Fleur De Lies(64)

            … bongbongbong … “… painted by Monet…” BONGBONG …

“… tomb of Richard the Lionheart …” bong BONG BONGbong …

“heavily damaged in World War II …” BONG BONGBONG …

            “This is a good time for you to look at my pictures,” said Bernice as she sidled up to me.

            “But—” I pointed in Madeleine’s direction and leaned close to Bernice’s ear. “I’m trying to listen.”

            “Oh, yeah? How’s that working out for you?” She hit the power button on her camera and stuck the screen in front of my face. “Here I am in front of the china cabinet while Osmond was reminiscing with that old broad on our home visit.”

            I blinked to refocus my eyes. “Bernice, how would you feel if someone referred to you as an old—”

            “Here I am by the sofa. Osmond’s head completely ruins the shot, but I should be able to Photoshop him out of the picture.”

            She looked absolutely dazzling in the screen image, her smile engaging, her complexion youthful. Even her wiry tangle of hair looked sleek and elegant. How did she do that?

            “The lighting was great by the east window, so this one really showcases my high cheekbones and expressive eyes. Cindy Crawford used to look like this before she went to seed.”

            “I don’t think Cindy Crawford has to worry about going to seed for a very long ti—”

            “Here I am in the doorway”—zzzzzt—“beside a floor lamp”—zzzzzt—“under one of the ugly paintings they had on the wall”— zzzzzt—“in front of the sideboard with the gazillion picture frames.” She frowned at the image. “That clutter is really distracting.” She pressed a lever that caused the camera to whir and the picture to supersize her face. “There. More of my bone structure and less of the other stuff. I won’t even have to zap the background.” She pursed her lips. “Other than this thing that looks like a cookie sheet growing out of my head.”

            I eyed the “thing” to discover that it was neither kitchenware nor photo, but an intricate piece of needlepoint displayed in a small, ornate frame. The zoom function had blown it up to a size where the details were clearly visible, but the realization of what I was looking at left me a bit baffled. Was I seeing it correctly?

            “Can you tell what’s in the picture frame?” I asked Bernice.

            “Looks like some ratty piece of embroidery.”

            “Of what?”

            She studied the image. “Looks like a funny-shaped iris with a broken petal. Or maybe a lily.”

            Or a fleur-de-lis, imperfect and stylized—just like the one that graced the ring on Woody Jolly’s finger.





                     twelve

            Why would Woody be wearing a piece of jewelry whose embroidered likeness occupied a place of honor on Madeleine Saint-Sauveur’s sideboard?

            The question kept floating through my head as we soldiered on toward the site where St. Joan of Arc had been burned at the stake.

            The rain had stopped abruptly, allowing us to scoot back onto the walkway without our umbrellas raised. We followed a shortcut through a walled courtyard on the side of the cathedral and arrived at a broad plaza fronting the west façade, where we discovered that the pinnacled doorways and colonnades once immortalized by Claude Monet were now obscured by an Eiffel Tower of metal staging.

            “What a scam!” Bernice griped. “What are we supposed to take pictures of ? The scaffolding?”