The Book of Lost Fragrances: A Novel of Suspense Read online

  “See that indentation?” He pointed.

  Two feet down was a depression.

  She shook her head. “What is it?”

  “Steps, Jac.”

  He leaned down a little bit farther. “See. There’s another one. They’re carved into the stone. And probably descend all the way to the bottom.”

  “We have to go down there. Look for him.”

  “I know, but not yet.”

  “Why not?”

  “We’re not prepped.” He pointed to her shoes, her clothes. “We need sneakers, helmets with lights. We need rope and a first aid kit in case Robbie is hurt.”

  She tried to argue, but his experience trumped her impatience.

  “Not till we’re outfitted. If we get hurt, we won’t be able to help Robbie.”

  “Even if I knew where to go to get that kind of equipment, there’s not going to be anything open tonight.”

  “I’m sorry, but we’ll have to wait till tomorrow. We have no way to see where we’re going. No way of tracking our path. We don’t know where that goes. We could get lost.”

  Sweat was dripping down Jac’s back despite the cool air. She was frightened, but that didn’t matter. Robbie had left a message for her. He was all that she had. She’d fought worse demons than this. Visions and nightmares had once threatened her sanity. They’d put her in the hospital. Given her electric shock. Drugged her. She could tolerate a tunnel.

  Even though she’d just agreed with Griffin that they should wait, she couldn’t do it. Getting down on her knees, she backed up toward the opening.

  His fingers wrapped around her wrists. His grip was so tight, pain shot up her arm. He pulled her away from the hole.

  “You’re hurting me,” she gasped.

  He let go. “You’re crazy, you know that?” His face was twisted in anger. “Why didn’t you listen to me?”

  Her heart was pounding, and she couldn’t catch her breath. Sitting on the damp earth, she leaned against the hedge. Her arms ached from being pulled away. She blinked back tears. The very last thing she was going to do was cry in front of Griffin.

  “If Robbie escaped and is down there—he’s as safe there as anywhere. No one could possibly know where he is. He’ll survive another night. We’ll go down tomorrow.”

  She nodded, not trusting her voice.

  “I promise,” he added.

  The combination of fear, frustration and sadness mixed in with the memory those two words elicited proved too much. The first hot tear slid down her cheek. She turned away from him. A second tear.

  She felt his hand on her shoulder.

  “Let me help you. I pulled you pretty hard. I was worried you might fall.”

  Ignoring his hand, she stood up, wiped her hands off on the back of her jeans, and started for the house.

  Thirty-three

  9:15 P.M.

  Whenever he came to Paris, Malachai stayed in the same suite at L’Hotel. He felt at home in the ornate apartment. The gold-and-red brocade curtains that matched the bedspread harkened back to the era of kings and queens. The crystal chandelier always sparkled. The fine French linens were always ironed.

  He opened the window and looked out over the rooftops and the bell tower of the church of Saint-Germain. The view hadn’t changed in hundreds of years. The tower was one of the oldest in the city and dated back to the tenth century. Malachai checked his watch. Fifteen minutes after nine. Then he popped the cork on the bottle of Krug that was on ice and waiting for him—a welcome-back note from the hotel propped up against the silver bucket—and poured himself a glass. Champagne in hand, he opened the doors to the small balcony and walked outside just as the church bells began to peal. Leaning on the balustrade, he soaked in the music, the same ethereal chimes that parishioners had been hearing since the Middle Ages and throughout the revolution. Malachai sipped the creamy sparkling wine, shut his eyes and tried to imagine he’d stepped back in time. His imagination wasn’t up to the task. Oh, how envious he was of the children he worked with, who were able to travel back and forth through the ages. He, too, wanted to truly see and taste and hear the past. Be in the past. Walk the streets and interact with the people. Discover the secrets that were otherwise so elusive.

  The bells’ reverberation disappeared. Street noises wafted up. A pigeon cooed. Malachai sat on an iron chair and pulled out one of his two cell phones—one to make calls, one to receive them. It was safer that way. Harder to trace.

