The Bennett Sisters Mysteries Box Set, page 53
part #1 of Bennett Sisters Mystery Series
Pascal asked the woman something about ‘parler anglais,’ speaking English. She shook her head. “You will have to text for her, Merle.”
“Am I going to be there? Hiding in the car? Dropping from a helicopter? On a walkie-talkie?” Pascal was not liking her tone. “And that dog? It looks nothing like Aurore. They’re going to see it in the headlights. They’ll know it’s not the right one.”
Merle stepped closer to him. “I can’t take another chance that it gets botched. I have to do what they say.” She looked at her watch. “And I only have minutes to get there.”
Outside, the heavy chop of a helicopter cut the night. Merle looked around the room at the team of policemen in combat gear, weapons at their sides. The beagle whined then barked at the noise. Merle looked down at the dog then back at Pascal.
“I have an idea.”
The third right turn off Camp Paillas was a fork in the road, easing uphill toward the wilder outskirts of Guzargues. The area was a wealthy suburb of Montpellier, it appeared, with lavish country houses behind gates. A new moon rose in the east, a slant of silver across the dirt road. Merle drove and Aurore rode shotgun, watching the dark trees go by.
“Which hill do you think they’re on?” Merle asked. Pascal was in the back seat with the beagle and the woman, a police dog handler named Giselle. They crouched low as she drove out of the village and into the dry hills dotted with scrub and stone.
“To the West probably. Get the dog from the passenger side.”
Merle gripped the steering wheel, driving as fast as she could around potholes on the narrow country road. It wound upward, past a compound of buildings, dim shapes against the night sky, a stand of pines, and dry, empty ground, away from civilization. She rounded a bend and saw the lantern ahead on the right, lighting a yellow circle on the ground. “There it is,” she told them, bouncing off the road onto hard dirt. Her heart began to flutter. Aurore pricked up her ears and whined.
“Leave the car running,” Pascal said.
The location was treeless and open, not even shrubs growing in the dry soil. To the west the hill dropped to a bottomless ravine, then another hill rose, barely visible in the moonlight. To the east no hills could be seen, just blackness and a smattering of stars. It looked like the perfect place to get hit by sniper fire.
“Allons-y,” she whispered to the dog. Let’s go. “Time to show ourselves to the bad men.”
The dog began to tremble again and struggled against the leash as Merle pulled her over to the driver’s side. She barked as Merle tucked her under her arm and shut the car door. Pascal whispered through his open window. “Can you hear me, blackbird?”
“Oui.”
“Check if there are more messages.”
Merle got out her phone. It made a crazy amount of light. She wondered if the criminals could see her face in its glow. She hoped so. Unless they had snipers.
“Nothing,” she whispered.
She set the dog down and held the leash tightly as they walked to the front of the car, into the bright stream of the headlights. She listened for the helicopter but the night was still. Not a breath of wind. Just the heat rising off the ground, releasing the stored sunshine. She tugged the leash and walked with Aurore out a little farther so her entire body was lit by the beams.
It was 1:04.
Merle held her sides, dancing from foot to foot. The night wasn’t cold but she felt a chill anyway. Aurore leaned against her leg, shivering. She patted the dog’s head.
At 1:07 the text came.
Drive to the first tree on the right. Tie the dog there. Your sister will be freed in one hour
Merle blinked, reading it again. She couldn’t believe it. There wasn’t going to be an exchange. This wasn’t right.
She wrote back: My sister must be freed now or I will not give up the dog
The reply was immediate: No negotiations
Back at the car, Merle settled the dog in the seat. “They aren’t going to exchange Francie. I have to tie up the dog at the first tree on the right.” She looked back at Pascal, angry. “Can’t you do something? Can’t you tell where those texts are coming from?”
“Drive, Merle,” he said. “We are working on it.”
She cursed loudly and put the car in gear. This was going badly, very badly. Steering back onto the road, she drove slowly, her high beams on, scanning the rocky hillside for a tree. Finally, a lonely pine tree, long dead, came into view on a barren ridge. She stopped the car and put it in park.
