4

Her thoughts racing, Marion threw off her coat. “He knows. He knows I’m Magni’s daughter. That auctioneer who called me, Mr. Rambert, figured it out. Why wouldn’t Duverger? The case he brought us could be a complete lie. Was La Medici in cahoots with him?” She bent down to unlace her ankle boots. “That means the shaman may not have been stolen. But why would it be at my dad’s house?” She took off her turtleneck and wiggled out of her pants. “What’s his game plan? Why didn’t he put all his cards on the table at the start?” She stuffed her bra and panties into her bag and slipped into her bathing suit. “And that dinner… Why did he tell me all about Magni’s creepy behavior in full detail?” Marion grabbed her towel and jetted out of the changing room.

The inner dialogue continued. “Magni throws a party at his place for the first time in his life, and it becomes a scandal, perfectly planned and orchestrated.” She instinctively handed her things to a sixty-year-old rocker planted behind the counter. “What was on his mind?” She slipped on a yellow plastic bracelet bearing her locker number. “The dinner, then, a few months later, the auction.” An old black wall phone started ringing. “Magni becomes even more reclusive. Won’t appear in public, won’t sell…” Carried by the King’s voice on the radio, Marion rushed toward the pool.

Swimming laps was Marion’s stress reliever and her means of escape.

The pool was practically empty. It was always empty, actually. Only twenty-five meters long, it wasn’t big enough for competitive athletes and not hip enough for cool kids. But it was charming, with its Art Nouveau columns and sage-green ceramic tiles with lotus details.

Behind her goggles, which gave the pool lights a bluish tint, Marion was starting to feel looser and stronger. Only her neck was still holding some tension, but it soon succumbed to the rhythm of her strokes. She thought again about Duverger’s innuendos and subtle approach. The appraiser was sneaky, adept at scheming and manipulating. “My exact opposite,” she said to herself as she started her fifth lap.

“Life is a chess game.” Peter—her ex—loved that cliché. Incapable of anticipating her opponent’s moves, she greedily gobbled his pieces, not realizing that they could be sacrificed until after she had placed her stakes elsewhere.

Ten feet below and on the left side of the pool, two scuba divers, with fins on their feet, oxygen tanks on their backs, and masks covering half their faces, were sealing cracks in the tiles. They looked like a couple of sea mammals as they worked their way from one tiny fissure to another.

Marion had been swimming for a while now, and she was no longer thinking about Duverger. She had her rhythm and was absorbed in the act of stroking and breathing. One kilometer down… She was tired, but that wouldn’t stop her. The hands on the wall clock pointed to four thirty. Just below it was the lifeguard, his nose deep in a newspaper. She glanced from time to time at the divers sharing the pool with her.

She focused on her crawl. It was becoming slower with each stroke. As she neared the spot where she had seen the divers on her last lap, she noticed that they were gone. They didn’t stay very long. She looked around the pool between breaths, trying to spot them. Distracted, she lost her rhythm. She kicked to regain speed and inadvertently swallowed water. She started choking. Now her strokes were all off. Her goggles had become a nuisance. They had fogged up.

Marion stopped at the end of the pool to catch her breath. Her lungs were barely replenished when she felt someone wrap his hands around her ankles and pull her down. Someone was yanking her toward the bottom. She clutched the side of the pool with all her might, but she lost her grip, and her head went under. Frantic, she tried to claw her way to the surface. Where was the lifeguard?

She looked down, powerless. The two divers were latched onto her ankles and looking up at her. Their large eyes bulged behind the deforming lenses of their masks. She fought. After a few seconds, the desire to surrender washed over her. But a voice screamed in her head. “Don’t give up!”

Anger, aggression, and survival instinct gave her a final burst of energy. She jerked her right leg free. But the hold on her other ankle tightened. She was being pulled deeper into the abyss. There was no air left in her lungs. The water blocked all ways out. Blood rushed to her head, and her eyes rolled back. Her mouth filled with water. Marion sank like a dead weight.

~ ~ ~

She heard voices. A door closed softly. Someone took a seat beside her. She wanted to keep her eyes shut. Her heart was beating wildly. She felt wound up like a cuckoo clock. She was scared. What had happened? Marion pictured the two twisted faces, their features distorted by their masks. Did those guys want her dead? Just thinking about it made her shiver. She wanted to go to sleep and forget about it. She was exhausted. Her body was as floppy as a rag doll.

She cracked one eye open anyway. Then closed it just as quickly. It was her mother. She was easily the last person Marion wanted to see. The woman’s manic depression was more than she could handle at the moment. Marion peeked again. Yep, the woman staring at her was definitely her mother. Usually her pupils were fixed and dilated, a symptom of her self-absorption. But now she was giving Marion a harsh look. “Probably because she had to think of me for once, instead of herself,” Marion thought.

Marion couldn’t fake sleep much longer. Her mother was making her too uncomfortable. She opened her eyes and glanced around the white room humming with fluorescent lights.

“Honey!”

Her mother’s freckled face, framed by brown curls, lit up. She smiled at her and moved closer.

“Finally! I was afraid you weren’t going to wake up until after I left. I know, I know. I’m sorry, I can’t stay long. You look great, though. They got me all worried. They told me you almost drowned. But I said it had to be a joke. I told them how you swim like a fish. Turns out I was right. It wasn’t that bad. You just swallowed a little water. I had to take a sedative to calm down. You know how I feel about hospitals. But seriously, I’ve got to head back home. I lost my watch.”

Her hands were flying around like crazed birds.

