The Paris Directive (19 page)

“I’m sorry, mademoiselle, but that’s impossible.”

“Ms. Reece is in law enforcement,” Bennett informed him. “She’s an assistant district attorney in New York City.”

“The crime scene is closed.” Mazarelle was in no bargaining mood. He didn’t give a damn about Bennett and assumed that if Ms. Reece was in law enforcement, she’d understand. Besides, he’d no desire to show her the kitchen where her father was murdered—his dried blood still covering the ceiling, windows, and walls like gruesome wallpaper, the kind that could kill you if you weren’t dead already.

Molly, ticked off with him, didn’t understand at all. Punishing her because she had almost fainted. Typical, she thought. She hated the way some men try to overprotect women. It was, after all, nothing more than a power play, just another way of keeping us in our place.
Kinder, Küche, und Kirche
. Eyeballing the inspector, Molly asked where his investigation stood as of right now, and her tone suggested that she would not be put off.

“Yes … yes, of course. Well, we’re coming along. I can tell you that.” The inspector took out his pipe and lit up.

“Perhaps I didn’t make myself clear. What I want to know is how close are you to breaking the case?”

“We have an interesting suspect, if that’s what you mean.” Mazarelle told her about Ali Sedak, the man they were holding as a material witness, whose fingerprints were found on one of the murder weapons as well as on the tape with which all the victims in the house were bound. Sedak, according to the inspector, was somehow involved in all the murders, even if he didn’t actually commit them all. “Or,” he added, with a puckish gleam in his eye, “any of them, for that matter.”

At the moment, Molly had no patience for paradox. “Who is he?”

“Sedak?” Duboit knew all about him. “A tough little sidi. Works
here at L’Ermitage, doing odd jobs on the property. He’s a
beur,
lives with a French woman and a baby who looks a little like him. Dark skin, dark hair, dark eyes. Mixing up those Arab genes of his with ours. It’s disgusting.”

“Shut up, Bernard! They’re married.”

“He’s still a
beur
.”

“So what? He speaks French as well as you or I do.”

Molly asked, “What’s a
beur
?”

“You know,” Duboit told her, “the same as Jews and Gypsies. What can you expect from people like that?”

Mazarelle didn’t have to see Mademoiselle Reece’s face to sense that she was unhappy. He told Bernard to go back to the car, to wait for him there. He’d be along shortly.

When he’d left, Molly asked, “Where did you get
him
?”

The inspector shrugged helplessly. “What can you do? Even in the police we have a few who confuse fascism with law and order. But Bernard isn’t really so bad. He’s a provincial. And the Front National’s racist, anti-Semitic ideas are not unknown in this part of the country. I’m sorry to say that only a few kilometers away in Villereal we have our own local Jean-Marie Le Pen in René Arnaud.”

Dwight Bennett knew all about Arnaud. “He’s almost as bad.”

Mazarelle sighed and turned to Molly, who was still seething. “I can tell you this, mademoiselle. Your father’s credit cards and money were almost certainly stolen by Ali Sedak. Furthermore, he’s admitted being the last one to have seen Monsieur Phillips alive. And it’s very possible these crimes were all drug related. Sedak is a known user. He has a record of violence and being a pusher as well. We think he may have been working together with a local dealer they call Rabo.”

“Rabo?” He sounded like a Vegas gangster to Molly. “Is he an American?”

“French,” snapped Mazarelle. “His real name is Rabineau.” Was there something he said that amused her? “And that’s where we are,” he said, abruptly concluding the matter. Mazarelle promised that when she returned home to New York he’d keep her informed of any major developments in the case. “Now I really must go.”

As he limped away, Molly felt depressed by what she’d heard.
Though she basically liked the inspector, she wasn’t exactly thrilled with his progress. Or with his “interesting” suspect. Or by that bigoted creep Duboit. Faced with cops like that, Ali Sedak might be as innocent as Jesus and still end up on the cross.

A number of reporters, having heard that the daughter of two of the murdered Americans had arrived in Bergerac, were waiting for Molly at the commissariat when Inspector Mazarelle drove into the courtyard. But only Jacques Gaudin, who wrote for the local edition of
Sud
Ouest,
had tracked her down at the Hôtel Fleuri in Taziac.

