There's Something About St. Tropez (26 page)

Overhearing, Nate propped himself on one elbow. “Who is this security man?”

“He goes by the name of Lev and he's the best. He's flying in from the
States. He'll be with us tonight.” Belinda scrambled to her feet. “I'm off for a swim. Anybody coming?”

Nate leapt up, brushing off the sand, and Sara followed reluctantly. Little Laureen remained on her mattress, still in the orange tutu, holding on to Tesoro who she'd discovered had been left in the kennel, and whom she had “rescued.” She'd kind of hoped Bertrand would have found Pirate by now and rescued him too. Poor Pirate had stared so mournfully after her as she'd walked away.

Arms round her knees with the little dog tucked beneath, she thought about how to help Bertrand. She knew it was urgent because at the end of the summer vacation time in France, when everybody went back to work, Bertrand would be banished to boarding school and would probably never even see his wicked mother again. An image of Cruella De Vil in
101 Dalmatians
flashed into her mind. She thought Bertrand's mother must look exactly like that: sharp pointed face; big red mouth; pointy black eyebrows. The very picture of “wicked.”

The others were already walking down to the water on the little straw paths laid over the sand to stop their feet from burning.

“You comin' for a walk, hon?” Billy said. “We could just wade. I'll bet that water'll be real cool,” he added, noting her flushed cheeks.

But Laureen shook her head. “I can't leave Tesoro.”

“Bring Tesoro along. Tell you what, let's take her for a walk along the water's edge. I'll bet you she'll like it.”

Laureen thought the little dog looked hot so she said okay, and let her father take her hand and pull her up. She carried Tesoro until they got to where the sea surged quietly onto the sand, leaving it soft as silk, and bubbling slightly under her bare toes. She put the dog down. A tiny wave splashed close by and the Chihuahua leapt into the air. “Like a ballet dancer.” Laureen laughed as Tesoro's lips curled back in a snarl, chasing the wave as it slid back, only to be hit by a second one.

Billy watched as his little daughter swept the Chihuahua up from the waves holding her aloft, paws waggling frantically. He couldn't recall the last time he'd heard Laureen laugh, but it was certainly before her mother died. It had taken a small dog to bring a modicum of joy back into her frozen heart, and to Billy that alone made the trip to France worthwhile. There were dogs on the ranch of course, working dogs mostly, or those belonging to the help, but as soon as they returned home he would take Laureen to choose one of her own, a Chihuahua if that was what she wanted.

“She's so cute, Daddy,” Laureen said as they strolled down the beach.

Billy agreed, but he decided to keep the dog buying a surprise to cheer her up when they got back. He held her hand and with the little dog darting in front, they strolled silently on. Laureen seemed lost in her thoughts again, and Billy didn't try to force her to talk, though he was wishing she would at least let him buy her a bathing suit so she could be like the other kids on the beach, but Laureen seemed determined to stick to the tutu.

Bertrand had been on Laureen's mind since waking that morning and now, when she passed “their” rock where they had sat and talked and Bertrand had told her about his mother, she hung her head, unable to look because the memory was too painful.
Poor Bertrand. What would he do? Where would he go? Who would look after him?

She glanced sideways at her father. He was wearing red surfer bathing shorts and whistling softly, his hat still jammed on his head. He never removed that ten-gallon Stetson no matter how hot he was. Suddenly, Laureen jumped up and snatched it off.

Billy looked down at her, astonished. “Now why'd you do that, honey-bunch?”

“Because you're too hot. And Mommy would have said you'll have a stroke in this heat.”

Billy nodded ruefully; he'd heard Betsy say that a million times. He ran his hands through his thick wavy hair, a surprising light ginger color that Betsy once said reminded her of fresh apricots.

“You must buy a straw hat, Daddy,” Laureen said, looking after him now because her mother wasn't there to do it.

“Which reminds me,” Billy said, “where did you get the straw hat you're wearing?”

Laureen blushed. “Ooh, I just found it . . .”

Billy said sternly, “I hope you didn't find it before it got lost,” and Laureen blushed some more. But just then Billy stopped.

