French Pastry Murder

by Leslie Meier

  “Why don’t we have an early lunch, while we wait?” suggested Pam.

  Bill was the only one with any appetite; the rest just picked at their sandwiches and salads. Rachel tried to keep up a brave front, but she revealed her anxiety when she ordered a second cup of tea. Finally, when the dishes had been cleared away and the bill paid, Lucy offered to accompany Rachel back to the police headquarters to inquire about Bob.

  This time, the officer at the reception desk did not send them upstairs, and he simply shook his head when they asked about Bob. Lucy produced the card she had taken from Lapointe’s desk, and tried calling him on her cell phone, but her call went straight to voice mail.

  “What do you want to do?” she asked Rachel.

  “I’m going to sit here and wait for him,” said Rachel, indicating a wooden bench that was situated against the lobby wall.

  “You’re sure you don’t want to go back to the apartment? You’d be a lot more comfortable there.”

  “No. I’m going to wait right here.”

  Lucy sighed. “Then I’ll wait with you.”

  Rachel looked at her with her big doe eyes. “You don’t have to. I’ll be fine.”

  “Don’t be silly,” said Lucy. “I’m not leaving you all alone. I’m staying right here.”

  Rachel squeezed Lucy’s hand. “Thanks.”

  Lucy found that sitting in the lobby at 36 quai des Orfèvres was quite interesting, and watched as suspects in handcuffs were brought in and hustled upstairs by the flics. The cops were easily identifiable, even the ones in plain clothes. There was something about their confident attitude and their aggressive physicality. Lucy found most of them quite good-looking and wondered if being handsome was a requirement, like minimum height. There was also a steady stream of citizens, either presenting themselves for questioning on some matter or reporting a crime. From time to time she and Rachel used their cell phones, attempting to call Bob or Lapointe, but never succeeded in making contact.

  But even though she found these mini-dramas quite absorbing, time dragged in the intervals when nothing was happening and the wooden bench was hard and uncomfortable. It was almost six o’clock when Bob finally appeared, looking drained and tired.

  Rachel jumped up and hugged him, demanding, “What happened?”

  Before Bob could reply, Lucy took him firmly by the arm and dragged him to the door. “Let’s get out of here. You can tell us all about it outside.”

  Rachel wouldn’t let go of Bob’s hand. She held it as they walked along the sidewalk to the Métro station. “I was so afraid they were going to lock you up,” she said.

  “Me too,” admitted Bob. “I think Lapointe was just yanking my chain, showing who was in charge. Most of the time he wasn’t even questioning me. He just kept me sitting there.”

  “Mucho macho,” muttered Rachel. “I hate that stuff.”

  “What was his line of questioning?” asked Lucy. “Did he try to place you at the crime scene? Was he trying to implicate you in the stabbing?”

  “No, nothing about that. It was all about money. How much money did I bring to France? How much did I have access to? Was I carrying money for somebody else?” He paused, shaking his head. “It was so crazy. I mean, I do okay financially. I’m a professional, after all, but it’s not like I’m rolling in dough. And the little bit I’ve managed to save is tied up in my IRA. And here he is, asking me about suitcases stuffed with cash.” He exhaled sharply. “Weird.”

  Lucy didn’t like the direction the investigation was taking. Once again she had the sinking feeling they were involved in something they didn’t understand.

  “Well, it’s over. At least I hope it is,” said Rachel. “Let’s get home and see what Sue has cooked up for supper.”

  “She said something about lemon roasted chicken,” said Lucy, smacking her lips.

  The Métro was crowded with workers heading home for the night, and there was no opportunity for conversation. Lucy was left to her own thoughts, and they weren’t comforting. From what Bob had told her, and judging by her own interview with Lapointe, it seemed certain that the authorities believed Chef Larry was involved in money laundering. She didn’t have the foggiest idea how something like that worked, but at Sylvie’s birthday party she had heard rumors that Chef Larry had been stealing goods from the Cavendish Hotel, rumors that were substantiated by the array of gourmet goodies they had found in the apartment and by Larry’s offer to get more. Lucy doubted that stolen caviar and truffles generated the amount of money that Lapointe was talking about.

