The Complete Mystery Collection

by Michaela Thompson

  Back to Paris

  The village of Chateau Josse was not a major stop on the railroad. The only train to Paris left around one in the afternoon, which meant I had several hours to kill after I bought my ticket. The one-room station had a few upright benches, timetables on the walls, a dozing clerk at the window, and a couple of shiny snack-vending machines. It also had the one thing I had most hoped to see: a pay telephone. I fell into the booth, pressing coins in the slot with trembling fingers, and soon was listening to the short buzzes that meant the phone was ringing in Kitty’s apartment in Paris. She answered, sounding breathless and abrupt. “Kitty? Kitty?”

  “Georgia Lee! Georgia Lee, where are you?”

  “Kitty.” I started to snivel. “Don’t hang up.”

  “No, of course I won’t hang up. Are you all right?” She sounded near tears herself. We were a fine pair.

  After a few tries, I managed to tell her I was in Chateau Josse, which I had ascertained was to the southeast of Paris. Then I said, “What’s happening there?”

  “What’s happening? The papers are saying you and your gang double-crossed the police and stole the mirror yesterday. Jack is so mad with you for not telling him.”

  Oh, no. I stole the mirror? Bubbles of hysteria rose in my throat. Choking them down, I said, “What about the ransom?”

  “Nobody picked it up. Too much commotion. They’re saying it was a smooth and ruthless operation!”

  I leaned against the wall of the booth, gasping with out-of-control spasms that might have been laughter or sobs.

  “I tried to tell that inspector, Gilles Perret, that you’d never do a thing like that, but I don’t know if he believed me.”

  “Ah— ah—”

  “Are you all right?”

  “Whoo.”

  “And then the other thing—”

  I couldn’t believe there was another thing. “What?”

  “Somebody broke in and trashed our office last night.”

  That sobered me. “No!”

  “Yes. Jack called not long ago. He walked by the door this morning, and he knew something was up because he smelled Sphinx all the way out in the hall. They poured it over everything— my slipcover samples, the typewriters— he said the place reeks.”

  I didn’t say anything. It seemed likely that this was retaliation for my having alerted the police and foiled the ransom pickup. That made a clean sweep: Bruno Blanc, the police, unknown office-trashers, all out after Georgia Lee Maxwell. Were any of them closing in, even now, on the Chateau Josse train station?

  “Georgia Lee?”

  “Yes?”

  “Forgive me for asking this, but—”

  “No, Kitty, I did not double-cross the police and steal the damn mirror. I was abducted by Bruno Blanc. Give me a break!”

  “I said forgive me.”

  “For crying out loud!” I thought I heard her sniffling at the other end of the line. Then it broke over me: “What about Twinkie? Did somebody feed Twinkie?”

  Her reply, I thought, held a trace of moral superiority: “I went and got Twinkie last night. She’s here with me. She seemed upset, so I gave her some foie gras. She’s asleep in front of the fire.”

  I was overcome. Twinkie was safe, warm, and stuffed with foie gras. After I thanked Kitty profusely she said, “What are you going to do now?”

  I didn’t know. I was a fugitive. The police felt burned, and I didn’t know whether they would believe me if I tried to explain. If they didn’t, the simple solution would be to lock me up. My recent experiences in that line didn’t make me more eager to be locked up. “I have a ticket for Paris, but—” I began.

  Kitty broke in. “You can’t go home. You’d better come here.”

  “Do you realize what you’re saying?

  “Yes.”

  “Everybody in the world is after me. They may be watching your place, too.”

  She must have been thinking about it, because she said, instantly, “So this is what we’ll do. When the train comes in, take a taxi to Chez Adele”— the cafe around the corner from Kitty’s place— “and I’ll meet you there with one of Alba’s uniforms. If you wear that, you can walk right in and they won’t look at you twice.”

  Alba was Kitty’s Portuguese housekeeper. Surely Kitty was right. A slightly disheveled housekeeper would be the last person they’d scrutinize. Still, I felt constrained to say, “Are you sure? You could get in real trouble.”

  “What time does the train arrive?”

  I didn’t argue any more. We made our final arrangements and hung up, and I had nothing left to do but wait for the train.

