It All Began in Monte Carlo (20 page)

Pru looked up, saw Kitty looking at her, saw the scorn in her eyes.
Cheap bitch,
she thought, deciding she had better warn Allie and Sunny against her later, when they were alone.

Sunny had noticed before that Kitty drank too much, but she said nothing. That was Kitty's problem; Sunny had enough of her own to deal with.

“Pru,” she said. “We've decided tomorrow you should be a blonde.”

“You're kidding!” Pru had never thought of changing her mouse-brown, ever.

“Get ready for the new you,” Allie said, smiling, as they ordered lunch.

A few minutes later, Pru stared dismayed at the small portion of lobster fettuccini in front of her. In her opinion it was barely enough to keep Tesoro alive. Understanding, Sunny said, “Do you ever wonder why, with all the wonderful food in this country, Frenchwomen look so good? And yet they always seem to be in restaurants and cafés, always eating?”

Pru had never thought about Frenchwomen and their diets. In fact she never thought about Frenchwomen at all.

“What Sunny means is, it's the
way
you eat, not
what
you eat,” Allie explained. “Frenchwomen don't merely
eat
their food, they
taste
it. They make each mouthful count. Take a bite of that lobster fettuccini now, Pru. Really savor it, then tell us what you think.”

Pru looked at the three women looking at her, and then looked
down doubtfully at her plate. She liked lobster; she liked pasta—though this sauce was pale and barely there, and certainly was not the tomato variety she was used to. An unknown sprig of greenery adorned the side of the plate. She picked it up and sniffed.

“Pru, how can you have gone through life and not smelled tarragon?” Sunny said exasperated.

“Easy. Nobody eats tarragon where I live.
Lived,
” Pru added quickly, because she was certainly never going to live in that town again.

“It's one of the most fragrant herbs. Mac loved to cook with it.”

“But it's licorice.” Pru sniffed again.

“Uh-uh, it's
tarragon
and it goes with the lobster. Now, taste it before it gets cold.”

Pru speared a piece of the lobster, half-afraid to put it in her mouth because she'd already decided she did not like the licoricy tarragon and couldn't say so.

“It's like sex,” Allie encouraged. “Close your eyes, and just think about what you are doing.”

Eyes closed, Pru thought. She knew instantly that the sweetness of the tiny Mediterranean lobster was different from the Maine variety she was familiar with, usually eaten smothered in drawn butter and with a bib around her neck to catch the drips.

Quite suddenly she understood. Her eyes opened. “It tastes like the Mediterranean sea,” she said, amazed she could be that specific.

Sunny grasped her hand. “Of
course
it does,” she said. “And that's what you need from it, Pru. To
really
taste. It's not about the quantity, about filling up the gas tank, it's about taking your time, savoring the pleasure the food gives you. The pleasure of the moment. That's what good food is about. It should be all
pleasure.
”

“The sauce is a very delicate Alfredo,” Allie added. She was eating the same thing. Just a hint of it, a fresh light pasta, a delicious taste of fresh-from-the-sea lobster.

“And there we are.” Sunny was beaming. “A whole new food
philosophy, Pru. You don't need quantity to feel good, and you don't need to
diet
diet. You need to eat like a Frenchwoman. And I promise, if you tell me when you're finished that you really enjoyed each mouthful, I'll order you some cheeses. Just three, I think, a sliver of each so you can tell us after which you liked best and why.”

“Is this an education?” Pru asked, a little affronted, even though she was enjoying the lobster and truth to tell, the plate was almost empty and she badly wanted more.

“Think of it as ‘the Monte Carlo makeover,' ” Allie said, and everyone, even Kitty, laughed.

“I like it,” Pru decided. “And you know what, I think those jeans will fit even better tomorrow.”

 

 

Mac sat at the Inspector's desk with the death photographs of Yvonne Elman spread out in front of him. He was no longer looking at them. He stared out of the window at the tops of the trees where the leaves rustled in the light breeze. The Inspector looked down at his hands, fingertips steepled together, as though in prayer, though in fact he was not praying. He was merely hoping.

