The Hotel Riviera(34)

I glanced at Jack out of the corner of my eye. His arms were folded across his chest, his face impassive. Only I seemed affected by Solis’s personal charm, and his sad story.

But I was wrong, there was one other. Evgenia unraveled her long legs and came to stand behind her husband. She draped her arms around his neck. “Poor darling,” she said, in a heavy Russian accent. She dropped a kiss on his silver hair and Solis took her hand and pressed it tenderly to his cheek.

“Evgenia has heard this before,” he said.

“But it never fails to hurt me,” she murmured, retreating to her chair again.

“Soon after we arrived in Athens, my father abandoned me,” he said. “Or perhaps he just died. I never knew for I never saw him again. I was living on the streets of Piraeus, the port city southwest of Athens, finding whatever odd jobs I could, running errands, fetching, carrying. I was a little workhorse, but I was also a fast learner, and I knew there was something better than this in my destiny. And that destiny was in my own two work-scarred young hands.”

He extended those hands as if for us to see—smooth, well-manicured, the hands of a rich man, if not a gentleman.

“I had no family, nothing to keep me in Greece, so I lied about my age and signed on as a cabin boy—a kind of slave you might call it—on a tanker. They were much smaller in those days.” He paused for a moment, as though remembering, then, “Bound for Marseilles,” he added.

“Marseilles?” I heard myself echo his words and he took off his dark glasses and for the first time I looked into his eyes. Dark eyes, gentle eyes. The windows to his soul. I felt myself sinking into them.

“I can see you are ahead of me, Madame Laforêt,” he said. “And yes, Marseilles is the connection. I was a boy with nothing in the world and in Marseilles a woman I had robbed because I had no other option helped me. Her name was Nilda Laforêt and I have never forgotten her act of kindness. She refused to hand me over to the gendarmes. She gave me food, talked to me the way no one had ever talked to me in my short life. She treated me like a human being and I never forgot her.

“Many years later, I was able to repay that kindness—ah, it was more than mere kindness or even charity, it was an act of pure love on Nilda Laforêt’s part.

“I revered this woman,” he said, still holding my eyes with his. “Though I had no contact with her after that initial year when she helped me. But when I heard she had died, I commissioned marble angels for her grave.” He paused, then added, “And of course Patrick Laforêt was her grandson.”

Evgenia slithered to her feet. She stood looking down at me. She was beautiful, a natural beauty, from the blond hair to the pert breasts and the flawless golden skin. Solis glanced at her over his shoulder and again she wrapped her arms around him.

“You are such a good man, my darling,” she whispered, loud enough for us to hear, then she walked to the window and turned her back, staring out at the dazzling C?te d’Azur.

“Patrick Laforêt was a notorious gambler,” Solis went on. “When you met him in Las Vegas he was already drastically in debt. The casinos had allowed him a big line of credit and for a while everything was good. But gambling is like love, you win some, you lose some. Patrick had nothing left by the time he came to me, begging for a loan to stall those creditors.”

Solis took time out to smile at me. “But creditors are cold-hearted people and business is business. Patrick was in an all-or-nothing situation. And all he had left to pledge against this loan was the Hotel Riviera. So I gave Patrick his money, I assumed he paid off his creditors, then he defaulted on my loan.

“And so you see, Madame Laforêt, I am now the sole and legitimate owner of the Hotel Riviera.”

“But that can’t be,” Jack said. “As Patrick’s wife, Madame Laforêt is co-owner of the hotel.”

Solis shook his head slowly; his smile had suddenly lost its charm. “Patrick signed the loan document before the marriage.”

Shocked, I snapped out from under his spell. Solis had spun me the story of his rise above poverty, about what a compassionate man he was, only to thrust the knife in at the end.

“Monsieur Solis, tell me exactly why you want the Hotel Riviera?” Miss Nightingale said.

“There’s an obvious answer, Miss Nightingale, and it’s the only reason Patrick was able to borrow against the property. It’s rare to find undeveloped land directly on the sea, hereon the C?te d’Azur. I am certain that Madame Laforêt is unaware that the land on either side of the hotel’s peninsula is included in the property. Patrick was sitting on quite a little nest egg. Pity he gambled it away, but then”—Solis spread his hands again, giving us that smile—“a gambler never learns. And what’s more, a gambler never cares. You see, gambling is all that matters.”

Like magic, Ma?tre Dumas had appeared at Solis’s side. I had no idea he was even in the room. Evgenia was still looking out the window, still smoking, nervously tapping ash into a crystal ashtray clutched in her other hand.

“Evgenia, must you smoke in here?” Solis said coldly. ‘It’s not good for the art.”

Evgenia stubbed out the cigarette. Ma?tre Dumas stood by Solis’s chair, awaiting instructions.

“Sir?” he said.

“Show these people the documents, Dumas.”