Sitting in the hotel’s small lobby, Gaudin was killing time with an old copy of
Paris
Match
when he heard Favier calling to him in a whisper from behind the desk. The woman who came in was tall and had red hair. A very classy dame with great cheekbones. Tossing aside his magazine, he hurried to the door and introduced himself. Bennett quickly stepped between them, insisting that Mademoiselle Reece had had a very exhausting day and was not giving any interviews.

“That’s okay,” she said. “I don’t mind a few questions. What do you want to know?”

She was as nice as she looked. Was he falling in love again?

“Do you think the man the police are holding, Ali Sedak, killed your parents?”

“No, I don’t.”

Gaudin coolly scribbled down her reply on his graph-paper-ruled notepad, but he was almost as surprised as her friend was by the strength of her conviction.

“May I ask why not?”

“And certainly not alone. I don’t believe any one man by himself could have killed all four of them. Schuyler Phillips was a great athlete and my father was a big man in pretty good shape for his age. Not to mention my mother, who was not someone who scared easily. And even if Schuyler was already dead in the barn and there were only the three of them still alive in the house, this one guy with a knife was unlikely to be able to tie up all three and then murder them in different rooms.”

“I understand your father, Monsieur Reece, was an important figure in the New York art world. Did he have any enemies?”

“None that I’m aware of. People who knew my father had the highest respect for him. On the other hand, I can’t imagine anyone who owns an art gallery in New York who doesn’t have a few enemies.”

Molly said nothing about Sean. As for that, she’d always supposed their relationship was like any marriage, with its ups and downs. They were successful partners, after all, and had been for years. But what if Sean felt that he was going to be turned in to the police by her dad for dealing in stolen art, felt that it was the end of his career and there was only one way to save himself from doing time? Could Sean have hired someone to murder him? But why kill all four of them? Only a maniac would do something like that.

“That’s enough questions,” Bennett said, seeing how tired she looked. He took her arm. “Come on, Molly.”

“Just one more, mademoiselle. How long are you planning to remain here?”

“As long as it takes. I’m not going home until I find out who murdered my parents and their friends. They deserve that. Not to be forgotten. Besides, I’m an assistant district attorney in New York City. I may be able to assist your police in their investigation. I’ll help in any way I can.”

On their way upstairs, Bennett said, “You’re not serious about that, are you?”

“About what?”

“Not going back with me to Paris tomorrow.”

“Look,” she said, and stopped at the landing. “We both know how the process works. As long as I stay here nobody is going to forget about what happened. And certainly not the police. I’d hate to see them get away with convicting some poor schnook they don’t like just because he’s an Arab. Why shouldn’t I stay?”

“Well, for one thing, if you’re right about Sedak not being the killer, then the real murderer may still be around here. You could be in danger.”

“Don’t be silly. Why would anyone want to kill me?”

“Maybe for the same reason he killed your parents and their friends.”

“Let’s drop this subject, okay? I’m tired.”

Though she’d told him that she wasn’t interested in dinner, Molly was glad later when Dwight knocked on her door. The restaurant Favier recommended was Chez Doucette. She didn’t care for the corny rustic decor, but the food was good and the wine even better. And Dwight was good company. He knew all sorts of amusing stories and could tell them well. A terrific mimic, he had more voices than Canal Street. By the end of the evening Molly thought she’d finally mellowed out. She even agreed to think over going back to Paris with him in the morning, which he kept encouraging her to do.

Later in her room, the sweet smell of the rain brought tears to her eyes. She couldn’t stop sobbing. After a while, she settled down and crawled into bed, listening to the rain lightly tapping on the window, and fell asleep. Around three, she got up to go to the bathroom and returned to bed, feeling as if she were the only one still awake in all Taziac. A grieving orphan cut off from even her memories of old, shared, familial joys. The church bell’s clanging stroke falling on the night faded away and left nothing but loneliness. Picking up her Walkman from the night table, Molly put on her headphones and played with the dial. Getting waves of static, then Radio One coming in crystal-clear from Cork.

“That was Erroll Garner and ‘Misssty,’ for
yooouu
,” the deejay told her in a deep, alcohol-soaked baritone, before promising gale-force winds over the Irish Sea. “So lay on a fire,” he suggested, “and cooozy up with a blanket to Ella singin’ ‘Baby It’s Coooolld Outside.’ ”

A little after 4:00 a.m. and unable to get back to sleep, she picked up the phone. It was still only 10 p.m. in New York. She told herself that she didn’t really expect Kevin to be home yet, but she knew how rotten she’d feel if he wasn’t.

