by John Brooke
· 25 ·
EVERY MINUTE OF EVERY DAY
The next morning, a morning after a night spent sitting at her kitchen table wanting to call Sergio Regarri, but drinking wine instead, thinking it used to be beer — beer and Piaf — but that was then and this is the south, Aliette arrived to find a message in her voicemail.
‘Bonjour, Inspector. These are both from yesterday. At 10:42. And again last night at 9:36.’ There was a pause, a click, then the distinctive voice of the man called Prince: Hey, Steph, just checking in. Doing fine. Feeling good. Hang tough. We’ll talk soon. Beep. Click. Stephanie?… Wish you’d get in touch, luv. Wasting precious time playing hide and seek here. We could be in Amsterdam by now. Or wherever you want to go. But we have to go together. I know this. I know you know it. Get past your worry. Love ya. Beep. End of message.
DST Agent Margot Tessier had not bothered to request that Aliette return the call.
Indeed, no need to do so.
She worked for an hour and sent the file along to her judge. And a note?
Of course. There has to be a note: Good morning. Building a picture. More today. Roland B at Maraussan tomorrow. Should be interesting. See you there?...That seemed both professionally neutral and forgiving.
Another grower was arriving for his Q&A with Magui as Aliette was going out the door.
·
When she pulled in at Bistro Les Oliviers, Avi Roig was on the terrace, setting tables. In the natural light of a summer day, his dark eyes were listless. ‘What now?’
‘I need you to tell me exactly what Joël Guatto said on the message he left when he called here that morning.’
‘I don’t care about Joël Guatto. You find Stephanie and bring her back safe.’ He skulked away, into the dim interior.
Aliette took a step to follow and almost collided with a woman carrying a tray of glasses.
An apologetic back step, wine glasses wobbling. Then a relieved flash of recognition flooded the woman’s face. ‘Oh, it’s you.’ The inspector nodded bonjour to the Dutch lady, one half of the friendly older couple she’d sat beside on that first visit a fateful week before. Her name was Roos. She was helping Avi. ‘…just till this is sorted out.’ She added, ‘He’s not sleeping too well.’
Aliette found him stacking another tray with more plates. Not much sleep. And verging on manic. ‘I am trying to find her, Avi... Please, the call?’
With much clattery to-do, he made a show of ignoring her. She waited, like a mother waits for her cranky child — a battle of wills. When he finished, he bowed his head, pressed fingers to his exhausted eyes. And got a grip. He faced her. ‘It was nothing too interesting. Something like, “Looking for Stephanie, we need to talk.” I threw it away… I thought I told you that.’
‘I’m not blaming… Nothing more than that?’
‘Nothing I recall.’
Bon… Aliette considered Avi Roig. Whatever else, he did seem to care about Stephanie McLeod. ‘Where do you think she is?’
‘Spain, I hope. Paris, probably. I don’t think she knows anywhere else to go.’
‘With him?’
He knew who she meant. ‘I’m praying that she’s not.’
‘Do you pray, Avi?’
‘Every minute of every day, Inspector.’
She decided to tell him. ‘We think she’s still in the area. Both of them, actually.’
He shrugged. Dumb notion. ‘No. She wouldn’t. She would not be with him!’
‘I gather you’ve talked to Agent Tessier?’
‘What a despicable woman.’ Avi lifted his tray.
‘But she has information. She believes — ’
‘Don’t trust her,’ he hissed, and went out with his next load.
She hustled after. ‘But what if they are, Avi? And what if he’s trying to get to her? Could you please just stop for a moment and consider the possibility. I need — ’
He slammed his tray down, began whipping plates into position. ‘What if, what if… I hate this!’ Raising a spindly hand to the brilliant summer sky. ‘What if God actually loves everyone, just like they say? Would things like this ever have to happen? I say let’s consider that!’ Avi Roig dealt four more side plates like playing cards and stomped off, back to the kitchen.
Roos was being discreet, working with a wet cloth and spritzer.
