Night Watch (7 page)

The maître d’ appeared in our path as we headed for the staircase. There was rarely a bill for Luc when we dined at a friend’s
restaurant. Professional courtesy would come in the way of payback for the owner and management of L’Ondine when they wanted an evening in the country. Luc folded a tip into his extended hand and we thanked the maître d’ for the delicious afternoon.

“We’re not alone tonight, did I tell you that?” he said, as we climbed the steps back up to La Croisette.

“You mean, apart from Captain Belgarde?”

“That will put a damper on the evening,” he said, catching up to me at the top and taking my hand as we crossed the broad boulevard. “Yes, one of the guys who’s going to supply the wines for New York is visiting here. I had no choice but to invite him to join us.”

“That should be lovely.”

“We have so few nights together that I hate to fill them with business.”

“For me it’s great fun. I get to learn so much about what you do. Do you like him?”

“He seems like a decent guy. And he certainly knows his business.”

We dodged the steady parade of cars and motorcycles and tiny Vespas that coursed through the thoroughfare with little concern about speed limits.

When we reached the motorcycle, Luc removed our headgear from the saddlebags and I stuffed my tote inside. I fastened my hair into a ponytail at the nape of my neck, strapped on the shiny blue helmet, and climbed onto the backseat. At this moment I didn’t bear any resemblance to the serious prosecutor who made it a point to appear like a complete professional in the office and courtroom.

Luc looked at his iPhone before he pocketed it. “Brigitte e-mailed me when you were napping. Belgarde’s already called to ask her about the dead girl,” he said, shaking his head. “She’s going to drive to her mother’s tonight and stay till all this blows over in town.”

“So I guess she’s taking the kids?”

“Yes,” he said, getting into place on the bike.

I was talking to his back. “And you want to see them before she goes?”

“I’d like to.”

“I don’t blame you, Luc. Just drop me at the house and I’ll meet you at the restaurant whenever you like.”

He reached back with one hand and stroked my thigh. “Thanks, darling.”

“You worry about the silliest things. I’m pleased you want to see them. They don’t need to have this murder case churning around them, just because you and Brigitte knew the victim.”

I was well aware that figuring out how to maintain his intimacy with his children was a major stumbling block to Luc’s plans for a second restaurant in New York.

The narrow side streets of Cannes were packed tight with parked cars and commercial vans. I nestled into my usual position against Luc’s back and swayed with him as he maneuvered the territory he knew so well. The first few blocks were almost on flat ground, filled with shops selling all the luxury goods for which the French were known. But then the streets began to merge together, more modest businesses and residences side by side, as we climbed out of the busy city headed due north on the Boulevard Carnot.

I was daydreaming with my eyes closed once we left the dramatic scenery of the old harbor and grand buildings. The highway was a drab road, with strip malls built up on either side. Traffic was already intense, and Luc began to weave among the cars that started and stopped at each intersection and traffic light. He was an impatient driver, and I was used to the rhythm he set as he picked up speed to charge the great concrete hill.

The bike dipped sharply to the left and seemed to kick into a higher gear. My head snapped back, bringing me out of my reverie as I tightened my grip around Luc’s waist.

“Easy!” I screamed out to him, but the word was lost between the noises of the engines and car horns all around us.

Luc was on a tear, passing three cars on the right as he gunned
the powerful Ducati to surge forward. I grabbed at his lean frame to find some skin to pinch to express my discomfort, and when I did he simply shook me off and continued at the same breakneck speed.

It must have been the day’s events that were getting to Luc, and maybe Brigitte’s sudden decision to leave town with the two kids, pressuring him when he least needed another concern. I twisted my head around to the left to check where we were and whether there was any reason—other than his nerves—for this erratic driving pattern.

I could see that he had skirted a bad collision a hundred yards back, a four-car pileup that would have everything backed up until it was cleared.