  This I did without incident. The time passed slowly. I sat on one of the benches, drinking coffee and eating cookies from the vending machine. I was afraid to expose myself by leaving the station. In the warmth of the waiting room, fatigue began to win out, and I kept waking myself up when my head dropped over. I got up and wandered outside, walking up and down the windswept platform. It looked like rain.

  People began to drift in about an hour before time, and when the train arrived a knot of us, maybe ten in all, stood on the platform. After I boarded, found a seat, and saw the last of the Chateau Josse station, I could no longer keep my eyes open. I slept heavily all the way to Paris, waking from my stupor only occasionally, to see this or that platform sliding by through a rain-streaked window. When the train pulled in I roused myself and went to find the taxi line. Soon, I was on my way to Chez Adele. I was in Paris. I had made it back.

  Reunion

  Kitty lived on the Avenue Gabriel, near the Rond Point of the Champs-Elysées and a mere stone’s throw, if that were your political inclination, from the presidential palace. Chez Adele, around the corner, was filled with babble and smoke. Its decor was as upscale as the neighborhood, with hanging Tiffany-style lamps, red plush upholstery, and stained-glass panels. Harried pink-uniformed waitresses bustled through the crowd of late lunchers.

  I found Kitty at a dark corner table, a white porcelain teapot and cups in front of her and a shopping bag from Hermès on the floor at her feet. She was wearing thigh-high boots, tight suede pants, and an oversized jacket with braid trim, epaulets, and frogs that looked like part of a band uniform. I sat down, and she looked at me and said, “Good Lord. Do you want a brandy?”

  I’d done my best in the ladies’ room at the station, but I was well aware that a dab of lipstick wasn’t going to salvage what abduction, sleeplessness, and leaf-burrowing had done to my appearance. “I’ll take tea. Break out the brandy at your place, assuming I make it there.”

  She poured and said, “I went to the office. The police wanted me to see if anything was missing.”

  “And was anything missing?”

  “Nothing of mine. I couldn’t tell about your stuff.”

  We sipped. She indicated the Hermès bag. “The uniform’s in there. I brought one of Alba’s cardigans, too. And a string bag with some apples in it, so you’ll look like you went shopping.”

  “Alba doesn’t mind?”

  “She’s not there. Today isn’t one of her days. She leaves an extra uniform at my place. The sweater she must’ve forgotten, I guess.”

  “I hope this works. Have the papers been running my picture?”

  “No. You’re lucky the Ministry of Defense scandal broke. You’re not getting the play you would have normally.”

  “Fickle fame.” I was dying to get to Kitty’s. I wanted to see Twinkie. I picked up the bag and went to the ladies’ room.

  In one of the stalls, I took off my disgusting garments. Putting Alba’s starched white dress on my unwashed body seemed like a desecration. I buttoned it and slipped on the pale blue cardigan. The ensemble was completed by Kitty’s artistic touch of the string bag with apples. I didn’t know whether I looked terribly Portuguese— I’d never heard of a Paris cleaning lady who wasn’t Portuguese— but surely I could pass at a distance. I shoved my discarded clothes into the Hermès bag and returned to the table.

>   When Kitty saw me she said, “Swell.” I didn’t ask what the comment implied. She picked up the loaded Hermès bag and, looking like she was going home after a multi-thousand-dollar shopping spree, left me to sip dregs and wait till she got there.

  The cafe was so jammed it was unlikely that my transformation had been noticed. I allowed Kitty a full ten minutes, then followed her.

  A light rain was falling, making it reasonable for me to keep my head lowered. From the corner of my eye I tried to see if anyone was lurking in the park across the street. I saw a few people rushing by, sheltering under umbrellas, and a couple of dog-walkers, and that was it. I turned my gaze to the drops hitting the sidewalk. I was somebody’s nurse, cleaning lady, housekeeper, caught in the rain during an apple-buying excursion. Either the uniform conferred anonymity or nobody was watching, because soon I was inside Kitty’s place, giving her a shaky, but triumphant, hug.

