Bennett Sisters Mysteries Box Set 2

by Lise McClendon

  Well, that wasn’t a very pretty dream. Maybe Pascal saw it that way, too, that was why he wasn’t interested in re-living the Revolution. To Merle it was turbulent but fascinating. But very distant.

  The bell on the lobby door jingled. The sound of footsteps came through the adjoining doorway. Merle saw a woman and a young boy. The woman was blond and pretty, around forty, and the boy with her looked about nine or ten. He had his hands stuffed into his pockets and sulked, his eyes flicking around the hotel lobby.

  The woman walked to the reception desk on high heels. She wore a beige trench coat, unnecessary on such a warm day, with a colorful scarf. Her hair was twisted up on her head. The boy wore baggy shorts, a soccer shirt, and worn athletic shoes. She rang the bell and tapped her nails on the desk impatiently. The boy said something to her and she shook her head, mouth in an unpleasant line.

  The boy wandered into the reading room. He paused, seeing Merle there, then flopped on a sofa with a bored expression. In the lobby, the woman now was punching her mobile phone.

  “Oui? Je suis ici.” She had told someone she was here. Merle’s senses tingled. She checked her watch. It was nearly six o’clock. Was this the ex?

  It took Pascal a few minutes to appear at the door leading to the stairway. He opened it cautiously, spotting the woman as she turned to him.

  “Bonjour, Pascal,” she said in a sing-song voice. He nodded to her and stopped in the middle of the lobby to extract his wallet from his back pocket.

  “I can give you two-hundred euros. I’m sorry, that’s all I have,” he said in French.

  The woman, who Merle knew was called Clarisse, stared at him. She said something in a low, hissing voice, very rapid.

  “That’s it,” Pascal said, holding out the cash.

  She erupted with what sounded like insults, spinning toward the parlor. She paid no attention to Merle but stomped in, looking for the boy. “Come here,” she said to him sharply. “Hurry. Vite.”

  The boy dragged his feet across the carpet. Clarisse spun him toward Pascal. “Here,” she said. “This is why I need money for a new apartment. Here is your son.”

  The look on Pascal’s face was stunned disbelief. Then he blinked, staring at the boy. Merle looked away, embarrassed to be here in this very personal moment. The naked emotion on Pascal’s face was so intimate. Did he know he had a son? Had Clarisse kept the son a secret? The questions roiled through her mind.

  She glanced back. Pascal had bent down toward the boy. “What is your name?”

  Clarisse was squeezing the boy’s shoulders. It looked painful with her long fingernails. The boy paused then cleared his throat. “Didier, monsieur.”

  Pascal glanced up at Clarisse. “Didier?”

  “I named him after your dear father.”

  Pascal looked rattled now, wiping a hand across his eyes. “And what is your father’s name, Didier?”

  Again, the boy paused and when he spoke his voice was barely audible. “I don’t know my father. He left before I was born.”

  Now Pascal’s face reddened with anger. A muscle in his jaw twitched. “And I suppose you are going to say you are ten years old?” He stared at Clarisse. The boy said yes. “And you waited ten years to tell me I have a son? Do you take me for a fool?”

  He pounded a fist into the door frame, rattling the room. Clarisse jumped back a step, losing her grip on the boy.

  “You expect me to believe this charade, Clarisse? Suddenly I have a son? When I haven’t seen you in ten years? This boy isn’t mine any more than you are. Get out of here.”

  “But the money,” she whined.

  “Find some other—“ He used a word Merle didn’t know. She imagined it was a word for ‘sucker.’ They didn’t move. The boy looked up at Clarisse, his eyes filling. Had she told him Pascal was his father? That they would be a happy family? Was this all an act? Merle felt sorry for the kid either way.

  “Sors d’ici! Get out of here!” Pascal shouted. He pointed at the door. The boy bolted through the lobby and out onto the sidewalk. Merle watched him slow to a walk with his head down. Then he looked up, smiling at the sky. He pulled some coins from his shorts, counting them, and dropped them back in his pocket.

