Flower of Heaven

by Julien Ayotte

  Kaleel spotted Father Dick sitting in the lounge and immediately approached him with his instructions. Once Father Dick answered Kaleel’s inquiry correctly, he was led to the elevators.

  Father Dick accompanied Kaleel to the suite and, following a thorough frisking by the Boston police assigned to protect the royal family, was escorted into a huge parlor area where Father Dick was seated while the queen was informed of his arrival. Father Dick was again extremely nervous and no sooner than the servant had left the room, there appeared before him a beautiful woman garbed in fine silk robes and jewels, her head covered with a sheer veil and her blue eyes shining through like the radiance of the sky.

  “May I present Queen Farah of Khatamori,” bellowed Kaleel.

  He jumped to his feet, his heart pounding just as it once did those many years ago when he first met her. He froze and did not know what to do.

  “Hello, Richard, it is so nice to see you again after all these years.”

  “Hello, Françoise, I mean, Your Majesty. I am not certain that I would have known you.”

  “You will leave us now, Kaleel, and take the other servants with you. I will call you if I need you.” Françoise asked Father Dick to sit and she sat on a sofa facing him.

  “You are well, Richard?” Françoise inquired.

  “As well as I could be under the circumstances, may I call you Françoise?” asked Father Dick.

  “But of course, Richard, Ahmad still calls me Françoise and I only use the royal name of Queen Farah when I appear with Ahmad in public.”

  “It’s not every day that a priest finds out he is the father of two sons after thirty-five years. This really came as a shock to me, and, at first, I wasn’t going to do anything about it and thought about throwing your letter away. But then, how could I? After all, they are or were as much my sons as they were yours. I don’t know that I would have done to them what you did, but I am not the one to judge. I only wish I had known sooner, although I don’t know what I would have done different, maybe nothing at all. We were both so young.”

  “Richard, for years after I married Ahmad and we could not have children of our own, I wanted to tell him what had happened before I met him. But as each year passed, so did my willingness to do so. I do not know how he will react to this when I tell him tonight. He may die tomorrow, and I could not bear to see him going on his final journey without knowing the truth.”

  “Charles is dead, Françoise, murdered three days ago in Dijon by an intruder. His full name was Charles Larouche, and he was a professor at the University of Bourgogne in Dijon. The police have no suspect at this time. I have a good friend who is in Louisville, Kentucky, today and has a good lead on Robert, our other son. Robert Elliott was adopted by an American couple when they lived in Paris. As soon as I have more news on Robert, I will let you know. I hope to hear more tonight.”

  “It is as I had feared,” exclaimed Françoise. “Answa is up to his deviousness and will stop at nothing to gain the throne if Ahmad dies. It is time to tell Ahmad everything. How will your contact in Louisville get a message to you, Richard?” queried Françoise.

  “I will call my housekeeper at St. Matthew’s and leave the number of the hotel with her as soon as I get a room.”

  “If you are unable to get a room, you can stay in one of our rooms on this floor. I am certain we can make that happen. I cannot believe that a moment of love between us has caused such pain.”

  After a few moments of silence between them, Father Dick excused himself and headed back to the lobby. He was a man totally dejected. Ten minutes later he phoned Françoise’s suite and left word he was in Room 911 and would be there all evening should the queen need to speak with him again that night.

  CHAPTER 18

  United Flight 88 landed at Standiford Field Airport in Louisville at 12:05 p.m. Jim had the written address of Carl Elliott from when he tried to telephone the Elliotts the previous night. He hailed a cab out front and twenty minutes later was outside 3265 Alta Vista Way. The cab pulled up to the curb outside the two-story Tudor style residence and Jim asked the driver to wait. He rang the front doorbell several times but no one answered. Jim crossed the lawn and spotted a neighbor in his garage fumbling with a rake and several leaf bags.

  “Excuse me, sir, can you tell me if the Elliotts next door are away?” Jim asked with an anxious tone in his voice.

  “Who wants to know?” retorted the cautious neighbor.

