Coco du Ciel

by Elise Noble

  And there was another problem, a more personal one—what if Coco’s heart still belonged to another man?

  “Merde,” Remi cursed under his breath. “They wrote her murder off as an accident?”

  “Seems that way.” There was a killer walking around in Lark’s River, living their life while Coco had lost hers. “Do you think there’s any way we could convince them to reopen the case?”

  “Not without new evidence.”

  “Well, we can hardly have Coco tell the cops what really happened.”

  “Especially because if she shows up, there will have been no murder in the first place.”

  Rhys leaned back in the leather swivel chair and sighed. “Why didn’t I just leave the past the hell alone?”

  “That’s a question I’ve asked myself many times.”

  “You didn’t know what you were getting into with the trees.”

  “Neither did you when you promised Coco that you’d look into her origins. At least you were honourable enough to keep your word.”

  There was a lot to be said for dishonour. And possibly lying too.

  “That still leaves the question of how I break the news to Coco.”

  “I’d suggest keeping a box of tissues to hand. Celine cried constantly in the beginning.”

  “Tissues. Got it.”

  “And perhaps I should speak with Celine first? That way, she can help with the aftermath. One of her strengths is that she’s an excellent listener, credit where credit’s due. Cambria tended to focus on offering practical assistance rather than hugs.”

  “I’d appreciate that. It’s the baby that worries me. How’s Coco going to react when she finds out about the baby?”

  “What baby?” she whispered from the doorway.

  Oh, fuck.

  Rhys looked at Remi, and Remi stared back, wide-eyed.

  “I think Coco’s dosage might need adjusting,” he said.

  No bloody kidding.

  “What baby?” Coco asked again. “And what’s Remi doing here at this time of night?”

  Probably regretting ever calling Rhys in the first place. If he’d just ignored the note attached to the flowers, Rhys would have given up and gone back to England after a few days. Guilt hit like an intercity train. Rhys had upended not only his own life but the Kleins’ too. Right now, he should have been sitting in a crappy bedsit writing code while Coco sweated her way through yet another nightmare, all of which would have been far preferable to the situation he found himself in at Le Château de Villance.

  “Uh, while you were sleeping, I ran a couple of internet searches, and I kind of stumbled across a picture of you.”

  “A picture? From those posters we put up?”

  “No, from your previous life.”

  “What?”

  “I’m sure it’s you. The timeline fits, and you used to live in America, and you drowned, and…”

  “What baby?”

  Rhys opened and closed his mouth like the goldfish swimming in the tank on his desk, but no words came out.

  “Perhaps you should sit down,” Remi suggested.

  “Just tell me.”

  With a dead woman as his witness, Rhys was never house-sitting again. “You were pregnant when you died.”

  At least Rhys was close enough to catch Coco when she collapsed. With Remi’s help, he got her back onto the sofa, but that was only the start. Next, they had to unravel the life and death of Jocelyn Bordeaux. And Rhys had a feeling that the twisted tale was just beginning.

  CHAPTER 26

  JOCELYN BORDEAUX HAD been popular in high school, a member of the photography club as well as a keen horse rider. She’d worked at a ranch on the weekends, helping to look after the animals, and in the evenings she’d been a leading lady in the Lark’s River community theatre group. After she graduated from the architecture program at Western Nevada College in Carson City, she’d spent three years working at 4D Associates, an architecture firm near Reno. Either her Facebook posts had tailed off in the months before she died, or she’d worked out how to use the privacy settings, because there wasn’t a single mention of the baby or any boyfriend either.

  “I don’t understand,” Coco said for the hundredth time. “Why didn’t I say anything about being pregnant? It must have been such a huge event in my life, and yet there’s nothing. Nothing. And who was the father?”

  She’d spent most of the night and the whole of the morning searching for her former self on the internet. On the two occasions Rhys had suggested she might want to take a break, she’d ignored him and snapped that she was “fine” respectively. The three mugs of coffee Celine had brought her sat cold at her elbow, as did the plate of croissants and the poached eggs on toast.

