The Collector of Dying Breaths (3 page)

“Robbie, you need to rest and—”

He interrupted. “So many things still to tell you. There
is
magic—it’s what we call something we don’t understand. Don’t dismiss it, Jac . . . please. Accept it, all right?”

Even with interruptions, the speech had exhausted him. He fell back against the pillows.

“All right. I can tap into past-life memories.”

“But you don’t believe it. You still think you might be crazy. I can hear it in your voice. Why, Jac?”

“I don’t know,” she said, and it was the truth.

Jac hated herself for not being able to convince him that she believed him and give him some peace. Why was it still so damn hard for her to accept she had access to past-life memories? She’d found proof her brain wasn’t manufacturing hallucinations. Why still doubt what she had lived?

Over the last couple of years, Jac, Robbie and her mentor, the reincarnationist Dr. Malachai Samuels, had amassed evidence of her ability. She’d made discoveries she couldn’t have guessed at. And not just memories that came from what appeared to be her own past. Sometimes she’d be able to remember other people’s memories too. A rare and unusual talent, Malachai had told her.

Robbie’s question was the right one. Why couldn’t she believe it? Didn’t karma teach us that we repeat the past over and over until we get it right? If her memories of her own previous incarnations were accurate, then time after time her lives had been heartbreaking and ended tragically. She’d never moved on. Each repeated the same horror. She was stuck in a karmic nightmare. If she could accept that, then maybe she could move on and—

“What we don’t know is so much greater than what we do know.” Robbie was looking at her. “Isn’t it exciting?” For a moment her brother’s ravaged face lit up with a glimmer of curiosity. Then the cough returned. His beautiful eyes filled with tears. His emaciated chest heaved.

Jac waited. Robbie’s hacking subsided. He took a shallow breath. And then another. Finally he pleaded: “I need you to understand.”

“I do.” She was determined to give him what he asked for.

“There’s no end. No beginning. Only the infinite passion of life. The past . . . present . . . the future coexist. My body—this envelope—will die, but not the essence of me—not my soul.” He smiled. “You won’t have to miss me. I’ll be all around you.” He paused. “This is so much harder for me because you are in pain. Don’t you see? You don’t need to be.”

She nodded, not trusting herself to speak.

He coughed again and again. Drained of all energy, he closed his eyes. After a moment, one tear escaped and slid down his cheek.

Jac dug her knuckles into her mouth to stop her sobs from erupting.

Robbie fell asleep again, this time deeply. For the next few hours Jac came and went, checking on him. At five in the afternoon, she found him awake again and gave him the new bottle of scent she’d mixed.

“Thank you.” He smiled. “Will you put some on me? And then I have to finish telling you what I was doing. What I want you to finish for me.”

She opened the small vial, wet her fingers and touched her brother’s neck on the right side and then the left and ran her fingers through his thick auburn hair that was the same color as hers. He had always been so lovely. With finer features and heart-shaped lips, Robbie had always been the more beautiful of the two of them. She was handsome, resembling the women in Pre-Raphaelite paintings with strong bones and wide shoulders.

Robbie breathed in the scent so deeply she thought he was going to set off a fresh coughing fit. But he didn’t. He just smiled at her and said: “Us forever, right, Jac?”

And as it turned out, that was the last thing her brother ever said to her.

Chapter 4

Jac was in her brother’s bedroom when their cousin arrived on Sunday morning. Luc L’Etoile had driven up from Grasse on Friday night when Robbie had slipped into a coma.

“Jac, you have to get up now,” Luc said.

She had not moved from the chair beside Robbie’s bed since the nurse had woken her up to tell her Robbie was dead. Had not looked away from his still, quiet face at all.

“Doesn’t he look like he is sleeping?” she asked Luc.

“Yes, darling, but he isn’t.” Luc pulled up a chair and sat down beside her. “Days ago Robbie called and told me how he wanted everything handled,” he said, “so let me see to it while you take a nap. Nurse said you barely slept last night. The next few days are going to be trying, so you need to rest.”

