Code Name Butterfly, page 26
“I got a brief glance of you two practicing the other day,” Danny began, “and I meant to ask you, Elly, if you could cook?”
Nearly tripping on the first stair that led out of the basement, Elly asked, “What do you mean you caught a brief glance of us practicing?” The door was always shut. If she was going to embarrass herself, Elly preferred that very few people saw her.
“Well, there are windows.” Elly glared at the space in front of her. And then she frowned as his question hit her. “Did you ask me if I could cook?”
“How did you tie those two things together?” Pierre asked. He was snickering as though he already knew Danny was going to say something ridiculous. And if Elly knew Danny, he would.
“Well, I’m still confused as to how Elly was taken for Jo. I mean, Elly is bigger.” Elly, at the very top of the stairs, stopped, turned around and stared at Danny while Pierre’s laughter grew louder and Grant sighed deeply. “Hey,” Danny said, bringing his hands to his chest. “I like bigger girls. Don’t get offended. It’s just that you look like you eat cornbread and black-eyed peas every now and then. Jo’s been on that grapefruit diet for ten years. There’s very little meat on her bones.”
Elly pushed the door open, blinking as the light from the hall filled her eyes.
“I was just thinking.” Because Danny wasn’t done yet. “It’s been an awful long time since I had soul food. And you look like you know how to cook it. It’d be real nice if you fixed us something. Man can’t live on quiche and omelets alone.”
“This may surprise you, Danny, but men can cook.”
“True. But none of the men in this castle can. You know what would be nice? Some collard greens and mac and cheese.”
“Sweet potatoes,” Pierre offered, his voice holding a dreamy element.
“Yes, all of these things can be found in France,” Elly said sarcastically as she started down the hall.
“You’re right. What part of the South are you from again?”
“Louisiana,” Grant said, answering for her. “The land of Cajun and Creole.”
“Hmm. That is a bit hindering.” Because Cajun and Creole food mainly consisted of seafood and while there was a river not too far from here, you wouldn’t be pulling out any crawfish, shrimp, or catfish anytime soon. “I’m not cooking,” Elly yelled over her shoulder.
“Oh, I know. Jambalaya!”
“No!”
Elly made her way down the hall to the music room where she knew Jo was already running through her paces. Their rehearsal wasn’t scheduled for another half an hour but sometimes the best part of practice was watching the master of performing do what she did exceptionally well. After all, Elly was only learning the choreography for one dance. The rest would all be danced alone by Jo—should there ever be another show.
Elly heard the music playing before she even reached the door. Benny Goodman was filling the air. It was the song that Elly was trying to learn to dance to. She entered the room just as the horns cut off and the drums took over. And Jo was hitting every beat, every note with every shake of her hip and tap of her foot. Elly parked herself into a corner as Jo danced up and down the room, exaggerating gestures so every part of her could be seen. Beautiful, but the moves made Elly tired just looking at them.
When Jo caught sight of Elly, she went over to the record player and lifted the needle. Wiping at the sweat on her brow, she asked, “Is it that time already?”
“No, no. I’m early. Please don’t mind me.”
“Early?”
“It was dance or cook Danny jambalaya. I chose dance.”
Jo rolled her eyes. “He can cook his own jambalaya. Since you’re here, let’s get started. I’m supposed to meet Jack by the river anyway.”
Jack. Jo’s boyfriend and handler had showed up a few weeks ago, boxes and boxes of papers in hand. In his car had been almost all of what was left of the Deuxième Bureau. The rest of it was somewhere near Marseille. That meant they were not only hiding weapons but French secrets. When Jack wasn’t up in the highest tower trying to communicate with allies, he was kayaking on the river. A nice man, but naturally somewhat distant. Except where Jo was concerned.
Elly stood up and made her way to the windows. She released the curtains, making the room darker.
“We need that light.”
Elly imagined Danny peeking his head through the window to laugh at her. “Let’s close this one and leave the rest open.”
Elly already had on the pair of dancing shorts that Jo had given her and so she removed the pants she was wearing and slipped on the dance heels.
“Remember,” Jo said as she began stretching from side to side. “Lengthening your legs makes your derrière look better.”
Elly’s only response was to shake her head. She was never going to get used to such talk. They’d briefly discussed costumes. For her, Jo had volunteered for something more modest. Elly had been most grateful except that they both had different ideas on what modesty looked like. It had come down to what a bathing suit would cover. The question was would it be a two-piece bathing suit or a one-piece? They had both decided to pick the discussion back up, if and when it became necessary.
“Let’s run through it first without any music. On my count. One, two, three, four.” These moves were something Elly practiced every evening before she went to bed. Sometimes she practiced them as she made her way through her morning walk around the gardens. Intellectually, she knew them. They weren’t hard. They were repetitive. And more than that, they were made up of steps from different swing dances that Elly knew from back home. It was just that sometimes when practicing with Jo, she got lost in her own head.
“You’re doing it again, Elly,” Jo said as they turned and met in the middle and then swung away from each other.
“I’m trying not to.”