  In the States, she’d heard that stolen goods were often sold at flea markets, but the sums involved were so small that the police generally ignored them. She had certainly never heard of any police raids at the weekend flea market out on Route 1. Of course, she thought, there was that VAT, or value-added tax, in France, and maybe that made black market dealing more profitable. And in France, there was more interest in luxury foods. Truffles, for example, could cost thousands of euros for a kilo, which she thought was less than a pound, but she wasn’t actually sure.

  She wondered if Lapointe had actually accused Bob of bringing “suitcases stuffed with cash” into France, or whether Bob had come up with the phrase. That was an awful lot of money, the sort of money that came only from dealing in drugs. Was Chef Larry involved in illegal drugs? It hardly seemed likely, but then, you never really knew people. You always thought other people were like you: you projected your own values and ideas onto others. If you were a good person, you tended to expect other people to be good, too. There was a term for it, “mirroring.” It was mirroring that made people give their money to con artists or dismiss the funny smell coming from their neighbor’s backyard. “He seemed so nice,” they would tell reporters after the serial killer had been arrested, “but he always kept to himself.”

  “C’mon, Lucy,” said Rachel, breaking into her thoughts. “It’s our stop.”

  The long, anxious day had taken a toll on Lucy, and she was tired as she climbed the stairs from the Métro station and followed Bob and Rachel along the narrow sidewalk to the apartment. The curb was quite high and the pavement uneven, so she had to concentrate on putting one foot in front of the other. She was hoping there would be a chilled glass of white wine waiting for her, and maybe Sue had cooked up some cheesy things or stuffed mushrooms. Her mouth was watering when they reached the double doors that led to the courtyard, and she could hardly wait for Bob to punch the code into the keypad. The buzzer finally sounded, and she pushed the door open, only to be met by Madame Defarge on the other side.

  “Finally, you are back!” she cried, wringing her hands. “It has happened. Je suis désolée. I am sorry, but there was nothing I could do. The police came, and you were all out. I could not stop them.”

  “The police came here?” asked Bob.

  Madame Defarge nodded.

  “They searched the apartment?” asked Bob, sounding as if he were cross-examining a witness.

  “Oui. They insisted. They had official papers. I had to let them in.”

  “What time was this?” asked Lucy.

  “In the morning. They came just as I was on my way out to do my shopping.”

  “Did you observe them?” asked Bob. “You accompanied them, right? To make sure they didn’t steal anything?”

  Madame Defarge looked down at the cobblestones, then raised her eyes to meet Bob’s. “I was running late,” she said in an apologetic voice. “If I don’t get to the market by ten, the quality is poor. The best food has all been sold. It’s gone. What is left is not so good.” She shrugged. “And,” she added, cocking her head toward the window where her fluffy little white dog was sitting, watching with a toothy smile, “I wanted to get some fillet for my petit Gounod.”

  “Of course, quite understandable,” said Bob, heading upstairs to assess the damage.

  Chapter Eight

  When Bob unlocked the door, it was all too clear that the apartment had been searched. Ransacked w
as more like it, thought Lucy. The suitcases that she and Bill had zipped and stacked neatly in a corner of the living room had been opened, and the contents tossed every which way. In the kitchen, bags of flour and sugar had been dumped into the sink, and Carte Noire coffee was all over the floor. Bob and Rachel’s bedroom had been treated in the same way, the doors of the armoire hanging open and the clothes thrown everywhere. The bed had also been tossed, the sheets and duvet yanked off and the mattress left askew. In the en suite bathroom Rachel’s jars of face cream and bath salts had been emptied into the sink, making a gooey mess.

  Bob stood in the doorway to the room he shared with Rachel, shaking his head. “I can’t believe the cops did this,” he said. “This would never happen in America.”

  Lucy wasn’t so sure, but she wasn’t about to argue. “What were they looking for?”

