Night Watch (2 page)

I ran toward the patio of the restaurant and ducked beneath the trellis that bordered the outdoor tables fronting the town square. Something on the ground in my way stopped me cold, and I bent over to see what was there.

Skulls. Obviously human. Three large human skulls stacked to form a pyramid at the entrance to the only three-star restaurant in the village of Mougins.

“I don’t know if you’ve ever met my friend Alexandra Cooper,” Luc said to the young policeman who appeared at the house shortly after eight o’clock in the morning. “Alex, this is Claude Chenier.”

“
Enchanté, madame
,” the officer said, nodding at me though refusing to crack a smile. His expression was as stiff as the pleats in the pants of his light gray uniform. “No, we’ve never been introduced, but I’ve seen you around the village. Good to meet you.”

“My pleasure.” We were on the terrace outside the house on a sparkling late April morning. “We’re just having our first coffee, Claude. Would you like some?”

“Yes, thank you, if you don’t mind.”

I stood up to go back into the kitchen to pour another cup. Beyond the grounds of Luc’s property, over the deep green of the dense growth of trees in the Valmasque, I could see the water of the Bay of Cannes that had given its colorful name to this stretch of the Mediterranean coast.

“I hope we didn’t create too much extra work for you last evening.” Luc was speaking English for my sake. He was bilingual, born in France and educated in England, before returning to take over the empire started by his father, the legendary restaurateur Andre
Rouget. Although my affair with him had done less for my language skills than for my spirit, my comprehension was far better than my ability to converse about anything serious.

“
Pas de tout.
No trouble at all, Monsieur Rouget.”

I stirred the sugar until it dissolved and then I carried the cup outside, setting it down on the table. “I have to apologize for creating such a commotion in the middle of the night, Claude. Won’t you sit down?”

He shook his head. “I’m not sure what you mean,
madame
? Commotion?”

“
Agitation
, Claude. But I think Alex is mistaken. Nothing you need to be concerned with.”

“Aren’t we talking about the bones I found last night? The human skulls?”

“No, darling,” Luc said, reaching across the table for my hand. “I’m sure Claude doesn’t even know about them yet. Give me a minute with him, will you?”

“I thought you went directly to the gendarmerie after you brought me home?”

I had raced up the hill to find Luc as the last of the revelers at our party were finishing their champagne. Together we walked back to his restaurant—Le Relais a Mougins—and went inside, careful not to disturb the skulls, to retrieve the key to his property that he kept in the office above the dining room. Luc assured me that he hadn’t locked the door and that I was probably just skittish alone in the dark alleyway, fooled by the work of village pranksters.

When we got to the house, he was as startled as I that he couldn’t even insert the key. The lock had been jammed, and as he patiently whittled away at it with his pocketknife, a piece of bone—the size of a small finger—splintered and spilled out of the opening.

Luc settled me inside and inspected the grounds to be sure that no intruders had made it over the garden wall. I finally fell asleep an
hour later, certain that Luc was going to the police station to report the incident and to ask the officer on duty to photograph and collect the bones.

“At three in the morning? Is that what you really thought?” Luc asked, winking at me as he got up from the table. “Like this is
CSI: Mougins
?”

Claude Chenier was still stone-faced. I was sitting with my back against the stucco bench of the sunny terrace, looking up at him. He was about my height—five-ten—and almost as slim as Luc.

“What bones are you speaking of,
madame
?”

“My wallet’s just inside the door, Claude.” Luc pointed to the kitchen counter not fifteen feet away and headed to it.

“I didn’t actually come just now for the money.”

“Nonsense. Your guys did a great job for us. No party crashers, no media, no out-of-control guests,” Luc said, taking a handful of bills from his alligator wallet. “Don’t look so startled, Alex. It’s not a bribe. Claude was off duty last evening and he supplied the private security team for our party.”

Claude did a quick count of the money. “
Merci
, Monsieur Rouget. It’s very generous of you. My men will appreciate it.”

Luc put an arm around the young man’s shoulder, as though to steer him past the swimming pool to the heavy old door that had offered me so much resistance earlier this morning. “They earned it. We had a wonderful time.”