  As lovely as the room was, the balcony was his primary reason for renting the extravagant suite. He could talk freely here and not concern himself about bugs. And that enabled him to travel under his own name, which he preferred. While an alias ensured anonymity, it didn’t engender the attention and service he received when he checked into hotels as himself.

  He punched in Winston’s cell.

  “I’ve arrived,” he told the ex-agent.

  “Good. How was the trip?”

  “Uneventful. So tell me, is everything okay at the office?”

  “Yes. Everything is status quo.”

  Before Malachai had left America, Winston had reported there was no new information in the case. The pottery shards that had disappeared with Robbie L’Etoile were of little importance, historically or monetarily. Their estimated value was $5,000 or less. The French police had listed them with Interpol. But since they didn’t know they might be memory tools, they hadn’t logged them as such. No one had waved the flags that would have placed Malachai under surveillance. Every time he left the country, passport control alerted the FBI Art Crime Team in New York City that he was traveling abroad. But his relationship with the L’Etoile family allowed him to be here with impunity. He’d treated the sister of the man who was missing. He was here to make sure she handled the stress of his disappearance without having a psychological setback.

  “Any news on your nephew?” Malachai asked, using their cipher for Lucian Glass. The ACT detective, who had handled the last two memory tool cases, had jeopardized not only Malachai’s relationship with his family but also his reputation with the Phoenix Foundation.

  “My nephew’s busy. He’s got less time for me than ever. A new job and a new girlfriend. I can’t compete.”

  Malachai smiled. It was always a relief to know Glass wasn’t on his back. At least not yet.

  “Good for him.”

  After the phone call, the therapist returned to the sitting room and settled down at the antique desk. He had two hours before he was to meet Winston’s colleague.

  Using his Montblanc and the elegant hotel stationery, Malachai wrote a note to Jac telling her he was here and offering any help she could use.

  The tone wasn’t right. He ripped up the effort. Dropped the scraps of paper into the brass trash basket.

  They’d met when she was a gangly teenager and he’d been one of Jac’s therapists. While the gap in their ages hadn’t changed, it didn’t have the same significance as it had all those years ago. She was an accomplished woman now. But still alone, scared and in need.

  He read over his second effort. Much better. Folding it, he slipped the letter into an envelope. He called down to the front desk and asked if the bellman would be willing to travel a short distance early the next morning to make a delivery.

  The concierge didn’t hesitate. “Bien sûr, Doctor Samuels.”

  Everything for a price. Well, almost everything. He’d offered Robbie L’Etoile more for the shards than he’d get from anyone else in the world. And the perfumer needed the money. Desperately. Yet he’d rejected the offer.

  Why? What was he going to do with them? Did Jac know? Well, Malachai was in Paris now. He had arranged with his bank in New York to take out a loan against his half of the Phoenix Foundation building to get L’Etoile to sell him the pottery. If he was still alive. If he still had the shards.

  Malachai checked his watch. He had a reservation at the restaurant downstairs. Sealing the letter, he put it in the pocket of his Savile Row suit.


  Yes, it was a much better idea to write her a note than to phone. Surely the telephones at the House of L’Etoile were bugged. Malachai didn’t need to announce his arrival to the police like that. The FBI would let them know he was here soon enough. Besides, there was Jac to consider. By having the letter delivered, he would spare her the anxiety she must be going through each time the phone rang as she waited to hear news of her brother.

  He never connected to patients personally. So why was he thinking about her like this? Almost with emotion.

  Walking from his room toward the elevator, Malachai tried to understand. As honest about his faults as his attributes, he was well aware he was an excellent therapist for the same reason he wasn’t a decent friend or lover. Empathy wasn’t his strength. He listened objectively to those who came to him for help. Navigated through their complicated emotional waters without ever drowning in them himself. Years of his own analysis had exposed his narcissistic tendencies—the psychological condition that protected him from feeling for anyone else.

