It All Began in Monte Carlo (16 page)

In the bathroom, blinking in the sudden bright light, she took a quick shower, threw on jeans, a shirt, an oversize hoodie; brushed her hair into a ponytail and put on the baseball cap.

“Come on, Tesoro,” she said briskly. “We're going for a walk.”

Eyes still tight shut, the dog shoved her nose deeper into the pillow.

Sunny put on her harness and picked her up, and walked out to the elevator.

As the doors slid shut, she had a sudden memory of her and Mac together in another elevator in this very same city, Monte Carlo, just last summer. She had been wearing a short black chiffon dress that fell in narrow pleats, sashed at the waist with satin ribbon, and held loosely at the back with three tiny crystal buttons.

“Have you ever made love in an elevator?” she'd asked Mac, unhooking those tiny buttons and sliding the dress down over her naked breasts, laughing at Mac's shocked face. There was nothing that delighted Sunny more than being naughty.

Panicked, Mac had hauled her dress back up, just as the elevator stopped at another floor to admit a surprised-looking couple, who stared suspiciously after them when they got out and raced, laughing, down the corridor.

“Naughty,” Mac had said, when he'd caught up to her.

“Isn't it fun?” she'd replied, tumbling onto their bed, still laughing as he pulled off the black chiffon and they made love.

This morning though, in Monte Carlo, the wind was gentle, almost springlike. It was too early even for the crews of the fancy
yachts to be out cleaning and polishing and fluffing nautical-looking cushions. Massive-hulled super-yachts, too big to fit into the marina, were moored beyond the harbor, pennants fluttering, helicopters poised on top like giant seabirds, all steel and white. Their absentee owners would show up again in May for the Cannes Film Festival, when they would entertain Hollywood royalty in the manner to which they believed Hollywood royalty were accustomed, though in all probability most of them, like Allie Ray, longed for a simpler life.

Sunny knew she had shocked Allie with her confession about Eddie, though it was really quite innocent. Well, almost. She and Eddie had not even kissed. Well, only that time at the airport in Paris, the two kisses on the cheek, then the extra one “for friends.” And of course the soft lingering kiss on the lips when they said good night in the hotel lobby.

Sunny remembered Allie saying Kitty Ratte had moved in on Eddie and she frowned. That couldn't be true. Kitty was her friend.

She walked along the harbor with Tesoro dragging reluctantly on the lead, stopping every few feet for a long sniff.

Kitty was so bourgeois, so innocuous she was almost boring, and always wanting to please. But wait a minute, hadn't Kitty talked sex to her? Asking if she missed sex with Mac because if so Kitty could “take care of it.” Sunny had dismissed it then as silly “woman talk.” Now, though, she wondered.

Seeing the yellow police tape and the cop cars still outside the scene of the previous night's crime, she ducked down a side street and found a tiny storefront café open early. The aroma of coffee lured her and she sat at the counter, dunking a flaky croissant into a
café crème
. Memories of the past summer in St. Tropez with Mac opened floodgates of tears that rolled down her cheeks into the hot coffee.

The waiter, a white apron wrapped around his waist and tied at the front, white shirtsleeves rolled, a cigarette burning in a nearby saucer, even though smoking was forbidden in public places in
France, eyed her then leaned across the counter. “
Madame?
Do you need help?”

She shook her head. “I'm okay.”

He took another drag on his Gauloise Bleu, stubbed it out in the saucer and shunted the remains into the trash can underneath the zinc counter.

“It's a man, of course,” he said, understanding immediately. “But
madame
is too beautiful to cry for any man.”

He set a small glass of brandy in front of her and drew espresso from a hissing machine, strong enough Sunny thought, sipping it, to fortify even the weakest of nerves, if not also to destroy the liver. The brandy made her choke.

“You are very understanding,” she said, managing a smile.

“Go back, tell him he is a fool,” he advised. Then with another of those little Gallic one-shouldered shrugs Sunny knew meant
what the hell,
added, “But then all men are fools.”

She pushed the euro coins toward him in payment. He pushed them back, and said it was on him.

