Paradise Interrupted

by Penny Mickelbury

  Viviene already had walked her down memory lane, to the time, thirty-five years ago, when they all were young— Henri LeRoi and Philippe Collette and Simone St.Almain and Odile LeRoi younger by several years than herself— Simone the most beautiful of the girls, Henri the most brilliant of the boys, Philippe the most handsome and wealthiest of the boys, Odile the most brilliant and wealthiest of the girls. Isle de Paix was newly independent, though still completely influenced and largely controlled by the French, and divisions within island society and culture based on proximity to things French. Consequently, those families of color most easily able to access a connection to French families of the same name occupied the highest social strata and, by default, the highest economic strata. In second place were the professionals and tradespeople who, despite having no direct tie to wealthy white French islanders, nevertheless managed to achieve financial success and stability. On the bottom, as always, were those without name, wealth or education. And pilloried on the points of this dangerous triangle: Henri LeRoi, Philippe Collette, and Simone St.Almain.

  “Henri adored Simone,” Viviene recalled. “And why not? She was beautiful. She was beyond beautiful. She took the breath away, of both boys and girls. Even the prettiest girls— and Odile was among the prettiest— paused in admiration of Simone.” And Viviene looked to her younger sister for affirmation of the truth, and received it.

  “Simone was lovely. But Viviene— we never have agreed on this point, and still do not, even after so much time has passed— she was lovely in the way an orchid is lovely or a bird of paradise or a cockatoo: Strangely. In some way not normal. You have seen her, Carole Ann. Do you understand what I mean? How did she seem to you?” Then, as if struck, literally, by an afterthought she added, “She is still beautiful, Simone?”

  Carole Ann recalled her own impression of Simone as a beautiful tropical avian and agreed with Odile, though she easily could imagine viewing such arresting beauty through the naked eyes of youth rather than through the prism of maturity. She nodded. “Yes, she is still beautiful, but in a fragmented, put together way...” She faltered, seeking the correct words, then relaxed as she noticed both Viviene and Odile nodding the heads in understanding.

  “So you can imagine that she was pursued—”

  “But what she cannot imagine,” Odile interrupted her sister with controlled vehemence, “is how foolish it was for Simone to dream, to say nothing of believing, that Philippe Collette would marry her! My God, it was madness! Yet, she believed that her beauty would be enough.”

  Viviene coughed gently and reached across the table for her sister’s hand, halting her flow of words. “Odile and Henri always were best friends, just a year apart, he the adored big brother for her. And because he was older, he refused to accept her warnings about Simone.”

  “Even after Philippe used her for his amusement that one summer and impregnated her and left her, to return to school in Paris, Henri still would have her! Can you imagine? He would marry her and give a name to Philippe’s bastard!”

  “Odile!” Viviene hissed her sister’s name but it resonated like a shout. “That is enough. Please. Denis is not a bastard. We care for him, and Henri loves him just as he loves his own children, and certainly Denis loves Henri.”

  “Yes,” Odile replied drily, “enough to claim him as his father.”

  The three women drank deeply of their wine in the emotional silence that hung over the table and, after a moment, Viviene resumed the tale: A defeated and despondent Henri LeRoi returned to his studies in America, eventually becoming a lawyer like his father before him; Philippe Collette returned to his studies in Paris, eventually becoming a lawyer like his father before him; and Simone retreated, in shame, to her parents’ hut on the north end of the island where her father worked as a cane cutter. Simone never returned to school and refused further contact with the people she had grown up with, including Henri and Philippe. Eventually, she was forgotten, and until Henri assumed control of the government and Denis began to appear periodically, it was not known that Simone and Henri had been in touch with each other. “So, I suppose that is why Denis concluded that Henri was his father,” Viviene mused. “Why else would such a man interest himself in the affairs of Simone and Denis St.Almain? And, as we later learned, it was Henri who arranged for them to go to the States and for Denis to be educated.”