  Clarisse gave Pascal a few well-chosen words and lifted her chin, marching out. The clicking of her heels on the tile floor faded as the bell on the door chimed. She looked back at Pascal through the window, hatred in her eyes. On the sidewalk, she looked up and down the street for the boy, calling his name. He had vanished from Merle’s view. Clarisse called out for him to wait before running down the block.

  Merle stood up behind the velvet chair, holding its back. Pascal had his forehead against the door frame now, fists clenched at his side. He glanced at her and stood up straight.

  “So that’s Clarisse,” she said.

  “All the crazy parts of her.”

  “How long were you married?” Merle asked. She didn’t really care. But maybe he needed to talk about it finally.

  “Two years. Not long, but long enough. Truthfully I would have paid that piano teacher to take her away by then.”

  She wondered if he wasn’t just saying that to cover his broken heart. But it didn’t matter now. “So, she’s a gold-digger?” He frowned, not understanding. “Someone who uses people to get money?”

  “She wasn’t always that way.” He glanced out the window where she’d disappeared. “I looked her up this afternoon, her address, her record. She hasn’t lived with Yves for years. She’s lived in six different apartments and owes money all over the city, for rent, meals, all sorts of things.”

  “How does she support herself?”

  He sighed. “It’s a mystery.”

  “I saw the boy examining some coins from his pocket. In a happy way.”

  He grimaced. There was pain in his voice. “We tried to have children. She has forgotten that she told me she was unable to bear a child. I didn’t believe her. I thought she was secretly taking the pills, you know? That would be like her, to lie about something like that. She wasn’t though, the doctor told me. And now she expects me to forget that, to think that I have a son she conveniently forgot to tell me about.”

  “How could she? That is too cruel.”

  Pascal stepped over to her then, and put his arms around her, pressed his cheek against her hair. “That, chérie, is Clarisse.”

  The next day Merle had arranged to spend several hours at the American University in their library. Pascal had been sullen at dinner the night before, his mind obviously still on his ex-wife. He drank more wine than usual. He was sweet with Merle as always, but preoccupied. There wasn’t much she could do about his mood. She decided to carry on with her research plan and left him to go into his headquarters at Police nationale and do whatever cops did in the office.

  Their last night in Paris was better. Merle was on a little high from finding so much good information about France in the late 1700s, about the Revolution and the social changes, translated into English. Plus, she had written six pages in her notebook on the next part of Odette and the Great Fear. She felt the French air on her face, the delicious food on her tongue. The restlessness and anxiety that formed her American self was falling away the way it had two years before. She was slowing down, enjoying little things, the way the sunlight glanced off the rooftops, the pots of red geraniums on every balcony, the colored sails of the boats on the ponds all over the city, the flap of the tri-color flag.

  At dinner that night she confessed to Pascal that she considered France a drug. That it cured people of their illnesses, erased the worst of the modern age, the crass commercialism, the puritanical outrage, the hyper-religiosity, the need to constantly judge other people. Pascal was drinking a soft Cotes-du-Rhône as he listened. He stared at her for a second when she stopped then burst out laughing.

  “Blackbird, tu es très touchante. You are so earnest, is that the word? But you don’t mean that.”

  “Yes, I do. There is a definite therapeutic
benefit from just being in France.”

  He eyed her, smirking. “It cures you? You are changed? Through the air?”

  “Absolutely. It cleanses you of the ills of modern life. Opens your senses.”

  He eyed the wine label. “How much of this have you drunk?”

  “Not as much as you! You don’t see it, because you’re French. You don’t understand how the culture and society and the way the French live is a balm for the soul.”

  “We made it that way on purpose. It didn’t just happen.”

  “So you agree! France is a drug.”

  “I think you may have overdosed already. And you are here until Christmas.” He patted her hand. “I will try to keep you anxious and busy. Working on your endless lists. No sitting around watching the people all afternoon, full of the bliss.”