He was looking up the incline from the beach over the grass-studded dunes to where the roof of a house peeked through the pine trees. A white house whose dull windows did not reflect the light and that, even on this sunny day, seemed steeped in shadow.

“Well, I'm darned,” he said, “if that isn't Chez La Violette. I never realized it was so close. And it looks as though there's a path from the beach that leads right to it. Hey, maybe it wasn't so bad after all.”

After a while, they turned and made their way back to where Belinda was just emerging from the sea, a graceful bronze naiad in a tiny white bikini. Sara followed her, stumbling through the waves, pink from the sun in her
striped bikini, arms crossed protectively over her chest. Laureen didn't even notice. She was thinking about Bertrand and the urgency of finding the stolen artworks and getting the reward to save him.

Belinda saw them coming and stood, hands on her hips, a big grin on her face. Billy's carrot hair stood on end, matching the freckles on his square, ruddy face. There was a wide white stripe across his forehead where the hat had fit. Belinda laughed and said, “If it wasn't for Laureen and the dog, I swear I'd never have recognized you, Billy Bashford.”

She went up to him and ran her finger across the white stripe near his hairline. “Soft as a baby's behind and untouched by sun or human hand.” Billy's eyes were the color of raisins as he gazed silently back at her. She said, “You've been hiding your light under a bushel with that hat, my friend. But don't worry, I can help you, a little Clarins face tanner will take care of it.”

Billy stared at Belinda, bemused. He'd never used a face cream—any cream—in his life. She linked her arm through his as they walked back to their shady mattresses. He could smell the sea on her skin, salty and sweetened with suntan lotion. It made his heart skip a beat.

And it made Nate quite jealous, though the truth was he was also still enamored of Sunny. He wondered where she was today.

 

35.

 

 

The Hôtel de Paris, in the Place du Casino in Monte Carlo, was sumptuous; a marble-pillared façade led into a lofty salon topped with a dome and a glorious Art Deco rose window. On every wall was a precious tapestry, a mural or a painting; antique tables held silk-shaded lamps and rich carpets muffled the sound of Sunny's heels as she and Mac made their way from the reception to the elevator.

The desk clerk had not raised an eyebrow when they'd said they had no luggage, he'd merely bowed respectfully and given the key to the bellman, who hitched their shopping bags onto a golden trolley and escorted them to their room, high enough to command a view of the great rock with the Grimaldi castle, flag flying, and of the harbor jammed with private yachts. Farther out, a cruise ship, an enormous floating white palace, blasted its siren as it sailed majestically off to the next port of call.

They stood watching the cruise ship depart until it became a mere speck on the horizon. Mac was thinking how different Monaco was from his home turf. Malibu was rawer, somehow, and more vigorous, with its surfers and showbiz folk, beach walkers and dogs, hamburgers and sushi and its great glass houses. Malibu was of today, while Monaco represented the past and hundreds of years of progress, ruled over by the Grimaldi family.

But the bathroom was definitely of today, if not tomorrow, all creamy marble with a huge tub, a double shower and elegant gold fittings. In fact the shower was just the right size for two, as they soon found out.

Later, looking at Sunny lying on the huge bed, her wet hair wrapped in a
towel, reading glasses perched on her nose, a sheaf of papers in hand, Mac thought that maybe he did not have her full attention.

He plopped down next to her, running his fingers along the delicate sun-blonded hairs on her golden arm. “Violette is coming between us,” he said.

But Sunny was still immersed in what she was reading.

“Listen to this, Mac,” she said finally. “This headline says, ‘La Violette Triumphs at Paris Opéra.' ”

Remembering Krendler, Mac's ears pricked up.

“But Violette was no opera singer,” Sunny added. “She was strictly French music hall, in the days when music hall ruled. You know, the follies and the big stages. It says she was ‘A Cabaret Artiste, singer of sexy songs, glamorous, gorgeous, she brought a sense of intimacy to the stage so that every male in the audience believed she was singing just to him.' ”

Sunny looked at Mac. “I'm quoting.”

