A Twist of Orchids

by Michelle Wan

  “Um, I’m sure he’s just been held up,” she said.

  Paul placed another pastis before Loulou, and a second kir royal in front of Mara. He asked if Julian was planning to show. It was going on for nine.

  “Maybe you could order now,” he said bluntly. “Mado wants to close the kitchen pretty soon.”

  They both chose the thirty-seven euro menu. Mara glanced out the window. A fog was gathering. No van came rocking to a halt outside the restaurant, no figure hurried toward the door. Julian had never failed to appear for their Friday nights at the bistro, except on the night of the storm, of course, and she had been with him then. Even if he were coming from a job at the other end of the region, even if he had sometimes turned up looking a little soiled because he’d had no time to run home and clean up, he still made it. Could he have forgotten? She was almost certain he was staying away purposely. But how could he just do that, without a word of explanation to her? She dug in her bag for her phone and then thought better of it. Julian absolutely must not think she was hounding him.

  Loulou was studying her.

  “Is everything all right?” he asked. “Between the two of you?” His voice had a kindly solicitousness to it that made Mara’s reply catch in her throat. Loulou reached across to take her hand. She burst into tears.

  •

  Julian woke with a start in the old leather armchair in which he had fallen asleep. Merde, it was past nine o’clock, and he should have been at Chez Nous more than an hour ago. There was no time to change, no time to shave. He had meant to arrive on time—in fact, early, to have a few moments alone with Mara to say whatever it took to put his unexplained absence right. “Look, I’m sorry I haven’t been in touch. Awfully busy.” It would have sounded lame, he knew. She wouldn’t have been convinced, but he had hoped it would do for the moment. Now, he wasn’t sure she would even still be there for him to sound lame to. He gave a sharp whistle for Bismuth and ran for the van.

  •

  Mara’s tears were drying up, but she occasionally hiccuped into the capacious handkerchief Loulou had gallantly offered her.

  “Maybe it’s my imagination. Maybe Kazim’s death is what’s still getting him down. But somehow I think it’s more than that. The problem is, he won’t talk. I’m afraid …” she trailed off.

  “You’re afraid …?” prompted Loulou in a fatherly way.

  “I—I don’t know how well this living together is working out. I think”—the tears welled up again—“I’m afraid Julian wants to break things off.”

  “Ah, non,” Loulou assured her vigorously. “Julian cares very much for you. He would never do that.”

  “I think he would. He’s essentially a loner.”

  “He is lonely,” said Loulou wisely. “As are you. There is a difference, you know.”

  Was that all that bound them, Mara wondered, their common sense of isolation? How did the song go? Two lonely people together? France, for all that it was the land of amour, could be an unnerving place for a single expatriate.

  Just then Bismuth bounded in the door. He was followed a moment later by his owner.

  “About time, mec.” Paul slapped forearms together with Julian in a kind of wrestling hold.

  “Sorry, I fell asleep.”

  Hugging, Mara had read somewhere, was good for you. It released oxytocin into the system and gave you a feeling of well-being. Hastily, she blew her nose, stood up, and hugged Julian hard, taking in his familiar smell, the aura of dampness that he brought with him from outside. A great sense of relief filled her. He had fallen asleep. It was as simple as that. It was almost as if the past anxious week had not really happened.

  Julian, who had been braced for testy comments about tardiness and poor communication, was pleasantly surprised at the warmth of Mara’s embrace. He returned it enthusiastically. She seemed so happy to see him. But why was she crying? They both held on, enjoying their arms around one another. The Time Out, their bodies said, was over, even though their minds puzzled over how they had got there.

  Loulou cleared his throat. The two of them sat down. Mara’s eyes were still a little moist, and her face had gone quite pink. Julian looked both pleased and slightly flustered. His right cheek bore the impression of whatever he had been sleeping on. He waved aside an aperitif and ordered straight away. He was starving. And exhausted. Gobbling a piece of bread, he told them about his run-in with Géraud. As a result, he had been getting up early to put in a few hours searching out likely habitats for his orchid before proceeding with the less interesting but equally pressing business of earning a living. And then continuing with the search after work until the light failed. It was like holding down two full-time jobs, and the orchid search part of it, as Mara well knew, involved leagues of walking.