  Jim reached inside his coat pocket and pulled out one of his insurance business cards. “Carl Elliott is the beneficiary of an insurance policy taken out with my company and I can’t seem to reach him.”

  “Well, you came all the way from Rhode Island for nothing. Mr. Howard is it? The Elliotts are right next door to you in Massachusetts right about now. Every year they spend Thanksgiving with their son Bob in Medway. You know Bob Elliott, don’t you, the Red Sox player?”

  “Bob Elliott on the Red Sox is the son of Carl and Judy Elliott?” asked Jim in stunned disbelief.

  “Sure is, though I think his career might be coming to an end soon, with all those injuries he’s had in the last year. Who knows, he’s not getting any younger.”

  “Thanks, I appreciate the time,” Jim replied as he dashed back to the cab. “Back to the airport, and step on it, please.”

  It was only 2:00 p.m. when Jim reached the airport. He booked the next flight back to Providence—Delta 782 leaving Louisville at 3:10 p.m. and arriving in Providence at 6:05 p.m.—and headed for the nearest pay phone.

  “Betty, Jim here. Listen, I’m on the road now but need a favor. I don’t care how you do it, but I need an address in Medway, Massachusetts, for a Robert Elliott. The guy’s the same Bob Elliott who plays for the Red Sox, so it might not be listed in too many places. Even if you have to drive to Medway to get his address from some local, do it. I must have that address today. I’ll be in the office around six-thirty tonight. Please, Betty, this is very important, you might say even a life and death situation, and I’m not kidding you when I say that,” Jim said to his secretary.

  “I’ll get right on it, Mr. Howard. I’ll have that address on your desk one way or another.”

  “Thanks, and one last thing, get me the FBI’s telephone number in Providence.”

  Harry Esten was a member of the Bureau in Providence and an old military buddy from Vietnam who served in the same unit with Jack Bumpus. He had gone to the FBI training school in Maryland right after the military and had been an agent ever since. When he checked his office that afternoon, Harry read a pink telephone slip left on his chair: “Meet me at the Gaslight Restaurant tonight around seven o’clock. It’s urgent that I see you, Jim Howard.”

  “Oh, shit,” Harry said, “there go my plans for an early night. What the hell is so urgent that he needs to see me tonight? What could be so important that can’t wait ‘til tomorrow morning, or couldn’t he just call me, man, Thanksgiving is only a day away.”

  At 6:45 p.m., Jim arrived at his office in the Turks Head Tower. The night guard to the triangular twenty-story office building on the corner of Weybosset St. and Westminster St. recognized Jim and, after signing in at the guard station, Jim punched the fifteenth floor on the elevator. Hardly anyone would be in the office of Continental Life other than a few computer operators running off reports for use the next day. The note on his desk chair read: robert and Julie elliott, 77 Tiffany lane, Medway. Telephone is unlisted and no one in Medway knew it. If they did, they wouldn’t give it to me. There were no other elliotts even in the Medway phonebook. Happy Thanksgiving. Betty.

  Two streets over on Pine Street, Harry Esten ordered a Heineken at the Gaslight. The restaurant was small but well-decorated and a perfect place to meet someone for quiet conversation, good food, and excellent service. No sooner had Harry taken his first sip than Jim tapped him on the shoulder.

  “Thanks for meeting with me, Harry, I need your help and I need it big,” Jim announced with a somber look on his face. “I’m in
over my head on something and this may be an issue for the FBI or the CIA or somebody like that.”

  They had the waiter usher them to a table in the far corner of the restaurant where no one was seated within three or four tables from them. Jim ordered a Southern Comfort Manhattan and he began to relate the entire story to Harry.

  “Wow, Jim, how the hell did you get involved in all of this? I can see Major Bumpus getting into stuff like this, but you, no way.”

  “Who the hell do you think got me involved like this, Christ, Harry, Bumpus’ saving my ass in ‘Nam is coming back big time. I don’t think he knows anything about this unless somehow Father Merrill has told him and he didn’t mention it to me.”

