The Orchid Shroud Read online

  Prudence, a glamorous Chinese American ex–advertising executive from L.A., spent part of the year in a restored farmhouse not far from Mara’s own place. Most of the renovation of the farmhouse had been (badly) done by somebody else. The selective conversion back to its original state, such as stripping off cheap, ugly walling to reveal the original creamy limestone, was being organized by Mara.

  “Oh?” Mara murmured, thinking with despair that this was one more thing going off the rails.

  “You look awful.” Prudence tickled the top of Jazz’s head with a perfectly manicured fingernail while taking in Mara’s rumpled appearance with critical, slim-line eyes. Prudence wore designer clothes even in the country and never had a hair out of place.

  “It’s Christophe,” Mara complained. “He really is impossible.” She elaborated on her grievances as she trailed Prudence into the kitchen, where she was given the choice of coffee or iced tea. Mara accepted iced tea. She needed to cool down.

  “He acts like a spoiled baby. And he’s autocratic as hell.” Now she followed Prudence back into the front room. She flung herself onto a plaid settee, one of a pair.

  Prudence arranged her Calvin Klein shirtdress before sitting down more gracefully on the other. “That’s because he’s a de Bonfond. The family’s rich as Croesus. He’s an only child, inherited all kinds of real estate in Bordeaux. And his cousin Antoine—he’s the Coteaux de Bonfond man—practically owns the Sigoulane Valley. Would own it all, if it weren’t for a few ragtag winegrowers who won’t sell out.” Prudence knew a surprising amount about almost everyone.

  “The nerve of him sending me to run his errands,” Mara fumed. “He wants me to commission someone to prove Baby Blue has nothing to do with his family.”

  “Oh, that’s because one of his cousins, Guy Verdier, is trying to cash in on the publicity by offering to sell the dirt on the de Bonfonds to the media. He’s a—what do you call them?—avocat. Lawyer. So I suppose he’d know how to avoid being sued for libel. Lawyers are generally good at that sort of thing. His father, Michel Verdier, is one of the winegrowers who won’t sell out to Antoine. There’s no love lost between the families. Maybe this is Christophe’s way of doing damage control.”

  “Well, I damn well feel like telling him he can get hold of this Fournier fellow himself, especially since he fully intends to suborn the results.”

  “Jean-Claude Fournier?”

  “I suppose you know him, too?”

  “I’ve met him.” Prudence toyed with a carved amber bracelet. “Drop-dead gorgeous and très charmant. Kisses your hand up to the armpit if you let him. He’s a practicing genealogist and a cultural historian, or so he calls himself. Writes things. That’s one of his.” She waved at a large book on the coffee table: Le Visage de la Résistance en Dordogne (The Face of the Resistance in the Dordogne). “And that’s another”—a smaller volume entitled Contes folkloriques de la Dordogne (Folktales of the Dordogne). “Borrow them if you like. He spoke once at the Dordogne Women’s Society meeting. I never really figured out exactly on what, but it was all very interesting. I keep telling you, Mara, you really should join.”

  “What, to get my armpit kissed?”

  “Or any other body part. Speaking of which, how are you and Julian getting on?”

  “Oh,” said Mara evasively. “We’ve both been pretty busy. He’s landscaping Coteaux de Bonfond, and as you know I’m renovating Christophe’s house.”

  “You’re supposed to be renovating mine. You need a kick in the pants. You and Julian, I mean. You’re right for each other, you know. So when are you going to get it together?”

  “We are. We do. Most weekends.”

  “That sounds really thrilling,” Prudence said with patent insincerity. “You two remind me of a couple I used to know. They dated for years, even lived together on and off, but never got out of the starting gate. In the end he drifted off to Hawaii with someone half his age to raise macadamia nuts, and she set up her own software business in Anaheim.”

  “And the moral is?”

  “You tell me.”

  Mara sighed. “The trouble is, Julian might be just as happy doing that. Raising macadamia nuts. If he weren’t so busy looking for orchids.”

  “So that’s where it’s at, is it?”

