CH 80 Lead up to Paris

Caro Jolicoeur wouldn't listen to her apology.

"Don't worry about it," she said easily, cutting Bonnie off mid-explanation. "Life gets in the way sometimes, I know. To be honest," she went on confidingly, "what with everything you've got going on, I'm surprised you got back to me so soon. I heard something about you being really swamped at work."

"It has been pretty intense," Bonnie allowed. "I'm getting two presentations ready for a symposium next week. I suppose Bear mentioned it."

Caro screwed her face up thoughtfully. "I think, actually, it was Danny. He was finishing up a drawing for you — you must know the one I mean."

Bonnie stifled a gasp, not quite believing her luck that Caro'd seen the drawing. "The one of the boy and dinosaur?" she prompted.

"At the pizza parlor," Caro said, with a nod. She smiled reminiscently. "Such a sweet picture — and funny, too! That boy's really gifted, but then, I don't have to tell you that!"

"No." Bonnie waited, breathless, mentally willing Caro to elaborate.

She did not disappoint. "Well, as you can imagine, I was curious about the place setting in front of the empty chair at the table, so I asked Danny about it, and he explained that the boy's friend in the story couldn't have pizza with him as usual because she'd had to stay late at work and also because she'd had a friend who'd died and was too sad to go out. I put two and two together, and figured he meant you."

At this proof of Danny's missing her, tears welled in Bonnie's eyes, tears Caro was chagrined to see and wrongly ascribed to her having touched on Bonnie's grief. "I'm sorry," she said, her dark eyes full of sympathy. "That was thoughtless of me. And I haven't even asked how you're doing. Feeling any better?"

"Yes," Bonnie assured her quickly, managing a fleeting smile. "It gets a little easier every day. Thank you." Flustered, unable to meet Caro's kind gaze directly, she hurried on, "I, um… checked the movie listings for this coming weekend. There are a couple of animated features that look promising…"

"If it's all the same to you, Bonnie," Caro interrupted, "I'd just as soon we wait until the end of the month. They're releasing the next Wizkidz movie on the twenty-ninth, and Luc's already begging me to take him. He's a huge fan."

"Oh!" Bonnie'd been prepared to set aside a Saturday or Sunday afternoon for the outing, but, with everything she had yet to do before leaving for Paris, it was, in truth, time she could ill afford to spare. "Are you sure? I won't deny it'd be more convenient for me…"

"All the more reason, then," Caro said decidedly. "A word to the wise, though: you're going to want snap those tickets up as soon as they're available. They go on sale the twenty-first."

"Thanks for the warning. I'll schedule a reminder." She suited action to words, and, shortly after, they said their good-byes, Caro wishing Bonnie good luck and safe travels, and Bonnie promising to call back with a specific date and time once the tickets had been purchased.

She set down her phone with a quiet sigh, lighter in her heart for Caro's understanding and, on account of it, more optimistic as well regarding her chances of mending fences with Bear. She was under no illusion that he would be as easygoing or quick to forgive as Caro, but she felt more cheerful about eventually getting through to him and regaining his trust. It would take time, patience, and, if he continued to be stiff and distant, more moxie than she'd shown to date, but she was determined to be strong and undeterred in her efforts to make peace. She went to bed that night resolute and hopeful, fully intent on setting her plan in motion the very next day.

She woke, however, to a phone call that gave her thoughts a new direction and sent her flying barefoot and in her pjs to her grandfather's suite of rooms. He was sitting in his recliner tranquilly reading his tablet when she burst in on him, waving the device like a madwoman. "He found it, Gramps! The marriage record! Richard found it!"

Booth smiled at her excitement, amused and pleased for her at once. "Good news, I take it."

"The best! Look at this!" She crouched by his chair, and, passing him the phone, explained, "He sent a photo of the document. See there?" She pointed at the center of the screen where, embedded in a passage of practically indecipherable script, a familiar name nonetheless jumped out. "The bride's identified as Magdalene Lavallière, and it doesn't even matter that her first name is misspelled because all the other vital information — her maiden name, place and date of birth, her marital status as Yves Lavallière's widow — all of it's absolutely right! You nailed it, Gramps. Thirty years on from having painted her into La Coupe d'amour, Lebrun married his one-time model."

"For her money," Booth said, on a note so dry, Bonnie had to laugh.

"Doucette got the wrong end of the stick on that one all right, but, to be fair, he didn't know anything about their history which, now that I think of it, suggests it wasn't widely known even at the time."