  Based on all that, Carole Ann accepted as logical Denis’ belief that Henri was his father; and no doubt, Simone would rather he believe the fantasy that claim as the father of her child the man who had so callously abandoned her. But were Denis and Henri joined by any other bond or connection, the kind that involved drugs and the DEA? The kind that would result in Henri LeRoi’s fall from power and Denis St. Almain’s becoming a murder suspect? “Why did Henri leave?”

  His sisters locked eyes across the table, their desire to protect their sibling as intense as if they still were children jockeying for playground superiority: The LeRoi clan against all takers. Carole Ann kept her eyes on Vivien, waiting for the answer. But it was Odile who answered. “Something to do with drugs. He said he had been tricked, used somehow, and he was afraid.” Odile stopped talking and looked again at Viviene who shrugged slightly, then nodded. “It...whatever it was...had something to do with Denis.”

  Carole Ann felt as if the air had been sucked out of her. “Philippe had nothing to do with Henri’s decision to leave?”

  Viviene frowned. “No. In fact, Henri made the arrangement for him to return. Philippe now boasts that he was planning all along to reclaim his family’s ‘rightful position’ as governors of this island, but the truth is that Henri made it all possible.”

  “And you’re certain that Philippe doesn’t know that Simone’s child was his child? Certain that he hasn’t encountered Denis and has made the connection?” Carole Ann asked. Thirty-five years ago, Isle de Paix would have possessed an ever smaller town mentality; everybody knew everybody else’s business, and if Philippe ever met Denis, he had to make the connection to his past, unpleasant and uncomfortable as that might be, the image of himself reflected in Denis St. Almain’s face would guarantee it.

  “Who would tell him?” Viviene asked with an eloquent shrug. “We had contact with them— the Collettes and the du Mas and the de Villages and the Chartres— only at school, and then only because, despite their names, they were not permitted to attend school with their French relatives—”

  “de Villages?” Carole Ann interrupted with a start. “There are de Villages other than the old man who owns everything on this island that the government does not own?”

  Odile released a girlish peal of laughter and Viviene almost matched it, and through intermittent giggles, they explained that, indeed, there remained several direct descendants of the island’s original colonizers, both Black and white, though the de Villages now were the wealthiest— they owned the biggest bank on the island— and, therefore, the most powerful, despite the fact that a Collette wore the official mantel of power.

  “But a de Villages still wears the unofficial mantel,” Odile added with a sniff and a giggle. “If one could ever get her out of her haute couture, one could argue that she wears the pants in that family.”

  “Odile,” Viviene hissed at her sister again. “That is quite enough. The back stairs intrigue does not help Carole Ann,” and she looked to Carole Ann for consensus.

  “I’m sorry, but I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Marie-Ange!” Odile exclaimed.

  “What about her?” Carole Ann asked, feeling very much like she was the only one excluded from the inside joke.

  “Marie-Ange is the eldest granddaughter of Hubert de Villages,” Viviene began, but stopped short as Odile rose quickly to pound Carole Ann’s back to prevent her from choking on the wine that she’d swallowed too quickly, sending it down the wrong way.

  “Well, at least now we know why Collette didn’t want to be the one to tell old man de Villages to shove his school an
d his clinic up his ass!” Jake was enormously amused to learn of the president’s familial tie to the island’s wealthiest man. Carole Ann was less so.

  “It’s also why the old fart thinks he can maintain the upper hand by controlling access to essential equipment, like that bulldozer, and get away with it. Jake, this isn’t funny!”

  “The hell it’s not,” he chortled. “I knew Collette had his hands full with Miss Marie-Ange, but I didn’t know how much trouble the man was in. I wouldn’t wish that kind of pressure on my worst enemy.”

  Carole Ann all of a sudden remembered Jackie LaBelle telling her how Marie-Ange had yelled at Phillipe the morning that construction had been halted on the de Villages school and clinic and how she had not attributed major importance to the event— a power play between spouses, she had imagined. She also recalled the early meetings that she and Jake had had with the Collettes, how involved Marie-Ange had been, and how invisible she had been since Carole Ann’s arrival. She now wondered whether Marie-Ange knew about her husband’s connection to Simone and Denis St.Almain, whether she knew the truth of Henri LeRoi’s demise and of Philippe’s ascendency, whether Hubert de Villages’ “gifts” were really that, or diversions. “Jake, get me every bit and scrap of information on Isle de Paix and its history that’s available, paying particular attention to the Collette, de Villages, du Mas and Chartres families. And I need it an hour ago, when I needed the file on Christian Leonard.”