The inspector asked, ‘Do I see a man desperately in need of a hug?’
‘Won’t let you near… I tried. Trust issues. Our son went through something like it when he lost his job.’
‘Why is he so fixated?’
‘You mean about Israel and hating himself? I don’t know. We’re Anabaptist…’ Roos focused on a wine stain on the arm of a chair till she’d made it disappear. ‘I sympathize, but I don’t understand. He rages, we listen. It comes and goes. Months can go by, he’s completely content creating the most beautiful food. Then something happens, I mean on the news, and he’ll start again.’ Roos moved to the next table. ‘He doesn’t really expect an answer — at least not from us. Now he has this other thing on his mind. That plus God?… it’s not easy.’
‘Are you managing?’ Aliette meant Roos’s new role. ‘You’re a good person to help him.’
Roos offered a modest moue. ‘He’s going to keep it to three tables. I’ll be fine.’
Aliette made a last try in the kitchen. He was hovering over a garlicky sauce, touching it with a spoon, grabbing gulps from his ever-present glass of chilled red wine, creating a wall the only way he could. She spoke through it. ‘I need you to help me, Avi. You know her better than anyone.’
‘Indeed I do. Indeed I do.’
‘Please think where she might take refuge and help me find her.’ She took out a business card and placed it on the counter. ‘It will be better if I find her before Agent Tessier does. Trust me on that, if nothing else.’
He closed his eyes. Maybe praying again? She got back in her car and drove up the hill.
· 26 ·
PERSPECTIVE ON STEPHANIE
They had demolished part of the back wall in the small cemetery at Vieussan and added a new area. It was still sparsely filled, looking stark. There were some shrubs, but it needed trees. Aliette Nouvelle was standing in front of a roughly hewn headstone. In lieu of natural plants, someone, probably Stephanie, had surrounded the plot with gathered stones about the size of shoes. A nice effect. Tasteful. There were no plastic flowers. No plaque with a generic message consigning her loved ones into the care of God. The inspector contemplated Arnold Burns McLeod and Caroline Marie-Maude Beliveau Vadnais, and their dates.
Yes, there was a logical possibility that the woman who left the IED on the Spanish rig was their daughter Stephanie: ENA scholarship student. Lover of an avowed anarchist. Disaffected political aide, twice over. Angry. Frightened. Last seen headed this way. What was it she’d told this mysterious boy called Prince? I love you but I need more… Something like that.
While Aliette could not refute Stephanie’s voice on the recording, she refused to accept her apparent declaration of love. It did not add up. Stephanie had lied through her tears, if not her teeth, about her movements the day she had ducked away from Aliette’s first advances. But despite the lies, her tears had been real. Regret. Shame, mostly.
No one could act that part, no matter how intelligent, no matter how angry.
What kind of girl was Stephanie McLeod?
‘Madame Inspector, you and your friends have scared away our scholar.’
The man was standing at the newly made passage connecting first families with later arrivals such as the McLeods. Another village elder. Late sixties, maybe more, weather-creased face, the knees of his jeans stained reddish from working in the vines. He held a watering can and garden snips. Come to clip and freshen around his family plot. Aliette strode over and offered her hand. ‘I would not call them friend
s, but I fear we may have done exactly that, monsieur…?’
‘Michel Planes. I’m the mayor.’ Even the tiniest villages require one — to build agreement on what’s needed, request funds, administer, report. Or perform marriages. And maybe funerals.
‘Do you know her?’
He hedged, an instinct long entrenched. ‘We all know each other here. How could we not? But no, not really. Who knows anyone of that age? I knew her parents — at least as much as they let me. But I am proud of her. Brain like hers, she’s bound to be on the evening news one day, perhaps she’ll give us a passing nod.’
‘She’s in a lot of trouble, monsieur. The more I know, the better for her.’
He immediately retreated. ‘Well, I’m just a farmer.’ Denial times two.
