A Bouquet of Rue Page 3

  “Seven.” I passed him the keys to his car. He handed me in on the passenger side, and when he was behind the wheel, buckling up, I asked, “Who was that man you were talking to? He seemed agitated.”

  “He is at least that. Distraught, I think. Yvan Fouchet. His daughter is missing.”

  “Ophelia? The missing girl everyone is talking about?”

  He nodded, watching traffic behind us as he backed out of the space.

  “What did he want from you?” I asked.

  “A miracle.”

  “Do you have one?”

  “Sadly, no.” He put the car into drive and we joined the queue heading toward the street exit. “Fouchet thinks I have connections that I don’t. A missing child is a matter for the local police. But he says the police aren’t doing enough because they believe she’s a runaway. Her boyfriend is missing, too. They’re fifteen, Maggie. Kids that age, sometimes they get ideas, oui? Chances are that Ophelia and the boyfriend will turn up when they run out of money and get hungry.”

  “I hope so. What a nightmare for the parents in the meantime. Can you do anything at all to help Fouchet?”

  With a little shrug, he said, “I told him that I’ll call a contact at Interpol who helped set up the European Union’s missing children hotline. Their focus is sex trafficking, which isn’t likely in this case. I know my contact will tell me this is a matter for the local police, but maybe they’ll put out an international alert, just to appease the father. Other than that, what can I do?”

  My turn to shrug; I was still learning the rich vocabulary of French body language. “Do you know either of the kids?”

  “The boy, no. But Ophelia, yes. Or, I did until she was about twelve. She rode in the youth riding club I coached. A nice enough youngster, I thought, eager to please. She had a natural saddle seat, worked quite hard, looked after her horse, took direction well, got along with the other kids. A bit quiet, but a pleasant girl. That’s all I can really tell you. She’s a few years younger than Dominic so she wasn’t in and out of the house with his pack of friends.”

  “Did Dominic ride with the club?”

  “Oh yes. Dom was the only reason I was involved. But he gave up riding when we left for the consular post in Los Angeles. Since our return, school has kept him too busy to prepare for hunter-jumper competition. So, I have seen nothing of Ophelia or the rest of family Fouchet for more than three years. I don’t know what sort of young woman she is becoming.”

  “And the boy?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t recognize his name.”

  We talked about everything else the rest of the way home. But we were both parents, and the specter of a pair of missing youngsters hung in the air around us.

  Jean-Paul and I were standing in my pie-shaped office, sipping that very nice wine from Languedoc and talking about what to do with Marian’s furniture when we heard Dominic’s scooter come up the gravel drive out front. Jean-Paul, with a little smile, cocked his head and listened: first the garage door, then the kitchen door, footsteps, a cupboard door, the clink of glass, the beloved eighteen-year-old’s heavy book bag hitting the floor somewhere near the stairway. And then the youth himself appeared, glass of wine in hand, looking a bit worn out after a long day of classes and tutorials, but still cheerful. Dominic was nearing the end of the first year of his grueling two-year preparatory course before entering one of the nation’s elite Grandes Écoles. The promise of summer holidays made the daily grind bearable for him.

  “Ça va, Maggie?” Dominic kissed my cheeks.

  “I’m fine, thank you,” I said. “And you?”

  “Assez bien.” He turned to his father to deliver the same set of smooches. “Et tu, Papa?”

  “Amazing. Fantastic. Perfect. The way I always feel when you walk through the door intact.” Jean-Paul ruffled his son’s helmet-flattened hair. Dominic wasn’t as tall as his father, his features a bit sharper, his hair lighter. But he was unmistakably a twig from the same tree. That is, heartbreakingly, quietly handsome. “Tell us about your day, Dom.”

  “Same old torture chamber.” Dom glanced at the piles of boxes and the disarranged furniture. “So, I love your décor, Maggie. Très chic.”

  I clinked glasses with him. “Glad you approve.”

  Jean-Paul reached over and grabbed his son in a one-armed bear hug. “So, mon petit malin, I’ll need your help to haul this stuff out of here.”

  “Tonight?” Dom asked with some dismay, releasing himself from his father’s grip.

