Chapter Seventeen
Paulette wasn’t in her bijou box of a home, which forced me to head into town, dark thoughts filling my head. I had no idea what games she was playing, but in future she would play them without me. I should never have been involved with the woman, but then hindsight was such a wonderful thing.
In supreme contrast to my state of mind, the sun was shining, and the pavements, roads, and cafes teemed with people, which stretched a short walk into an obstacle course. I reached the central square and the library, a charming building with green shutters, fancy iron grilles on the windowsills, and flower beds adorning the entrance from where a group of schoolchildren erupted, squealing at the top of their lungs.
Someone was happy. I wasn’t; I didn’t want to face Paulette. Since it had to be done, I entered the library.
She wasn’t at the reception counter. No surprise there, as a head librarian she had more urgent things on her mind than customer care, a minor detail she left to her minions.
I counted two assistants at the counter, one of them berating a hapless youngster who seemed to be a day late in returning his books. The poor mite’s mother pleaded his case, but the librarian wouldn’t budge.
At least, she was polite about it.
It was her colleague I addressed, once she had finished serving a frail old lady, with wispy white hair and pink scalp shining underneath, who packed her books into a shopping trolley and trundled off.
I stepped closer. And waited. The librarian, who must have seen me arrive, hacked away at her keyboard. The friendly smile she shared with the pensioner drained.
After too many minutes kept waiting, I cleared my throat. “Uh, are you free?”
The woman sighed and looked up, like a tortoise peeping from her shell. Wariness hovered in her eyes, huge and brown behind the gilded spectacles. “Ye-es, how may I help you?”
I forced myself to relax my stance and plaster a harmless expression on my face. My beef was with Paulette, not her colleague. “I’m looking for Madame Gingembre. Can you tell me where to find her?”
The librarian’s pupils dilated, and her gaze slipped aside before she yanked it back. “Uh, Madame Rosen, she’s rather busy today.”
Paulette must have distributed “Wanted” sheets among her staff. How else would the librarian recognize me? I only ever dealt with the big mufti herself. “She’s around, though, isn’t she?”
“Yes, but—”
“So sorry, but I really need to speak to your boss. There’s something she needs to know.”
A shrug was my only response. I could almost watch the brush-off forming on the woman’s tongue. My inner demon nudged me in the ribs, whispering I should make the most of this opportunity and leave.
No. I needed this sorted once and for all, like the root canal treatment last year.
“There’s something your boss wants from me, and I must tell her in person. It’s related to the hidden treasure of Capbreton. No doubt you’re aware how important this is to Paulette.” Underhanded tactics for sure, but sometimes politeness doesn’t buy you enough chocolate.
The librarian sagged in her chair. Then, with a deep sigh, she heaved herself from her seat. “I see. Mince alors . Okay, stay here, it might take a moment.”
She lurched off and disappeared behind the racks of returned books.
While I waited, a queue formed. The second receptionist kept throwing nervous glances over her shoulder while she beavered away. Her remaining colleagues stayed where they were, and my money was on Paulette having assigned their tasks for the day. Queues or not, she wasn’t the most flexible person and wouldn’t approve if the ladies deserted their posts.
The knot in my stomach congealed into a ball of lead, and my mouth was dry. Ridiculous, really, I was no employee, had nothing to fear.
An eternity later, the queue appearing ready to riot, the bespectacled librarian returned, her face flushed. “Uh, Madame Gingembre has been waiting for your report, she will see you. But she can only spare ten minutes.”
Fury seared through me, melting the lead. Oh, I was reporting to base now? How kind of Paulette to grant me her precious time. Acid shot up my throat. I ignored the bitter burn and flashed the assistant a friendly smile. “Thank you for your help. Is it okay if I go through?”
“Uh, you’re not allowed—”
“Let Madame Rosen in,” the second assistant snapped. “It won’t make a difference with her in that mood. I need you here.” She gestured at the restless queue. Her colleague dropped onto her protesting chair without sparing me a second glance.
I thanked the two librarians, didn’t get a response, and strode past the shelves into the belly of the library. I had never visited before and, on another day, I would have loved to sniff around. Give me a good book anytime. Today, however, my destination could only be the wooden door opposite me, bearing a star and a gilded nameplate underneath.
Paulette Gingembre.
No title, nothing, only the name. From Hollywood with love?
I rapped on the door panel.
“Enter.”
Yup, Star Tek here we come.
With blood rushing in my ears, I grabbed the handle, and stepped into the woman’s sanctuary. An air-con unit hung above the window, making an unsteady hum, chilling the office to an Antarctic winter.
Paulette sat ensconced on a padded chair behind a blond-wood desk, big enough to serve breakfast for ten. No croissants here. No coffee mugs either, only a fleet of paper trays arranged in a row, the papers inside stacked with perfect precision.
