Deadly Slipper Read online

  Paul, who had donned an apron, was now serving tables. A group of cyclists, dressed in colorful spandex, sun goggles, and aerodynamic helmets, pushed through the bead curtain. All walked with the mincing step of men treading on cleats who have been straddling bicycle seats too long.

  “Messieurs, dames,” they gave the standard greeting to the room at large.

  “Damned spacemen,” Paul muttered to Julian in passing. “Think they’re training for the Tour de France. Drink nothing but Badoit.”

  Julian finished up with a dessert of crème brûlée. He drank a well-sweetened coffee and read the paper. Eventually, when the bistro cleared, Paul joined him at his table, followed by Mado.

  “Listen, you two.” Julian drained his cup. “I need to ask you something.”

  “What’s up?” rumbled Paul. Mado lit a cigarette, dragging at it deeply.

  “Do you remember a case involving a missing hiker, a Canadian woman, nineteen years ago? She was last seen at Les Gabarres. It’s possible she disappeared in this area.”

  “Vaguely.” Paul pulled a face. “Long time ago. Why?”

  Julian told them about Mara Dunn and her sister.

  “She should lean on the police, lazy salopards,” Mado said. “She could be on to something with these photos. Why won’t they take it seriously?”

  “There’s no real way of proving her sister really took them, except for some initials on the inside of the camera case, but those could be anyone’s.”

  “The flowers tell you nothing?” Mado took another deep drag, tilting her head back to blow smoke upward to the ceiling, eyes half closed. Mado’s smoking, Julian thought with pleasure, was an object lesson in sensuality.

  “Probably not. However, there’s a shot of a pigeonnier in the middle of a field. Something like that is a lot easier to place than a bunch of flowers. It’s long odds, I know, Paul, but you’re from around here. I thought if you could look at the photo …”

  Paul stared aghast. “Bigre! Do you know how many pigeonniers there are around here? In all the Southwest? For five hundred years, farmers have been building pigeon houses. Pigeon shit used to be worth its weight in gold, you know, as fertilizer. France was built on pigeon shit.”

  “Well, even if you don’t know the pigeonnier, you might be able to recognize the general locality,” Julian persisted doggedly.

  “Oh, what can it hurt?” cried Mado, stubbing out her smoke with a quick, imperative gesture.

  “Just look at the photograph,” pleaded Julian.

  “You know what you are, my friend?” uttered Paul. “You’re a raving lunatic.”

  But he promised to have a go.

  •

  The drive to Toulouse took Mara much longer than if she had gone by the A20. But today she preferred the minor roads. She needed the soothing progression of villages and farms and rough, newly planted fields, of towns with names that rolled off the tongue: Villefranche-du-Périgord, Fumel, Tournon-d’Agenais, Montaigu-de-Quercy. Her dog, Jazz, also a lover of country drives, occupied the passenger seat, his broad head hanging joyfully out the opened window. The wind was heavy with the smell of wet manure.

  A few days before, Mara had sat on a hard, upright chair in police headquarters in Périgueux, pleading again with Commissaire Boutot for the reactivation of Bedie’s case. The Commissaire, a sad-eyed man with a drooping mustache, told her mournfully that the camera was very little to go on, the police had already made what inquiries they could with no result, therefore, désolé, there was nothing more they could do. “After all, madame, nineteen years!” His entire demeanor gave a weary conveyance of the Gallic shrug.

  Depressed, Mara had e-mailed Patsy Reicher, her psychoanalyst friend in New York:

  > So once more things are at a stop. I told you I drew a blank with Julian Wood. Knows his flowers, but a bit of an oddball and in the end no help. Oh, Patsy, why did I have to find that damned camera? Just when I was beginning to let go, I’m plunged right back into it. I haven’t told Mum and Dad yet, or Scott. Afraid to raise their hopes. Sometimes I feel as if Bedie were still alive, playing a game of hide-and-seek, daring me to find her. <

  For five years, tall, wacky, gum-chewing Patsy had been Mara’s only real confidante in the Dordogne. The problem was that Mara’s other friends were also her clients, and experience had taught her that business and intimacy—particularly something as heavy as Bedie—didn’t mix well. With Patsy, however, it had been different. Mara pictured her—gangling, fifty-something, with frizzy, badly hennaed hair showing gray at the roots, a broad, freckle-splashed face, ironic green eyes—and missed her badly. But Patsy’s time in the region had been a temporary midlife fling at sculpture. Her work, humorous, free-form, and too large to command a market, now stood moss-covered and forlorn in Mara’s back garden, where it had resided since Patsy’s return to New York and psychoanalysis. Know when to cut your losses, was Patsy’s motto, a guiding principle she also applied to men—her marital career, like her art, being somewhat free-form.

