“Tours just remind me too much of field trips in elementary school, and I was always the one getting diverted, always getting scolded,” I said.
“That doesn’t surprise me one bit,” Alex had said.
Not only was Alex in fine form this morning, but so was Millie O’Neill. She arrived with her group but gravitated to us when we all wound up in the same English-speaking tour. The guide, a rugged-faced woman with a drill sergeant’s manner and a brisk British accent, called us to order. “Come now, may I have your attention! Please don’t touch! My name is Gertrude Havers.” Did I only imagine “You may call me Miss Havers”? It came as no surprise to me that Alex made his way toward the front of the group until he could have touched our guide, should he have desired to do so. Millie and I hung back, letting others push forward, until we wound up behind all the other twenty or twenty-five eager tourists. Though we brought up the rear, we had no trouble hearing the piercing voice of Miss Havers. I wondered if she’d had an earlier career as one of the line judges at Wimbledon, the unblinking ladies in brogans.
“How’s Alex?” Millie whispered.
“Better than I am,” I said. “And you’re looking chipper.”
“Not a bad night’s sleep. Four solid hours.”
Farther and farther we lagged behind until we no longer had to whisper. With several guided tour groups operating, many voices in various languages echoed in the grand hall. The voice of our fearless leader rang out above all the others as she herded our group into the room where the first collection of paintings was displayed.
Millie and I paused in the arched doorway. She said, “I’m not much for museums, but I expected you’d eat this up.”
“I do like museums. I just have a short attention span,” I said.
“I don’t know much about art,” she said. “I’m sure the paintings are worth a fortune, but wonder where they kept the sketches?”
Millie and I exchanged a look, and a minute later, we’d broken off from the guided tour.
Back in the grand hall, I said, “Alex will tell me everything I need to know from Miss Havers’s commentary.”
“I’ve listened to people drone on about one thing or another for forty years,” Millie said.
“I keep looking at this building, trying to imagine how anyone could get in,” I said. “I know there were security guards, but I don’t see any surveillance cameras.”
We wandered through the grand hall, trying to circumvent other tours. A group of Japanese tourists plowed between us. When I located Millie again, she was motioning for me to follow her into another hallway that took a sharp left into rooms that were surely off-limits. There were no paintings hanging in this wing, not even a sign to les toilettes.
“Probably just offices back here,” I said.
Millie kept walking. “I admit, I like to snoop. Maybe the sketches were kept back here.”
“You’re almost there,” came a voice from behind us.
Millie’s gasp sounded like the suction of a vacuum cleaner. I wasn’t frightened, just a little embarrassed that we were—as Millie had put it—snooping. I turned, expecting a guard, but the speaker wore an amused smile. His mild, cultured voice was anything but intimidating. “May I assume you ladies are not reporters?”
“We are not reporters,” Millie said, jerking her shoulders back. “And we’re not doing anything wrong. Just looking.That’s what a museum is for. Right?” I was amazed by her courage, though I shouldn’t have been. She was just as dauntless, I remembered, when she had stepped out of an alleyway at Les Baux.
The man’s smile lit up his entire face, making his blue eyes dazzle. He must have been impressed by Millie’s gumption, as well. She seemed to be processing something. Her brow furrowed; her eyes narrowed as she asked, “Have we met?”
His gaze took us both in. Through a wry smile, he said, “We have never been introduced. I would have remembered.”
I stepped up to him and extended my hand. “I’m Jordan Mayfair, and this is my friend, Millie O’Neill. Millie, meet Monsieur Broussard.”
Millie’s face turned bright crimson as she stammered apologies. Monsieur Broussard behaved like a true gentleman, treating our encounter with good humor, even planting a kiss upon Millie’s hand—and then upon mine.
“I have seen you at L’hôtel du Soleil,” he said to me, “but we were not introduced.”
“Yes. Last night,” I said.
He nodded. I wondered if he was trying to remember the details of the occasion, what he might have said to Bettina or to Gerard Llorca that I might’ve overheard.