  When Jean-Paul turned to me for the answer, I said, “No hurry. I’m solidly booked with meetings at the network and editing sessions with Guido until Wednesday. There’s new furniture coming sometime during the week, so everything can wait until the weekend.”

  Still also working on my vocabulary of French slang, I asked, “What does petit malin mean?”

  There was a father-son exchange of Gallic shrugs, raised palms, and moues before Dom said, in English, “Smart ass.”

  “Exactement,” Jean-Paul said with a nod.

  After taking another look at the jumble, Dom asked his father, “What do you plan to do with Grand-père’s things?”

  “Do you want any of it?” Jean-Paul asked.

  “I could use one of the file cabinets, if that’s okay.”

  “Bien sûr,” Jean-Paul assured him. “Only one?”

  “Sorry, yes, only one.” He shrugged. “Actually, I don’t want any of it, but I thought, well, to keep the peace I would take one.”

  “That isn’t necessary, Dom. Not for your mother’s sake, and not for your own.”

  “Grand-père’s things?” I asked, curious.

  “Zut,” Dom said with a shake of his head, clearly not happy with the topic.

  “There’s a little history, yes,” Jean-Paul said. “When Marian’s father retired, he made a gift to her of his precious office furniture. At least, all that he could squeeze in here. He even had his drapes cut down to fit these windows. Where are the drapes, by the way?”

  I pointed to the pile on the floor behind the desk.

  “Good place for them,” Dom said. “Maman hated them. She hated all of Grand-père’s old furniture.”

  “But she kept it?” I said.

  “Where her father was concerned,” Jean-Paul said, “Marian chose her battles carefully. A roomful of ugly furniture, she decided, wasn’t worth a war.”

  “Oh dear,” I said, thinking that through. How often did Marian’s father visit? And what would he have to say when he got a look at what I fully intended to do to the room? And did I care?

  At that moment, Ari opened the terrace door and announced, “À table, mes amis.”

  As we trooped out toward the backyard, Jean-Paul asked Dom, “When was the last time you saw Ophelia Fouchet?”

  “Around Easter, I think.” He reached into a back pocket and pulled out an untidy wad of paper that he handed to his father. “But she didn’t look like this at all. She’s gone totally Goth now. Dyed her hair black, black clothes. If they want to find her, they need to use a different photo.”

  The paper, we saw when Jean-Paul had smoothed out the folds, was the flyer for the missing girl and boy that the women had been posting all over the haras. In her picture, the girl was fair and sweetly pretty. The boy was dark-haired with olive skin. Her I did not recognize. The boy I did. He was in our backyard that afternoon, deep in discussion with Ari.

  ] Two

  Ahmad Nabi?” Ari studied the color photos on the missing persons flyer. “Who says he’s missing? He was here for his tutoring session just this afternoon.”

  “So, then, he’s back,” Jean-Paul said as he took his seat at the table on the terrace. “I hope that means the girl has returned as well.”

  “Do you know the girl, Ari?” I asked as he handed me a basket of warm flatbread.

  “Ophelia Fouchet?” He shook his head as he began ladling rich fish soup into bowls and handing them around. “No. I can’t think of a reason our
paths would cross.”

  I accepted a bowl from him, and after an appreciative sniff of the fragrant steam rising above it—tomatoes, grilled fish, onions, garlic, peppers, and fresh oregano—asked, “How do you know Ahmad Nabi?”

  “From the Islamic Community Center in La Celle Saint-Cloud,” he said, picking up his spoon. “I can’t practice medicine in this country until the results of my licensure exams come in. But I can offer lay counseling and do some preliminary pediatric medical screening. Most of the kids who come to the center are quite recent immigrants. Refugees, to be exact. They have all sorts of issues: academic, physical, emotional. If I spot something, the center staff can direct kids to the help they need. Sometimes they can, anyway.”

  “What sort of help does Ahmad Nabi need?” Jean-Paul asked.

  “Among other things, academic,” he said. “The secondary school Nabi attended in Afghanistan offered no science courses. He needs tutoring to catch up with his peers in anatomy, chemistry, biology. He’s a serious boy. He works hard and he wants to succeed. More than that, he wants desperately to fit in.”

