Too Rich For Rain: SEVEN PARIS MYSTERIES, #5

By Peggy Kopman-Owens

Cover Art © Roger Kopman. Who knew? Spies read! The rich are not like us. When it rains, they simply fly away, taking their secrets with them. On the Côte d' Azur, a missing journalist is given a rare opportunity to becomes an insider, offering his best friend an unexpected invitation to a masquerade ball at the Darimus Mansion in Antibes, and a chance to settle an old score. To spend New Year's Eve on the French Riviera in the company of the rich and royal is more than mystery writer Jamie Litton had imagined. If Ben Foulof's plan works, his appearance there will be an even bigger surprise for his enemies.

• Language: English
• Publisher: PKOBOOKS LLC
• Release date: Mar 5, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215265567

Peggy Kopman-Owens

Peggy Kopman-Owens writes suspenseful fiction, gentle mysteries with touches of romance that inspire readers to search for their passports. Her literary properties, reflecting her work in 35 countries, include three series set in Paris. SIMON PENNINGTON MYSTERIES, MRS. DUCHESNEY MYSTERIES, and SEVEN PARIS MYSTERIES now available in eBook, paperback, hardcover, and / or audiobook. (author's photo: © Michael D. Owens)  Cover Art © Roger Kopman. Online gallery at KOPMANPHOTOS.com "My mother wrote stories and songs, becoming my inspiration, teaching that passion and patience are inseparable partners. From my father and mother, both musicians who loved to travel, I learned to embrace a world full of diversity and endless possibilities. I can never thank them enough for bestowing this lovingly unselfish gift of intellectual freedom."

Book preview

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Chapter 1

THERE ARE PEOPLE IN this world, so rich, that when it rains, they simply fly away on private jets in search of sun. Often, they find themselves in the south of France. Sometimes, our paths cross.

Bernadette had been the one, who saw it first. I was driving far too fast to catch the first glimpse of the little stone house on the top of the hill. She had been looking up. I had been looking down at the curving road ahead, trying to keep the little sports car on the slick road. I will be eter­nally grateful that she screamed Slow down! Stop!

By my stomping on the brakes, we missed by split seconds a car coming at us head on. It had been passing a truck in the rain, and did not see us. Our car would end up covered in mud, stuck in a clump of scrub brush, but not off a cliff. We would be alive to tell the story. Bernadette would explain, later, that she had only wanted to stop to look at the little stone house on the hill.

By the time, that Bernadette and I caught our breaths, got our adrenal rush under control, and pushed our car out of the brush patch, the rain had stopped. I drove carefully around the next curve, found a driveway, and parked safely off the main road. We marched back up the road and onto a muddy path too narrow to drive. Our climb to the top of the hill required holding onto branches of olive trees to pull ourselves up. Below us was the road, where only moments before, we nearly had been killed. We felt that someone, other than Berna­dette, had been screaming, STOP!

Thank God, we listened.

As if that weren’t enough drama to start the new­est chapter of our lives, at the top of the hill, we found ourselves gazing across a beautiful valley to the Mediterranean. In the distance above the water, the late after­noon sky displayed a double rainbow. I took this as proof that we were meant to be alive, together, and here, in the south of France.

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Chapter 2

ONLY ONE WEEK EARLIER, Bernadette’s long dark hair had circled high above her head in the wind as we flew down the highway out of Paris toward Provence. As we sped along, top down on our little blue sports car, we felt free, happy, and more than a bit reckless. Our imag­inations had embraced our destination. We were going to the Côte d’Azur. Nothing could stop us. We were finally on holiday!

Asking Bernadette to join me on the long drive from Paris had proved to be a brilliant idea. On the journey down the backbone of France, we laughed until our bellies hurt. We sang along to old tunes on the radio until our ears hurt. We talked for hours, until we were finally content to be silent, riding side by side. By the time, that we arrived in Provence to the house, which had once belonged to Jacqueline’s grand­father, Bernadette and I were solidly together as a couple. Although, we had not had sex yet, we had done everything else.