“One moment.” She didn’t invite me to sit. With a grim frown on her porcelain forehead, she attacked her keyboard.
A visitor chair and some filing cabinets in the same blond wood as the desk filled the rest of the office. Pictures, plenty of them, covered the wall to my left: Paulette with the mayor; Paulette with the latest K-pop group; Paulette in Bayonne; Biarritz; Dax. Paulette, Paulette, Paulette.
The hacking continued. The chill draft blew straight into my face. Oddly enough, now I was inside the woman’s den, my trepidations had vanished and with it, the anger. I would put that woman into her place. I could, and I would.
Clickety click.
If this was how she wanted to play things, fine with me. I crossed my legs at the ankles and leaned against the wall, which proved to be a smart move, since I hit the light switch and the spotlights in the ceiling went nova.
Finally, Paulette lifted her gaze and gave me a surly smile.
“Must you do that?” she asked in French.
I responded in the same language. “Not necessarily, but it got your attention, didn’t it?”
Her eyes narrowed, but she said nothing. She waved at the chair. “Sit.”
“Thank you, but I don’t want to take any more of your precious time. Your colleague told me how busy you were.”
“Assistant.”
“Come again?”
“She’s an assistant, not my colleague. And if her performance doesn’t improve, she won’t stay employed for very much longer.”
I glared at Paulette.
Her gaze slipped aside. She licked her lips and focused on her tablet. “Well. I hope you have a good reason to interrupt me during work hours. Some of us have a job to do, you know? Not everybody can afford to swan around the whole day.”
Paulette aimed low and still hit her target. I struggled to stop the rage from flooding my system, but by controlling the airflow through my nostrils, I prevented myself from twitching. All the while, my antagonist regarded me from lowered lids, no doubt waiting for a reaction to her jibe.
The seconds ticked by in my head, the anger cooled and, just as I was searching for a tune to whistle, she leaned forward in her seat. “So?”
Mission accomplished, I sauntered toward the desk and stopped at the chair. “Right. I’m a bit confused. Let’s hope you can help me. You were seen entering my house. Even if you are my landlady, which you never mentioned, you can’t enter the place without asking beforehand. It’s illegal.”
The comment wasn’t exactly a massive leap of faith, since I trusted Raoul.
Paulette paled. “But there was nobody around. I—”
Bingo.
Belatedly, she noticed her mistake. Anger glittered in her eyes as she bounced from her seat. “How dare you accuse me like that?”
“You’ve just proved my suspicions were spot on. Okay, let’s not waste any more time.”
“You—”
“We both know what I’m talking about. You’d better return what you took.” Of course, I would change the locks. I could always have them changed again when I left.
She balled her hands into fists and placed them on her waist, her cheeks round like puffer fish. “You are unbelievably rude. How dare you after everything I did for you. So much help I gave you, is it nothing?”
“Honestly, I was wondering from the start. You were too helpful, you know? In principle, I have no problems with tit-for-tat, but you overdid it. Why couldn’t you wait? I would have kept you in the picture. I treat my sources with respect.”
“I’m not a source,” she spat. “You vanished from the scene for a whole day, and all I get is a vague message, then nothing. I expect detailed reports, and I expect them on time.”
A fresh wave of anger rolled through me, and it took all my willpower not to spontaneously combust and go for her throat. “Not from me, you don’t. I’m not on your payroll.”
“Believe me, you won’t be given another chance.”
“Jolly good. If this is how you want to play it, be my guest. When are you going return the things you took?”
“You can’t prove anything,” she said with a triumphant expression on her face. “Who claims to have seen me? That person is a rotten liar.”
“Not your business. This is your last chance to apologize and return my property.”
“Stop throwing wild accusations around. I haven’t got your stupid memory stick.” She looked me straight in the eye without flinching once, the true sign of a liar. A lousy one, actually, since she had just given herself away. “Now, your trip with Batz. What do you have to report?”
The nerve of her. “You don’t seriously expect me to tell you?”
Her eyes widened. “Of course, I do. You owe me.”
“Do I heck. Our business relationship ends here and now. As far as accommodation is concerned, I have a contract for another eight months. While this is the case, you’ll stay away from Villa Glorieuse. Got it?”
A dangerous glint crept into Paulette’s eyes. She leaned on her desk, hands fisted, and I breathed a sigh of relief for having not only the desk but also the visitor’s chair between us. “Nobody, absolutely nobody tells me what to do. Do you think because you’re tall, you can run rings around me? Huh? Mon Dieu, woman, look at you. No chic, no style, no nothing. You don’t even have a proper job. A novel-writing freelancer, hah. I know some people in the Guide Douchevin . You will regret what you did today. Oh yes, you will. How could they ever take on an English woman? You—”
Whoa. An acid diatribe washed over me, but I tuned it out. How did she contain her venom? She must suffer from ulcers. My memory flipped back to the scene at the fish market, the group of shoppers, one of them calling me a “garce”, a bitch. The comment might not have been meant for me.