“You mean she was a sort of Piaf.”

“Oh no. Piaf was Paris's ‘Little Sparrow,' a tiny plain waiflike woman with a big voice. La Violette was tall with a soft sexy voice. Here I'll quote from this other review. ‘La Belle Violette, tall, broad-shouldered, an Amazon in her liquid silver gown that slid over her breasts like a lover's hands.' ”

“They said
that
—in
those
days?”

Sunny looked at the date. “This was in nineteen-thirty, when she was twenty-seven years old. And
gorgeous
.”

She handed Mac a sepia-toned photograph, showing a woman with an oval face, a pert nose, a wide full-lipped mouth, innocent pansy eyes and a tumble of hair that fell over those alluring eyes and those white shoulders, half-hiding the famous breasts.

“She could play Caesars Palace, looking like that,” Mac said.

Sunny handed him another picture, this one taken at a race meeting in Paris, of Violette in a chic spring suit that must surely be early Chanel, with little black kid booties that showed off her long slender legs. There was another of her sitting beside an English lord in a Lagonda sports car, and later ones of her on a terrace, in what in those days were called palazzo pajamas, soft and drapey, alongside the Prince of Wales and Mrs. Simpson.

Sunny peered at the photograph. “That's the terrace at Chez La Violette,” she exclaimed. “I swear it.” There were olive trees in the background and a glimpse of the mosaic-tiled pool in front, the pale flagstones, a tumble of bougainvillea and hibiscus, and the villa half-hidden behind rosemary bushes. A white-jacketed manservant stood respectfully to one side, guarding a cocktail trolley with martini shakers and a crystal ice bucket. The
prince was smoking, and Mrs. Simpson stared unsmiling into the camera, severe in a narrow white high-necked dress with a thin black belt and pearls of a considerable size. But Violette herself was beaming from ear to ear. “May 1937—Riviera Hostess captures Royalty. The Couple of the Moment,” the caption flared in heavy black print.

Sunny made some quick calculations. “Edward was still prince then,” she said. “He didn't abdicate and marry Mrs. Simpson until nineteen thirty-eight. My oh my, that was some coup for La Violette. British royalty. It didn't get any heavier than that.”

She rolled across the bed to look at Mac. “So you see, Chez La Violette must have been splendid once.”

“Pity it wasn't splendid today.” Mac had no pity for the missing rental scammer. And none for Joel Krendler, who had the money to fix up the place. As a self-proclaimed “patron of the arts,” at least he could have made it a memorial to a once-famous French singing star known, so Sunny now told him, as “
La Violette, Chanteuse de Tout Paris
.” But Sunny was propped against the pillows once more, immersed in another news story.

She skimmed it quickly. She knew PR fluff when she read it and this definitely was not that. This was real. She threw Mac a you're-not-gonna-believe-this glance and then she began to read it to him.

 

Sunday Telegraph

Nice, September 1995

 

There's a small hill outside of St. Tropez. A green hill with a covering of Mediterranean pines that leave a lingering scent in the air, like that of well-aged wine casks. A long while ago, in the stillness of the evening, just before night fell, the sound of laughter and music would float up that hill from the festively lit yachts where champagne and rosé wine flowed, a preliminary to dinner onboard. Or perhaps, instead, to a meal ashore, in one of the simple bistros and cafés lining the small town that used to be, not so very long ago, a fishing village. It was a place that drew artists of all kinds: painters, writers, Paris designers in search of the simple life. Some lived in fishermen's cottages and crumbling villas; they ate fish fresh from the sea, with anise yellow Pernod or the thin local pink wine to wash it down.

“There's something about St. Tropez,” they would say happily to each other. “Just something about St. Tropez.”

And then La Violette arrived, fresh off her latest European tour. She fell in love with St. Tropez, and with the green hill—and probably also with the pianist who, in later years, accompanied her in her performances, and was said to be her true love, a young blond German fellow whose name has been lost to time. It doesn't matter, the beautiful Violette was notorious for her habit of flitting from man to man. “Like a hummingbird to a flower,” she used to say with that wicked throaty chuckle that promised much, and, those who knew said, always delivered.