Our stop in Lyons was intentional. The hotel room we shared was not. Bernadette had wanted to visit a library in Lyons. We stayed until it closed, then, searched for dinner. Dinner lasted much longer than planned, through two bottles of wine. We chose our hotel after dinner, rather than before, based upon how far we could walk. There was only one room available. The debate, staying at this hotel or going to another, ended with a look at our watches. It was late. One long look at each other sealed the deal.

We settled into bed, thinking our fantasies would finally be satisfied, but reluctantly, com­mon­sense ruled. We fought temptation, still afraid that our friendship might be ruined with carnal knowledge. Abstaining, with Bernadette lying beside me, was one of the most difficult things that I have ever done. It was also one of the sexiest. However, by morning, I knew that we had done the right thing. Friends can be friends forever. Lovers cannot.

Five years earlier, I had made the mistake of not abstaining with Jacqueline. Five years later, she and I were still strug­gling to remain friends. It was difficult at best. When we were lovers, she called me sweetly eccentric. Since our breakup, she had edited it to simply unreliable. Time and distance can change one’s per­spective on many things. I knew that in Lyons with Bernadette, it was neither the time, nor the place, to be­gin the inevitable demolition of our friendship.

Some­where along the way, I confessed to Berna­dette, that I had found her attractive from the moment that I first laid eyes on her. She confessed, too, that over the years, she had been more than a little jealous of the women, whom I carelessly discussed at our café society dinners. She had been disappointed that I suddenly burst out that I was moving in with Jacqueline. She said bluntly that it had been thoughtless on my part to an­nounce it without Jacqueline being there. She had wanted a reason to be angry with me, a reason other than the obvious one, and my abrupt solo declaration had provided it. The less obvious problem? I had cho­sen Jacqueline over her.

We talked about what had been a series of mis­understandings. All that I understood, at the time that I moved in with Jacqueline, was that Bernadette had be­come mildly miffed about some­thing. She became less attentive. At our weekly dinners, if she arrived late, she no longer vied for the seat next to mine. Before long, she was always late. I admitted that for a while, my new rela­tionship with Jacqueline had been a distraction from the rest of our group. I did not say that sex on a regular basis had made me stupid, or forgetful. Bernadette probably assumed that.

Bernadette described, with an amazing amount of drama, that she had accepted the reality that she and I would never be lovers. She knew Jacqueline well enough to know, Jacqueline had no live-in lovers. If Jacqueline had invited me to move in, it was probably for the long-term. Berna­dette resolved herself to look for lovers, elsewhere. She began inviting more male guests to our café society dinners, and they were men whom she knew I would not like. I made the mistake of men­tion­ing, that all I could remember about them was that their IQs matched their collar sizes.

Berna­dette didn’t like that comment, seizing the moment to punch me in the arm. I shouted that it was illegal to hit the driver, while he was driving. It was no secret that Bernadette had a thing for athletic men. It made me question, silently, why she had chosen to be with me.

We rode along in silence for a little while. Berna­dette stared out the side window, watching the other cars whiz by much faster than ours.

She said, Speed up!

Was she trying to get us arrested? I looked at her, raised my eyebrows with an expres­sion, which said. Are you crazy?

Bernadette couldn’t resist. You drive like an old lady.

I took the bait and stepped on the accelerator, roaring down the highway faster than I had ever driven. Bernadette hooped and hollered as we passed other cars. She was practically coming up out of her seatbelt. I told her to sit down and act like a lady, then laughed. I also slowed down.

She said, See? You are an old lady.

This time, I punched her in the arm. She calmed down, and we rode along in silence for a few more miles. She played with the radio, but found nothing that satisfied her. What she said next came as a total surprise. She said that over the years, she had grown accustomed to the idea that I was never truly happy, with or without Jacqueline in my life, and that I probably enjoyed my unhap­piness. She assured me that it was perfectly ok, if I wanted to be that way. She had discovered, from her many years of being around artistic people, that emo­tional pain motivates them. When they’re happy, they produce crap. When they’re miserable – master­pieces!

