The Butler(69)

“Things have been crazy here too. It turns out that my delightful employer owes over a million pounds in back taxes. He’s a heavy gambler. He tried to burn the barn down last night, for the insurance money. They’ve arrested him for it. The house is mortgaged to the hilt, so he tried to set fire to the barn. He had just taken out a huge insurance policy. All the horses are safe, but they arrested him for tax evasion, insurance fraud, and animal cruelty. He saw to it that we got the horses out quickly, into trailers and off the property. It was all very obvious. It was a scheme of massive proportions. He was desperate to do something that brazen. I’m afraid it’s going to go badly for him. His girlfriend reported him. He told her he was going to do it, and he’s been cheating on her, so she called the police. The firefighters were here all night, the animal protection people came for the horses. And the police took him away about an hour ago. Things are a little busy right now. I’m not staying obviously. But I want to stick around till somebody takes charge here. His sister and her husband are coming from Italy. I swear, the world is full of criminals. Being a butler isn’t what it used to be.” He sounded shocked himself. “I’m sorry about the chateau. Did he stiff you for what he owed you?” It seemed inevitable and he was sorry for her. He wasn’t going to be paid by Mount-Williams, but he was relieved that no one had gotten hurt.

    “No, he paid me in full three weeks ago, right before he got convicted. And I just got another job from Audrey Wellington. A Texan who bought a small chateau near Provence. I’m meeting with him this week.” Joachim was happy that things were turning out well for her. She deserved it. She worked so hard.

“I’m glad for you. I’ll send you a text and let you know where I am. I’m going to turn the whole mess over to Mount-Williams’s sister when she arrives. He did some serious damage to the barn, but we got all the horses out, with no casualties. The world is a crazy place.”



* * *



—

She didn’t hear from him again after that. Her meeting with Guy Fellowes went well. He was as handsome and charming as Audrey had said. He hired her to do the chateau after their meeting at the Ritz, and he took her to dinner at Le Voltaire to celebrate. She sent flowers to Audrey to thank her. Olivia was sitting at her desk a week later when she got a call from the Treasury, wanting the keys and anything else she had relating to the chateau. Two men came by shortly after to collect what she had. She had all the keys carefully marked in a lockbox and some papers in a manila envelope. She had all the paperwork related to the renovation for whoever would eventually buy it at auction. The man who picked it all up was very formal, and he brought a huissier with him, a legal witness to testify in court that they had collected the keys and whatever documents she had. It was a strange end to the story after eight months of hard work on her first big decorating project.

    Joachim called her the next day and sounded upset. She hadn’t heard from him since his employer got arrested almost two weeks before.

“Where are you?” she asked him. “Are you still in Sussex, or back in London?” He was unemployed again, and would have to start the job search all over.

“I’m in Paris,” he said quietly, and she suddenly got a bad feeling about it. There was something in his voice.

“Is everything all right?” There was a long silence at the other end.

“It’s my mother. I talked to her last night.” He sounded dazed. “She was so happy. She turned the Monet over to the family yesterday. She’s been working on it for over a year. She finally found a distant cousin, and they needed the money desperately. They have a special needs child. She was fine when I talked to her. But she didn’t answer her phone this morning. I called the police, and the guardian let them in. She had died peacefully in her sleep. I think she must have sensed something. I just got here. The apartment is perfectly neat, and it usually wasn’t. Everything is in order, her papers, her clothes, her desk. She looked so peaceful, and so happy. She just went, quietly.” Tears slid down Olivia’s cheeks as she listened to him. “I’m glad you met her.” His voice broke as he said it.

    “So am I,” Olivia said, crying openly. They both were.

“She loved you. She thought you were terrific,” he said.

“What can I do to help?” she offered. She didn’t want to cross any lines. She knew how private he was, but he sounded lost, which wasn’t like him. And he needed a friend now, not an employer.

“I’ll take care of it. I need to get everything organized. She’s at the funeral home now,” he said, pulling himself together.

“Can I do any of it for you?” she offered again.

“No. I’ll let you know what I’m doing. Maybe we can have lunch afterward.”

“If there’s a service, I’d like to go.” She could hear that he was crying when he answered her.

“I’m not sure. She had kind of her own arrangement with God. I don’t want to do anything she wouldn’t have wanted. I suppose I’ll bury her next to Javier. She’d like that. Francois was buried with his own family in Brittany, so I can’t put her with him. I still can’t believe she’s gone.” Neither could Olivia. She had seemed so vital and alive only weeks before.

“Maybe she felt she had done everything she was here to do,” Olivia said gently. But Joachim still needed her. They loved each other.