  The elevator doors opened. Malachai joined the man and woman inside. He stepped to the left and faced front. The couple was reflected in the highly polished brass panel. They leaned close to each other, their bodies touching along their arms. They were holding hands.

  Averting his eyes, Malachai looked at his own reflection. Fifty-eight years old and still chasing the same dream. Never married, he had neither children nor many long-term relationships. His aunt, codirector of the Phoenix Foundation, had a grown son, and Malachai took his relationship with the now-fatherless man seriously. But a cousin wasn’t the same as his own progeny.

  The doors opened. The couple walked out. Suddenly feeling tired, Malachai stepped out into the dramatic Belle Époque lobby. Took in the exquisite sun motif in the marble floor. The six-story-high Grecian frieze. The plush fabrics and opulent seats. The lush, low lights. L’Hotel was a romantic spot. He supposed he’d always known that, but he’d never felt out of place there. Until tonight.

  Thirty-four

  10:05 P.M.

  They went back in the same way they’d come: not through the workshop but via the French doors in the living room of the residence. Navy silk jacquard curtains with white stars and moons and gold suns draped windows that looked out onto the courtyard. Created in the early nineteen hundreds for her great-grandparents, the motif was repeated all over the room. There were gold stars painted on the night-sky-blue ceiling. Astrological signs woven into the gold carpet. The furniture was a mix of pieces from different eras arranged artfully. Classic but comfortable.

  Before Jac had a chance to say anything, Griffin asked her where the bar was.

  “I don’t know how well stocked it still is. Robbie drinks only wine.” Jac pressed a mirrored panel. It revolved in, and a sparkling cabinet with crystal glasses and marvelous antique decanters swung out.

  “Everything in this house is hidden behind something else,” he said. He poured two glasses of brandy and handed one of the tumblers to Jac. “Drink it, Jac. It’s shock therapy.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “I’m sure you are. Drink it anyway.”

  She sipped the amber liquor. It burned going down. She’d never acquired a taste for Cognac, even as aged as this one.

  “Is there a stereo hidden behind one of these mirrors, too?” he asked.

  She pointed to the matching panel on the other side of the bar. “You want to listen to music?”

  He shook his head. Put his finger to his lips. She remembered what he’d told her in the restaurant. If the police were watching, there was a good chance they were listening, too.

  Griffin pressed on the upper-right-hand corner of the mirror and a full stereo swung out. He hit the eject button, saw the tray was full, then pushed the tray back and hit play.

  He kept his eyes on the console, waiting for the first strains of music. Saint-Saëns’s Danse Macabre filled the room.

  Jac recognized the piece. “Great choice,” her voice thick with sarcasm.

  She sat on the couch, drink in hand.

  He pulled over a chair, faced her. Talked softly. “I know how much you want to find him. But you have to trust me. We have to do this the right way.”

  “I can’t bear to think he’s down there. Alone. Scared.”

  He drank some of his brandy. “We have to wait, we have no choice.”

  “You don’t understand.” It came out more sharply than she intended.

  Griffin put down his drink on the coffee table between them and stood. “If you’d rather, I can go back to the hotel.”

  She wanted to tell him yes, that it would be much better if he left. Instead she shook her head. Rubbed her wrists and said, “No. I’m sorry.”

  “Maybe I’m not as worried as you are . . .” His voice was low and kind, and she felt as if he’d put his arm around her even though he hadn’t touched her. “But I want to find Robbie too. Please stop fighting me. I’m not the enemy here.”

  She shut her eyes.

  “Do you know anything at all about that tunnel?” he asked.

  “It was another one of those crazy legends that my family seemed to collect the way other people collect china dogs. Have you ever heard of the Carrières de Paris?” She realized she’d used the French and corrected herself, referring to them in English. “The quarries of Paris?”

  “Yes,” Griffin said. “The city is built on mines, some of which date back as far as the thirteenth century, right? The stones that built Paris came from those quarries, leaving a network of empty tunnels and caves that became the catacombs. Most archaeologists know about them.”

