Huguette

Early December 1947
Étoile Office, Lyon

At her office window, Huguette hardly saw the mist hugging the sluggish Rhône or dawn slashing copper on the horizon. After a moment of staring at awakening Lyon, a city that felt more like home now than she’d ever thought possible, she turned back to her desk and leaned down to unlock the safe. Rubbing her knuckles, she looked at the stacks of cash within.

Money carried a weight she would have welcomed when she’d been hungry. Now she had more than she thought possible. Too much.

She closed the safe. Touched the medal of Saint Christopher on her neck. And got to work.

Soon she heard a discreet knock and Simone Delambry, her assistant, entered, pushing a rolling cart with a coffee carafe and cups on top, money bags on the tray below.

“Bonjour, Mademoiselle Lise. Here’s the weekend’s takings.”

Huguette—known to those she worked with as Lise de Jouvenal— smiled. “Merci, Simone.”

Every Monday, she and Simone sorted the receipts from the ticket offices and cinema concessions and confirmed amounts in the account books. Their morning was fueled by good coffee from the café downstairs, one of four Huguette owned.

As profits climbed, the surplus soared, and figures swirled in her head—what to buy next? A building or two—or three—was on her agenda.

Simone, a war widow who spoke little, was the sharpest person Huguette had met in a long time. She had been an indispensable part of Huguette’s business since her first week in Lyon, when Simone had helped negotiate a union contract with the cinema’s employees. Huguette, frankly, had needed all the help she could get.

She looked over her shoulder every day. Wary the past would catch up with her. And every day she had to prove she could do this.

Would she ever not be afraid? She wondered if she’d have to hide like a burrowing animal all her life. Late at night, she sometimes felt like giving up, unsure of what to do to shake the demons of her past off once and for all. But in the meantime, what she could do was work with good people like Simone by her side.
*
Downstairs in the bouchon, what the Lyonnais called a bistro, chalked on the slate menu board was turnips, chestnut terrine, rutabaga. Always rutabagas. Skipping lunch, Huguette ordered a coffee. She didn’t want to know how the chef procured ingredients to prepare pike quenelles with lobster sauce for special patrons. Postwar outages continued, but thanks to their refurbished generator, the wall sconces didn’t flicker and dim. The Germans’ bullet holes, filled and sanded, hardly showed on the stone facade.

She lifted up a silver-plated knife from the place setting to check her roots in its thin reflection. Time for another dye job. She tilted the blade to adjust her glasses, which were fake, and this time in the knife’s reflection she caught a face staring through the window. A face from her past.

Claude Leduc.

Emotions flipped and her insides churned as he opened the door to the bouchon and entered, approaching her table. Words choked in her throat.

She’d dreaded being found out. Hoped this day never came.

But who was she fooling?

She’d been so careful, but it wasn’t enough. He’d betrayed her and she’d run. Without a trace, she’d thought. How had he found her? Where could she go to get away? Why did she want to feel the warmth of his arms again?

He reached out to her with something in his hand, and she stiffened, gripping the butter knife—but he was holding out a pocket-sized red booklet. A bilingual map of Paris. “I thought you might need an updated one.”

Why would she need that? She didn’t know what to say.

Had he been tipped off? Led a squad to Lyon? Would he finally turn her in?

Frantic, she looked around for any eyes on them but saw only passersby, busy and intent. She could make a run for it.

“No one knows I’m here,” he said, as if he’d read her thoughts. “This is between us. I’ve got two questions, that’s all. Then I’m gone.”

Ridiculous to run, she thought, and she resigned herself to whatever fate he’d brought with him from Paris.

“Not here.”
*
She shouldered her emergency kit: cash; a faux ID issued in 1947 for a Madeleine Colbert, occupation: seamstress, with her left and right thumbprints and touched-up photo; a brown wool jacket with tortoiseshell buttons bought from a rag seller; a cloche-style hat to cover her hair; a stub of carmine lipstick; a thimble; a spool of thread; and an open-ended train ticket to Marseille, all of which fit into hidden custom compartments in her market bag.

