The Inquisitor's Key: A Body Farm Novel Page 7

  HUMAN NOTICE: WE SEEMED TO BE ATTRACTING IT. As I leaned recklessly on the tubular steel rail of the Bénézet bridge once more, watching a long, slender canal boat slip beneath the outermost arch, Miranda laid her hand on my arm. “Don’t look now,” she murmured, “but someone’s stalking us.”

  “Where?” Trying to look casual and touristy, I raised my eyes, pointing to the fortress on the river’s far shore, as if calling Miranda’s attention to it.

  She looked in that direction, smiling and saying, just loudly enough for Stefan and me to hear, “Downstream about a hundred yards. Edge of the parking lot. There’s a red-and-blue sign. Guy in a floppy hat standing behind it, propping binoculars on top. Don’t look yet.”

  I swiveled slowly, with only a passing glance at the spot she’d indicated, and gazed upward at the cathedral and the papal palace, which loomed above us on the rock. “You’re right,” I said. “That’s the biggest pair of binoculars I’ve ever seen. And they’re pointing right at us.”

  “Merde,” Stefan muttered a moment later. “Now he has a camera. A big telephoto lens.” He raised his arm, hitched up the cuff of his sleeve, and made a show of checking his watch. “Allons-y. Let’s go. Turn your backs and cross to the other railing, so he can’t see us. Then let’s get the hell out of here.”

  Hugging the far side of the bridge, we hurried back along the span. This time there was no singing or dancing. As we exited the tower and scurried to the car, I asked, “Did either of you get a good look?”

  “Non.”

  “’Fraid not,” Miranda said. “White guy with tan hat and black binoculars. That narrows it down to about, what, a zillion people?”

  I recalled Stefan’s nervousness as we’d driven from Marseilles to Avignon, and again when we’d heard noises near the treasure chamber. I’d been inclined to dismiss it as excessive paranoia—that, or Stefan’s exaggerated sense of importance—but now I was re-evaluating. “Have you seen someone watching you before now?”

  “Oui,” he said. “Nothing as obvious as binoculars and a camera, but yes, I think so.”

  “When did it start?”

  He shrugged. “A few days ago.”

  “Maybe the day before you got here,” Miranda added. “Remember, Stefan? You got that phone call when we were having lunch, but then the caller hung up without saying anything?”

  “Ah, oui. And then you thought someone was following us back to the Palais…”

  “But when we turned around, he ducked down an alley and disappeared,” she finished. “So now I’m questioning everything, everybody. The guy behind me at the café this morning—did he smile because he thought I was cute, or was he just pretending to flirt so he could study me? The woman in the hotel lobby—was she really reading that newspaper? Hell, now that I’m feeling paranoid, even you seem kinda sinister, Dr. B, you know?”

  I knew, and I made a mental note to make a phone call to Tennessee as soon as I was alone.

  “STONE HERE.”

  “Rocky, it’s Bill Brockton.” I backed into a doorway in a narrow street that was just around the corner from Miranda’s hotel. She’d gone to her room to catch up on her e-mail for an hour, and Stefan had headed off to an electronics store to buy a motion detector and alarm for the treasure chamber. I was on my own until seven, when I’d arranged to fetch Miranda for dinner.

  “Doc? I thought you were in France,” said Stone. “Did you just make that up so you could get the extra helicopter ride?”

  “No, I am in France. Rocky, I need to know if there’s a chance—any chance at all—that one of your drug smugglers might have followed me here?”

  The line was silent for a moment. “Are you serious, Doc?”

  “Unfortunately, yes,” I said. “I realize it’s unlikely, but I need to know. Somebody’s watching us—me, Miranda, and this French archaeologist we’re working with.”

  “Are you sure? What happened? Exactly?”

  “We just caught someone watching us through binoculars from about a hundred yards away. Then he traded the binoculars for a camera with a really long lens.”

  “You’re sure he wasn’t just sightseeing? Taking in the scenery?”

  “Come on, Rocky. Howitzer-sized binoculars, followed by a foot-long telephoto? What would you think if you saw that kind of optical artillery aimed at you?”

  “I’d probably think, ‘Oh shit,’” he acknowledged.

  “So. Any chance your bad guys have tailed me to France?”

