Night Watch

FOUR

“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.”

Jacques’s head rolled as he leaned backward with his chair. “Ha! You were looking for something perkier, my friend, like a sex crimes prosecutor? Is that what you’re telling me?”

There wasn’t much of my usual good-natured humor in reserve since first seeing Lisette’s body on the edge of the pond, and I had no interest in performing for the captain, who seemed to be growing ruder by the minute.

“Perhaps the next time you’re in New York, you’ll come visit me in the courtroom. I’m long on facts and fairness and the occasional outrage, Captain, but I’ve never been accused of being sad. Buy me some Dewar’s at the end of the day, I might even convince you I’m having a good time,” I said. “Now, Luc planned an absolutely delightful day for me. If you’ve got any more questions, you’ll find us at the restaurant tonight. Ça va?”

Luc fished a business card out of his wallet. “This is my accountant. He knows a lot more about Lisette than I do.”

Jacques was practically sputtering as he saw me reach for the door handle. “But you can’t go yet.”

“You can’t possibly be holding him?” I asked, warming up to the incredulity that often preceded my outrage.

“I’m not holding anyone. I have no idea what happened to this girl. It’s your brain I want to pick, Alexandra. I thought you’d help me with this-this situation.”

“Such a strange way you have of asking for assistance, Jacques. The experts are on their way. What is it you need from me?”

“So drowning like this. Is that always murder? Must it be a homicide?”

I didn’t take my hand off the door handle. I saw no reason for Luc and me to involve ourselves in this mystery. “Not necessarily. Most drownings are accidental. People fall out of boats or into deep water and can’t swim. They panic and struggle to reach the surface, and sometimes doing that they exhaust their energy reserves. Or they swallow large quantities of water at the same time that air is escaping from their lungs. Alcoholics fall facedown in three inches of water, and because they’re barely conscious they’re unable to roll over.”

“And the doctors know it’s an accident because…?”

“The totality of the circumstances, Jacques. Sometimes from witnesses, in other cases because the evidence points to only one conclusion. Do you know facts you haven’t told us? Any idea how Lisette got to the pond? I didn’t see a car there. And it’s a long walk in from the road.” I was talking at high speed. “Do people really swim in that water? It hardly seems the site for an accident.”

“Well, no, I wouldn’t think-”

“A few instances of drowning are suicidal. Think Virginia Woolf, Captain.”

“Who?”

“You don’t read enough, Jacques. An Englishwoman,” I said. “She walked into a river after loading her pockets with heavy rocks, which took her to the bottom and made it impossible for her to survive. Manic depression.”

“So she was sad, too, this Woolf person?”

“Not sad like Lisette,” Luc said. “Mentally ill.”

“And you know this girl wasn’t a psych case? Is that what you’re saying?”

“I haven’t a clue, do you understand? I don’t know anything about her except that she was quite comfortable stealing from me.”

“Then there’s murder,” I said. “Someone may have held Lisette’s head under water until she drowned. An ugly death. If she was conscious when she went down, she would have been struggling, both to breathe and to get free of her attacker. Then the coughing and choking would have begun as she took on water, and convulsions next, before respiratory arrest and death. Minutes, probably. Achingly long minutes during which she knew she was likely to die.”

“So who am I looking for?” Jacques Belgarde put his fingers to his lips for several seconds before he spoke again. “Someone who-”

“Someone? Maybe more than one. Who knows what it took to get her into the park in the middle of the night?” I asked. I didn’t tell him I was reminded of the voices I’d heard when I was trying to get Luc’s door open. “The autopsy will eventually tell you whether she was drinking or drugged. Perhaps there are bruises on her neck, under her clothing.”

“This will spook the tourists for certain. The mayor will be on my ass to solve this one fast.”

“Just like in New York,” I said. “Political fallout is a common side effect of homicide, Captain.”

“Talk to my sommelier, Jacques. Some of the younger guys on my staff may remember who her friends were and who dated her. Maybe they even kept in touch,” Luc said. “Or they might be aware of who else she crossed, besides me.”

There was a knock on the door and Claude Chenier entered, pushing us farther inside as he extended his hand with several pages of paper in it. “For you, Captain. From Paris.”

“That was fast,” Belgarde said to his young officer, lighting another cigarette.

“We can’t be sure, sir. It’s just a name check and a guess at the girl’s age.”

Chenier backed out as the captain glanced at the documents, then looked up at Luc and shook them in his direction. “The National Police. They seem to know your Lisette Honfleur, too. They share your low opinion of her character.”

“I didn’t say I had an opinion, Jacques. I don’t know-”

“Is that her criminal record?” I asked.

“It is indeed,” Jacques said, coming out from behind his desk and bending over to scoop up one of the skulls, spinning it around to examine it more closely. “Not that it tells us why someone targeted you with these human remains, Luc, but maybe we know where they came from.”

“What does it say?”

“Two arrests, both fairly recent. Shoplifting from a boutique on the Left Bank, and last year, theft and vandalism from the catacombs.”

“The Catacombs of Paris?” I looked at the discoloration of the stack of bones in the crate at Luc’s feet. The idea that they might have been hundreds of years old, stolen from the underground ossuary created in miles of caverns and tunnels that once housed the stone quarries beneath the city’s streets, made more sense than that they were a recent find. “Why would anyone want to steal bones of the dead?”

“Not to worry, Alexandra,” Luc said, shaking his head. “It’s only the French who would make a tourist attraction of our mass burial practices for the poor. Don’t try to put a good reason to it.”

“But someone is connecting them to you,” I said. “From the remains of-what?-six million humans on public display?”

“Minus these three or four gentlemen,” Jacques said, poking the wine crate with the toe of his tall black boot. “A token from the ‘empire of death,’ as the ossuary was so aptly named. What is it, Luc? What message was Lisette sent to deliver?”

Luc squeezed my hand, urging me to exit Belgarde’s office. “When you figure it out, Jacques, I’m sure you’ll let me know.”

“I’m glad, Alexandra, that you asked Luc to call these bones to my attention.”

“He would have done it anyway,” I said, thinking to myself that it was later rather than sooner as I’d asked him to.

But the captain couldn’t let us go without a parting shot. “So at three this morning, Luc, when you didn’t pay any attention to what Alexandra asked you to do, where did you go instead?”