The Paris Secret (19 page)

Sylvie Renard knew Vincent Garland from working at the U.S. Embassy. She must have been his partner. She already knew about the Society of Moret from her father. Sylvie and Garland had been working together to get their hands on the
Aurum Liber
and Juliet was the weak link they’d exploited. Sylvie killed Garland and made it look like a suicide. She was probably close by, watching when we’d found his body in the pond and saw Simon drop the pouch with the crucifix.

But how had she faked her own death? Her body had been identified. If it wasn’t her body in the morgue, then whose was it? I thought long and hard about everyone connected to Garland and had a sudden sick feeling I knew.

I hurried downstairs and asked for the Internet access code from Georges for the public-use laptop in the lobby. I logged on and pulled up a search engine. My fingers lingered over the keyboard momentarily before I hunt-and-pecked out the name
Shannon Davies
in the search box. I clicked on the first link in the results list, a news report about her disappearance. I stared at the picture that accompanied the story. Though Shannon Davies’s face was a bit fuller and her hair a shade lighter, she could have been Sylvie Renard’s twin. My fingers trembled as I pulled Paul Moyet’s business card from my pocket.

About the time I should have been picked up by the airport shuttle, I was sitting on the other side of a Plexiglas window opposite Sebastian Marcel. He looked frail and so much older than when I’d seen him last, right before he locked me in that closet. But as soon as he saw me, a smile creased his thin lips, and he eagerly picked up the phone on his side. I’d almost gone home and left him in this mess and still he was happy to see me. I was so ashamed. I picked up the phone on my side of the window.

“I’m so sorry,
monsieur.
I understand now what you were trying to tell me yesterday. It’s Sylvie Renard who’s
la petite nonne,
right?”

He nodded. “
Oui.
I knew as soon as you told me about the books you’d found at Evalyn’s house. And she must be stopped, Madame Sinclair. Sylvie is a very sick and dangerous young woman.”

“She wants the
Aurum Liber.
”

Marcel shook his head sadly. “I’m afraid this was never solely about the
Aurum Liber,
though I’m sure Oliver’s obsession over the years with finding it must have made Sylvie want it just to spite him. No, Madame Sinclair, for Sylvie this is also about revenge. Revenge against the mother who abandoned her and for the child that was taken from her.”

“The mother who abandoned her?” My hand flew to my mouth. “Juliet? Juliet was Sylvie’s mother?”

“The product of her ill-fated affair with Oliver Renard. Oliver was in love with Juliet. He wanted to marry her. His wife, Camille, was Catholic and wouldn’t give him a divorce. Even if she had, Juliet didn’t love Oliver. She was just using him to make Bernard jealous.”

“Dr. Fouquet?”

He nodded. “Bernard was a magnet for women. They loved him. He was handsome and brilliant, arrogant and charming—but kind.”

That picture I’d seen in Monsieur Marcel’s apartment certainly proved Fouquet had been a very handsome man. He had probably gotten more distinguished-looking as he’d gotten older. He must have been in his early fifties when he was Juliet’s advisor.

“And did she make him jealous?”

“
Non.
Bernard may have desired Juliet but he never crossed the line with a student of his. Never. Oliver was a different story. I loved him like a brother but he was weak when it came to women. He met his match in Juliet. When she ended the affair, he tried to keep her from joining our society. But he was outvoted. Every time she came to France for our yearly society meetings in Moret-sur-Loing, Oliver would beg her to meet him in Paris. She always told him no but relented just once, when she needed a professional reference from him. That was the meeting in which Sylvie was conceived.”

“She didn’t seem like the maternal type to me.”

“She wasn’t. Juliet wasn’t heartless, just very ambitious. She knew she wasn’t cut out for motherhood when the only thing that mattered to her was her career. Oliver wouldn’t hear of her aborting the child. His wife longed to be a mother and could never carry a child to term. So Oliver and Camille raised Sylvie.”

“Dr. Renard’s wife raised Oliver’s and Juliet’s child?”

“
Oui.
It meant she could finally be a mother and there was no love left in that marriage. Camille didn’t care what Oliver did as long as he was discreet.”

“And Sylvie never knew?”

“That was the agreement. Juliet was to have no contact with the girl. At Camille’s insistence, she had to legally sign away all her parental rights. Camille loved Sylvie like she was her own. And then it all went wrong.” He sighed heavily.

I waited for him to continue.

