The Bones of Paris

by Laurie R. King

“How about we eat, first?” He was getting tired of being asked how sure he was that Pip was gone.

  “Yes. You’re right. How are you for funds, Mr. Stuyvesant?”

  “Pretty flush.”

  “Then we can have a real meal.”

  “Maybe not the Ritz.”

  “They wouldn’t let us in, anyway,” she said.

  Was that a snide glance at my shirt, when she said that? Stuyvesant thought. A girl who comes to the door in a man’s bathrobe?

  She took him to a brasserie near the Louvre, a place where she was clearly known. It was in a cellar, and almost cool compared to the streets outside. To his surprise, her drink order was for a large bottle of mineral water, only including a glass of white wine at his urging.

  She was not so abstemious when it came to food. She plucked a roll from the breadbasket the instant it touched the table, smeared it with butter, and attacked it with the enthusiasm of a monk who had just rescinded his vows. She took a second and, buttered knife in action, glanced up.

  “Sorry! It’s been ages since I ate. I spent the past two days on a series of trains, and since my friends were all in third-class, so was I—with an endless supply of retsina, but none of them thought to include food, and we all ran out of cash.”

  “Were you in Greece?”

  “Yes. Ever been?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Fascinating place. I was helping out in an archaeological dig—the Italians are running it, of course, but they were happy to have a hand.”

  “Is that what you do? You’re an archaeologist?”

  “What, a summer’s sweat for a handful of broken pottery? No, a friend of mine is in love with a man whose greatest joy is digging stuff out of the ground, and she asked me to go along. It was great fun, though I wished I’d taken a better hat.”

  “The tan makes you look like you’ve spent the summer on the beach.”

  “But not the hands.”

  She stuck out her free hand, and indeed, though the back was just brown, the front of it showed the hard wear of heavy calluses and half-healed blisters.

  Their food came, and she addressed herself to it with considerable focus: one modern girl who didn’t simply pick at a lettuce leaf. She was also, now that her mind was coming awake, a deft conversationalist: in between bites she amused him with tales of archaeologists at play; during bites she listened to his adventures in Europe. Light talk: serious eating.

  When her plate was empty (though her wine glass remained half-full), she sat back with a purr of contentment.

  “Dessert?” he asked.

  “I’ll explode. Thanks for that. If you hadn’t come to my rescue, Mme. Hachette—the concierge—would have found me wasted away, without the energy to crawl out and buy a baguette and some milk.” Her face changed, its liveliness draining away. “That joke may have been in poor taste. You think something bad has happened to poor Phil, don’t you?”

  He cocked an eyebrow. “Read a lot of detective novels, do you?”

  “From time to time,” she admitted. “All I mean is, it sounds as if Phil has walked away from her life pretty thoroughly.”

  “Oh, I’m sure to find her living it up on someone’s yacht near Antibes, collecting wild stories to tell her grandchildren. But that reminds me—I don’t suppose you have her passport? It’s not in her desk.”

  “I haven’t seen it. That’s good, isn’t it? It suggests nobody conked her on the head and dragged her off to a cave or something.”

  Ladies’ novels, too, he guessed. “She wasn’t in the habit of carrying her passport with her, then?”

  “Heavens, who does that?”

  Harris Stuyvesant did that. But then, not everyone lived with the chance of needing to get out of a country fast.

  “So in the last weeks before you went off to Greece, what was she doing? Who was she seeing?”

  She threw up her hands. “This is the problem. I’m sorry, but by last spring, Phil and I were living at opposite ends of the clock. She’d be out late and sleep late, while I was down in the Quarter before ten most mornings, either at the restaurant or with this Greek student who was teaching me some of the language. Phil and I would mostly leave each other notes: Pick up coffee. The dentist called. Package at Mme. Hachette’s.”

  “What about politics? Was she involved in any radical groups?”

  “Phil? Politics? Only if she was hot for one of the men, and she never mentioned anything like that.”

  “And she showed no signs of drugs.”

  “To tell you the truth, I’m not sure I would have noticed unless she set the stuff up in the kitchen one morning.”