  “I doubt it,” he said…but his tone was hedging. He sighed. “The truth is, I can’t completely rule it out. We’ve got a bad leak somewhere, Doc. I don’t know where, but we’ve just had another operation compromised. So yeah, it’s possible they know we called you in. If they do, they know you’d be important at a trial. I’m sorry, Doc. I was gonna call you soon—you’re on my list, but I’m up to my ass in alligators, and I’ve got half a dozen undercover operatives I’m trying to pull in before it’s too late.”

  “I understand,” I said. “I’ll let you get back to it. Good luck, Rocky.”

  “Thanks, Doc. I’ll call you as soon as I know anything. Meanwhile, watch your back.”

  Suddenly, just as the call ended, I felt myself falling, toppling straight back. Reflexively I yelled; an answering shriek sounded in my ear as I thudded into someone and we landed in a tangle of arms and legs. A moment later, I was helping an irate Frenchwoman to her feet—a woman whose door I’d been leaning against at the moment she opened it. Mortified by my clumsiness—and by my inability to say anything but “pardon, pardon” by way of apology—I slunk down the street and around the nearest corner.

  But it’s not paranoia, I finally consoled myself, if they really are out to get you.

  CHAPTER 6

  “OKAY, YOU CAN OPEN YOUR EYES NOW,” I SAID.

  She did, and she squealed with delight. “Oh, sweet—a fancy hotel named after moi!”

  “We’re having dinner here.”

  “Cool! That’s so…boss, Boss.”

  We were standing, Miranda and I, in front of the Hotel La Mirande, an elegant little jewel box tucked into the dead-end street behind the Palace of the Popes. I’d stumbled upon La Mirande only forty-five minutes before, shortly after I’d stumbled upon the slightly bruised, very irate Frenchwoman.

  I had never stayed in a place this fancy, and surely never would—the rooms started at eight hundred dollars a night—but how could I pass up a chance to take Miranda to a swanky restaurant that bore her name? Besides, Stefan was occupied procuring the motion detector and alarm for the treasure chamber. A quiet dinner seemed like a good chance to catch up with Miranda—and to learn more about her prior history with this pretentious pedant who might soon be the world’s most famous archaeologist.

  I pulled a glossy brochure from my pocket. “Here, this gives a little background about your establishment.”

  She took a look and laughed. “Ooh, architectural erotica—my favorite kind. Listen: ‘This timeless refuge offers a dreamy, relaxing, and authentic experience in a refined, eighteenth-century décor…. Behind its stunning façade, La Mirande exudes the sweet way of life of yesteryear.” She surveyed the exterior, an elegant neoclassical composition in butter-colored stone, its windows capped with gargoyles and angels, gods and goddesses, sunbursts and swirls of cake frosting in stone. “Stunning façade indeed,” she concurred. “The façade,” she added, “is from the seventeen hundreds, but parts of the building date back to the early thirteen hundreds, when a cardinal—a nephew of Pope Clement the Fifth—built his palace on the site.” She was enjoying this, and that pleased me. “Come on, let’s go inside and show them what chic cosmopolites we are.”

  If the hotel’s exterior was quietly elegant, its interior was almost intoxicating in its richness. Crystal chandeliers and sconces glittered everywhere; paintings and statues and flowers filled the spaces, set against backdrops of gilded wallpaper, brocaded drapes, rich paneling, sumptuous sofas and chairs. An interior courtyard
was set with candlelit dining tables; so was a lush outdoor garden that offered spectacular views of the floodlit walls of the Palace of the Popes. Miranda flitted from space to space, statue to statue, ruffle to flourish, her face beaming. “This place is so excellent,” she exclaimed. “You could probably pay my assistantship for a year for what dinner’s gonna cost, but wowzer, Dr. B, how gorgeous.” She laughed, a fountain of delight. “I know money can’t buy happiness, but damn, it sure can open doors to places that make me smile.”

  We ate in one such place, a linen-draped, candlelit table in a corner of the hotel’s garden. Fairy lights twinkled in the trees around us; above us soared the graceful windows of the papal chapel, flanked by a pair of massive towers.