“Well, it’s not working. You’re thinking too much. I can always tell because those frown lines appear on your forehead. Stop. Let’s stop. Elodie.” Jo formed a fist with one hand and slammed it into the palm of her other hand. “If you don’t think you look good dancing, no one else will.”
“Yes.” Jo had explained this before.
“If you don’t think you’re the best thing since sliced bread out there on that stage no one else will. You cannot sell a product you don’t believe in.”
“Understood.” Everything Jo was saying made absolute sense.
Jo’s eyes narrowed. “You can make a mistake.”
“Not on a stage with hundreds of people looking at me!”
“Yes! Even on a stage with hundreds of people looking at you. Elly, I make mistakes all the time. All the time. And you know what? You never know it because I learned at a young age that if you keep going, they won’t know it either. Once, I was supposed to be lowered onto the stage from the ceiling by this metal contraption thing.” Jo pointed up and then to the ground. “The thing broke opening night and I dangled above everyone for the whole show. I had to improvise and entertain from the air. And no one in the audience had a clue that that wasn’t how the show was supposed to go. We got rave reviews. Sometimes mistakes make things better. I’ve learned to cherish them.”
Having folded her arms over her chest, Elly tapped a finger against her bicep. Cherish a mistake. What a unique idea.
“There’s no mistake you can make that I cannot cover you for. None. So take that weight off your chest, Elodie. And remember, dancing is fun.”
There was a knock on the door and Danny poked his head in. “We found sausage.” Danny held up the meat so Elly could see. “And I have confirmed that the garden out there is growing the Holy Trinity.”
“Danny!”
“Remember every shake of the hip is a fight against the Nazis.” He gave them a thumbs-up and then he shut the door.
Elly didn’t want to smile. Particularly because she knew she would now be cooking dinner.
“So annoying. Okay, where was I? Right.” Jo held up her hands in a gesture of surrender. “Make mistakes. From here on out, we’re not going to stop if you trip over your feet or forget the next step. I want to see you turn that problem into a solution. All right? Let’s try it with the music.”
CHAPTER 33
The confessional was small and slightly cramped. It was a beautifully crafted box with woodwork that depicted small stories all along the sides of it but it was not designed with a person’s comfort in mind. Whoever had put it together had not wanted people to stay long. Either that or Elly simply was not someone who could linger in enclosed spaces for longer than she had to.
“I must place some very important information into your hands. Forgive me, daughter, but I know no one else who I can trust.”
Already feeling stiff as a board on the slight wooden pew, Elly tensed. “I’m listening.”
“There is a freight train bound for Paris carrying weapons and supplies to the Germans. It will pass through here in two days’ time.”
Elly considered his words. “I do not know that we can find a place to hide so much.”
“I do not ask you to hide it, my child. I ask you to destroy it.” Destroy it? “The train must never reach Paris with those items on board.”
For ten seconds, Elly said nothing. Grant’s conversation with Danny danced in her head. “Such an action invites the scrutiny of the Germans.” As it was, their small town had been left alone, a little pocket of heaven in the midst of hell.
“Then we must be very careful not to lead them to us.”
“Someone will pay the price, Frère.”
“Oui. One always does in war,” he said tiredly as though he too would prefer not to go down the route he was ushering her toward. But Elly understood. They could not simply sit back and do nothing. The small slot between them opened and a piece of paper dropped onto her lap. “The times and different stations that the train will pass through.”
Elly did not take a second to look at the paper. She folded the already folded note again and reaching under her veil, she tucked the paper between her breasts. Feeling the intensity of the moment in her body, Elly rotated her neck under the large, heavy veil. Then she lifted her head. “I will convey your requests. You will know your answer in two days’ time.”
“Merci, my dear. May the Lord bless you and keep you. May the Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you. May the Lord lift up his countenance to you and give you peace.”
“Frère Laval, please keep your death benedictions for someone who needs them.”
Once again they met in Jo’s room while Jack the boyfriend was upstairs in one of the towers trying to communicate with his counterparts in Great Britain.
“He’s asking us to blow up the train, isn’t he?” Danny was sitting on the floor rubbing Luca’s belly.
“Well, we certainly have the weapons to do it,” Pierre said with a sigh. He too was sitting on the floor, but he was holding up a wall, tapping the back of his head against the stone every now and then.
“Can it be done?” Jo asked Grant. This time she had a small cat in her arms. Elly had no clue where she’d even gotten it from. And she thought it was a bit counterintuitive considering that Jo kept mice for pets.
Grant was sitting on the couch next to Elly. He leaned forward resting his elbows on his kneecaps. “It’s not a matter of whether it can be done—not that that would be easy in the slightest. It’s how do we get in and get out without being seen and without leading anyone back here? Two days? I’d prefer more time to scout out the train station.”
“Are we going to do it?” Elly asked quietly. It was, after all, the most important question.
“I don’t want to say yes or no until I see what we’re working with. I hope no one was planning on getting any sleep.”
While Danny and Pierre worked on constructing plastic explosives, Elly, Jo, and Grant pored over maps until they narrowed down the train station, a rudimentary plan for getting the explosives onto a car, and a way of escape.