Her Amazonian beauty and her singing career on the stages of Europe had netted La Violette a small fortune, made even larger by the jewels and houses lavished on her by her admirers, and lovers, several of whom were nobility, and at least one of whom was a Royal. (The diamond tiara he gave Violette sold twenty years ago at a major jewel auction in Geneva for an enormous sum, even at today's prices.) They called it “Violette's trophy,” but in truth there was more to it than that. Violette had been fond of her Royal, even though she was rumored to have said he was not a good lover.

The house she built on her hill on the site of an old priory overlooking the sea was plain, squarish, not unlike the fishermen's cottages that lined the harbor, but Chez La Violette had arches and patios and pinkish tile roofs and a small tower at the center. And of course it had extra-large windows because Violette, who was rumored to have come from a poor background, an orphan brought up in some obscure provincial asylum, though no one has ever proven this story; anyhow, Violette loved everything to be light and welcoming. There were to be no shadows in her house.

Until passing time took its final toll there were still people here in Nice, old of course, who when they cast their minds back thought fondly of Chez La Violette, recalling long sunlit days by the azure swimming pool, with lunch served by a manservant, impeccable in a white jacket. And of drinks in the late evening on the cool-tiled terrace with its view down
the slope to the sea, glinting crystal and pink in the sunset. They remembered delicious dinners served under the spreading branches of the olive trees where tiny birds perched, eyeing them and occasionally singing for their supper.

They recalled Coco Chanel stopping by to visit from her fisherman's cottage on the harbor, and Colette scribbling stories in a shady corner. They talked of the artist Paul Signac, who painted so evocatively the familiar views of the village and the piney landscape, and of the visits of the English prince and his woman, when everything had to be top-notch to suit such exalted guests, who were not used to “roughing it” in the casual way of the house.

They said Piaf had been there, and Chevalier, and Mistinguett and Josephine Baker, with all her many children of different races and colors. Presidents and Generals came too, all adoring friends—or perhaps lovers, but though Violette was a woman who could drop names with the best, she never told.

And then war came to Europe. Eventually it made its way as far as the Riviera. Violette fled to Paris, living there, but often retreating to her now lonely villa. She still went onstage, still sang, though this time it was for the Nazi occupiers of Paris, as several of her contemporaries also did. It was said that, like Coco Chanel, she had a new German lover, but if so, she never brought him to Chez La Violette. And no one visited her there anymore.

Then, at the end of the war, when the Allies liberated Paris, Violette was arrested, accused of being a collaborator. She hid her still-beautiful face from the photographers in shame. But quite suddenly, and without any fanfare, she was released. Her new “enemies,” once her friends, said it was because Violette knew important people. That Violette had stories she could tell they would not want made public, and that this was how she gained her release. Was the beautiful Violette a collaborator A blackmailer? A woman who used her power for her own good?

No charges were ever brought, no proof ever offered, no vindication made, and Violette returned to her villa. The woman who had once had everything, including the world at
her beautiful feet, lived alone but for a multitude of stray cats, whom she nourished and loved like the children she'd never had.

And then, on a day in early summer, she was no longer there. Violette simply disappeared, leaving behind nothing more than the villa she had built in her favorite place in the world, and her beloved cats, with a will stipulating that the last of her jewels be sold and the money used to pay a woman in the village to come in daily to feed and take care of them.

You see, the one thing Violette offered in such great abundance, all her life, was love. A love of friends, a love of all animals, a love of life itself. Perhaps Violette gave her love so freely because she'd had so little of it in her youth. And there were many who, remembering the way things used to be, were grateful for that love. But now it was only a memory.

Violette, Chanteuse de Tout Paris, would not recognize Chez La Violette today. Abandoned for decades, unloved and unlived in, it stands as a monument to the mystery of her disappearance so many years ago. And to the persistent rumor that it is haunted.

By whom? you well might ask. Why, by the woman herself, of course. La Violette.