  “Exhuming the dead from overcrowded aboveground cemeteries that were causing health problems started in 1777,” Jac continued, “just as the revolution was gaining momentum and the government’s greed for accumulating land was growing. The House of L’Etoile was already founded by then. My grandfather used to tease us that our ancestors weren’t above us in heaven but beneath us in the cellar. ‘A city sitting on an abyss,’ he’d call it. When I was little and didn’t get what I wanted, sometimes I’d stamp my foot and—”

  “Why am I not surprised?”

  Jac ignored Griffin’s comment and continued. “Grand-père Charles would warn me to be careful. ‘If you stomp too hard, you’ll make a hole in the earth and fall though. And then you’ll have to make friends with those bones.’”

  She still missed her grandfather, who’d died while she’d been living in America. Everyone she cared about in her family was gone except for Robbie.

  “I didn’t believe him,” she continued. “I wanted to know how he knew people were buried there. When I was old enough, he told me that he and his brother were part of the resistance movement during World War II, and they used the tunnels and galleries beneath Paris to help Allied soldiers and airmen escape.” Jac got up and walked over to the glass doors leading to the courtyard. Her grandfather had planted those bushes, imported heirloom roses from all over France and England. He’d cultivated hybrids as he strove to create scents other houses couldn’t copy.

  A fine rain was falling in a shimmering mist. She opened the door and breathed in the semisweet nighttime scents and green cool air. “Grand-père said he had his own private entrance to the tunnels. That it was more secret than most because of where it was and how it was hidden. Robbie used to pester him to take us down.”

  “Did he?”

  “No.”

  Griffin got up to refill his glass. She’d never imagined she’d see him here. But he belonged in a way. Wasn’t this room a repository for memories? Antiques and artifacts dating from eighteenth-century L’Etoiles sat on tabletops and on shelves. Silver perfume chatelaines amassed by a great-great-grandmother. A large assortment of Limoges snuffboxes that had been collected over generations.

  Jac’s grandmother had a penchant for enameled jeweled frames. Crystals set in scrolls. Ruffles edged with marcasites. Openwork gold studded with pearls. Dozens sparkled all over the room. Onc
e there had been Fabergé borders around the likenesses of long-dead family members, but those had long been sold.

  On the mantel was a gold clock decorated with symbols of the earth, moon, sun, and stars of the zodiac. It not only told the hour and the day but also the times of sunset, sunrise, moonset and moonrise.

  It had been broken when Jac spotted it in a corner booth at the flea market early one Saturday morning. Her grandmother had bought it over Jac’s mother’s protestations that it was going to be impossible to fix.

  Grand-mère had patted Audrey’s hand in that way she had. “It’s a beautiful piece,” she said. “We’ll find a way.”

  Robbie’s collection of malachite, quartz, lapis lazuli, and jade obelisks flanked the clock. On the other side, a Lalique bowl was filled with green, blue and milky-white sea glass that Jac had collected with her mother the summers they’d spent in the south of France. There was nothing here that didn’t have memories attached.

  “Is it possible your grandfather took Robbie down into the catacombs and not you?”

  “Of course. After I left—when I was in America—my grandfather lived for another six years and was very healthy until the end.”

  “When was the maze in the courtyard constructed?”

  “The exact date? I don’t know, but those are architectural drawings of the house and the courtyard.” She pointed to a series of six framed etchings. “They date back to 1816, and the maze is in the second to the end.”

  “So it’s possible that the manhole in the center of the maze is the entrance to the underground tunnels that your grandfather used to tell you about. And that he showed it to Robbie?”

  “Yes. Don’t you think?” She was excited by the idea. If her brother was down there, he might be safe after all. “If there’s a city of the dead underneath our house, it’s exactly the kind of mystery Robbie would gravitate to.”

  Griffin stared into his glass. “When I was younger,” he said, “I wanted to grow up to be the kind of man whose friends and lovers had secrets.”