  We were midway through dinner—duck breast for me, “line-caught sea bass” for her—before I worked up the nerve to go on my own fishing expedition and angle for details about Stefan. When I wasn’t busy bristling at his pretentiousness, I had realized, I was fretting about something else. I’d seen the way he looked at her, heard the way she spoke to him. They shared a familiarity that went beyond collegiality; a familiarity that might be, or might have once been, intimacy. It’s none of my business, I scolded myself, but that didn’t stop me from casting the lure. “Stefan’s quite a character,” I said casually. “Remind me how you know him?”

  She didn’t exactly take the bait—her gimlet look told me she knew she was being cross-examined—but she answered the question anyway. “Remember when I did the dig in Guatemala, the summer after my first year of graduate school?” I nodded. “He was a crew leader. I worked under him.”

  I raised my eyebrows at the phrase “worked under him.” I expected her to roll her eyes at that and fire back one of her signature smart-ass retorts. Instead, she turned crimson and looked down at her fish, swimming in butter and seaweed sauce. “Sorry, Miranda. I didn’t mean to embarrass you. I was joking, or meant to be. I think. I hope.”

  She looked up, slightly defiant but also vulnerable. “It’s okay. I had it coming, after the way I’ve let Stefan be a jerk to you. I did get involved with him in Guatemala, and I shouldn’t have. I was a kid, and he was my boss. And he was married, though he said that didn’t really matter, because the French don’t mind infidelity—‘We approve of extramarital affairs,’ he said. Exact quote. He approved, turns out, but his wife didn’t.”

  “And you know this how?”

  “Because she came to Guatemala. A birthday surprise. A big surprise. When she found me in his tent, she came at me with fingernails and teeth.”

  “Ah. That would imply a certain level of disapproval.”

  “She took the next flight home and promptly divorced him.” She took a deep draw from her glass of red wine. “I’m also embarrassed that I still feel awkward about it. It’s been five years. It shouldn’t still bother me.”

  “Says who?”

  “Myself. My inner critic. My friends who have hookups and don’t think twice about it, who act as if sharing a bed with somebody’s no different from sharing a taxi or a park bench. I’ve just never been able to be that nonchalant about the whole sex thing.” She spun the stem of the glass between her fingers; the wine swirled up the sides, then sheeted back down. “I feel guilty about Stefan’s marriage, too. If not for me, he might still be married.”

  “Maybe. But maybe miserably married. As it is, he seems like a fairly happy guy. Pompous, but happy.” She smiled. “Anyhow, if she hadn’t caught him with you, she’d have caught him with someone else, don’t you think?”

  “Oh, probably. Much as I’d like to believe I’m something special, I probably wasn’t Stefan’s only…extracurricular activity.”

  “Sounds like he had his sales pitch down pretty well. ‘Ah, chérie, I am ze Frenchman. I must, how you say, cherchez la femme. Non? Oui!’” She laughed at the parody, and I felt doubly glad—glad to make her laugh, and glad to do it by skewering Stefan. “But you know what, Miranda?” I caught and held her eyes; she looked back skittishly. “Even if Stefan’s a womanizing jerk, that doesn’t mean you’re wrong about the other thing. You are something special. You’re lovely, you’re smart, you’re strong and brave and spirited. You’re amazing.”

  She raised her wineglass in my direction. “I’ll drink to that,” she said, smiling…but the smile looked wistful. When she set down the glass, her fingers lingered on the stem, and I felt a powerful urge to reach across the table and squeeze her hand. But would the gesture be one of friendship and empathy, or something more complicated, something more like Stefan’s overtures? I hesitated, and while I did, she let go of the glass and took her hand off the table.

  I retreated to safer, more neutral ground. “Before the year you went to Guatemala, how’d you spend your summers? Other trips abroad?”

  “Are you kidding? I worked my butt off. I had summer jobs from the time I was twelve. Babysitting. Mowing yards. I taught swimming a couple years. Spent three summers as a lifeguard.”

  “City pool? Country club?”

  “Nah, the real deal. Daytona.”

  “Daytona Beach? Lifeguarding on the ocean?” She nodded. “Ever save a life?”

