Blame it on Paris

by Lise McClendon

  She mimed contemplating all the delectable mixtures then gave up and smiled at him. “Hi, I’m Francie.” She stuck out a hand and he pumped it. His name was Eli, he said. “Eli, I’m not really looking for tea today. I’m trying to find two students who live upstairs, I think. Jean and Victoria?”

  His eyes sparkled. “Vicky Victoria and Jeanie Jean? They’re my favorite customers!”

  “And they do live upstairs?”

  “Fourth floor. Party central, I hear.” He leaned in. “I’ve never been invited up— yet.”

  “Me either,” Francie said. What a swell guy. “I hope they invite you soon. I hear they give great parties.”

  “Oooh, yeah.” He scratched his ribs.

  She looked at her watch. It was close to 11 a.m. now. “I wonder if they’re home.”

  “I should think so. They always come down first thing. And it being Sunday they’re probably having a little lie-in. That’s the usual.”

  “Thank you so much, Eli. You don’t happen to know their actual last names, do you?”

  “Poof, no way. But I can call up there and ask if you want.”

  “Oh,” Francie said. “You have their phone number?”

  “Sure. We sometimes send a pot up. They’re good customers and all.” He rummaged around on a messy bulletin board above the cash register. “Here it is: V + J. You want me to call?”

  “I can do it.” Francie pulled out her phone. “Read me the number.”

  With effusive thanks to Eli Francie went back out onto the sidewalk to look for the door to the apartments above. She found it down the side street. It was a pretty building in the Haussmann tradition but just a little rundown. The wood door was weathered, the varnish peeling. A row of buzzers lined the frame on the right side, the names next to them faded or missing.

  Francie stared at her phone for a minute then punched in the number. It rang six or seven times then with a clunk and a curse, a woman answered. “Yeah?”

  “Hi, is this Victoria?”

  “No, just a sec.” Shouting then another voice came on.

  “Hey-ho, Vic here. Who’s that?”

  Francie hadn’t really rehearsed this completely in her mind. But now it was too late so she plunged ahead. “Victoria, my name is Francine Bennett. I’m a friend of Reece Pugh. I wonder if you have a minute or two to talk.”

  “About Reece?”

  “Yes. I’m downstairs.”

  “Huh. Okay. Hey, hit the buzzer, Jean!”

  The door buzzed and unlocked. Just like that.

  The girls were in various states of undress: pajama bottoms, robes, tank tops. Both had long, dark hair, tangled and unwashed. Victoria was the prettier one but her eye makeup from yesterday was smeared in large black circles around her eyes. Or maybe it was some new fashion, Francie thought, feeling old and schlumpy around these two young things.

  They sat at a cluttered table in a dining nook, drinking tea and eating shortbread cookies from a metal tin. Francie held the warm mug they offered and smiled at them. Friendly girls, she thought. How will this go down?

  “So you’re students at the University of American Business?” she asked, starting off light. They both nodded, mouths full of shortbread. “Do I detect accents? I’m American. Aussie?”

  Jean raised a hand. “Guilty. She’s a Brit.”

  “Welsh actually,” Victoria said. “We’re touchy about that.”

  “This University really attracts people from all over. That’s so cool.” Francie smiled, wondering how idiotic she sounded. “So. Reece.” They pulled faces. “Yeah, it’s sad. I’ve seen him in prison and it’s not going well.”

  “Poor thing,” said Jean.

  “You knew him well, did you?”

  “Not terribly well, wouldn’t you say, Vic?”

  “Oh, no. But we liked him. Loads.”

  “He came up for parties and other— events? That’s what he said.”

  “Few times,” Jean said.

  “What about any of his other friends? Did he bring anyone with him to parties? A girlfriend, or his roommate?”

  They looked at each other, thinking. Vic said, “I don’t remember anyone.”

  “I remember his roommate,” Jean said. “Kind of a nut ball.”

  “Oh? In what way?”

  “Super shy, you know? In a way that kinda creeped you out. Just staring around at everyone but not doing nothing, ya know?” Jean shrugged. “That Arab guy, Vic.”

