by J. A. Kerley
Danbury took Mimi’s hand, held it. A shudder went through her body, passed into the ground at her feet like electricity. She took a deep breath.
“One day after work I walked into a café. Marsden was there. I knew who he was, of course. He knew me only as a lowly clerk, wandering the halls with papers and files and mail. Yet he waved those around him into silence, and walked - no, glided - across the floor to me. His smile was a beacon, his eyes blue as the Mediterranean. He took my hand in his, said, ‘Mimi Badentier, it is so nice to see you out on this beautiful evening. Please join us.’ I was amazed he knew my name.”
“He stole your heart,” Danbury said.
“For several months I was one of them. Not openly; I didn’t want to incur the laughter of others or the irritation of Henri, who considered Marsden a scandalous poseur. I met them outside Paris, in the countryside. Or at the parties in the garrets and basements. There was talk of art and music and…the physical pleasures.”
“Was there talk of death?” I asked.
“Marsden loved to speak of it. The Holy Moment, he called death. Or the ‘sugared edge of the razor’. He loved to invent phrases like that. But it was all just talk until…”
Another tremor passed through her. Danbury clasped the woman’s hand tighter. Mimi whispered, “Until she came.”
“She?”
Anger cut through the pain in Mimi’s eyes. “La femme de l’Enfer. The woman from Hell. She wasn’t a student, but we’d seen her before. She was attractive, aloof, always at the edge of our conversations, always listening, ears keen as a bat. I caught Marsden’s glances at her. She always looked away, as if he was too insignificant for her eyes.”
“Sounds like a tease to me,” Danbury said.
“Several of us went to a bistro. It was late, but time meant nothing to Marsden. She was there. But different; she had colored her hair as red as fire, and wore a black dress. Someone whispered her dress was so tight you could count the hairs on her sex. Her lips were rouged dark, like a mix of blood and soot. When she walked, it was like an eel, everything flowing. I’d never seen anyone move like that. Her shoes were spiked like icepicks.
“She sat two tables away drinking something with fruit. She sucked the cherries, ran her tongue around slices of lime. Marsden was hypnotized. The talk at our table grew strident as we tried to distract Marsden from the woman. But he saw only her.”
“Did she come over to your group?” Danbury asked, transfixed by the image.
“No, that’s not how it worked,” I said, seeing the moment full in my mind. “The woman didn’t go to Marsden, did she, Mimi? She made Marsden come to her.”
Mimi stared in amazement, as though I’d performed a psychic feat. Her voice went low.
“The woman crooked her finger and Marsden ran to her table like a dog in heat. They talked in candlelight and shadows. I watched her fill her mouth with ice, take his ear in her teeth, bite hard. His eyes glittered like stars. She led him out the door and we didn’t see him for a week. He returned exhausted, as if he’d run around the world.”
“After that?” I asked.
Mimi shook her head. “It was never the same. All his energies focused on her. His finest words went into her ears, his passionate glances were hers alone. Most left. The few who stayed were too needing of anything he could give them to leave. The separation would have been unbearable.”
“Did you stay?” I asked.
Her eyes flashed. “You’re strong by yourself. I feel strength pouring off both of you. I’m weak; I needed him like a drug; anything he could give.” She lowered her head. “But they disappeared, Marsden and her and the rest of them. To America. It was the land of excess, the perfect place for them.”
“This woman,” I said. “What was her name?”
Mimi closed her eyes. Her lips pursed as if to spit. “The woman had no regular name. All anyone ever called her was Calypso.”
Calypso.
I heard my heart pounding in my ears. If she’d called herself Calypso before coming to the US, it suggested Hexcamp might not have created the naming system. At first I’d thought the naming an affectation, artsy-cutesy. But it further removed the acolytes from their former lives, making them more dependent on Hexcamp. It also provided anonymity within the group once it fired up in the United States, making it difficult to penetrate.
It had proven to be a very effective system.
“Did you know a young woman named Marie?” I asked.
