A Twist of Orchids

by Michelle Wan

  “I said it’s odd how often Luca’s name seems to pop up. This whole drug business. The death of that narc Yvan Bordas, Kazim, the trashing of Lokum. And now he has a table booked at the time and place where Amélie takes a tumble. I find it damned peculiar.”

  Mara stopped chewing. “You’re not saying Amélie was the third person? What would she have being doing consorting with someone like Luca?”

  “Keep your voice down.”

  “He can’t hear us. And why would Luca want to bump her off? It’s Christine and Alice who have the motive.”

  They returned to their meal.

  After a long moment, Mara put her fork down. “Okay. Let’s go down that road. If there’s some kind of link between Amélie and Luca—forget what for the moment—then we have to assume it also involves Joseph. And if it does, then his nighttime monsters, which you don’t believe in, take on a much more sinister meaning.”

  “Then we’re back to why would a drug baron want to kill an old woman or terrorize her husband?”

  “Maybe it’s not Luca. Serge is the hit man. Maybe he does commissions on the side.”

  “You think Christine and Alice hired Serge to lure Amélie up to the porch and push her off, and now they’re paying him to get rid of Joseph?” Julian seemed to find this funny.

  “It’s one way of reconciling things,” Mara said a little defensively. Her eyes, sweeping the crowded room, narrowed.

  “Someone’s joining them,” she said, ducking her head low over her plate. “For heaven’s sake, Julian, don’t turn around.”

  “Can you see who it is?”

  “It’s a man. Now he’s sitting down.” She stood up suddenly. “I’m going to the toilet.”

  Before he could react she was gone, taking a circuitous route around the edge of the room. Near the window table where a small man with the look of a startled hare was talking rapidly and Luca was spitting olive pits into an ashtray, she stopped suddenly to dig into her purse.

  “I’ll need another week,” Mara heard the hare squeak. He could be, she thought, a schoolteacher, a government functionary, a minor businessman. “I’m sure I can come up with it, but I’ll need another week.”

  With an exclamation of annoyance, Mara dropped her purse, scattering keys, a comb, wads of paper tissues, her wallet.

  Serge was the only one who took any notice of her. His expression was cold and alert, and he did not take his eyes off Mara until she had gathered her belongings and moved on.

  She followed through by going out of the room, crossing the porch, and making her way to the other side of the restaurant where the bar and the toilets were located. That half of the restaurant was full as well. On her return, she retraced her roundabout path but this time did not linger. She was back with Julian within ten minutes.

  “That was the most transparent piece of play-acting I’ve ever seen,” Julian hissed. “What the hell were you doing?”

  “Eavesdropping.”

  “Yes, I could see that.”

  “I heard that rabbity-looking man ask for more time to come up with something. You know, in addition to drugs, I wouldn’t be surprised if our Monsieur Ton-and-a-Half isn’t also into loan-sharking. If Christine and Alice are hard up for cash, maybe that’s the link we’re looking for. They took a loan from Luca, and now they have to find some way to pay the devil.”

  • 27 •

  There was a thunderstorm in the middle of the week. The rain struck the windows in big, heavy drops. Every now and then the sky fizzled with vertical lightning. Jazz slept unconcerned on the Aubusson rug. Bismuth, who was terrified of storms, crept under the art deco sofa where Julian sprawled, reading a week-old copy of the Daily Mail that Madame Audebert had not yet managed to destroy.

  The phone rang three times before Julian remembered that Mara was outside in her studio behind the house. He tossed aside the paper and hurried to pick up before the répondeur kicked in.

  “Julian?” It was Iris Potter, Julian’s artist and Géraud’s live-in partner. Her voice sounded a little breathless. “He’s up to something. He’s got that look about him. You know what I mean, that smug, sneaky look he has whenever he thinks he’s going to get the better of someone, especially you.”

  She obviously meant Géraud. Julian stiffened as he always did at the mention of the man.

  “He’s been seeing someone named Adelheid Besser,” she went on. “Do you know her?”

