by Anne Stuart
His fingers tightened around hers. “Claire …”
“Claire! What on earth are you doing here!”
She hadn’t seen them coming. If she had, she would have released Tom’s hand, she would have dived under the table to avoid them. As it was, all she could do was look up into two almost identical pairs of dark French eyes and curse the day she was born.
“Robert and I were wondering where you and Marc had gotten to,” Solange Capet said, keeping a possessive arm around her husband. “We’ve seen nothing of you recently. And who is this charming young man?”
Claire suppressed the urge to scream. Solange and Robert Capet were the only people Marc had ever socialized with. Robert was a fellow mime of splendid physical attributes and not much brain power; Solange was much older, much richer, a major patron of the Théâtre du Mime. Claire had always suspected that she and Marc had once been lovers, and the malicious glint in Solange’s eyes did nothing to discourage that supposition.
“I’m Claire’s brother,” Tom said helpfully. “Jeff MacIntyre, from Boston.”
Claire swallowed her groan of dismay as Solange’s grin widened. “Claire is an only child,” she said sweetly. “How very naughty of you, Claire darling. Tell me, does Marc know what you do when you go out? He never was terribly modern about these things.”
“Tom is a friend.” There was no way she could keep the defensiveness from her voice, but it no longer mattered. She had never liked Solange or her witless husband, and right now she detested them.
“Tom? I thought his name was Jeff?” Solange cooed. Her mauve-tinted eyelids drooped for a moment as she surveyed Claire’s companion. “You know, I don’t blame you. He’s very attractive in a roughhewn sort of way. Marc won’t take kindly to being a cuckold, and believe me, he’ll find out.”
“I’m not cheating on Marc!” Claire said desperately. Tom’s fingers clenched warningly around her own, and she realized belatedly that she hadn’t let go of his hand. She wasn’t about to do it now—the damage had been done, and she needed the reassuring touch of his flesh too badly in the face of Solange’s sophisticated malice.
“No?” said Solange. “Well, if I were you I’d be sorely tempted. However, let me give you a piece of advice. I’d wait until Marc is out of town before I’d take a lover. Marc has a nasty temper and a streak of unpleasantness in him that it would be wise to avoid.”
Claire opened her mouth to protest once more when Solange’s words sunk in. “Marc is out of town,” she said slowly.
“Is he?”
“You should know that as well as I do,” Claire said. “He’s on tour with the Théâtre du Mime.”
Was that pity on Solange’s face, mixed the amusement? It was too hard to tell. “No, he’s not.”
“He’s been gone two weeks,” Claire said desperately.
“He may very well be. But he’s not on tour. If he were, Robert would be with him. And I, as a major fund-raiser, would know about it. If Marc told you he was going on tour he lied to you.” Reaching over, she patted Claire’s shoulder. “Don’t worry. Perhaps he’s found a lover of his own and just hasn’t wanted to break the news to you. When he comes back and finds Jeff/Tom here he might be relieved. Or then again, he might not.” She moved away, taking the oblivious Robert with her. “Keep in touch, chérie. This is almost as good as ‘Dynasty.’”
Slowly Claire removed her hand from Tom’s. Slowly she rose from the table. “Would you pay for my coffee? I never know how much they want.”
“Claire, don’t leave!”
“I have to.”
Tom was on his feet, searching his pockets for change, frustration and impatience on his face. “Can’t you see that woman was a lying troublemaker? Of course Marc is out of town, and even if he isn’t, what does it matter? You haven’t done anything wrong. Are you afraid of him? Has he threatened you, hurt you in any way?”
“No. No, he hasn’t hurt me,” she said slowly. “I’d better get back.” And before he could stop her she was racing down the streets, her Reeboks silent on the sidewalks.
She could feel his eyes watching her hasty departure, but she knew those weren’t the eyes that had watched her, followed her. She knew now whose eyes they were. No, Marc hadn’t threatened, abused her. But he frightened her. Very much indeed.
And tucking the grisly newspaper under her arm, she turned the corner and raced homeward, a thousand demons riding at her back.