“Terrible,” he said, breaking their silence.

“An understatement,” Mac said.

It was not easy looking at what was once the face of a young woman and that was now merely a bloody mask of scraps of flesh and shattered bone. And embedded in the remains of that face were shards of diamonds. A hundred minuscule pieces of what had once been a twenty-carat stone that, fragmented by the bullet, had imploded and caught under the camera's lights, sparkled and glittered through the pink froth of brains and blood that was all that was left of Yvonne's head. A once valuable and now worthless diamond was the price of this young woman's life.

“I figure the victim—I mean Yvonne”—Mac hated to depersonalize a dead woman into merely a corpse—“was holding up the stone for the gunman to take. Instead he shot her.”

“And hit the diamond instead.”

“As well as.”

“You mean the robber intended to ‘kill' the stone.”

“Probably just for the hell of it, show his power, show that he had more than enough and didn't need anything from her, or from society.”

“Then our robber is a sociopath.”

“Could be. A sociopath cares for no one but himself, or herself, yet he moves in society, gets through the world on a certain amount of charm and normal behavior. He has a strong desire to be accepted by that society while at the same time descending into the depths of cruelty and depravity without any feelings for others. He could easily kill and not feel a thing. You might call him a ‘murderer with charm.' Most con men are sociopaths; they become your ‘friend,' that's how they get away with it. Look at all the financial misdoings recently.

“A psychopath is similar, but more antisocial, more immediately dangerous. He's like the sociopath, though, in that the only person who counts is himself.
He
is the most important. He will have no real friends and will usually live a lonely life, half-hidden in normal society. And then he'll go out and murder, go on killing sprees, often beginning with small animals when he's still a child, feeling the thrill of power at that killing, progressing to sexual power always followed by the killing, and usually leaving his victim hideously disfigured, maimed, disemboweled, literally cut from top to toe.

“And then,” Mac continued, “we have a third type; the oddball, that combination of the two, the one with face-value charm, at ease with society, though always with a hidden past, yet still with that urge to kill.”

“And I've noticed they often kill at the time of the full moon,” the Inspector said, recalling the moon shining behind the helicopter beams and the halogens.

“Could be. The tides are in tune with the phases of the moon, why not the minds of men.”

“Are we now assuming the shooter was a man?”

Mac wasn't assuming anything. He said, “This type of needless killing was very male, but from the descriptions of the robbers, their approximate height, weight, clothing, we must still assume they were women.”

“They carried very small semiautomatics, the kind a rich female might carry for protection. Though she would need a permit of course, and a good reason.”

“Like for instance she was rich and frightened and thought somebody might try to kidnap her?”

“Perhaps.”

“If she were that rich she'd have hired a bodyguard.” Mac was remembering hiring Lev Orenstein just last year. Lev was simply the best security man. He knew the Riviera coast better than the back of his own hand. He knew every nook and cranny, every slip road and minor highway. Lev could get a woman out of trouble faster than she got into it. There was no excuse for women toting guns, in Mac's opinion. The victim had certainly not carried a weapon. But that was always the way it was; the victim lost her life then got lost in the courtroom shuffle while the killer got sympathy, blaming it on his terrible upbringing, or parental abuse, or having a crack mother and living on the street. They gave a bad name to all those kids with similar backgrounds who picked themselves up, survived, took their lives into new areas, along with their dignity and self-respect. Mac had no time for killers, whatever excuse their defense lawyers gave in court.

He took another look at Yvonne's death pictures. “I'm hoping her husband did not have to see these.”

“He identified the body by the rings she was wearing. These copies are for you,” the Inspector said, collecting them and putting them in a folder, slipping in a photo of Yvonne when she was still an attractive young married woman and not merely a faceless body. “It's against the rules, but there are no rules in matters like this. I
need your thoughts, Mac. That's all. You cannot take part in anything that might go on here, that's a police matter. But you have the ability to see the quirkiness in things, the odd, the strange, something different that might lead to the perpetrator.”