He turned to Millie. “And are you staying at L’hôtel du Soleil, as well?”
“Yes,” she said in a small voice that didn’t fit her at all.
“And you are traveling together, in Fontvieille on holiday?” Monsieur Broussard asked, looking from me to Millie and back again. I explained that I was traveling with my uncle, who was working on a book, and Millie was on a tour. Millie, so talkative under other circumstances, added not a word to my explanation.
Monsieur Broussard studied us, a hint of a smile on his lips, and then, apparently deciding that we were harmless, he made a little sweeping motion with his hand, indicating the hall before us. “Please,” he said. “This way.” Millie and I exchanged glances, indicating our agreement. We accompanied the patron down the narrow hall. Another turn, and we passed a uniformed guard who regarded our host with a respectful nod. Walking beside Monsieur Broussard, I was conscious of his importance. It was impossible not to think about it. Tall and broad-shouldered, he walked with a proud gait. He wore fine clothing, white shirt open at the collar, black trousers, and shoes that no doubt were Italian-made. He stopped at one of the doors, on which a sign proclaimed: Entrée Interdite Aux Visiteurs. As he drew out a key ring from his pocket, I saw that his hands were strong, his fingers slim, his nails perfectly manicured. Monsieur Broussard was the portrait of culture and taste, and he radiated vitality as he said once again, with mock severity, “You are certain you are not members of the press.”
Millie found her voice. “Promise!” she chirped, like a Girl Scout.
Swinging the door back on what appeared to be a large storage room, Monsieur Broussard declared, “You see here the archives.” The guard had dropped back and was watching us through beady eyes. I think he was wondering if he should say something, should the patron allow us to enter. But it didn’t come to that. “Unfortunately,” the patron said, “I cannot allow you to go inside, but you wanted to see the scene of the crime— the crimes— so voilà.”
The room was about the size of a two-car garage, with bars on the high windows that made a stripe on the exterior wall. Besides a rickety-looking table and two sets of flat files, much like the ones I had at home for storing architectural drawings, there were other random pieces of furniture and frames, canvases propped against the wall. On the table were stacks of papers, piled high. My immediate thought was, How would anyone know if something were missing?
“Where were the sketches?” Millie asked.
I caught my breath, astonished that Millie was so blunt. But her face was the picture of innocence. She surely didn’t realize how inappropriate her question was—not until her eyes met mine. She opened her mouth; her lips rounded as if to say “Oh!”, but nothing came out.
The patron pulled the door closed and locked it. Maybe his intention all along was just to give us a thirty-second glimpse. He didn’t indicate that he was annoyed by Millie’s question. His expression was slightly amused until he said, “I will tell you this, ladies. The Van Gogh sketches that I saw in Paris came from the files in that room, and the sketch book, as well.”
The flat files. I knew how drawings were laid out in those files. Perfect for sketches.
I said, “No other entrance to the archives, I presume.”
“Only this door.”
“I saw another door,” I said. “Was that a closet?” Realizing I was sounding like Millie, I hurried to add, “I
’m an architect. I notice all kinds of architectural features. But I apologize for our questions. We don’t mean to be rude.”
“Not at all,” he said. “The door you saw does open to a closet, where we store paintings that we will eventually hang in the gallery. We change them out periodically. Our visitors are not just tourists who come to the museum once in a lifetime. People who live in the region, admirers of art, visit the museum again and again, each time we have a new exhibition.”
“But the sketches have never been on display,” I said.
“That is correct. Monsieur Llorca has been considering an exhibition of the sketches for some time, but it has never happened.”
Monsieur Broussard turned to the guard, who had been standing against the opposite wall the whole time. Jiggling the door knob, the patron said something to the guard.
“Oui, Monsieur,” the guard said. He proceeded to check the door himself.
“He’s only doing his job,” said Monsieur Broussard, leading us back through the hall. “As you might imagine, the security firm is not in a good position, and if anything else were to hap-pen—well, you can understand.”
“Was a guard on duty at that door the night the sketch book was stolen?” I asked. Now Millie darted a frown my way. I returned a shrug. I just couldn’t help myself.
