The Paramour's Daughter

by Wendy Hornsby

  He paused to sip his wine.

  “So, you came over,” I encouraged, wanting him to continue.

  “Yes, but we didn’t intend to stay so long,” he said. “Kelly and I want the children to be truly bi-cultural. We wanted them to have the experience of living in France. A couple of years we thought, then back to California, to spend our summers here. But...” He shrugged shoulders that seemed to bear an enormous weight.

  “What?”

  “It’s time to go back,” he said. “We’ve done what we needed to do here. We brought the operations of the estate into the twenty-first century, got the profit stream flowing, and now we are finished. Jacques manages the fromagerie brilliantly. I have a very good man at the distillery, ready to take over production. Carrots? That land we can lease to a local farmer to work. And the Percherons haven’t been more than an expensive hobby since my grandfather bought his first motorized tractor.”

  “What’s keeping you here?”

  “Concern for Grand-mère, of course. But other than that?” He raised his open palms—there was nothing on them. “Chris will take his baccalauréat exams in June. We’ll wait for the results. If he scores in the top two percent he will get into one of the grandes écoles like David. He’s bright, but the odds are against him. If he doesn’t make it, well, for students anywhere except in the elite academies the French university system is very complex, very chaotic, and a student can take years getting through the classes necessary to finish a degree. In that case, Chris would be better off at an American university. As a fall-back, he applied to three American schools. We’ll hear from them in the spring.

  “And my Lulu—what can I say? She is a far better soccer player than she is a scholar. Kelly and I both believe that she would thrive in an American high school and later in a public university.”

  “What about your expectations here, Antoine?”

  He shook his head. “I have very few. My father is a gambler and a fool, on the edge of financial ruin because of that. It was expensive for me, Bébé, and Aunt Isabelle, but we managed to stop him from wreaking havoc on the estate, this time or any time, with his schemes. When Papa sold his inheritance rights to us, what are my brother and I left with? Peace of mind and not much else.”

  “I wouldn’t sneeze at peace of mind,” I said.

  One corner of his mouth lifted in a wicked smile. “Be prepared. Farming can be an expensive hobby.”

  “Psst.” Jacques leaned into the room. “Help, please. There is a very unpleasant man demanding someone who speaks English.”

  “Promise me he isn’t an American,” I said in my best imperfect French.

  “Russe,” Jacques answered.

  Indeed, the angry newcomer was Russian, Sergei’s father, accompanied by two blond monoliths encased in expensive black velour warm-up suits and sneakers as big as redwood stumps. The helicopter we heard earlier flew them across the Channel from England.

  Sergei, Senior was a pipsqueak of a man, his lack of stature exaggerated by proximity to his huge companions. The excess fabric in the thirty-inch waist of his buttonfront Levi 501s was gathered under a belt. Looked more like clown pants on him than the western stovepipes they were intended to be. Besides blue jeans, he wore a white dress shirt open to show a graying chest pelt, a blue blazer, and black boots with heel lifts. He added something to his height by teasing the rug atop his head into a sort of controlled version of a Don King frizz. However, the size of his personality compensated for the shortcomings of his physical stature.

  Ludanov, the dad, nailed me with an accusatory finger. “You, you speak English?”

  “When it suits me,” I said.

  “I don’t need a wiseass right now, honey,” he hissed in heavily accented English. “My kid’s been in an accident and no one here seems to be able to tell me what happened.”

  “He wrapped a Lamborghini around a tree,” I said.

  “What shit-for-brains gave a dickwad kid like Sergei the keys to a rocket like that?” From hiss to shout in under five seconds, impressive.

  “Car’s registered to Zed Entertainment,” I said, keeping my voice calm and quiet, making him listen closely if he wanted to hear me, a tactic I learned when I had a toddler going through the tantrum phase.

  “Aw shit.” He dropped into the closest chair. “Aw damn, fuck and shit.”

  Dauvin was getting a simultaneous translation from Antoine, who rendered that stream as “merde, merde, merde.” Such a universal, multi-purpose word, merde. English needs a word like that.