Booth mulled this over and nodded. "Otherwise, it would've cropped up in some letter or other. Too juicy a tidbit not to make the rounds."

"Exactly. All the gossip in Doucette's sources must've been, instead, about Lebrun marrying some little nobody for her fortune. That had to be where he got his story. His mistake was in accepting that spin on events as gospel and reporting it as fact."

"Sloppy scholarship," Booth agreed, with a mock-rueful shake of the head. "But that just means you, Bonbon, get to set the record straight."

"That's right!" In a sudden rush of exuberance, she threw her arms around her grandfather's neck and planted a great big kiss on his cheek. Jumping back up, she grinned, announced, "I'm going to see our Madeleine gets her due," and then, danced back out of the room, calling over her shoulder, "Love you, Gramps. See you later."

Such was her impatience to share her news that Bonnie made quick work of getting ready, and was out the door and at the Jeff well ahead of her usual time but not, fortunately, ahead of Bear who was already at his desk when she reached the conservation floor. She did not stand on ceremony, but made straight for his office, and Bear, looking up at her knock to see her fairly quivering with excitement, guessed at once what she'd come to say. "You've heard, then? From Paris?" At her giddy nod, he tried, unsuccessfully, to suppress a small smile, and motioned her in. "All right, then. Take a seat, and show me what you've got."

She forwarded Richard's photo to his computer, and, together, they combed through the pictured document, Bonnie, for Bear's benefit, reading aloud the French made cryptic by the outmoded style of writing. When they'd finished, she couldn't quite resist regarding him with a certain degree of triumph, and he, for his part, granted with good grace that she'd done the improbable and established beyond doubt Madeleine's importance to Lebrun. Dr. Cummings, of course, had to be notified immediately, and, once he'd been thoroughly briefed, an email with the photo evidence of the marriage attached was sped off to Henri Perrin. The Louvre's Chief Curator must have been at his desk when it arrived as a call came through from him only moments later, and it was thus at his request and with the best will in the world that Bonnie found herself going over the document in minute detail for the third time that morning.

The end result was all she could have wished: Henri was warm in his congratulations, and assured her the committee's acceptance was now a mere formality. She could count on presenting her tribute to Madeleine at the symposium, most likely as the final speaker of the art history session on the second day; she'd receive official word on that score from the committee chair in the next twenty-four hours. In his courtly way, he professed the greatest impatience to hear her full presentation — as well, bien entendu, as Bear's — and looked forward with pleasure to welcoming all three of them to Paris. "À très bientôt," he told them in signing off, "et bon voyage!"

The call concluded, Dr. Cummings rose to his feet, and, smiling broadly, reached a celebratory hand across his desk first to Bonnie, and then to Bear. "Well," he said, resuming his seat with an air of satisfaction, "you've done it, Bonnie. You've gotten the opportunity you wanted. Now, if you'll pardon my bluntness, it's a matter of ensuring you make the most of it, not just for your own sake, you understand, but for the Jeff's as well. I'm aware that you've given several papers already…"

"But all at small, national conferences," Bonnie conceded, sensing the trend of his argument.

He nodded. "And this symposium's a whole different kettle of fish: very high-profile and prestigious, so you're going to want to be at the top of your game. Now, I don't want you take this to mean I don't trust you, because I do, but I really believe it's in everyone's best interests for Baer, here, to have a close look at what you've prepared so far, and for you to be guided by any recommendations he makes. He's an old hand at giving professional talks, and knows what'll make the grade and what won't. Listen to him. And Baer, you see to it she dots all her i's and crosses her t's."

Bear bobbed his head curtly. "Will do."

"Good." Cummings stood again, this time buttoning himself into his suit coat. "Keep me apprised of any problems or complications you run into. And aim for being done and ready to present by Friday afternoon."

Bonnie, who'd been getting up to leave, stilled suddenly. "Friday, sir?"

"That's right. I'd like to see you run through your presentation once, start to finish, so if there are any kinks, you'll still have several days to work them out. We'll open it up to anyone in the department who wants to sit in, so you'll get the benefit of real audience feedback, which could be invaluable. What do you say, Baer?"

"It could be a very useful exercise."

"Then, we'll plan on it."

If Bonnie had thought the previous week hectic, it was as nothing compared to the next few days of scrambling to meet her foreshortened deadline. True to his word, Bear subjected the rough draft of her remarks and the slides she'd prepared in support of them to a ruthlessly critical examination, and determined, unsurprisingly, that there was much she could improve on. She was obliged, first and foremost, to revise her talk extensively, cutting down, punching up or rewording certain sections to his exacting standards, but that was the least and easiest to accomplish of the tasks he set her. He wanted her also, and very reasonably, to double-check all her historical data, and, if possible, to verify independently any detail she'd had from a single source.