“What about when they see it’s the beagle?” she asked. This had been her plan but now she wasn’t sure. How would they find Francie once the criminals were caught?
“We will have them by then, blackbird. Turn off the car.”
She switched off the ignition. The headlights went out. It was very dark, moonless. She waited a moment for her eyes to adjust then got out. Inside the car, she heard yips and whining as the dogs were moved. She walked around to the passenger side. This was wrong. But what else was there? She had to go forward.
She took a breath to steady herself. “All set?”
“Oui,” came the answer from the back seat from Giselle. “À bientôt, Mignon. Soyez bon.”
Opening the door quickly, Merle scooped up Mignon, the beagle, and shut the door quickly, dousing the overhead light. She set the dog on the ground and straightened, squinting in the dark for the tree. She wished she had a flashlight. The ground was strewn with rocks. That was out of the question; tonight the darkness was her cloak, her friend. She picked her way along, stumbling, until she reached the dead pine tree. She wrapped the long leash around a low branch and tied it securely. The walk back to the car seemed to take an eternity. The dog began to bark. Merle turned back, using the trainer’s command, “Silence, Mignon!”
Poor dog, she thought, crossing the last of the stones. She hoped nothing happened to Mignon. She got in the car. “Now what?”
“Turn around and drive back toward Guzargues.”
As she drove down the hillside, heart heavy, she saw two police cars hidden behind a stand of trees. Then another two, by a high wall. The kidnappers would be caught. Mignon would not be harmed. That gave her little consolation. Francie was still a captive.
The dog handler pulled off her wig as she got out of the car by the gendarmerie. She gathered up Aurore and disappeared into the building. “Come on,” Pascal said, taking Merle’s hand. They got in his BMW and headed back out of town.
“I’m going to text them again,” she said. She wrote: I did as you asked. Where is my sister?
They passed the church and plunged onto the dark hillside. “Anything?” he asked. She said no, holding her phone tightly.
Pascal got a call and began talking rapidly in French. He braked hard, jerked the steering wheel, and made a U-turn. “Enfin,” he said angrily. “The priest called the emergency number two minutes ago. Finally Paris gives approval to track his phone. They were worried about his privacy.” He swore in French. It sounded very dirty.
“Did he give directions?”
“He had no idea where he was. Paris will call when they get a location.”
As they pulled into the field on the edge of town where the helicopter sat parked, its rotors limp in the night air, Pascal’s phone rang again. He listened then turned to Merle. “They need the GPS turned on the priest’s phone. He’s locked it. Call them.”
Shaking now, she punched her phone. Come on, Cyril. It rang five or six times. She was losing hope when suddenly Francie was there. “Merle!”
“Francie, are you okay?” She gripped Pascal’s arm.
“Yes. Well, sort of. We’re locked in this room. I was tied to the bed and we got that off but we can’t get out the door. And the window is tiny.”
“Le GPS,” Pascal hissed.
“You need to turn on the GPS on this phone, on Cyril’s phone, so we can find you.”
“I think they’re gone. We saw some cars drive away. We’ve been yelling out the window but there’s nobody out there.”
“Listen to me, Francie. Turn on the GPS on the phone.”
“Ah, right. Just a sec.” She spoke to the priest, asking him how to work his phone. A minute passed, some discussion about buttons and functions and codes. Finally Francie came back on the line. “Okay, it’s on. He didn’t really know where it was, but I think we got it.”
“Good, okay, now we can track the phone and—”
Pascal’s phone rang. He said, “Bon,” and got out of the car.
“Hang on, Francie. We’re on our way.”
“Merle? I smell smoke.”
The helicopter rose awkwardly, lifting into the night sky, sending dust and gravel flying on the ground. Merle clung to the seat, straining against the seat belt. Her first helicopter ride. She’d been given earphones for the noise but it came through anyway, a riot of percussion. Pascal, in front, was showing the pilot a map on his phone.
They didn’t need a map once they’d cleared the hill. Yellow flames lit the scene against the black landscape like a beacon. Merle felt her stomach turn over. They circled once then set down in a pasture. The building was engulfed, the fire several stories high. The wind created by the helicopter didn’t help.