  “Why not? I would love to do that. I adore bliss.” As soon as she said it Merle realized she would be bored to tears, sitting in a sidewalk café for hours on end, doing nothing.

  “Only people without jobs do that, blackbird. College students or old drunken men or the chronic lazy. Or people who work in clubs.”

  Visions of purple strobe lights popped into her head. Possibly she had drunk too much. “Should I get a job in a nightclub? That sounds like fun. Is it very French?”

  “No, blackbird. It is very American. Rock and roll, what you call it? Techno. Rappers. All your exports. You like hip-hop?”

  Merle frowned. “You’re killing my buzz.”

  He looked at her from under his thick eyebrows. “France is not a drug, ma chérie. The people who think France is a gastronomic Disneyland full of sunflowers, they are the ones who will take us back to the past, to an age that never happened except in their minds.”

  “Back to Madame Guillotine?”

  “And worse.”

  She fingered her wine glass, wishing he would pour her a little more but worried he thought she drank too much. Was she drunk? Was she being an idiot? Did she say France was perfect? No. Just a lot more livable than most places. It suited her. Was that a crime? Did it make her anti-American? No. She would always love America. Right now though, she needed a hit of la belle France in all its life-changing glory.

  As they enjoyed dessert, an éclair with a heavenly filling, a thought pushed in from the edges of her mind. Maybe Pascal was right, in a way. Not that France wasn’t a gastronomic Disneyland full of sunflowers, because, seriously, it was. Every tourist knew that.

  But maybe she wasn’t worthy of it.

  Maybe she didn’t deserve her French dream. Maybe it wasn’t hers.

  France was Harry’s legacy, his birthright. Her husband who died after marching up seven flights of stairs on four shots of morning espresso, Harry who had betrayed her yet loved her, Harry who she had not loved enough: France was his. He could have returned in his old age, retired in his quiet village, enjoyed his dark, little cottage as his birthright. She could see him, waddling around with his pot belly proud, tipping his hat to the old ladies. But it was all taken from him.

  Was she unconsciously living out Harry’s dream? It seemed like her own adventure, her own dream, but maybe it wasn’t. Maybe she had just co-opted her late husband’s life in some twisted sort of revenge for his cheating.

  But, honestly, she didn’t care about the cheating any more. Yes, he had done it, yes, he had a child with another woman. You can’t hate someone who is dead. They’ve paid their price. It would always nag a little, the jealousy. But she didn’t blame the child. It was done. Over.

  Pascal was looking pensive too. Maybe thinking about that boy that his ex-wife claimed was his. He was an adorable child when he wasn’t scowling. He didn’t look anything like Pascal with those blond curls though. Pascal always wanted a child, he’d told Merle. He loved Tristan like a son. What was he thinking now? That he wished she was young enough to give him a child? A deep ache in her belly reminded her that was impossible, even if she was younger. With Tristan she was one and done.

  Did Pascal even want a child? They’d never discussed it. He didn’t believe in marriage any more, he’d made that clear. Why beat yourself up, Merle? What they had was what they had. And it was plenty.

  She knew she was being silly and a little ridiculous about France being a drug. She felt silly and playful, and very happy tonight. Who wouldn’t, having a mouth-watering meal in Paris with a handsome Frenchman? Of course, France didn’t cure what ailed you, unless what ailed you was a pasty complexion and a hankering for goose liver.

  Still, ridiculously, she clung to her hope that being in France would transform her into the person she wanted to be. She didn’t believe in magic. But change, that was possible, wasn’t it? She so wanted to be someone besides one of five lawyer sisters. Someone who was buttoned up and rigid. Someone who made lists obsessively. She wanted to be calm, and herself, individually— not one of five. To be creative, free, not caring what others thought. France must be able to help with that.

  Her sister Annie claimed that turning fifty was a watershed, the beginning of the ‘Fuck you Fifties’ when you stopped caring what people said or thought about you. When social judgment rolled off your back like a tattered garment you no longer needed. When you were truly free.