  From her uptown Manhattan office, Patsy had fired back:

  > Easy, kid. The only player here is you, and the game is solitaire. Yes, you can let it go. Finding out what happened won’t bring Bedie back. Besides, you might not like what you dig up. <

  It was true. So focused was she on the hunt that perhaps she had not sufficiently considered its possible consequences. Suddenly the countryside she drove through took on a more forbidding aspect: wild woods and fields, a scatter map of isolated farms and small communities. The rough, clustered dwellings of the villages seemed to draw in on themselves, stubbornly closing down on secrets that the outsider would be hard put to dislodge. Terrible things could happen within their precincts and no one would be the wiser. Which one, she wondered, and where?

  •

  Mara’s business in Toulouse included an importer of ceramic ware, a fat, voluble Spaniard named Pablo who had his shop in the old Fish Market. She had not dealt with him before. He gazed at her with warm, coffee-colored eyes while Mara gave him a purposely exaggerated notion of the size of her clientele, all with bathrooms and kitchens that they, as today’s purchasers of picturesque Perigordian cottages, were disinclined to leave in the sixteenth century.

  “Bueno.” He drew back thick lips, disclosing square, yellow teeth, and offered her a negligible discount and a bag of sample tiles.

  Lunch was a quick croque-monsieur, half of which she shared with Jazz, followed by a pass through the antique dealers on the Left Bank. The only thing she found of interest was a dusty bolt of vintage yardage that in the end wouldn’t do for draperies because on unrolling it she discovered that it was water-damaged. All in all, a disappointing day.

  She drove home in the gold-blue twilight, tired, still depressed, mechanically making the turnoff to the hamlet of Ecoute-la-Pluie. Translated literally, Ecoute-la-Pluie meant Listen to the Rain. Nomenclatures in those parts tended to be rendered in a kind of rural shorthand, reduced simply to the names of residents, or, in this case, to their prominent characteristics. Ecoute-la-Pluie referred to a small water mill that had once operated there—or, more whimsically, to the miller himself (as Mara imagined him), ear ever cocked for the sound of rain that would swell the little stream that powered his grindstone.

  The hamlet consisted of a handful of dwellings, strung out along a bumpy gravel lane. At the head of the lane, someone had left a battered white Peugeot van, badly parked on the grassy verge. She veered around it. Her house was the third down, a rambling eighteenth-century structure. She loved her house, its honey-gold stone, its roughly tiled roof, its many windows. It was her one solid point of reference in a life that to date had been busy with making her business go, haunted by the imperative of Bedie, and too little given to comprehending where she herself fit in all of this.

  She parked along the side and got out, breathing in the sweetness of lilacs that filled the evening air. Jazz dropped heavily to the ground behind her, did a dog’s version of a full-body stretch, and sa
untered off to water a bush. As she rounded the corner of the house, a tall figure broke from the shadows. She froze. Jazz was suddenly beside her, tail stiff, ears erect. He gave a low growl.

  “Ah,” said the figure, stopping mid-stride. “Julian Wood. You came to see me about some photographs. Is your—I’ve forgotten his name—is he okay?”

  “Jazz,” said Mara, slightly annoyed with herself for being frightened. In fact, now that she had recovered, she was glad of a visitor. She hadn’t been looking forward to an evening of her own company. “Don’t worry.” She waved a reassuring hand. “He’s very friendly, actually.”

  “I’m sure,” said Julian with palpable skepticism.

