The 13th Fellow: A Mystery in Provence (7 page)

“I see you’ve made the acquaintance of the receptionist and the concierge. Nice police work.”

He didn’t take the bait. Instead he nodded and pushed the button for the elevator. The doors opened immediately.

“After you.” He smiled at Havilah.

The inside of the elevator was small. Too small even for their long-limbed bodies to stand side by side. Thierry slid behind her. She understood that the concept of personal space as well as size were very different in France; hence the too small elevator. If this had been in Nashville, she would have encouraged her elevator partner to take the next one; but Thierry Gasquet was not having any of it. He seemed entertained by her clear discomfort.

“Is this okay for you?” he inquired.

“Perhaps we should take the steps next time?”

She could see his bemused expression in the elevator’s mirrored interior. He smiled even wider when he felt her squirming uncomfortably in the tight space. He turned slightly, pushed floor button five, and then rested his well-manicured hands at his side. The doors quickly closed shut.

When the doors opened, she sprang out like a Jack in the Box. Gasquet continued to smile as he led the way to her room. Like a gentleman, he opened her door. She held her hand out for the key.

“Thank you.”

“If you need me, I will be there.” He pointed and turned to go.

Next damn door. I just can’t catch a break
. She gritted her teeth ever so slightly. “Of course,” she replied as she quietly closed the hotel room door behind her.

She kicked off her shoes so hard they hit the other side of the wall. She nearly ripped the buttons off her pants. She opened the balcony doors to let the breeze in. It was almost four.
Think. Think.
She tiptoed across the room towards the bathroom. On the way, she spotted her travel bag at the foot of the bed. It was empty. She turned back to open the closet and chest of drawers. Her clothes had been neatly put away on hangers and in the drawers. She wondered if Gasquet had personally unpacked her things.
He was looking for something probably. Anything. Don’t be so cynical
.

She was glad that she had not had any need for the underwear that made their debut at certain times of the month. They were usually girlish cotton ones with flowers or plain white. Needless to say, they were very different from the boy shorts, hip huggers, bikinis, and silks worn on other days. Havilah grabbed her purse and went into the bathroom.

She opened the taps of the bathtub faucets, letting the water run out hard and fast. She looked over on the small countertop where her toiletries had been arranged. She put foaming gel in the tub. She sat down by the tub and reached into her purse for her cell phone. Scrolling the address book, she pressed “Home.” Her father, Hambright Gaie, picked up on the first ring.

“Havilah Paige Gaie, what is going on?!!” The invention of caller ID allowed her father to pick up the telephone barking with nary a concern about embarrassing himself.

“Dad, I don’t have a lot of time to explain. I’m fine. But Kit Beirnes has been murdered.”

“Yes, you left that deranged message. I know all about it. Why didn’t you leave your cell phone turned on? You know we are up and about at 6:30 in the morning. It is after 9 a.m. here now, Havilah.”

“I thought it was…” But her father interrupted her before she could continue.

“Even Lucian called,” he whinnied. “He just wants to make sure you are okay. He knew you had that event at the Félibrige. What’s this about police at your apartment, a plane ride, and telephone calls? Who is this Thierry Gasquet again that you mentioned in the voicemail? What is that noise? And why are you whispering?”

“I’m in the bathroom, drawing a bath. Okay?” she sighed.

She was a little irritated by her father’s shouting and Lucian’s calling him as well. But she was the one who had left him a babbling message. She searched for a calm voice. Had Havilah not wanted her parents alarmed she probably should have left a more coherent message, she realized. Her father had just retired from his architectural firm in Providence, Rhode Island. He and her mother, Bertie, had planned to do some sort of an around the world cruise in July. She didn’t want to disrupt their retirement festivities. She knew that Hambright and Bertie Gaie would board the first chartered jet, the cost be damned, to get to their one and only child.

“I need you to take a spontaneous trip somewhere,” she suggested with firmness. She opened the tap a little more.

“Well, we are…”

Before he could finish, she snapped, “No! no! no! Not the cruise. I said spontaneous. That’s planned. And do not go to the house in Chatham.”

