Bones of Paris (9780345531773) (38 page)

A taxi was perched impatiently at their toes. The two friends shook hands, green eyes holding blue. “Do you think something has happened to Sarah?”

“No. I don’t know. But we’ll find her. Doucet is good. Very good.”

Grey listened to the truth in Stuyvesant’s voice before turning to the taxi door. Stuyvesant let his hand rest briefly on the small man’s shoulder, then the gears clashed and Grey was away.

A
SHIRT, A SHOWER
, and a shave. With the photographs in his pocket, Stuyvesant went to lean on a few of Sarah’s acquaintances.

He began with Cole Porter, the man Sarah had taken care to be standing beside at the strike of the full-moon bell. Porter lived with his wealthy wife in a garden mansion near Des Invalides—a marriage of convenience, since Porter’s interests lay elsewhere. He was unlikely to be Sarah’s lover, but he was certainly a friend.

Unfortunately, he was also an absent friend. The doorman who answered Stuyvesant’s ring professed himself désolé but M. Porter was not at home, he was in the country writing songs, and would not return until the first of the week. Oh yes, certainly, with friends, but alas, it was impossible to say just who had gone with M. and Mme. Porter. Mais oui, there was a blonde Englishwoman—there had been, in fact, several English ladies with blonde hair here after Le Comte’s party, but following breakfast, there had been a general dispersal and alas, he could not say which of the jeunes filles had gone in which direction: into Paris, or with M. Porter.

Stuyvesant figured a butler like this would have to know who went where, but he also figured that the only way to get more information out of the guy would be by fist. And there were too many footmen around for that.

So he tried Bricktop. Whose house-maid refused to wake her, although the woman did look at Sarah’s picture and tell him that there was no one in the house who looked like that.

The routine at Josephine Baker’s was remarkably similar.

He looked at the next name on his list, and decided that it required a dose of liquid courage. Down the boulevard Raspail, François-call-me-Frank was behind his zinc bar dispensing booze and wisdom. Both would be somewhat watered-down, but what was it they said about beggars and choosers?

Stuyvesant took his glass and laid out six of his seven photographs: Sarah in the garden, Man Ray’s photo of Pip, and the four pieced-together faces from Didi Moreau’s hidden room. “Know any of these girls?”

Frank dried his hands on his apron and picked them up. “She was in,” he said at the top one: Sarah.

“When?” Stuyvesant said sharply.

“A month ago, maybe two,” he replied. Stuyvesant’s heart slowed. “She was looking for some artist with an interest in Africa. Matisse? No: Brancusi. Something to do with set design for a stage play.”

“That’s the only time?”

“So far as I remember. These others—Whoa.” He had reached the third photograph, and stared at the woman’s expression.

This might be a bad idea
. “Looks realistic, doesn’t it? It’s an art project, for that same theater—the Grand-Guignol?”

“Yes, that would explain it.”

“Qu’est-çe que ç’est?” Another customer sidled down to look, and in the end, a dozen or so men pawed over the pictures before they came back to Stuyvesant.

They’d all seen Pip’s snapshot on his earlier visits, and the change to Man Ray’s didn’t affect their lack of recognition. Of the other photographs, only the blonde rang any bells, reminding three men of a singer who’d worked in the French bars, although come to think of it, they hadn’t seen her much recently. The description stirred recognition in the back of Stuyvesant’s mind.

“Name of Mimi?”

That was her, although the men were no more certain of the complete name than the women had been ten days earlier.

However, it was the picture of the youngest girl, the healthy-looking brunette with the missing segment in her face, that caused the most unease.

“This girl looks pretty beat up,” said Frank.

“Great makeup department. But do you recognize her?”

“She looks a little like my sister.”
Is your sister missing?
Stuyvesant tried to think of a gentle way to word the question, but Frank made it unnecessary. “At least, like she did until she had her second baby, she’s ten kilos more than that now. Still, she’s happy and her husband likes it, so who am I to complain? Who are these women?”

“They’re all missing.”

“What’s that theater doing, eating them?”

Stuyvesant forced a smile. “It’s probably a publicity stunt, but families worry.”

“So you’re setting up a missing persons agency. Any reward for finding them?”

“If I had the money to offer a reward, would I be drinking here?”