  Antoine asked Ludanov, on behalf of Dauvin, “Do you know this Zed Entertainment?”

  “Yeah. They owe me money. I’m holding some of their assets as collateral.”

  “The auto?” Dauvin said, trying his English.

  “Could be,” Ludanov said. “I don’t bother with the details.”

  He seemed to lose his starch all at once when he realized that there was no one present he could blame, except maybe himself and his employees. And his kid. Maybe just for the practice he shot an accusatory eye at his two men, who were positioned to block both of the access routes into the anteroom of the surgery suite.

  Ludanov, voice back in normal registers, asked me, “How is my boy? You know?”

  “Touch and go,” I said, and gave him the information I had about broken bones and internal injuries.

  “And who are you?”

  “My name is Maggie MacGowen.”

  He thought that over before he asked, “You’re American?”

  “I am.”

  “I’ve seen you on TV, haven’t I?”

  “Could be.”

  “What’s your interest in my son?”

  “None,” I said. “He showed up at a family gathering after my mother’s funeral this afternoon.”

  “Where was that?”

  “Here. At my grandmother’s house.”

  “With a name like MacGowen, you can’t be a frog. What is it, your husband’s name?”

  “Yes.”

  He was coarse, rude, and really ugly. But his son lay near death a few feet away, and as soon as Antoine contacted him, he had flown over out of concern. We owed him a modicum of patience; people react differently in emergencies. He had lost control of one area, his son’s survival, so maybe he just needed to exert control over another. I decided to give him an opportunity.

  Rich had spelled out the name of the man, Something’ovich, who ran the chop shop in Pacoima, the man who apparently was in cahoots with Chuy Cepeda, the kid who ran down Isabelle. I had written out ’Ovich’s full name on the back of a business card I dug out of my bag. I showed the name to Ludanov.

  “Do you know this man?” I asked.

  He pronounced the name. Then he paused too long before he said, “Never heard of the bastard. I don’t know nobody in America.”

  Nothing on the card indicated that the man was in the U.S. One of his velour-clad monoliths caught the gaffe and lost the beginning of a guffaw. Antoine caught it also, and translated for Dauvin, who laughed out loud.

  When Ludanov saw the general reaction, he thought over what he said, heard his own internal replay and turned a furious red.

  “So, who is he?” I asked.

  “A nobody.” Dismissed the guy with the wave of his hand. “He borrowed some money from me once, that’s all.”

  “So maybe he owed you a favor?”

  “No, no. Like I said, he owed me money. That’s all.”

  “Your son seems to know quite a bit about your business,” I said.

  “Sure, of course,” he said. “Family business, you know? Sergei works for me.”

  “Doing debt collection?”

  “What?” He looked horrified. “You crazy? He’s in executive training, of course. I own some clubs. He advises about attracting the young crowd.”

  I could only imagine. I asked him, “Why did a guy who runs a chop shop in Los Angeles come to you for a loan?”

  “I know his father, from the old country. We
come from the same village.” (He pronounced it “willitch.”) “He comes to me and says his boy is a good mechanic, wants to open an auto repair business, can I give him a hand getting started? So, I make a loan. Strictly business.”

  “Does Sergei know this mechanic?”

  “Sure. Maybe. I don’t know.” He pointed his chin toward the door of the surgery suite. “Ask him yourself. Why do you want to know?”

  So far, Dauvin had let me ask my questions, probably because Ludanov was more likely to talk to an American TV person than a French cop, a frog in his parlance. But before I went any further, I glanced at the inspector. He barely moved his head from one side to the other, but I read No perfectly well. I would leave it to the police to tell Ludanov about his son’s connection to a murder.

  Two emergency workers, still wearing the vivid blue jackets festooned with reflector tape that we had seen on the crash site crew earlier, negotiated their way in past Ludanov’s men. Dauvin, with a little toss of his head, had them follow him off to the side where the three of them had a quiet conversation.