  “Remi has investigators trying to find out about your past,” Celine reminded her.

  “But they can only look at facts. How can they tell if I’m still me? You know, inside?”

  Celine didn’t have an answer for that.

  “I’m sure they’re very good at what they do,” Rhys tried. “I can’t see Remi hiring a bunch of cowboys.”

  Nothing.

  Click, click, click.

  It was painful to watch as Coco devoured every article she could find, rereading the ones she thought were important. Occasionally, a tear would trickle down her cheek and Celine would hand her a tissue. Rhys stayed too, checking out the links on his phone as he puzzled over the mystery. Had Jocelyn Bordeaux got herself into some sort of trouble? Or was it merely bad luck that she’d gone for a walk and never come back? And how the hell had she gotten into the plant food? According to a note from Rochelle Bordeaux on Jocelyn’s Facebook page, Jocelyn had been buried in the church cemetery. Unless the casket was empty, of course, but how would they find out? They could hardly request an exhumation.

  Outside, night fell, and Celine began to fidget. Rhys couldn’t blame her. His own arse cheeks had gone numb hours ago.

  “Sweetheart, you need to get some food and some rest.”

  Coco dragged her eyes away from the screen for a brief second. “Are you crazy? How can I eat? I feel sick.”

  Click, click, click.

  “The internet will still be here tomorrow.”

  “That…that executioner is still walking around free.” She rubbed her face. “My head hurts.”

  “It’s probably eye strain.”

  “Why don’t you just take a tiny break?” Celine suggested. “We can walk over to the stables and see my horse. At least we know you like horses now.”

  Coco hesitated for a moment, and Rhys thought she was going to refuse, but then she nodded.

  “Maybe fresh air would help.” She tried to stand. “My legs have gone weird.”

  “That’s normal when you’ve been sitting for seventeen hours straight.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “It used to happen to me when I started building apps.” In the end, Rhys had set a timer to remind himself to get up and move around every thirty minutes. “Here, take my arm.”

  Celine’s suggestion of visiting the stables turned out to be a good one. Coco seemed to know instinctively how to handle the horse, and Rhys kept well out of the way as the girls brushed its fur and combed its hair. Her hair. Apparently, the huge white beast was female. It had a little friend too—a Shetland pony that was as wide as it was high. The Arabian was called Azizah, which meant “beloved one,” and the Shetland had the unfortunate name of Al Capony.

  “Remi bought him for our first Valentine’s Day together,” Celine explained.

  “That was very thoughtful.”

  Celine giggled. “Not really. He’d travelled to England on business, and suddenly he remembered the date and realised he should buy a gift. It was late, and his business associate mentioned that his wife was happy with anything horsey, so Remi sort of…panicked?”

  “And bought a tiny pony?”

  “We were still getting to know each other, but he knew I liked animals.” Another giggle. “Remi walked
Cappy right into the house, and he pooped in the living room.”

  Coco smiled, just a tiny twitch of the lips, but it was there. Thank goodness.

  “Don’t get any ideas,” Rhys warned her. “We don’t have a paddock.”

  Celine waved a hand. “We have plenty of paddocks. Do you want to try riding Azizah tomorrow?”

  Coco nodded, and Rhys breathed a sigh of relief. If the two women were outside, then Coco couldn’t drive herself crazy staring at a computer screen. The thought gave him hope—maybe in time, they could get through this darkness and find the light.

  ***

  Coco barely said a word as Rhys led her up the stairs in the cottage. There was no repeat of last night’s kiss, no groping each other on the sofa. But at least she was in bed. Remi had given her different pills tonight, and Rhys thought she might protest about taking them, but she’d merely nodded and swallowed them down with half a glass of Chablis. Whatever they contained, it was heavy stuff because she was sleeping soundly by the time he’d finished brushing his teeth.