  “Ooooh. Him.” Victoria nodded. “He was freaky. He wouldn’t talk to women, like it was some Islam thing, I guess? Or maybe just him. But he wouldn’t leave either. We tried to get him to go fetch us some vodka and he refused.”

  Francie thought about that. “Did he drink? He is a Muslim, right?”

  “Oh, he drank,” Jean said. “Everybody else’s liquor.”

  “He was kind of a mooch,” Victoria said.

  “I know this is kind of— personal. But did people do drugs at these parties?”

  Vic and Jean just looked at her behind hooded eyelids.

  “Okay. I had to ask.” The answer was obvious. “Did Reece do drugs? Or bring them to your parties?”

  “I can’t say if he did or not,” Victoria stated blandly. “I’m not his mother, ya know.”

  Jean just shrugged.

  “So you weren’t surprised that he got arrested.”

  “Not saying that,” Victoria said. “What did he get pinched for anyway?”

  Didn’t they know? Francie said, “Cannabis, cocaine, heroin, pills.”

  Jean made a face. “Oy. That’s bonkers.”

  “They think he’s a dealer,” Francie said. “He could go away for years.”

  Victoria stuck out her lower lip in a pout. Jean slumped in her chair. But they were silent.

  “If you know anything, or anyone, who could help Reece, he would so appreciate it. His parents would too.”

  “Ask that roomie,” Vic said. “He probably knows the whole of it.”

  “Sami? Do you know where I can find him? I think he’s dropped out of the University.”

  “No shit,” Jean said. She rummaged on the table and came up with a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. They watched as she struggled to get her cigarette lit.

  Victoria stared at Jean’s progress on the cigarette as Francie tried not the wrinkle her nose at the smoke. “Anything else you can think of?”

  “Sorry, ma’am,” Vic said, waving a hand at the smoke. “Christ, Jean. At least give me one.”

  Francie left them her card, writing in her cell number on the back. “In case you think of anything else,” she said as she let herself out. She stepped down the four flights of stairs which were littered with trash. As she reached the bottom a voice called out from above.

  “Hey, you, what’s-your-name lady.”

  It was Victoria, holding her robe shut as she leaned over the railing. Her long hair almost obscured her face.

  “Yes?”

  “There’s a Muslim guy who hung out with the roomie sometimes. His name is Zuhair something. I think he works at the library.”

  Exciting as that lead from the two students was, it went nowhere. Nobody at the University library, a small, three-room suite on the second floor of the main campus building, had heard of anyone named Zuhair.

  Francie sat in a lounge on the ground level, a student gathering place, trying to decide what to do next. She eyed various students and wondered if anyone would talk to her, especially as it concerned drugs. When she was in college, or law school, she would never have told a stranger a thing about anyone relating to drug use. It was like a club you weren’t in if you were straight.

  She’d been staring into space for about ten minutes when she noticed a girl with a backpack and jeans studying a bulletin board covered with leaflets and notices. Francie got up and slowly walked in that direction. The girl was reading something at the bottom of the board. She reached toward it, tore off a tab at the bottom, and walked away, stuffing the tab in her
pocket.

  The notice she’d been reading was about a part-time job, translating from French to English. The tabs at the bottom all had the same telephone number on them. Half had been torn and taken.

  Francie surveyed the board. Now she could see tape that sectioned off into different topics: Employment, Housing, Events, General Info. This must be where Reece had put up his flyer for a roommate. In the Housing section several well-thumbed flyers were tacked up. People looking for female roommates, male roommates, ‘extremely clean’ roommates, ‘study club’ roommates, ‘devout and mannered roommates’ and the like. Most of the tabs were gone from these flyers. It was already midway through the spring term. Everyone had their housing worked out apparently.