“Not always,” Mac said, recalling the times he had failed. “I'm not perfect.”

“But then, which of us is?” The Inspector was just glad that Mac was walking out of there with the folder of pictures under his arm. Mac had not turned him down this time, and perhaps, only
perhaps,
something might come of it.

 

 

Maha was wearing an exquisite sea-blue sari this evening, fashioned of the most delicate silk chiffon and clasped at the shoulder by an immense aquamarine with a mountain-glacier glimmer about it that drew the eyes of everyone in the bar. Which seemed, Maha thought, irritated by the crowd, to have become
the
fashionable meeting place since the jewel heist down the road. It was as if everyone wanted to see the scene of the murder. She shuddered delicately as she sat at her usual table and ordered her usual bottle of champagne. No caviar tonight, though. She was not in a caviar mood. Instead she ordered a plate of petit fours, the chocolate kind with cake and cream underneath and icing draped thickly over the top. Maha could not control her sweet tooth tonight.

She glanced round, thanking God the redhead was nowhere in sight. The woman disturbed her deeply. Maha understood Kitty Ratte. She knew she was corrupt and like all corrupt people was on the hunt for victims. Maha did not know what her game was, but she recognized a predator and knew instantly that this predator had Sunny in her sights. Exactly why, she wasn't sure.

Anyhow, Maha was not about to let that happen. If anyone was going to corrupt Sunny Alvarez it was herself, and in ways she was
sure were completely different from the sexual ones the redhead had in mind.

Sharon Barnes, Maha's number-one assistant, stalked into the bar, followed almost immediately by Sunny Alvarez's ex-fiancé. Maha felt suddenly chilled. She had made it her business to find out all there was to know about Mac Reilly. She knew exactly who he was, and what he did, and knew he did it well, following a gut instinct that was very much like Maha's own when it came to assessing people, knowing who they really were. Now she was nervous.

Sharon covered the ground between the entrance and the table in a few swift strides, threw her new Valentino jacket, which was almost the color of Maha's rubies, onto the chair next to her, fishing immediately in her tote for her pack of cigarettes. “Ciggies” as she liked to call them, as if the diminutive lent the cigarettes a sort of feminine charm.

“Shit.” Sharon remembered there was no smoking. She flung the pack back in disgust, signaled the bartender and ordered a double shot of Scotch on the rocks and some olives.

With her close-cropped dark hair, winged brows and wide sullen mouth Sharon looked as though she were playing a role in a French movie, and indeed she spoke French like a native from all her years of living in Europe. Prague was now the city Sharon called “home” but she had always been restless and home was wherever she chose to make it. Or at least it had been until she joined forces with Maha three years ago.

Sharon's eyes were on Mac, who was standing at the bar. She heard him order a beer, a Stella, then she saw him turn and survey the scene. For a second her eyes met his, then he glanced away.

Sharon liked the way he looked, with that nice lean body. She could not abide fat men, none of those “love handles” for her, she wanted to count every rib, thank you very much, and she'd bet this guy was good in the ribs department.

“Know who that is?” Maha asked.

Sharon turned to look at her.

“Sunny Alvarez's ex. One of the foremost American detectives, with his own successful TV show. Mac Reilly succeeds in solving crimes when others, including the police, have failed.”

Sharon's brows rose in shock. Maha thought she really was attractive when that hard-boiled shell dropped away. Maha knew all about that hard-boiled part of Sharon. It was why she employed her.

“Ex? What?” Sharon asked, taking a gulp of Scotch and pulling a face. The spirit always caught the back of her throat at first taste and she often wondered why she drank it. Except after the second she knew why. It made her feel good. Like the fuckin' cigarettes. Hey, she was an addict. So what?

“I believe he is her ex-fiancé, and the reason Sunny is here is because she ran away from him.”

“How do you know that?” Sharon bit into an olive. The juice squirted onto her new Valentino blouse. “Shit,” she said again, on the verge of losing her temper.