Paradise Interrupted

by Penny Mickelbury

  A good portion of her good feeling drained away and she was left feeling merely drained. She wanted to eat but she didn’t want the work of polite bantering or sparring with Odile Laurance or whomever else she might encounter. On the other hand, she was curious to see if Denis St. Almain was present and, if so, who would be in his company. She also was curious to see how she’d be received by Odile. She thought that Denis must have told her of his visit and she therefore would know that Carole Ann knew of her relationship to him. And that’s why she realized, Odile had warned that Philippe must never know of her association with Denis. Damn! but she was weary of the tangles and complexities of this island, and resentful of the rebuffs of her efforts to help.

  ‘Nobody asked for your help,’ she reminded herself. ‘Nobody but you thinks there’s a problem.’ But how could that be, she wondered, when so many signs and signals suggested otherwise? Paradise interrupted. ‘Maybe this isn’t paradise to those who call it home, any more than Los Angeles is paradise to you.’ The thought stopped her cold as she conjured up the image of the thousands of Mexicans who daily risked their lives to cross the border into California. That was her home but she no more considered it paradise than...than...residents of Isle de Paix considered their home paradise. ‘Go home and go to bed,’ she told herself, and she cranked up the Jeep and backed out on to the coast road for the brief drive home. An omelet and some cheese and fruit and what was left of the wine she’d opened for Denis St. Almain last night would do for dinner. She would eat and the she would go to bed.

  She drove slowly, paying close and careful attention to the activity on both side of the road, for the beach side had its share of activity despite the fact that almost absolute darkness that now had settled over the sea. Several small boats rode low on the gentle tide, and people waded in and out of the water, their voices floating outward but unintelligible. Cars and mopeds were tightly packed into the parking areas in front of all the stores and shops along the coast road, though only the eateries and bars were open. Who were all these people? Tourists? Islanders? And were they all just out for a good meal, a rum punch, and romance under the stars?

  As she was contemplated parking and strolling for a bit along the beach, the night quietude was punctuated by the rapid rat-a-tat of automatic gun fire. Yes, the sound was distant and distorted by the sea, but she did not doubt that it was gun fire. She stopped in the middle of the road, closed her eyes, and replayed the sound in her memory: Rattattattattattattat. Seven. There were seven reports in rapid succession, followed by silence. No scream carried on the air, and certainly no siren. She jammed her foot down on the accelerator and the Jeep sprung forward with a screech of rubber. This stretch of the coast road was narrow but it was straight, and she barreled up the road, heading north, directed by her sense of foreboding.

  She cruised past the road construction site and slowed as the road rose and curved. Cliffs rose to greet her and the sea vanished as the lights of Deauville came into view. She slowed to a normal driving speed and coasted into the town. It was as alive as Ville Paix and Little Haiti, though with a different, more subdued energy, and certainly no suggestion that assault weapon fire had interrupted the night. She crept down the street. Couples strolled on the cobblestone walks and dined beneath canopies and on terraces overlooking the Atlantic. She stopped as a car backed out of one of the angled parking spaces, and she pulled in so she could turn around and head home, feeling both frustrated and a bit silly. She looked behind her, to see if the road was clear, then returned her gaze forward, and as she did, the door to the restaurant in front of her opened and Marie-Ange Collette swept out, followed by the man she had seen in Aux Fruits de Mer with Denis St.Almain.

  “Jesus H. Christ on a raft!” Quickly and instinctively she shut off the headlights and simultaneously leaned down across the seat. Her heart was thudding and she was breathing heavily. “Holy shit,” she muttered, sitting up. Marie-Ange was walking rapidly down the street, followed closely by the too smooth, too good looking sleaze ball. “Holy shit!” she yelled inside the closed truck, and slammed it into reverse. She backed out and headed the opposite way from the direction in which Marie-Ange had gone, though she desperately wanted to follow, to assure herself that the wife of the president wouldn’t do anything so foolish as to indulge an affair in public. By the time she arrived home, heart still beating as if she’d been the one caught in a compromising situation, she didn’t care. She took a bottle of Chablis and a bag of popcorn to bed and fell asleep on “Silverado,” wishing for an open-air gunfight instead of rapid fire shots in the dead of night.