  Rhys turned out the light and climbed into bed beside her, and tonight, it was he who couldn’t sleep. Things had gone so, so wrong. Would they ever find their way back from this? Watching Remi and Celine offered another ray of hope, although Remi’s foray into the coco du ciel trees’ warped world had been planned, even if the outcome had been somewhat unexpected.

  Rhys had fallen into this mess due to pure dumb luck.

  Good luck or bad luck? The jury was still out on that. When things were good with Coco, they were amazing, but when they were bad? Oh, man… He wouldn’t even wish that on Gary.

  But giving up on her wasn’t an option. Coco was his now, for better or for worse.

  ***

  What time was it?

  The sky was still dark when Coco woke Rhys with an eerie wail. His first thought? Not again. His second thought? Fuck. Her hand slammed into his gut as she thrashed away, and he doubled over in pain. While he tried to snatch a breath, she caught him under the jaw with her other fist, sending shooting pains up the side of his skull. He dove off the side of the bed as his self-preservation instincts kicked in.

  What the hell was he meant to do? She was flailing like a madwoman, and even the crack of her arm hitting the iron bedstead didn’t wake her. He tried to catch her hands, but all he got for his trouble was a black eye.

  Then she began to retch, gulping in air, clawing at the mattress as she struggled to breathe.

  “Coco! Wake up!”

  The only response was the agonising sound of a woman dying all over again. This was worse than the episode with the Zopiclone.

  Then she went limp. Rhys poked her, shook her, but there was no reaction. Was she still breathing? If she was, the rise and fall of her chest was too shallow for Rhys to tell. He searched for a pulse and found a frantic fluttering. What did that mean?

  He grabbed his phone and dialled Remi’s number. Should he call an ambulance instead? What was the emergency number in France?

  “It’s four o’clock in the morning.” Remi sounded groggy and more than a tiny bit pissed off.

  “Coco’s gone weird.”

  “Weird in what way?”

  “All floppy, and she might not be breathing.”

  The grogginess disappeared. “I’m on my way.”

  Rhys didn’t wait for Remi to arrive. A combination of desperation and fear helped him to drag Coco down the stairs and out the front door into the garden. Gravel from the path shredded his bare feet, but he hardly noticed. Still Coco didn’t stir.

  A minute later, Remi skidded to a halt beside them in a golf cart. Did he even play golf? Or was this just a billionaire’s daily transport?

  “What happened?”

  “She had another nightmare, and I can’t wake her up.”

  Remi knelt down and checked her vital signs himself. Did he have any kind of medical training? At least he looked as if he knew what he was doing.

  “She is breathing, but her pulse is fast. Let’s take her to the château.”

  “Not the hospital?”

  “Do you want to answer those questions? Because I don’t. If necessary, I can get a doctor to come here, but at the moment, we don’t need that.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Celine reacted this way several times while I was adjusting her medication.” Remi scooped Coco up and laid her across the back seat of the golf cart. “The human body is more resilient than we think.”

  In the château, Remi stopped halfway along the corridor to the kitchen and opened a panel in the wall that Rhys had never noticed before. A second elevator? He expected to go up, but instead, they went down to the basement. Or was it a hospital? The white-walled room was set up with a railed bed and a bank of monitors.

  “What is this place?”

  “I installed the equipment so I could monitor Celine’s sleep patterns.”

  Remi clipped something to Coco’s finger, and her pulse scrolled across one of the screens, jagged and erratic. But it was there, and it was strong. Probably slower than Rhys’s if he was honest. He gripped her other hand and whispered a prayer for her to wake up.

  “Terrifying, isn’t it?” Remi said.

  “That’s an understatement.”

  “Do you realise your nose is bleeding?”

  “What? Is it?”

  Remi passed him a tissue from the box on the nightstand, and sure enough, it came away bright red.

  “Your eye is also bruised.”

  “She caught me with an elbow.”

  “An occupational hazard, no?”

  “Yeah, this is my dream job.”

