Volume One
THE FRENCHMAN
Contents
The Frenchman
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Odette and the Great Fear
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Odette and the Great Fear
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Odette and the Great Fear
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Odette and the Great Fear
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Odette and the Great Fear
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Odette and the Great Fear
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Odette and the Great Fear
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Odette and the Great Fear
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Odette and the Great Fear
Epilogue
Read the next Bennett Sisters Mystery
The Frenchman
a Bennett Sisters Mystery
© 2017, by Lise McClendon
Published by Thalia Press
USA
All rights reserved
One
New York City
The headlines were ridiculously easy to spot by now, on the newsstands around Manhattan. The Power of Sisterhood, the magazine blared. Merle Bennett paid for five copies of the inane rag and rolled them under her arm. She was getting good at this. Over the last two weeks she’d disposed of at least seventy-five copies of Society NYC. Her sisters wouldn’t be happy. But that article about the five Bennett sisters had to go.
She dropped the magazines into the trash bin on the corner, near the Greenwich Village offices where she worked for Legal Aid for at least one more day. Inside she got to work, cleaning out her desk. She dropped the chipped white vase into the box on the floor. Two years ago she’d brought it home from France. Should she take it back, set it on the mantel, add a pink rose from the garden? That seemed cheesy. Merle was not the sentimental type and yet here she was, planning her getaway with roses and nostalgia, while cleaning her desk for her replacement.
Six months wasn’t long. She’d be back here kissing up to high-powered lawyers for pro bono money in the new year.
If everything goes as planned.
The words popped into her head. She frowned. As if her planning was soft, unformed, and unreliable. It was not. It was firm, credible, and solid. That was who she was.
Two months earlier Merle told her boss she was taking half a year off. While unhappy, Lillian Warshowski took less than a week to find a young attorney willing and able to hold her job in the interim. Lawyers were always looking for something to break the tedium of desk work, brief-writing, research, and stale coffee. Her job, wining and dining white-shoe firms for services for indigent clients, might look glamorous from the outside, like one big party, but Merle had had enough rich food and drunken lechery for a lifetime. She needed a break. France in all its simplicity, in its golden light and slow days, was calling.
Her bags were packed. But Tristan was dragging his feet. She texted her son quickly to begin, definitely, today. In three days they would fly to France and there were hundreds of details she had to attend to. The one thing he could do was pack his own suitcase.
Of course, Tristan would rather spend his last bit of summer partying with his friends before heading off to college than traipsing around a musty old French village with his mother. What 17-year-old wouldn’t? He was driven, very much his mother’s son, but lately — since his college acceptance — he’d disappeared into a social world she didn’t even know he had, full of cute young things and who knows what. It worried her, but so far, he’d kept himself out of trouble. Three more days, Tristan. Hold on.
This summer trip to France would probably be their last together. She hoped not but knew better. She would return in late August to get him moved into his dorm then back she’d go, footloose in France for months and months. The open time caused a knot in her stomach even though she had a very detailed plan of renovation, cavorting with Pascal, her French boyfriend, and — yes — writing.
She would write her novel. No big deal. Everybody was writing novels these days, and lawyers who wrote novels were a dime a dozen. It was a vanity project, no doubt about that, but it had grown into a slight obsession since her last, short visit to France. There it had come in a dream of sorts. No, it was a dream — call it what it was. A dream about a goat herder, a young woman during the time of the French Revolution.
It was silly, childish, thinking about it so much. As if she’d gone into this misty corner of her mind, a playground full of lovely toys, walled off from the practical, rational side where duty and desk loomed in all their grownup glory. Well, once in awhile you had to do the thing your childish mind demanded. She shivered in the warm office at her newfound rebelliousness.
The small, red leather-bound notebook sat in her lap. She’d bought the journal earlier in the month and had been scribbling ideas into it ever since, tidbits about the French Revolution, ideas about characters and events, anything to keep the idea of writing the novel alive until she got back to France. She opened it and peeked inside. On the first page she’d marked out five or six possible titles. The one that remained was ‘Odette and the Great Fear.’ It had a nice double entendre feel to it. The Great Fear happened during the French Revolution when food riots raged and commoners thought the nobles were trying to starve them.
But what was a young woman’s ‘great fear?’ There were so many things to fear when you were young, and yet so many choices. Living in the midst of turmoil was tenuous, and made your choices more stark. Did a girl’s ambitions matter? Was staying alive all there was? The words ‘great fear’ made you want to think about what life means and— stuff. Now that was a literary phrase.
She closed the notebook, bringing herself back to reality, listening to Lillian talk rapidly on the phone. This beautiful old brick building in the Village was her home away from home, but now she had another one. Her cottage in the Dordogne.