“Trouble is,” Sunny said, turning at the door to look at him, “there are
two
men.”

“Mon Dieu.”
The waiter's face expressed his astonishment.
“Eh bien, madame. Bonne chance.
Good luck,
”
he called after her.

 

 

The Inspector had had no sleep. He sat at his desk in a normally tranquil
préfecture,
tranquil at this time in the morning anyway, before the latest bunch of ruffians were arraigned and sent before a judge and on to prison where they could no longer disturb the elite population of the small elite few kilometers of the French Riviera, that were home, some of the time, to some of the richest and most elite people in the world.

The criminals were usually minor: pickpockets, credit card scammers, shoplifters, but security was tight and they rarely succeeded in getting away with anything.

Of course in the twenties and thirties, there had been the daring kind of cat burglaries where jewels were stolen from a safe in the master bedroom of a grand pink villa; and of course there was the time when there was a fire in the penthouse apartment of a very rich man who had perished in the flames under what, some had suggested, were suspicious circumstances. This had proven to be true and a culprit was arrested. Anyhow, real crime was rare in these parts. And a job like the La Fontaine robbery was unthinkable. Just as it had been unthinkable at the Paris store, and in Milan, Berlin, London, Rome. And probably even more cities. The Inspector was too tired to think about it right now.

All the Inspector knew was that he had a murder on his hands. A young woman was dead and a small child—a two-year-old boy—left motherless. From what he had gathered in his questioning of the distraught shop assistants, there had been no reason for the robbers to kill her. They had obeyed orders, handed over keys, phones, diamonds. It simply did not make sense, they had said, though of course, they were all suffering from shock and had been taken off to the hospital. Except the one who had been carted away in the black body bag.

The Inspector slumped wearily in his chair, his cap on the desk alongside his feet, his smart jacket slung over the chair back, arms behind his head, thinking. He looked up at the knock on the door and an officer entered.

“The crime scene photographs, sir.” The officer handed over the printouts of the pictures the Inspector had already viewed on his computer. He did not, at this moment, choose to look at them again. Instead, he put them in a blue folder, marked with the young woman's name,
MADAME YVONNE ELMAN, DECEASED
, stood up, put on his jacket and cap, tucked the folder under his arm, told the officer he was going out for coffee and could be reached on his mobile if needed, then walked out and round the corner to the nearest café. It was eight
A.M.
, and he had been thinking about Yvonne Elman for more than twelve hours.

He took his usual seat at the café and ordered his usual breakfast: one hard-boiled egg, two croissants and a double espresso. He would have liked a brandy but he was still on duty. He took out his phone and called his wife, told her to expect him home for a fast ten minutes, when he would shower and change his clothes then get back to business.

His wife had listened to his telephoned reports through the night and she understood.
Serious
was not word enough to describe this situation and her heart bled for the young mother who had met her unwarranted and unexpected death.

The Inspector cracked open his egg, peeled it, sliced the contents, then ate them slowly in between sips of the strong espresso. He signaled the waiter for a
café crème,
double, then dunked his croissants in the creamy froth, looking like an aging bloodhound with his long lined face, large ears and droopy brown eyes.

He wondered if it was too early to telephone Mac Reilly, decided that it was not and placed a call to the hotel.

Monsieur Reilly was not accepting calls yet, he was told. He opened the file and studied, one more time, the shattered face of Madame Yvonne Elman.

 

 

The rock on which the Grimaldi castle had stood for more than seven hundred years—up-and-down years, both financially and scandalously—loomed over the tiny principality of Monaco. Much of its almost four hundred acres had been built on landfill to expand its territory and also to enlarge its harbor into one of the smartest ports of call on the oceangoing planet. The Greek, Aristotle Onassis, before he had a falling-out with the then prince of Monaco, had come up with the idea of this expansion; he had known exactly how to carry it out and take the principality from near ruin to one of prosperity with a tax haven status that had no equal.

Millionaires were common in Monte Carlo but the newer, smarter description
billionaire
guaranteed access to every grand party, while also guaranteeing that everybody who was anybody would also attend, be it on a yacht, or in a penthouse overlooking the marina, or in a villa set back in the foothills, though many also owned villas close to St. Rémy or in St. Tropez, where they escaped Monaco's somewhat claustrophobic atmosphere and the constant danger of bumping into the same people at the same events.

