He believed her.
Chapter Six
Nora kept a mental list of men who somehow managed to get even more handsome after turning fifty than they were before. George Clooney was on that list. Christopher Plummer, of course, her personal favorite. Two of the men on her list she’d had the pleasure of sleeping with. Alas, Captain von Trapp wasn’t one of the two.
Standing in the doorway of Céleste’s pretty pink ballet-themed bedroom, Nora watched as one of those men on her list read a bedtime story to his three-year-old daughter. A scene from a fairy tale: the handsome papa with the rakish dark hair only beginning to show the gray, and the little girl enraptured with the story or, far more likely, with her father and his tender voice.
The girl was small, and so was her room. But it was a work of art in miniature—pink-and-white striped wallpaper, white wainscoting, white princess bed, a barre and mirror on one wall because Papa could not tell his baby ballerina “no.” On the nightstand, a milk glass lamp with a lace lampshade was on, bathing the room in the softest gentlest light, and next to it sat a framed photograph of famed ballerina Misty Copland leaping like a gazelle in a white tutu, grace and power incarnate. Céleste’s idol right after her Papa.
“Maître Corbeau, sur un arbre perché, Tenait en son bec un fromage…” Kingsley read aloud.
The Fox and The Crow. An ancient story warning of the dangers of believing your own reviews. The consequences could be dire. One might lose one’s cheese, and Nora had enough German ancestry in her to consider this not a fable, but a horror story.
Anything but the cheese.
It would have been sublime—the handsome papa, the adoring little girl, the picture-perfect bedroom—except for one thing. Nora was in trouble. Again.
Papa closed his storybook. Nora went into the room and stood at his side over his shoulder.
“King?” she said softly.
“Céleste,” Kingsley said, “would you tell your Tata Elle I’m not speaking to her?”
“Papa’s not speaking to you, Tata Elle.”
Nora grimaced but tried to make it look like a grin. “Yes, I’ve noticed, baby. Can you tell your Papa he’s being childish?”
“Papa, really. You kind of are.” Céleste, almost four, had already mastered the art of the French shrug, the ever more French eyes-to-heaven look.
“I know,” he said, grinning. “I’m enjoying it.”
“Céleste,” Nora said. “You know I love your Papa, right?”
“I know.”
“You know I’d never really hurt him, right?” Nora asked.
“Right.”
“Good. Now kiss him goodnight before I drag him out of your room by his hair.”
Céleste rolled up, grabbed her Papa Kingsley by the face and kissed him on both cheeks, twice.
“Goodnight, Papa. I love you.”
“I love you too, my angel princess darling cabbagehead.”
“Very sweet. Now excuse us, Céleste. Goodnight.”
Nora grabbed Kingsley by the back of his hair and yanked him out of his little chair.
“Ow,” he said.
“Come on, Big Papa. We need to talk.”
“Help me, petite,” he said to Céleste who only shook her head.
“You’re on your own, Papa,” she said, before dramatically throwing the covers over her head.
“On my own? You’ve been spending too much time with your auntie,” Kingsley said to her as Nora dragged him into the hallway.
“There is no such thing as ‘too much time’ with me.” Nora released his hair once they were outside Céleste’s room.
“I beg to differ.”
“You’ll beg to breathe if you don’t behave. Come with me.” She slapped her thigh the way she did when signaling Gmork to follow her. Luckily this maneuver also worked on Frenchmen.
She went into the guest room she usually commandeered when she spent the night at the house—a red and gilt room that looked like the sort of place where French Bourbon kings sodomized their courtesans. This was Kingsley’s typical aesthetic.
“Sit,” she said, pointing at a Rococo chair with gilt scrollwork arms. “Speak.”
Out in the hallway, Gmork barked.
“Not you, Gmork.”
“That is the stupidest name I’ve ever heard for a dog,” Kingsley said, disgusted.
“It’s from The Neverending Story, which is a classic of German children’s literature. Show some respect.”
“Le bête noire,” he muttered. The black beast, a fancy French way of saying Gmork was the bane of Kingsley’s existence.
“My dog is not a bête noire.”
He pointed a finger at her. “I meant you.”
“What did I do this time?” she demanded.
He sat back in the chair, stretched out his legs and crossed his feet at the ankles. She straddled his calves and stood arms akimbo. If he tried to escape, he’d have to go through her first.
“Did you or did you not let a strange man into this house today?” he asked, dark eyes narrowed.
“He wasn’t all that strange. Certainly less strange than the man who lives in the house.”
“Juliette is thirty-five weeks pregnant. We don’t let strange men near her. I’d ban strange women as well, but we need you to babysit.”
“Juliette told me I should invite him in.”
“You shouldn’t have listened to her.”
“Is this the key to happiness in your relationship? She says something calm and rational and not paranoid and you ignore it?” Nora asked.
“So far so good,” he said.
“I swear to God I would slap you if I didn’t know for a fact you’d like it.”
“You could have called me. I would have come right home.”
“Cyrus Tremont is a P.I. who helps women catch cheating husbands and parents find missing kids. And he has very good Yelp reviews. He’s not a serial killer. I Googled him.”
“We do not vet visitors to this house with Google.”
“I do.”
“And we do not help P.I.s destroy the lives of our clients.”
“They’re my clients now, not yours,” she reminded him. “I don’t work for you anymore. And he wasn’t even asking me about a client.”
“Then why the hell was he here?”
“Because some priest killed himself last night.”
Kingsley’s head snapped up and he started to stand. Nora put her hand out, pressing him back down into the chair.
“Not him,” Nora said, rolling her eyes. As if she’d still be vertical and breathing if anything happened to him. “A priest named Isaac Murran. Apparently he tried to call my old number a few minutes before he shot himself. My business card was in his pocket. Tremont wanted to know why. The end.”
“What did you tell him?”
“The truth—that I have no idea who Isaac Murran is, that we’ve never met, that he’s certainly not a client of mine.”
“Did you tell him—”
“I know what I’m doing, King. And you can’t guard Juliette all the time. She’s a grown woman.”