After even more effort on Luc’s part, Jac finally agreed to leave Robbie’s bedside. She was sure she’d never be able to sleep, but for the rest of that afternoon and for most of the next few days that was all she really did. Meanwhile Luc arranged for the cremation, invited guests to the memorial and hired caterers and florists and musicians. All to Robbie’s specifications. And then on Wednesday, it was Luc who hosted the celebration downstairs in the formal rooms of the house—the memorial Robbie had requested instead of a funeral.

That morning Jac showered and then dressed in a simple black sheath with black pumps, her grandmother’s pearls and the watch she always wore, her mother’s. Ready far too early, she sat in her rocking chair and stared out her window at the courtyard with its barren trees and sleeping flower beds. She heard the first guest arrive. Was aware from the growing noise level that more guests had gathered. Finally it was time for her to go downstairs. But she couldn’t. Instead she rocked back and forth in the antique rocker, staring at the naked tree branches swaying in the March wind. At some point Luc knocked on her door and told her everyone was there and waiting for her. In a quiet voice, she told him to start without her. That she’d come down soon.

But she never did. She never left her room. Never stopped staring at the lonely courtyard. Jac didn’t want to hear them eulogize her brother. Didn’t want to interact with the people who’d offer her condolences and try to reassure her with all kinds of meaningless platitudes.

Robbie had promised he wouldn’t leave, and he’d never broken a promise to her before. Maybe if she just waited, stayed in that rocker long enough, he’d come back to her.

That evening, when the house was finally still and quiet, Jac attempted to meditate herself into one of the hallucinations that had plagued her since childhood. These fugue states took her out of the present and into dreams of unknown origin where she was someone else, living another life in another time.

If she could go there now, she could escape the pain of missing her brother for just a while. She longed to disappear into someone else’s life, someone else’s history, and get some relief from this unrelenting loss.

She closed her eyes. Slowed her breathing. Imagined a dot of light between her eyes. Her third eye. Focused on the place ancient mystics believed was the portal to altered states.

Jac waited for the warm air and infusion of scents that accompanied what Malachai called “memory lurches.” But she couldn’t summon one any better than she could prevent one when it came unbidden.

On the Monday following Robbie’s funeral, Jac began attending to business. In the morning she dealt with the bank and at noon sat down for lunch with Luc, his two brothers, George and Marcel, as well as Monsieur Corlaine, the family solicitor. It was the first meal she’d shared with anyone since her brother had died.

Jac had asked the cook to make a simple lunch of cold soup, roast chicken and salad with a fruit tart for dessert. Just choosing the menu had been an arduous effort. Even the most mundane tasks were suddenly more difficult.

She met her guests in the living room, where navy silk jacquard curtains with white stars and moons and gold suns draped windows that looked out onto the courtyard. Created in the early 1900s for her great-great-great-grandparents, the motif was repeated all over the formal downstairs rooms. There were gold stars painted on the night-sky-blue ceiling. Astrological signs woven into the gold carpet. The furniture was a mix of pieces from different eras arranged artfully. Classic but comfortable.

As she was about to lead everyone into the dining room, Jac’s cell phone rang. Glancing at the LED screen, she asked her guests if they would mind waiting a moment. The call was from Detective Marcher of the Paris police department.

Almost two years before, a journalist had come to the L’Etoile workshop to interview Robbie about a new perfume line. Robbie quickly realized the reporter wasn’t who he purported to be. He knew nothing about the industry. Robbie guessed the man was there to steal fragments of ancient Egyptian pottery that Robbie had found, artifacts that contained a clue to a fragrance formula that might enable people to access their past lives.

Through the ages mystics had used incense to access memories of previous lives, including Tibetan monks, who believed each new Dalai Lama was a reincarnation of the previous one. If there was a fragrance to aid in regressions, it could be a powerful weapon. A memory tool could help Tibetans foil China’s efforts to control who became the next Buddhist leader. China had incentive to prevent Tibetans from getting the formula.

