The Hotel Riviera(21)
“So it was the detective. And the Frenchman. The husband you might—or might not—have killed. You’ll notice I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt here.”
“Thanks a lot.” She threw him another glare, then took a sip. “Jack,” she added, giving his name a sarcastic emphasis.
Jack piled sugar into his espresso, then drank it down in one long sweet gulp. “So now we’re friends, Lola, why don’t you tell me the whole story.”
“Why? So you can have a little spicy gossip to share with your girlfriend over dinner tonight? Well, let me tell you—Jack—I did not kill my husband. Patrick just disappeared…like smoke.”
She picked up the croissant and took a bite. God, she was famished!
“Okay, so tell me what happened,” Jack said.
She took another bite of the croissant as though wondering why she should be telling a stranger her story. Then she told him the whole truth and nothing but the truth. At least that’s what she said.
“I went crazy trying to find Patrick,” she finished. “I tried everything, I hounded the local police, I even hired a private investigator but all he did was spend his time and my money hanging out in bars in Marseilles.”
She had already finished the first croissant and now she took a big bite out of the second; nothing like food in a crisis, he supposed.
“Of course, I questioned Patrick’s friends,” she went on, “and his girlfriends, and the local bartenders. Nothing. It seems when a person wants to disappear, he just can.”
“Or else something happened to him.”
“But what? And why? Patrick wasn’t a bad man. He was just a bad husband. Of course, I knew about the other women,” she said. “I confronted Patrick about his…philandering. He told me it wasn’t his fault. He said they were just girls looking for a good time, they almost fell at his feet.
“Let me tell you something else, Jack Farrar,” she said, looking him in the eye. “If I were going to kill Patrick, it would have been there and then. But I didn’t. And before you ask, yes, I wanted to leave him, but I couldn’t leave the hotel. It’s my home, my own little oasis, a safe, beautiful place in this big, wide, difficult world.”
“The police seem to think you might. What are you going to do about that?”
She heaved a sigh, dredged up all the way from her beribboned espadrilles. “It’s simple, really,” she said. “All I have to do is find Patrick, then they’ll know I’m innocent.” She thought for a minute then added, “There’s another reason I need to find him, though. I want to ask him, face to face, what the hell he thought he was doing just going off like that, leaving me with all the worry, the problems, the suspicions.”
“So if you find Patrick, do you want him back?”
She shook her head. “No. I don’t. And you know why? First, he’s too handsome; second, he’s too sexy; and third, he’s too French.” She laughed. “Sounds like every girl’s blueprint for the perfect man, right? Only trouble is, he shared those qualities around quite amiably with all and sundry. Hey”—she lifted a shoulder in a shrug—“let’s face it, it was all displayed for him to choose from, right here on the beaches in the south of France. As tempting and available as ice cream on a hot summer day.”
“And it probably meant as little to him.”
“Well, isn’t that the old alpha-male myth.” She snorted again. “Tell that to today’s woman-scorned, Mr. Farrar, and you’ll find yourself in double-standard trouble.”
“And what if you find him, only to bury him?” Jack Farrar said. She stared, horrified, at him, unable to answer. “I guess you must have really loved him,” he added gently.
“Oh, I loved Patrick all right,” she said. “In the beginning, I loved him. I believed everything about him, everything he told me. But you know what? Even now, six years later, I still don’t know who Patrick really is. I guess I never really knew him.”
Chapter 20
Lola
Mollie Nightingale headed purposefully toward us, straw hat slammed over her eyes, handbag clutched close to her chest in case of muggers.
She checked my bewildered face and threw Jack a stern glare. “This young woman has enough troubles without you adding to them,” she said.
“Ma’am, you’ve got it all wrong. I’m the rescuer.”
“It was the police that upset me,” I said quickly, letting him off the hook. “I was shopping, I dropped my stuff and Bad Dog ate my cheese, then Jack heard Detective Mercier say I’d better not leave town, so I told Jack the detective thinks I’ve killed Patrick, and he bought me coffee and brandy, and now I’ve eaten all the croissants and I’ve told him all about Patrick’s disappearance or at least everything I know about it and…and well, now I don’t know what to do. Except I have to find Patrick so they won’t think I killed him.” It all came out in one long breath.
Miss N turned to the waiter. “Three espressos and make them strong,” she ordered. Then she said to us, “Of course, had we been in England I would have ordered a nice pot of tea. There’s nothing like it for helping solve a problem.”
Jack looked bemused, but he offered her his hand. “My name is Jack Farrar,” he said.