The Monégasques, the hometown citizens of Monaco, lived real lives amid the grandeur and the hubbub and influx of tourists and sightseers, protected and cared for as perhaps in no other country
by their rulers, with job security and no taxes, and celebrations for almost any festive occasion.

Monte Carlo had been famous for several decades not only for its Casino but also for its pricey shopping, and La Fontaine, the jeweler's, had a historic place on one of its prime boulevards. It had been there as long as the Casino itself and owed its success to those Belle Epoque years and to the twenties and thirties and the men bent on blowing their Casino winnings on extravagant jewels for a courtesan or a new girlfriend.

Even though the Paris store had been robbed and a sadistic act of violence committed against a young woman assistant, no one ever imagined this could happen in Monte Carlo, the city of rosy dreams.

“That's exactly
why
it happened.” Mac finally answered when the Inspector called him for the third time at ten minutes after nine the day after the robbery, the day after Yvonne Elman's murder, and the day after Mac had arrived in Monte Carlo and Sunny had told him they needed to reevaluate their relationship.

“Right after Christmas,” Mac said. “Everybody's relaxed, their shopping's done, and of course grand jewelers like Fontaine do not have ‘sales,' so there was no business pressure. In fact I'm willing to bet there wasn't much ‘business' being done that day, except women returning gifts, exchanging them for the piece they'd really wanted all along.”

“You mean the one they'd hinted about to the husband for months and which he was too dumb to pick up on.”

Mac laughed. But then Mac had not seen Yvonne's death photographs. “You're probably right,” he said, thinking of Sunny buying the red dress and the boots before he'd gotten around to it.

“It's an expensive street,” the Inspector said. “Pricey boutiques, all of them. You wouldn't get the kind of customer, ‘clients' they prefer to call them, going in there not properly dressed.”

Mac assumed he meant women dressed in Dior and furs. Monte Carlo was different from L.A., where nobody ever wore fur, and
those with money strolled the best stores in shorts or in jeans and T-shirts and flip-flops if they wanted.

“So why this call, Inspector?” he asked, though he got the feeling he knew the answer.

“Mac, a young woman was murdered last night. The mother of a two-year-old boy, the wife of a crew member on one of the yachts. A nice young couple, Mac. A toddler left motherless.”

“I feel for them,” Mac said. And he meant it. “I've encountered this situation before,” he added. “It's never easy. In fact, Inspector, it's the kind of hell no one should be put through.”

“I knew you, of all people, would understand. And it's because of what you just said, because of your experience in this kind of strange murder, that I'm asking for your assistance. Off the record, of course.”

Mac looked out the window, coffee cup in hand, thinking about the unknown Yvonne Elman. “Inspector, why did you use the word
strange
to describe the murder?”

“Because, my friend, it was entirely unnecessary. There was no need to shoot the young woman. She and the other four salespeople, one of whom was the manager, had handed over the jewels, the keys, the phones. The security cameras had been shot out, the alarm disabled, the guard disarmed. All the three female robbers were wearing surgical gloves, masks and blond wigs, and were therefore unidentifiable. They had what they wanted. All they had to do was walk out of there, lock the door behind them and drive off in the vehicle that I'm sure was waiting for them. They knew it was unlikely anyone would even realize the place had been robbed until later, and by then they would be long gone. Which in fact is exactly what happened. The staff were locked in there with that dead girl and no way out and no passersby to summon help.”

Mac thought about the Paris robbery and the act of violence against another innocent female saleswoman, and knew there was more to this affair than stolen jewels, though of course they were at the heart of it. In the end, money was always involved and this was
big international money, in a case involving at least five countries and a network of thieves who knew how to play their game. Not anymore though. He knew this would be their last. No jeweler in the world would allow fur-clad expensive-looking women inside their doors without checking and double-checking. He was sad for the young woman's family and for the Inspector's dilemma, but because of Sunny he could not get involved.