The room flirted with contemporary furnishings while incorporating Orientalist touches. Such was the attention to the minutest of details for certain effects it reminded him of something out of an Alexandre Dumas novel. He then scanned the very contemporary large white-tiled bathroom. Thierry Gasquet liked nineteenth-century French literature. He realized such predilections could be perceived as incongruent with his profession. But those were the only French novels his mother brought with her that first summer when she decided to leave a position as a professor of literature at the Sorbonne to follow his father to the family villa in Essaouira. His father’s father was ill.
Gasquet was descended from a line of French-Moroccan liaisons. Beautiful, educated French women left France to follow dark, handsome, educated men from well-to-do Roman Catholic Moroccan families to the white-walled North African province on the Atlantic coast. It began with a promising French-Moroccan doctor, his great grandfather, and ended with a high financier— his father.
The family moved back and forth between these two worlds. The children were without fail born and educated in France. Much to his father’s chagrin, after Thierry completed his baccalauréat at a French-English bilingual school in Paris and earned an advanced degree at the requisite elite grande école, he traveled to London and New York for three years to further perfect his English. When he returned, he chose to become a high-level civil servant.
Thierry’s subsequent fluency in English, French, and Arabic, his prestigious education and training with the French national police, landed him in an elite division of the police. He was part of the Groupe de Sécurité de la Présidence de la République, the unit that had direct access to the Élysée Palace and protected the President of the French Republic, Nicolas Sarkozy. And he usually accompanied the prime minister and the minister of interior on their trips to English-speaking countries. His father had arranged for him a prestigious office post as head of the Direction générale de la sécurité extérieure, the French equivalent of the CIA, where he would have delegated fieldwork to agents. He preferred to be in the field.
Since he had insisted on living in Paris and also refused to pursue the decidedly lucrative and discreet family professions of law and business, for the sake of the family’s standing, his father requested that he at the very least keep up an apartment in the bon chic, bon genre, or “bcbg” as it was commonly called, sixteenth arrondissement. His father had had after all a membership at an exclusive, but well hidden club on the very top floor of a building overlooking the Avenue des Champs-Élysées where wealthy conservatives dined, played board games, and met their mistresses. Bernal and Anne Gasquet lived in Neuilly-sur-Seine, a wealthy suburb of Paris. He couldn’t have his son living some bourgeois bohemian lifestyle in the ‘hot property’ sixth arrondissement. He wanted him to settle down with a wife and children in a respectable Paris neighborhood.
Thierry compromised only because he had upended his father’s other plans for his life. He purchased a two-bedroom apartment overlooking the Seine at 24 Quai de Bethune on the Ile St. Louis. It was a renovated sandstone-colored building where the former French president Georges Pompidou lived from 1969-1971. Given its presidential connections, it was respectable enough for his father. From his terrace he could see Notre Dame, the Institut du Monde Arab, and the celebrated restaurant La Tour d’Argent. While he lived in the heart of Paris, the views from the apartment represented the various points of contact that had shaped his worldview. “Your room is ready,” he informed the American professor.
* * *
Havilah looked over her sunglasses at Thierry Gasquet. His tall, lean but not lanky figure cut a long shadow over the chair next to hers. An hour in the sun at the crime scene had further bronzed his skin.
“The room met with your approval I take it?”
The sun felt warm. She had eaten one of the best salades niçoise of her life at this little Provençal hotel built on Cassis’s white rocks. The Badoit went down smoothly. She had had her brief respite. This is no vacation, Havilah. Kit is dead.
She raised herself from the reclining poolside chair. Havilah hoped the room had a bathtub. She knew a workout would have helped to clear her head, but she was too wound up for it to be relaxing. A nap would have to do. She needed to be on her A-Game when she rendezvous’ed with Laurent. Having figured out a way to get into Kit’s apartment, she had to shake Thierry Gasquet loose. That task would now be more difficult.
“I think you will find your accommodations more than suitable, Havilah.”
