The Complete Mystery Collection

by Michaela Thompson

  He blew a puff of air through his moustache. “Camping?”

  “Yes. I think someone— a motorcyclist— has been camping down that way” —I pointed in the general direction— “in a grove beyond the top of that hill.”

  He considered. “There are campgrounds for those who wish to camp.”

  “Yes. So—”

  “However, if a person has permission from the owner of the land, I suppose there is no problem.”

  I doubted the motorcyclist had permission from the owner of the land, whoever that might be, and I didn’t imagine Constable Reynaud thought he had. His answer was another way of avoiding unpleasantness. I gave him a surly “Thank you,” he gave me a polite nod, and he was on his way.

  Marcelle was in the yard smoking like mad, her pretty, dimpled face the color of pastry dough. “Oh, Madame, what is going on?” she burst out when she saw me.

  “I wish I knew.”

  “I heard them quarreling that time, you know. Monsieur Pedro and Madame Howard.” She lowered her voice. “I told Constable Reynaud.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He said he would make a note of it, but I’m not sure he did.”

  Par for the course. Marcelle took a long drag on her cigarette. “I’m afraid. Really afraid,” she said.

  I was torn. I couldn’t in good conscience reassure her, but I didn’t see any point in adding to her fear. I took the sneaky way out. “Constable Reynaud thinks it was an accident.”

  “Yes. So he does.” She brightened.

  “He believes it will be cleared up soon.”

  “Yes.” She threw her cigarette down, ground it out, and reached for the pack in her apron pocket. “Do you think they will go back to New York now?” she asked in a hopeful tone.

  I wondered myself. “To tell you the truth, I doubt it.”

  “Oh.” Her face fell at the bad news. “Madame?”

  “Yes?”

  “Do you think anyone will want to eat lunch?”

  For my part, I wasn’t hungry. Neither did I feel like hanging around Mas Rose waiting for the next disaster to strike. I decided to walk the couple of miles down the hill to Beaulieu-la-Fontaine. Not only did I want to get away, I wanted a telephone where I could unburden myself to Kitty without the risk of being overheard. I went to get my hat.

  Against all odds it was a lovely walk, the hot sun condensing moisture from the road, the air fragrant and fresh. My discovery of Pedro’s body might have happened in another dimension— a wet, gray, cool dimension where tragedy was common and tears the order of the day. Trying to distance myself from it, I strode out energetically.

  In about forty-five minutes Beaulieu-la-Fontaine came into view, the church with the curlicued wrought iron belfry at the top of the hill and the tile roofs below. Woods gave way to vineyards, interspersed with a gas station and a few raw-looking new villas with flat, bare yards. On the outskirts of town I passed older houses, their lush vegetable gardens surrounded by chicken wire. A German shepherd patrolling one of them gave every indication of wanting to tear my throat open if only he could get at me. It was barely midafternoon, and most places were still shuttered with wooden panels of turquoise, pale blue, dark green.

  In the village I wandered down the shady main street, past a bank, the two-story city hall, a couple of grocery stores closed until later, their outside vegetable bins covered with netting. In the center of town was the lichen-covered fountain, its sculpted dolphins seeming to rear out of a bright-green sea, I stood beside it, listening to the splashing water, letting its sound fill my consciousness.

  Across the street several drinkers sat at sidewalk tables in front of a café, the Relais de la Fontaine. Next to the café was the post office, and in front of the post office was what I was looking for— a phone booth. I glanced both ways before crossing the street, a totally unnecessary precaution.

  I reached Kitty at the office. “I’m amazed you’re not still at lunch,” I said. Four p.m. was her usual hour of return.

  “I had a date with—” she named a famous French rock star— “but he had a breakdown a couple of days ago and was carted off to some rehabilitation center, so he had to cancel.”

  “Detox, probably.”

  “So they’re saying. I wonder how this will affect my story about what a straight and upstanding guy he is.”

  “Better change the lead.”

  “Guess so. What’s happening down there? Everything OK?”

  The floodgates opened. I went on at length about what was happening, emphasizing that everything was not at all OK. When I stopped to draw breath, she said, “So you think this Pedro could have been murdered?”