  She smiled briefly. “Yeah. I did. I saved a life.” She looked away, somewhere into the past, then looked at me again. “But I lost one, too.” I waited, very still, hoping she’d go on. “My second summer, there was a girl—eleven, maybe twelve; she still had a kid body, and still had a kid’s innocence and exuberance. It hadn’t gotten complicated for her yet, the way things get for girls when they hit puberty, you know? Anyhow, she was bodysurfing on this gorgeous, gorgeous day.” I felt a rush of dread for the girl. “The waves were perfect—sweet little breakers, three, maybe four feet. That girl was having such a great time, just flinging herself into those waves with total abandon, riding them all the way in. She’d stagger up out of the foam with a suit full of sand and this huge, dazed grin on her face. Made me happy just to watch her. Then along comes this big-ass wave, twice the size of the others she’s been riding.”

  “Oh no! What happened?”

  “I can still see it so clearly. The top of the wave is just starting to curl when it gets to her. The wave lifts her up, and up—this twig of a girl, halfway up a mountain of water—and then it comes crashing down. I mean, that wave just explodes with her inside it.”

  “God, how awful.”

  “I see her tumbling, flipping end over end, then she smashes into the sand headfirst, like a post being pounded by a pile driver. When I got to her she was facedown, underwater, being pulled out by the undertow. I was sure she was dead, or worse—paralyzed, a quad.” I felt nearly sick just hearing about it. “But she wasn’t. Amazingly, she wasn’t. Her forehead looked like somebody’d taken a cheese grater to it, but once I got the water out of her lungs, she came to and she was okay. Coughing and crying, but okay.” In the candlelight, diamonds sparkled at the corners of Miranda’s eyes and then rolled down her cheeks. She wiped her eyes on her napkin, then blew her nose into it with a trumpeting honk. Then she laughed. “Miranda Lovelady: You can dress her up, but you can’t take her out.”

  I felt as if I’d just ridden a roller coaster. “Wow. How come you never told me that story before?”

  “We’ve never talked swimming before.”

  “So that was, what, ten years or so ago?” She nodded. “Whatever happened to the girl? Have you stayed in touch with her?”

  She shook her head. “Couldn’t. Didn’t know how. As soon as she came to, her parents yanked me off her, scooped her up, and skedaddled—straight to the ER, probably. Never asked my name or even said thank you. Too freaked out to be polite, I guess.” She shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. I’m still the one who saved her. Funny—I like to imagine I’m that girl’s hero; that she thinks of me as some sort of guardian angel watching over her. God knows, girls need all the watching over they can get.” She said it sadly, and I wondered if Miranda wished she’d gotten more watching over and guarding.

  “You’re my hero, Mir
anda. You make me proud.”

  “Thanks, Dr. B. Sometimes I make me proud, too. I did the right thing that time.” She looked away again. “Not so much the next time. The next summer. It was a guy that time—an adult. He got into a rip current, got carried out. By the time I saw him, he was out past the surf line. He didn’t know what to do, and he panicked; he was flailing, struggling to get back toward shore. Wrong thing to do. You can’t beat a rip current head-on; can’t outswim it. You’ve got to turn ninety degrees, swim parallel to the shore, till the current lets you go.” She paused, took a breath, then another. “His mistake was, he tried to fight it. My mistake was, I hesitated.” She shook her head, still angry at herself. “He was a big guy—taller than you, and stocky; I’d noticed him when he waded in—and when he got into trouble I hesitated, just sat there, because I was afraid he’d overpower me, take me down with him. Finally I grabbed a torpedo float and started swimming, but by then it was too late. He went under when I was halfway there; washed up two days later and a mile south, minus his eyes and his lips and his fingers and toes.” She drained her wineglass. “That’s still on my shame list, written in indelible ink. Thing is, I’m not sure I could’ve gotten to him in time even if I’d dived right in. But I’ll never know. Because at the crucial moment, I hesitated. God, I’ve wished a million times for a do-over, you know?”

  “I do,” I said. “I’ve got a few of those, too. Who doesn’t? But from where I sit, Miranda, I see you do the right thing all the time, again and again.” I made her look at me. “Once upon a time, when I was wishing hard for a do-over, someone older and wiser told me that life’s a river. It’s not Daytona Beach, where the same water keeps washing up on the same damn spot again and again; it’s a fast-flowing river. That guy’s death? That happened way upstream, Miranda. Trying to swim back to that spot is like swimming against a rip current. Remember that girl you saved. You’ve spent all these years being her guardian angel. Let her return the favor. I bet she’d loan you some of that innocence and exuberance if you asked.”