CHAPTER 9
The apartment was empty. Claire made very sure of that fact, starting with the hall closet and working her way back through the huge, stately rooms to the cavernous kitchen. No sign of Marc, no sign that he’d been there in the past two weeks. All that remained was her defiant clutter.
Pushing up the sleeves of her baggy cotton sweater, Claire began to clean. She started in the kitchen, working with single-minded purpose, scrubbing and dusting and straightening, making sure every piece of china was back in place, every piece of silver polished and sparkling, the counters and table scrubbed, the floor spotless, the ceilings free of cobwebs.
Without stopping any longer than she needed to consume too much black coffee, she moved through the bedrooms, the bathrooms, the dining room and formal salon, working with a frenzy only intensified by the silent reproach of the apartment and the caffeine in her system. She kept her mind a perfect blank, refusing to think about why she was doing this, refusing to acknowledge the very real panic that had swamped her when she imagined Marc’s reaction when he saw how she had trashed his beloved apartment.
She stopped outside of Nicole’s room, exhausted, sweating, almost too weary to continue. But she knew Nicole was just as intrinsically messy as she herself was, knew that as long as her father was out of reach she’d let her own room turn into a shambles.
She opened the door and then stopped, leaning against the door frame and staring at what she hadn’t quite comprehended during her previous reconnaissance.
Nicole’s room was spotless.
Messy Nicole, who’d left her dishes in the sink just as Claire had, who’d dropped coats in the hallway and crumbs on the silk-covered sofas, had kept her own room scrupulously neat.
Claire shut the door silently, moving back through the empty apartment that didn’t feel empty. It hadn’t been deeply ingrained instincts that had kept Nicole’s room neat. She must have known, deep in her nine-year-old heart, that Marc was still around. Watching.
No one saw him as he made his way back to the shabby hotel room. But then, no one ever saw him. He knew how to blend with those around him, how to disappear into crowds, become invisible. If by any chance someone happened to notice him, they would simply shrug and think no more about it, accepting him as part of the Paris street scene.
He was late coming back. He’d stayed too long at the park, but he couldn’t help himself. He liked the little boys the best. The girls, even the five- and six-year-olds, were already too flirtatious, too sure of their own seductive power. Whores at heart, all of them.
The boys were still innocent. Still a challenge. When he was ready he would start with the little boys.
The pain was manageable. Harriette had learned that long ago, learned to control it with her mind, with drugs, with sheer grit and determination. It wouldn’t be much longer. Just time to pay off a few debts, and then a blissful nothingness. She simply had to use the formidable strength of mind and will that had supported her for so long. And never weaken.
She watched her granddaughter leave with mixed emotions. She didn’t like entrusting her care to some mindless American besotted with Marc Bonnard’s sexuality. But she had Nicole’s word that Claire MacIntyre was essentially a decent person, and she trusted her granddaughter’s instincts. Nicole had seen through Marc even before Harriette had, looking up at her stepfather with dark, disapproving eyes.
It was no wonder Marc hated her, almost as much as he hated Harriette, as he had hated Isabelle, her daughter. He was such a consummate artist, a trickster, that it was simp
ly unbearable for him to be seen as he was, the shoddy upstart with no origins. He’d taken on Isabelle’s apartment, her life-style, her daughter, as if he were born to them all, but Harriette could see through his jumped-up manners. She didn’t need to know he’d been brought up by peasants in Rouen to realize he had less breeding than her garbage man.
She wasn’t going to die peacefully and let Marc end up with everything—Isabelle’s money, Isabelle’s apartment, Isabelle’s daughter. He wasn’t going to profit from murdering her daughter. The damnable thing was that Harriette had no proof. It had been a stormy night when Isabelle had taken off over the steep, winding roads in the south of France, and Isabelle had never been a good driver.
The police had seemed to think it all reasonable, and Marc had been sufficiently broken-hearted to convince some of the most cynical observers.