  Kitty’s apartment is posh. When her estranged husband, Luc de Villiers-Marigny, decamped for the Riviera to indulge his dissipations, he more or less gave it to her, although he remains the legal owner. She lives in fear that he’ll straighten himself out and return to claim it. In the meantime, she has french windows and a long balcony with a view of the Champs and the Grand Palais, marble fireplaces in every room, ornate plaster mouldings, and Luc’s collection of sexually explicit pre-Columbian statuary. When Kitty is squeezed for cash she has been known to sell a statue, although she prefers to pawn them.

  I looked around for Twinkie. She was crouched on the coffee table, eyeing me sullenly. When I picked her up and held her close, crooning, “Here I am, Twinks. Here I am, girl,” she squeaked in protest and twisted her body out of my grasp. She landed on the floor, shook herself all over, sat down with her back to me, and began washing her face.

  “She’s mad at you for leaving her,” Kitty said in a soothing tone.

  I was nettled. “To hell with her,” I said, and collapsed into a chair in front of the fire.

  Kitty brought me a brandy and a pile of newspapers with my story in them. I glanced over a few. Nobody seemed entirely sure what had happened in the Luxembourg, but nobody seemed willing to give me the benefit of the doubt. In the gamut of speculation, I was everything from a weak-willed dupe to the mastermind. “Innocent” was not a cornerstone of anyone’s theory.

  I wondered if Loretta and the Good Look people had yet heard of my latest go at dragging Good Look through the mud. While I was living it up in Chateau Josse, “Paris Patter” may have petered out. Which would be a serious problem only if I avoided jail.

  Enough was enough. I tossed the papers aside. “Tell me about the break-in at the office,” I said to Kitty.

  She had settled on the sofa. Twinkie, still ignoring me, marched to the hearth and lay down with her nose practically in the fire. “The police had the building under surveillance, but of course there’s a lot of coming and going,” she said. “Jack said maybe somebody went in late in the afternoon and hid. Because of Worldwide, there’s plenty of nighttime activity, too.”

  “Has there been any more word on it? Did Jack call again?”

  She flushed. “Yeah, he called. Nothing new.”

  I looked at her closely. “You didn’t tell him you’d heard from me, did you?”

  Looking surpassingly guilty, she said, “No, I didn’t.”

  “Come on, Kitty.”

  “I didn’t! Really! But—”

  “But—”

  “But I think he guessed.”

  “For God’s sake! How?”

  “He just… knows my voice. I’m afraid he could tell.”

  I put down my brandy and lay back. It was meant to be a gesture of disgusted resignation, but it felt so good I could hardly muster the energy to say, “He’ll be over here any minute, battering the door down, looking for a scoop.”

  “Give him some credit, Georgia Lee. He’s awfully worried about you.”

  I wanted to argue. I thought of a great riposte, but my mouth wouldn’t form the words.

  In a few minutes I woke up enough to stumble to the bathroom and turn on the shower. I shucked off Alba’s dress and stood under the steaming water a long time. When I got out, I found a lace-trimmed nightgown Kitty had hung on the door. I put it on, went to the darkened guest bedroom, and slid between crisp sheets. Just as I was falling asleep, the bed shook gently. A cold nose nudged mine. Emitting breathy purrs, Twinkie curled up next to me, and the two of us settled down for a nap.

  In the Office

  When I woke, it was dark. Twinkie was gone. A light was on in the living room, and I could hear voices. I found a man-sized navy terrycloth robe in the closet, put it on, and crept out to see what was happening. Kitty was on the sofa, legs stretched out and ankles crossed. Sitting in a chair, with Twinkie curled up on his knees, was Jack. On the coffee table was a bottle of red wine, glasses, and a plate of pâté and sliced bread.

  I stepped into the room and said, “Fancy meeting you here, Jack.”

  He grinned. “You can lead a newshound around the block a few times, but you can’t put him off the scent.”

  “I had to let him in,” Kitty said. “He was threatening to flash your whereabouts to all parts of the globe if I didn’t.”

  “Hardball, eh?” I was ravenous. I spread pâté on a piece of bread and took a bite. Duck liver mousse. The wine was a Bordeaux. I poured myself a glass.

  “Tell me something,” Jack said.

