The Paris Mysteries (Confessions #3)(32)

Suddenly, he veered onto the verge of a country road and stopped the car outside an isolated hobbit house made of brick and wood, with a roof that sagged in the middle. In front of the house was a crazy-wild garden that hadn’t been tended in years.

The whole place looked like a girl who had crashed after a wicked party and woken up with smeared makeup and her hair sticking out every which way.

Who lived in this tumbledown house? And why had we come here? I asked the boss, putting a little anger into it.

“Be patient, Tandy. You’ll know shortly. But I’ll tell you this right now. I used up a lot of personal favors to find these people. It’s taken me years.”

What people? Why had he looked for them?

I got out of the car and followed Jacob’s regimental walk up a dirt path through tall weeds to a bare wooden front door.

He knocked. He knocked again, and then the door creaked open on rusted hinges. I held my breath, wondering if the person who opened it would be an enemy. Had I been led into a trap?

Two old people stood in the doorway.

The gentleman’s face was heavily lined. He had a wide nose, cracked hands, a thatch of gray hair, and a bent back. His clothes were simple denim work clothes and looked like they’d been laundered a thousand times.

Standing right in front of him was a small woman about the same age, same general work-worn appearance. She wore a man’s long-sleeved work shirt over baggy gray pants. Her gray hair was short and roughly cut, and her eyes were gray, too, and unflinching.

The elderly man said, “Bonjour, Jacob.” Then he dropped his gaze to look at me.

The woman, who I assumed was his wife, fixed her gaze on me and said, “Vous êtes la soeur de Katherine, n’est-ce pas?”





When the old woman asked me if I was Katherine’s sister, it was as if a whirling, sucking vortex had opened on the doorstep. There was no escape. I plunged down into this well of nauseating fear I couldn’t name.

I steadied myself against the door frame and managed to say weakly, “Oui, Katherine was my sister.”

Jacob introduced me to étienne and Emmanuelle Cordeaux, and I kept flashing on what he’d said to me at the stoplight: You want answers, Tandy? You’re going to get answers. The kind you like. Complicated.

The sickening feeling of dread was tied to that. Like I was about to learn what had happened to Katherine, or maybe the truth about my whole family—and I wasn’t going to like it.

The old couple showed us into a teeny sitting room with a low-beamed ceiling, a couple of ancient chairs, and a sofa covered with a horse blanket. A big old shaggy dog slept in front of the wood-burning fireplace.

While Madame Cordeaux fixed tea, about a hundred questions lit up in my mind.

The top three: How did these people know Katherine? Why had Jacob taken years and used favors to get to the Cordeaux? And third, how was I going to sit through small talk without jumping out of my seat and demanding explanations—right now?

As I looked around the room, a tableau on the mantel reached out and grabbed my attention. There were three gilt-framed pictures of a boy about ten, long-limbed, smiling mischievously. A kid with joie de vivre and a sense of humor.

In the first photo, he romped with a shaggy, long-legged puppy. In another, he was laughing as his father carried him on his back. In the third picture, he was wearing a stiff little suit, standing on a stage, shaking the hand of an older man, who was giving him a trophy.

“Our sons,” étienne Cordeaux said in French. “Christian, Laurence, Charles. They would be twenty-four years old now.”

Did he say sons, plural? Was this boy in fact three boys? And they were all dead?

Madame Cordeaux returned from the kitchen with a tray, and as she poured tea, she said, “Yes, triplets. My three beautiful, identical sons. They were good children. We thought they would work in the vineyard, have families one day…”

Monsieur Cordeaux said, “But then we were discovered, or perhaps you know this, Mademoiselle Tandoori.”

“No. I don’t. This is all news to me.”

Jacob said, “It’s okay to tell her, étienne. She wants to know it all.”





The old gentleman paused as he organized how and what he was going to tell me. I could almost see him thinking and see what he was feeling, too. His features crumpled.

At last he said, “When Emmanuelle and I were young, we worked in the lavender fields for a lady in Paris. Madame Hilda Angel. Very kind. Ten years ago, a man from Angel Pharmaceuticals came here. He brought Katherine with him. She was a striking girl in every way.”

Madame Cordeaux said, “Pardonnez-moi. Come, Bernard.” The dog got to its feet and followed her into the front garden.

Monsieur Cordeaux said, “Emmanuelle… cannot bear to talk about the boys.”

When the door had closed, I used the interruption to ask, “Who was the man with Katherine?”

I was scared to hear the answer. Had it been my father? Or Jacob? Was that how he knew the way to this house by heart?

“He was Madame Hilda’s son Peter Angel,” said Monsieur Cordeaux. “I didn’t like him very much, but I was instantly drawn to Katherine, who was about the same age as our sons.

“But Katherine was very different from my boys or any child I had ever met. She spoke several languages. She picked up the front end of my truck. She explained the genetic makeup of a virus affecting our grapes. She sang—now, there was an angel’s voice. And then she went off with the boys to play.