  “The hydraulic lift is frozen.” Paul Francois’ tone was so mournful, so baleful, that Carole Ann immediately wanted to sympathize but she couldn’t because she didn’t know what he was talking about, and that admission didn’t improve his disposition. “The damned hydraulic lift raises and lowers the platform on the damn truck!” he shouted, pointing to the dump truck whose engine was idling as quietly as an engine in a dump truck can idle. “It’s broken! And Monsieur Remy says that it cannot be repaired.” He was almost whining now, and she was at a loss. Surely a broken hydraulic lift was relatively insignificant in the scheme of things? After all, the truck was running.

  “Paul? You’re going to have to tell me why you’re so upset because I really don’t know.” “The damn truck runs and the damn backhoe runs but we can’t get the backhoe on the truck and we can’t get it to the site if we can’t get it on the truck!”

  “Now I see the problem,” she said quietly, casting about in her mind for a solution, for she understood immediately that it would be virtually impossible to drive the backhoe from one end of the island to the other on the island’s only paved road. It needed to be transported in something like a dump truck or... “Paul, if the truck can carry the backhoe, it can pull it, yes?”

  “Well, of course!” he snapped. “But what good does that...”

  “Build a platform with wheels and a ramp...”

  “You’re almost as brilliant as Remy! But it’ll take all day. That thing weighs a ton and the truck’s top speed is about ten miles an hour.”

  She thought for a moment. “Do it on Sunday. Start early in the morning. Unless you were planning on going to church, that is.” And she side-stepped his slap on the back.

  “When does the police chief arrive?”

  “Monday. When will the car be ready?”

  “Sunday,” he shot back with a little smirk. “I shall deliver it myself to the front door of police headquarters. After I’ve delivered the backhoe to the construction site. And by the way, there’s only the one vehicle, yes? What will the other police use for transportation?”

  “Bicycles,” she said with a grin, enjoying having the last word.

  The president was beaming again, and so congratulatory that she begged him to stop. She was, she insisted, merely doing her job. “We both know that your efforts have been above and beyond the call of duty, Carole Ann, and I’m grateful. You’re even forgiven for bullying and intimidating me!And judging from the change in him, I’d say that Roland had a similar response to your, ah, persuasive tactics?” He smirked a bit and Carole Ann grew wary.

  “I’m not certain what you mean, Sir.”

  “Ha!” The word exploded from his mouth and she realized that it was amusement that fueled it. “You should see Roland. He hasn’t worn a suit since, what day was that? Tuesday? He wears Guyaberras and sandals now, and spends most of the day ‘out in the field,’ as he says. He’s conducting a survey of all the roads on the island— ruts, he calls them— and he’s assessing beach erosion. He’s drafting plans for training programs in several areas, inspired by your example with the mechanics.”

  “That was Roland’s idea.”

  “Ha!” The explosion was louder this time. “Let us save the charades for others, eh? Between us, Carole Ann, only the truth, eh bien? Though I admire your motivation. Now. On to a matter of purely social consequences: Marie-Ange would be delighted
if you’d join us for dinner tomorrow evening. You’ll find that Friday and Saturday nights on the island are social, with Fridays usually casual and Saturdays a bit more formal. I think you’ll enjoy yourself, and we’d certainly appreciate your company. After all, you’re the talk of the town! And if the president can’t produce the object of everyone’s interest, then what good is he, eh?”

  “I’d be delighted,” Carole Ann responded in what she hoped was a tone devoid of relief and gratitude.

  “I don’t know what you’re so happy about,” was Jake’s response. “You can’t pump and grill the woman in her own home at her own party.”

  “I’ve no intention of pumping or grilling her, Jake, no matter what the venue,” Carole Ann said sourly. “I merely want to talk to her.”

  “You’re a lawyer, C.A., and lawyers never merely talk to people, you pump and grill. And besides,” he growled nastily, she owes you an explanation.”

  “She owes me nothing! She’s a grown woman with a life of her own.”