  “Er—yes.” Julian had the sensation of his stomach dropping into his boots. It was the last thing he wanted to hear. He had forgotten about Adelheid, indeed had hoped she would simply vanish from the landscape. Obviously she had not lost any time getting on to Géraud, and his being “up to something” with her could mean only one thing.

  Iris spelled it out for him: “I think they’re after your Cypripedium thingummy.” Iris was bad with taxonomic names but accepted entirely that Cypripedium incognitum belonged to Julian. “Apparently this Besser woman—Géraud calls her Heidi, makes me think of yodeling and goats—is a big collector. She travels all over the world in search of orchids, and she has a greenhouse filled with plants that has Géraud lime-green with envy. He said she’s promised him a Something sanderianum. Since Géraud hates to pay for anything, it can only mean an exchange. Well, the way I see it, there’s only one thing Géraud can offer her that she hasn’t got, and that’s your orchid.” For someone whom Julian regarded as beautifully innocent, Iris could be surprisingly astute.

  “Damn!” swore Julian, beginning to hyperventilate.

  “So I’d watch my back if I were you, ducks,” said Iris. “And there’s something else I ought to tell you. I’ve just seen a brochure. You know all that land next to Mara’s house? Woods and fields and so on? Apparently it’s going to be developed as some kind of big, fancy golf course.”

  Julian had thought that nothing could have been worse than the news that Géraud and Adelheid had joined forces. Now he found he needed to sit down.

  •

  “It’s a multinational consortium called Montfort-Izawa,” Julian said in disgust. It was the next day, and he had just returned from the mairie, where the mayor, Madame Marty, had proved extremely helpful. “I can’t get any details on who or what Montfort-Izawa is, but they own all the land adjoining your north side, including the woods and the fields beyond. Apparently have done for years. They’ve just released promotional material on an eighteen-hole international-standard golf course, construction to start next year. Plus clubhouse, pro shop, restaurant, parking, and access road. This is the bumph Iris saw.”

  He tossed two shiny brochures onto a table. One was in English, the other in French, both showing a happy golfing couple at the height of their swings, superimposed on an emerald expanse of turf. In the foreground, a triangular flag bore the monogram M-I.

  Julian disliked golf courses, not because he had anything against the game, but because of the way golfing greens were managed. First, they took up a helluva lot of land. Goodbye to the forest bordering Mara’s property. Goodbye to the rough meadow beyond the trees. In springtime it was thick with orchids: purple Orchis morio, deep-throated Serapias lingua, and brilliant waves of pink Pyramidals.

  Second, golf courses used huge amounts of water. At a time when water rationing in summer was becoming the norm, he was amazed that the scheme had been permitted to go through. Madame Marty had assured him that golf courses in France were now required to abide by strict watering regulations, but it still added up to a drain on a scarce resource. Third, golf courses used chemicals like crazy because anything that wasn’t grass was regarded as a weed. That included orchids.

  “And that’s just Phase I,” he went on. “Phase II is luxury condos scattered about, plus parking, two swimming pools, plus more access roads. A kind of golf holiday village. You can buy shares in the scheme, or a package deal: leasehold on a condo and all the golf you want. Maintenance, landscaping, and security looked after by the consortium. If you’re looking for income property, you can r
ent out your condo and your golfing privileges. Montfort-Izawa will advertise it on their website and manage the rental for you. For a fee, of course. As a sweetener, if you buy before Decem ber 31—this is before they even break ground, mind you—you can benefit from time-share privileges for as long as you own your condo that’ll get you accommodation and golf in Florida and the Dominican Republic. Plus there’s a lot of hype about taking advantage of this early-bird offer because in the New Year they expect prices to be much, much higher owing to demand. It seems any number of Japanese corporations are keen to invest in real estate and golfing privileges for their executives, who will come out in fortnightly rotations. The Japanese are golf-crazy.”