New York, NY, Monday, June 21st
MonaLisa Caren eased out of bed at 5 a.m. Monday morning. She quickly showered and had a breakfast of oatmeal and orange juice with calcium and vitamin D. At 48 years old, she knew she was a prime candidate for osteoporosis, so she consumed calcium-laden foods with a vengeance. She thought about her good-natured, humped-back Bubbe, and popped a vitamin with an additional 450 milligrams of calcium. MonaLisa’s limpid hazel eyes stared back at her in the mirror; she immediately reached for the Orlane Hypnotherapy. She figured her skin had to be as depressed as she was after a night with Nigel Latt. He was a National Book award-winning author. She had never slept with a writer she represented. But Nigel was looking mighty fine in his tight jeans and loose-fitting white shirt when he pulled out his David Oscarson pen to sign some papers at her office. He had Mick Jagger lips, lean abs and hips, and a confident masculine swagger. All of these attributes were enhanced by the fact that she had just signed the 38-year-old Nigel to a $3.3 million-dollar book deal with a large publishing house for his next two novels. She had also mere months before served divorce papers to her third insecure and faithless husband. She had reasoned that she deserved a good lay.
She had nurtured Nigel from a pup with his first book, The Good One, for which he had happily received a $100,000 advance. MonaLisa had such high hopes for Nigel as a writer and a lover. And yet, he proved to be a great disappointment from the split seconds it took for him to remove his jeans and reveal a needle dick.
It was downhill from there. Oral sex felt like he was exfoliating her with his beard. After chafing her up, he proceeded to poke her with his pencil. The needle-dicked writer came off in 3 minutes. If it weren’t for the 15% commission on his book sale, MonaLisa would have kicked him in the balls with her pointiest stilettos and out of her apartment onto the rainy New York streets. Instead, she smiled as she escorted him to the door and pecked him goodbye at 3 a.m. that morning. It was rather difficult to manage. She hated bad sex for the same reason she hated drizzling afternoons after a visit to the hair salon. They were both a waste of time.
Two hours later, she was lathering up with an anti-aging moisturizer for depressed skin. After the moisturizer came the concealer and base, mascara, and a bit of color for the eyes. She put on her favorite Chanel russet moon lipstick. With her black push-up bra and silk panties, black garter and the sheerest of black stockings on, she reached in the closet for a black wrap dress and red and black peek-a-boo patent leather pumps.
She pulled her long, dark layered hair into a sleek ponytail. Despite the hellish conoodling interlude with Nigel, MonaLisa looked pretty good that morning. She was fit from a regimen of elliptical training sessions and a healthy diet. She had weekly facials and massages. The jars of Orlane and Ingrid Millet body and caviar neck creams on the makeup table of her well-appointed Upper Eastside apartment had also helped her repel the free radicals that seemed determined to push her usually luminescent skin to premature ageing.
She had left the apartment at 6:30 a.m. Like clockwork, MonaLisa reached the sidewalk of her building. Gripping a leather bag in one hand, she stepped ever so slightly off the curb to greet the New York 20 car service driver who usually took her to her midtown office.
A cab came barreling down in its place, swooping her up in the air. MonaLisa Caren’s body was tossed like Raggedy Ann. Her peek-a-boo pumps came flying off. Her leather bag emptied its contents of manuscripts, contracts, and personal effects
into midair, while her dress opened like a parachute that could not provide her a softer landing. On the way down, she thought again about Nigel’s subpar sexual gymnastics. Why did her last time have to go bust? For she knew that the sorry Nigel Latt would probably be her last lover. She had seen the feral glint in the driver’s mischievous dark eyes on the way up. There was not the least bit of remorse or shock. She hit the hood of the cab and rolled under, just touching the front wheels. The driver unceremoniously drove over her like a pothole, crushing her sternum and breaking both ribs. Two of those 24 rib bones punctured a lung.