  “Goddammit, she’s the wife of the president, for Jesus Christ’s sake, and she’s got no damn business out in public with some fucking sleeze bag!”

  “We don’t actually know he’s a sleeze bag, Jake.”

  “We know he wasn’t her husband, Goddammit!”

  “Yes, we do know that much,” she sighed, and brought him up to date on everything else, intentionally saving for last the details of Denis St. Almain’s visit, hoping that he’d still be too pissed off about Marie-Ange to have the energy to light in to her. But when he was eerily silent, she grew worried. She waited several moments for him to respond and when he did not for so long a time, she wondered whether they had been disconnected.

  “I’m still here,” he replied in a strangely weary tone of voice, “though I really do wonder how long you will be, C.A.”

  “Jake, I—” She didn’t finish the thought because she didn’t know what to say.

  “I used to think that you went looking for trouble, C.A., but I don’t think that anymore. I think trouble looks for you, but because you’re who you are, you don’t even think about trying to hide from it. You just rush meet it head on, and that scares me.”

  She started to speak but he cut her off. “Look. It’s Thursday. You’ve got Marie-Ange’s shindig tomorrow night, and I know the devil himself couldn’t keep you away from the backhoe ride on Sunday. But aside from that, C.A., will you just lay back and take it easy? Please? Go lay on the beach, drink too much rum punch, watch movies, eat popcorn. Stay out of harm’s way until Monday, then let Messinger and Casson handle things.”

  “Dammit, Jake, you think cops are the answer to every problem!”

  “To the kinds of problems that find you, C.A.? Damn straight!”

  “Cops wouldn’t have stopped Denis St. Almain from breaking in the other night, Jake!”

  “Yes they would,” he snapped, the steel in his voice a little frightening, “because they’d have had a tail on his sorry ass from the moment you saw him step out of those woods.”

  “Why are you so intent on believing the worst about the man, Jake? You really have no cause for that.”

  “I’ve got every cause! He’s either a drug dealer or he had a career masquerading as a drug dealer, either of which puts him in the company of some nasty sons of bitches, the kind who play with AK47s. And while we don’t know for sure that he’s not a murderer, we do know that he’s desperate to clear his name and save his ass from prison. That makes him dangerous, C.A. Dangerous enough to break into your house in the middle of the night to rummage through your office.”

  There was nothing left to say, so she changed the subject. She asked him for a status report on the shipment of police uniforms and guns and bicycles and he told her to expect the boat on Tuesday. Then she reminded him that the telephone lines in police headquarters still were not connected and he promised to correct that problem immediately. She spent the remainder of the day writing up a report of her first week’s activities on Isle de Paix. (God! Was it only a week?!) She faxed one to Jake and delivered a copy to Philippe Collette’s office. Then she went home and got a head start on the part of Jake’s program that involved rum punch.

  The Collette’s dinner party indeed was a relaxed affair, if elegant in the extreme, the two concepts not at all at odds with each other under Marie-Ange’s ministrations. The crowd was smaller than Carole Ann would have expected— perhaps two dozen people in all— including the finance and tourism ministers and their spouses, the Collette’s eldest son who was the island’s only physician, several members of the yacht club, three French movie stars who, judging by the way they were fawned over, must have been the equivalents of Robert DiNiro, Susan Sarandon, and Denzel Washington, and house guests of the Collettes from New York and Paris. Marie-Ange was breath-taking in coral satin, a color that accentuated her deep copper skin. She was relaxed, at ease, and gracious, and every bit the wife of the president.

  The food was extraordinary. Everything was grilled, though differently and unlike anything Carole Ann had ever experienced: The lobster was spicy, the fish sweet, the chicken fiery hot, the shrimp pungent, and the steak like melted butter. The panoply of island fruit was presented in its natural state— fresh and chilled— and as ice cream, sorbet, and juice. The seafood, in addition to being grilled, were presented in a variety of salads and in sushi. And Marie-Ange seemed to be every where at once, like the spices in the food, a welcome ingredient in every conversation, never lingering too long, never dominating, always welcome. Carole Ann observed her discreetly. Her smile was genuine, as was her evident enjoyment and appreciation of her guests, and the feeling was mutual. Carole Ann had attended enough social affairs to recognize false smiles pasted on to yawns of boredom or grimaces of disdain. The affection and mutual appreciation evident between Marie-Ange and her guests was genuine. So was that between husband and wife.