  One of the men held up a Ziploc bag with a dark, slender shaft about eight inches long inside. Dauvin pulled up the bottom corner, bent down for a closer look. Piece of the wreckage? Evidence of something? I could ask about it later. But I might only have one shot at Ludanov. I turned my attention away from the investigators, curious as I was about the meaning of their rather complex hand gestures, and focused again on Ludanov.

  I said, “I understand you know my uncle, Gérard Martin,” pronouncing the name as the French did.

  Ludanov frowned as he shook his head. “No, I don’t think.”

  “Jemima’s father?”

  With that prompt, apparently he did think. “You mean Gerry Martin?” He pronounced the last name with the accent on the first syllable as it would be in English, instead of with the accent on the second, as I had. Gillian, I remembered, called Gérard Gerry.

  I said, “Yes, Gerry Martin.”

  “Oh yeah, sure. From the kids’ football board. Gerry’s a good guy. Big supporter. His kid could turn pro. She looks like a toothpick, but don’t let that fool you. She’s quick, you know? And aggressive. Whoo, shoulda been a boy.”

  Jemima, a football star? Of course. In Europe soccer is football. It hadn’t occurred to me, as I imagined oversized boys in massive shoulder pads and helmets when Gérard said he was on a youth football board, that he was supporting his daughter, the soccer player. My mistake.

  “Have you ever done business with Gerry?” I asked.

  “No, why would I?”

  “Or with his wife?”

  “Hah!” Sounded like a squeaky door. “No way. Never. I don’t much care for that lady. That one has to take the stick out of her ass before she can even sit down.”

  I dropped my face to hide my smile—couldn’t have described Gillian better myself. But he saw it, and gave my back a hard thump. When I looked at him, he smiled, tapped the end of his nose with his index finger as he said, “Uh-huh, you know what I mean, yes?”

  A little much-needed levity. I didn’t trust what Ludanov had to say, but I trusted his reactions—I don’t think he was much of an actor. Certainly he was too upset about Sergei to be thinking clearly, so he was vulnerable, as his gaffe earlier showed. I asked him one more question.

  “Mr. Ludanov, why did Sergei come here today?”

  “This funeral, Jemima was there?”

  “Yes.”

  “My boy went around with her for a while. They were friends, you know? He’s a well-brought-up boy. He just came to pay his respects to her family, you know?”

  A doctor, a middle-aged woman still wearing blood-stained scrubs, pushed through the surgery suite doors. Her face was drawn with fatigue. She pulled the surgical bonnet off her head and twisted it in her hands as she looked at the expectant faces focused on her.

  “La famille?” The family?

  Antoine introduced her to Ludanov and stayed to translate.

  Sergei was failing, the doctor told Ludanov. His liver was perforated and they worked for over an hour to stop the hemorrhage. Still touch and go. They removed his spleen. When Sergei’s right femur shattered it shredded his femoral artery. Blood loss was severe; thank God it had been a cold night or they would have lost him before the ambulance arrived. The surgeons could not repair the damage to the artery, so the leg was amputated below the hip. Kidneys were shutting down, heart was failing.... He needed a miracle. If there were last words, now was the time. Should she call a priest?

  Ludanov was white with shock and grief. When the surgeon asked if he wanted to come in and see his son, it clearly was an invitation to say good-bye. The little man’s breathing hitched as he tried to hold back sobs. When he couldn’t contain his despair any longer, he looked around the room, decided on me, and offered himself into my arms. He wept, engulfed in the horrible reality every parent fears most, the loss of a child. Tears streamed down the faces of his giant attendants, also. Everyone in the room fought back tears.

  After a few moments, one of the big companions took him around the shoulders and half carried him through the big doors to see his son.

  But Sergei was gone before his father reached his bedside.