Merle had to wait for Pascal to open her door, then threw herself out. They ran toward the building, a large barn, flames licking the outer walls. The noise was like a thousand lions roaring. The heat was intense, keeping everyone back. She lost Pascal in the crowd of neighbors who arrived carrying shovels, axes, and hoses.
Where was this window? Merle ran left, around the blaze, her eyes stinging from smoke. She called out for her sister but her voice was nothing to the raging fire eating up old beams and boards. She ran to the back where two men were cutting back shrubs between the barn and the farmhouse, a two-story stucco manse with a red tile roof and blue shutters.
She asked a man wearing pajamas if he’d seen a window on this side. He pointed to the opposite side of the barn. On the east and to the back the walls were whitewashed stone as if it was some ancient, original part of the structure. She rounded the corner and saw a tiny window about six or seven feet off the ground. Merle jumped, but couldn’t see inside.
“Francie! Are you there?”
A hand poked out, then Francie’s face emerged. “Merle? Thank God. Get us out of here. The smoke is getting bad.”
“Are your walls made of stone?”
“Yeah but the ceiling is wood. We can hear it crackling. We’re afraid it’s going to fall in on us.”
“Is Cyril okay?”
“I think he has asthma or something. Hurry!”
Pascal was helping throw water onto the edges of the barn to keep the fire contained. Without serious firefighting equipment, the barn was a loss, that was easy to see. The roof was tile but the wooden structure of it burned like a tinder box.
Merle grabbed his arm. “They’re in the back.”
Pascal grabbed an axe and followed Merle. He swung the tool wildly at the window. Glass flew in every direction but the stone held. After a few whacks, he told Merle he would have to go through the main door, and then he ran back to the front. Merle called to Francie, telling her they were going to come in through the door, then ran back to the front. Pascal borrowed gloves from a farmer, then picked up the axe again and chopped through the outside door. It shattered, half burnt. A whoosh of air sent a plume of sparks up to the rafters, feeding the fire. The skin on Merle’s face felt dangerously warm. Her eyebrows might be melting.
Pascal disappeared into the smoke and flame. He shouted, his words lost in the chaos. The crack of the axe boomed. A cry went up as the west wall of the barn collapsed in on itself, sending everyone back. Merle called out to Pascal, her words evaporating. Fire was so unpredictable. She wanted to go in but knew it would just make things worse. Did the beams crush him? Would Francie burn to death? Had the smoke choked them? The scenarios ran through her head, the call to their parents, the trials for the kidnappers, the revenge she would extract, all hardening inside her.
No. It was too early for hate.
Around her, the work went on, the dousing of small flames, the digging of trenches, the wet trickle from an ineffectual hose. She waited until she was sure she would burst. Time during a calamity took on an elastic quality, stretching until you’re sure it will break.
Finally figures materialized out of the smoke. Pascal was dragging a thin man dressed in black, his arm over Pascal’s shoulders. Father Cyril, his hair, face, and clothes gray with ash. Was he alive? They stepped over burning debris, stumbling out of the barn. Pascal laid him on the ground. Cyril was coughing. A woman cradled his head her lap and gave him sips of water.
Merle let out a sigh. He would live. She looked back into the gloom and yelled, “Francie!”
Pascal turned to go back in, then paused as they saw her. Francie, high-stepping over embers and beams, hair flying, arms batting smoke and sparks out of her path, screaming very bad words as she leaped and ran. She plunged out the broken door and into Merle’s arms.
“Oh god,” Francie said, her face smashed into Merle’s shoulder. “I don’t want to do that again.”
Merle and Francie sat on the ground, a blanket around their shoulders, holding onto each other. The fire burned on but they sat outside the active zone, spectators now. A fire truck lumbered up with its water tank but too late. The roof caved in fifteen minutes after Francie and Cyril got out. Pascal kept working tirelessly. He helped carry Cyril to the helicopter to be flown to a hospital.