  •

  “I just happened to be passing,” Julian said, stepping bemusedly into her front room. Right away he didn’t like it: a showcase of period furniture and objets d’art, all positioned for effect. A large floral carpet (genuine Aubusson? if so, worth a small fortune) lay on the highly polished walnut floor. The whole place had an uncomfortable, upmarket air, redolent of the sweetish smell of beeswax polish. He looked at her, and his discomfort deepened. This was not the hedgehog woman who had come to him for help the month before. Instead, a person to match the room, bone dry to start with, coolly professional, tailored silk dress belted at the waist, wedge sandals, hair artfully clipped. Stood to reason, he thought sourly. As her business card had announced, she was a designer, an arranger of the natural scatter of things.

  And then there was her dog, a large, tawny beast, probably of pit bull extraction. In any case immensely strong, with a broad chest flashed with white and a very big head. It took up a protective position beside her on the Aubusson. Its eyes, Julian noted, were remarkably intelligent, golden-brown, and outlined in black.

  Julian hadn’t really been passing by. He had driven out on purpose. It was necessary to his plan that he see her in person. Not knowing which house was hers, he had parked at the top of the lane and ambled down, peering in the dusky light at names on mailboxes until he saw her sign. Now, taking in her furnishings, her dog, he decided to cut his visit short.

  “Um, thanks, but I can’t stay,” he said in response to her offer of a drink and a chair (a hard-looking Louis Something fauteuil). “I really came by because I was wondering if I could have another look at those photos.”

  She tensed immediately. “Have you found out something?”

  “No,” he admitted. “I just thought—”

  She didn’t wait for him to tell her what he thought. “Come out to my studio,” she said, and led him quickly across the room and out the back of the house through a set of double doors.

  He had anticipated manicured turf and topiary to match her interior decor. He was surprised to find instead an unkempt ground studded with oversized statuary that made his patch look like the formal gardens of Versailles. Her studio was even worse. Housed in a converted stable, it resembled a bomb crater. The floor was littered with what looked like salvaged material from wrecking sites. A chipped marble mantelpiece and bolts of cloth leaned against the walls. There was a broken-down armchair loaded with manila files, a large workbench buried in paint samples, plans, and sketches. The only relatively clear space was an L-shaped desk with a phone/fax, computer, and printer.

  “Sorry,” she apologized. “This is how it really is. What you saw out there is my storefront, where I impress my clients.”

  “I was impressed,” he admitted grudgingly.

  She laughed, a clear, friendly laugh. “You were meant to be. Everything in it is for sale. My cleaning woman treats it like a holy shrine. Honestly, she polishes the floor on her hands and knees with a brand of encaustic that smells like churches.”

  She went straight to the desk, pulled open the bottom drawer, and removed the now familiar brown envelope. Beneath it lay a dark rectangular object covered in plastic.

  “Is that the camera?” he was moved by curiosity to ask.

  She nodded, lifting it out, unwrapping it, handling it like a holy relic. He took it from her. The black leather case was brittle, crumbling slightly at his touch. Gently he unsnapped the top. A dusty smell of mold rose to his nostrils. The metal mounting and other hardware were corroded, but the box and lens looked intact. On the interior of the cover flap, he saw the letters, clearly printed: B.D. At that point, she took the camera back from him, as if his scrutiny had somehow become too personal.

  Julian removed the photos from the envelope and fanned through them, purposely ignoring the Lady’s Slipper, singling out the shot of the pigeon house.

  “Look,” he said, “would you be willing to make copies of this print?” And he told her about Paul and Mado Brieux.

  “Paul’s from around here, you see. I thought, even if he doesn’t recognize it, he has a lot of contacts, agricultural salesmen, farmers, market vendors, people who travel around the region every day. I’ve talked to him. He’s willing to pass copies of this print around.”

  “Julian, that’s brilliant!” Mara cried. Her pale face glowed with sudden hope.

  “Oh well,” he said, speculating on where the admiring light in her eyes might lead. “Nothing may come of it, of course. Still, no harm in making, say, a couple dozen copies, letting Paul hand them out, and seeing what happens.” He was standing close enough to her to catch a remembered scent of sandalwood, to see the faint flutter of a pulse in her throat. It made him slightly uneasy.

  “I can’t begin to thank you—”

  “Yes, you can,” he said, taking a deep breath and stepping back. “Because I want something in return.”

  “Oh?” She was suddenly wary. “What?”