Mimi’s eyes widened. “Marie Gilbeaux. Of course. Sweet little Marie. We sometimes called her Ma-riche because she received a parental stipend, a large one. She was generous with it. All she had to do to keep the money flowing was never go home. She joked about it, but there was deep suffering beneath the laughter. It was her special pain, I suppose.”
I wanted to tell Mimi that Marie had spent over a quarter century in peace. But she would have asked where Marie was today, and I didn’t want to speak those words.
Perhaps sensing my thoughts, Danbury took a turn at the questions.
“Why did they all leave, Mimi? Marsden, Calypso, the group - you make it sound sudden.”
Marie looked away. “They beat a man to death.”
“Who?”
“I didn’t know him. A strange man with a garret in the neighborhood. It was rumored he created wild art, amazing. But he let no one near, a hermit in the center of Paris. He didn’t attend school, or join the café scene; all he did was work. Marsden had heard of the man, of his fantastic creations, and was always after the man to show him the work. Marsden was at his most charming, most deferential. One day the man took Marsden into his garret. When he returned he spoke to no one, and spent a week alone in the studio with Calypso.”
A long pause. Mimi Badentier’s hands started to shake. “Not long afterward I read the man had been found in his garret, robbed, beaten horribly. His studio had been savaged, his paintings set ablaze. He wasn’t expected to live.”
“You suspected it had been Marsden who attacked the artist?”
“The group. Some of them.”
“Why?” Danbury said.
“Perhaps the artist slighted Marsden in some way, insulted him. The man had poor manners. If he’d belittled Marsden, I can see how his anger might…” her voice trailed off into silence.
“What did you do?” Danbury coaxed.
“I became terrified the police would question Marsden and I’d be found out, my allegiance revealed. It would have angered Henri. I feigned illness and went home for two weeks. When I returned, the group had fled. I heard little more about the incident, and don’t think it was ever connected to the group.”
Was that their first taste of blood? I wondered. Finding they’d easily escaped detection in Paris, did they bring that mindset to America? Commence the bloody banquet across lower Alabama?
“Who followed Marsden, Mimi?” Danbury asked. “Who besides Calypso disappeared?”
Mme Badentier palmed tears from her cheeks. “A young Swiss girl, Heidi. A whiny young man named Ramone. I later saw him back in Paris. He’d been spurned by the group for turning to drugs, was a junkie when I saw him. I imagine he’s dead now. There was a woman called Julia. There was Bonita, a Spaniard, Terri, an American girl. And, of course, Marie Gilbeaux, who would have done anything for Marsden, even after he was entranced by Calypso. But they all would have.”
“That’s the group?” I asked. “The only ones?”
Mimi thought. “Oh, and a woman named Nancy, a French girl. She was strange, a hippie type - flowing hair, bells, beads. She had a pretty voice and sang a lot.” Mimi paused, said, “Oranges.”
“What?”
“Nancy was the first vegetarian I ever knew. Fruits and vegetables only. She loved oranges. Twice a day she ate an orange. It was like a ritual.”
“Will you excuse me while I make a phone call?” I stood, dizzied by the roaring in my ears.
Chapter 40
No one I needed was at the statio
n, so I left a brief message for Harry regarding the Orange Lady and her connection to Hexcamp. It wouldn’t be long until we’d return to Mobile, but the info would give Harry time to pass the word to Roy Trent, maybe get the action moving in a more productive direction.
Neither Danbury nor I felt up to a large dinner, so we dined modestly but well at a quiet hole-in-the-wall restaurant. We felt overdosed on information and drama, content to let it ferment in our heads while enjoying the remaining few hours in Paris. Danbury translated signs in windows, snippets of overheard conversation. We dropped our remaining euros in the hats and instrument cases of street performers. After a few blocks the crowd thinned and we found ourselves on a lamp-lit street bordered by three- and four-story stone buildings. Night slipped from twilight into dark, and light brightened in the windows of pawn shops and piano stores, bakeries and florists.
Danbury stopped short, grabbed my wrist.