  “Good to know he is no longer among the missing,” Jean-Paul said. “I’ll call Ophelia’s father after dinner and congratulate him now that the ordeal is over. And I’ll notify Interpol to cancel the alert.”

  “Not yet, Papa.” Dom had been quiet, listening intently, so far. “Doctor Massarani, what time was Nabi here?”

  “Four o’clock, give or take, until five. He comes straight from school on Mondays.”

  “It was after six o’clock tonight when I dropped my friend Nathalie at her parents’ bistro. All the mothers were in the village handing out flyers.” He tipped his head toward the flyer now folded on the table beside his father. “Madame Aubert, Cécile’s mother, gave me that one.”

  “Maybe word isn’t out yet that the kids are found,” Jean-Paul said.

  “But Ophelia’s mother was there, too, in front of the patisserie. Wouldn’t she know if her daughter was back?”

  Jean-Paul turned toward Ari to say something, but when he saw that Ari had his phone in his hand and was tapping in a text, he sat back and waited until he was finished and had set the phone down on the table.

  “Texting Nabi?” he asked. When Ari nodded, Jean-Paul took out his own phone and began punching in numbers. Ari reached over and put a hand on his arm.

  “Before you call anyone, as a favor to me, my friend, I ask you to wait just a bit. Give Nabi a chance to respond to my text.”

  Jean-Paul rubbed his chin, thinking, deciding. In the end, he acceded to Ari’s request and put his phone away.

  “How terrible for the boy’s parents,” I said, remembering the state of Ophelia’s father at the train station.

  Ari shook his head. “Nabi has no parents. No family now except his grandmother. As far as he knows, only he and the grandmother survived when the boat smuggling them to Italy capsized in the Mediterranean; thousands of refugees don’t survive that crossing. Nabi is certain his parents and siblings drowned because he has heard nothing from them. And sorry, I don’t have a phone number for his grandmother.”

  “Do you know where they live?” Jean-Paul asked.

  “No. But the center might. I’ll call there if I don’t hear from Nabi soon.”

  Though everyone’s gaze strayed from time to time toward the screen on Ari’s phone, waiting for it to light up, the conversation moved on. There was an edge, a hesitation, to everything that was said, with that dark telephone screen serving as the centerpiece.

  After the soup, Ari brought out a tray of cheese and fruit. As he placed a small plate and knife in front of me, he said, “Maggie, I had hoped that tonight with my humble offerings I could wish you, one immigrant to another, good success in your new country. The circumstances for you and I finding ourselves so far away from everything that was once familiar to us are certainly very different. But no matter why we are here, the adjustment can be difficult at times. As you said this morning, in the village you felt invisible. These French people—” With a smile, he looked from Jean-Paul to Dom. “As charming as they are, they can be mysteries to us. I caution you to be patient with them, and sooner or later you will cease to be an invisible stranger.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “Though I think there may be some advantages to invisibility.”

  From there, a general conversation followed about adding a fourth cog, me, into the workings of the household machinery. My first concern, the native Californian and freeway veteran, was, how would four people with four very different schedules manage with one car in the household? When I suggested that I might look into acquiring a second car, the others asked, almost in unison, “Why?” So far, there had been no need. Dom, who was not yet eligible for a driver’s license, assured me that he took his Vespa almost everywhere he needed to go. When Ari needed a car, which was rare, he would ferry Jean-Paul back and forth to the train, as I had done that very day. Because Ari observed Islamic dietary rules, he kept his food, kitchen, and food preparation utensils entirely separate from ours, and generally did his own shopping. Everything he needed, he told me, except meat from a halal butcher, he could walk or ride a bike into the village to acquire. Most days, Jean-Paul said, the car sat all day in the train station parking lot gathering dust. I wasn’t persuaded, but until I knew my work schedule and where my work might take me, and considering the other issue hanging like a pall over the evening, I let the subject drop. For now.

  The cheese course was finished, coffee came and went, dishes were carted back into Ari’s little kitchen in the guest house. And still no word from Nabi.

  Dom and I gave our thanks to Ari, said good night, and headed toward the house, but Jean-Paul hung back. He put a hand on Ari’s shoulder, looked into his eyes, and said, “We have to call the Commissariat of Police.”