“Sylvie was such a beautiful child, like a little angel. And for the first few years of her life she was an angel. It wasn’t until she was maybe five that Oliver noticed something was wrong. They gave her a kitten for her fifth birthday which somehow ended up drowned in the toilet. Sylvie cried and cried and neither Oliver nor Camille suspected anything other than an accident. But every pet they gave her ended up dead within a month or two. Oliver knew it had to be Sylvie, but Camille would hear none of it. Sylvie was always so quiet. No one ever suspected her of any wrongdoing. But she was very sly. Few of the other kids would play with her. Most were scared of her. Then there were the nannies.”

“She hurt them, too?”

He nodded. “And drove them mad with her lies. She would steal from them. She would break expensive antiques and blame them. Oliver even suspected she shoved one off a ladder. They could never keep anyone for more than a few months. It wasn’t until she was ten that Camille finally realized what Oliver had been trying to tell her for years. Camille was coming from her bedroom one day when she saw Sylvie arguing over a doll with another child. When the child refused to give it to Sylvie, Camille watched as the daughter she adored calmly threw herself down a flight of stairs and broke her arm. She claimed the other child pushed her.”

“And did they get her help?”

“There was no help for the child, though Camille tried everything including special blessings from priests. If she were schizophrenic, bi-polar or obsessive compulsive, there would have been treatments and medications. But how do you treat someone who was born without a conscience, without a sense of right or wrong, without a soul? There is no treatment for such people.”

“She’s a sociopath,” I said.

“That is one name for it,” he replied sadly. “I call it pure evil. And when Sylvie ended up pregnant at sixteen after seducing one of her teachers at school, Camille and Oliver were beside themselves. Abortion was out of the question, but Sylvie couldn’t be trusted with a pet, let alone an infant. They were terrified she’d kill it.”

“They took the baby from her?”

“It was a boy. They told her the baby died, and they placed him with an English couple in a private adoption.”

A stone-faced guard appeared and barked something to Monsieur Marcel. He nodded solemnly.

“I’ve only a few more minutes,” he said to me.

“How did Sylvie find out about everything?”

“Camille told her eight months ago on her death bed. She’d become a broken and bitter woman. The burden of raising Sylvie took a hard toll on her and she felt Juliet had gotten off easy. She wanted her to suffer, too. So Camille confessed all to Sylvie before she died, knowing Sylvie would seek out Juliet like an avenging angel. She also harbored a hope that motherhood might change Sylvie, so she told her that her child was alive. But all Sylvie cares about is punishing everyone who’s lied to her all these years and getting her hands on the
Aurum Liber
in the process. I shudder to think what she’ll do if she decides to find her son. The boy would be about ten now.”

“Did you know Sylvie had connected with Juliet?”

He sighed heavily. “Evalyn and I tried to warn her. But Juliet had come to regret her decision of giving up her baby and didn’t want to hear the truth about Sylvie. What woman would?”

“Do you have any idea where Sylvie could be hiding?”

“Oliver’s sister, Annette, spends half the year in South Africa with her children. You might check her house here in Paris.”

He gave me the address and I wrote it on the back of the picture of Shannon Davies I printed from the Internet. Then I asked him the one question I really needed answered.

“
Monsieur,
I found the fake Moret Crucifix in your old office at the Sorbonne. It had blood on it. Were you there when Dr. Renard was murdered?”

“Heavens no,” he replied, looking hurt. “Oliver gave me the crucifix the day he discovered it was a fake. I still had it in my coat pocket when Sylvie attacked me. I assure you the blood on it is mine, Madame Sinclair.”

“You have to tell the police what you just told me.”

Suddenly, Monsieur Marcel’s face went blank. He seemed to disappear before my eyes. He looked around clearly confused. He was staring at me like he didn’t know me.

“Where am I? What is this place?” he asked, looking lost, helpless, old.

“
Monsieur,
are you okay?” But I knew he was gone, at least for now. I’d get no more out of him. And he was in no shape to tell the police anything.

He started to cry, and the guard gently took the phone out of his hand, hung it up then led the frightened old Frenchman away.

Paul Moyet was waiting for me in the lobby when I emerged and stood abruptly when he spotted me.

“I need your help, Monsieur Moyet.”

“Anything for my client.” His eyes were shining with excitement. “How can I help you?”

“I need you to help me track down a dead woman.”

“When will he be back?” I asked the officer manning the front desk at the DCPJ headquarters, who’d just informed me that Captain Bellange was away on another case.

“I have no idea,
madame.
”

“Do you know what kind of case it is or where he went?”

“I cannot give you that information,” she replied wearily.