  “I don’t suppose you could help me?” he turned to her. “I hate to ask, but now that Géraud knows I’m looking around Aurillac, the orchid will be at his mercy if he finds it before I do. It would go a lot faster with two.”

  Mara’s chin went up. A small voice, aggrieved, rang out in her head. While she had anguished, he had not communicated with her because he was too busy searching for his orchid? She took a deep breath to expel the “no” that was already forming in her mouth. And then she saw his face, boyish with hope and yet doubtful. They both knew that the last time she had gone on an orchid hunt with him she had been charged by a wild boar. She brushed aside remembrances of past searches, opted for generosity, and said, “I wouldn’t think of letting you out on your own.”

  His look of amazed delight made her feel pleasantly heady. Or maybe it was the champagne cocktails. They agreed on a hunt the next day.

  Then Julian told them about his encounters with Adelheid and Serge.

  Loulou raised his head sharply. “You’re sure it was Serge following you?”

  “Positive,” Julian said with his mouth full with bread. “I was on my way to Adelheid’s house, and this car was behind me. I didn’t pay any attention to it then, but it was waiting for me on the roadside when I came out. A black Mercedes. I got a good look at the driver. There’s no mistaking that face. Not to worry, though.” He swallowed. “I managed to shake him in the end.”

  “But how does he know your car?” Mara asked. “Julian, I am worried.”

  He considered the question. “Good point. Unless … I don’t know. There was a sneaky little bloke who followed me to my van the day I was asking around after Kazim in Périgueux. Maybe he was one of Luca’s boys.”

  “This isn’t good,” muttered Loulou. “If Serge knows your car, he probably knows a lot more about you. Where you live, for example. I’d say Serge was tailing you from the time you left your house yesterday morning.”

  Julian’s eyebrows jerked upward. Had both Géraud and Serge been following him? It would have been comical, except that Serge did not look as if he had much of a sense of humor. Or—the thought struck him forcefully—had Géraud’s unwelcome presence actually saved him from something more unpleasant than a cross-country chase?

  “Well, no harm done,” Julian said uneasily. He reached for another piece of bread and watched Paul hurry by, carrying platters of steak-frites, sizzling and mouth-wateringly appetizing, as only Mado could make them. “God, I’m ravenous.” He had ordered the same thing, and this teaser—the smell of grilled meat and fried potatoes—was almost more than he could bear.

  Mara gave him her news. As she told him about the viager and the information she had been able to pry out of Maïtre Joffre, Julian’s eyes strayed to a neighboring table where a woman was breaking into a steaming pastry shell.

  “Hmm.” He stroked his beard thoughtfully. “I’d say that leaves both Christine and Donny well out of it. All the same, it might be worthwhile finding out who did purchase the viager—” He broke off in eager anticipation. At last Paul had come out of the kitchen and was heading their way. “Just because it’s not Donny, it doesn’t follow that someone else isn’t interested in getting rid of Joseph to sell his l
and to Montfort-Izawa.”

  Loulou nodded. “C’est logique. A very good point.”

  Someone else? Mara recalled the notaire’s face as he told her that Donny was not the purchaser. His expression had been stony. Or stonewalling? The closed look of a man who shaves the truth very fine, of someone whose practiced answers hid as much as they revealed. Mara froze, her drink halfway to her lips. Suddenly she had a pretty good idea who the buyer was. Not Donny. Daisy. She was the one with the money, and she could have made the purchase in her own name. Which meant that the O’Connors had a stake in Joseph’s life after all. All that feigned concern and the talk about getting him into care was so much eyewash. Then a horrible thought struck her. She jumped up, pulling Julian out of his chair just as Paul was placing their first course on the table.

  “Hey, just a minute,” Julian objected, indignant at having his meal snatched from him, or more precisely, him from it.

  “Come on,” she shouted, heedless that everyone in the restaurant was gawking at them. “Sorry Loulou, sorry Paul, this can’t wait.” She bellowed for the dogs and dragged Julian with her out the door.