  In truth, Mara did not know where it was at, except that their parting the night before had not forecast romantic success. He had asked her to stay. She had turned him down. If he had pressed her, maybe she would have told him what was on her mind. They could have talked things out. But it hadn’t happened like that. Were they, like Prudence’s friends, fated to go their separate ways, he to his botanical pursuits, she, endlessly, to renovating other people’s bathrooms? Her last sight of Julian had been in her rearview mirror, as she left him standing by the roadside outside his house: a tall, indistinct form, lonely in the darkness. The thought of him like that made her swallow hard.

  Prudence, who had been studying Mara, broke the silence. “Tell you what. You read Jean-Claude’s Contes folkloriques. It’s full of tales of folks who make pacts with the devil. You could try selling your soul to Satan in return for Julian’s love.”

  “No thanks.”

  “Oh, it’s not as bad as it sounds,” Prudence reassured her cheerfully. “Around here, people always get the better of the devil, poor dope. Typical Périgordine cunning.”

  Mara sat up in bed, pillows stacked behind her, drinking fruit juice straight from the container and squinting through a pair of newly prescribed varifocal glasses, which meant that she couldn’t see anything properly, near or far. Le Visage de la Résistance en Dordogne was balanced on her knees. It was a photo-documentation of the local Resistance effort against the Germans in the years 1940–1944. She was surprised, given Prudence’s description of the author, to find it a serious, well-assembled work.

  An hour later, she got up, dumped her juice carton, punched her pillows into shape, resettled, and opened Contes folkloriques de la Dordogne. This was a collection of stories, interlarded with the author’s comments. One, a tale told by a farmer from Liorac, was described as part of an oral tradition still very much alive in the region and representative of the typical werewolf “encounter” tale:

  A farmer coming home from a housewarming late at night was walking along the bank of a stream. The moon was full, and he could see almost as well as in bright daylight. He saw a strange man on the other side of the stream, bathing in the water. When the strange man realized he had been observed, he transformed into an enormous wolf. The terrified farmer fell on his knees and prayed to the Virgin Mary. When he opened his eyes, the werewolf had vanished.

  “Would’ve done better to swear off drink,” Mara muttered to Jazz, who lay snoring at her feet. She read on:

  … If we accept that all legends have their roots in the reality of a people, we must ask why the Sigoulane Valley offers such a particularly rich store of werewolf stories. Perhaps this is partly explained by the fact that in times past wolves roamed freely in the forests surrounding the valley. However, it is also possible that the tales took their origin from a series of gruesome deaths that occurred in the last quarter of the 1700s and again in the middle of the 1800s. Eyewitnesses claimed that a wolflike creature able to walk upright like a man was responsible for the killings. Fact or fantasy? There are many who believe the Sigoulane Beast, as it came to be called, was no figment of the popular imagination …

  Mara was growing sleepy. The books gave her a curious picture of the man she had been instructed to meet: the competent historical documentarian sat oddly with the legitimizer of werewolf stories. She yawned. Folktales soon joined The Face of the Resistance on the floor.

  9

  SUNDAY AFTERNOON, 2 MAY

  Jean-Claude Fournier was slim, mid-thirties, and movie-star handsome. He had an aquiline nose, bright-yellow hair parted in the middle above a high forehead, and disturbing gray eyes, the kind that, because of their clarity, seemed to look right into you. His eyes at th
e moment were piercing Mara with a teasing discernment that made her thoroughly uncomfortable.

  “Mais oui,” he said, smiling. He sat next to her on a velvet settee, watching her with interest. His hand on the cushion between them was nicely manicured. Incongruously, the strong, long fingers were sprinkled with dark hairs. “I put together an enormous amount of information on the de Bonfonds for Christophe over the past two years. Genealogical research is one of the things I do.”

  Very profitably, Mara thought, from the look of him and his elegant, almost bijou, environment. His house was a beautifully restored eighteenth-century cottage. A large back terrace offered a panoramic view of forested hills and valleys. It was cantilevered over a ravine which, she was informed, served as a run for deer, sangliers, and foxes.

  “Then you’ll take it on?”