  Francie had an idea. She had seen a copy center with computers at the far end of the ground floor. Paying for an hour on a computer, she made up a quick and dirty notice, asking for information about Reece Pugh or Sami Amoud, first semester students. ‘Strictly Confidential,’ she typed in a big font. Along the bottom she did the phone number thing, dozens of vertical times. She made three copies of it, bought a box of thumb tacks, and tacked it up on the bulletin board under Housing. She tacked a second one up under General Info. Wandering the building she found another message board near the women’s restrooms in the basement and tacked up the third one there.

  By this time she was exhausted. It was three o’clock and she’d skipped lunch, and breakfast, if she remembered correctly, except for that coffee. What were Merle and Pascal doing? She texted Merle who wrote back immediately:

  ‘At a café near Luxembourg Gardens: get over here now! I need details on you know who!’

  Twenty-Three

  “So? Tell me all of it.” Merle wrapped her hands around a cup of tea, the remains of a salad on a plate nearby. Pascal, she’d said, had to run off and work again. Francie had just taken a bite of a ham sandwich. She held up a finger as she chewed. “Hurry up!”

  Francie washed down the bite with water. “Okay. So, nothing happened. We just talked. Got caught up. Don’t read too much into it.”

  Merle looked disappointed. “Oh. That’s it?”

  “He’s going to help me talk to somebody at the embassy. The legal attaché.”

  “So you’ll see him again.”

  Francie rolled her eyes. “It’s been fifteen years, Merle. Or more. We’re different now. He’s got a kid.”

  “That’s nice. You like kids. He’s divorced then?”

  “Yes. I told you last night.” She ate a pickle off her plate. “What if I told you he had been cyber-stalking me since his divorce?”

  “No! Seriously?”

  Francie nodded. “Knew everything about me.” Her cell phone buzzed in her pocket. She extracted it and stared at a text.

  “Is it Dylan?”

  “It’s a blocked number. Can people text you and hide their number?” She showed her phone to her sister with BLOCKED NUMBER in bold.

  “Apparently. What is it?”

  Francie read the text quickly, a chill passing over her. Someone had already taken her number off those signs.

  “It appears to be a threat.” She turned the phone again. Merle leaned in to read it.

  “STAY AWAY FROM UNI STUDENTS. NOTHING TO SEE HERE, BITCH.”

  Francie took a breath. “I left my number on some signs in the main University building, asking for information on Reece or his old roommate. I didn’t see this coming.”

  “You’re not going to reply, are you?”

  Francie shrugged. She had considered a smart-ass remark. But no, probably not a good idea. Still the text meant something. Like, she was close and someone didn’t like it.

  “What do you think it means?” she asked Merle.

  “Somebody saw you at the University. Heard you asking around?” Merle frowned. “Your name isn’t on the sign, is it?”

  “No. Just the number and a request for information.”

  “It must be someone you met. Who did you talk to?”

  “A guy at the copy center. A couple of students in the library. The tea house guy, Eli. Jean and Victoria, a couple of stoner party girls. A few other students who claimed to know nothing. One gave me the address of Jean and Victoria but the others stonewalled me. I went up to the girls’ apartment. I left them my phone number.”

  “Maybe it was one of those girls. Or somebody who watched you come out of their place.”

  Francie frowned, trying to remember if she’d been followed. “I guess. I wasn’t really looking.”

  Merle straightened and peered around the café. In mid-afternoon it was quiet, with only four or five tables occupied. It was a lovely old bistro, with wood paneling on the walls, glass chandeliers, classic bentwood chairs and marble-top tables. Francie watched her eye the customers, one by one, then did the same.

  “I don’t recognize anyone,” she whispered to Merle.

  “We’re probably just being paranoid. You would have noticed if someone followed you on the Mètro, right?”

  “It was pretty busy.”

  “Maybe we should go back and take down those posters. You don’t want your phone number all over the place.”

  “Actually I do. It’s already attracting attention. That means somebody over there knows something about the drug bust.”

  Merle looked skeptical. “How is that going to help Reece?”

  “I don’t know. But it might.”