  She looked at her watch: She had fifteen minutes to make her nine o’clock meeting with Yvette Casson. She’d be late if she walked. She’d also be late if she had another cup of coffee, which she intended to do. She called Yvette, bought herself another hour, and walked down the hallway to the kitchen. She was about to switch on the light when she heard a sound in the living room. She stopped and listened: Faint tapping that grew increasingly louder and more insistent. She hurried across the room to the window, her feet silent on the carpet. She pressed herself against the wall and lifted a corner of the curtain. She saw feet, and then a hand, tapping again, harder. She put her mouth to the window. “Come around to the kitchen door. I’ll turn off the alarm.”

  Denis St.Almain slid in when she opened the door and looked frantically around. “You sent for me, which I don’t mind, but I do mind you putting my aunts in jeopardy.” He’d spoken quietly but harshly and she was surprised.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “I’m talking about the police you have looking for me. Why involve Viviene and Odile if you’d already sent your cops? I don’t want the police hanging around the restaurant.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about, but you can either explain yourself or get the hell out of here and let the cops find you, but I’m tired of your games, Denis. And if anyone is putting Viviene and Odile at risk, it’s you.”

  He looked around the kitchen again, then stepped further in. He was filthy, and he looked as if he hadn’t slept in several days. “I’m rather tired myself, Miss Gibson, and if you didn’t sic the cops on me, then who did?”

  “What cops, Denis?”

  “Your cops, dammit! The ones you brought here, in their khaki outfits and their twenty-speed bicycles. Three of them have spent the last thirty-six hours riding up and down every rutted road on the east side of the island looking for me. Fortunately, they were looking in the wrong places.”

  “Which should tell you that I didn’t send them. If I had, they’d have found you,” she snapped at him. “Now go take a shower, fix yourself some breakfast, and take a nap. I’ve got to go to work. Make yourself at home in any rooms but my bedroom and my office. I’ll be back by noon.” She turned away from him, then turned back, catching the look of bemused surprise on his face, and that look that confirmed for her that he definitely had been a cop and not, she thought, a bad one. “And I’m going to lock you in and set the alarm. I need for you to be here when I get back.”

  He gave her a lopsided grin. “I’m too hungry, too tired, and too dirty to pass up the offer of respite in all those areas. Just don’t make too much noise when you come in, all right?”

  “I’d have given you a cup of coffee,” Yvette Casson said by way of greeting.

  “I don’t drink cop-shop coffee,” Carole Ann replied ungraciously. “Not unless I’m being detained.”

  “Which you have been, on more than one occasion,” the chief shot back, her aim steady and true.

  Carole Ann shrugged and changed the subject. “So, are you the proud owner of two AK-47 assault rifles?”

  “You betcha,” she said, imitating Chief Marge from the film, “Fargo.” “Though the Minister of Internal Security wanted to turn them over to the Coast Guard or the DEA. What’s with him wanting to turn everything over to the Federal government?” she groused, knowing but not caring that she was taking the impolitic step of complaining about her boss to, technically, an outsider. “I think he doesn’t understand yet that he is the legal authority here. He doesn’t have to bow down to anyone anymore.”

  Making no comment but offering a conspiratorial half- smile, Carole Ann knew without asking who had ordered the search for Denis St.Almain. What she didn’t know was why. So she took the initiative, telling Yvette as much as she dared about her conversation with Viviene LeRoi and Odile Laurance. Yvette paled a bit at learning of Denis’ paternity. “The Minister is going to faint,” she whispered.

  “Why?” Carole Ann jumped at the opening.