This meant, in practice, confirming everything Sébastien Beaumont had told her about Eugène Blanchard, and that entailed devoting considerable time and effort to tracking down Étienne Blanchard and speaking with him at length about his many-times-great-grandfather. Once she'd explained her interest in Eugène to the baron, he was, happily, only too eager to cooperate, and even volunteered to send her a photocopy of the passage in his ancestor's will pertaining to Madeleine and her children, an offer Bonnie was grateful to accept. He asked in exchange only that she let him know the date, time and place of her lecture so he could make arrangements to attend.

At Bear's direction, she also contacted Blanchard's other descendants, the Lavallières, but with far less pleasant results. As the owners of paintings that would featured prominently in her talk, they were due the consideration of being informed, but, in the event, the Lavallières were not satisfied with simple courtesy, and demanded to be paid for the use of their photos. There ensued a trying back-and-forth of emails, with Bonnie patiently explaining they were not legally entitled to compensation, and the Lavallières continuing to bluster about engaging lawyers and taking her to court. Finally, it was by appealing directly to their greed, and impressing on them how much their paintings stood to gain in value by being associated with Lebrun that Bonnie convinced them to back down. Indeed, at the prospect of cashing in, they changed their tune completely and were suddenly very accommodating, even to granting Bonnie's request for photos of the six paintings in their possession she had yet to see, none of which, as it happened, was useful for her purposes.

With so much to occupy her time and attention, Bonnie's resolve to talk to Bear about Danny largely slipped her mind, and on those occasions when she did remember and had the opportunity to act, she could not, given the pressure they were under, bring the subject up with any degree of naturalness and so said nothing. By the time Wednesday evening and her scheduled call to Danny rolled around, she was, consequently, still in a bind as to what to say about his drawing. She didn't want to lie to him, but neither did she want to cause friction between father and son, which left her with a very fine line to walk. In the end, she told him, without going into specifics, that she hadn't, regrettably, had a chance to take a really good look at his sketch, and was sorry not to be able to give him her usual in-depth critique. She followed that up by remarking she had been particularly struck by the detail of the empty chair and unused place setting, and their discussion of what he'd intended by that tided them over until Bonnie could gently steer him into the safer conversational waters of how he was liking and faring at school.

It was too much to hope, she reflected on hanging up, that her guileless young friend wouldn't report their conversation to Bear, and so, it was in the full expectation of an awkward confrontation that she set off for work the next morning. To her surprise, she was not called into his office immediately upon her arrival, and when she was summoned an hour or so later, it was to find Dr. Cummings already before her, comfortably ensconced in one of Bear's two visitors' chairs. He smiled at her in welcome and, waving her into the seat next to him, explained, "I stopped in for an update on your progress, and Baer assures me you'll be good to go tomorrow."

Bonnie stole a glance at Bear, who gave her a silent nod, his manner cool but not any more so than it'd had been all week. "I, ah…" she began, looking away from him with difficulty, "… have a few loose ends to tie up, but, yes, I think it'll all come together in time."

"Splendid! Just what I was hoping to hear! Especially since I took the liberty of inviting a special guest." At Bonnie's wide-eyed look, he supplied, "Geneva Duchesnay. I remembered, y'see, how enthralled she was at the gala by what you told her about Madeleine's background, and I figured, if anyone deserves to know how the story ended, it's her. I didn't think you'd mind."

"No, no!" Bonnie said, sincerely pleased. "I'm really glad you thought of it! I completely forgot she asked me to let her know what more, if anything, I discovered."

"Well, she'll get her wish tomorrow. And I had this other thought: since I'm, in effect, opening the proceedings up to people outside the department, why shouldn't you invite one or two guests of your own? For moral support, as it were."

"Oh!" Bonnie's thoughts flew immediately to her grandfather, without whose help, support and guidance her inquiry would likely have gone nowhere, let alone succeed. He, more than anyone, deserved a front and center seat at her run-through. "I know just who I'll ask! Thank you!"

"Not at all," Cummings said, returning smile for smile.

In her delight and wanting to include him, Bonnie turned to Bear, but his expression was withdrawn, unreadable, and she sensed that, without meaning to or knowing how, she'd put a foot wrong yet again.