Being a practicing Buddhist, Robbie deduced the Chinese had sent an operative to steal the potential reincarnation aid.

So he’d played along with the charade until he was able to trick the impostor into smelling a toxic essence designed to cause him to pass out. Then Robbie planned to call the police and get help.

But what Robbie couldn’t have known was that the thief was an asthmatic; the fumes caused an attack that led to his death. Robbie fled in order to protect the pottery shards, but his disappearance suggested the possibility that Robbie had committed murder.

Marcher was called in. Eventually Robbie’s name was cleared. Though it was proved he had acted in self-defense, her brother still had precipitated the death of a Triad member. Detective Marcher had warned them at that time that the powerful Chinese Mafia might seek revenge.

Over the next year and a half nothing suspicious had occurred. Then Robbie got sick. The doctors couldn’t find any reason for why his body was failing, and failing so quickly. That’s when Jac had called the detective, and he’d begun looking into the possibility of a connection. Several times he’d reported in, but without any information. The last time he’d called was to offer condolences.

“Mademoiselle L’Etoile, would it be possible to see you this afternoon?” he asked now.

This task too would be a welcome distraction, and she agreed to a time and then returned to the dining room.

The purpose of today’s luncheon was to plan for the future. The House of L’Etoile didn’t have a second in command. Jac and her brother owned the company jointly, but Robbie had been running it on his own. When they’d first inherited it, Jac and Robbie, having no heirs of their own, had decided they’d each leave their respective shares to their three cousins to ensure the company stayed in the family. At the time it had seemed a decision for the faraway future. It was impossible to Jac that future was now.

She went into the dining room to rejoin her cousins. “I’ve heard the rift between our grandfathers was over a perfume,” Jac said as she poured wine for her cousins. She really only knew a few facts—that in 1941 the House of L’Etoile had been owned by Jac’s grandfather and his brother, Pierre L’Etoile. After a falling-out, Pierre sold his share of his firm to Jac’s grandfather, moved to Grasse and started his own company. Playing on the family name, L’Etoile—which meant “star”—Pierre called his firm Luna Parfums.

“A perfume and a woman,” Marcel L’Etoile said as he buttered a piece of a roll. “Our grandfather was seeing a woman he was very much in love with. So of course he created a perfume for her. And of course she always wore it. One day he ran into her in the street, it was a day when they had no assignation planned, and she was wearing a different perfume. One that Pierre knew all too well. He’d watched your grandfather create it for a supposed wealthy client. The discovery that they were both in love with the same woman destroyed the brothers’ relationship, and ultimately Charles bought Pierre out.”

“Who was the woman?” Jac asked.

“Your grandmother,” Luc said with a rueful smile. “She’d met Pierre first and liked him well enough. But when she met Charles, she fell in love.”

“She was seeing them both?” Jac pictured her grandmother in the photographs of when she was young. Lovely with almond-shaped eyes and high cheekbones, the very essence of chic. Even as an older woman, Grand-mère was a bit of a flirt in that utterly charming way French women had. Jac remembered being at the beach in the South of France with her grandmother and Robbie when a gentleman—

Her cousin Luc was talking to her. Jac came out of her reverie and asked him to repeat himself.

“We don’t want you to feel obligated to the House of L’Etoile. If you want to sell us your shares of the company, we’ve discussed it and we would be interested.”

“I’m not sure how I want to arrange my life right now,” she said. And she wasn’t. In New York she had an apartment and a successful career as a mythologist with a cable show that examined the origins of myths. It was on hiatus now, and she had until June to decide whether or not to sign another contract. In Paris she had this house and the family business. She’d spent all her time off this year with Robbie, being a full-time perfumer for the first time in her life, and she’d loved it. But how much of that feeling came from working with Robbie?