  Mara took this in with growing anger. She, too, had just returned to the house, having talked to all of her immediate neighbors that morning and having picked up some of the same information. She said: “In Ecoute-la-Pluie, Joseph and I are the ones directly affected because the development will abut our properties, but I’m not sure Joseph really understood me when I tried to explain to him what was happening. Everyone else in the hamlet is in favor of the scheme, and it seems to have the support of the whole commune as well. When I talked to Olivier Rafaillac, he said application for the project was made several years ago, not long after I moved here. I had a chance to voice my objection then, but I was so busy trying to get my business going, I don’t think I was even aware of it. And anyway, Olivier said I would have been outvoted. Everyone feels the golf course will bring income to the area and increase the value of their land. I’m the only one dead set against it.”

  “And me,” said Julian.

  “And you.” She sat down miserably in a straight-backed chair. Her expression was desolate. “Oh, Julian. They’ll destroy the wood. We’ll have idiots yelling ‘Fore!’ and ‘Gare!’ on our back terrace. What will we do?” She picked up the English brochure and stared at it, looking as if she were about to cry.

  “There’s nothing we can do to stop it,” said Julian. “Montfort-Izawa have met all the departmental requirements. Its plans conform to structural, safety, health, and access regulations. The project is very much a go. You—we’ll—have to live with it.”

  “It’s so crass!” Mara cried, disgusted.

  “It could be worse.”

  “I mean this.” She flapped the brochure in his face. “The whole approach. The hype, the all-inclusive package, the early-bird deal. It sounds so North American, so—” she broke off to stare in disbelief at the open tri-fold in her hand. “Golf? Time-shares in Florida and the Dominican Republic? Julian, who do we know who’s into land speculation, who’s a former pro golfer, who has development interests all over the place? Who do we know who’s been closing a deal in the Dordogne? This sounds like frigging Donny O’Connor!”

  • 28 •

  It was Friday again, Madame Audebert’s day to clean. Julian took himself off early and did not return until she had gone. So it was not until the end of the afternoon that he and Mara took the dogs and walked to the end of the road and into the forest to take the measure of what they were about to lose. Jazz and Bismuth bounded ahead and soon disappeared into the undergrowth. The air was warm and damp, dusty with the smell of coming rain.

  “It’s all of this,” said Julian as they crested the ridge and came down through the trees on the other side to enter the meadow below.

  A wave of sadness swept over Mara. There had been too much loss of late. Amélie, Kazim, Joseph, who was losing his daily battle with Parkinson’s. And now the impending destruction of a piece of wilderness that was somehow so essential to her happiness. What did you expect? a tough, practical voice spoke up in her head. The frame to freeze just because you came and thought you’d found your little piece of paradise? Things change, people leave, or they die. Land was now a highly marketable commodity.

  “Plus all of that over there.” Julian pointed to a long, fallow field that lay along the road farther to the west. In it stood the ruins of a house that had once been part of a working farm, a legacy to a generation unwilling or unable to remain on the land. Often such parcels were locked in endless sibling battles over what was to be done with a shared inheritance. Fields that had been cultivated were left to the creeping stranglehold of brambles that claimed a bit more of the open space each year. So much of the Dordogne was like that, Mara thought, a melancholy testimony to times past. Unless it was being bought up by the Montfort-Izawas.

  “I wonder if there’s any way we can find out if Donny is behind this,” Julian said. Mara had looked up Montfort-Izawa on the Internet, had found a website but no principal names, and Madame Marty had not been able to give Julian any more information than she had already provided. “Maybe we should just come right out and ask him.”

  “I’m sure it’s him,” Mara burst out irritably. “This scheme has Donny O’Connor stamped all over it.”

  Julian agreed. And yet something puzzled him mightily. Surely this could not be all of it? By his reckoning, the fields and the forest all told were at most 40 hectares, less than 100 acres. An impossible squeeze for a course that was supposed to come up to international standards, let alone accommodate the necessary facilities and the proposed condominiums. A lot depended on layout, but he knew that any decent eighteen-hole course required at least 60 hectares, 150 acres, give or take. Glancing back at the woods above them, he also realized that the topography here was terrible. Everything was on a slope, running uphill or downhill to a departmental road that snaked along the bottom of the land. He imagined a great deal of reconstruction, heard the whine of saws as they toppled trees, the rumble of earthmovers slicing off the top of the high ground and using the earth to fill in the lower levels. It would require expensive cut and fill, or terracing, to create playable space. The cost would be prohibitive.