Luc was trying to say something to me now, but it was impossible to hear him. I leaned in against him and could figure only that he was trying to tell me to hang on. When I turned to the right and looked back, I could see why: two men on motorcycles, both in leather jackets with upturned collars, wearing polarized sunglasses beneath large black helmets, seemed to be in serious pursuit of us. They were also off to the right on the shoulder of the paved road, following in the very path Luc had carved out for himself.

There was nothing for me to do but flatten myself against Luc’s back. His shirt was flapping against the skin on my cheek, whipped up by the wind and the velocity. At home, in the city, a ride like this would have been virtually impossible without a police car intervening in a matter of minutes. But speed wasn’t an issue in this part of the world.

I wanted to be off the motorcycle, and I wanted to be anywhere but clinging to the back of a man I thought I loved but barely knew. I shook off that thought and tried to be rational. What if these two guys weren’t chasing him? He was putting us both in danger, and I was getting dizzier from the combination of those ideas and the swinging motion of the bike as Luc steered it back between the two heaviest lanes of traffic.

The next three minutes on the highway seemed like an hour.
Cars were honking at us now as we cut them off to keep up the pace, and the honking continued behind us as the men in black must have done the same.

I knew the exit was coming up in another quarter of a mile. Luc veered in front of two lanes of cars to go from the left-hand passing lane toward the ramp that would take us down to the route that led to the village. As he leaned to the right to make the exit, both bikers behind us followed suit. We were hugging the right side of the pavement so closely that I feared we would slam into the road sign announcing Mougins.

Then, as though turbocharged with an extra measure of juice, Luc jammed on the brakes, leaned sharply to his left with me hanging on tight, and turned the Ducati a full one-eighty, as on a dime, regaining the shoulder of the highway to continue northbound.

One of the bikers wiped out completely in an effort to copy Luc’s move. I saw him hit the ground and skid along, trapped beneath the deadweight of the heavy motorcycle, which slammed with him into the base of a tree. The other guy swerved off the ramp to avoid a car coming directly at him. The last time I looked back, he had come to a stop beside his fallen mate, whose screams I could hear over the roar of Luc’s racing engine.

Luc must have seen the accident in his rearview mirrors. His whole body, which had stiffened with tension somewhere early along the route, relaxed against me. He took his place in the line of cars—as though it was an ordinary ride—until we reached the next exit, on the far side of Mougins.

“Stop now,” I said, practically screaming into his helmet as we turned onto the tranquil road a mile north of the village. There were brasseries and small shops and endless places with parking lots in which Luc could have pulled over to explain to me what set him off.

“Home” was the only word I understood when Luc responded.

I was sitting upright behind him, distancing myself as far from his body as one could on a motorcycle. It was another five minutes before we finished the circular climb up to the center of town, and Luc nosed the bike down into the alleyway to park it beside the door to his property, right where I had found the stack of bones.

I ripped the helmet from my head and was off the bike before he had it positioned. “That was insane. That ride was terrifying and unnecessary and totally insane, Luc. Do you see how I’m trembling? Can you make any sense of this to me?”

I turned away from him and pushed open the heavy door. By
the time he’d locked the Ducati and followed me inside, I was sitting on the old stone wall that overlooked the valley. Gaspard, the sloppy basset hound, was cuddled beside me offering solace.

“Are you all right, Alex?” Luc came up behind me and put his hands on my shoulders. “I apologize for alarming you.”

“Alarming me? Alarming me would have been telling me you had a hair-raising ride home this afternoon. I wasn’t alarmed, Luc. I thought we were going to die—at your hands or theirs, whoever they were. What have I walked into here? What is it you aren’t telling me about your life?”

He sat down beside me, much to the dog’s obvious delight, and pulled the band out of my hair, combing his fingers through it, pulling at the blond wisps that had curled up under the heavy helmet.

I reached for his wire-rimmed glasses and took them off, folding them and putting them in his shirt pocket.

“I have no explanation for what’s going on, Alex. Only that you’ll have to trust me. You arrived Friday and everything was as calm as the sea was today. It all started in the middle of last night. I don’t know why that is, and I certainly don’t know how to make it stop.”