  There was only one chair in the room, and Remi slumped into it, so Rhys lay alongside Coco on the bed, hoping her subconscious would spare her from another nightmare. Remi was right—going to the hospital would be awkward, doubly so if Rhys had to explain a swollen nose as well. Together, they kept a vigil until Coco’s eyes flickered open almost four hours later.

  “Where am I?” She reached out and traced a fingertip across his cheek. “What happened to your eye?”

  “At the château. You had another bad dream.”

  “Did I do that to your face?”

  “It was an accident.”

  She sagged back against the pillow. “I’m so sorry.” Her voice lowered to a whisper. “It’s coming back now…worse than before.”

  “The dream?”

  “Yes.”

  “In what way was it worse?” Remi asked.

  “Longer. It was longer. He… I saw more of him than the other times. His arms…they were hairy.”

  “Light or dark hair?”

  “Dark. Even underwater, I could see it. And he was wearing a watch. A fancy watch. And…” Her eyes widened. “He had writing on his skin.”

  “A tattoo?”

  “I think so. Although you take notes on your hands, don’t you?”

  Remi shoved his ink-covered hands into his pockets. “Bad habit. Can you remember what it said?”

  “I…” She screwed her eyes shut as she thought. “Not the words. But the writing was all curly. Like script.”

  “Why don’t you try drawing what you saw? That worked for Celine when we needed to identify… Never mind.”

  Yes, Remi had definitely caught up with the man who mugged his wife. Where was he now? In a shallow grave somewhere? Or had Remi made the death look like an accident?

  “I guess I could have a go,” Coco said.

  “And you like to sketch,” Rhys reminded her. “Remember all those doodles of buildings? Maybe there’s something of your old self left.”

  She perked up a little. “Do you think? What if it’s just a coincidence?”

  “It would be a pretty big coincidence.”

  Remi headed for the door. “I’ll find a pencil and paper.”

  Could Jocelyn the architect really be lurking inside Coco’s subconscious? Only time would tell.

  Five minutes later, Remi came back with a sketch pa
d and a whole box of pencils, plus a sharpener, an eraser, and a selection of pastels.

  “Celine likes to draw too,” he said as he handed them over.

  Coco turned to a blank page and scratched a few lines with the pencil. Rubbed them out. Tried again. Wadded up the paper, threw it across the room, and huffed.

  “Everything’s fuzzy.”

  “Close your eyes for a moment,” Remi suggested. “Relax.”

  She glared at him. “Relax? Seriously?”

  “Let’s settle for ‘cogitate.’”

  “I don’t even know what that means.”

  Why was she looking at Rhys? He had no idea either.

  “It means ‘think,’” Remi said, rolling his eyes.

  “We didn’t all go to Harvard.”

  But Coco thought, and this time, she drew an actual arm. She was right—it belonged to either a man or a very butch woman. There were muscles, and the attached hand wasn’t wrinkled, exactly, but there were definite age lines.

  “Not bad,” Remi murmured.

  Coco added a watch, an old-fashioned one with a numbered face. To Rhys, it looked expensive and boring—if you had that much money, why not get a smartwatch?—but Remi leaned forward and peered more closely at the paper.

  “Are you sure about the shape of that watch hand?” he asked. “Or did the pencil slip?”

  “The second hand? It seemed wavy, but maybe the water distorted it?”

  “And what about that open mechanism at the top?”

  “All the little cogs? That’s how it looked. Is that normal? I’ve never seen a watch like that before.”

  “I have. It’s a Blancpain Villeret Carrousel. If what you’ve drawn is accurate, it could narrow down the search considerably. Few men can afford a hundred-thousand-euro watch, and even fewer would wear it to push a woman into a lake.”

  Rhys glanced at his own twenty-quid Casio. “What kind of idiot would pay a hundred thousand euros for a watch?” Then he realised who was standing next to him. “Ah, right. Sorry.”

  “I don’t wear mine anymore. Not since a Rolex and a pair of diamond earrings cost Cambria her life.”