“Look up there -” She pointed to a line of large windows on the second story of a brick building across the street. The windows were curtained with a silky, diaphanous material, shadows flowing over the fabric. Music drifted to us, rich and symphonic.
“Spooky,” I said.
Danbury took my hand. “Let’s check it out.”
“We’ve got other things to -”
But I was under her control now, tugged across the street, dodging cars, taxis, a man on a bicycle. “There,” she said, pointing to a sign above the door, L’ACADÉMIE DE DANSE CLASSIQUE. “It’s a dance academy. Classical.”
“I got that impression.”
She pulled me toward a flight of stairs. Music poured down them like water in waltz time. “Come on, pogie. You’re balking.”
“Danbury? Have you gone -”
She had one hand on my sleeve, the other on the banister as we ascended the marble steps. There was a door at the top and she pushed it open.
Dancers. Perhaps two dozen couples. Most seemed in their sixties and seventies, the men in suits, the women in flowing dresses. They stepped and spun and dipped, amazingly adept. The room was high-ceilinged, the floor white, the walls red with triangles of light shot upward from brass sconces. The dancers were followed by shadows.
“It’s like a movie. It isn’t real,” Danbury whispered.
I looked to the side of the room. Behind an ornate wooden bar a mustachioed man in a black suit poured glasses of champagne. He was talking to a handsome woman in a black velvet gown, her dark hair in an elegant bouffant. She looked beautiful and mysterious and every inch a painting by John Singer Sargent. The woman’s eyes found us, and she brightened, moving our way with athletic grace belying perhaps seventy years of age. She offered her hand and her smile. I greeted her in English, and she responded in kind.
“I am Serena Chardin. Have you come to dance? Please tell me yes.”
Danbury said, “You all dance so beautifully. This is a school?”
Mme Chardin laughed, a lovely sound. “We usually teach dance, many of us. From across Paris, beyond. Tonight is not for students, it is - what would you say? - for social. It is our turn to dance.”
Danbury explained our presence. Serena Chardin nodded. “Goodness, all that way for so little time in Paris. And work besides. You must stay and dance. And, of course, share some champagne.”
“I, uh -”
Mme Chardin was summoned from across the room by a dapper old gent beside a phonograph. He seemed to wish to consult on selections. She excused herself and glided away.
Danbury said, “Want to give a quick twirl around the floor? Having been invited, it’s the diplomatic thing to do.”
I said, “I can’t dance a lick. Who our age can dance like that anyway?”
“I can. Can you believe it?”
“Your grandmother again?”
“Grand-mère thought the waltz de rigueur for all young ladies of breeding. I had no one to dance with. In my neighborhood clogging was all the rage. Grand-mère believed clogging more seizure than dancing.”
I felt my face redden with embarrassment. “I don’t know the slightest thing about dancing of any kind.”
“Then you’ll have to let me lead. Can you handle that, mon pogibeau?” There was a shadow of challenge in her voice.
“I’ll manage.”
Mme Chardin made a proclamation and music commenced. The recording was on vinyl, and opened with hisses and crackles. Violins swept into the room, followed by woodwinds. The dancers around us found partners, began to move. Danbury took my hands, guiding them gently.
“This hand holds my hand, this hand goes right here.”
I did as instructed; she was warm both places. “Ready?” Danbury said. “Un, deux, trois?”
I started haltingly, stumbling, mismatched to her rhythm and motion. My knees knocked hers, my feet kicked her toes. She held me tighter, whispered, relax…un deux trois. I searched for her rhythm and released my body to it, un, deux, trois, my feet finding the shape of the dance. At first she used her hands and hips to show me the way, and then all she needed was her eyes. We spun, sashayed, dipped; our moves rudimentary, but fluid. We broke for champagne, returned to the floor.
Somewhere in all the un deux trois, an hour disappeared.
At ten p.m., the music stopped. Everyone applauded. Participants bade us farewell and drifted out the door. Mme Chardin appeared and patted our hands between hers. “You are such a handsome couple, so beautiful in one another’s arms. Will you return?”
“Whenever I dream,” Danbury said.
