Night Watch (3 page)

The pontoon snagged on a stand of lotus fronds, and the old man used his pole with great deliberation to free the slow-moving vessel. I watched while Luc talked.

“One of my father’s friends returned to Paris in the eighties, after a long time away. He wanted to see a lot of acquaintances, so he made his contacts and people agreed to meet all together, for dinner,
even though they didn’t know one another. By the time François assembled his list, there were too many of his friends to fit in a restaurant or home, so he suggested they meet at the Bois de Boulogne.

“Everyone was to bring not only their own food but also tables and chairs, wine and glasses, silver and table linens. And all were to dress entirely in white, so the two hundred or so guests could spot one another inside the park.”

Jacques inhaled and raised his eyebrows. “That’s legal, in an historic landmark?”

“
Je ne sais.
François made the rules. The hell with the law. He just wanted everyone to enjoy themselves.”

“It worked?”

“So well that it’s grown to incredibly larger numbers each time. Four thousand people in the plaza at the Cathedral of Notre Dame two years ago. Last August, when I was invited for the first time, six thousand showed up in the courtyard of the Louvre.”

“That’s astonishing. And not mobbed by outsiders?”

Luc smiled. “Only friends, and friends of friends. Each time there is a different organizer, deciding who is in and who is out.”

Jacques blew smoke rings in Luc’s face. “Clearly, I was out when you drew up your list.”

“
Alors
, my pal, you don’t Tweet, do you?” Luc waved the smoke away with his iPhone.

“I’m too old for that bullshit,” Jacques said. I guessed him to be a decade older than Luc, who was forty-eight. “That’s how you invite?”

“Till the very last minute, the Parisian organizers never revealed the location of the dinner. Part of the fun, I guess. Then on the actual day of, they blast out the landmark—whatever it is—and people descend on their Metro stations with all their gear.”

“So for you, Luc, the place was la Porte Sarrazine?”

“Exactly. The peak of Mougins, with that spectacular vista over the valley. I broke the rules and provided all the food and drink from
the restaurant. Guests just had to bring a blanket to sit on. The classic French
pique-nique
, full of romance and mystery, no? Ladies in white dresses and men in linen shirts. Pâté de foie gras, poached salmon a la Relais, cheeses, and chocolate truffles. The very best wines and a night of great
amitie
, great friendship.”

“I hope you saved me something,” Jacques said, rubbing his belly, which protruded over the belt of his uniform. “White’s not my best look.”

Luc was reliving the magical evening he had created, while I was fixed on the body across the shore.

“And you, Alexandra, did you enjoy?”

“Very much so. Until this news. Until now.”

“How many guests?”

“Sixty in all,” Luc said.

Jacques snorted. “I didn’t know you had that many friends in town.”

“I don’t,
Monsieur le Capitaine
, but some of my friends have friends,” Luc said, laughing at Jacques’s candid remark. “The only three-star joint in a resort filled with restaurants, a mecca for gourmands? Yes, there has been some pretty fierce competition for me these last few years.”

“Not to mention that you got your stars the easy way.”

“How so?”

“You inherited them from your father.”

Jacques’s comments were getting to Luc. “When my father hung up his toque for good and retired, everyone thought the glory days of Le Relais were over. He had created the most acclaimed restaurant in the region, only to lose two of his stars in the last five years while he tried to hold on to the place.”

“Too much time chasing tail, eh? Those were still the rumors when I got to town.”

“Give it up, Jacques. That’s rude. I’ll invite you to next year’s dinner, okay?”

“You inherit that, too?”

“What?” Luc was fuming. I could see the muscles in his face tense up.

“That philandering thing. Is that why your wife split?”

“If you’re not going to be respectful to Luc,” I said, “then would you at least try not to make a fool of yourself in my presence, Captain?”

“
Je m’excuse, madame
,” Jacques said, bowing his head in mock respect. “I didn’t know this was a serious affair.”

“It’s none of your business what kind of relationship it is, Jacques,” Luc said, moving closer to me.

It seemed that the captain had pinned his hopes on a connection between the corpse and my lover, simply because she was clothed in white.

“Even if it’s the reason that you’re leaving for New York?”