  “Maybe it was a routine procedure,” suggested Rachel in a doubtful tone.

  “I don’t think so, but what do I know?” said Bob in a defensive tone. “From what I can see, the flics can do whatever they want. Citizens don’t seem to have any rights at all.”

  “I’m sure that’s not true,” murmured Rachel, who was busy picking up clothes and replacing them on hangers in the armoire. “I could use a hand, Bob. Can you get that mattress back on the bed?”

  Lucy left them to it and made a quick tour of the apartment, discovering that the rest of the bedrooms and baths were in the same condition. She returned to the living room, where she began gathering up clothing and refolding it. She heard a key turning in the lock and looked up to see the rest of the group arriving home.

  “What the hell!” exclaimed Bill, taking in the sofas, with cushions askew, and the clothes scattered about.

  “The police searched the apartment while we were out,” said Lucy. “Everything’s a mess, the kitchen, the bathrooms. . . .”

  They quickly hurried down the hall to check on their rooms, and Lucy heard their cries of dismay as they discovered the mess.

  “My Crème de la Mer,” said Sue, showing Lucy the empty jar. “Two hundred dollars, dumped in the bathtub.”

  “Well,” said Lucy, “the tub’s gonna look great.”

  Rachel was already starting in the kitchen, dustpan and broom in hand. “The coffee!” she exclaimed, mourning the loss. “That stuff was so delicious!”

  After they all pitched in and cleaned up the kitchen, Sue spread out the dinner she’d bought on the way home: rotisserie chickens from a stand on the rue Saint-Antoine, green salad, and a couple of baguettes. “I was going to roast chickens myself, but I ran out of time,” she said, wielding a carving knife.

  “How did you all spend the afternoon?” asked Rachel.

  “On the Batobus,” said Sid. “It’s a tourist boat on the Seine. You can get on and off.”

  “We checked out the Musée d’Orsay. We even got in line, but it was too long and didn’t move, so we gave up and got back on the Batobus,” said Bill. “How did you guys make out at the police headquarters?”

  “Bob was there all afternoon,” said Lucy.

  “Are you kidding?” asked Sid.

  “No, they just kept me sitting there at Lapointe’s desk.”

  “Rachel and I waited in the lobby,” said Lucy.

  Sue’s eyes widened. “All afternoon? That’s terrible. You deserve a treat, which I happen to have,” she said, unwrapping a beautiful chocolate cake and setting it on the table. “I thought we might need something sweet and chocolaty tonight.”

  “It’s too pretty to eat,” said Rachel, admiring the swirls of icing and the fresh raspberries that topped the cake.

  “No, it’s not,” said Bob, holding out his plate.

  “But you haven’t eaten your dinner,” protested Rachel.

  “I’m learning that life is short and unpredictable,” he countered. “I’m eating dessert first.”

  After dinner, the friends spent the rest of the evening tidying up their rooms and making lists of things they needed to replace. Lucy found the police had somehow overlooked the bathroom she and Bill used, which was hidden away in a back hall. She remembered her mother once saying that there was nothing a good bath couldn’t make better, so she decided to have a good soak in the big rolltop tub and poured in half a bottle of bubble bath.

  Lying there in the suds, gazing at her pink toes poking through the bubbles, she wished she could just wash away her worries, but they persisted. As an American, she took a lot for granted, she thought. It wasn’t as if she was an innocent who’d never been touched by crime. She was a newspaper reporter, and she’d been involved in numerous investigations back home in Tinker’s Cove. But there the system was quite different. Chief Kirwan didn’t detain random suspects for hours at a time, the Tinker’s Cove Police Department didn’t toss people’s homes in pointless searches, and suspects were presumed innocent until proven guilty. And in America they didn’t grab your passport, not unless you were actually indicted on a very serious charge. She wasn’t actually positive about this—it hadn’t really come up in Tinker’s Cove—but she had read about high-profile cases in which the defendants were ordered to surrender their passports, and the news reports always made much of it.