The night was soft as we walked to our hotel through cones of streetlight. We passed a wine shop. I reached out and took DeeDee Danbury’s hand, my turn to lead. “I owe you a bottle of wine,” I said. “Would you prefer red or white?”
“Silly you,” she said. “It’s a night for champagne.”
Chapter 41
Danbury snapped the airphone back in the holder. “I can’t figure out where Borg is. This is the first time in two years I haven’t been able to track him down.”
“What do you need him for?”
“He could videotape us coming off the plane, walking through the terminal. If this project comes together, it’ll be a nice shot: intrepid PSIT hotshot Carson Ryder returns to Mobile with fresh evidence, assisted by his trusted sidekick, la femme Danielle.”
“Two minutes after the chief saw that, I’d be washing cruisers.”
“Not if the story has a happy ending, pogie. Hey, can I call you Carson now and then? I remember calling it out a time or two last night.” She smiled. “You didn’t seem to mind.”
I tried to smile back, but it curdled and I looked away. Her fingers touched my arm, slid to my hand.
I eased it away. “I’ve got to call Harry.”
She studied my eyes, then sat back as I made the call, hearing otherworldly sounds as the signal bounced off satellites or the moon or whatever. “Hey, bro,” I said above the twitters and boinks. “It’s your long-lost partner. The Orange Lady, Nancy, what’d you find out?”
“Nancy Chastain. She was with them, Cars. Hexcamp’s crew. Didn’t draw any incarceration, probably because she was such a sad case, and never directly participated in the killings. Later she became more disassociative. But a gentle kind of crazy; lived in the home, fed the neighborhood cats, made her citrus runs. Harmless.”
“And she’s killed Monday, one to two days after Marie Gilbeaux. Was there any art in Nancy’s life?”
“None found; we’re still looking. Anything else?”
“Lots to tell, Harry, but nothing pressing. You gonna pick us up at the airport?”
“Lawdy yessir, massa Ryder. I’se living for it.” He paused. “Cars?”
“What, bro?”
“You and Danbury work out fine together?”
I started to answer, but something jammed in my throat. “I can’t hear you, Harry,” I rasped. “We’re going through sunspots or something.” I jammed the device back in the holder.
The attendant wheeled the cart d
own the aisle. I got a ginger ale, Danbury a coffee. She blew across its surface, turned to me.
“Are you OK about last night, Carson? You seem different this morning. Like you’ve got a touch of the regrets.” She paused. “Oh my gosh…are you seeing someone? Is that it? Jeez, we should have talked about that beforehand, not that there was much time. Are you involved?”
I looked out the window. The clouds were bursts of white above a sea like blue mercury. “No. That is, I was. I don’t know.”
“A relationship in transition.”
“That’s a good way to put it.”
“Transition up or down?” She did the Roman emperor thumb, skyward, floorward.
“I don’t have a clue.”
“Which way do you want it to go?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Where does she want it to go?”
“I can’t tell.”
“How about this one, Carson: Do you know her name?”
I couldn’t help it; I laughed, full and open. The sound rushed through me, like the first breath after a long underwater swim. It occurred to me that last night had felt pretty much the same.
Her finger touched my chin, angled my face to hers. “We made love, Carson. In the City of Light. I think if you get a chance to have an intimate experience with a person you trust, go for it. That kind of trust is rare, at least in my experience, and to be savored. I thought last night was beautiful all the way through morning.” She thought a moment. “And comfortable, too. Like we were still dancing.”
I glanced around; all of our neighbors were either sleeping or watching a movie which, without sound, seemed a series of car chases interrupted by shootings. “Last night was very…I thought it was…I mean…” I stopped babbling, looked at my hands. “I’m not thinking very well here.”
“Things sometimes need time to sort themselves out,” she said.
I nodded. “I guess so.”
“One final question, Carson, then I’ll clam up.” She leaned close. Perfume flooded my senses, her breath hot against my ear. “I’m going down memory lane here; last night, après la danse. Our moments of trust. Do you think that sort of thing should happen again?”