  19

  Exhausted, I hunkered down under the duvet on my bed, propped up on pillows, a glass of red wine—vin ordinaire—from the half carafe on my nightstand in hand, a plate of Grand-mère Marie’s little shortbreads on the bed within reach, the bundle of Dad’s letters Freddy had given me tucked in beside me. I was prepared to read about some of the mysteries surrounding my early life, but I couldn’t settle down enough to focus on the words. I kept seeing the crash site, everything glittery in the flashing lights of the emergency vehicles, and the father, bereft, who was as much a part of the wreckage as the young man and his car were.

  Casey, tired to the point of stupor when she came upstairs, was sound asleep in her room next door with her iPod earbuds in her ears and music playing, a strategy she learned from living in a college dorm. Before I got into bed I listened at her door until I heard a little snore, just to reassure myself that all was well. Feeling unsettled, I left my door open so that I could see anyone who came down the hall from the direction of the stairway; I was shamelessly hovering over my kid.

  Bébé was in his room across the hall, sitting in an easy chair beside a lamp, reading. His door was open enough that I could see the shadows of his hands move along his rug whenever he turned a page. He told me he planned to stay up for a while in case Grand-mère needed anything, but I thought he intended to keep vigil over everyone in the house that night.

  News of Sergei’s death had sent the entire household into a tailspin. A family already stretched emotionally by Isabelle’s death and funeral, and the awful news about how she died, not to forget the stresses of spending a couple of days together in lockstep, seemed ready to snap.

  When Antoine and I returned from the hospital, we delivered the emotional coup de grâce: Just moments before the doctors called Sergei’s time of death, two crash site investigators arrived to show Dauvin a discovery they made in the wreckage of Sergei’s borrowed Lamborghini.

  At some point before Sergei roared out of the family compound, someone shoved the narrow blade of a boning knife laterally into his right front tire and snapped it off below the handle. As the kid drove, the weight and motion of the Lamborghini forced the blade deeper, torqued it, exacerbating the damage caused by the initial thrust.

  Driving conditions were bad to begin with that night. Add too much speed, too little experience, and a shredding tire and what you get is a trifecta for disaster on an icy road. You also get a case for premeditated murder.

  Interestingly, it was Bébé who stepped forward to take charge of the family. He declared the day over and ordered everyone to their rooms. He then helped Clara and Oscar deliver bedtime snacks to everyone. I thought when he set off on that errand that he was also making a bed check of all three houses, making sure a
ll were safely in and accounted for.

  Across the hall, Bébé coughed a couple of times. I got up and went to his door, looked around the edge.

  “Can’t sleep?” he asked, looking up. He put a marker in his book and set it aside.

  I shook my head. “Quite a day.”

  He chuckled softly; an understatement.

  “How are you?” I asked.

  “Me?” He lifted a shoulder. “I’m safe and warm. Can I hope for more?”

  “At the moment, maybe not.”

  “Anything I can get to help you sleep, Maggie? Read you a bedtime story, maybe?”

  “Thank you, but wine and cookies should be enough.” I offered a shrug—I was getting more practiced, had a growing vocabulary of gestures and their nuances. I added a moue for emphasis.

  His focus had slipped off to a spot over my left shoulder, his train of thought drifting onto its own track. From that faraway place, he said, “Can I ask you something?”

  “Sure.” I leaned against the door frame, arms folded, ankles crossed, feet warm in Isabelle’s slippers, wrapped in my flannel robe. “What’s on your mind?”

  “My mother.” His eyes came back to me. “You know how she died?”

  “In her car.”

  A small, sad nod. “On a clear day, alone, on a straight piece of road.”

  “What do you think happened?”

  “Until tonight, I wasn’t sure,” he said. “I was a little afraid to know.”

  “And now?”

  “Now I am very much afraid.” He shook his head. “When it happened, I asked Lena what were the odds that it was an accident. She said that every time we get into a car we reset our odds. What happens on any car trip is always a function of multiple intersecting variables—that’s how she talks. Health, state of mind, condition of car, condition of road, random events like birds flying at the windscreen. She said only Maman could answer what happened in the moment before she left the road. But, of course...”

  But of course his mother, my aunt Louise, was beyond answering.