  “What?” I sat down. The mousse was fabulous. I spread some more.

  “Where’s the mirror?”

  I gave a gigantic shrug and kept chewing.

  “Sure you know. Come on, kiddo.”

  I sipped my wine. Delicious. “Sure I know. And I’m not about to tell you, or Kitty, or anybody else. Take my word for it, I’m saving you a lot of aggravation.”

  Kitty said, “What about the cops? Wouldn’t they forgive you if you gave it back?”

  “So far, they’ve jumped to believe the worst. And even if I gave it back, would that exonerate me? I have to decide what to do.”

  Jack pointed a finger at me. “When you decide, don’t forget Jack. A teeny head start on the story is all I’ll need.”

  “You can lead a newshound around the block, but you can’t teach him sensitivity,” Kitty said. “Don’t browbeat her, Jack. The woman was kidnapped.”

  “She’s a pro. She understands.”

  I understood. I said, “So you discovered the break-in at our office.”

  “How could I not? I walked by the door and caught a whiff of a suffocating odor. I thought, either a herd of musk oxen is in there grazing—”

  “Camels,” Kitty said. “A herd of camels.”

  “—or something is seriously wrong. I went in. I actually thought about putting a handkerchief over my nose and mouth, but I couldn’t see why that would help.”

  “Was it a real mess?”

  “A mess, anyway. Pieces of cloth strewn all over the place—”

  “My slipcover swatches,” said Kitty with a sigh.

  “Papers thrown around, your Bay City mug and Kitty’s teacup broken. But the worst was the smell. They’d poured that Sphinx stuff all over— into your typewriters, on the extra ribbons. I found the empty bottle on the floor. Two hundred milliliters.”

  We fell silent. I was stricken at the thought of our vandalized office.

  “So that’s that,” Jack said. “Practically the entire Criminal Brigade came to check it out, including a bruiser named Jacques Perret—”

  “Gilles Perret”

  “—who seemed to be either a special friend or a special enemy of yours. I couldn’t tell which.”

  “I don’t know myself.” I felt terribly depressed.

  We all stared into the fire. At last I said, “I wish I knew if they’d taken anything of mine.”

  “We could go and look,” Kitty suggested.

  I shook my head. “The place will be watched.”

  “They’re through in the office
by now.”

  “Yeah, but outside.”

  We lapsed into silence again until Jack said, casually, “This is where I make you happy you let me in. Or do you already know about the back door?”

  We looked at him. I wasn’t about to give him the satisfaction of saying, “What back door?” He yawned, scratched Twinkie’s head and said, “This sure is a nice cat.”

  “Stop screwing around, Jack,” Kitty said.

  He smiled sweetly and said, “There’s a back door. Nobody uses it except the janitors. But guess what?”

  “You know how to get in it,” I said.

  “I have a key. A few years ago, I did some interviews with a man who had hit squads out after him. Political stuff. He was afraid I’d lead them to him if I went to his place, so he came to me. I finagled a key to the back door so he could go in and out in secret. And I never gave it back.”

  I stood up. “Then let’s go.”

  We didn’t leave immediately. I was constitutionally incapable of putting on my slacks, sweater, and camel coat again, and I didn’t particularly want to wear Alba’s uniform, so we had to find an outfit of Kitty’s for me. Since she’s taller and thinner than I it was a complicated matter, made more complicated because we had diametrically opposing views about what would look good on me.

  “Those stripes are great, Georgia Lee.”

  “But it hangs like a sack. Look at the way it hangs.”

  “It’s supposed to be that way. It’s made that way.”

  “I could never in my life go out looking like this.”

  “Try this one, then.”

  We continued, with Jack in the living room yelling, “Are we going or what?” until we settled on a getup neither of us liked: a rhinestone-studded olive green velour sweatshirt that reached almost to my knees and skintight silver pants. Then we all trooped down to Jack’s car.

  The drizzle had let up, but the streets were damp and glistening, the streetlights fuzzy-looking in the saturated air. It was about ten o’clock at night. The Rue du Quatre-Septembre, so busy during the day, was almost deserted. The glass fronts of banks and office buildings looked shadowy and hostile.