“Two guards made rounds of the building all night,” said Monsieur Broussard. He stopped precisely at the location where he’d surprised us earlier. With an affable smile, he said, “Are you ready to join your group?”
Millie was profuse with her thanks. I assured him we would join our group tout de suite.
“Until we meet again,” he said, with a small bow from the waist.
“Monsieur Broussard,” Millie said, “not that I’m ungrateful, but I have to ask: Weren’t you taking a big chance showing us the room?”
That wry little smile again. “You have honest faces.”
“We’ll leave you alone now, Monsieur Broussard,” I said.
“Paul. Please call me Paul,” he said.
I extracted a promise from Millie not to mention to Alex that we’d actually glimpsed the archives from which Van Gogh’s sketches were stolen. “Don’t even mention Monsieur Broussard,” I said.
“He told you to call him Paul,” she said with a smug smile.
“He told us,” I said.
“No, he told you.”
“The point is—don’t say anything to Alex. He’ll be annoyed with me for leaving the group anyway. If he finds out where we went, he’ll be—”
“Furious,” Millie said.
“Oh no, Alex is not like that, but he’ll be—”
“Envious.”
“That’s about right.”
But Alex was so enthralled by Gert’s tour, he hadn’t even missed me. “My only disappointment is that so much of the building was off-limits,” he said.
Millie returned to her group and headed to the Abbaye de Montmajour, a burial place for the counts of Provence in the 11th century. Alex and I drove into Fontvieille’s centre ville for lunch at one of the small cafés. I bought a few colorful ceramic cicadas to take back to Savannah. Alex was in a hurry to return to the hotel. “I’ve seen and heard so much, I have to get it on paper before I lose it,” he said, touching his head. “So much splendid material for my book.”
I was delighted to have an afternoon at the pool, alternating laps in the bracing silver water and sunbathing in the warm, exquisite light that I knew would fill my mind whenever I thought of Provence. Exhilarating—and therapeutic. A couple of hours later, when I pulled myself out of the pool, my body felt like jelly. I stretched out on a lounge chair, entertaining just one thought: Nearly a week of our trip was over. Then, in a rare moment, I closed my eyes on a blank screen. No worries. Absolute relaxation. Sweet oblivion.
“It’s very nice out here, isn’t it?” came a voice above me.
I opened my eyes, shielding them from the light, and looked up at Paul Broussard.
“Did I wake you? Please accept my apologies.” He placed his palm on his heart—what an endearing gesture.
“Oh, you didn’t wake me.” It was just a very little white lie. I adjusted my lounge chair to a sitting position. “Yes, it’s lovely out here.”
He looked over the rims of his sunglasses and indicated a chair beside me. “May I?”
“Please.” I would have reached for my towel, tossed on top of my tote bag, but leaning over would have provided an unobstructed view of my cleavage. I remained seated upright, my legs stretched out on the lounge chair. Glad I’d painted my toenails a lively pink. That brief glance over the top of his sunglasses helped ease my resentment about spending way too much in Paris on my black bathing suit.
Now I realized how it handicapped me not to see his eyes when he spoke. His expression was in his eyes, not in his exquisitely-cultured and perfectly-modulated voice. It occurred to me that I put too much expression in my voice, and he was surely aware that I was a little nervous. This was silly. I wasn’t a teenager with a crush. But I chattered on. I asked him to call me Jordan, since he’d asked me to call him Paul, and I thanked him again for showing Millie and me the archives at the museum.
“It was my pleasure. All in all, this recent trip to Fontvieille has not been a pleasurable one.” I said I could imagine. With an abrupt shift in his manner that seemed to indicate he didn’t want to talk about the museum, he said, “Actually, I returned to Paris earlier in the week for a business matter, and I had a glimpse of a beautiful woman with titian hair when I was dining at one of my favorite restaurants. It is possible you were in Paris on Tuesday?”
“Guy Savoy,” I said, without missing a beat.