Frank’s gale of laughter was a sore temptation, but Stuyvesant managed to walk out without hitting any of them.

One drink wasn’t enough courage to face rue Jacob. Ten probably wouldn’t be. He did not give himself a chance to chicken out, but marched up the street to the house and knocked. Softly. Maybe she’d be asleep, too.

She was not.

The housekeeper showed him into a room with dark pink walls and dark pink drapery, crowded with soft, multi-cushioned sofas, ornately carved chairs, vases of luxuriant flowers, and small tables strewn with books. Portraits of women lay along the walls, looking askance at his blunt masculinity.

When she returned, the gray-haired housekeeper seemed amused at his reaction to all this female décor. He turned away from a painting of a woman in man’s clothing, and followed her through more pinkness
until they came to Natalie Barney, nestled among settee cushions with a book.

“Mr. Stuyvesant,” she said warmly. “So good to see you again. That
was
you at Le Comte’s party the other night, wasn’t it? I can’t imagine you have too many lookalikes.”

“That was me, in among the bones. Great music.”

“And one of the odder assortment of guests. Will you have coffee? Wine? Do sit down. Berthe, this is Mr. Stuyvesant from New York, I met him a year or so ago at that mad party on the Île de la Grande Jatte. As I recall, Mr. Stuyvesant, you were working as a private investigator?”

“Still am,” he said, accepting both chair and coffee.

“Dolly Wilde was saying I should write a murder mystery with a Sapphist detective. Detective stories seem all the thing.”

“You’d sell a million,” he said gamely.

“More to the point, I could have some fun with the clichés.”

“That too.”

“What can I do for you, Mr. Stuyvesant? Berthe said you were looking for a girl.”

Putting down the cup, he chose two of the photographs, pushing all thoughts of death from his mind, and his voice. “Two girls, in fact. The first one’s named Pip Crosby. She went missing in the spring, and her family’s hired me to find her. The second is a friend—of mine, that is, not Pip’s. Sarah Grey. She was at the party the other night, and hasn’t been seen since.”

Miss Barney put her feet on the floor to accept the pictures.

“Oh yes, Sarah. She works for Dominic.”

“That’s right.”

“A sweet girl,” said the lesbian.

Down, boy
. “She is, yes. She and her fiancé had a little argument, and we both figure she’s just gone off with friends for a day or two to let things cool off.”

One eyebrow lifted. “And you were wondering if I might have been that friend?”

“It did occur to me that if she’d been feeling the urge to get away
from the irritations of the male species for a while, she might have mentioned it to you. In passing.”

Her lovely laugh went far to explain her reputation for conquest. “Mr. Stuyvesant, I
so
hope that one day I have need of a private investigator. However, no, Miss Grey did not express any specific dissatisfactions with the men in her life, and she is not taking shelter under my roof, although she would be welcome to do so.”

“Well,” he said, “thanks anyway. And thanks for the coffee.”

Her gaze lingered on Pip. “Am I right to think this was taken by Man Ray?”

“That’s right. Le Comte had it done. I understand he was thinking of putting her on the stage, and wanted it for publicity.”

“Yes,” she said.

Her drawled monosyllable caught his ear. “Is there something I ought to know about Man Ray?”

“ ‘Ought to know,’ Mr. Stuyvesant?”

“Pip Crosby was a good kid, and she’s missing. He’s one of the men she was in contact with.”

“I’m sure it’s nothing. But as you might imagine, people tell me things—gossip, yes, but also things that women feel other women ought to be told. One of those pieces of gossip concerned Mr. Ray. It seems he enjoys telling how he beat a former girlfriend with his belt. It is common knowledge that he prefers attractive young female assistants. They pose for him, and some of the poses are rather disturbing.”

“Does any of this ‘gossip’ have him being an active threat?”

“No. And I’d have heard.”

“I’d imagine that half the artists in Paris—half the male artists, that is—expect their women to be …”

“Submissive?”

“I was going to say ‘agreeable,’ but yeah, submissive.”

“You are no doubt correct. And to be clear, Mr. Stuyvesant, I have no problem with submission, if given willingly.” The meaning in her blue eyes was clear.

Stuyvesant rose to her playful challenge like a man. “Willing submission is the only kind that matters. Not the kind with a belt.”