‘Who should I talk to?’ Aliette tried to fathom the sparkling eyes. ‘Any suggestions?’
‘B’eh, everyone… I mean, of her generation. And some parents.’ He was assessing her as much as she was him. He added, ‘…And Monsieur Roig, of course.’ Monsieur Roig. Not so blatant as Madame Fortuno. Still, the line between us and everyone else was clear. Indeed, the mayor could not hide his curiosity. ‘Has all this something to do with Avi?’
‘I don’t know. You think it might?’
Shrugging in the exaggerated French way, he ventured, ‘It seems to be her second home.’
‘Avi’s very concerned,’ she confirmed. She was of a mind to suggest, ‘too concerned?’ More politic, she ventured, ‘He’s very generous.’
Michel Planes gave Avi Roig his due. ‘Yes, very generous and God knows she’s needed the support. And he did a wonderful thing bringing that place back to life. Brings a lot of people our way. His lapin à la moutarde — beautiful! Always as fresh as the morning. Bags them himself. And his olives. The man’s not lazy, I admire his skills.’ But…
Aliette smiled, patiently silent, adjusting to his plodding pace.
The mayor found some words. ‘He’s too angry. Whatever he left behind, he can’t let it go.’
‘From what I gather, her parents were — ’
‘ — as dark and heavy as two old stones at the bottom of the river. Obviously hiding from some big mistake. It could not have been easy on the child. Then he comes into the picture. He’s worse than both of them where it comes to carrying demons. Did she need that?’
‘At a certain point she must have.’
‘I just wish she could have stayed in Paris.’ But she was a good daughter, bound to come home and care for her mother.
He fell silent. Aliette sensed he was embarrassed from gossiping too much. These were generalized regrets, hints of more specific things rarely expressed, and never to a stranger, things the community deciphers and guards as its own. Knowing she’d reached the limit of village propriety, she pointed to a well-trod path beyond the cemetery wall. ‘Where does that go?’
‘We use it to get to the vines on the other side of the ridge. It goes up to the tower.’ He contemplated the ridge. ‘Beyond that? Forest… An EDF service road goes over to Roquebrun.’
She gazed up at the castle-like turret. ‘What is it, anyway? Or what was it?’
‘For communications. Doves, carrier pigeons? A roost and way station of a sort… Now? The kids have claimed it.’ The mayor grinned. ‘But don’t ask me what they do there.’He shook her hand and wished her the best in sorting it out for Stephanie.
·
The climb was a long but gentle arc, less hard on the legs than the steep streets of the village. She emerged from the pine forest into a fierce wind. Clutching her cotton jacket closed at her throat, Aliette hurried carefully along the narrow goat path and looked inside the rotting door. An empty space. Some forgotten bottles. A dirty blanket. She stepped back into the wind. The path on the other side of the tower took her into the next patch of forest. She saw the power line above the trees but the EDF service road was not immediately apparent.
Returning, the inspector paused midway for a moment, exposed, a sense of balancing at the top of the world. To the north, the Reposing Woman. Barring those rare days when the clouds were low, Aliette had contemplated the giant lady every day since her arrival — from her bedroom window, while opening the shutters in the morning, and when closing them at night. This high, this close, she seemed touchable, a primordial presence. She thought of the postcard of the Reclining Buddha her grandmother once sent her. Larger than life, but life itself… To the south, directly below, Avi Roig’s olive trees shone warmly, a languid movement, the breeze down there nothing like the constant pushing wind up here. Then the road, the river. More forest.
The rock stairway that met the goat path took her down to the boules court and herb garden. The inspector came upon a picnic, six young women with a dozen or so very young kids and two grandmothers, clear family traits to be seen as she took in the noisy group passing sandwiches, pouring cups of juice, having fun. It all stopped as a stranger stepped into their space.
Aliette smiled. ‘Anyone seen Stephanie?’
A surprise question. It brought spontaneous, if nervous, group laughter.