Could Berna­dette see what I could not see? Had I been seeking misery, all my life in order to create? Was that why I escaped my relationship with Jacqueline? It was too tranquil? I was too content? Cer­tainly, that was not the situation through most of our last year together.

Bernadette went back to fiddling with the radio. I drifted off in thoughts about my past re­lationship with Jacqueline. In the beginning, it seemed that Jacqueline and I had found a perfect match of tempera­ments. With her, I was in a comfortable, nonthreatening relationship – one as happy as I imagined any normal person might expect.

Certainly, for the first couple of years, it seemed that way. We had each other. We had Adela. It was not 2.5 children and the suburbs, but by Parisian standards, we had it all. Of course, there was no dog. Perhaps, therein lay the problem. We were settling for cat poop, when we could have had dog poop.

It was not until the last year that things changed. Before that, we never fought. We never argued. Maybe that was the problem. Perhaps, we should have. Per­haps, we didn’t fight, because neither of us had ever been fully vested, emotionally, in our relationship. We accepted the neutrality of our arrange­ment, willing to take no stand, rather than fight for its survival. Cer­tainly, that was true at the end. Neither of us had the energy. It died with a whimper, not a roar. I thought it civil to resolve things the way we did. I moved out as quietly as I had moved in. The only difference was that, this time, out of respect for Jacqueline, I did not an­nounce it at the dinner table in front of our friends.

I thought about it a bit longer. Bernadette might be right. The last year with Jacqueline was my most mis­erable one ... in years. Yet, I had finished some of my best writing during that year. Were bestselling novels nothing more than witnesses to the author’s mental health? Or the state of one’s love life?

Bernadette said that everything changed for her, when she learned from Jacqueline of our sudden break­up. Bernadette was fully, animated, when she confessed that she couldn’t outwardly jump for joy, but inside she wanted to. Our last year of difficulties had been simply one more diffi­cult year for Bernadette. She loved Jac­queline as a friend, and she loved Adela, the beautiful little four-year old girl, whom Jacqueline and I were raising together. The feeling was mutual. Adela ac­cepted her Aunt Bernie as family. All three of us had accepted Bernadette, who always had been there for us, as family. We counted on her drop­ping everything, rear­ranging her work hours, and giving up her social life to come running.

Bernadette, however, admitted what a challenge it had been for her, always smiling as she walked into our home, pretending that she wasn’t the least bit jealous of our happiness. She thought that Jac­queline had it all. A home. A baby. Me.

(Me?) I thought as I listened to Bernadette’s startling revelations. After my breakup with Jacqueline, Bernadette entertained the hope, that she could finally stop hiding the truth. Jac­queline moving to Pro­vence had added to that hope. The further away Jacqueline was, the greater her chances grew that I might notice her – in a different way. When my unexpected invita­tion came for her to accompany me on the drive to Provence, it gave her the courage to express her feelings aloud. Now, she could shout. She did. In the car.

I love you, Jamie Litton!

She was in love with me? I was stunned. I was thrilled. I told her, I had no idea.

Bernadette said, Of course, you didn’t. I just told you. With that, she slapped me on the back of the head and laughed.

My Rubenesque beauty, for years, had possessed the patience of a saint. All I had seen of her was what she had allowed the world to see. She possessed the passionate appetite of three women for life, for fun, and for food. However, now, with this sudden freedom to express her feelings, she could reveal her equally im­mense appetite for me. She couldn’t decide if it had been divine comedy, or tragedy, but finally, she could laugh at what an idiot I had been – for not knowing her true feelings.

I agreed. I had been an idiot, a blind idiot. I prom­ised her. I would spend the rest of my life making it up to her. Later during our holiday, when I attempted to repeat the pledge, she would joke that based upon our near death experience, she would have happily settled for the rest of the day! After all, there were no guarantees in life. If we wasted our lives waiting for someone else to start the party, we might miss it. It was up to us. That was her motto. Any excuse for a party, is still a party!

With Bernadette’s revelation, I was now free to confess how jealous I had been of the rough-necked football player, whom she had invited years earlier to one of our dinners. I would tell her that if Otto hadn’t blackballed him from the group, I would have. She would be surprised to learn that I had been equally jeal­ous of her Essex giant, Peter, and of Gerard, whom I never met, but never wanted to. I was also irritated by countless other men, whom she flaunted in my face at weekly dinners.

