Mrs. John Doe

Chapter 12

The new transport Jacques had procured was a dark blue Renault Modus, and it belonged to his eldest son and his family, who were on vacation in America-New York City, as a matter of fact. Nora got in, and he opened the hatchback and produced a pillow and a blanket, which he handed to her. She settled herself in the comfortable backseat as he drove out of the alley and headed in the direction of the A6, the first leg of their journey.

“This village you wish to visit, mademoiselle-it is in the Franche-Comté, south of Besançon, yes?”

She nodded. “That’s right. Jeff- My husband used to joke that Franche-Comté means French completely, the only part of France that isn’t choked with foreign tourists. His people are from there-well, his mother’s people. La famille de sa mère. A village in the mountains, in the woods. I forget the name of it, but it means pine forest in French. Pinon? Pinelle?”

“Pinède,” Jacques said.

“Yes! You know it?”

“I have heard of it. My family is from Saint-Dié in Lorraine. It is north of the Franche-Comté, but close. My father was un routier, a driver of the big trucks, and he would take the wood pieces, le bois, from the Jura for the business. He would some of the time take me in the camion with him. I know this part of France.”

“I was there once,” Nora said, “but it was twenty years ago. So, your father hauled lumber? My husband’s grandfather cut down the trees.”

“Ah, it is the teensy world, yes? Rest, mademoiselle. I will take us to Pinède before the night is here.”

Nora turned her head to look out the rear window, studying the cars behind them for several minutes. No gray Citroën. Forcing herself to abandon the vigil, she lay down across the seat, her head on the pillow, and pulled the blanket over her, grateful for the tinted windows, which kept out the glare of the afternoon sun. It was dark and cool inside the car, and the steady vibration of the tires on the road was more effective than a lullaby. Her first full meal in three days, combined with three days of nervous insomnia, soon did the rest. Despite her nagging worries, she began to doze as Jacques eased the Renault into the stream of traffic heading away from the city.

Her rest was fitful. The weight of all she’d experienced since Bill Howard’s phone call, the gnawing anxiety at the dark young man who dogged her steps, and the occasional bumps and swerves and muffled traffic sounds combined to keep her half wakeful, even as exhaustion weighed her down. She sat up at one point, blinking around at the suburban landscape, and caught glimpses of hanging signs along the autoroute: aéroport orly, lyon, périphérique interieur. Jacques was silent, seemingly relaxed, moving the car swiftly toward the easternmost reaches of France. She lay back down on the pillow again. The next time she roused herself and looked out at the bright afternoon, she saw a signpost for CHILLY-MAZARIN, and the names made her smile. She tried to work out the pronunciation; it would be something like shee-lee and mah-zah-reen, no doubt. Such a beautiful language…

The roar of the Renault’s powerful horn startled her awake. She shot up to a sitting position, gasping. The car was barely moving on the autoroute surrounded by other nearly stationary vehicles. She saw the all-too-familiar problem immediately and relaxed.

“Pardon, mademoiselle,” Jacques said, waving an arm at the view beyond the windshield. “I lose my control at this. It is the tangle, the jelly.”

Nora laughed, overwhelmed with relief, and rubbed her eyes. “Jam.”

“Oui, the jam. It is these next sorties, for Dijon. It is always the way here, at this part of the road.”

“We call them exit ramps in America,” she said, still laughing. She glanced at her watch, amazed to see that three hours had passed since she’d last checked it. “Dijon? We’re nearly there. When we get out of this, could you find a rest stop? Une, um, petrol station?”

He understood immediately. “Certainement, mademoiselle.”

“Merci.”

He was silent for a moment, and then he said, “Exit ramp.” He repeated it twice and nodded to himself. Another phrase for his growing lexicon. Nora smiled; she was rather falling in love with her escort.

Soon after the traffic cleared, he pulled into a large service complex and parked. He walked her around the side of the bright glass structure and deposited her at the door of the ladies’ room. Only when she was inside did she hear him go into the door beside it.

There was one other person in the big white-tiled room, a young woman about Dana’s age who stood at the row of sinks, meticulously making up her face. She had tattooed arms and was wearing a denim jacket and a miniskirt, with silver loops in her ears, both eyebrows, and one nostril. Her hair was a symphony of deep brown and electric blue, piled high in a beehive. When Nora came back out into the room, the girl was painting her mouth. Nora washed her hands and smiled over at the girl, who grinned and held up the lip gloss for her inspection.

“Très Rose de Superbouche!” she proudly announced.

Nora nodded enthusiastically, as though she would now run screaming to the nearest makeup counter, and left the restroom, thinking, Somewhere under all that nonsense is a pretty girl. Dana had gone through a similar phase, mercifully brief, when she was sixteen, but Jeff had nixed the request for body ink.

Dana. She must call her daughter as soon as tonight’s adventure was over. With any luck, she’d have good news for Dana-and herself-by then. Break a leg…

Jacques was waiting for her outside the door. She smiled, charmed by his vigilance, and followed him back around the building. She went inside and bought paper cups of coffee for both of them while he filled the car’s gas tank. She remembered to pay cash for everything. They drank the coffee in the car while he called his wife and told her not to wait up for him, he’d be home tomorrow, and no, he hadn’t been smoking. So, that explained the raspy voice but no cigarettes. Thank you, Marianne, Nora thought. Only then did it occur to her that even if this mission concluded happily for her, Jacques would still be on the wrong side of France in the middle of the night.

“We can stop for food when we reach the city,” she told him as they resumed their journey. She consulted her watch: It was six o’clock, and they’d be there in an hour. “Then I must be in Pinède by ten o’clock, and it’s an hour’s drive, so we must leave Besançon by nine. But I won’t allow you to keep going all night, Jacques. There will be places to sleep on the way back to Paris, right? We’ll have to find one.”

He nodded, maneuvering the car over to the fast lane on the highway. “Yes, mademoiselle, there are many of the motels along the autoroute. Do not worry with this now.”

She didn’t; she was too busy worrying about this strange errand. Let it be over soon, she thought, tonight in Pinède. He’ll be there, and we’ll be safe, and there will be three of us going back to Paris, as long as-

She turned abruptly to look behind the car again, scanning the traffic that trailed them for the gray Citroën. The sun was setting, and in this light all the cars on the road seemed to be gray. She peered at windshields, trying to see beyond them, searching for dark skin and dark hair…

“He is not there, mademoiselle,” Jacques said quietly. “I keep the peeled eye, but there is no such car since Paris. From now, we will have the smooth sailboat.”

Just as he uttered these words, a low rumbling sound began in the distance and spread across the sky above them.

Jacques chuckled. “Too soon do I speak, yes? Tonight it will be the rain.”