  Finally, the configuration of the land was bad, the meadow and fallow field lying in long strips along the road. In his early days of landscaping, Julian had done golf course maintenance. He remembered one fairway so narrow that golfers had had to hold up play for passing cars in case a stray shot smashed into a windscreen. The space here was like that. How could an experienced golfer like Donny O’Connor get it so wrong?

  “You know,” he said, with a faint flicker of optimism. “I wonder if Montfort-Izawa—Donny—will really be able to carry this off.”

  Mara, who had been lost in thought, stirred. “How do you mean?”

  He explained his doubts about space and layout. “And there are the condos and the swimming pools to come, don’t forget. Where’s it all going to go?”

  “Are you saying it’s a scam?” Hope, like a timid banner, unfurled in Mara’s heart.

  “Er—no.” Donny was a bore, a blowhard, but Julian really didn’t think he had the bottle to try skulduggery of this magnitude. “Just a highly speculative venture. Maybe Donny’s launching Phase I as a kind of trial balloon to see how many investors he can pull in. That would give him cash up front to set things in motion for the golf course. But I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s a long time delivering Phase II. If ever.”

  “Phase I is bad enough,” said Mara hotly. “And my land will still be affected. Don’t forget, this damned putting green is going to run right along the entire length of my north property line. Joseph’s, too.” Mara shook her head. “But he doesn’t understand. Or care.”

  Julian contemplated this. “Maybe he does. Just not in the way you want.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Look, there’s no way the consortium can make good on all their promises with what we’re seeing here. But Joseph is sitting on a whacking great parcel of cleared, level land that’s bang up against the proposed development. Maybe he’s planning to sell out to them.” Julian stood very still. “Bloody hell. In fact, that’s got to be it. In order for Montfort-Izawa to go ahead with their project, they must have secured more adjacent land. What’s the betting they have some kind of private understanding to buy Joseph out? His verbal agreement to sell is all it wou
ld take at this stage. Nothing formal, nothing on record, but there you have another 45 hectares, enough to make the project feasible.”

  Mara stared at him in horror. “You’re telling me I’ll not only have a fairway and condos down one side of my property, but across from me, too?” She shook her head. “No. I can’t believe Joseph would do this. He wants to live out his days in his own home, remember?”

  “Nothing easier. Montfort-Izawa strikes a deal with him. He stays put in the house, but the rest of the property changes hands. You must see that a piece of land as big as the Gaillards’ is key to this whole scheme. It’s contiguous to the development, and it definitely offers the necessary space and layout. And there’s another thing. Have you stopped to ask yourself why, if the consortium has owned the land for all these years, it hasn’t done something with it sooner?”

  “The market hasn’t been right until now?”

  “Or they’ve been waiting to acquire the final piece. Gaillards’ property.”

  Mara shook her head vigorously. “It’s out of character. I told you, Joseph’s rooted to the soil. He’d never sell. Neither would Amélie, and even dead her word still rules.”

  “Maybe he needs money.”

  “He doesn’t. He spends very little. And Jacqueline told me he gets some kind of monthly stipend, plus a bit from the farmers who graze their cattle in his fields. Besides, there’s something you’re overlooking. No matter how bad their relationship is, I’m sure Joseph would want to hang on to the property for Christine, not sell it if he doesn’t need to, just to pump up his bank account. You know how sentimental the French are about land and passing it on to their children.”

  Julian paced a patch of ground, arms crossed, hands tucked under his armpits. “Then Montfort-Izawa must be getting another parcel of land from someone else. I can’t see it proceeding otherwise. Unless …”

  Mara, who was staring at the tops of her shoes, looked up. Julian stopped pacing, stuffed his hands in his pockets and stared out over the landscape. A dark bank of clouds was building up in the west, blotting out the last angry rays of the sun.