Almost Gone (The Au Pair—Book One)

by Blake Pierce

  “Marc, could you and Ella show me your school bags and tell me what you need?” Cassie asked, hoping it wouldn’t take too long, and she would be finished by the time Antoinette was ready to help her.

  But Marc shouted, “No, I don’t want to help. We’re going outside to play hide and seek.”

  Grabbing Ella’s hand, he charged out of the dining room. Cassie ran to the door and shouted after them.

  “Marc, please! Wait a minute. I’ll come out and play with you later but we need to get this done. Ella, come back!”

  Both children ignored her completely and raced outside.

  The thought of chasing them down in the huge garden, or the orchard, or the greenhouse, filled Cassie with exhaustion. She’d do the damned school bags on her own. Let the children blow off some steam; there was surely a limit to the damage they could do in the half hour it would take to go through their belongings and make a list.

  She felt deeply relieved to have some quiet time. The constant presence of all three was claustrophobic, and their nonstop questions and demands fragmented her concentration. It was giving her no chance to straighten out her muddled mind. She longed for a day of silence to collect her thoughts, and a week of sleep to banish the exhaustion that was making every move an effort.

  She trudged upstairs to check through the bedrooms, realizing that since Marnie hadn’t given her any details about what the children needed, and they weren’t cooperating, it would be down to her own common sense and guesswork.

  She decided to start by looking through their school bags, making sure that the bags themselves weren’t broken and that no surprises, such as two-week-old sandwiches, were lurking inside. Then she’d just have to work out what, if anything, was missing.

  Checking the bags felt like a Herculean task. Ella’s contained very little equipment, but how much did a five-year-old need for school? She had pencils, crayons, a sharpener, and two notebooks.

  Marc’s bag was a chaotic mess. His pencil case had been left open, and it had spilled out into the bag. Pencil shavings, markers with their lids off, toy animals, and leaking pens were cluttered on the ink-stained bottom of the bag. His notebooks had pages torn out and the covers were bent.

  By the time she’d finished organizing it, Cassie had made a long list of what would need replacing, starting with the bag itself. It was a mess; one of the straps was broken, and he’d drawn a rude picture on the outside of the bag, of a short woman with wild hair and a frowning face. Cassie guessed the artwork might be of his teacher.

  His room was as untidy as his bag, and she spent some time straightening it out. Model soldiers were strewn in every corner and there was a pile of them under the bed. She couldn’t believe the mess Marc was capable of creating in no time at all.

  Walking out of Marc’s room, Cassie listened for piano music, but it had stopped. Since Antoinette hadn’t come upstairs, she decided to push ahead and finish the job on her own. She hoped that Antoinette’s bag would be in order, because she didn’t have the energy to repeat what she’d just done with Marc.

  Antoinette’s turquoise satchel was neatly packed, as she’d hoped, and everything she needed seemed to be there. Cassie checked through the geometry set, thinking back to the equipment she remembered from school. It all seemed correct. Even the small pencil for the compass was sharpened.

  Cassie put the bag back where she’d found it, but as she bent down she caught a glimpse of something else far back on the wooden shelf, something that seemed weirdly familiar to her exhausted and befuddled mind.

  She pulled the bag out and took a closer look, drawing in a sharp breath as she saw what was there.

  It was her cell phone. Its distinctive cover, gleaming with silver holograms, had caught her eye in the darkness.

  Cassie pulled it out and turned it on, noticing her hands were shaking more badly than ever, but this time from shock, rather than stress.

  It was in one piece, and in working order. She wasn’t going crazy, she hadn’t dropped it or mislaid it. She clutched the phone to her chest, closing her eyes in utter relief that it was back in her possession.

  It took a few moments for relief to evaporate and sheer, blind fury to take its place.

  Antoinette must have gone into her room, pulled the phone from the charger, stolen it, and hidden it away where Cassie had only found it by the luckiest chance. Antoinette had acted deliberately and maliciously. Cassie was sure she hadn’t intended to give it back until she’d seen her suffer—if she’d planned to return it at all.

  As a twelve-year-old, Antoinette had no excuse for what she’d done; she was old enough to know better. This was theft, pure and simple.

  Cassie realized that in terms of her emotional reserves, she’d just hit rock bottom.

  She was out of patience—it was all gone. She was sick of the children’s mind games, their agendas, their defiant rejection of her authority, and their refusal to understand the basic concepts of right and wrong. She couldn’t deal with it anymore.

  Cassie imagined grabbing Antoinette by her slender shoulders and shaking her until her teeth rattled. She imagined lifting her hand and slapping her smug face, seeing her head snap sideways, that superior expression vanishing.

  She took a vicious joy in thinking about exactly how much force she could put into that blow.

  Cassie shoved the school bag back onto the shelf and marched out of the bedroom, banging the door behind her.

  Priorities first, she decided. With her phone back in her possession, she could at least look up the agency’s number. It was already a quarter past ten. That meant it was still very early in the States; too early to use Pierre’s landline to call the agency. They opened at eight a.m. By the time they were open, Pierre might be back from breakfast. If he was around, she couldn’t exactly march into his room to make an important, confidential call for help.