  Carole Ann, who found herself easily and comfortably engaged in conversation as she moved about, realized with no small degree of surprise, why: They were intelligent, charming, gracious people, and good conversationalists all, despite their wealth and social status. In a rare acknowledgement of her own wealth, she chided herself for falling prey to the stereotype that wealthy socialites all were shallow and boring; and to demonstrate her own charm and grace, she engaged in a spirited dialog with both the ministers, never once talking shop, and when the actors learned that she spoke fluent French, they pummeled her with questions about American film, and were so excited to find that she was a film buff, they commanded her attention until Marie-Ange shooed them away, rescuing her.

  “They are irrepressible, yes? But delightful, I think, though you may rather discuss matters of government and policy.”

  “They’re wonderful, Marie-Ange, as are all your guests, and I’d always rather discuss anything than matters of government and policy. I’d also rather dine at your table than any other place in the world. The food is art.”

  “You are very kind, Carole Ann, and I’m honored that you could take the time to join us.”

  Carole Ann, pleased that Marie-Ange had taken her arm and led her away from the crowd, now steered them even deeper into a quiet corner of the garden. Her effort to have a few moments alone with her hostess was aided by the fact that most of the guests now were dancing. A live, seven piece orchestra, enhanced by steel drums, managed classic jazz, reggae, ragtime, and Broadway show tunes with equal aplomb, and it seemed that everyone decided at the same moment to dance off dinner.

  “As wonderful as the evening is, I came specifically to see you. I’ve wanted to make time since I arrived.”

  Marie-Ange interrupted with a bark of laughter that almost was a guffaw. “How like Philippe you are, Carole Ann! You’ve been here just a week and you’ve worked non-stop in that time, and you chide yourself for having no time to socialize. I don’t expect that, as much as I would enjoy the chance to spend time with you.”

  “Then we’ll make the time,” Carole Ann s
aid. “But what I wanted to say to you, Marie-Ange...what I want is to apologize for having to stop the work on the clinic. I know how important health and education issues are to you, and I assure you that on a personal level, I share them.”

  “Ah, but it is the business aspect, the financial aspect, that always assumes the importance, no?”

  Carole Ann shook her head. “Too often, perhaps, but not always. And in the case of Isle de Paix, Marie-Ange, the issue really and truly is one of security.”

  “Yes, yes, yes. Philippe told me of your...your... rules. Do you really believe that such extremes are necessary?”

  “They are not extreme in the least, Marie-Ange, and yet extremely necessary. Please don’t believe for a second that the murder of those two constables was random or accidental.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The assassins, and I believe there were two of them, boarded your craft specifically, and the constables stopped them—” The woman’s reaction stopped Carole Ann. She gasped, fearful and horrified, and gripped Carole Ann’s arm. “You didn’t know that, Marie-Ange? Philippe didn’t tell you?”

  She shook her head, her whispered response all but inaudible, and tears glistened in her eyes. She produced a linen handkerchief and turned her back to the party long enough to restore her equilibrium. Carole Ann admired the strength and control required for such an effort, whatever the motivation— to preserve her image as a woman of grace and elegance, or to maintain the dignity of the president of a country, or, as her own mother would have it, to keep one’s personal emotions personal.

  “I’m truly sorry to have upset you, Marie-Ange. Please forgive me and let us talk of something less disturbing. At least I hope it will be less disturbing. Will you tell me about the health issues here that concern you, and about your son’s work?” And she listened as Marie-Ange spoke passionately and non-stop for several minutes about rickets and scurvy and measles and chicken pox and whooping cough and polio, about pre-mature births and low birth rates and infant mortality. Then Carole Ann talked for a while, with equal passion, giving voice to several thoughts and ideas that had occupied a corner of her consciousness for several days. And when she was finished, tears again glistened in Marie-Ange’s eyes and this time she did not wipe them away. She embraced Carole Ann and whispered her thanks.