  “A full set of these prints.”

  She looked surprised. “But the photos are awful. You said so yourself. Oh … I suppose you’re interested in the Lady’s Slipper?”

  “Be crazy not to be,” he admitted. “Something like this is a botanist’s dream.”

  She frowned. “But why do you want… Wait a minute, I thought you said it was impossible to use these photos to trace my sister.”

  “Well, yes, there’s really no way—” he began, but she cut him off.

  “But you’re going to try to find this Cypri—this flower. Using Bedie’s photos. That means—”

  “Now, hold on, Mara,” he broke in. “No one said anything about trying to find the Cypripedium. After all, what are the odds? It’s probably a mutant that bloomed once a long time ago and died. I just want a photo of it for, well, call it scientific curiosity.”

  “Fine,” she said coolly. “If that’s all you want, then you can have it. I’ll make you a copy. But only this one. You don’t need the rest. Not if, as you say, you’re really not trying to track this orchid down.”

  He felt a sudden spike of anger. “For heaven’s sake, this is ridiculous. It’s not a lot to ask, and I would have thought—”

  “You help me,” she said, her awful chin snapping up, “and I’ll help you. After all, in a way, we’re looking for the same thing, aren’t we?”

  The admiring light in her eyes had hardened to a bargaining glare. The pulse in her throat pumped aggressively.

  She had him.

  “All right,” he gave over. Bloody woman. At that moment, he felt like strangling her.

  •

  Julian got out of bed the next morning feeling terrible. He had slept badly, and the shadow headache of the day before, taking on substance, seemed to be trying to hammer its way out of his skull. A real thumper. Strictly speaking, his headaches were not typical migraines. He did not have, thank god, the nausea, the incapacitating pain, but they were bad enough. He stumbled blindly into the bathroom, groped for his pills, and swallowed them down with tap water. Seeking Mara out had been a big mistake, like dropping a rock into the placid puddle of his existence. Grudgingly, he had to hand it to her. She had seen through him pretty damned quickly. With a sigh he shambled unsteadily into the kitchen to make himself a mug of tea. Stirring in four sugars, he squinted dizzily at his list of appointme
nts—there was only one, but he wondered if he really would feel well enough to make it. It also occurred to him that Edith hadn’t been around for her morning snack. In fact, he hadn’t seen her for a while. She was in heat. Probably off coupling with every dog in the valley, the slut.

  By eleven o’clock, the pills had kicked in and Julian was feeling better. He slicked down his hair, put on a clean shirt, and drove out to meet the new client whom Mara had referred. She proved to be a glamorous, retired Chinese American advertising executive named Prudence Chang. Looking over her property, Julian cheered up considerably. He fervently hoped the woman had money to burn. If he was given his way, her renovated farmhouse, fronted by a wonderful walled-in cobblestone courtyard, was about to become la plus belle site de la région.

  The client, standing with him in the sunny courtyard, listened while he enthused over the microenvironment of walls, the characteristics of Rosa gallica versus heady floribunda. He was developing a theme of wisteria over the archway of the double gate when she tipped down designer sunglasses and looked at him with tired, slim-line eyes.

  “Look. Julian. I’ve got two questions. How much is this gonna cost, and do I get to see any of it before I die?”

  Sadly, he realized that what she really wanted was instant garden—hostas, bedding plants, and pret-à-porter hanging baskets. It was like that with most Americans. She read the disappointment on his face and offered a compromise.

  “Okay, listen. I’m giving a bash here next month. You get things looking nice—I don’t care what—just whip it into shape—in time for my party, and you can plant roses up the ying-yang for all I care.”

  “Fair enough,” he said. But he wondered what “whipping into shape” meant to a woman like Prudence Chang.

  •

  There was a message on his répondeur when he returned to his cottage: Julian, Mara. I’ve made two dozen color photocopies of the pigeonnier. Can I bring them over?

  She turned up at the end of the day, accompanied inevitably by Jazz. They went straight round to Chez Nous, where they found Paul working in his potager, turning the soil carefully around herbs that had wintered over, and setting out tomato and lettuce seedlings with a delicacy that belied his size. He gave Mara a muddy fist to shake, scratched Jazz’s ear, and jerked his head toward the house.