Bernadette’s eyes positively, lit up, with each new disclosure. We laughed and laughed at how foolish we both had been. I loved Berna­dette’s laugh. I loved her big red lips, which I had fantasized about kissing for years. I loved that I was finally getting to kiss them. I loved the idea that I could be in love, again.

Before leaving Paris, I had promised Bernadette that I would show her Cannes, Nice, An­tibes, Monaco, and Menton, all places that I had visited on my first summer long escape from New York. She had never been to any of these places. I wanted her first time to be with me. How­ever, we first had to stop in Provence to see Adela and Jacqueline. I missed my little girl.

Adela might not be my biological daughter, any more than she is Jacqueline’s daughter, but I love her as if she were mine. Adela’s mother died shortly, after giving birth. She put my name down on the birth certifi­cate as the father. In truth, Adela’s father, is my best friend, Ben, who has never met his only child. To do so, would only jeopardize her life. He knew to deny her was to protect her. I knew to protect her, to protect Ben, was to continue living the lie. To the world, Adela is mine. One day, I will have to tell her the truth, but that day is very far away.

Jacqueline and I agreed with the doctors in Aix-en-Provence, that the doctors in Paris had been wrong. Adela’s nerve damage was not as severe as they had first diagnosed. The doctors at Aix had been getting much better results with their intense physical therapy pro­gram. Jacqueline called them miracle workers. I attri­buted the speed, with which Adela was recovering, to the swimming exercise she was performing at the clinic. Perhaps, God had given Adela a new dream, now that her dream of becoming a ballerina had been taken away. Bernadette said that all little girls dream of becoming ballerinas, and that their dreams change every year. This was only the first of many to come. I should prepare myself.

We were supposed to stay with Jacqueline for two days. We stayed five. I could tell by day four that Jac­queline was becoming irritated with our delayed depar­ture. I had just returned to France from a book tour in Australia, and had not seen Adela in nearly a month. I didn’t want to rush our time together.

Jacqueline, how­ever, was growing weary of the work that our stay was creating. Overnight visitors meant extra laundry, more meals to prepare. Graciously, Bernadette had volun­teered to cook, but Jacqueline was territorial in the kitchen. Bernadette was relegated to the laundry.

I of­fered to take everyone into neighbor­ing villages or on longer adventures to the coast for dinner. Jacqueline thought that sitting in restaurants was too much to ex­pect of Adela. A ride, fur­ther than to Aix, was totally out of the question. Besides, who would ride where? Did I really ex­pect Adela to ride in that tiny little sports car, with her bad leg? Didn’t I know how dangerous lit­tle sports cars were? Here, in the south of France, you could easily drive one off the side of a moun­tain. Her words gave me chills.

Later, when her predic­tion nearly came true, it would take days to get her words out of my head.

For the moment, it seemed that nothing I said, or did, quite suited Jacqueline. She did not hold back as she had in the past. She no longer withheld her judg­ments in front of Bernadette. She ranted that my ideas were foolish, inappropriate, and always, always, danger­ous. She called me, un­reliable, and erratic.

These were not new admonitions, but it was surprising that she no longer felt compelled to hide her feelings in front of other people. Before, she would have never thought of being so con­descending with others present. I worried that Bernadette might start to agree with her, that it would damage our budding romance. I worried more that Adela might overhear Jacqueline.

About the third time it happened, when she started to say, Wasn’t I thinking...? I got up, inter­rupting her in midsentence, and went outside. Berna­dette got up, and went upstairs to be with Adela. Leav­ing Jacqueline, sitting alone in the kitchen, wasn’t in­tended to be cruel. I left because I was embarrassed. Bernadette would later tell me, she left because she was embarrassed for me.

Jac­queline never apologized to ei­ther of us. She went to the kitchen, and began banging pans, and throwing utensils. I got in the car and drove away, staying away for several hours. I would have thrown Bernadette a life preserver, but she was already hiding upstairs. She had retreated to the safety of the role, which she knew best, babysitter.

