere in her fifties. She had once been blond but now it appeared that the silver was winning. Her clothes were couture, cut to flatter her larger frame, and were entirely too nice for house staff. Nick must have thought so, too.
“Bonjour, Madame Brouillard,” he greeted her.
“Mr. Carroll, good day,” she said. Her French accent was very soft, as light as whipped butter in a croissant.
“So sorry to disturb you on the staff’s day off,” Nick said.
The smile she bestowed upon him was tinged with relief. Clearly, she had been dreading trying to explain why she was answering her own door and Nick had solved the problem for her. Well played.
“It is no bother,” she said. She glanced at me just over his shoulder.
“My assistant, Fiona Felton,” he said. We had already decided that I would use our hat shop intern’s name instead of my own on the off chance that she had heard my name in connection with Will or the missing Renoir from the police or another source.
“How do you do, Mademoiselle?” she said.
“Very well, thank you,” I said.
She led us into the house. It was much like the outside, beautiful but with a sad air of neglect hanging about it, sort of like a coating of dust on an old antique. The chandelier overhead was dull and sported a few cobwebs, the staircase that wound up the side of the room to the floor above looked chipped and scuffed and was missing several rails.
We entered a drawing room to the left. The antique carpet was threadbare, the curtains faded from the sun, and the furniture looked to have seen better days with worn armrests and gouged wood.
“Would you care to sit, Mr. Carroll?” Mrs. Brouillard asked.
“Oh, brilliant,” he said. “And please call me Nick. I feel that we are to become very dear friends.”
“You may call me Marie,” she said.
I noticed neither of them asked me to call them anything; I was the help after all. I tried to know my place. I pulled out my phone as if I were taking notes on it. Neither of them paid any attention to me. Shocking, I know.
“Now, Marie, I have to tell you that my passion is for the impressionists and I hear you have quite a few that you are looking to . . .” Nick hesitated, trying to find the right words, and then he added, “find homes for.”
She flashed him a smile, again looking relieved at his kindness.
“We have many,” she said. “My mother, Estelle Brouillard, was the last real collector in the family and the impressionists were her favorite as well.”
I perked up at this, knowing that Estelle was the one who had bequeathed the troublesome Renoir to the Musée de l’Or originally. I wondered if Nick would be able to steer the conversation that way.
“Who were her favorites?” Nick asked.
“Manet, Monet, Renoir,” she said. “Gonzales, Buffet, Pissarro, she loved them all, so much so that she nearly caused the financial ruin of the family all for her passionate love of art.”
“I fear it is an obsession to love the works of the greats so much that you need to own them, to make them yours and yours alone,” Nick said. “I know I feel that way and I imagine your mother felt the same.”
I gave him a side eye. He sounded a little daft, as my cousin would say, while I was more partial to cray-cray.
Marie gave him a wide, toothy grin. Her eyes were hazel, blue with brown around the pupil, and they didn’t reflect the smile on her lips, which seemed terrifyingly calculating. That was the first moment I got the feeling that things might not be as they seemed in that perhaps Marie’s interest in Nick was about more than selling him some art. Uh-oh!
Chapter 22
“Yes, you and my mother would understand each other quite well,” she said. She tossed her head and her ash-colored bob shifted about her round face as if trying to give her cheekbones. “Come, I will give you the tour and you can see if we have anything that might interest you.”
We began the tour on the first floor. Room after room of musty, neglected furniture. I could feel a sneeze lodge itself in my nose, just waiting to let loose. I pinched the bridge of my nose repeatedly, trying to keep it in.
Nick, bless his heart, kept pace with Marie. He played up the part of the rich collector, asking questions, admiring the works of art, and flattering Marie until she lost the pinched expression on her face and was hanging on his every word.
I feared he might be overselling it, as Marie kicked the giggling and flirting up a notch, clearly not catching on to the fact that Nick was gay. If Andre were here, he’d likely have a fit. I figured it was just as well that Harry had divided us up as he had, and I wondered how the two of them were doing at the museum.
I surreptitiously took a few pictures of the pieces we were looking at, including an ugly little statue in the corner, all the while pretending to be taking notes. I wondered if the pieces Marie was showing us were authentic. It occurred to me that since Harry and Andre were at the museum, I could text them some of the pictures and the curator could tell us what the known status of the pieces were. You know, like was it really in a museum in Germany or Italy, or was it owned privately by, say, the Brouillards?
I’m not sure why but my intuition was telling me not to trust Marie Brouillard. Perhaps it was the alarming amount of teeth she showed when she smiled or maybe it was the fact that she looked at Nick as if she were cataloging the cost of each item of his clothing—again, thank goodness Andre had dressed him today—and was estimating his worth accordingly. Either way, there was something about her I did
n’t trust.
I fired off a quick text to Harry with some pictures attached. So far, we had seen a number of small pieces by a variety of impressionists. They were pretty cool, but none were the Renoir we were looking for, and they were all modest-sized pieces that didn’t really knock my boots off.
There was a gallery on the second floor that was full of art. Most of it, according to Marie, was junk. They were mostly artists who had come up in the Paris art scene who had shown great promise but then didn’t become as successful as was speculated.
I had never thought of fine art as a gamble before, but looking at the vast array of paintings in the room that were now worth nothing, I realized thousands of dollars had been spent looking for a sure thing, but in art, unless it was an established artist who was already untouchable, there really wasn’t a riskless gamble.
Nick was doing a fine job of playing the art connoisseur. He paced the room, propped his chin on his hand while considering a piece. He asked Marie questions, giving me the opportunity to snap a few more pictures, although there was still no sign of the Renoir, which I was beginning to think was more and more of a long shot. I decided it was time to be a bit more direct.
“Excuse me, Madame Brouillard,” I said. I waited until she turned her gaze toward me. “I read in the paper that your family bequeathed a Renoir to the Musée de l’Or, but it was stolen shortly afterwards and that it recently turned up in a junk shop. Do you think you’ll be getting that piece back?”
“No, we will not,” she said. “The painting was insured by the museum, so when it was stolen, the museum was compensated for it. I imagine the painting will belong to the insurance company now.”
“Did you ever have any dealings with the insurance company?” I asked.
“No,” she said. “There was no need. The painting was no longer ours. My mother fancied herself a patron of the arts, but she was really a poseur, trying to ingratiate herself into the art world by having her name on a plaque beside a painting no one cared about in a smaller museum because she couldn’t afford to be a patron in a larger venue.”
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