  “It’s possible. He was at odds with Vivien. And some guy on a motorcycle has been hanging out in the woods near the house. There are so many undercurrents, Kitty.”

  “Maybe you should come home. First letters—”

  “Yeah. I haven’t gotten any more.”

  “Now somebody dies. It’s scary.”

  “Yes. It is.”

  “So are you going to give it up?”

  “I haven’t decided. I’ve spent a lot of the money—”

  “Georgia Lee—”

  “—but it isn’t that. I’ve gotten sort of attached to the daughter.” To my chagrin, it was true. Poor Blanche, with her blank verse Book of Betrayal and her troubadour music, Blanche whom I’d saved— maybe I’d saved— at Les Baux, had touched me with her request that I stay. “I feel responsible for her, in a way,” I went on.

  “Responsible! The girl has a mother!”

  “She sure does. That’s a big part of her problem, if you ask me.”

  Kitty’s silence meant disapproval. I changed the subject. “How’s Twinkie?”

  “She’s fine. A laugh a minute. You should see her playing with the tassels on my bedroom curtains.”

  I remembered the tassels. Exquisite small ones made of braided white silk. “She hasn’t hurt them, has she?”

  “No, no.”

  “Really?”

  “Well—”

  “Come on, Kitty. Tell me.”

  “She did unravel a couple, but it’s no big deal.”

  “Oh, no!”

  “Honestly, it’s no problem. The man who did the drapes is pretty sure he can get more.”

  “Kitty, I’m so sorry—”

  When we hung up, I continued my walk through town. I missed Twinkie, and Kitty, and my own tassel-free apartment. I passed the elementary school, another café, a newsstand, a hardware store with a bouquet of wooden pitchforks displayed on the sidewalk. At the end of the street, where the main road came in, was a modest-looking hotel, the Auberge de Ventoux, whose major charm came from the rose tree heavy with yellow blooms rambling along the wrought iron fence in front.

  Parked in front of the hotel, sandwiched between two cars, was a black Yamaha motorcycle with a red bandanna knotted around its handlebars. Even before I was close enough to look, I knew there was white lariat-style printing on the handkerchief’s border, and that it would read, “Bingo’s Buckaroo BBQ.”

  I watched for a long while, but nobody claimed the motorcycle. At last I started back to Mas Rose.

  The Whipping Boy

  The nervous energy that had propelled me down to Beaulieu-la-Fontaine ebbed on the uphill return, and a suffocating melancholy moved in. If I’d needed another reminder of the fragility of human life and human enterprise, and I wasn’t at all sure I had, Pedro’s death had presented it to me. Leaden with intimations of mortality, I made slow progress.

  When I reached Mas Rose, I found a semblance of order restored. Marcelle was in the kitchen bathing a leg of lamb in olive oil, garlic, and thyme. She looked glum, though, her mouth pursed so tightly her dimples showed. She greeted me with, “Another guest is coming to stay. Arriving tonight for dinner.”

  “Another guest?” It was an odd time for entertaining.

  “I think that’s what they were trying to tell me. When Madame Howard could
n’t make me understand she called Mademoiselle Blanche.”

  “Did Blanche say who it was?”

  “Her brother, I believe.”

  I hadn’t heard a word about this. “Alexander McBride?”

  Marcelle nodded, spooning liquid over the meat as she talked. “That’s it. Yes, the telephone rang, and there was a lot of excitement. ‘Alex! Alex!’ Madame Howard called out. She was crying. Afterward, she tried to talk to me with gestures, but I didn’t understand. Then Mademoiselle Blanche told me.”

  I remembered Vivien bending over the stair rail. Oh, Alex. Alex. “How strange,” I said.

  “Yes! She asked me to prepare a bedroom, too. Unless someone packs up Monsieur Pedro’s things, the only room left is the small one in the attic, and no one ever sleeps up there!” Marcelle spooned fiercely. “It isn’t for me to pack Monsieur Pedro’s things, is it?”

  “No. Of course not.”