“I don’t want to sell my shares.” She shook her head. That would be akin to voluntarily amputating a limb.

“We’re glad about that,” Luc said warmly. “We don’t think that would be the right direction for the company.”

“Neither did your brother,” the lawyer interjected. “Robbie’s wish was that you take a leave of absence from your job in New York and run L’Etoile with your cousins for at least two years.”

It was like Robbie to advise.

“We can discuss having an office in New York if you preferred to work from the States,” George suggested.

Jac had rarely seen her cousins in the last twenty years until recently because she’d spent so little time in France. And now she was surprised how easy it was to be with them. They had the classic L’Etoile family features—mahogany hair, aquiline nose, light-green eyes—that reminded her of her father, her grandfather and her brother.

“Robbie hoped you might all merge the running of both perfume companies,” the lawyer said. “He outlined a scenario that he thought would work.”

Jac nodded. It made sense. “I like that idea. While our grandfathers might have had their problems, we don’t.” She looked at her cousins. “Your fragrances are wonderful, and Luna seems to be well run. It would be a much stronger company if both halves were reunited.”

For the next hour they discussed Robbie’s suggestions about how the merger might be financially arranged. Jac thought her brother would be pleased by the solutions they chose.

She felt an odd peacefulness. A cessation from the grief. Almost as if the last week and a half had been a bad dream and Robbie was just in the workshop and about to join them any moment. Once she’d even turned around, thinking she heard his footsteps, but there was, of course, no one there.

At four o’clock one meeting ended and another began. Jac greeted Detective Marcher and ushered him into the L’Etoile workshop. The detective looked tired, and Jac offered him coffee.

While she waited for the water to boil, she filled the French press with ground espresso beans. The smell of coffee was always welcome here. It cut through the mélange of scents that hovered in the air. Coffee beans were to a perfumer like the lemon sorbet a gourmand eats between courses or the crackers wine tasters munch between flights. When a nose was building a fragrance, it was important to stop and cleanse the olfactory palate.

“We have the preliminary results of the autopsy,” Marcher said

She was surprised. “An autopsy? I hadn’t realized, but of course . . .”

“I’m sorry. I know how painful this is for you, Jac.”

“Thank you.” She nodded.

Marcher’s face seemed to bear an aspect of perpetual melancholy, as if all the years he’d been on the job and all he’d witnessed had worn him down. More than once Jac had wondered if, when he was with his wife and family, the expression in his face lightened and his shoulders lifted. She hoped so.

It occurred to her now that her own expression was dark too. Since Robbie’s death, whenever she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror, she didn’t quite recognize the lost soul who glanced back.

Jac poured coffee into two white porcelain espresso cups and brought them over to where Marcher was sitting.

He sipped the coffee. Smiled at her. “This is excellent. Thank you.”

She nodded. To her it was hot and distracting, and that was enough for now. Both her sense of smell and taste seemed dulled since Robbie had died. Grief had numbed her.

“Would you mind turning that on?” He pointed to Robbie’s stereo system.

Jac was startled by the request but turned it on. Beethoven’s
Eroica
Symphony filled the air. The last time she’d heard it was when they’d been here working on a new fragrance. This was the music her brother had chosen. How many of these
last time
moments would she have to endure?

“Based on the rapid onset of organ failure and how healthy your brother was prior to the attack, they still suspect poison.”

“But the doctors tested his blood for poisons when he was in the hospital and didn’t find anything.”

“And they still haven’t.”

“So how is that possible?”

“Certain poisons clear the system after a particular amount of time. The complication here is that even so, there’s no known poison that presents in the manner of Robbie’s reaction.” He shook his head. “I’m sorry, I know uncertainty isn’t helpful. The bottom line is they don’t know the root cause yet, but poison remains the most logical answer. Especially because, being a perfumer, your brother was always working with foreign substances and could have easily inhaled or ingested something that he reacted to this way.”