Luc wagged his finger back and forth. “Not leaving, Jacques. I’m opening a place there for the winter season, when things are slow here.”

Claude Chenier stepped forward and circled us to get onto the rickety wooden dock that was about to receive the flat-bottomed boat.

“Perhaps it’s time to tell the captain that someone left piles of bones and skulls on your doorsteps during the night,” I added, to bring the point to Jacques’s attention. “Maybe there is a link to what happened here.”

“What do you mean? Tell me, my friend.”

Luc ignored both of us and followed Claude onto the dock. “Let’s get this done first, then I’ll show you what Alex is talking about.”

The other officer got off the pontoon to make room for the three of us. Luc boarded and identified himself to Emil. They embraced, speaking rapidly in French, and briefly reminisced about the past, while Jacques and I followed and grabbed onto the railing that sided the boat before it took off again.

“You have a list of all your guests, Luc?”

“Of course. It’s in my office. I’ll have it for you as soon as you get me back to town.”

By the time we were halfway across, the mosquitoes had found every exposed piece of my flesh. I swatted them away from my mouth and nose.

“Are you familiar with this part of the forest?” Jacques asked Luc.

“We all played here as kids. I know it pretty well.”

“Have you been lately?”

Luc clearly didn’t like the tone of the question.

“Just the other day, in fact. Before Alex arrived. You could create an entire meal from this pond.” His sarcasm wasn’t lost on Jacques.

“I’ve never been fond of frogs’ legs.”

Luc squatted and reached into the water, wrenching loose from its roots in the mud a green frond which housed the small bud of a lotus flower. “A real culinary delicacy, Jacques. Every bit of this plant is edible.” Luc peeled open the flower and showed us the seeds before he swallowed a handful, almost daring the police captain to speak what was on his mind. “Tastes just like chestnuts. And the roots themselves cook up like sweet potatoes. We served them last weekend.”

There was no dock on the shoreline of the pond where the body had been retrieved. Emil gently beached the boat, warning us to hold on as it slid in hard against the muddy embankment.

Jacques disembarked first, then Luc, who extended his hand to help me off. The captain walked toward the covered body, squatted at the far corner of the blanket, and drew it aside to reveal to us the back of the young woman.

The white clothes were still sopping wet and clung to her skin. Her head faced away from Luc and me, obscured by the clumped strands of long brown hair that crossed her cheek.

“You know the girl, Luc?” Jacques asked. “You bring her lotus picking with you the other day?”

I spoke before Luc could answer, though I resented the captain’s question. “Don’t show your ignorance, Jacques. She’s been in the water only several hours.”

His silence suggested he didn’t know anything about postmortems.

“See her skin, Captain?” I walked to his side and kneeled in the muck, face-to-face with the deceased, whom I guessed to be younger than I by seven or eight years—maybe she was about thirty. “There are no wrinkles, no ‘washerwoman’ effect, as we call it at home. She hasn’t been dead very long.”

“And that stuff—that pink stuff coming out of her mouth,” he asked, barely able to look at her face again, “what’s that?”

“Do you know whether someone tried to revive her?” I asked.

Jacques pointed at Emil. “He says he attempted to resuscitate the girl, to press on her chest.” Jacques simulated the motion of CPR in midair, keeping his distance from the body.
“C’est vrai, Emil?”

The weathered old man nodded in the affirmative.

“It’s foam, then,” I said, looking at the mushroom-shaped froth that oozed from her mouth and nose. “It’s the mixture of oxygen and water with mucus created in her airway when she was fighting to breathe. Come look, Luc. Do you know who she is?”

He moved slowly around the outstretched legs of the body, no more comfortable in this setting than the captain of the local police.

“You’ve taken photographs, Jacques?” I asked, waiting for Luc to get next to me.

“Just with the camera I keep in the car. And Claude’s cell phone. An inspector is coming from Cannes sometime later today to manage the investigation.”

I had no faith that the integrity of the forensics in this case would be preserved, or that Jacques was terribly concerned about that. I took the ends of a few of the tangled strands of hair and lifted them gently so that Luc could see the girl more clearly—despite the
distorted features of her gaping mouth and foam-covered nostrils—so that he could tell Jacques he had been mistaken.