VI
Cassis, France, Les Roches Blanches, June 21st
Havilah and Thierry walked towards the lobby from the pool. He had again placed his hand on the small of her back as he guided her through the hotel’s sunlit lobby. To onlookers, the gesture would have appeared intimate. As they moved towards the small elevator, both the concierge and desk receptionist flashed Thierry huge smiles. He nodded in their general direction. Havilah looked at them both and smiled as well. She was mildly amused by the flirting. As soon as they were out of the concierge and desk receptionist’s view, she glided away from his hand.
“I see you’ve made the acquaintance of the receptionist and the concierge. Nice police work.”
He didn’t take the bait. Instead he nodded and pushed the button for the elevator. The doors opened immediately.
“After you.” He smiled at Havilah.
The inside of the elevator was small. Too small even for their long-limbed bodies to stand side by side. Thierry slid behind her. She understood that the concept of personal space as well as size were very different in France; hence the too small elevator. If this had been in Nashville, she would have encouraged her elevator partner to take the next one; but Thierry Gasquet was not having any of it. He seemed entertained by her clear discomfort.
“Is this okay for you?” he inquired.
“Perhaps we should take the steps next time?”
She could see his bemused expression in the elevator’s mirrored interior. He smiled even wider when he felt her squirming uncomfortably in the tight space. He turned slightly, pushed floor button five, and then rested his well-manicured hands at his side. The doors quickly closed shut.
When the doors opened, she sprang out like a Jack in the Box. Gasquet continued to smile as he led the way to her room. Like a gentleman, he opened her door. She held her hand out for the key.
“Thank you.”
“If you need me, I will be there.” He pointed and turned to go.
Next damn door. I just can’t catch a break. She gritted her teeth ever so slightly. “Of course,” she replied as she quietly closed the hotel room door behind her.
She kicked off her shoes so hard they hit the other side of the wall. She nearly ripped the buttons off her pants. She opened the balcony doors to let the breeze in. It was almost four. Think. Think. She tiptoed across the room towards the bathroom. On the way, she spotted her travel bag at the foot of the bed. It was empty. She turned back to open the closet and chest of drawers. Her clothes had been neatly put away on hangers and in the drawers. She wondered if Gasquet had personally unpacked her things. He was looking for something probably. Anything. Don’t be so cynical.
She was glad that she had not had any need for the underwear that made their debut at certain times of the month. They were usually girlish cotton ones with flowers or plain white. Needless to say, they were very different from the boy shorts, hip huggers, bikinis, and silks worn on other days. Havilah grabbed her purse and went into the bathroom.
She opened the taps of the bathtub faucets, letting the water run out hard and fast. She looked over on the small countertop where her toiletries had been arranged. She put foaming gel in the tub. She sat down by the tub and reached into her purse for her cell phone. Scrolling the address book, she pressed “Home.” Her father, Hambright Gaie, picked up on the first ring.
“Havilah Paige Gaie, what is going on?!!” The invention of caller ID allowed her father to pick up the telephone barking with nary a concern about embarrassing himself.
“Dad, I don’t have a lot of time to explain. I’m fine. But Kit Beirnes has been murdered.”
“Yes, you left that deranged message. I know all about it. Why didn’t you leave your cell phone turned on? You know we are up and about at 6:30 in the morning. It is after 9 a.m. here now, Havilah.”
“I thought it was…” But her father interrupted her before she could continue.
“Even Lucian called,” he whinnied. “He just wants to make sure you are okay. He knew you had that event at the Félibrige. What’s this about police at your apartment, a plane ride, and telephone calls? Who is this Thierry Gasquet again that you mentioned in the voicemail? What is that noise? And why are you whispering?”
“I’m in the bathroom, drawing a bath. Okay?” she sighed.
She was a little irritated by her father’s shouting and Lucian’s calling him as well. But she was the one who had left him a babbling message. She searched for a calm voice. Had Havilah not wanted her parents alarmed she probably should have left a more coherent message, she realized. Her father had just retired from his architectural firm in Providence, Rhode Island. He and her mother, Bertie, had planned to do some sort of an around the world cruise in July. She didn’t want to disrupt their retirement festivities. She knew that Hambright and Bertie Gaie would board the first chartered jet, the cost be damned, to get to their one and only child.