  “He found out from his Coast Guard pals that there’s a ‘want for questioning’ out for him— for Denis St.Almain— with the warning that he could be here, since this is home for him. David had me to send out lookers.” She paused, waiting for questions or comments, and continued when none came. “I didn’t tell him what you’d told me, and I sent the lookers to the wrong side of the island.”

  “Why?”

  “Because, despite the fact that you’re a lawyer, you have a better street cop nose than David. I’m sorry to say that because I like David, but I don’t trust him, the same way I didn’t trust the brass when I was on the street, you know what I mean? David’s too much of a bureaucrat, and those are the dudes that can get you shot.”

  “Would you kindly tell Jake Graham, next time you talk to him, about my street cop nose? He still treats me like a lawyer.”

  Yvette laughed and Carole Ann engaged in a three second debate with herself over whether to mention that Denis St.Almain was, at that moment, probably taking a shower in her house, deciding not to. The woman already was guilty of withholding crucial information from her boss; no need to make her guilty of aiding and abetting a suspected felon as well.

  The decision proved to be a wise one. David Messinger was on a tear, ranting and raving about murderous drug dealers being the scourge of the earth and deserving of death. He stomped up and down his office, a big cat on the prowl, and Denis St.Almain was his prey. “That son of bitch had better not be on this island! And he damn well better not be who killed Paul Francois, because if he is, I’ll hang his ass!” He stomped about some more, his anger surrounding him like an aura. Carole Ann took note of the fact that his rage didn’t extend to the still unidentified corpse in the marijuana field; but, like Jake, like so many cops, his sympathies didn’t extend to criminals. And like cops everywhere, there had come for David Messinger an end to any degree of tolerance for drug dealing, for drug dealers, particularly for those who commit other felonies during the course of their drug dealing. “They think they can go up to the States and learn how to deal and rob and kill like pros, then run back home to set up shop down here.” He shook his head back and forth. “Those days are over. When we enact the death penalty here—”

  “When you do what?”

  “I’ve already discussed it with Philippe, and he’s already signed the Inter-Island Memorandum of Agreement Against Drug Trafficking—”

  “Talk to me, David, about enacting the death penalty here. What did you mean?”

  “Exactly that! The
re’s a movement to restore the death penalty to the Caribbean nations, brought on specifically by drug dealing and the murders they spawn. Trinidad and Tobago led the way a couple of years ago by hanging nine of them.”

  “Nine? The government of Trinidad and Tobago hung nine people?”

  “No, Carole Ann,” he intoned drily and sarcastically, “not nine people. Nine drug dealing, murdering bastards who were responsible for a decade-long reign of terror in the region.” He heaved an exasperated sigh, flicked his hand at her as if she were some kind of pesky insect, and hurried over to his desk. He rifled through a stack of file folders on top, retrieved one, and hustled back to her. “Here! Read this,” he ordered, shoving the folder into her chest. She opened the folder and began to read, when he stopped her. “Not now. Take it home with you. If you’re going to continue to advise us on matters of security, you need to know how we’re thinking.”

  “At the very least,” she snapped at him.

  “...and we’re thinking,” he continued as if she hadn’t interrupted him, “zero tolerance for any drug-related crimes. We have models to follow— Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, Bermuda, the Bahamas— all have enacted tough laws with strong penalties, including restoration of the death penalty.”

  Carole Ann was silent. She didn’t yet know nearly enough about how the criminal justice system worked in the Caribbean islands, though she did know that all the islands he just mentioned were governed in some way by a British council of jurisprudence, as they all were or had been British colonies, and she said as much to David Messinger.

  “You’re referring to the Privy Council,” he replied coldly, “which finally conceded Trinidad’s constitutional right to enforce its own laws, which is how those nine drug dealing murderers ended up dangling from a rope. You really should read the documents in that folder.” He looked down at her and she struggled for control, reminding herself that Jake wanted her to be nice to this man. What she wanted to do was...was...she didn’t know what she wanted other than to not have to talk to him any more today. Or until she no longer was harboring a fugitive, or until she knew who was, in fact, dealing drugs on Isle de Paix, whichever came first.