The photograph sat on her desk, front and center, as if she might forget. The stone house with the azure shutters didn’t have a name — yet. (It was on her list: Name the house.) The front door’s shutters were broken and mismatched. There was a patch of stucco hanging from the corner wall and a broken flower pot in the street. She hadn’t even gone there this spring with Pascal. She was too busy at his house, farther south in the hills outside Toulouse. The list of renovations and repairs was daunting but she vowed to complete them. Being in France would make everything possible, even plumbing and literature. It gave her such a lift. France made her optimistic, it made her smile, it made her feel sexy and alive.
France was a drug, and she wanted it all the time.
The tapping of Lillian’s heels across the hardwood floors brought her back. Her misty mind was getting bossy, showing her scenes of an 18th Century village in southwestern France, far from the Paris cobblestones but teeming with intrigue, scents of the bakery, and wild places.
Stop it. Three more days.
Lillian had a strange look on her face. Was that a smile?
She was walking and smiling at the same time. Merle braced herself.
Her boss in her tailored blue shantung suit tapped her manicured nails on the edge of Merle’s desk. “Have time for a coffee?” She turned toward the door then looked back. “Let’s walk.”
Grabbing her purse, Merle hurried down the front steps after her boss. Lillian was ten feet ahead and showed no sign of slowing until she reached the door of the espresso bar on the corner. Short with a severe helmet of platinum hair, Lillian waited for Merle to open the door for her. It was a bit annoying. And Lillian was still smiling. Odd, to say the least.
They ordered cappuccinos and found a table in the sunshine. July in New York City could be hideously hot and smelly but this summer had been mild. Not that Merle would be staying in the city any longer than necessary. This was definitely her last day of work. She felt the promise in that phrase and took a sip of her coffee, dabbing the froth from her lip with a paper napkin.
Lillian reached into her bag and pulled out a magazine, smoothing it carefully. She smiled more, even showing teeth. “This is so lovely,” she said, almost purring.
Merle’s heart jumped in her chest. The magazine in question was familiar to her. The one and only Society NYC. Glossy and shallow like most gossip magazines, a city version of Town and Country. It was to her shame that her photograph was in it, along with her four sisters. Just the sight of it made her angry. How had she missed this particular copy on the newsstands? Lillian beamed at her, cheeks glowing with pride.
The older woman leafed through to the article. There it was, the headline that read: THE POWER OF SISTERHOOD: Five Legal Brains Set Sights on New York. The photo underneath showed the five of them in Times Square with their arms linked, smiling like goons. That day in March when none of them realized what the story would be like. They’d gone out to lunch first at a swanky downtown restaurant and someone had ordered champagne. Maybe two bottles, hard to keep track. Some sister started criticizing another’s choice of dress and shoes. Another wanted to know where a sister got her hair done because it looked like a rat’s nest. But they had laughed, all of them. It had been fun and they were all buzzed and loose and rosy when they got to Times Square.
Where had the magazine’s editors come up with the idea that the Bennett sisters were on some crusade, out to rock the foundations of the city, swing battle-axes through legal worlds? From Francie? She might say something wild like that, off-the-wall explosive, just for laughs. Or was it Annie who had just moved to Manhattan and was starting her own consultancy? It didn’t sound like Stasia at all, although she was the most high-powered lawyer amongst them. Elise, the youngest sister, only pretended she worked in the city for the article.
Whoever had blabbed, whoever had given that stupid writer the idea for that atrocious article, they were keeping their mouths shut. Merle had interrogated her sisters and they all denied it. Four out of five sisters were thrilled with the publicity if not with their photographs inside. Merle was the exception. She abhorred it. Since the issue had hit the newsstands two weeks before she had tried to buy up all the copies she could find and burn— er, recycle them. Obviously, her subterfuge hadn’t worked.
“This is a really good photo of you, Merle,” Lillian was saying. “You look so relaxed and happy. This one of Elise is unfortunate. I know she’s prettier than that. You should have let me help. My cousin’s son takes the best casual portraits. But, well, what’s done is done. At least your photograph is excellent. Is this at your home?”
Lillian had never been to Merle’s home in Connecticut. Not that she’d been invited. Was that what she was suggesting, that Merle should be more social? If Lillian had visited she’d know the sunshine on Merle’s cheek, the stucco walls behind her, the lavender at her side were all obviously not the Connecticut suburbs. Merle spun the magazine toward her. But that was her home, her house in France. She smiled, longing to be there again.
“The Dordogne,” Merle said. “Where I’m headed soon.”
Where was Lillian going with this? Because in the years they’d worked together she’d never invited Merle out for a coffee. They were not that type of work colleagues. They socialized by taking big-shot attorneys out to big-deal dinners.