  Cassie let out a frustrated sigh. Was there seriously nowhere in this godforsaken place where a person could make a cell phone call? Now that she had prepaid minutes loaded, perhaps she should check. The estate was huge. Surely there must be somewhere that offered enough signal to allow for a phone call, even if there wasn’t enough to enable data. A sliver of signal would be adequate. One bar might do it.

  Holding her phone in front of her, Cassie stepped outside and went hunting.

  The front of the house yielded nothing. Cradled in between the hills, Cassie guessed there was simply no line of sight to an available tower—and if there was signal elsewhere, the stone bulk of the chateau itself would prevent it from reaching through to this side.

  She was more hopeful about the back of the house, where that beautiful, dizzying view stretched for miles. Even the tiniest trace of signal from a faraway tower might be enough. In addition, today was clear, dry, and still, which meant a better chance of success. Cassie remembered Zane, of all people, telling her that bad weather affected cell signal. Heavy clouds, rain, and even high winds tamped down the signal. He’d learned that from his older brother, who was involved in maintaining cell towers.

  Cassie rounded the corner and headed along the paved walkway, with the chateau’s high stone wall on her right. She kept her phone turned slightly to the open vista on the left, not knowing if that would help, but feeling it couldn’t hurt. She walked slowly, keeping her gaze fixed on the screen, where that frustrating “No Signal” logo was refusing to budge.

  With all her attention focused on her phone, Cassie didn’t see the gutter ahead of her, a deep trench in the stone. Her foot caught in it and she almost fell, diving forward to save herself and her phone.

  As she did so, she sensed, rather than saw, something heavy falling behind her—she heard the swift breath of sound as it fell, and felt it as a sudden chill of air.

  A heartbeat later, the huge object crashed to the ground.

  Cassie spun round, shouting in panic. Her heart hammered in her throat as she stared incredulously down at the heavy stone bust. It had fallen directly behind her,
no more than a step away from where she was standing, and she realized in horror that her stumble had only just saved her, because if she hadn’t tripped and dived forward to save herself, it would have fallen directly onto her.

  The marble head and shoulders were bigger than life-sized. It must weigh hundreds of pounds. Its solid form looked to be undamaged by the fall, but the large flagstone where it landed had shattered.

  Weak with shock, Cassie stepped back to get a better view of the balcony, far above.

  The statue on the left pillar of the balustrade was still in place. The one on the right had fallen. The balcony itself was empty, and she could see no movement there.

  Had somebody seen her walking past, and pushed it?

  She didn’t want to believe it, but it had been close—so impossibly close. She’d only just escaped being crushed.

  Opportunistic, yes, but she had to face the reality that somebody genuinely could have been trying to kill her.

  The only question was who.

  CHAPTER TWENTY SIX

  As Cassie stood, frozen by the realization that the statue could have been aimed deliberately at her, she heard a shout.

  “What is happening? What was that?”

  Pierre rounded the corner at a run, sprinting up to where she was standing.

  Cassie saw genuine astonishment in his face as he stared at her, then up at the balcony, breathing hard.

  All she could think at that moment was that it hadn’t been Pierre who pushed that bust over the edge. It would have been impossible for him to have run all the way from that upper balcony, down the staircase, out of the front door, and around the side of the house in such a short time.

  “It fell as I was passing,” she said, her voice high and shaky. “It almost hit me.”

  “It fell? That statue could not simply fall. It has been in place for centuries.” Pierre stepped back to get a better view.

  “Look, you can see the podium where it rested.”

  He squatted down and scrutinized the statue carefully.

  “Unbroken, although we will need to replace the flagstone,” he said. “I will go and tell the vineyard manager to organize for it to be put back in its place.”

  “It almost killed me,” Cassie said. Her head was swimming now from delayed reaction. Half a second slower, and she wouldn’t have had a chance.

  Pierre frowned at her and Cassie knew that after what had happened between them yesterday, sympathy would not be forthcoming. In fact, she shouldn’t even have mentioned her near-escape from death. She didn’t want to be the focus of Pierre’s attention for any reason. It was better when his gaze passed over her dismissively, as if she was insignificant in his life, and her problems not his concern.

  “You are hurt?” he asked, in a tone that told her he knew she wasn’t.

  “No, I’m not hurt, I’m fine,” she said defensively.

  “If furniture was moved out of the room while it was being cleaned, one of the household staff could have knocked it over by accident,” he said.

  Or one of the children, Cassie thought with a shiver, and if so, maybe it wasn’t an accident at all.

  Pierre headed for the garage and climbed into the golf cart before driving down the sandy track in the direction of the vineyard.

  Cassie decided to see if she could find out for herself who had been there.

  The balcony belonged to one of the guest suites, in the wing of the house that was standing empty. She supposed a few of the rooms would have been occupied last night by the funeral guests, but didn’t know which ones. When she went upstairs, she found all the rooms were unlocked, with their doors closed. She went into the wrong room first by mistake. The inside of the house looked different, and seemed bigger, than the outside.