  “Then this Alexander will sleep in the attic!” She put down her spoon. “Nothing like this has happened to me before. I do my work, that’s fine. But this—”

  I heard her out, mouthed something about how difficult it all was for everybody, and went to find out more about Alexander’s arrival.

  Ross was alone in the living room, sitting in a shadowy corner, a drink in his hand. When I looked in he raised his glass. “Join me. I’ve inherited the mantle of bartender. What can I get you?”

  “Nothing, thanks. I’m going up to take a shower. I understand Vivien’s son is coming?”

  “Alexander the great? Yes, we have that to look forward to.”

  “Isn’t it unexpected?”

  “To you and me, certainly. I think Vivien may have had an inkling and not wanted to broach the subject. She’s gotten a couple of letters from him.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Avignon, he said. Thought he’d buzz by in time for dinner and move in bag and baggage. As a person with no major responsibilities, he finds it easy to get away and impose.”

  “Did Vivien tell him about Pedro?”

  “Sure. No reason why that should slow him down.”

  Ross was obviously in the grip of bilious jealousy. I leaned against the doorframe and said, “What does Alexander do in San Francisco, anyway?”

  “I’ve never quite known. For a while he was a barker for a sex show in North Beach, I remember. He carried equipment for a rock band. He hands out leaflets on street corners, or waits tables, or clerks in stores that sell Golden Gate Bridge key chains. Occasionally he takes a class somewhere, but he’s twenty-five and has never been within shouting distance of a degree.”

  “Is he gay or straight?”

  “Cuts a wide swath through the female population.”

  I stated the obvious. “You don’t like him.”

  “I don’t like what he does to Vivien. He plays her like a goddamn violin.”

  I shrugged. “He’s her son.”

  “Yeah.” Ross tilted his glass up. “Sure you won’t join me?”

  He sounded forlorn. I walked in and sat on the arm of the sofa. His eyes were bloodshot, I now noticed, whether from liquor or tears I couldn’t tell. “I don’t really want a drink,” I said.

  He set down his glass. “I don’t mix them as well as Pedro did, anyway.”

  “Is there any word from Constable Reynaud?”

  “Not a peep. Poor old Pedro.” He stretched his arms over his head, then let them fall.

  “Was Pedro a nice guy?”

  “Not that I ever noticed.”

  “Did anybody suspect he might have killed Carey?”

  “You better believe it. They went over him with a fine-tooth comb, the way they did the rest of us. Obviously, he had the best opportunity, since he was right there in the apartment. But no evidence against him turned up, and he didn’t seem to have a motive. So— poof.” He waved his hand in dismissal.

  “What do you think happened this morning?”

  “Why ask me? I’m only the whipping boy.” His voice was harsh.

  I winced at the reference to Vivien’s slap. “Why did she hit you? Killing the messenger who brings bad news?”

  “Who knows? She doesn’t. Vivien lashes out the way some people eat breakfast, as a normal part of the routine.”

  The room was darkening. The last light picked out the spines of the books flanking the empty fireplace, row after row. I drooped under the weight of sadness around me.

  When Ross spoke again, his tone was casual. “Don’t you think you should get out?”

  I was stung. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean we’re poison. You must have noticed by now. You have noticed, haven’t you?”

  “I’ve noticed.”

  “Why should you be caught in this horrible, toxic, disgusting—”

  He hadn’t wanted Vivien to write her book in the first place, I reminded myself. I got up and said, stiffly, “If you want me to leave—”

  He stood, swaying a little. He took my hand and said, “You’ve misunderstood. I was talking about what’s best for you. What I want is something else entirely.”

  I looked away. “I can’t—”

  “Don’t get prim.”

  “I have to get prim. I am prim.”

  “No, you aren’t.”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “Aren’t.”

  “Am.”

  Absurdly, we were laughing. He took my face in his hands and kissed me, and when he let me go I put my palm against his cheek where Vivien had slapped him. He said, huskily, “All right, be prim.”

  “I am.”

  A clatter in the kitchen reminded me of Marcelle’s proximity. I pulled away. My face was burning. I said, “I’ve got to go.”