  “C’est logique. Although my notes are all at Aurillac. Christophe insisted on it, but as long as I can access them there should be no trouble.” He paused thoughtfully. “A most interesting commission.”

  He had served her a peach wine apéritif, lightly brushing her fingers as he gave her the glass. In her nervousness, she had gulped down the contents.

  “Another?” he suggested.

  “What? No. Merci.” She focused on a Louis XVI armchair. She also noticed a collection of pentagrams, a phrenological skull, a crystal orb, a plaster hand, and wondered if, in addition to hair-coloring, Jean-Claude dabbled in the occult. “You do understand that Christophe wants the work done as quickly as possible, and quietly? He said absolute discretion.”

  “That goes without saying. May I call you Mara?”

  “Of course.”

  “And you must call me Jean-Claude.” He exuded a subtle scent of aftershave that somehow matched his Nile-green shirt. “I’m fascinated by your accent. Where did you learn your French?”

  She laughed outright. “I’m French Canadian. From Montreal. We drawl and flatten our vowels and say things like ‘y faire des gnangnangnan,’ meaning to talk stupid, and ‘il tombe des clous’—it’s raining nails—but it’s our way of speaking, and we hold to it.”

  “But your name. Dunn is not a French name.”

  “My father’s Scottish.”

  “And Maman?”

  “Québécoise. What we call pure laine. Dyed-in-the-wool.”

  “Formidable,” he breathed and leaned in.

  Mara returned to her commission. “Christophe believes the baby was the illegitimate child of one of the servants. I don’t need to tell you that he would be highly gratified if that’s what you in fact discover.”

  “Understandably.” His gaze lingered on her. “It would be easier for all concerned. Although,” he added after a pause, “improbable.”

  It was what she already knew: the child’s trappings really were too grand for the bastard of a servant. She sighed. “I suppose that leaves the family.”

  Jean-Claude refilled Mara’s glass anyway. He did it in such a way that she was barely aware of it. “Unfortunately, yes. In fact, during the period in question—1860 to 1914, I believe the newspaper said—the de Bonfond family had several unmarried females of childbearing age living in Aurillac Manor.”

  “Why focus on unmarried women?”

  Jean-Claude smiled, a not altogether pleasant smile. “Because a child for any one of them would have meant a bastard and social stigma. Sufficient motive perhaps to suppress the unfortunate infant’s existence? Whereas the married women of the family could have simply passed the baby off as a legitimate son.”

  She took a deep breath and said, “All the same, I believe Christophe wants to know the truth.” It was a lie, of course. The only one who wanted the truth was Mara herself. Christophe fully expected Jean-Claude to cooperate, in return for a handsome fee, by producing a plausible explanation for Baby Blue that left the family honor unsullied.

  Jean-Claude cocked an eyebrow. “Are you sure?”

  “Yes.” She downed the second drink as quickly as she had the first. “He—er—thinks the only way to put an end to the gossip and the bad press is to identify Baby Blue and release the story himself. In a controlled way, of course. But he’s in a hurry. Apparently some people named Verdier are trying to profit from the circumstances by selling the dirt on the de Bonfonds to the media.”

  Jean-Claude nodded. “Michel Verdier and his son, Guy. Cousins on Christophe’s great-great-grandmother’s side, if my memory serves me right. What about Antoine and his family? They’re de Bonfonds as well. What do they say?”

  “I don’t know. I’m here representing only Christophe. And, oh, Christophe also said that if the Verdiers try to contact you, you’re to let me know. He was very insistent that you remember at all times that you’re working for him and no one else, particularly anyone who might try to … let’s say, co-opt your services.”

  “Naturally,” Jean-Claude murmured.

  “When can you begin?”

  “Right away.”

  “Formidable. I’ll tell Christophe—”

  “It will allow me to get to know you all the sooner.” He smiled suggestively.

  “I’m here strictly as a go-between, Jean-Claude,” Mara said coolly. Prudence had called him très charmant, and he was. Mara’s ex-husband, Hal, a talented architect with a drinking problem and a skyscraper ego, had also been charmant. Since Hal, she had steered clear of the type. Jean-Claude was also, she figured, a good ten years younger than she. Her few experiences with younger men had only made her feel old. “I think it will be better if we keep to business.”

