“I don’t know,” said Danny. “I don’t know anything concrete at this point and neither do you, Mr. Daley. Blog gossip does not a homicide case make. Plus, even if you’re right, and the three killings are all connected…”
“…which they are. You know they are.”
“…local French police don’t take kindly to outsiders trampling all over their turf and meddling in their investigations. Especially Americans.”
Matt threw his arms out wide in a gesture of innocence. “Don’t worry about me.” He grinned. “I’ll charm them into submission.”
LATER THAT AFTERNOON, IN THE DEPARTURES lounge at the Lyon airport, Matt Daley tried out his charm on his wife.
“I’ll be here another week, honey, ten days at most. I’ll bring you back some goodies from Chanel, how about that?’”
“I don’t want goodies!” Raquel snarled. “I want our share of that money! Don’t you realize that every day you’re gone, those fucking charities are spending our cash? I can’t fight this alone, Matt, and I can’t fight it with no money. There’s a lawyers’ meeting on Tuesday in Beverly Hills. I expect you there.”
“But, honey, this Anjou murder—”
“Is not gonna pay our bills,” snapped Raquel. “I mean it, Matt. Either get home by Tuesday or don’t bother getting home at all.”
ACROSS TOWN, AT HOME WITH CÉLINE, Danny McGuire lay sprawled out on the bed in postcoital bliss.
“How did it go today?” his wife asked him. “Your meeting, with that American. Your stalker! What did he want in the end?”
“Hmm? Oh, nothing.” Reaching out, Danny caressed her breast. “He’s some TV guy, making a documentary about the LAPD. It wasn’t important.”
It was the first time Danny could ever remember lying to her. The guilt of it lay heavy in his stomach, like lead.
That night, while Céline McGuire slept, Danny lay awake, thinking of Angela Jakes’s perfect face.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
MATT DALEY STARED OUT OF THE window of Hélène Marceau’s medieval château feeling like he’d strayed into the pages of a fairy tale. It wasn’t just the house. It was the entire town of Eze, a ludicrously picturesque hilltop village less than twenty miles outside Monte Carlo. Walt Disney couldn’t have drawn the place better, with its turrets and steeples, its winding cobblestone streets, its gas lamps and flower boxes and quaint, higgledy-piggledy artisans’ cottages. Matt thought: It’s perfect. A ready-made movie set for Beauty and the Beast.
Twenty years ago, Hélène Marceau would have made a wonderful Belle. Even now, in her fifties, Didier Anjou’s ex-wife number two was an attractive woman. With her slender figure, fine bone structure and sparkling emerald eyes, Hélène could still turn heads. Of course, everybody in Eze knew the rumors: that Hélène was déformée, down there. But it didn’t seem to have prevented her from landing two more husbands after Didier, both of them wealthy. The furniture in this room alone must be worth six figures.
“I’m sorry I can’t be of more help, Mr. Daley.” Hélène’s English was perfect. “But Didier and I hadn’t had any contact for many years. I read of his death in the newspaper, like everybody else.”
Matt sighed. Much to Raquel’s fury, he had been in the South of France for nine days now and badly needed a lead. Any lead. He took a sip of his thé au citron. “Did you part on bad terms?”
“Didier left me, Mr. Daley. Just as soon as he’d spent every centime I had to my name.”
“I see. So you did part on bad terms.”
Hélène smiled. “We divorced, Mr. Daley. It’s fair to say that, at the time, Didier was not at the top of my Christmas-card list. But I’m not a great bearer of grudges. Time passed. I remarried. I was sorry when I heard what had happened to Didier. Nobody deserves to end their life that way.”
One glance at Hélène Marceau’s face told Matt that she was sincere. This woman did not wish Didier Anjou dead, and clearly had nothing to do with his murder. It was the same story with his other exes. Matt had tracked each of them down. Lucille Camus was now a frail octogenarian, barely able to remember her own name, still less plot a murder of a man she hadn’t seen in decades. Pascale Anjou had remarried a Greek property tycoon and was far too rich to care. Camille, the fourth Madame Anjou, still lived happily with Luc, Didier’s estranged son, on a farm in the Pyrenees. She sounded genuinely upset when Matt contacted her to ask about Didier’s murder.
Not that Matt had ever had much faith in the “hell hath no fury…” theory, which seemed as flimsy to him as the Mafia link that the police were so keen to pursue. He was sure that the same man who killed his father and Sir Piers Henley had done away with Didier Anjou. But Danny McGuire was right. They needed more than conjecture to build a criminal case, or even to make a half-decent documentary. Matt had to explore every angle.
Of course, the one ex he really did want to talk to still eluded him. The police claimed that Irina Anjou had returned home to Russia, as she was entitled to do after giving her witness statement. But no one seemed to know where, exactly, she had gone, who her family was or, indeed, anything about her at all. All Matt’s inquiries about Irina had been met by bored Gallic shrugs from the Saint-Tropez police, and few locals seemed ever to have met her. Only one man was willing to talk to Matt about Irina Anjou. Taking his leave of Hélène, Matt Daley set off to meet him.
SET IN THE VERY HEART OF Saint-Tropez’s bustling harbor, Café Le Gorille was the place to see and be seen. Sipping your morning coffee as the superyachts sailed in, ogling the glamorous occupants as they emerged on deck in their Cavalli silk shirts and Eres bikinis, you could almost imagine you were one of their number. Privileged. Golden. Untouchable. And all for the price of a café au lait and an hour sitting on the rather uncomfortable wicker chairs that made the backs of one’s thighs look like you’d sat on a waffle iron.
Lucien Desforges recognized Matt Daley instantly. Not because they had met before, but because Matt had that earnest, trusting, idiotic look common to untraveled Americans. How odd, Lucien thought, that a nation of people so generally loathed abroad should have such unparalleled faith in their own likability.
“Mr. Daley.”
“Monsieur Desforges. Thanks for seeing me.”
Lucien Desforges had thought twice about agreeing to today’s meeting. He’d had nothing to do with the police since they effectively ignored what he’d told them about Irina Anjou having been violated. “One crime at a time,” the moronic detective in charge had told Lucien, making no effort to record the details of his statement. If the lady declined to report it—and apparently she had—the rape did not officially exist. Less hassle, less paperwork, and everyone was happy.