“That foam is a pretty good indicator that this poor creature was alive when she was submerged,” I said to the captain. “You really need to get a professional team here quickly to move her before you compromise the chance for a coroner to find marks or bruises under her clothes.”

I looked up at Jacques to be sure he understood the importance of what I was telling him, but he was more interested in the expression on Luc’s face.

“Alex asked whether you know who she is,” Jacques said. “Why don’t you respond?”

Luc rested a hand on my shoulder and squeezed it hard as he kneeled beside me. I let go of the girl’s hair when he answered. “Of course I know who she is, Jacques. Her name is Lisette. Lisette Honfleur. She used to work for me in the restaurant.”

“Busman’s holiday, Alex? Isn’t that what they call it in the States?” Jacques asked. “Working your way through your vacation?”

It was an hour later and we were sitting in Jacques’s cramped office in the gendarmerie of Mougins. The bulletin board behind the captain was littered with celebrity headshots—movie stars, many of them in town for dinner during the Cannes Film Festival throughout the years, thanking the police for one courtesy or another.

“This is all in your capable hands now, Captain. I’ve got another week here to relax with Luc,” I said, turning my head to offer my lover some reassurance, although it didn’t seem that would help. “I’m sure you’ll have things sorted out by then.”

I’d been schooled in murder investigations by the best detectives in New York. The ignorance Belgarde displayed at the crime scene would have shocked Mike Chapman, and I harbored little hope that these village cops would know what to do next.

One of the captain’s men had been dispatched to the restaurant to carry back the bones. They sat on the floor in a large wooden wine crate between Luc and the desk, the three hollow-eyed skulls meeting my gaze with a blank stare.

“Tell me about Lisette, Luc.”

“I thought we were waiting for the investigators to arrive.”

“They’ve been delayed and I’m curious. Tell me about the girl.”

“It must be at least five years since I’ve seen her, Jacques. Maybe more than that.”

“Really?” the captain said, rocking back and forth on his ergonomically correct office chair. “Why so long between visits?”

“I fired her. That’s probably the reason.”

“She couldn’t stand the heat in the kitchen?”

“Lisette wasn’t involved with food. She helped with the books. My accountant placed her with me. He knows more about her than I do, for sure.”

“How long did she work with you?”

“Five, maybe six months.”

“And you let her go, why?”

“Because she liked to help herself to the cash, Jacques. A little too much, a little too often.”

“
Ah, oui. Les doigts collants.”
The captain saw that I looked puzzled by his words. “Sticky fingers, Alexandra. A common problem in Luc’s business.”

Tax officials in France sat on restaurant owners like hawks, because so much of the business was in cash transactions. And the ready access to all those euros—and occasional dollars—must have been a temptation to the young woman working alone in an office above the chic dining room.

“My ex is the one who actually caught Lisette with her hand in the till.”

Luc had been divorced amicably from Brigitte, his wife of fifteen years, who lived close by with their two kids. He was devoted to the children.

Jacques’s chair was on casters, and he rolled himself toward the corner, where several dilapidated file cabinets stood. “So we have a record of the theft, you think?”

“I never reported it.”

“No?”

“There was no point. I didn’t think she had stolen that much money in such a short time. No need to jam her up. We just—we just let her go.”

“No need to have the taxman in your house, finding out you cook your numbers, eh, Luc?” Jacques scooted back in place behind the desk. “I bet they get that pink foam off her face, she was a looker, this Lisette.”

I studied Luc’s somber face as he answered. “She was a handsome girl.”

“Handsome enough to tempt you?”

“No, Jacques, she was—”

“I realize I’m offending you, Alexandra, but it would be stupid of me not to ask.”

I nodded at the smirking captain while Luc finished what he wanted to say. “I was at the point in the breakup of my marriage, Jacques, that I wasn’t beyond temptation. No secret there. That wasn’t the issue. Plenty of guys in town were attracted to Lisette, but I wasn’t one of them. There was a profound sadness about this girl—
une tristesse—
not just in her appearance and the way she carried herself, but in her whole spirit.”