  “But you’re Christophe’s representative,” he argued reasonably. “Isn’t it normal that I should want to know with whom I’m dealing?” His clear gray eyes locked on hers in an amused challenge. “Come. You’re not married. At least”—his glance swept her left hand—“you don’t wear an alliance. Do you have a friend who would object?”

  “Yes,” said Mara, thinking of Julian. “No.” And wondered which it was.

  10

  MONDAY MORNING, 3 MAY

  Julian had risen to another glorious day, but his morning was quickly turning into a waking nightmare. His interview with Antoine de Bonfond the previous Wednesday had gone extremely well. Too well, perhaps, because it had set him up to believe that the landscaping of the sales pavilion would run smoothly.

  The pavilion, an octagonal structure of glass and stone, had been built directly onto the old chai. The chai, where the wine was processed, aged, and bottled, had also been expanded. The conjunction allowed visitors to pass from reception straight into the areas where the art of winemaking would be explained and where they would hear the history of Coteaux de Bonfond and be impressed by the blend of tradition (hand-picking of choice grapes) and modern technology (the state-of-the-art methods of wine-processing, the new stainless-steel vats) before returning to the pavilion and the object of it all: the point of sale. Julian’s role was to do something with the space fronting the pavilion and surrounding the parking area. From what he could tell, it was practically solid limestone. Had it not been, he was sure that Antoine would have planted it with vines rather than waste good land, for everywhere else the rows of vines came right up to the buildings. In addition to the centerpiece water feature, Julian had proposed an informal rock garden. It was the only thing that could be done with the difficult piece of ground he had to work with.

  “Excellent,” Antoine had said. “Do it.” A decisive man, he had spent a lifetime developing a modest winery into one of the leading vignobles of the Bergerac zone. Having mastered his calling, he seemed to be willing to let others get on with theirs if he thought they knew what they were doing.

  Not so his son. Pierre was a pudgy individual approaching middle age. His black eyebrows grew together over small, mean eyes. He also had a way of breathing in through his mouth and out his nose with a minute, whistling sound that Julian found intensely annoying. Unfortunately, now that the preliminaries were over, it looked as if Pierre was the person Julian was going to have to
work with. Unlike Antoine, Pierre had a slow, distrustful way about him and a strong preference for what he called le parking over vegetation. Julian found this strange in a man who derived his living from the soil. Until he learned that Pierre dealt strictly with the winery accounts.

  “What’s wrong with just gravel?” Pierre complained.

  “It’s boring.”

  “What does that matter?”

  That was how they started off. Pierre proved, as the morning wore on, indifferent to the vibrant vista of form and color that Julian proposed and positively hostile to the anticipated cost of the project. He sat opposite Julian at a table in one corner of the new pavilion, wheezing in and out and taking a sadistic pleasure in crossing out whole sections of the landscaping plan that Julian had worked hours on and that now lay in tatters, so to speak, between them.

  “This goes,” Pierre said peremptorily, tapping the spot where the water feature was to be.

  Julian started out of his chair. “But it’s the centerpiece of the whole thing. Your father specifically agreed on a natural rock waterfall as a kind of signature piece for your Domaine de la Source. It’s your leading label, after all—”

  “Julian, Julian”—Pierre raised a hand—“I’m afraid you’re going to have to get one thing through your head. You’re dealing with me. Now, if Papa wants this waterfall, I’m willing to consider it, but first you’re going to have to convince me that it’s worth the additional expense.”

  Julian subsided, simmering. He thought he would much rather be dealing with Pierre’s sister, Denise, a tall, sleek woman whom he had seen passing back and forth. She handled, he gathered, public relations and marketing.

  “Giving you grief, is he?” she interceded at one point as she breezed by on her way to a display area she was setting up, showing the history of Coteaux de Bonfond. She took in at a glance Julian and the plan Julian was trying to defend.