  But Merle had turned 51 already and she still had all these anxieties about how well she was doing at work, how well her child was doing at school, how other lawyers viewed her, what her neighbors thought, how her sisters viewed her— how everyone viewed and judged her. She still cared what her people were thinking.

  “Yoo-hoo. What are you thinking about, blackbird?” Pascal asked, tapping her hand on the tablecloth. “You look so serious.”

  France and me, she almost said. France and me and you.

  Odette and the Great Fear

  part two

  The goat sheds smelled a little too rank for a girl from Paris. They were clean enough, they had to be for the milking, but still there were many smelly animals in close proximity.

  Odette was learning to milk the goats, an intense, near-constant activity on the farm. The ones she took out to pasture in the hills were the young kids and males. They didn’t have an immediate function to the farmer, Odette’s employer, the Daguerre family. She was entrusted with their safety. That had gone fairly well, except for rainstorms and getting lost once or twice.

  She hadn’t told the Daguerre’s that she’d met Le Comte. The Count was the man who opened the door behind her at the chateau, as she cowered there during the strange icy rain. The man with the scary face. He was tall and broad-shouldered but stooped a little like the weight of the world sat on his shoulders. He might have been handsome once but now he had a horrible scar from the fighting, he said. A duel with another noble over some perceived slight.

  She must have been staring at it. She couldn’t help it, it was a long, angry scar that went from his lower eyelid to his chin. He seemed self-conscious about it, turning away from her eyes. He wasn’t particularly friendly but he did talk to her for a moment before sending her back outside in the rain.

  The only person she’d told about meeting le comte was Margot, who ran the milking shed. A pleasant, smiling girl who taught Odette everything there was to know on the farm, Margot had promised to keep her secret. Everyone would want to know that le comte was back from Paris. It wasn’t common knowledge but if they found out Odette had met him she would be deluged with gossips. He was an important man, but hated by some. Odette didn’t mention the scar; Margot didn’t have time for gossip. She needed Odette to learn milking fast because they’d lost another farm worker. He had run off to Spain where he heard things were better. Where he’d got that information was unknown.

  Odette gripped the teats of the goat as she’d been taught. The animal twitched and attempted to get away but she was tethered well. Odette patted her neck and spoke soothingly, the way Margot had taught her. A calm goat is a good producer, she said. Soon Odette was expressing milk into the pail. The rhythmic sound of the liquid hitting the metal
was very satisfying. She forgot about the heavy odor of the animals completely.

  Late that night she stepped out of the kitchen to check on her herd. Just because she was milking in the morning and evening didn’t mean she could neglect her regular responsibilities. She was tired but it was good to be helpful and she didn’t mind the hard work. A ten-year-old boy could tend the goat herd but there wasn’t one available. So many men had been conscripted into the Army or gone to fight with the partisans. Or run off to Spain.

  She walked past the milking shed and the grain store. The summer crops had been a disappointment. At least no nobles had come to confiscate their wheat— yet. There were tales circulating of heavy-handed tax collectors and hated elites who either burned the wheat stores to the ground or confiscated it. Did le comte do horrible things like that? She had no one to ask. The harvest here wouldn’t go to market. There wasn’t enough. They would grind it and make bread for the farm. Odette wished she worked in the kitchen sometimes. She adored making bread with her mother as a child, the texture and sweetness of the dough.

  She reached the gate that led to the pastures. The light was fading and she could only make out a group of six goats in a nearby field. She kept walking, making the little clicking sound that sometimes made them come to her. More often they ignored it but it was worth a try.

  Odette hadn’t heard from her parents in over a year. They were in Normandy then but said they would soon move on as there was no work. They didn’t know where she was either. She’d had nowhere to write to them. It was very sad. She’d had one letter from her younger brother who was attending classes in Lyon. Somehow, during all the turmoil, the university kept its doors open and its students fed. It was a blessing. Her brother was so smart. Odette’s heart swelled, thinking of him as a scholar and a thinker. He would be a great man one day. When all this was done, she hoped to go to Lyon. She wanted to see him in action.