  “Do you mind telling me what this is all about?” Julian demanded as she started up the engine.

  Mara said breathlessly, “It’s about the fact that I’ll bet the whole damned farm that Daisy owns the viager, and I stupidly told Donny that Joseph’s live-in caregiver starts tomorrow. That’s like saying they have until tonight to finish the old boy off!”

  •

  It was half past ten when they reached the house. Joseph was sitting in the kitchen watching television while eating a flan that Suzanne Portier had prepared for him. She had brought him vegetable soup and homemade bread, a slice of roast pork, boiled cabbage and potatoes, and the flan. The flan was stuffed with raisins. He had eaten half of it right after his dinner and saved the other half for a late-night movie he wanted to see. It had girls in it, and a certain amount of nudity. He had never been able to watch his choice of television when Amélie was alive. With her, it was always early to bed, early to rise, and she had closely controlled the programs they viewed.

  “’Course I’m all right,” he said in reply to Mara and Julian’s question as they burst in on him. His eyes lingered on the television screen. A woman had just stepped out of a shower, letting a towel fall away from her. He seemed to have forgotten about his monsters. “Why shouldn’t I be?”

  • 37 •

  It is a night of mist, with no wind and no moon. Even the stars are dead. Everything lies wrapped in the kind of absolute obscurity that only occurs deep in the countryside. Here, no lamps illuminate empty streets, no traffic signals flash their mindless red–green cycles, no stain of neon bleeds through the drifting darkness.

  The house inside is dark, too, and silent, except for the heavy ticking of the grandfather clock, spelling out the hours in its corner of the front room.

  Outside the house, something moves. A pencil beam of light wavers through the hazelnut grove, points momentarily at the black switches of the fuse box in the wood hangar. Now it glances off the concrete surface of the terrace, focuses on the lock fixture of the back door. When the door swings open, the pencil beam moves within, sliding like a sly finger over the flagstones of the kitchen floor, illuminating the leg of a table, the worn flooring of the hallway. It slips across the threadbare carpet of the front room, where the old clock stands, pauses before the dark bulk of the sofa. Now it points back down the hall and glimmers on the handle of the bedroom door. The handle turns, as if of its own accord. And then the pencil beam goes out.

  Something has come into the bedroom. It makes its presence known by a slight disturbance of the air, by a blackness that is denser than the blackness that surrounds it. The room pulses with its entry, as if it has been waiting to enclose this moment.

  The sleeper lies motionless. The thing has crossed the intervening space to stand so near that its breathing enjoins with the breathing coming from the bed. Another displacement of air betrays movement. Carefully, a hand searches out the sleeper’s face, touches skin.

  There is a muffled cry. A roundhouse swing catches the thing a stunning blow. It reels back amid sounds of struggling, of furniture being overturned, of things crashing to the ground.

  “For God’s sake, Mara,” Julian shouts. “Give us a bloody light, will you?”

  In the sudden flare of the flashlight beam, Mara sees Olivier Rafaillac sprawled on the floor. He is wearing his padded nylon jacket over pajamas and is wrestling with a pair of legs that kick and thrash beneath him. Julian is lying across an expanse of black rubber poncho that covers a large, writhing body. He scrambles to a kneeling position, shifts his hold to grab the front of the poncho and jerks the body upright.

  “All right, you bastard,” he yells, fetching Donny O’Connor a mighty sock to the jaw. “Just what the hell do you think you’re up to!”

  •

  “He came here to murder Joseph,” Mara declared, pointing an accusing finger at Donny.

  The pair of gendarmes who had answered their call looked doubtful. Mara told them about the attacks on Joseph and the pivotal importance of the Gaillards’ land to the Montfort-Izawa development, in which she was sure Donny had more of an interest than he admitted. Julian explained that he and Mara had anticipated that Donny would make another attempt on Joseph that night. They had therefore bundled Joseph off to Olivier Rafaillac’s house. Then they had enlisted Olivier’s help and returned with him to lie in wait for Donny.

