by Harper Lin
“Feels like a lifetime ago now, doesn’t it?”
Rose nodded. There was still a trace of sadness on her face; Clémence wished her friend could be happy again.
“Where’s your mom?”
“Out buying groceries. I hope you don’t mind that she’s here.”
“Of course I don’t mind. You can both stay for as long as you like. Actually, there’s something I wanted to talk to you about.”
“What is it?” Rose frowned.
They went into the kitchen and sat down at the table.
“I was wondering if you had Pierre’s email password?”
“I don’t,” she said. “He was very private about those things. Why?”
“Well, I just want to make sure that the police are on the right track.”
“You’re not sure his assistant did it, do you?”
“Not completely.”
“I didn’t think you did. I was thinking about it in the bath. Something doesn’t feel right about it. Pierre had never gotten along with Mary professionally, but that’s common in a high pressure workplace. Would she really come to his house and kill him just because she was working overtime? I mean, she could quit, right?”
“Right,” said Clémence. “I checked out her LinkedIn profile and it sounds like she’s quite educated. She could easily quit or transfer if she really hated her position. She has options.”
“But who else could it be?”
“That’s why I wanted to check Pierre’s emails. What if there’s something that the police overlooked? I know they confiscated his laptop and phone, but I was hoping there was another way to access his account.”
“Unfortunately, I don’t have his passwords. I think he has an email for work and a private email. The one for work could be accessed on his laptop, or his boss would probably have access to it as well.”
“I suppose I can visit his workplace again and ask, although…”
“Wait! Pierre does have an iPad. He keeps it in a blue iPad sleeve and I’m pretty sure it’s still shoved between books on our bookshelf. It might still be at the apartment.”
“Do you need a password to access the iPad?”
“Yes, but I know this password. I saw him punch it in once. It’s the year of his birth, 1986. He doesn’t know that I know, but I happened to be over his shoulder when he was punching it in and I saw it by accident. Maybe his email is accessible without a password on the iPad.”
“I’ll have to go get it right away then. Do you still have the key to the apartment?”
“Yes.” Rose went to the coat closet near the front door and found her key ring. “The big key is for the entrance, and this one is for the apartment.”
“I’ll go there now.”
“Are you sure it’s safe?”
“I doubt the police is still there.”
“I’d offer to go with you, but…”
“I understand,” Clémence said. “It’s painful for you. Don’t worry, I won’t be long.”
***
As Clémence approached Rose’s former apartment, she wondered if she should’ve called a guy friend to go with her for protection just in case. She sure had needed it on her last two cases.
She brushed off her worries; she would be fine. What was there to worry about? It wasn’t as if the killer was still lurking in the apartment. She would just get the iPad and get out.
As she went up the staircase, she wondered if St. Clair had already interrogated all the neighbors. Had they heard anything that night? Like many of the old buildings in Paris, the walls were thin. At Clémence’s apartment, sometimes when she was sitting quietly in the kitchen alone, she could hear the couple below arguing. Perhaps a neighbor had done the same to Pierre, mistaking the woman he was having an affair with for Rose.
She put the keys in the hole and turned. Inside the apartment, the windows were still closed, leaving a musty smell. Pierre was gone, but his breakfast was still there. They just left it there. Were they expecting Rose to clean this up? The bread was probably as hard as a rock now. The apartment was deathly quiet. It felt wrong to be there, and spooky, as somebody she knew had died there. She better make it quick.
In Rose and Pierre’s bedroom, she found the iPad on the shelf. She took it out of its blue sleeve. It still had power and it turned on when she pressed the Home button. She punched in the code and it unlocked. Her original plan had been to get the iPad and get out, but she was too eager to look through its contents right away. The account the iPad was linked to was Pierre’s personal email.
She sat down on the chair at his desk and began to read through them. In his inbox were exchanges with friends, Rose and his family, and various forwards and email subscriptions. In the “Sent” box, Clémence learned he wasn’t much of an emailer. He probably did so much emailing at work that he didn’t do much of it in his spare time. Perhaps it was why the woman called him instead.
She looked for emails to other women. He’d often responded to his mother, Rose, and a couple of female names Clémence didn’t recognize. After going through them, she pieced together that one of them was his cousin and another was an aunt. Then finally she found an email from someone named “Samantha Xes”.