The Gaies owned a home on Cape Cod, inherited from Bertie’s grandfather. The house had passed through three generations of Scholls, with her mother representing the third. Hers was the black side of the Scholl clan, not ever to be confused with their relatives, the well-known white Scholls, who lived in Newport, Rhode Island.

“Wherever you go, let Lucian know and he can call me. Dad, are you listening? Don’t call me directly.” She was becoming agitated because the tub was filling up fast. She needed to conclude the call.

She couldn’t be certain how far the killer’s reach was. She wanted them safe and not easily locatable. Since Lucian was calling all over tarnation, she figured he could be put to some other good use. She knew her parents would be ecstatic at the prospect of having contact with Lucian. It meant a possible reconciliation to them. Havilah had never told them the details of her decision to call off her engagement to Lucian. And he had never offered to explain those details to them either.

In the end, she was certain her parents respected her decision not to “run down” Lucian like so many broken-up couples did to their respective families. They loved him. She didn’t want to trample on their idea of him. Moreover, she didn’t think they would understand that she felt Lucian had not been forthright about his not wanting children. There were, she knew, plenty of women who would have sacrificed having a family for a wonderful, handsome, and attentive husband. But she wasn’t one of them. She would never have agreed to the engagement had she known. He had pleaded with her to stay, to try.

She preferred that her parents believed that their daughter had put her career before the prospect of marriage, that she was not like her mother who had decided not to pursue her dreams of becoming a lyric soprano with New York’s Metropolitan Opera in order to marry her father and raise her. Her parents assumed times were different. Havilah was a new kind of woman in a new era, so why begrudge their only child her ambitions? Spoiled is what they thought. Since they had had the biggest hands in spoiling her, they let it be.

“Dad?” she queried as she slowed down the water.

“What’s this all about, Havilah?” he clucked. She could just see him pacing the floor of his Eastside Victorian.

“Dad, what did I tell you when I first called?”

She could have throttled him. He was, as his mother Naida said on many occasions, “hard-headed.” She wished her mother had answered.

“Where’s Mom?” she asked before he could begin sermonizing.

“She’s in the parlor playing the piano.” She imagined he heard his wife tinkling the keys, hoped it had the effect of soothing his disquiet about his one and only child.

“Tell her I love her. I love you, too.” Havilah’s eyes welled up. She knew her father wanted more answers but he was biting his tongue because she had insisted.

“And I love you more, lemon seed.” He had always called her some variation of a fruit seed.

“I love you the most.”

“Oh, you got me.” He feigned disappointment.

The “I Love You” back and forth was a game they had played from the time she could say the words. He always let her win.

“Has Nana Naida arrived?”

“No. She usually comes up from Mobile in July. And heads back South after the hurricane season in November. You know that, honey.”

She did. But she wanted to be sure. Everything seemed precarious to her now. She needed some certainties.

“Dad?”

“Yes?”

“Drive. Don’t take a plane. And you can come back on the 24th.” She anticipated having it all figured out by the time she gave her remarks.
Either that or I’ll be dead.

“Will do. Be safe, my baby.”

With that said, she disconnected the call. The bathtub was full and too hot. She decided to read through her emails while she waited for the water to cool. She returned to the bedroom to pull out her laptop. She then looked around the room. This was the first opportunity she had had since arriving to appreciate the space. She liked it. It was large for a French hotel room. She knew she would sleep well here, with the breeze coming from the opened balcony doors. She could hear the calming rustle of the waves. She didn’t think any killer was nimble enough to scamper along the stone building with nothing but the sea underneath them to whack her.

She then opened her subcompact laptop on the small mahogany desk. Thanks to the hotel’s WI-FI, she was at Astor’s website and into her email in less than a minute.

There were fifteen messages. Most were from academic organizations announcing conferences; there were several mass emails to the faculty. She quickly read and deleted those. There was one message, however, marked “Urgent!” from Astor’s president.