  “Bob Elliott from the Red Sox is really the son of this Queen Farah or Françoise, the French girl that the priest gave his special blessing to all those years ago.”

  “It’s all true, Harry, the other kid getting murdered earlier this week in Dijon and some suspicious Arab guy in Paris asking for some address for the Elliott family.”

  “Well, Jimmy boy, this can’t wait too long. If we don’t find Bob Elliott first, we may end up with egg on our faces that involves international consequences, even though it doesn’t look that way at first glance.”

  Ahmad’s trusted servant knocked on Françoise’s bedroom door to announce that the king had just awoken and that the rest had been good for him. Françoise had been deep in thought over the last few hours on how she would break the news to him of her life before the Louvre. Ahmad had not met her parents until they attended the wedding ceremonies in Khatamori, but he had never engaged in any lengthy conversations with them. In the years following, both of Françoise’s parents had passed away, her father in 1981 and her mother two years later.

  She headed to Ahmad’s quarters where he was attended to by a full-time nurse provided by Mass. General as a precaution before the transplant operation. She asked the nurse if she could speak to her husband alone. The nurse agreed, but said it was imperative that Ahmad’s vital signs remain stable. Françoise said she understood and the nurse left the room.

  She immediately went to his bedside and caressed him and asked how he was feeling.

  “It would be nicer to be able to function normally at this time and, perhaps, tomorrow will be the beginning of a second life for us, Françoise. I would enjoy growing old with you.”

  “Tomorrow is a serious moment for you, my husband, and you know that the doctors are optimistic but cannot guarantee success in this operation. I do not know how I would live without you. You have been my life for all these years and we have always been honest with each other, something that has kept our marriage happy even though I could not give you children. I must finally tell you a story that you must hear, my dear Ahmad.”

  “What are you saying, Françoise?” queried Ahmad.

  “I am saying that your cousin Answa is making sure that if anything should happen to you, that the kingdom will be his to rule. You will understand what I am saying when you hear my story.”

  Françoise turned away from Ahmad, stared out the window at the Boston skyline, and began. “When I was a young girl, several years before I met you at the Louvre, I conducted tours of Paris by bus for Le Bourse. While on one of these tours, I met a young American who was vacationing in Paris. He was the first person I made love to, but you have been the only other man I have shared my bed with. We were both very young and only on the night before he was to return to America did he reveal to me that he was a Catholic priest. I was very upset at this but, in time, the pain in my heart went away. A few months after he left, I found out that I was carrying his child. I was ashamed and confused and never told my parents. I secretly arranged to bear the child with the help of my landlady, who happened to be the sister of Claude Gagnon, the director at the Louvre. When the time came, I had two sons, Ahmad, two boys. I could not care for them; I could hardly care for myself since I had not worked for months. So I gave up the boys to an orphanage in Giverny for adoption. Today, the boys would be thirty-five years old, Ahmad, and I have never seen them in all that time. The problems I had giving birth to two babies are why I could never have more children, children that should have been by our side today.”

  “The father of these boys, he knows of them?” asked Ahmad in a quiet tone.

  “Yes, I wrote to him a few weeks ago and asked him to help me find them. Our laws would allow them to succeed you in time, Ahmad, but I thought that no one else knew about them. The father’s name is Father Richard Merrill and he was here in this hotel today to give me news. One of the boys was murdered in Dijon three days ago and the other is here somewhere in the United States, perhaps Louisville, Kentucky. Everything points to Answa as being behind this, and he will stop at nothing to gain the throne from you. Father Merrill is doing all he can to find the other son, Robert Elliott.”

  “I know of the orphanage, Françoise, I have always known. When one of my advisors asked me if I was going to give money to the orphanage each year, since he handled the transfer for you, I asked him to go there the next time business took him to France. It was not my wish to force you to tell me of this place and why you were sending money there, but I became aware that the money was going to two families. I married you, Françoise, for who you are, not for what or who you were before. If Answa is doing this, I will find out and deal with him, if I live to return to Khatamori.”

  “Now, did your son from Dijon have a family? If so, we must see to their well-being.”

