The Charmers: A Novel(22)

The whine of sirens could be heard rapidly approaching. In seconds blue lights were flashing outside the window.

The three cops didn’t knock, they just strode in. One grabbed Chad by his collar, pinning him against the wall. A second went and stood in front of him, gun in hand. It was like a scene in news broadcasts I’d seen on TV. The gun was a Glock. I’d heard the name, and once you’ve seen one, it’s easy to recognize. Whatever, it was lethal looking and I had no doubt it was loaded.

I asked myself how this could have happened. My peaceful villa, Jerusha’s home, Aunt Jolly’s legacy, the Siamese cat—still on the bed along with the sausage mutt with the soulful eyes, while the damned canary that, despite being covered for the night, now would not shut up. And Verity, whose screams still rattled in my head, and the next-door neighbor who’d obviously bitten off more than he could chew merely by coming to our aid. Even if he did behave like a shit once he got here.

“Leave him alone,” I said to the cop who was holding Chad Prescott, speaking my just-sufficiently-decent French so I thought he might get my message. He ignored me. Perhaps I hadn’t said it right. I tried again in English.

“Leave him,” a male voice said in French from behind me.

At least they understood him.

“Bon soir,” I said to the newcomer, trying a smile. He ignored me and stepped up to Chad, standing so close in front of him they must have breathed the same tiny bit of air. He thrust his face even closer.

“What are you doing here?” he barked at Chad.

It was a true bark, a fast, authoritative, questioning tone that let you know he meant business. Chad threw back his head, out of breath’s way I guessed, and said nothing. The look of contempt on his face struggled with anger.

“No, no, it’s alright, he’s not the intruder,” I told the cop quickly. “He only came to help us.”

I grabbed Verity by her cold hand and dragged her forward so they could see who we were, understand what two lone women had just gone through: a masked man in their house in the middle of the night, with a gun.

I spilled out the story in English. The cops stared at me like I was a crazy woman.

“Perhaps it would be better if we started at the beginning,” the officer in charge said, also in English.

I knew that voice; I knew that man. He was the Colonel. The stocky, bearded, uniformed gendarme with the piercing eyes that I’d met after the accident. He was the one who had questioned me, made notes about the small green car, the anonymous Ducati. The cop who, as far as I knew, had not yet come up with any answers. I heard him sigh.

“It’s you again,” he said in a resigned I-might-have-known-it voice.

I remembered we had not gotten along; after all I had just been in a terrible accident, been helicoptered out of the canyon, lost my beautiful blue Maserati, almost lost my life. And Verity’s. Somebody had tried to kill me then, and this … this Colonel … had acted like it was my fault. So now I did it again. I burst into tears. Me, who never cries, never, ever, at least only at weddings, and that’s probably because they are not my own.

I heard Verity telling him there had been a man in my room, that she had heard me scream, and that he’d escaped through the french doors.

“We have him,” the Colonel said, indicating the now-handcuffed Chad Prescott, who we could see outside on the steps, about to be bundled into the cop car, blue lights blazing like in a true crime scene. I almost smiled through my tears; I thought that would show the bastard who’d claimed he owned this villa. Let him try to take it away from me now, when he was inside a jail cell. Then I remembered, he had come to my aid.

“He’s my neighbor,” I called loudly so the officers outside would hear. “He came to help me. He is not the intruder, that man had a gun, he was wearing black, he got away through the doors.…”

“No one was seen outside, Madame…?” The Colonel gave me a questioning glance.

I could tell that, like I had done with Chad Prescott, he was pretending he could not remember my name. Maybe it was true and he couldn’t. After all, I was not that memorable, except for my red hair.

“It’s Mirabella Matthews,” I said and gave him a sharp look that let him know I knew he knew. He gave me what I assumed was a smile back, a mere lifting of the lips. I took another deeper look at him. Medium height, stocky, rumpled dark hair, an impression of strength, maybe a little dangerous. Of course that could be because of the stubble; a whiskery chin always lends itself to a look of masculinity, a not-quite-had-time-to-shower-and-shave, just-left-my-bed look. I quite liked it, actually. My imagination could take off on a look like that.

“Madame Matthews.” He was not in a joking, lighthearted, flirty mood. He was deadly serious, and with reason. “This is the second time you have been in mortal danger.” He gave me another long look from his flinty, dark eyes—gray, I think, unusual anyway. “You seem to attract trouble.”

He was being mean and I knew it; still he was attractive in an offbeat way. Another of the “bad boys” was how Verity would have described him. You just knew he would be trouble. And right now he intended to give me that trouble, though I had done nothing wrong, only summoned his professional aid.

“I can’t help it if someone pushed me off the road and someone else came into my room with a gun,” I managed to say, albeit tearfully.