  “No money went missing, no strange smells, her behavior didn’t change—depressed or manic?”

  “You think she was using cocaine?”

  “Lots of people do.”

  “Well, if she did, I didn’t see it.” She grimaced. “Yachts, drugs; it really doesn’t sound like Phil. She had … interests. A life. God, you hear about things—of course you do, Paris is like any big city. Bad things happen. But … Oh, Phil.”

  The despair of the last two words was unmistakable, and Stuyvesant jumped to distract her before it could develop—or become contagious.

  “Tell me about Phil. Her friends, her life.”

  “Could we go, please? I’d like to be outside.”

  Their premature departure earned the disapproval of the waiter, for whom a meal was unfinished if it did not end in a jolt of liquid tar, but Stuyvesant left him a soothing tip and followed Nancy Berger along to the chestnut allées of the Tuileries.

  He lit a cigarette, waiting for this unexpected young woman to put her thoughts in order.

  “Can I have one of those?” she asked.

  “Sure—sorry, you said you didn’t smoke.”

  “I don’t. Used to, gave it up, except for maybe twice a year when I need one.”

  She paused to cup her hand around his, steadying the Ronson’s flame. She tipped her head back, eyes closed, then let the smoke drift from those wide lips with a disconcertingly … experienced kind of moan.

  “I met Phil when I first came to Paris, a year ago last June. I was staying in a hovel down in the thirteenth arrondissement that was a long way from anywhere, so I mentioned to Sylvia Beach—Shakespeare and Company, you know?—that I was looking for a nicer place to rent, maybe in the fifth or sixth arrondissement. A few days later Sylvia gave me a phone number. It was Phil, who wanted a housemate to share this grand flat she had on the Right Bank. It wasn’t the money. She’d only been in Paris a couple of months, and I think she was a bit lonely living there alone. Not exactly where her crowd tended to gather.”

  “She had a ‘crowd,’ then? Americans?”

  “Sure. And like the rest of us, she spent most of her time down in the Quarter.”

  “Boyfriends?”

  “Naturally. Why come to Paris if you’re not interested in sex?” She said it matter-of-factly. “But, I only met a few of them. We agreed early on not to bring men to the apartment unless we were sure the other was away—we’d both had experience with the awkward meeting of roommates and boyfriends. What about you? Did you sleep with her?”

  He gave a cough of surprise. “Miss Berger, I’m twice her age.”

  “She likes older men.”

  “Does she?”

  “Especially artists.”

  “Well, I’m no artist.” They reached the end of the gardens, where a bevy of girls in pleasingly short summer dresses waited to cross the road. “Tell me about the modeling. Was she doing it when you first met?”

  “Not at first. Maybe over the summer? Certainly by winter it was a regular thing—I remember her coming back from a sitting half-frozen. After that she started picking jobs based on the efficiency of the artists’ heaters.”

  He chuckled. “Yeah, I’ve been here in January. You call them jobs, but she had money. You ever ask her why she did it? The modeling?”

  “I did, one night before our lives �
� diverged. Somebody’d given me a bottle of really good champagne, and we opened it and talked, like mad. Phil told me she found modeling freeing.”

  “Freeing? What, posing naked in front of a bunch of artists?”

  The smile she gave him held more sadness than humor. “I know, but—you saw her photographs? With the scar? Since she was ten years old, Phil’s been taught to see herself as damaged, less than whole. Certainly less than desirable.” She paused, frowning. “I wonder if that could be related to her obsession with privacy? Anyway. She found it a revelation that her body might be something others could appreciate, even value. The honesty of modeling was intoxicating. Especially when it came to photographers. You saw the close-ups?”

  “I can’t imagine having those on my wall.”

  “I know—waking up to them every morning? The man spent a week taking close-ups of her body, head to toe. I went to the gallery that showed his collection—they were amazing, the textures of her skin—not just the scar, but her … well, other parts.”