“Of course. That French light,” Lillian murmured, a bit wistful. She read the headline out loud triumphantly. Merle glanced around the half-empty coffee shop, glad no one was sitting nearby. “So. What are you going to do with your power, Merle?”
“My— ?”
“Power. Your intellect, your drive. You probably don’t realize how talented you are, Merle. That’s part of your charm. It says in the article your name has been floated as a candidate for various public offices but you have always said ‘no.’ Is that true?”
“I’ve only been asked to run for school board. No one wants that job.”
Lillian scoffed. “As if your children go to public school.”
As if Lillian even knew her children. There was only one. “Tristan went to public school last year.” When the money from the so-called inheritance ran out. Lillian was such a snob. Merle smiled a smile that she knew didn’t reach her eyes.
“Tristan. Lovely boy.” Lillian had the decency to look embarrassed, mixed liberally with pity. “Would you run for something else? State legislature? Congress?”
Merle shook her head. “I don’t think so. Would you?”
“Me?! Oh, no.” Lillian tipped her head coyly. “I am thinking of retiring though.”
Merle sat back in her chair. Retire? What would Lillian do with herself? She was a workaholic of the first order, and Merle would know. Although, Lillian must be in her late sixties. The window light highlighted the crosshatch of wrinkles on her cheek.
“Are you surprised?” Lillian chuckled. “I see you are.”
“I never thought of you not working,” Merle said softly. “I mean, I’m glad you’re considering it. You deserve it.”
“I do.” Lillian preened for a moment, running a finger over a perfect eyebrow. “Merle, I’d like you to take over the office when you return from France. If you could get back by September, October at the latest, that would be ideal. I could get you up to speed on all the details— you know most of them anyway. Then by December you’d be in charge.”
“I — what?” Merle never stammered, yet, now she was.
“Be in charge, dear girl. Of the entire office, the fundraising, the arm-twisting, all the Pro Bono events. Call the shots, make the plays. The power position.”
Merle shut her mouth which had been hanging open. “I’m not into power, Lillian.”
“Don’t be silly. Everyone is into power.” Lillian pushed away her cup. “That’s how things get done. How change happens. How the world is made better. I know you’re into that.”
Merle blinked, feeling trapped. Of course she wanted the world to be better, for justice to happen, for progress to be made. It was her mantra: make that list and check things off. But this, what was this really about? She’d never aspired to Lillian’s job. Not in a million years. Lillian embodied it; it fit her like a glove. And she was so not Lillian.
“I’m planning on returning after the holidays.” Merle tried and failed to make her voice firm.
Lillian waved that off. “You can change that. I’ll pay the airline change fee if that’s the issue.”
“It’s not that.” Merle stared at her boss, with her stiff bearing, her squared shoulders, her head like an emperor’s on a Roman plaque, all golden crown and granite glance. “I have plans. We agreed to my coming back in January.”
“Plans to do what exactly?” Lillian had stopped smiling.
Merle felt her words like a blow to the chin. She always had plans, lists, agendas, duties. To have Lillian question her organizational skills, her forward thinking, like she was a matron on a cruise with nothing to do but browse the all-you-can-eat buffet, was insulting. With a mild shock of embarrassment she thought of her novel, her gothic romance. She couldn’t tell Lillian about it, not now
, maybe never. Did that mean she was ashamed of it? Was the project ridiculous? What about Odette who she loved like a sister, who she might have been if she’d been alive in France in the late 1700s? This was her plan, her project, and it had no bearing whatsoever on Lillian and her ‘plan.’ Merle had every intention of exploring Odette’s world in depth and at length, as frivolous and unimportant as it may seem to, well, anyone.
“Does it matter?” Merle said. She was suddenly over caring about Lillian’s retirement.
Lillian’s eyes flashed in anger, and she closed the magazine with a slap. “I was mistaken. I had thought you would take a considerable, and very lucrative, promotion in the spirit of generosity and admiration that was intended. But I see. You have other plans.”
Merle sat in the coffee shop for fifteen minutes after Lillian had gone. All the pleasure and anticipation of her trip to France had vanished. Lillian had complimented her by offering her this job but it also seemed to be all about Lillian, her schedule, her time off. Had she envied Merle’s long break? Had she purposely disrupted Merle’s plans to punish her? It all seemed very possible.
Before stomping out, Lillian had mentioned the salary. She’d said it triumphantly, almost gloating, like it was so massive that it would bowl Merle over. The figure was much higher than Merle had imagined, especially for a non-profit like the Legal Aid Society. That sort of money would make a difference to her life. She could buy a new car for instance. But it wouldn’t make her abandon France, or come back three months early. As a bribe, it fell a little flat next to endless, golden hours in the Dordogne. Whether Lillian’s timetable was a deal-breaker went unsaid.
Bennett Sisters Mysteries Volume 5 & 6 Page 1