  Ari nodded. “Do what you must.”

  Within fifteen minutes of Jean-Paul’s call, two police detectives, a somewhat rumpled older man and a starchy younger woman, were at the front door. They could have been American senior police, a bit world-weary, know-it-all, skeptical, except that their suits were better, and when Jean-Paul offered them wine they accepted. The man drank his in a single long quaff and did not turn down a second pour. She took a sip and set her glass on a table.

  While her partner, Detective Lajoie—an ironic name for such a dour-looking man—took care of asking who we were and the reason they had been summoned, the woman detective, Fleur Delisle, surveyed the room as if it might hold some answers to yet unasked questions. With her head back as she studied the soaring ceiling, she finally spoke.

  “Monsieur Bernard, a large black spider is spinning a web up in that corner.”

  Jean-Paul followed her gaze. “Oui. Lots of spiders this time of year. They trap all sorts of pests, so I leave them alone to do their work. And they leave me alone.”

  She brought her focus down to study him for a moment, her expression as contained as the tight bun at the back of her neck. “We’ll need to see your identification. All of you.”

  Jean-Paul, Dom, and Ari reached for their pockets while I went in search of my bag. Quickly, Delisle scanned the national I.D.s of the two Messieurs Bernard into her phone and handed them back. Delisle lingered over Ari’s papers, looking from them back at Ari several times.

  “Syria?” she said. “Refugee?”

  “Yes, to both.”

  “How long?”

  “Just over two years.”

  “And that is how you are acquainted with Ahmad Nabi?”

  Ari puzzled over the question for a moment. “Are you asking if I know him because we are both refugees, or are you assuming that all refugees are somehow connected?”

  Her only answer was the smallest shift of her left shoulder; she never took her eyes from his face.

  He said, “A couple of days a week I do some counseling and some tutoring at the Islamic Community Center. I met Nabi there. He was having difficulty catching up in school, so he started coming t
o me here once a week for help. Today he came by after school as usual, and we worked on his chemistry lessons. Just as a point of information, Ahmad Nabi is from Afghanistan, and he has been in France for barely a year.”

  She made a quick note in a small pad. “What did he say about Ophelia Fouchet?”

  “Nothing. I never heard her name until young Monsieur Bernard showed us the flyer he picked up in the village this evening.”

  With an open palm, she drew a line from Ari to Jean-Paul. “You two know each other how?”

  Jean-Paul answered first. “I met Doctor Massarani at a refugee camp in Turkey shortly after he was evacuated from Syria. It took a while, but with help from our friends at Doctors Without Borders we were able to arrange a French visa for him.”

  “Doctor Massarani?” She made a note. “You were in the camp as a physician or as a refugee?”

  “Both,” he said again.

  “Monsieur Bernard, why were you at a refugee camp?”

  “From time to time, on behalf of the European Union’s consortium on refugee resettlement, I conduct inspections of the camps.”

  Lajoie uttered his first sound for a while, a short “Hmm,” as he thought over, perhaps, some implications of Jean-Paul’s mention of an affiliation with the EU. Delisle pivoted her focus to me, holding out her hand for the passport in mine.

  “Margot Eugénie Louise-Marie Duchamps Flint,” she recited as she studied my passport. “You are born in France?”

  “French mother, American father.”

  “Father is Flint?”

  “Father was Duchamps.”

  “So, his background is French?”

  “No,” I said. “American Immigration misspelled my grandfather’s name when he got off the boat from wherever he came from. I don’t know what the Eastern European original was.”

  “And Flint?”

  “My late husband.”

  “What did he do, your Monsieur Flint?”

  “He was a homicide detective with the Los Angeles Police Department.”

  “Late husband? He died in Los Angeles? Gunshot?”

  “He had cancer.” Which was true. But I sure as hell was not going to tell her that Mike Flint used his service weapon to decide the timing of the inevitable before cancer could take him. I also did not mention that my nom de guerre, my TV name, Maggie MacGowen, wasn’t on my passport. The MacGowen part was a leftover from husband number one, another folly of youth but one that had an excellent legacy, my daughter Casey.