  The next room was the right one. It was immaculate, with a four-poster bed neatly made with burgundy pillows and a cream bedspread. The door to the balcony was open, but there was nobody outside. She walked onto the balcony and looked down, her stomach churning as she surveyed the drop. Uneasy, she checked behind her and moved quickly away from the railing. She wondered if she would ever be able to look down from a height again without remembering the jolting shock she’d felt, and the sick dizziness that had filled her, when she had seen Margot’s body.

  She gave the remaining bust a tentative wiggle. With its narrow base, wide shoulders, and large, imposing head, it was top-heavy and unstable. It wouldn’t have taken much force to push it off. Physically, even Ella could have done it.

  One thing was for sure—there were no housekeeping staff in this room, or even in this wing. They must have finished their work earlier.

  Pierre hadn’t even mentioned the possibility that it could have been one of the children, even though it was obvious that apart from the staff, they were the only ones who could have done it. Cassie wondered if it genuinely hadn’t occurred to Pierre, or more likely, whether he simply wasn’t allowing himself to consider the possibility.

  She guessed this was an extension of his belief that the family name must remain squeaky clean, and untainted by scandal, at all costs.

  Having narrowly escaped death, she was still none the wiser about who had done it, and the incident had only drawn Pierre’s attention to her again. On top of it all, she was convinced that there was no cell phone signal anywhere in the area. There hadn’t been the slightest trace downstairs, and when she checked her phone on the balcony, the stubborn “No Signal” sign refused to budge.

  Frustrated, Cassie realized she’d have to wait until Pierre went out. Perhaps he would do so later, and then she’d use the landline to contact the agency, and damn the consequences if he found out.

  Everything she’d tried to do that day had ended in disaster, and when Cassie thought of it from that perspective, it made her want to burst into tears. Antoinette had stolen her phone. Someone had tried to kill her. Everyone seemed to hate her apart from Marnie, the only friendly face in the whole chateau.

  She left the room and, remembering her responsibilities, searched for the children. Ella was in her bedroom, and Antoinette was in the library. She was curled up in an armchair reading, smiling at Cassie innocently when she walked in.

  Cassie bit back the urge to scream at her that she was a thief, and possibly a would-be murderer, too. If the statue had been pushed off its stand deliberately, she knew which child was the most likely culprit. It took all the remaining fragments of her self-control to ask her if she knew where Marc was, and when Antoinette shrugged dismissively, Cassie was tempted to grab her shiny ponytail and pull it until she screamed.

  Marc was in the kitchen. He’d raided the fridge and found a plate with some iced cakes. He’d dropped one on the floor, and was marching triumphantly out of the scullery with another, when Cassie arrived.

  She managed to catch up with him as he was heading for the orchard, having eaten half the cake on the run and thrown the other half down onto the immaculate paving in a shower of crumbs.

  “It’s almost lunchtime, Marc, you must come in now,” she entreated.

  “I’m not hungry,” he shouted gleefully, and she had to chase him again, all the way to the greenhouse with its broken panes. Cassie supposed she should tell someone about them but she didn’t have the energy, and if she told, she’d have to explain that Marc had done it while unsupervised.

  It seemed better just to leave it be.

  Her only tenuous link to sanity was the key to her bedroom. She could feel its reassuring shape in her pocket. When it was nighttime, she would lock her room, and nobody could get to her. She clung to that fact like a life raft. It felt like the only thing she still had control of.

  Pierre joined them for lunch, which surprised and dismayed Cassie. Still more disconcerting was the cheerfulness of his mood.

  “May I serve you some roast chicken, Cassie?” he asked genially, and she forced a polite smile.

  “Marnie prepared this herself before she left. I feel it is one of her most accomplished dishes. Roast
chicken, ratatouille, and gravy. Simple and classic. Do you like it, Antoinette?”

  Antoinette smiled coquettishly, clearly delighted to be her father’s main focus of attention.

  “It’s delicious,” she agreed.

  “Margot never used to eat gravy,” Ella observed. “I don’t think she liked it.”

  Nobody responded to this observation and there was a short silence after her words. Marc glanced at Margot’s empty chair before returning his attention to his meal.

  “Where has Marnie gone?” Cassie asked, worried. She’d hoped to be able to speak to her this afternoon and find out if there was another phone she could use.

  “She asked for the rest of the day off; she had an errand to run. She has had a few days off recently, but she is a hard worker. We cannot begrudge hard workers their leisure time, especially when they perform so well. After all, those who put their hearts into the job are the ones who are well rewarded. It’s always important to please your employer.”

  His gaze met Cassie’s over the table and he gave her a meaningful glance. She had no difficulty in picking up the innuendo. The fact that Pierre was saying this in front of the children, the day after Margot’s funeral, made her want to vomit.

  With a superhuman effort she kept her expression neutral and forced the food down, hoping that keeping quiet might help her to become invisible to him again.

  “I am going into town this afternoon on business,” Pierre announced as the plates were cleared.

  “When will you be back, Papa?” Antoinette asked.

  “By early evening.”

  “Can we play a game?” She smiled again.

  “Perhaps we can. You know how much I enjoy games.” But as he spoke, Pierre was looking at Cassie, not at his daughter.

  She thought he’d been about to say something else, but at that moment, there was a knock at the front door.

  Pierre stood up.