But not Harriette. She had watched, dry-eyed with a grief too terrible to bear, as her son-in-law moved with dignified grief through the funeral, and she had known. In the years since it had happened she had been consumed with such bitter hatred that it was no wonder her aging body was now eaten up with cancer.
But it wasn’t cancer that was going to get her, she was about to make grimly sure of that. And Marc wasn’t going to reap the benefit of her money, the money she had no choice but to leave to Nicole, which would, in turn, place it in Marc’s greedy hands. No, she was going to take care of Marc, give him just what he deserved.
She heard the rude buzz at the back door, and nodded with satisfaction. She’d told Hubert to make sure his employee—her employee—wasn’t seen. She wanted nothing to tie him to her untimely demise.
She moved slowly through the apartment, running a graceful, regretful hand along the elegant old furniture. The door buzzed again as she reached the kitchen, and Harriette frowned. Such a rude, impatient man. But what could you expect from someone in his line of work?
She opened the door and looked up into Rocco Guillère’s cruel, pockmarked face. She blocked the doorway, all one hundred frail pounds of her, and looked him over with a withering glance. “You are Hubert’s friend?” she inquired coolly.
The man didn’t like her attitude, she could tell. Good. It would make him that much more eager to get the job done.
“I’m Hubert’s friend,” he growled in a gutter-Parisian accent. He hesitated a moment longer, then pushed past her into the kitchen. “I believe you have a job for me.” He looked around her small, spotless kitchen in contempt, looked at her with equal disdain.
Harriette felt a final shiver of regret. And then she stiffened her backbone, shut the door, and led her new employee toward her elegant chintz salon.
The woman was crazy, Rocco thought, wishing he could find it funnier than he did. Not only was the woman out of her mind, but life itself was playing tricks, tricks he wasn’t sure if he appreciated.
He hated the looks of her, from her snooty, beaked nose to her swollen ankles to her tiny little feet. Even more, he hated the smell of her and her apartment, the wisp of lavender and mothballs, the trace of a perfume so aristocratic it made his lip curl.
He liked the others better, the poor ones. The ones who were just holding on to their dignity, with their overcrowded apartments and their fading memories, the ones who smelled of old sweat and urine, not flowers. He would have taken special pleasure in this one, not because she reminded him of Grand-mère Estelle, but because she was so far removed from the old woman. Two centuries ago his ancestors would have watched her ancestors being guillotined. Now it was up to him to continue in that tradition.
But it wasn’t going to be up to him. Not when he heard her plan. “I want you to kill me,” she’d said in her poker-up-the-ass voice, looking at him as if he were a cockroach.
“My pleasure,” he’d rumbled, setting his dirty jeans on her fancy sofa and propping his shiny boots on the rickety table, knocking the artfully arranged magazines askew. “When and how?”
“I would like it to appear to be a murder like the other ones,” she’d said, giving him his first taste of uneasiness. “I want you to stab me and lay me out as the other old women, but I want it done at such a time and in such a way as to implicate my son-in-law.”
He’d laughed out loud at that, a rough guffaw that rattled the china in that overbred apartment. “With a mother-in-law like you I’d think he’d be more than willing to do it himself,” Rocco offered maliciously.
Harriette Langlois had smiled, a chilly little smile, and for the first time he saw the connection between her and Grand-mère Estelle. “My son-in-law is too clever for that.” She was unruffled by his rudeness, and he hated her all the more. “If he were to kill me he would make absolutely certain he wasn’t caught. He murdered my daughter and no one ever suspected. He may very well be planning to kill me, I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. All that matters is that he pay for his crime, that justice be served.”
Rocco reached in his black leather jacket and pulled out the solid gold toothpick he’d stolen off a dead pimp. “I don’t give a rat’s ass about justice,” he said, poking at an old piece of steak that had lodged in a broken molar.
“No, I imagine you don’t. But you care about money, don’t you? And Hubert thinks very highly of you—he thinks you’re the man to carry this off, make it appear like it’s simply one more in the string of murders.”
Rocco grinned. “I think I can manage that.”