Twenty minutes later, she joined Claude on a hillside bench overlooking vieux Lyon’s Renaissance buildings, the terracotta rooftops, the medieval streets sloping under the Fourvière hill, to the lapping current of the Saône below and across the wide Place Bellecour to the Rhône. The rivers threading Lyon made her homesick for the Seine, the first thing she’d seen every morning out her window for seventeen years.

From under his newspaper, a Lyon daily, Claude produced a small tin tray bearing two demitasses with steaming thick espresso.

How had he managed that?

“My fault you missed your coffee,” he said. “Luckily the café owner, a romantic, obliged and let me bring you this. I said we needed privacy.”

He smiled and jerked his chin to the café quayside with a broad terrace.

“First question: sugar or not?”

Caught off guard, she smiled. “Non, merci.” While grateful for the thought, she saw this gesture for what it was—a technique to disarm people. She sipped. Delicious. It should have been; she owned the roastery.

“Maybe not up to Parisian standards, but the Lyonnais are masters of cuisine.”

Or so they thought.

His voice sounded light but she heard an undertone, and it made her restless. “What do you want, Claude Leduc?”

“To enjoy coffee with you.”

She scoffed. Did he still think she was a naïve little girl? After everything they’d been through? “Don’t tell me this is a social call.”

“I’m not a flic anymore. I’m a detective privé now. Clients pay me to investigate. My field’s missing persons.”

“Who paid you to find me?”

Hesitating, he looked away.

She set down the small demitasse. “Of course, you’re not honest with me. You’ll lie again.”

“I never lied to you.” But he hesitated again, a pained look on his face. A face she’d once thought open, sincere, caring.

“I’m leaving,” she said.

“Just give me a minute. Please.”

“One minute.” She glanced at her watch. Pigeons fluttered down the path and pecked at crumbs scattered by an old man.

He steepled his hands, matching fingertip to fingertip. She noticed his bruised thumbnail. His shoulders broad under a well-worn corduroy jacket and his hair curled over his collar. Those deep-seeing eyes.

“Will you do me a favor?”

She wanted to hit him.

“There’s going to be a trial in Paris in two months. Honoré Gisors, the notaire, is the defendant.”

Her fingers gripped the demitasse.

“Your testimony’s needed—”

She interrupted. “But it’s been, what, two years?”

Two long years, she could see in his eyes.

“Homicide cases remain open until they’re solved. Justice can finally be done.”

Justice?

“Too late for that.” She sipped her coffee and tasted nothing but fear.

“The past never goes away.”

She’d like to forget. If only the phantoms would let her.

“But you betrayed me.”
“Think what you want,” said Claude. “Alain sold me out, too. His actions made it clear I had to leave the force.”

She’d wondered about Alain. But did it really change anything? “You took my money.”

Claude pulled an envelope from his inner jacket pocket. “Here’s my portion returned.”

Her jaw dropped. She set down the demitasse.

“When I found out what happened, you’d disappeared.” He grinned. “I did use it to start my detective agency. Now business is booming, and I can repay you. You know, after the war, finding people is in hot demand. My new métier.”

“You must be good.”

“I found you.”

His warm hands were holding hers. She felt the magnetic pull.

“But I would have found you anyway.”

Then he was pulling her close. Kissing her. And she responded, folding into him, until his grip tightened and she remembered herself.

“Non.” She pulled back. “How dare you ask me? I’m not that person anymore.”

Claude took her chin to look deep into her eyes. “Testify, then you can disappear again. For good this time.”

Why couldn’t this just go away? Leave me alone, she wanted to scream. In her limited experience, men did nothing but take.

But Claude had helped her when he hadn’t needed to. And now, he’d asked her for something—the others never asked.

She pulled away from his hand, staring out at the river instead.

Claude stood. She didn’t want him to go. A wistfulness emanated from him. He said, “It’s your chance to right a wrong, Huguette. To bring your father’s murderer to justice.”

At what cost?