  Donny’s story was that he had come to the house to check up on Joseph because he had heard the old fellow had been troubled by nighttime prowlers. Of course he had a key. Why shouldn’t he? His wife had bought the Gaillards’ property en viager years ago. (“I knew it,” Mara growled at Julian.) The Gaillards were practically family. Mara also had a key, he pointed out. So did just about everyone else in the neighborhood.

  “If I’m supposed to be the monster that’s been scaring Joseph, shouldn’t I have some kind of costume?” Donny argued. “A mask? Fake fangs? A gorilla suit? So where’s my Halloween outfit?”

  “You’re wearing it,” said Mara, pointing at his poncho. She recalled Joseph’s description of his first intruder. Big and black, he had said, with loose, rubbery skin. “All you needed to do was pull that over your head. In the dark, you’d look like the Blob.”

  “Give me a break,” snorted Donny, touching a reddening welt on his jaw. “I’m gonna have you charged with assault.”

  Olivier confirmed most of Mara and Julian’s account but admitted that he knew nothing about any land deals, nor had he exactly witnessed Donny attacking Joseph—Mara—in the bed. It had been too dark to see. He had merely followed Julian’s order to jump anyone who came into the room. Monsieur O’Connor, as it turned out. Yes, he could confirm the fact that Joseph thought he was being terrorized. However, no one had really taken him seriously.

  One of the gendarmes went with Olivier to his house to take down his statement and to get Joseph’s version of events. The remaining gendarme searched Donny. He found a wallet, a wadded-up handkerchief, loose change, keys, a slimline flashlight of American make. Nothing that could be construed as a weapon.

  “There’s your weapon.” Mara waved at a cushion lying on the floor. “It’s from the sofa in the front room. He was planning to smother Joseph—me—with it.”

  “You’re nuts,” sputtered Donny.

  “What’s this?” the gendarme asked, unfolding a piece of paper he had pulled out of Donny’s jacket pocket. In the next moment, the officer became quite excited. He read it aloud:

  Hee Hee Hee

  Hah Hah Hah

  Cherchez partout

  Vous ne me trouverez pas

  Translated, with a little poetic licence, it read

  Hah Hah Hah

  Hee Hee Hee

  Look everywhere

  You won’t find me

  The gendarme stiffened like a game dog on the scent. “Monsieur,” he addressed
Donny, “I’m afraid you’ll have to come with me. There are a number of questions we would like to ask you.”

  •

  At the local gendarmerie where their statements were formally recorded, Mara protested loudly to the brigade commander.

  “Why won’t you listen? Donny O’Connor isn’t the rhyming burglar. He went to the house not to steal but to murder Joseph Gaillard. I think he planned to pass the crime off as a burglary gone wrong, and he was going to leave a bogus poem behind to throw you off the track.”

  “She’s crazy,” Donny denied. “I didn’t write any goddamn poem, and if it wound up in my pocket, she planted it there to land me in it.”

  Mara threw up her hands. “Can’t you see the MO is all wrong? The rhyming burglar is selective. He chooses unoccupied houses with things of value in them. Joseph’s house is very much occupied and it has nothing worth stealing.” She made a last desperate attempt to convince. “The poem. If Donny O’Connor really is the rhyming burglar, he would’ve come up with something a lot better, don’t you think? The thing doesn’t scan. It’s inconsistent. Before the burglar used tu. Here he switches to vous. He spells Hah Hah and Hee Hee the English way. In French it would be Ha Ha and Hi Hi. Not only is this poem not up to usual standards, it’s plain awful!”

  “I’ve been set up,” Donny insisted.

  Nevertheless, he remained in custody. Officers hurried past the room where his ongoing interrogation was taking place. An excited buzz filled the hallways. The news spread quickly: the gendarmes had finally caught their man.

  •

  The sky was bright with morning by the time Mara and Julian’s statements were complete and they were told they could go. Mara, with Julian hurrying in her wake, strode furiously out of the gendarmerie and plunged into the nearest café in search of a badly needed jolt of caffeine.

  “He’s going to get away with it,” she fumed as they stumbled into an empty booth. They had not seen bed for twenty-four hours, and both looked drained. “The gendarmes can’t see past their housebreaker, and the bastard is going to get away with it.”