“Lo …” His voice sounded as if it had been tucked in bed for the night.

“Kev! Hi, sweetie. Did I wake you?”

“Molly! Where are you? I was getting worried. I’ve been trying to reach you. Did you see your folks?”

“Oh, Kevin, it was awful.”

“I bet.”

“The worst.”

“I could kick myself. I should have been there with you.”

“But you couldn’t. You have the new play. I understand. How’re the rehearsals going?”

“Geoffrey is all nerves. It’s a small stage. He keeps changing the blocking, which is a drag. Other than that, not bad. What time is it there anyhow?”

“Four fifteen.”

“A.m.! What the hell are you doing up at that hour?”

“I couldn’t sleep.”

Lifting the receiver closer to his mouth, Kevin whispered, “I wish you were here, Molly. Miss you, honey. When are you coming back?”

“Don’t know yet.”

“Seems as if you’ve been gone ages already. Come home, Molly.”

He didn’t want her to stay any more than Bennett did. “You too?”

“Me too what?”

“Did you get a chance to speak to Sean and tell him what happened?”

“That’s what I wanted to tell you. I tried, but he wasn’t around. The gallery assistant promised to pass on the message to him when he called in. Did you know that he’s in France?”

“Sean’s in France? Where?”

“She didn’t know exactly. Which reminds me, where are you?”

“The Hôtel Fleuri in Taziac.”

Molly gave Kevin the number pasted on the phone and before hanging up promised to call as soon as she knew what she was going to do. She really couldn’t decide. I’ll sleep on it, she thought.

A few hours later, when Bennett knocked on Molly’s door, he was glad to see that she was dressed and waiting for him.

“Ready to go?”

“I’m not going.”

“Let’s talk over breakfast.”

Downstairs Bennett could tell it was hopeless to try to change her mind and gave up. Instead, he ordered a chocolat and dropped in three cubes of sugar. Poor thing, she thought. He seemed to be feeling deprived. Over the
petit
déjeuner
he asked if she’d like him to drive her to the Hertz in Bordeaux, where she could get her own car.

Later in Bordeaux, he took out an embassy card from his wallet and wrote down his home phone number.

“I can be reached at either of these numbers. If there’s anything you need, Molly …”

She thanked him and gave him a French send-off on both cheeks.

“And above all,” he warned her, “don’t go playing detective. Remember, you’re in France now. That’s Mazarelle’s job. Be careful, Molly.”

25

MAZARELLE’S OFFICE

T
hough Molly didn’t know what to make of the news that Sean was in France, she thought it important to tell the inspector right away. She also told him about her father’s falling-out with his partner over his dealings in stolen art. Molly couldn’t believe Sean murdered her father and mother, let alone their friends. That in some way he might be at the bottom of what happened, however, she accepted as a distinct possibility.

Mazarelle received her information with more than routine interest, his eyes fixed on Molly, streams of smoke shooting up from the bowl of his pipe. He was open to following up any outside lead that seemed promising. Recalling the accident in Schuyler Phillips’s rented Mercedes, he wondered if her father had been the intended victim after all. He asked how long Sean Campbell had been in the country, which she didn’t know, and then took down a description of him, the address and phone number in Manhattan of the Reece-Campbell Gallery. Mazarelle assured her that if Campbell was in France, he’d find him.

They stood up and shook hands. She was almost as tall as he was. No ring on her left hand except a small one with an oval peridot birthstone that matched her green eyes. Independent, intelligent. A Leo, if he believed in such nonsense. He supposed that back home in the States she had a lover. More than one, probably. She’s good material for love, he thought. He liked the easy way she moved, the way she lit up a room when she walked in, her courage. To have both her parents chopped up like hamburger and, rather than go home and grieve, to be so strong, so determined to get justice … Yes, a remarkable
young woman. He’d seen the interview with her in the morning issue of
Sud
Ouest
. Underneath all that beauty she was tough as a tank, and she didn’t miss much. As long as she stayed out of trouble, Mazarelle didn’t mind in the least having Mademoiselle Reece in the neighborhood for a while longer.