I could tell Luc was embarrassed that he’d misled me into thinking he had made a police report already. Of course there was no need to awaken everyone in the village for what he’d almost convinced me by daybreak was a practical joke. And though the joke had been a distasteful one, I tried to switch off the “on-duty” part of my brain that was always thinking like a prosecutor.

“You must come by some evening with your girlfriend for dinner, Claude, eh? To Le Relais, for the new spring menu.”

I smiled as the officer nodded in agreement. I knew that my
favorite NYPD detectives, Mike Chapman and Mercer Wallace, would envy a police department in which there were no rules against taking meals at pricey restaurants “on the arm.”

Mike, who worked Homicide, and Mercer, in the Special Victims Unit—one of the few African American detectives to make first grade—had become my most trusted friends in the twelve years I had served as a prosecutor.

“Very well, then. We’ll set a date.” Luc’s chiseled features weren’t classically handsome, but his smile was warm and slightly crooked, in a sexy way, and always drew a grin in return from me.

Claude held his ground despite the fact that Luc was trying to usher him out. We hadn’t gotten much sleep and were planning a lazy day alone together. Claude pocketed the wad of cash and turned back to question me.

“May I ask again,
madame
, what bones are you talking about?”

Luc rolled his eyes and shrugged his shoulders, but I answered anyway. “Let me show you, Claude,” I said, putting down my coffee cup as I stood to walk out to the alley.

“Alex, they’re not there any longer.”

“What do you mean? If you didn’t alert the police, then what did you do?”

“I removed them,” Luc said. The sun reflected off the metal of his wire-rimmed glasses, so that I couldn’t see his expression, see whether or not he was joking.

“You what?”

“I picked them up and carried them back to the restaurant for safekeeping.”

“With your bare hands?” I sounded as exasperated as I was exhausted. “Did you even think it might be worthwhile having the police examine them for fingerprints?”

Claude was tugging on his narrow black uniform tie as he listened to us bicker, never taking his eyes off my face.

“C’est fou.
Don’t be ridiculous, Alex.”

“How about the skulls? You moved those, too?”

Claude looked at Luc.
“Crânes?”

“
Oui.
Trois crânes
. Very old ones, Claude. I have them in my office.” Luc turned his back to me. “You must understand something about Alex, Claude.
Elle est une procureur de la ville de
New York.”

“C’est vrai, madame?”

“Yes, it’s true. I’m a prosecutor.”

“Alex is in charge of sex crimes in Manhattan.
Touts les crimes sexuels
,” Luc said, trying to impress the stolid young cop, which didn’t seem likely to happen. Then he patted Claude’s shoulder. “It explains why she always sees something sinister when there really isn’t cause for concern.”

I playfully put my hands against Luc’s back and pushed him toward the edge of the pool. “If I riffed about the secret sauce for your escargots half as dismissively as you just nailed my career, you’d probably carve me up and serve me for dinner.”

“With that very sauce,
mon amour
. Not only would it be tasty but also all the evidence would be devoured.”

“How Hitchcockian,” I said, turning my back.

“Are you ready for a swim to cool off that temper a bit?” He spun me around and lifted me from the ground, dangling me over the water, while he addressed Claude Chenier. “And you, my friend, the bones she’s talking about are older than this village, but I’ll cart them over to headquarters as soon as you like. Or do you want to come with me now?”

Luc put me down as Claude answered him.

“I was trying to get you alone, Monsieur Rouget, to explain to you the reason I came here this morning. But since Madame Cooper is a professional, I’ll tell both of you.”

“A reason you’re here, beside the money?”

“
Oui
, monsieur, I was sent by my captain,
”
the young officer said, hesitating before he looked Luc in the eye. “There was a body found just a few hours ago.”

“Whose body?” Luc was all business now, his blue-gray eyes as icy as steel, his hands planted firmly on his hips.

“A young woman. We don’t know who she is. I was sent here to ask for your help with an identification.”

“Why
my
help?” Luc’s pale face had reddened.

“Because we think she was on her way to your celebration last night. The captain believes she might have been one of your guests.”

“Of course we’ll do whatever you need,” I said, thinking of the hairpin turns on the narrow roads that led from the
autoroute
to this hilltop. “On her way to our dinner party, Claude? Was it an accident, then? A car crash?”