“Could it be personal?”

He took my chin in his hands and made me look at him. “You’re my personal life, Alexandra. You and only you. Do you understand that?”

“I’m trying to. Does Brigitte?”

“I don’t think of you as the jealous type.”

“I’m not.”

“She was my wife. She’s the mother of my children.”

“She’s also the reason you fired Lisette Honfleur,” I said. “And Lisette’s dead.”

“Then let’s try business. I know you don’t think of my work as having the gravitas of yours, darling, but this is serious business in France. Chefs have killed themselves over losing a Michelin star. No reason others wouldn’t kill to get one.”

“You’ll have to help me with all this,” I said, scratching one of
Gaspard’s long ears to avoid making eye contact with Luc. “I know we can’t talk about it at dinner because we’ll have guests.”

“And right now I’d really like to go see my kids.”

“Sure. That means tomorrow. I want to understand everything that’s going on with the restaurant here, and what the status is of the plan in New York. Don’t worry,” I said, switching to the other ear. “I’ll feed the dog while you’re gone. But you really do need to tell me about the guys on the motorcycles.”

Luc stood up, reached for his glasses, and cleaned the lenses with the sleeve of his shirt. “I don’t know who they are.”

“Why do you think they were chasing you?”

“Didn’t you notice them?”

“Before the highway? No, I didn’t.”

“They were parked directly across the street from the staircase down to L’Ondine. On their bikes, faced out, like they were waiting for someone to appear just as we were leaving. I mean, I didn’t think they were waiting for us, until I pulled out of my space and turned onto La Croisette.”

“And they came after us?”

“Immediately. I zigzagged through a couple of the back streets that I don’t usually take—a very indirect route to get back here—and they were along for the ride. I reached the boulevard and they were still behind me. I put on some speed and so did they.”

“So instead of stopping, instead of pulling over into a gas station where there would be people around, you could have gotten us both killed by driving through the traffic like a maniac.”

What was unspoken between us was the story that I had told Luc about my first love, Adam Nyman. He had been killed in an accident on the highway driving from the hospital at which he was doing his residency to Martha’s Vineyard, the night before we were to be married at the home we’d just bought. I’d never known whether it was speed or exhaustion or being forced off the road by another car that sent Adam to his death, but I had a lingering fear of losing control on the road.

“I had a split second to make the decision to accelerate, Alex. I saw something in the man’s hand when the one on the lead bike tried to get on our tail.”

“Something?” I asked. “Do you know what you saw?”

“I was looking in the rearview mirror. He pulled a pistol from his jacket so I could see it, then shoved it right back in and charged the bike.”

“A pistol? You actually saw a gun in his hand?” It was my turn to stiffen and sit upright.

“Yes, I did,” Luc said. “No mistake about it. And the only thing between the gun and me, Alexandra, was your back.”

It was eight-fifteen when Luc called from his office to ask me to meet him at Le Relais. After brooding for a couple of hours, I showered and changed into a navy-blue sweaterdress with white piping that showed off my newly acquired tan.

I pulled my suitcase from the back of the closet and—despite my promise to Luc—took out my BlackBerry. I felt too disconnected from events in the office to ignore Mike completely. The phone had gone dead, of course, so I plugged it in to charge during the time we were at dinner.

I left the house for the short walk to the restaurant, intending to bypass the main entrance and go directly into the bar. I hadn’t counted on the mild night to have attracted a crowd to the outdoor tables on the terrace.

As I got closer, a woman called out and waved to me. “Alex! Come join us.”

It was Gretchen Adkins, a Wellesley classmate married to a Parisian, who’d been at the party the night before. I walked to the short hedge that separated the terrace from the cobblestone street and greeted the couple.

“I can’t sit, Gretchen. I’m late to meet Luc.”

“He’s got his hands full inside. Just have a drink with us. We’re waiting on another couple.” She was kind and warm, and loved to gossip. It was comforting to see someone from home, and I would have liked to catch up with her, but I learned months ago that Luc had a reason for me not to sit with his clients.