  “No, Ahmad, he was not married.”

  “And when will we hear of the other son, this Robert Elliott?”

  “Father Merrill said he would inform me as soon as he has news of him. He has taken a room here in the hotel.”

  “Perhaps at another time, I should like to meet this first love of yours.”

  Harry Esten picked up Jim Howard at his apartment on the east side of Providence at 8:00 a.m. on Wednesday and they headed for Medway via Route 495 to Route 126. Passing through the rural highway in Bellingham, there appeared to be a seamless connection between the two towns as they entered Medway, passing a restaurant, a colonial-styled bank, and several local stores. Harry pulled his car up to the curb on Main Street and he and Jim entered the Medway police station. Harry flashed his badge and asked to see the chief. Once formalities were addressed, Chief Oscar Anderson volunteered to escort the two of them to Tiffany Lane and the home of Bob Elliott.

  Julie opened the front door after two rings and was somewhat surprised to see Chief Anderson there.

  “Hello, Chief, Happy Thanksgiving. What brings you here this morning?” she asked.

  “Is Bob at home, Julie, these two gentlemen are with the FBI and need to ask him a few questions, nothing serious, but he may be of some help to them in a case they’re working on?”

  “He went down to the restaurant to go over some things with the staff. We expect a pretty good crowd for lunch and dinner on Thanksgiving and, well, you know Bob, he wants to make sure there are no surprises. Is there something I can do to help?”

  “Not a problem, Julie, we’ll just go down to the Lamplighter and see him there. No need to call him either, Julie, I wouldn’t want you to get him worried for nothing. But I’m going to leave a squad car out front, just in case we miss him at the restaurant; that way the officer can just radio me when Bob gets back here. Have a nice day, Julie.”

  The Lamplighter was on Route 126 heading back toward Bellingham. Harry Esten’s car followed the Medway Police vehicle there. As they entered the parking lot adjacent to the front door of the restaurant, Chief Anderson noticed Bob’s car parked near the side entrance. Before Anderson led Harry and Jim to the entrance, Harry pulled Anderson aside and asked him to keep the police car in front of the Elliott residence for security reasons. He explained to Anderson that there might be a threat on Bob Elliott’s life and the FBI did not want to take chances. Anderson agreed and left.

  Harry and Jim entered the restaurant and were greeted by a tal
l, blond good looking man with a broad smile.

  “Good morning, gentlemen, I’m afraid we are not open at this time of day. Is there something I can help you with?”

  “Yes, you’re Bob Elliott, aren’t you? I recognize you from your Red Sox pictures.”

  “Yes, how can I help you?”

  “Mr. Elliott, my name is Harry Esten from the Providence office of the FBI and this is Jim Howard, an acquaintance of mine in Rhode Island. We believe there is a serious threat on your life. It appears that it has nothing to do with you directly but more to do with your birth history. Are you familiar with your birth, Mr. Elliott?”

  “I know I was adopted as a baby, if that’s what you mean, I don’t know much more about it than I was born in Paris,” Bob answered. “What is this all about?”

  From the front entranceway, Jim noticed a black sedan parked directly across the street from the restaurant. There were two men in the car and they were just sitting there. Jim immediately tapped Harry on the shoulder and pointed to the vehicle across the street.

  “Mr. Elliott, please stay inside. Whatever you do, do not leave the restaurant unless one of us comes back for you, understood?” Harry’s voice was loud and crisp in his message. “If you see anyone else even heading for the front door, head out the side to your car and go straight to the police station. First, make sure the doors are locked as well. Go now, please.”

  “Jim, you’d better not get too close to me. If those guys are armed, you’ll be a sitting duck,” Harry shouted as he headed out the front door with his gun drawn.

  The dark sedan’s engine suddenly started and, the car made a quick U-turn in the restaurant parking lot. The passenger window rolled down and bullets came rapidly toward Harry, several smashing the glass on the front door behind him. Lucky for Harry, none of the shots hit him or Jim who was several feet behind. Harry threw himself to the ground and began firing at the speeding car as it headed back toward Medway.