Later, in the af­ternoon, as she and Adela came down to the garden to read, Jacqueline would be no­where to be found. Right before my return, Bernadette would find Jacqueline had disap­peared under her bed­covers to take a nap, a two-hour nap. Jacqueline never took naps. She got out of bed, only shortly before I drove in the drive­way. Berna­dette whispered that Jac­queline had not said a word to her in my absence, virtually ignoring her all afternoon. That’s when I knew something was wrong.

By dinnertime, Jacqueline had returned to being the serene woman, with whom I had fallen in love. Ber­nadette noticed the marked transformation, too, but chose to communicate her obser­vations with raised eye­brows, and looks shot across the dinner table in my di­rection. Fortunately, for Bernadette’s sake, Jacqueline never caught on.

Dinner proceeded on a happier, calm­er note. We shared innocuous news from Paris, mostly gossip, which Raphael had shared with us at our last din­ner in Paris. Jacqueline asked about Max. We filled her in on the latest from the emperor of the café society, who had been living in absentia in Milan with his mis­tress, since his messy divorce. We caught her up on Jean Pierre, the architect, and his new girlfriend, who we suspected might become Mrs. Jean Pierre.

I tested Jacqueline’s mood by telling her that Moni­ca and I had lunch at her favorite restau­rant on Boulevard Henri IV. Jacqueline gave no inkling of jeal­ousy. I said that Monica was doing well, and enjoying her new career in immigration law. Jacqueline asked if Monica was still writing poetry, and performing in the underground clubs of Paris. I had to admit, that I did not know, but didn’t think so. I, too, had given up the club scene.

Jacqueline asked, but with little real interest, if I thought my latest manuscript would be another bestseller. I replied that I wouldn’t jinx the possi­bility by predicting. Then, she asked about Otto. I told her Otto was fine, and completely en­grossed in his newest project, inventory of the attic at L ‘Indice.

She said, Oh, That’s why he’s not returning my calls.

I made the mistake of saying, Is there a message you would like me to give him, next time we talk? It implied that he and I talked regularly, and that they did not. Jacqueline bristled at the idea that I should know Otto better than she would, or be closer to him.

No, I can give Otto my own messages, thank you. Her response spoke volumes. After all, she had known him first. She had known him longer. He had been her friend, before he had been mine. Who was I to be de­livering her messages?

Jacqueline had chosen to be isolated. Any of us – any of her friends – would have been de­lighted with an invitation to join her in Provence, to share her family’s home at Vauvenargues for a weekend. She had chosen to be alone. We all assumed, albeit mistakenly, that Jac­queline knew what she wanted. I was waking up to the possibility that she did not. Her words implied much more.

This was not about which one of us was closer to Otto. This was about who was closer to me, her or the woman sitting across the table from her. She was rea­lizing that Bernadette and I had become something more than just friends. Was Jacqueline jealous? If she were, this would be a first. Our break up had been just as much her idea, as it had been mine. Was she having second thoughts?

After dinner, Bernadette offered to do the dishes and the kitchen cleanup. This time, Jac­queline didn’t object. Jacqueline seemed extremely tired. I poured her another glass of wine, and myself a Pellegrino, before asking her, if she’d like to sit with me in the garden. I told her that Ber­nadette would enjoy getting Adela ready for bed. Jacqueline, to my surprise, didn’t object. Ber­na­dette, with­out saying a word, took her cues, jumped up from the table, and began working.

Jacqueline led me to her favorite place to sit in the garden in the evenings, to watch the sun­set. The place was surrounded by lavenders of every variety and size, some planted in the ground around the patio, and some potted and placed next to chairs. I made a point of ad­miring the garden, knowing that it was her handiwork, and telling her how happy I was that she had a garden. In Paris, when Jacqueline was not on the ambulance, or at the hospital, or taking care of Adela, her garden had been the focus of her life.

Jacqueline smiled for the first time all day. She touched the leaves of one of the lavend­ers, then, held her fingers under her nose