  After they finished the late lunch, they took a leisurely walk through the gardens. They determined as they walked to not be paranoid and not look over their shoulders. That way lies madness, Merle declared. It was Sunday so lots of families, children, strollers, and other pedestrians were out enjoying the sunshine after so many gloomy, rainy days. Francie looked for trees in bloom but there were just tulips and daffodils. Pretty though, glistening in the sunshine. As they rounded the big fountain Francie’s phone buzzed again. She pulled it out and grimaced at her sister.

  “Another one?” Merle asked.

  Francie clicked on the message. “It’s from Dylan.”

  “Good.” She waited impatiently. “What does it say?”

  “He wants me to meet him for dinner. At some random place called Les Saisons.”

  “I wonder where he heard about that?” Merle laughed when Francie raised an eyebrow. “You must go.”

  “Strictly legal business.”

  “Of course.”

  When Francie showed up at the end of the narrow allée where Les Saisons was situated, she felt a flutter of nervousness. First date jitters? Oh, how ridiculous. She straightened her shoulders, turned on her heel, and headed toward the red-painted storefront. She got ten paces down the alley when she heard her name.

  “Hey,” Dylan called, breaking into a jog to catch up. “You’re early. That is so not done in Paris.”

  She glanced at her watch. “Am I? Then so are you.” She smiled as he caught his breath. He pushed back his hair in a gesture she remembered well. His hair wasn’t the same as back in law school. Now it was shorter and precisely cut, with trim sideburns, and a whiff of silver over his ears. But nice, and just long enough to come undone and flop over his forehead.

  “Well.” She smiled, trying to control her nerves. Had she worn the right outfit? Was a pink sweater too— something? Were slacks a turn-off? Should she have worn black, gone with a lower neckline, or a higher one? So many second thoughts. She didn’t have time for them. “Shall we?”

  Inside the warm, busy restaurant they were tucked in behind a table, sitting side-by-side against the wall, and in close proximity to diners on either side. This wasn’t Francie’s ideal set-up. When the waiter left she turned to Dylan.

  “Is this too cozy or is it me?”

  Dylan looked surprised. “We can fix it.” He pushed out the table again, inched out, and rearranged things so he sat opposite her. “Better?”

  “Much. Thank you. I like to see who I’m talking to. But the waiter is giving you a look.”

  “Don’t pay
any attention to him. I’ll order an expensive bottle of wine and everything will be fine.”

  Dylan Hardy, it appeared, had morphed into an international sophisticate. Francie was stunned into silence, listening to him speak rapid French with the waiter, ask about various dishes and vintages, discuss some particular with a pinch of a finger. She blinked, catching herself remembering the take-out Mexican food they ate in law school, and the cheap beer they washed it down with. Dylan wouldn’t even get guacamole with his tacos because it cost extra.

  As the sommelier poured their wine she caught Dylan’s eye and smiled. “My, haven’t we grown up,” she whispered.

  Dylan wiggled his eyebrows adorably but waited until the wine steward had left before saying, “We’re not in Waxahachie any more.”

  Francie let a chuckle burst out of her. “I haven’t heard that one for awhile.”

  They raised their glasses and clinked them together. “What shall we toast to?”

  “Old friends,” she said.

  “Second chances?” he added.

  Oh, dear. This was moving right along. But what was she afraid of? “Yes, second chances.”

  After a taste of the wine Francie set to work on keeping the evening conversation about legal matters. She hadn’t been kidding about that with Merle. It seemed the safe tack to take, plus she really needed to figure out what to do about Reece. She asked Dylan about the legal attaché at the American Embassy and how she could get in to see him.

  “He’s really busy, of course,” she said. “So you’ll call for me?”

  “First thing tomorrow,” Dylan assured her.

  “I went over to the University of American Business. Just to snoop around, you know. I found some of the students he mentioned but they weren’t much help.”

  “When did this all go down?”

  “The bust? December. Almost four months ago. I wish I could find the roommate. I think he’s key. It looks like he’s flown. He’s not enrolled and nobody knows where he is.”

  The waiter arrived with a tiny cup of something orange, an amuse-bouche to awaken the taste buds. Whatever it was, melon soup perhaps, it was heavenly.