“It’s very important that I see him. I’ll just wait for a while.”

The officer gave me a dismissive nod and I went to sit on a hard wooden bench. I’d told Paul Moyet everything Monsieur Marcel had told me and he’d gone off to find out who had positively identified the bodies of Oliver and Sylvie Renard.

The more I thought about Marcel’s story, the more sense it all made. Juliet’s journal had mentioned meeting the one she’d been waiting for so many years at the embassy reception. I’d thought she was talking about finally finding love with the man of her dreams, Vincent Garland. But she’d been referring to Sylvie, the daughter she’d given up years before and wasn’t allowed contact with. She must have been waiting for her child to contact her. And Juliet must have also come to realize something wasn’t right about her daughter when she’d made mention in the journal of seeing a side she didn’t know existed, which is why she hid the real crucifix.

A young woman pushing a cart loaded down with files walked passed me and stopped at the elevator down the hall. Although she wore a uniform with a drab blue sweater and her curly blond hair was pulled into a demure ponytail, her long bright orange fingernails and large silver hoop earrings belied a more flamboyant style. A pink iPod Nano hung around her neck and her head bobbed to techno music so loud that even I could hear it. On a hunch, I followed her onto the elevator when the doors slid open.

“
Excusez-moi, madame.
”

She didn’t hear me, so I tapped her lightly on the shoulder. She scowled at me as she pulled the earbuds from her ears.

“Do you know Simon Girard? Are you a friend of his?” Simon had told me his contact at the DCPJ was a file clerk. I’d bet my passport this was her.

“Who wants to know?” She looked me up and down suspiciously with bloodshot eyes.

“Maya Sinclair. The fugitive from the news.” Recognition washed over her face and she smiled.

“Ah,
oui!
I know your face now. Too much club hopping last night. Makes me grouchy. I’m Valerie Lebrun.”

“Nice to meet you, Valerie. So, are you a friend of Simon’s then?”

She gave me a sly smile and shrugged. “
Oui.
We are friends. We help each other.” She put an extra emphasis on the word
help.

I didn’t even want to know what that meant but it somehow it made me feel a little less guilty about how I’d treated Simon. Was there a woman in Paris he hadn’t slept with?

“What would I have to give you to get you to help me?”

Valerie’s overly plucked eyebrows shot up and disappeared into her hairline. She took a step backward and put up her hands. “Hey. I’m not like that. You’ve got the wrong idea.”

“No. No.” I burst out laughing. “I just need information, Valerie, just information.”

She let out her breath and smiled sheepishly. The elevator doors opened and Valerie got off. I followed her.

“Depends on what kind of info you need.”

“I need to know where Captain Bellange went. I really need to talk to him. It’s important.” I pressed two twenty-euro notes into her hand and she looked around quickly before stuffing them into her bra.

“He’s in St-Germain-des-Prés. Some hotshot American fashion designer’s daughter is missing. Never showed up at school this morning. You could have found that out for free. It’s all over the news by now. And just so you know, Simon never pays me in money. He takes care of my poodle, Zsa Zsa, when I’m out of town.” Valerie laughed as she pushed her cart down the hall.

I’d stopped listening as soon as the words
fashion designer’s daughter
left her lips. My blood ran cold. Francoise was missing.

I nursed a coffee in a café across from Claire Samuelson’s apartment building. Police cars were parked out front. I really wanted to believe Francoise had simply had an argument with her mother and had run off to sulk at a friend’s house but I knew better than that. The press camped out, waiting to pounce on whoever walked out of the building. From what Simon had told me, I bet Claire was enjoying all the attention.

I’d tried calling Simon several times but he wouldn’t answer the phone. In the meantime, Paul Moyet had called and informed me that Oliver’s and Sylvie Renard’s bodies had been positively identified by Oliver Renard’s sister, meaning she was in town and not in South Africa.

Simon emerged from the building and was surrounded immediately by the press. He pushed his way through the crush of people and then headed off down the street and hailed a cab. I ran across the street calling for Simon and narrowly missed being creamed by a florist’s van in the process. A cab pulled up. We both jumped in at the same time as cameras flashed all around us. The driver looked at us expectantly.

“Just drive! I’ll tell you when to stop,” Simon barked. The driver floored it, and I was thrown back against the seat.

“I’ve been calling you for two hours. Why haven’t you answered your phone?”

“I’ve got other things on my mind. And besides, I thought you had a plane to catch.” He wouldn’t even look at me.

“My plane left an hour ago. I found out about Francoise at the police station. I think I know who has her.”