After that it was easy — gossip is more interesting than squalling infants and messy three-year-olds. Everyone had something to say and two generations of village ladies did their honest best to help the police. Chief Inspector Nouvelle kept smiling, expertly personable, leading one comment to the next, stringing together a picture that was not good news:
A portrait of a village girl who was not really a village girl, who’d used that instinctual fact as exotic allure and protective armour as she played the game of love.
Had they seen the couple that was Stephanie and Joël Guatto?
More laughter. Stephanie’d had the poor man in the palm of her hand.
The six twenty-something mothers had grown up with her. They corroborated each other’s memories, the general perception that Stephanie was hard and not a little capricious where it came to boys. ‘We would sit up there and scheme… Her schemes always worked.’
Up where?
‘The tower.’ High on the ridge behind them, now magical again in the sun and wind.
Everyone agreed on the power of Stephanie’s scheming.
The two grandmothers also had sons, brothers of two of these young mothers. They described a ‘very clever’ Stephanie who had many boyfriends and never stayed with one for long. Too smart. Got bored, could always run them any which way, always wanted something more.
Was she mean to them?
Shrugs. Talking about adolescents in love here. What’s mean?
But the young mothers who’d been friends said sometimes very mean. Three had husbands who could tell the inspector about it first-hand. And what a pushy girl!
‘My brother Philippe disappeared for a week after Stephanie gave him his walking papers. My parents were convinced he’d thrown himself in a grotto.’
Disappeared?
‘Into the hills. She dared him. She was always daring him to break the rules. The police were on their way out to search when he came wandering down... I mean, he learned a lesson or two; it straightened out his little macho brain like no one’s business.’
Her mother nodded the way a mother will, remembering. ‘But mon dieu, he suffered.’
Her daughter said, ‘I don’t wish her ill. I hope she’s safe. But does she really belong here?’
It was a question echoed more than once by women more bemused than concerned. It devolved back to an idealistic revolution-minded mama and papa running from the world they couldn’t change. The women of Vieussan knew this even if they didn’t know the specific what or why — or care. More germane was the tough and pushy heart those two had produced.
The inspector made notes… ‘What about with the bald boy — the foreigner?’
That was different. He was more Stephanie’s speed.
They talked for almost
an hour. Then came the yawns, cranky crying. Siesta time.
There was one more thing. ‘If I sent my people to search the hills, where should they go?’
This brought a torrent of possible hiding places, a childhood’s worth and more so. These were country kids — they knew the hills and river swimming spots. Stephanie knew them too.
Two of them had seen her Monday afternoon. Heading to the cemetery.
With a knapsack? Or just a market bag? They could not remember.
The inspector took names, passed out her card with a plea for any further information.
She made her way back to the place along Rue Bel Air, mesmerized by paving stones.
Add the circumstantial to the phone calls and the ladies’ gossip — Margot Tessier’s take on Stephanie McLeod was taking on some substance. Could this be be a vindictive, brainy princess demanding the next outrageous show of love? Give me bombs or go away. Had Stephanie enticed Joël Guatto into something beyond his ken, far too deep, that ended with a bullet in his brain? A torpor weighed. Aliette fought against it, struggling not to second-guess herself.
At the McLeod house she checked the old answering machine, found nothing new, noted flimsy sandals by the bed, the dust-free outline of a pair of shoes no longer in the cupboard, basic items no longer in the bathroom, same again in the fridge. Leaving, she advised the peering neighbour, ‘Madame, if you see her it’s your duty to call us. Whatever she may have told you, she is at risk and you are obliged. Promise me now.’
Madame Fortuno challenged, ‘What about him?’
Aliette knew exactly who she meant. She felt compelled to defend Avi Roig. ‘He cares for Stephanie, madame. Like you.’
‘Not like me. Never! I never walked in and out of her house like I owned it.’
‘She’s an adult. Their relationship is private.’
‘He was far too old for her and he can never let go. Even when she isn’t there. In and out, all the time. Something wrong with that man. Look where it got her.’