Because they were up until the wee hours of the morning, Elly waited until noon before she knocked on Pierre’s door. It still took him a while to answer. “What?”
Cracking his door open, Elly peeked in. Pierre was looking at her through slitted eyes and tangled sheets. “I need to talk to you. Get dressed.”
“No.” He turned away, burying his face into his pillow.
“It’s very important.”
“My beauty sleep is very important,” he mumbled into his pillow.
“It’s about Grant,” she whispered. And then she waited.
He punched the pillow next to him. “Fine!”
Ten minutes later, Pierre was still in bed but dressed and smoking a cigarette. Elly sat at the other end of the bed with her legs tucked under her.
Elly watched him lean over and tap his cigarette against an already filled ashtray. “What is it that you want?”
It had taken her a while to come to the decision to speak to Pierre. But she had very few options here. “I need to ask you something. I need you to promise me this conversation won’t leave this room.”
Pierre returned the cigarette to his mouth, his light brown eyes glittering. “You’re very lucky I’m extremely curious right now.”
“Yes, yes.” Elly lifted her pinkie finger. “Promise me.”
“Are we ten?”
“Promise me.”
Pierre blinked three times. Then he scooted forward and wrapped his pinkie finger around hers for two seconds before returning to sit back against his pillows.
“Several times you’ve said something along the lines of ‘the love of a good woman will not change Grant’s mind.’ Are you implying that he does like me as a … potential romantic possibility?” Elly needed to be sure that it was fear keeping Grant away and not … distaste. She could only try to change his mind if certain things were an option.
The cigarette in Pierre’s hand froze on its way to his mouth. His eyes went wide as he tilted his head, looking at her. “Definitely expected you to be a bit more circumspect.”
“Why? There’s nothing circumspect about me.”
“If that were true, you would be asking Grant about his thoughts, not me.” Elly opened her mouth to refute this. And then closed it. Some things very much made Elly hesitant no matter how bold and straightforward she was built. Like rejection. “It’s okay,” Pierre said, a hint of a smile dancing on his lips. “It’s nice to know that you too have human emotions.”
“Oh, please.”
“In answer to your question, we don’t talk about that kind of stuff. Grant is a very private person and a southern gentleman with a capital G. The most he has ever said about you was before he actually met you. He watched you before he recruited you to be a spy. You know that?”
“Yes.”
“I recall him once saying that he could probably watch you all day and be content. I thought he meant because you put him in mind of Mary Grace. But let’s just say, I no longer think he thinks of Mary Grace when he’s with you. That’s all I got.”
Mary Grace? His daughter? Elly almost shuddered at the thought. When she glanced over at Pierre, he was watching her so intently that she felt as though he’d read every thought that crossed his mind. Removing his cigarette from his mouth, and tapping the side of his ashtray, he said, “I’ve decided that I’m going to be nice. I’m going to call in that favor you owe me.”
“What favor? Oh.”
“Yes. That one. You seem like a very nineteenth-century kind of woman.”
“Oh, hush up.”
“You know the sort. Those kinds of girls who won’t say boo to a man unless he speaks first.”
“Pierre.”
“Now, there’s a place for that. Sometimes there’s a reason he ain’t speaking first but here’s the favor I’m calling in: when the time comes, ask him to go with you.”
“What?!” She didn’t have to ask Pierre for clarity. She knew what he was saying. She stared at him in bewilderment. Cool eyes stared back.
“You owe me, darling. And I’d like to think you don’t renege on your word. Ask him.” Pierre smashed the butt of his cigarette into the ashtray. “I’ll know whether you do it or if you flake. C’mon, Grant’s little moth isn’t afraid, is she?”
She never should have come here. Elly tossed him an annoyed look as she swung her legs over the side of his bed.
“It’s been fun!”
She slammed his bedroom door behind her. Ask him, he said. As if Pierre wasn’t demanding that she reveal the whole kit and caboodle. Ask him. Elly stomped down the stone stairs. How did Pierre know that there was nothing more she wanted than to ask Grant to come home with her?
CHAPTER 34
A few hours later, Grant, Elly, Danny, and Pierre drove out to the train station, parking several miles away and hoofing it to a hill that overlooked the tracks to see whether their plan translated from paper to reality.
“There are no guards or people on watch in this area,” Grant whispered from next to Elly as he looked through binoculars. They had split up. Danny and Pierre were on one side of the hill and Grant and Elly were on the other. No one else seemed to be around—the station was fairly deserted—but still Grant and Elly were in the grass on their bellies. Best not to be seen, if possible. Elly held out a hand and Grant gave her the binoculars. Lifting them to her face, she saw what he had seen.
This particular station was chosen because the town was barely a dot on the map. There would be few people lingering around at night. Next to her, Grant pulled out his notes and the sketch he’d made. He leaned in close enough to her that she got a whiff of his cologne. “We have to assume the train stops for no longer than thirty seconds.”
“Why does it stop here at all?”
“People from three towns frequent this station,” Grant said, showing her the map. His shoulder brushed against hers, sending wonderful shivers across her skin. She’d missed these light touches that reminded her she was alive. “They don’t all live here but they are close enough to this area to warrant the train coming through.”