  He glanced over: not the faintest hint of a blush. It was on the very tip of his tongue to ask if she modeled, too, but he caught the words and turned them into something else. “She has a lot of art in that room. Can you tell me about the artists? I recognize a few of them, and, of course, the Picasso sketch.”

  “She was proud of getting that one, cornered him at the Select one night and flirted outrageously until he did a drawing of her. And as I said, she liked—likes—older men. There was one she went on about, eyes like Valentino—and she’d have slept with Picasso except he had a very new young girlfriend. Oh, now that was catty of me. Mr.—What was your name again?”

  “Call me Harris.”

  “Harris, of course—sorry, I’m half-dead. Oh, God, there I go again!”

  He was worried that she would burst into tears then, and he wasn’t going to get much more out of her today. “C’mon, I’ll walk you back. I need to finish looking through Pip’s things, anyway.”

  She allowed him to turn her in the direction of the apartment. “What a strange job you have. I’ve never met a private detective before. That I know of.”

  “I’ve never met an archaeologist before. Even an amateur one.”

  “I’m an amateur lots of things.”

  “Such as what?”

  “Linguist. I collect languages.”

  “How many?”

  “I’m fluent in three or four and I can work my way through a marketplace in, I don’t know, seven or eight? Maybe ten in a pinch. And chef: I collect cooking techniques. I decided that a grown woman not knowing how to produce a decent meal was foolish, so I came to Paris to learn.”

  “You’re in a cooking school?”

  “Informally. I volunteer as an unpaid plongeuse and work my way up from scrubbing the pots to stirring them, watching over the chef’s shoulder until I can mimic a few of the dishes. Then I start over at another place. I did that three times, and I’d planned my fourth—that brasserie we just ate at—when I came back from Greece. I’m not so sure now that I want another dose of classical French. I’m thinking of changing it to Greek cooking. Maybe Indochinese.”

  Stuyvesant examined the side of her face. She was tall for a woman, with a strong chin and sharp nose—not pretty, but it suited her. He’d been thinking of her as a student—though she was years older than the standard nineteen-year-old—with a limited budget that had driven her to shared accommodations. However, anyone who could spend a year indulging hobbies and still afford an archaeological summer in Greece had resources.

  Unless the resources had been Pip’s. But, short of being the best liar he’d ever met, Nancy Berger’s reactions didn’t fit that theory.

  “There’s a great Indochinese café tucked in the other side of the Sorbonne,” he said.

  “The Bambu? Oh, I dream about their lemon grass chicken.”

  “Or even better, their duck with chilies.”

  “You’re a brave man, Mr. Stuyvesant.”

  But not brave enough to face the concierge without a qualm. He gave Mme. Hachette a craven tip of the hat and followed on Miss Berger’s heels, feeling the dragon’s glare scorch the back of his neck.

  Upstairs, his companion walked into the sitting room, looked vaguely at the strewn objects from the exploded suitcase, and seemed to sag. When she turned, he realized that she was older still than he’d thought, probably past thirty.

  “Dear Lord, I am tired,” she announced. “Look. If I leave you with Phil’s things, can I trust you not to steal the silver?”

  “As if Mme. Hachette would let me walk away with so much as a hairpin. Yes, I’ll lock up. And close the window.”

  “Thanks. Good to meet you,” she said.

  “Before you go, tell me: what did you go into her bedroom for? It wasn’t for any ointment.”

  She hadn’t been embarrassed when talking about naked photographs, but she was now. “I told you, I—”

  “Honey, you’re a rotten liar.”

  She sighed. “I am, aren’t I? It was a dress. Phil had two or three really special dresses. The kind of garments that take over a woman’s entire personality when she puts them on. You become … well, you become a person who would wear that kind of a gown. So when I was asked to a very formal occasion, I borrowed one, even though it was too short on me. I had it cleaned afterwards and put it back precisely where I had found it, but if she knew, she’d have a fit. She loved those dresses. She used to …”

  She stopped, laying a hand over her mouth.

  “What is it?”