“I need you to take a spontaneous trip somewhere,” she suggested with firmness. She opened the tap a little more.
“Well, we are…”
Before he could finish, she snapped, “No! no! no! Not the cruise. I said spontaneous. That’s planned. And do not go to the house in Chatham.”
The Gaies owned a home on Cape Cod, inherited from Bertie’s grandfather. The house had passed through three generations of Scholls, with her mother representing the third. Hers was the black side of the Scholl clan, not ever to be confused with their relatives, the well-known white Scholls, who lived in Newport, Rhode Island.
“Wherever you go, let Lucian know and he can call me. Dad, are you listening? Don’t call me directly.” She was becoming agitated because the tub was filling up fast. She needed to conclude the call.
She couldn’t be certain how far the killer’s reach was. She wanted them safe and not easily locatable. Since Lucian was calling all over tarnation, she figured he could be put to some other good use. She knew her parents would be ecstatic at the prospect of having contact with Lucian. It meant a possible reconciliation to them. Havilah had never told them the details of her decision to call off her engagement to Lucian. And he had never offered to explain those details to them either.
In the end, she was certain her parents respected her decision not to “run down” Lucian like so many broken-up couples did to their respective families. They loved him. She didn’t want to trample on their idea of him. Moreover, she didn’t think they would understand that she felt Lucian had not been forthright about his not wanting children. There were, she knew, plenty of women who would have sacrificed having a family for a wonderful, handsome, and attentive husband. But she wasn’t one of them. She would never have agreed to the engagement had she known. He had pleaded with her to stay, to try.
She preferred that her parents believed that their daughter had put her career before the prospect of marriage, that she was not like her mother who had decided not to pursue her dreams of becoming a lyric soprano with New York’s Metropolitan Opera in order to marry her father and raise her. Her parents assumed times were different. Havilah was a new kind of woman in a new era, so why begrudge their only child her ambitions? Spoiled is what they thought. Since they had had the biggest hands in spoiling her, they let it be.
“Dad?” she queried as she slowed down the water.
“What’s this all about, Havilah?” he clucked. She could just see him pacing the floor of his Eastside Victorian.
“Dad, what did I tell you when I first called?”
She could have throttled him. He was, as his mother Naida said on many occasions, “hard-headed.” She wished her mother had answered.
“Where’s Mom?” she asked before he could begin sermonizing.
“She’s in the parlor playing the piano.” She imagined he heard his wife tinkling the keys, hoped it had the effect of soothing his disquiet about his one and only child.
“Tell her I love her. I love you, too.” Havilah’s eyes welled up. She knew her father wanted more answers but he was biting his tongue because she had insisted.
“And I love you more, lemon seed.” He had always called her some variation of a fruit seed.
“I love you the most.”
“Oh, you got me.” He feigned disappointment.
The “I Love You” back and forth was a game they had played from the time she could say the words. He always let her win.
“Has Nana Naida arrived?”
“No. She usually comes up from Mobile in July. And heads back South after the hurricane season in November. You know that, honey.”
She did. But she wanted to be sure. Everything seemed precarious to her now. She needed some certainties.
“Dad?”
“Yes?”
“Drive. Don’t take a plane. And you can come back on the 24th.” She anticipated having it all figured out by the time she gave her remarks. Either that or I’ll be dead.
“Will do. Be safe, my baby.”
With that said, she disconnected the call. The bathtub was full and too hot. She decided to read through her emails while she waited for the water to cool. She returned to the bedroom to pull out her laptop. She then looked around the room. This was the first opportunity she had had since arriving to appreciate the space. She liked it. It was large for a French hotel room. She knew she would sleep well here, with the breeze coming from the opened balcony doors. She could hear the calming rustle of the waves. She didn’t think any killer was nimble enough to scamper along the stone building with nothing but the sea underneath them to whack her.
The 13th Fellow: A Mystery in Provence Page 5