“Perhaps an accident,
madame
, but it didn’t involve a car. They were taking her body out of the pond when I was dispatched to come here. It’s either an accident, Ms. Cooper, or the young lady was murdered.”

Half an hour later we were standing at the edge of Fontmerle Pond, twelve acres of water that bordered the enormous forest, almost completely obscured by the green pods of lotus flowers that would bloom later in the summer.

Claude Chenier had passed us off to his boss, Captain Belgarde, who greeted Luc with a handshake as he tossed his cigarette into the murky water.

“Alex, this is Jean-Jacques Belgarde. Jacques, I’d like you to meet Alex Cooper.”

Luc was going through the motions, but his attention was focused on a yellow blanket spread on the ground on the far side of the pond. “He’s married to an American and lived in Baltimore for fifteen years, so his English is better than yours. What’s happened here, Jacques? Who is she?”

Two men were navigating a pontoon back to our position. The morning stillness was ruptured by shrieking birdcalls—dozens of different sounds and cadences—probably occasioned by our unexpected presence in this natural sanctuary.

“Not my forte, Luc. I haven’t seen a body since I left military service.”

“And the slow-motion ferry?”

“Nothing works in the pond but a flat-bottom boat. These pods put down roots that tangle oars or anything else that tries to move through. The boat’ll reach us in a few minutes.”

“That old guy steering the platform looks familiar.”

Belgarde called out to Claude and asked who was poling the pontoon, carrying the other officer back to this side.

“Sorry, I don’t know his name. He’s how you say? The
veilleur de nuit
. He’s the one who found the lady.”

“The night watchman,” Luc said. “Of course I know him. Emil. He used to be the caretaker for Pablo Picasso’s home, just across from the pond. When I was a teenager, I used to make runs on my motorcycle with food my father sent to Picasso when he didn’t feel like coming to town for dinner.”

The great artist had spent the last twelve years of his life in Mougins and was one of Andre Rouget’s regular customers.

“Pretty swell takeout,” Jacques said. “There you go. Three years in town and I’ve never met this Emil, didn’t even know his name. I’ve heard about him though—that he’s a real loner. Works the midnight shift for the park service just so he doesn’t have to deal with people.”

“How would anyone see a body in this pond, especially before daylight?” I asked. Some of the leaves were three feet in diameter, overlapping one another and appearing so thick that it looked as if I could walk across on them to the other side.

“That brings us back to you, Luc,” the captain said. “The deceased is dressed entirely in white. It’s the clothes that stood out so obviously against the dark water and leaves, even in the dead of night. Sweater, lace camisole, long cotton skirt—and it’s not even summer yet. My officers tell me you hosted a party last evening. A dinner in white.”

“Guilty, Jacques, but all my guests were accounted for,” Luc said, shading his eyes with his hand. “Why didn’t they load the body on the boat and bring her to the dock?”

We were watching the pontoon’s slow progress through the lotus leaves.

“I’ve been instructed not to move the woman. We’ll go across to her.”

“Fine. Perhaps Alex should wait here.”

“I’m more useful with the dead than you are, Luc. Does this mean, Captain, that there’s a
medecin legiste
on the way?”

“A medical examiner? I wouldn’t know where to find the closest one. I’ve never had the need. But there’s a local coroner. We’re trying to get our hands on him now.”

“Surely you’re not going to leave this woman outside for hours, exposed to the elements?” It wasn’t just the insects and eels above and below the water, but foxes and wild boar that gave the forest its unique character.

“We’ll move her as soon as we’re ready.” Belgarde spoke sharply to me. “Tell me about the event, Luc. Your idea, this
Diner en Blanc
?”

“No, not mine. It’s been going on in Paris for a quarter of a century, and more recently in New York, Montreal. Who knows where else? I thought I’d bring the concept to Mougins. A touch of civility before tourist season overwhelms us.”

“You and I have shirts on our backs because of the tourists,” Jacques said, cupping his hand over a match as he lighted his next Gitanes. Judging by the pile of butts, he had smoked enough cigarettes in the last couple of hours to blacken the lungs of the purple herons observing us from the middle of the pond. “You feed them, and I’m the uniformed lost and found for their cameras and car keys and iPads. What are these dinners,
mon ami
?”