He’d finally gotten through to her. She was looking at him warily, out of filmy blue eyes, as if he were one of those big jungle cats in the Paris zoo. “You haven’t … you didn’t …” She stopped on a shuddering sigh. “No. I don’t wish to know.”
Rocco’s grin broadened. “You still haven’t answered my question, lady. Where and when?”
“My son-in-law is on tour at the moment. He should be returning to Paris in another two weeks. We’ll do it when he comes back. You’ll have to plant the knife in his apartment, and I expect Hubert will take care of the anonymous phone call to the police. It should be fairly simple.”
It should be, Rocco thought, his uneasiness increasing. “Who’s your son-in-law?” he asked suddenly. “What’s he doing on tour? I don’t want to get involved with anybody famous—it draws too much attention and the police are much more diligent when they’ve got the newspapers on their back.”
“He’s nothing. He’s a third-class mime with a second-class theater,” Harriette said waspishly. “His name is Marc Bonnard.” And she watched him stonily as once more Rocco began to laugh.
He hadn’t bothered to explain it to her. After all, what could he have said? The irony of it all was so delicious he was bursting, and yet there was no one he could tell. No one, except a man he hadn’t seen in over twenty years. Marc Bonnard.
Rocco doubted he was really out of town. Unless he’d changed drastically he was probably holed up somewhere, watching the old lady, waiting for his chance. Maybe he hadn’t wanted to do it himself, afraid it might call attention to him. Part of the success of their pact had been the random nature of their victims.
Hubert would be able to find him, Hubert could set up a meeting. Together they could lament the demise of that stupid fool Yvon, together they could share a bottle for the sake of old times. Together they could decide who would get the supreme pleasure of wasting the old lady, and who would take the fall for it.
But Rocco still couldn’t rid himself of a trace of nerves. While he could appreciate the irony, he didn’t like the coincidence. And he wondered if his childhood buddy would feel the same.
The phone calls began that night. Claire was lying alone in the big bed, the fresh sheets scratchy beneath her silk nightgown, when the ringing broke through her efforts to will herself to sleep. She leaped for the phone, knocking it onto the floor, and scrambled after it, speaking into it breathlessly.
There was no sound on the other end. No French or English obscenities, no heavy breathing, nothing. Just an eerie silence that caused a rash of goose bumps to travel down Cl
aire’s bare arms.
She slammed the phone down, restored it to its proper place beside the bed, and crawled back beneath the covers. She should be able to sleep—her body was so achingly weary that it was amazing she could keep her eyes open.
But her brain was still clipping along at twice the normal rate. She’d tried to keep it quiet by bustling around, doing all that she would normally do if Marc were there, telling herself that if he happened to return unexpectedly she wouldn’t need to worry. The rumpled sheets had been taken to the laundry, the T-shirt thrown away, every crumb and speck of dust in the house had been banished. Everything was done; she had some breathing space while she decided exactly what she was going to do, how she was going to get out of a mess that was of her own making.
Nicole had watched her panicked industry with maddening calm. She always kept her room neat, she’d said. It was second nature by now. But Claire knew she lied. What was second nature to the nine-year-old was not trusting Marc. If only his thirty-year-old mistress had as much sense.
She shut off the light, snuggling down lower in the sheets. How in the world had she gotten herself into such a fix? Had she no brains at all when it came to men? For two years she’d listened to Brian’s lies and believed them, only coming to her senses when he’d run down an innocent child and then driven away from it.
But she’d turned to Marc, a man who’d mesmerized her sexually and terrorized her spiritually. So that here she was, stuck in Paris with nowhere to go and no one to turn to.
That wasn’t strictly true. There was someone she could turn to, someone she wanted to run to, but that was the last thing she would do. She’d gone from one mistake to another, and she wasn’t about to go tearing into another relationship without thinking first. Her instincts told her Tom Parkhurst was safe, charming, cuddly, and protective, but so far her instincts had done nothing but get her into trouble. Besides, she shouldn’t trade sex for protection.