I made a T-sign with my hands. “Finished with your rant? You don’t scare me.”
“How’s your kitty cat, by the way?” The malicious sneer on Paulette’s mouth not only aged her beyond her years, but it also reminded me of an evil doll in a horror film. No further proof needed. She had left the entrance door of my villa open deliberately, only to spite and hurt me.
All right, sometimes it helps not to push back, but to offer a helping hand. “Why, Paulette, do you behave like this? You’re way out of line. As for not calling you, well, I was busy, and I didn’t want to leave phone messages. There wasn’t a lot to tell you, actually, but it’s another reason for coming today.”
“One contacts me on time,” she snapped. “Not when it suits you.”
What was she smoking? I wasn’t her personal slave. “Life doesn’t work like that.”
She rocketed around the desk, fast as a cobra striking, her pointy high heels clicking on the polished concrete. I shifted aside, keeping the door in firm view. She stopped and grabbed the backrest of the visitor’s chair as if it were a gauntlet, her knuckles white, her eyes blazing.
“Oh yes, they do. I know exactly what’s happening here. You’ve shifted alliance to that man. Hah, if you think taking sides with your precious Mr Batz is a clever thing to do, think twice. He’s an abomination. He’s going down. And you’ll go all the way with him.” Her voice shrilled into my ears, and there were flecks of spittle at the corners of her mouth. “The same applies to the stupid phantom.”
Oh yes, she knew about Raoul. “Who?”
“Don’t act surprised. I know who or what he is, and so, I’m sure, do you by now. Monsieur Dubois, hah. Forever laughing and moaning in my ear when I search the dunes. I will find his treasure. I will find the Legrands. I will find that spoon.”
She stabbed her chest with one manicured fingernail, no longer reminding me of a horror doll, but an actor in a cheesy tragedy. “I, Paulette Gingembre, will be the one to solve the mystery of eternal life. Go. Before I lose my patience.”
This time, she stabbed at the air in the general direction of the door.
I gave her a hard look and waited long enough to make it clear I wasn’t taking orders. “You must have watched too many soap operas. This is the real world. In this world, you’ll leave me in peace, or you’ll regret it. You might rule the local roost, fine, but nothing else.”
With that, I strode to the door, keeping a wary eye on the rigid figure behind me, in case she was planning to hurl hard, sharp objects at my retreating back. Luck smiled on me, since the door was already closed when something smacked into the panel with a solid whump .
?The anger churning inside me was the only excuse for not making the connection earlier. By the time my synapses sparked, I was three-quarters of the way back to the villa.
Paulette had mentioned the spoon, was after the secret of eternal life. And she called Yvon an abomination.
Fear clawed at my throat. The other two people to use the same expression had been the fanatics in the lime-green Citro?n whom Yvon called Sansculottes. When we last talked before the Lupiac trip, she had pretty much ignored Yvon.
Something must have changed.
My brain flung another thought at me. Was it possible Paulette might have joined those fanatics and was running the show? It would explain the odd comment of the man with the whiny voice.
“We’ve found someone new,” he had said, most likely meaning new management.
They had been on their way to meet that person. Somehow, Team Green Citro?n and Paulette must have come to an agreement while Yvon and I had been lost in each other.
My head spun, and for a split-second, my vision wobbled, forcing me to hold on to a gatepost to catch my breath.
“Madame, are you ill? Can I help?”
I pushed my unruly hair aside and registered the concerned face of the white-haired old woman, the one I met earlier, at the library. She stooped over her garden gate. “ Merci , it’s simply not my day today. I’ll be fine, thank you for your kindness.”
She nodded with a twinkle in her pale, rheumy eyes. “Oh yes, it’s been absolute ages, but I remember the downsides of being a young woman. Oh, the pain every month, what a nuisance.”
“Youth is relative, but thank you for your kind words. I’m feeling better already.” Funnily enough, I did.
“Watch after yourself. You’re only young once, and it’s such a blessing despite the nasty bits.” She waved goodbye and heaved her trolley into the house.
I waved at her back, felt foolish for it, and strode on. The woman’s kindness helped calm the terror flooding my body, and the panic stopped chasing its tail. Yvon needed to be briefed on this development, and pronto.
These people had been chasing him forever; he knew how to deal with them. I couldn’t, not with worry swarming my guts, and gazillions of thought fragments swamping my head.
Somehow, I made it back to my street. As I rounded the corner, a lime-green car flashed by.
I whirled around, but the vehicle was too fast. Its brake lights flared when the driver signaled left and then sped away.
The fanatics from Lupiac.
Yvon, what had they done to Yvon?