Fleur De Lies(85)
“Ta-da!” She held up a small sheet of paper. I squinted at the nearly illegible scrawl.
“Gag order?”
“A note from the captain.” She hugged it to her chest like a child embracing her first doll. “I can hardly wait to see her reaction when she reads it.”
“What’s it say?” asked Osmond as he readjusted his cervical collar beneath his chin.
She beamed. “I believe the abridged version is, ‘Liar, liar, pants on fire.’’’
While Jackie snaked through the milling crowd toward the exit, I guided Osmond to the nearest settee and sat down next to him. “You should have joined us on the walking tour, Osmond. Can you guess who our local guide was?”
“A Joan of Arc impersonator?”
“Madeleine Saint-Sauveur.”
“Madeleine dressed up like Joan of Arc?”
“No, she was dressed in street clothes, but the important thing is, I was able to talk to her after the tour, and she gave me the contact information for Solange!”
His mouth rounded like a small planet. His eyes grew to twice their size. “REALLY?”
“Really.”
“Wow!” He fumbled to release his iPhone from its holster. “Can you text me the information?”
“Why don’t I give you the paper I wrote it down on?”
He hesitated. “I’ve kinda gone paperless. Can you tweet me?”
“C’mon, Osmond. You know I don’t tweet.”
“Email?”
I pulled my little memo pad out of my shoulder bag, tore off the relevant page, and held it out to him. “Here you go. Express mail.”
He stared at the paper with the distaste of a vegan eyeing a T-bone steak. “Could you give it to Marion and have her text it to me? She’s not one to blab other people’s business to everyone. And she’s probably got the fastest thumbs in the group, so I’ll get it quicker.”
“Right. Because my handing the information over to you this very instant is too slow.”
“Well, it’s not in the right format, so that can cause all kinds of technical delays.”
“Okey-dokey.” I stuffed the note back in my bag, wondering if, twenty years down the road, some scientist would become famous for his groundbreaking discovery of pen and paper.
He nodded toward my bag. “So what does the note say?”
“The usual contact stuff. Phone number. Address. Email.”
“Did Madeleine say Solange would be happy to hear from me?”
“Of course Solange is going to be happy to hear from you.”
He dropped his voice to a whisper. “Did she give any hint that she might know why my name showed up in her family?”
“She mentioned that specifically. Solange named her firstborn Osmond to honor what you did for the family during the war. And every generation after that jumped on the bandwagon, so the family is rife with Osmonds.”
“That was real generous of them.” He scratched his jaw with a nervous hand. “Did she happen to say when the first Osmond made his way into the world?”
“Late winter. After the war.”