She responded to the president and copied the university’s provost:

Dear Charles and Rina,

I made it safely to Cassis. I am sure Laurent has filled you both in on the details. I was escorted here by the French SPHP; they believe I can help them in some way. It is terrible. I have no idea who could have done this to Kit, or why? And truthfully, given how things turned out for him, I really would prefer NOT to know. I will attend the dinner this evening and the board meeting in the morning and prepare my remarks for the celebration. After that I am on the first plane out of here to leave the police to their work. I look forward to seeing you, Charles, at the ceremony.

* * *

She had lied. She had every intention of finding out what happened to Kit. Her life now depended on it. She shut down the computer and headed for the bathroom to check the water’s temperature. It was still quite warm but she needed a hot bath to help her sleep.

VII

Nashville, Tennessee, Astor University, June 21st

Charles Chastain’s cell phone vibrated at 9:30 a.m. He saw the message was from Havilah. The late fortyish, bespectacled Chastain, Astor’s second youngest president, decided to wait to read her email. He had just attended a meeting about green space, space planning, and expansion. The university wanted to expand. But in a city, space was at a premium. The pristine campus was a national arboretum with its tall Magnolias, Bicentennial Oak, flowering trees, tulips and pansies, and liriope, otherwise known as monkey grass. There were over 300 species of trees and shrubs. Chastain was very sensitive to environmental concerns.

He understood that wherever and however they expanded they needed to develop green space. He and the board of trustees agreed that they did not want to become a concrete, chock-a-block morass like so many other urban institutions. Green space, the environment, and campus beautification were all on his mind when he decided to take a quick walk around the large circular grass-filled area in front of his office. It was a clearing of the head exercise. He couldn’t walk too long or far on this muggy Nashville morning without working up a sweat.

He exited Kettle Hall, a large Victorian building with ornate arches and thick wood doors that served as command central for the university’s upper administrative ranks. A statue of the shipping and rail magnate, Maréchal Pierpont Paul Astor, after whom the university had been named, reigned at the entrance to the main campus off West End Avenue. It was the Maréchal who provided Astor with its initial endowment. He was taken with things French given his family’s origins in the Savoy region of France. Hence, his self-named title, Maréchal, and the name of the university’s presidential residence, Chambéry.

Chastain rounded the circle, talking quietly to himself and running his slim fingers through his thinning, blonde-gray hair. Unable to restrain his curiosity, he skimmed quickly Professor Gaie’s email. Charles Chastain understood that Kit Beirnes had been up to something fairly sensational. At the late April meeting in Nashville, Royce Lee, Astor’s board of trustee chair, who also happened to live in New York and socialized in rather exclusive circles, told Chastain that he had heard some rumblings about Beirnes floating a book idea to a literary agent or two who in turn floated it to several editors. No one ever got the exact numbers, but once a proposal was in hand Chastain had been left with the impression that a minor bidding war might ensue. He heard outrageous numbers like $200,000-300,000. That was a lot for a book of poetry. Royce was certain Kit was writing more than poetry. But he was at a total loss on the subject. All he knew was that the subject was titillating, could solicit a lawsuit and thus possibly tarnish the institution’s reputation, and upset fundraising efforts. Something had to be done, he was told.

Naturally Chastain became alarmed. He believed in academic freedom; but he also believed in checks and balances, accountability, responsibility, and repercussions. These were things faculty never thought about in their zeal to protect their right to say and write whatever they pleased. He certainly did not want a showdown over academic freedom like what had happened at the University of Colorado in 2006 over that firebrand professor Ward Churchill or this new cause célébre for academics Steven Salaita at the University of Illinois. Now Havilah Gaie was somehow involved. He hoped that her desire not to know any more than necessary was true. Whatever Kit Beirnes had been writing would be buried along with him. It was a sad end to an unseemly affair.

If Havilah Gaie left well enough alone, he’d reward her for her discretion. He always knew she was talented. She had come to his attention clearly one evening when he was watching one of those shows where they rounded up a number of experts. She had a sharp analytical mind. She never raised her voice or talked over anyone, as garrulous pundits are often prone to do. She had represented Astor quite well publicly.