“Thus saith the knight in shining armor,” Miss Barney pronounced. She handed him back the photos, watching him put them away. “You are welcome to stay, Mr. Stuyvesant. Friday afternoons I hold a salon, when we talk about everything from art to orgasms. You could show my friends your pictures. And, you might find the other guests entertaining.”

“Not as entertaining as they’d find me, I expect.”

She laughed again, and stood, taking his arm to steer him through the pink world and back onto the narrow gray street.

He went by the Hotel Benoit, to check for messages—none—and grab his overcoat, since dusk was falling.

The day awarded him one moment of bleak humor when Bennett Grey answered Sarah’s door wearing a flowered apron, but it faded the moment Stuyvesant looked into his green eyes and saw their shared thought:
She’s been gone forty-two hours
.

“Y
OU
’
RE COOKING
?” I
T
was obvious that the man in the apron hadn’t slept.

“Just rescuing some green beans from Sarah’s garden. The housekeeper brought a cassoulet.”
Rescuing Sarah’s beans when you can’t rescue her
, thought Stuyvesant, and poured himself a drink.

Grey returned to his vegetables. “Tell me about your Miss Crosby.”

“Not mine. She made that clear.”

“You have a picture?”

Stuyvesant showed him the Man Ray portrait, then told him about Pip in Nice: pretty girl in a bar, middle-aged man, unlikely but promising—until she kissed him good-bye and left for Rome.

Grey snipped, sliced, listened as Stuyvesant described his fruitless search through Montparnasse and Montmartre, and reluctantly, his despair over Pip’s fate. The kitchen went still for a moment, muffled by a blanket of dread.

“Miss Crosby sounds as wary of obligations as you are.”

“What are you talking about?
I
wasn’t the one to cut it off with Sarah.”

“Who said anything about Sarah?”

“Every conversation with you seems to be about Sarah.”

“Yes, we’ve had so many conversations in the past few years.”

“I’ve … been busy. Anyway, why would Pip be scared of something
long-term? A twenty-two-year-old with someone my age is more likely to be bored.”

“Those are not the eyes of a twenty-two-year-old,” Grey said. He shoveled the beans into a steaming pot.

“Yeah. I know.” Stuyvesant studied the man’s profile. “Sarah said you came over in April?”

“I decided to try.”

“It went all right?”

“It was hard. But I managed.”

“Did she have really short hair then?”

“Not terribly. Does she now?”

“Yeah.”

“It must make us look even more alike.”

It’s like he felt my thoughts against the side of his head
. “It is a bit startling,” Stuyvesant admitted.

“Harris, my sister is happy here,” Grey said. “Her hand bothers her less each time I see her. And I like this Doucet chap.”

“Yeah, I get it. She’s fragile and I’m a threat. I’ll leave Paris when … this is all finished.”

The copper pan was taking forever to return to a boil.

Grey broke the silence. “I feel I would know, if … something … happened to Sarah. That Paris would go dark.”

The forbidden topic—the two men’s history, Stuyvesant’s reason for avoiding Cornwall, the thing that had kept him wandering rootless across Europe for three years—stirred like a grizzly bear in the corner of the room.

“Look, I’m sure she’s fine, we’ll—”

The cutting board smashed into the sink, shattering amidst an explosion of bean-trimmings and soapy water. Grey stood, hands grasping his skull as if the easy lie had driven an ice-pick through it. “Don’t. Please don’t.”

“Jesus. Bennett, I’m sorry. You said that your … abilities were fading.”

“Not enough.”

“So I guess the Project isn’t leaving you alone?”

“Oh, they’re still interested, all right. If I could just get them to stop spying on me, the arrangement would be almost bearable.” He dropped his hands. “Look, this is about ready. Want to eat?”

Not really
.

Grey served the food onto two plates and laid them on the kitchen table. Stuyvesant doggedly picked up knife and fork, casting around for a polite topic that wouldn’t turn their stomachs. “I like this part of Paris. Almost like being in the country. Sarah said there was a blacksmith?”

“A self-educated philosopher who dispenses Plato along with his horse-shoes. I gave him a hand a few times, at the forge. Tell me about your girl.”

“Nancy? She’s … unexpected. Like your blacksmith.”

“Not your usual blonde kitten?”

“Not blonde, no kitten. Nothing usual about her.”