“Exactly! I knew it. I thought so last night in the hotel lobby. The more I thought about it, the more certain I was that I had seen you before. I have a fondness for titian-haired women.”
“I recognized you, too,” I said. Coyness was never my strong suit.
His smile rewarded me for my candidness. “Now fate brings us together in Fontvieille,” he said, and then on a light note, “Tell me, Jordan, where is your home?”
I answered. I asked him if he’d been to the States.
“Yes, many times, but never to that region,” he said.
I gave my short spiel about Savannah, and in response to more questions, I told him about my profession and my five children. Unlike most people, he didn’t wince at the idea of five children. “And your husband?” he asked.
“My husband died when the children were young,” I said. He nodded, pursing his lips, as if to say that such things happened. He asked about my uncle and the book he was writing, drawing from the one line I had spoken at the museum about Alex and his book. I was flattered that he’d remembered—but maybe he was just a man with great powers of recall.
“Fascinating,” he said. “I would like to know more. Unfortunately, I must make some calls to the States.” He glanced at his watch, and I realized that the day was just starting on the east coast. It struck me that my family might like to hear from me, but that notion was interrupted by the question: “Would you have dinner with me tomorrow night?”
This, I hadn’t expected. Now as he removed his sunglasses and ran his hand along his damp brow, I realized he might have come out to the pool for that particular reason. Not to chat. Certainly not for the sun, dressed as I’d seen him at the Château.
Dinner with Monsieur Broussard, patron of the arts, from Paris. Then I remembered that of all my evenings in Provence, tomorrow was the one evening I had already arranged. I explained that my uncle and I had been invited to someone’s house outside of Aix. “I wish I could,” I added, but somehow it didn’t ring with the genuine disappointment I felt. Damn Felicity! I wanted to shout.
“I understand,” he said, in the voice of a man who was unaccustomed to being turned down for any reason.
He stood up and put his sunglasses back on. I was sure he was about to say goodbye.
I got to my feet, as
well. He offered his hand as I stood, and I took it. Strong fingers.
“Any other evening, I’d love to—Paul,” I said.
The warm smile returned. “Monday,” he said. “Six o’clock. I know another restaurant in Paris that I think you’ll enjoy. We’ll take my plane.”
CHAPTER 19
* * *
“A picnic,” said Felicity’s friend, Portia, as she led the way onto the stone terrace of her country home, south of Aix-en-Provence—Aix, pronounced like the letter X. “Just a picnic. It would be a shame not to eat out under the blue skies on an afternoon like this,” Portia continued in a deep, rich voice. One could imagine her role as a contralto on the opera stage.
Beyond us, located under the olive trees, a round table was covered with a white cloth and set with crystal, silver, and china, with a centerpiece of wildflowers.
“She’s so modest!” said Felicity. “They dine like royalty all the time, so they take it for granted. But isn’t this splendid? Isn’t this place absolutely gorgeous?”
How could I not agree? Alex agreed, too, adding his profuse thanks to Hunt and Portia Southwick for their hospitality.
“Maybe Alex will put you in his book,” Felicity gushed to the host and hostess.
Neither responded to the suggestion. “Oh, we enjoy entertaining, we really really do,” Hunt said. This came out as RIL-ly RIL-ly. He beamed at Alex and at me and back at Alex—a pleasant façade, but clearly only a façade.
Hunt was tall, trim, and tanned, with bushy, wavy blonde hair that bunched across a severely high forehead, but short on the sides and back. His black, tight jeans and white shirt with no collar and billowy sleeves made me think of a poet or a painter, but Felicity had introduced him as an investment banker. He might’ve been younger than Portia, or it might have been the contrast of his boyish looks with her matronly figure. Portia sported diamonds worth enough to feed a third-world country—rings, earrings, bracelets, and an exceptionally stunning diamond pendant, a single teardrop that might have tipped the scales at a pound. Not that whatever else she wore mattered, but she was dressed in pink designer jeans and a matching overblouse. She wore a pink headband, taming her short, fluffy, platinum blonde out-of-the-bottle hair, almost the same shade as Felicity’s.
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