  “I’m talking as if she’s dead. Oh, God! Poor kid, she comes to Paris to get away from Boston and what does she end up with? A roommate who’s happy to find the apartment empty and a private investigator who’s more interested in girls’ legs than his job. Jesus, Paris can be a shit of a town.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” he protested. “You got no reason to panic like that. Pip’s no wide-eyed innocent. She knows how the world works. And she’s got enough sense to keep out of dark corners.”

  “And if she didn’t, then she brought it on herself, is that what you mean?”

  If she’d been a man, he’d have punched her. “I never said that. I never thought that. And lady, I’m doing my damnedest to find her.”

  Her dark eyes welled up. “I’m so sorry. Oh, God—I seem to have spent the last hour apologizing to you. I’m not usually—it’s just—I’m such a useless—oh, why didn’t someone at least notice?”

  He seized her shoulders, forcing her to look up at him.

  “Listen. I will find her. No doubt head over heels in love with some handsome young painter.”

  “It’s just, she was so … secretive. And when she did talk she’d come up with some piece of old wives’ hooey and it was just … irritating. I even asked her if she wanted me to move out, but she sounded surprised and said no, she was happy to have me. Like I say, we might as well have been living in separate houses. Mme. Hachette probably knows more about Phil than I do—she could tell you when Phil left, which is more than I can! Oh, I should have pushed it.”

  “What, moving out?”

  “Talking to her. If I’d even asked her about her new friends, her strange habits, what she was doing …”

  “Nancy, look: if Pip was so set on privacy, do you think she’d have told you any of that?”

  Her teary eyes studied him for the longest time. “Thank you,” she said finally.

  “For what?”

  “For trying to make me feel less of a failure when it comes to friendship.” To his surprise, she stepped forward to plant a kiss on his cheek. To his greater surprise, his hand started to come up and hold the back of her head, pressing that generous mouth into his—but he stifled the motion before it started. She wasn’t even his type.

  Still, she was unexpected. And she might tell him more about Pip Crosby, if he distracted her. Fed her booze. “Would you like to go out with me? Dinner, dancing—the movies, if you like. Inno
cents of Paris is still playing, if you like Maurice Chevalier.”

  She sniffed, and dug through her pockets for a tissue to blow her nose. Her eyes were red again when she looked up, but dry. “Would this be social, or part of your investigation?”

  “What if I said both?”

  “Then I suppose yes. But not tonight.”

  “Tomorrow, then. Seven?”

  “Half past.”

  “I’ll wear a shirt with buttons that match,” he said.

  She gave him that mournful smile. “And I’ll wear one of my own dresses.”

  He watched her go. Less of a failure when it came to friendship. Yeah, okay, he might’ve been a little … using towards Pip Crosby, last winter. She’d caught him at a bad time, just after Tim’s death, and he’d been feeling so down he hadn’t really stopped to think why this pretty young thing would want the likes of him. He’d just let himself be convinced. And then she’d been so damned enthusiastic, and …

  And maybe he should have talked with her a little, too. Asked her about herself. Treated her like a person, not a … not a Lulu.

  But, really, how was a man to know? Women these days seemed to like being casual, seemed not to want anything but a good time and a good-bye. And in the end, Pip left him rather than the other way around. There was no reason to feel any more guilty about her than he did about Lulu.

  Other than her youth. And her scar. And the image of a ten-year-old girl falling through the air with flames in her clothes.

  Ah, crap. What had started as a quick and cushy job wasn’t turning out that way.

  He began his bedroom tour, as before, with the photographs on the wall. The first time through, they had struck him as slightly phony, pretentiously arty, like a college freshman with delusions of fame posing his girlfriend for the camera. Reluctantly, now he wondered if they weren’t more than that. Not the close-ups of her scar: those were just morbid. But the others …

  Both of the moody photographs rendered Pip’s conventional features dramatic by their severe black and white. In the first, she was lying on a black surface gazing up at the camera lens, hands crossed like a laid-out corpse, hair falling back from her face: expressionless as a mannequin, inscrutable behind heavy makeup. The photograph was disturbing in some indefinable way, and despite the paint and the apparent lack of revelation, seemed more naked than the other one.