He punched up an email from his executive assistant and showed Marcus the phone again. The embedded scan was the exact same letter on pink stationery.
“What do you say about that?” Mickey asked him.
“I don’t have a fucking clue, Mickey. I really don’t.”
“That makes two of us. I was on the phone with this lady when you showed up. She’s willing to help find Jesper.”
“Please, Mickey, it’s going to be a colossal waste of time and a big distraction.”
Mickey was aging before his eyes. His shoulders were slouched, his eyeballs were shrinking into their sockets. It was hard to feel sorry for the guy, but Marcus was getting there. He knew something about loss himself.
“I can’t take the risk of dismissing her, even if psychics don’t fit into our neat little belief system,” Mickey said. “I’ve got two little girls who haven’t aged a day in four years. I’ve got two little girls who’ve got the same leukemia at the same time, which my expert in Chicago tells me is impossibly rare. We’re stumbling around in the dark, and if this Celeste Bobier can shine some light, we’re going to listen to her. So, get used to it, Marcus, because she’ll be here in the morning and she’s going to be your new best friend.”
10
Celeste Bobier blew in like Le Mistral, the northerly wind that roars across the Rhône Valley, driving people mad.
She was in her thirties, Marcus thought, physically imposing, tall with deeply olive skin and prominent features. If one of them—the nose, lips, cheekbones, chin—had been smaller or out of proportion to the rest, the entire concoction would have failed, but in harmony, she was attractive. It was her coloration that especially dazzled from across the room. She had intensely green eyes, vividly red hair that cascaded down her back like a waterfall, and she wore a sexed-up red sausage-skin of a dress and green tights. Marcus might have forgiven what he took to be an obvious shout-out for attention, but her mannerisms were also over the top. Her letter had been modest and reserved. She was not. When Marcus and Mickey entered the hotel lobby to greet her, she threw herself onto Mickey, their height disparity leaving her breasts squeezed high onto his chest. While she embraced him, she said in a light French accent, “My poor man. The ordeal you have suffered.”
Mickey disentangled himself, thanked her, and introduced Marcus as his security consultant. While Celeste towered over the comparatively diminutive Mickey, Marcus had several inches on her. He thought she wouldn’t be as effusive with him, but to be safe, he kept her at bay with an extended hand. Her palm was dry and warm, almost hot, and he released it after a short pump.
“I am pleased to meet both you gentlemen,” she said. “Where are the precious girls?”
Marcus was about to choose between, Not so fast, lady, and Hold your horses, when Mickey told her they were in a local hospital.
“May I see them?” she asked.
“Why don’t we have a little talk?” Marcus interjected.
Mickey told her he had a room reserved for her and that perhaps she wanted to freshen up, but she said she was ready to talk immediately.
She left her case at reception and they went across the lobby to the restaurant. As she stirred her coffee, Marcus noticed a tattoo on her left wrist—the stars of the Big Dipper. He hated tattoos, especially on women, and wondered how much ink there was underneath her slinky red dress.
“So, you’re French,” Mickey said apropos of nothing.
“Yes, although I am not pure-bred. My mother is French, from Lyon. My father, who is no longer with us, was Lebanese.”
Mickey asked whether Celeste was her real name or one she had chosen given her psychic abilities.
“My father used to say that one often grows into one’s name,” she said. “It is absolutely my given name. Your name, Mikkel—I believe it means he who is like God.”
“Yes, you’re right,” he said, “but in my case, I most certainly did not grow into that.”
Marcus wondered if she’d looked that up before coming, anticipating the obvious question about her own name. He set a challenge. “How about Marcus? Any ideas on me?”
Without skipping a beat, she said, “Now yours is an interesting name with more than one meaning. From the Latin, it means warlike, referring to Mars, the god of war. Are you warlike, Marcus?”
“When I have to be. I’m not aware of other meanings.”
“Well, then, you are not a student of Etruscan,” she purred. “In Etruscan, the word mar means to harvest. So, Marcus, you are also a harvester, perhaps.”
“Neither literally nor metaphorically,” he said. “I’ll go with warlike.”
“You said you were flying from Marseille,” Mickey said. “Do you live there?”
“Near Marseille. I don’t like big cities. I prefer the tranquility of the countryside. It is far more conducive to the kind of work I do.”
“And that is?” Marcus asked.
“Well, I think you know. I am a psychic.”
“You make a living doing that?”
“A living. An interesting expression. I live. I work. Sometimes they are the same, sometimes they are different. But if your question is, do people pay me for my psychic abilities, then the answer is, yes. Am I a billionaire like Mikkel? No, nor a millionaire. But I am comfortable living and working as I do. May I ask you, Marcus, do you make a living being a security consultant?”
He grinned. “Recently, no, but things are looking up.” It was his turn to serve and Mickey would just have to turn his head like a spectator at a tennis match. “How do people find you? To hire you as a psychic, I mean?”
“Basically, it is word of mouth. One client tells a prospective client and so on, and so on. How do people find you? To