“Xes” wasn’t a typical French surname as far as Clémence knew. It was not a name she’d heard of in general.
It suddenly came to her that “Xes” was “sex” spelled backwards. That was the first clue.
The email was short: Pierre, went to the Ritz for coffee and it reminded me… SX.
Reminded her of what? The Ritz was a hotel. Perhaps they had a rendezvous there?
She searched his emails for more Samantha Xes emails. There were only two more, the first being from a year ago. It said, Tea and Croissants this Friday? Same place. SX. The second was from four months ago. Really can’t get enough of those pastries. SX.
Three emails, in the span of a year. Perhaps they had met more than three times. She noticed that Pierre never even replied to these emails. He just received them. Maybe he replied in other ways. They were both private and sneaky.
Who was Samantha Xes? She searched the name on Google, but the results came back with nothing. It must’ve been a code name. This woman really went out of her way to protect her identity.
Clémence needed to convince Cyril St. Clair to help her track this woman down; she didn’t have the technical skills to do so. She breathed a sign of relief that she had a new lead: she was one step closer to getting justice for Rose.
Before she left, she took another look around the apartment. She put on leather gloves as she searched just in case. The police probably did all the searching and took all the samples they needed, but if they could miss these emails, they might’ve missed other things. Perhaps Pierre had left some clues by mistake. Perhaps the woman had, having been in the apartment. She looked in the closet, under the bed, behind the couch. All she could find was Rose’s blond hair. Unless the other woman had blond hair as well—Adam did mention that Pierre had a thing for blondes.
In the kitchen, she checked all the cupboards. It would’ve been easier if Rose was here to help her, so she could point out anything that was unusual or out of place.
She checked the fridge. There were a few rotting vegetables, condiments, and leftovers in a reheatable glass container. Clémence opened the container. Inside was a piece of pâté aux pommes de terre, just like the one Diane made yesterday. It still looked edible and it must’ve been made recently. Did Rose make it before she left for Zurich? She couldn’t have, because Rose proclaimed she didn’t know how to make the dish well. Perhaps she was just being modest, or she had brought some home earlier in the week when she visited her mother.
Clémence would have to ask Rose about this. She decided that since she was here, she might as well start interrogating the neighbors. She chose the apartment that was closest to the Rose’s bedroom. There was a chance that they might’ve heard what happened that night.
She knocked on the door. A h
ousekeeper answered. She was a stout, middle-aged lady with her graying hair in a messy bun, and she spoke French with a Polish accent.
“The owners are not here,” she told her.
“When will they be back?”
“Maybe half an hour.”
“Oh. Do you mind if I wait here?”
“Okay. I can give them a call to let them know you are here. What is your name?”
“Clémence. They don’t know me, but I’m actually a friend of their neighbor, Rose. I have some very important questions to ask them.”
The housekeeper tried one number and left a voicemail message. She tried another number, but no one picked up either.
Clémence picked up one of the magazines on the coffee table and waited the half hour. Then it turned into an hour. She figured that she should just leave her card. Who knew when they were going to be back? She could be spending her valuable time interviewing others, especially Mary.
She had some Damour business cards in her bag, but she realized that she’d left the bag in Rose’s apartment. Following the excitement of her new discovery on Pierre’s iPad, she was careless enough to forget her bag. She told the housekeeper that she would be right back.
When she took out the key, which she had kept in her jean pocket, she heard shuffling noises.
Somebody was in Rose’s apartment.
Whoever it was stopped moving.
“St. Clair?” she called from the door. “Is that you?”
Nobody answered.
The floor squeaked in the kitchen. A face emerged.
“You,” Clémence exclaimed, half surprised and half not.
CHAPTER 15
Diane stood before her wearing a black, cape-like coat and black leather gloves. Her blond hair was tucked under a floppy black hat. It was similar outfit to the outfit that the woman in the security footage at St. Lazare wore.
“Are you surprised?” Diane asked.
Clémence left the front door open, wishing that she had brought a bodyguard with her after all. She was standing in an empty apartment with a killer, someone she’d known since she was thirteen. The Polish housekeeper next door had begun to vacuum. Although the door was open, she wondered if the other neighbors were home, and whether they’d be able to hear their conversation. She decided to speak as loud as possible.