“I’ve been without that watch for two days now. It’s ridiculous. I looked everywhere. Giselle says I threw it out the window. But I think she stole it. I—”

“Okay, Mom, okay!” Marion cried out. Her mother’s incoherent rambling was already wearing her down. “I’m fine. You can leave if you want to.”

“You know, without my watch I don’t know when to take my pills. They upped me to twenty a day. I have to take them at just the right time, or else it’ll start up again!”

“I’d lend you one, but I don’t wear a watch.”

“I know. I looked in your bag. I thought mine might be in there. You could have borrowed it.”

“But I haven’t seen you in weeks.”

“What if it was in your bag, and that nurse stole it?”

“What nurse?”

“The one I saw earlier.”

“Mom. Go home. I’m sure Giselle has found it by now.”

Marion couldn’t think of anything else to say to make her leave. She was worried that her mother would have an episode right there in her room. The various drugs the woman took subdued her temper but not her obsessive thoughts. And her moods turned so quickly, it was impossible to predict when another fit of hysteria would occur.

When her irrational imaginings broke through the logic barrier, she’d sometimes become a soldier ready to save the world from the invisible threat—whatever that was. The hot-water kettle would start revving like an army tank. The bedside lamp would become a bomb. The bread knife would be her machine gun. All she needed was the signal, and she’d be off—a twenty-first century Joan of Arc.

The door of her room cracked open, and a face peeped through the opening. It was a much welcome face with coarse stubble. The bags under his hazel eyes accentuated a look of fatigue.

“Is it okay if I join you?”

“Chris!” Marion sat up and beamed at her friend. “I’m so happy to see you.”

“Your mother called as soon as she found out that you were in the emergency room. I’ve been waiting for you to wake up.”

Marion looked at her mother. Pretending to ignore Marion, she hastened to put on a pair of gray gloves and picked up her purse.

“I’m getting you out of here,” Chris said. Marion blinked. His lanky body seemed to be floating. “The doctors say everything’s fine. Low blood sugar. You just got dizzy and passed out.”

“Dizzy? What are you talking about? They wanted to—”

Marion stopped short. Her mother had stealthily taken her hand.

“I’d love to take you home and look after you, but you know I can’t. I just have too much on my mind. Would you call Giselle and make sure she has my watch?”

“Yes, I promise I’ll call her as soon as I’m back at my apartment.”

Once she was gone, Marion covered her face with her hand.

“I couldn’t tell her about Magni.”

“In her mind, he’s been dead a long time,” Chris said.

Chris was the only person Marion could count on. He was just as much a loner as she was, and he understood how she valued her privacy, because he valued his. They had met twelve years earlier at the École du Louvre and had become close friends thanks to heated arguments they would have about antiques, the nature of beauty, and people’s fascination with art.

“Okay, let’s go. Get dressed,” he instructed as he pulled her clothes out of the closet and handed them to her. “I’m taking you out to dinner. How does prime rib sound? It’s all I can think about. I’m starving.”

Chris helped Marion get up and turned his back while she dressed. She felt weak and empty. Her hands were trembling like leaves in the wind. With her clothes on at last, she sat down on the bed. She was too tired and anxious to face the world.

“Are you okay, Marion? Should I call the nurse?”

“I think someone wants me dead.”

“What?”

“In the pool. Two guys tried to drown me.”

Chris flashed a dubious look before sitting down next to her.

“But the doctors said…”

“They don’t know what happened. They only know that somebody fished me out of the pool and called the paramedics.”

“Maybe it was just some kids who were messing around. They were teasing you, and it went too far.”

“If they were kids, they were well-trained kids. And strong. I’m telling you, these guys planned their attack! They took their time and waited until just the right moment, probably when the lifeguard was taking a break.”

“If they wanted to eliminate you, they’d have done it.”

“Something—or someone—stopped them.”

“And how could they have gotten away?”

“You don’t believe me!”

“Of course I do, but maybe you’re exaggerating a bit. You’ve been through a lot.”

“Maybe they were just trying to scare me.”

“Why would they want to do that?”

“Maybe they were warning me to give up my search for the sculptures.”

“Who’s they? No one’s supposed to know about you. Isn’t that right? The estate attorney promised to keep everything confidential. I haven’t told anyone. Who could possibly want to hurt you? You’re blowing this entirely out of proportion, Marion.”

“Gaudin knows.”

As soon as his name left her mouth, her suspicions about the man seemed too obvious to be true.

“And maybe Duverger, La Medici, and Rambert. I don’t care what the estate attorney said. You know how the art world works. Artworks may get stolen and stay under wraps for years, but secrets are traded out in the open. I’m almost positive they all know I’m Magni’s daughter. They may even have more information than that. Enough to eliminate me from the picture.”

“Duverger? Rambert? Who are they? Whatever... You’re being paranoid. As big a name as Magni was, the whole world didn’t revolve around him.”

“Never mind,” Marion muttered. Chris didn’t know all the facts and couldn’t possibly assess the situation.

An awkward silence settled in the room.

“Okay, let’s say you’re right,” Chris finally said. “What do we do now?”

Marion shrugged. She was too overwhelmed to make any decisions. She was having a hard time holding back her tears, but she didn’t want to break down in front of Chris. He would feel awkward about consoling her, especially now that he was married—to a real nut job, in Marion’s opinion. At least his wife wasn’t the jealous type, or she would have lost his friendship long ago.

“Come on. Let’s get that food,” he insisted. “It’ll take your mind off things.”

Nope, nothing could take her mind off this, but she wanted company.

She got up with immense effort just as a nurse entered the room and handed her an envelope.

“This was left for you at the reception desk.”

Marion looked at Chris for a second and then anxiously unfolded a piece of paper. On it were three words in flawless, rounded cursive: “Watch your back.”