The Charmers: A Novel(14)
Agnes, her name was, but the Colonel always only called her mon amour, and she called him mon choux, though never in public, of course. Theirs was a passionate relationship, nurtured over the years, and he was bereft without her. Time, as it usually does, eventually papered over the cracks of despair until it resembled some form of acceptance, though never forgotten.
Their children, the twin girls named Marie-Laure and Marie-Helene for their grandmothers, were now six years old, Laure with long pigtails, blond like her mother, Helene exactly like her father with his thick dark hair that sprouted every which way, falling into her eyes mostly so she seemed to peer at you shyly, which in fact she was not at all.
Laure was the shy one, usually walking behind her sister, head down, clutching her bookbag over one shoulder, small gold-rimmed glasses half hiding her blue eyes. Helene always looked out for her sister though.
The Colonel was to pick them up from school and because of the interviews with the Matthews woman he was late. He spotted them sitting on a low wall outside the schoolhouse, each with an elbow on her knee, chin clasped in hand, eyes blank with the lethargy of the long wait.
He pulled up next to them, apologizing, got out, opened the door, and watched while they climbed in. He fastened their seat belts, double-checked everything, and said, “Okay, girls, we’re off to get ice cream.”
The Colonel drove off with them chattering away about the school day. He was a family man at heart despite his formal demeanor, his position, his uniform, and his reputation for toughness, which came from a hatred of criminals and anyone against the law. He was a “true” man, in his heart.
He was not happy with the supposed “accident” in the canyon. The body of the man driving the green car had been identified as that of Josephus Raus, a Russian, in the country without a visa, yet who purportedly worked for a well-known property developer by the name of Bruce Bergen—whose passport was Italian but whose birthplace was Belarus, and who was commonly known as “the Boss.”
All in all, it looked messy to the Colonel, and now those two women had almost lost their lives. It puzzled him as to why they should be so targeted. What could they have done to inspire such revenge? If in fact it was revenge. It might be unrequited love—after all, they were two fine-looking women. Or some other reason he had yet to find out. It looked like a big job to him. Less time with his girls, and more time finding out what the two women were up to at the Villa Romantica. You never knew.
10
Mirabella
My new home lies on the narrow coastal strip near Antibes, a town with two personalities, the old and the new.
New Antibes has a smart seafront promenade where artists sit in front of easels painting portraits of tourists and local landscapes, or rather, “waterscapes,” since the Mediterranean is ever-present. Bars and cafés compete for those same tourists’ attention, their terraces shaded from the sun by colorful awnings and where lounging around is the order of the day.
The cafés and bars are always crowded of an evening, when a cool glass of wine or a chilled beer is necessary while watching the passing parade of suntanned beauties in short dresses. Not to mention the rich and sometimes good-looking owners of the grand boats moored in the harbor, boats that cost a fortune and that can also be rented for a small fortune. Tanned, shirtless young men work constantly keeping those boats immaculate, swabbing decks, shining teak, and polishing brass. Chefs from the boats browse the local market in the early morning, seeking out the freshest goods: mushrooms picked at dawn in a field inland; melons grown near Aix-en-Provence; the tiniest and sweetest wild strawberries, the fraises des bois of the region. And of course, the sea bass and grouper and red mullet fished before daylight to be grilled to perfection and scattered with herbs and a little garlic and the good olive oil.
Farther out to sea is a specially constructed jetty, where giant white cruise liners moor, being too large for the harbor itself. And in back of the port, narrow cobbled streets are strung with washing from tall house to tall house and tiny shop fronts display minuscule bikinis and T-shirts with the town’s name, so when you return home you’ll remember you were there, and perhaps remember how it felt, and how it smelled. You’ll remember the fruits too, displayed in wooden crates outside those small stores, and the lavender sold in tight bunches, picked from the lower reaches of the Alpes-Maritimes, on the peaks of which, sometimes even in summer, a snowcap might be glimpsed.
Hot new boutiques with good prices are next to jewelry stores, the cheaper ones with local handmade earrings and bracelets, the expensive ones offering diamond necklaces. The ice cream shop with popular pale-green pistachio is next to the upmarket shoe store whose custom-made flat sandals everyone seems to wear to traverse the bumpy cobblestones, while expensive chiffon evening gowns compete for attention with the skimpy white shorts and South of France T-shirts.
Flowers are everywhere, bunches of jasmine and red roses tied with ribbons. Hair bands and bathing suits hang on hooks on the sidewalks outside the shops. There are straw hats on shelves with a little mirror to check out your look and sexy lingerie shops with lacy thongs and demi-bras guaranteed to lift and shape and look adorable in every color from red to black, lavender and coral and rosy pink.
And then there’s the Grimaldi Palace where Monaco’s royalty still live, and the Old Town, the place the “real” people live, and where they shop at the small grocery stores with salamis hanging overhead and tall glass jars of fresh made-that-morning pasta standing by the door. You can also buy the homemade sauce for that pasta, and fresh garlic to add flavor, and the juicy tomatoes to serve with cheeses made with milk from local goats that eat only grass. You can buy chickens from the outdoor grill where they rotate until crisp and golden and whose smell makes the mouth water, and whose fat and juices cook the small potatoes underneath. There are field-fresh lettuces, green and pink and red-edged, to be served crisp and cold with a vinaigrette made from local oil and vinegar the farmer’s wife has been selling at the market for years.