“I am surprised.” Clémence was also surprised by the calmness of her voice. “Although, a part of me isn’t. That pâté aux pommes de terre was from you, wasn’t it? You made it for Pierre.”
“Clever girl.” Diane crossed her arms. Her face twisted into a snarl. “I also bought the baguette. I’m a big fan of your baguettes.”
Clémence shook her head sadly. “You’re Rose’s mother. I wanted to give you the benefit of the doubt.”
Diane sneered. “Oh Clémence. You’ve always been a goody two shoes, a real pushover. Haven’t you learned? My daughter certainly hasn’t. Trust no one.”
“Why would you do this?” Clémence exclaimed.
“Why? Why do we do anything? Why do we live? Why do we die? Why do we laugh or cry? There’s no reason to do anything anymore, so I took what was mine. I took whatever joy I could find that was left in this world.”
“By stealing your daughter’s boyfriend?”
“I wasn’t stealing him. What doesn’t belong to you can’t be stolen, right? That’s what my ex-husband always said.”
“You’re sick. You need help.”
“Pierre knew what he was doing. A year ago, I happened to run into him at Galerie Lafayette, in the lingerie department. He was shopping for Rose, but once we locked eyes, that was it. We got a hotel room that same afternoon and we snuck away whenever Rose wasn’t around. He liked older woman. He couldn’t get enough of me.”
“But how could you do that to Rose?”
“Rose has a lifetime to find boyfriends. She’s young. What about me? I’m in my fifties. Sex with someone like Pierre isn’t going to come by for long. I had to take what was mine.”
“But Rose wanted to marry him!”
“Pierre was scum anyway. He was going to cheat on her. And he treated me like crap after he was done with me. Rose should be so lucky to get rid of him. I know I am. You know what he said after he had his way with me on Friday? He said he was done with me. Of course I didn’t believe him.”
“You didn’t want to believe him, you mean.”
“He said that it was over, that he never wanted to see me again. After a night of passion that we had? In the morning he had the nerve to toss me out like garbage. When I wouldn’t listen, he said that he doesn’t want me because I was an old hag. That I was all used up and that he never wanted to see me again. Well. I clunked him over the head with my purse. It was an accident. I didn’t realize there were so many things in my bag, like a hardback book and all my beauty products. I just wanted to hurt him, but when he wasn’t getting up, it felt good. I was actually glad. I laughed. And I still don’t feel remorse. After all he said and done. I don’t feel remorse at all. He deserved it entirely.”
“Why did you come here?” Clémence asked, even though she had an idea. “Why did you come to the scene of the crime? Did you want to get caught?”
“Rose told me you came here to get the iPad. I figured you’d be gone by now, so I came here to see if the piece of pâté aux pommes de terre was still there. I had meant for Pierre to eat it, but that was before I killed him. When Rose said you were coming, I remembered that it was probably still in the fridge, the only thing incriminating me to the murder. It sounded like no one was in the apartment when I came here, so I let myself in.”
“So you have a spare key to the apartment.”
“It was how I caught my husband. When I found out that he was spending money on another apartment, I found the extra key in his briefcase, made the copy, and one day, I was here, catching him in the act with some dirty little slut.”
“Diane. You really need help, and you’re not going to get away with this.”
She laughed, cackled really. “I already have.”
“The police are on their way,” Clémence bluffed.
“I don’t think so, little girl. Not if I kill you first.”
Diane pulled a knife from one of the massive pockets of her coat, then the knife was coming down on Clémence’s chest.
CHAPTER 16
Clémence jumped out of the way. The knife stabbed the counter instead. Diane cried out from the pain of hitting something solid and attempted to stab her again, but Clémence punched her right on the face.
“Ouch” Clémence muttered. “That really hurt my knuckles.”
Diane dropped her knife. Blood gushed from her nose.
“You broke my nose, you bitch!”
Clémence kicked the knife away, then retrieved it. Clémence backed out into the hallway as Diane covered her nose, wailing. The Polish housekeeper came out, asking what all the commotion was about. Clémence asked her to call the police.
Diane wouldn’t be going anywhere, especially with a broken nose—Clémence would make sure of that. She needed medical treatment, then some jail time.
***
“Are you crazy, Clémence? You almost got yourself killed again?”