  At the door, I looked back at him. He was watching me, but it was too dark to see the expression on his face.

  Alexander

  Out of guilt and a desire for distraction, I went to look in on Blanche before taking my shower. How would Blanche feel, I berated myself, if she knew you’d been downstairs stealing kisses with her dream lover? Is that the kind of raising you had? And, for that matter, how would Vivien feel? She might scratch your eyes out.

  Although I remembered Ross saying Vivien didn’t care, wouldn’t even care if he slept with Blanche. Did that mean, I did my best not to speculate, that Vivien wouldn’t care if he slept with me?

  Wishing I had reached Blanche’s door before I got that far in my thinking, I tapped, and entered when I heard her faint, “Come in.”

  She was in bed, in her robe. She must not have dressed all day. Her hair didn’t look as if it had been touched since morning, either. Her Book of Betrayal notebook lay on the corner of her dresser, and the cassette player was silent.

  She barely turned her head to look at me. “Where did you go?” she asked. I thought I heard an undertone of accusation.

  “I walked down to town.” When she didn’t say anything, I went on, “You’ll have to come with me next time.”

  She looked away from me, out the window. The morning’s puffiness had subsided and her face looked caved in. Her hands lay listlessly folded on her stomach. “What did you do today?” I asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing at all?”

  “Talked to my therapist.”

  “About— Pedro?”

  “Yes. She wants me to call her every day, now. It’ll cost a mint.”

  I leaned against the dresser. “Did you work on your dialogue?”

  “No.”

  This was like wading through knee-deep sludge. I had told Kitty I was attached to Blanche. I was. Yet I was continually kept off balance by her reactions, as she opened up to me in one encounter and pulled away in the next. As I wondered whether to keep on, she said, “Alex is coming, you know.” The words sounded forced out by pressure on her chest.

  “I heard.”

  “Even this. And this was supposed to be mine.”

  Yes, of course. The Provence trip had been Blanche’s dream. Now her brother
was horning in. “Maybe he won’t stay.”

  “What difference does it make? It’s spoiled, anyway.”

  I wasn’t sure whether it was spoiled because of Pedro’s death or Alexander’s arrival. I wasn’t going to argue about it. I went to the door. “Time to get dressed for dinner.”

  “I’m not coming down.”

  I stopped, my hand on the knob.

  “You aren’t? Why not?”

  No answer.

  “Blanche, do me a favor. I don’t want to go down any more than you do. Come on, and we’ll tough it out together. All right?”

  She studied her hands. I left, closing the door behind me.

  I stood in the shower a long time, hoping the hot water would ease my many pains. When I got out, the smell of Marcelle’s lamb had wafted into my bedroom, and by the time I was dressed it would’ve lured me downstairs no matter what ordeals awaited. I opened my door and heard voices below— Vivien, speaking rapidly and excitedly, and a male I didn’t recognize. Alexander must have arrived while I was in the shower.

  They were in the living room, where a couple of lamps now cast a mellow glow. “There you are, Georgia Lee!” Vivien cried as I walked in. She was standing in the center of the room, her face flushed, her eyes brilliant with an emotion that looked more like dread than joy. Ross sat in his corner, the picture of disengagement. Alexander stood in front of the fireplace.

  He was tall and lanky, with his mother’s dramatic looks. A lock of glossy, abundant black hair fell over his forehead, shading bright blue eyes. His face was not quite long enough to be horsy, his cheekbones were high, his mouth curled in a smile you’d immediately tag as sardonic. He was wearing tight faded jeans, scuffed boots, a waist-length denim jacket over a white T-shirt.

  He looked me over appraisingly during our handshake. I debated whether to stick with innocuous chatter or jump right into the tragedy of Pedro and get it out of the way. I opted for innocuous chatter and asked him when he’d arrived in France.

  “This morning. Flew into Nice and got the train to Avignon.” He continued to size me up, his blue eyes acute behind heavy lids. I could see he was a man who expected women to approve of him, but I wasn’t sure I could oblige. There was something smarmy in his slow grin, the way he stood with his hips thrust forward.