Francie refused to go. She laid her head on Merle’s shoulder, quiet now. There would be time to talk later. She had been wild to call Jack and Bernie and their sisters until Merle told her they didn’t know about the abduction, that she’d kept it to herself so they could fly home together and tell the story with all the flourishes and drama. Francie’s knees had given out then and she cried for a minute. The nightmare was over. The relief was palpable that no one had been stressed and worried, wondering if she was dead or alive. No one but her middle sister.
Merle wiped away tears on both their faces. They would recant the tale together with everyone there. It would become a moment of family lore, the telling and re-telling. It would morph into legend, or not. Whatever Francie wanted. For Merle, her arms tight around the sister she had underestimated and undervalued, but would never, ever do again as long as she lived, it was enough to be right here, right now.
Safe and sound.
As dawn crept into the eastern sky, turning the scene of the fire a smoldering, ghostly pink, Pascal put Merle and Francie into his car and drove back to Guzargues. He looked exhausted. They all did, gray smudges under their eyes, ash from head to toe. In the back seat, Francie laid her head back and was asleep when they pulled up to the gendarmerie.
Standing in the bright sun, Pascal turned to Merle. He began to speak but she put a finger to his lips and leaned in to kiss him. They wrapped their arms around each other silently. Finally, Merle pulled back and took his face in her hands. “Thank you,” she whispered. “Merci, mon chèri.”
He drove them home to Malcouziac in the afternoon. The sisters couldn’t stay awake. Merle tried to stay alert to talk to him but kept nodding off. When she woke up, they were on rue de Poitiers again, parking beside the broken stones of the wall as they’d done so often.
Francie took the shower first. She was desperate, she said. Merle had asked if the men had hurt her and she said only that she was slapped a couple times. Nothing else, she said pointedly. “You know I would tell you, Merle,” she said, giving her sister a hug.
Pascal stripped off his T-shirt and stood under the old cistern to wash his head and arms. When he’d dried off he and Merle sat at the dining table, trying to process what had happened. He pulled her into his lap and buried his face in her chest. They were sitting that way, silently, listening to the shower run, when the knock came on the door.
He looked over her shoulder. “Merde.” James waited outside, wearing the same blue polo shirt and khakis he’d arrived in. “I’ll get rid of him.”
James startled at the sight of Pascal, shirtless and damp. “Is Merle here?”
“She’s busy. What is it?”
Merle appeared at Pascal’s bare shoulder. “It’s okay. Hi, James.”
“There you are.” He looked back and forth between them. “I’ve been worried. So, ah, I’m going home. I’m taking the train to Paris tonight. The priest dropped the charges. They just called. He’s in the hospital or something.”
“Great. I’m glad,” Merle said.
“You look—are you dirty or something?”
She wiped a swath through the gray ash on her arm. “I guess I am.”
James pulled back his shoulders, eyeing the two of them. “I guess this is as good a time as any to tell you. We had some good times, Merle, and I hope you aren’t crushed or anything. I don’t want to hurt you. But, well, Christine and I decided to give it another try. We’re getting back together. And not just for the kids although I did miss them a lot.”
“Good news,” Pascal said flatly.
“Yes,” Merle said. “Good luck, James.”
“She came to France for me. Must be something about France and, what do you call it, l’amour?” He smiled, pleased with himself, then squinted at Merle. “You’re not angry or—”
“No,” Pascal said. “She’s not. She’s happy for you. We both are. Very happy.”
They watched James walk away, hands in his pockets. “It seems I reconciled a marriage,” Merle said, pulling him close. “Or was it you?”
“It all worked out very well, blackbird. Au revoir, King James, et bon débarras. Good riddance.”
Earlier, up in the hills, the police had appeared out of the night with flashers blazing to intercept Hector and Milo as they arrived to pick up the dog. Two other Italians including a prominent businessman were nabbed at roadblocks and taken into custody. Mignon, the beagle, emerged a little hoarse from howling but unscathed and was happily returned to her handler. Father Cyril enjoyed a long recovery from smoke inhalation on the island of Sardinia.