  Her thoughts turned to a favorite old movie that she and Bill had watched a few weeks ago, Casablanca. She remembered the European refugees who gathered in Rick’s café during World War II, waiting desperately for letters of transit that would allow them to leave Morocco for someplace safer, like America. They were like those frantic refugees, she thought, scrubbing her face with a terry-cloth bath mitt. They were stuck in Paris until the French police decided to return their passports.

  She was beginning to think Elizabeth was right: France was a horrible place. She thought of King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette and their two children, chased out of their beautiful palace at Versailles and dragged to prison in Paris. She could understand why the common people detested the aristocrats, but it was possible to see the royal family and their circle as victims of circumstance, unaware of the poverty and suffering taking place outside the palace gates. Mob rule was terrifying. She’d read of the September Massacres, when the queen’s friend, the beautiful princesse de Lamballe, was literally torn limb from limb. And when they’d finished, Lucy recalled, they stuck her head on a pole and paraded it back and forth beneath Marie Antoinette’s prison window.

  Poor Marie Antoinette. What a dreadful end. Stuck in jail for years, cruelly separated from her children, then carted through the streets of Paris to the guillotine. And the guillotine . . . How horrible was that? And to think it wasn’t mothballed until 1981, which really wasn’t very long ago. Suddenly cold, Lucy climbed out of the tub and wrapped herself in a towel. All she really wanted, she realized with a shiver, was to go home.

  Next morning Lucy woke with a plan. If the police thought they were involved in some sort of illegal dealings with Chef Larry, the only way they were going to get back to Tinker’s Cove was if she could discover what Larry had been up to. In other words, she decided, she had to talk to him and get him to tell her who had attacked him and why.

  She realized this was easier thought than done. After all, Chef Larry had been under police guard at the hospital and probably still was. And she didn’t know if he was recovering or if his condition had worsened. But she’d never know unless she tried, and she did have a few ideas as to how she could sneak into Larry’s room.

  She felt a certain sense of excitement when she went into the kitchen, looking for breakfast, but she wasn’t about to share her plans with the group, and especially not with Bill. She’d make some excuse, she decided. Perhaps she’d express a desire to visit the Musée Edith Piaf, the tiny singer’s two-room apartment, or to seek out the graffiti-covered home of pop star Serge Gainsbourg. Something that none of the others would have the slightest interest in doing.

  The TV in the kitchen was on when she poured herself a cup of coffee, and Sue and Pam were watching intently.

  “What’s happen
ing?” she asked.

  “General strike,” said Pam.

  “The potato farmers are protesting a cut in their subsidy or something,” said Sue. “And this being France, everybody’s joining in. The Métro’s shut down, truck drivers are on strike, and of course, so are the college students.”

  “I’ve never seen the point of student strikes,” said Pam. “What difference does it make if they skip classes?”

  “That’s the point,” said Sue. “It’s an excuse to cut classes.”

  “That means we’re stuck here,” said Lucy as the coffee took effect, clearing her brain. The TV screen was showing crowds of protesters filling the streets, and the occasional shoving match with police. “We can’t go out in that.”

  “Yup.” Sue poured herself another cup of coffee. “Everything’s closed, anyway.”

  “Is there anything to eat?” asked Lucy.

  Sue nodded. “Tartine.”

  “And what is that?”

  “You toast up yesterday’s baguette and put jam on it,” said Sue.

  “Sounds good,” said Bill, joining them.

  Fueled by tartines and coffee, the friends found ways to occupy themselves, while keeping an eye on the TV. The guys sat around the table, playing poker, placing small bets with pocket change. Rachel settled down with a book, Pam practiced yoga, and Sue studied the French edition of Vogue. Lucy found herself wandering around the apartment, going from window to window, checking that all was peaceful outside.

  “The demonstrators will hardly come here. This is a residential area,” said Sue. “All the action seems to be on the Champs-Élysées.”

  “That’s true,” admitted Lucy, pulling the map of Paris out of her guidebook and studying it. Much to her surprise, she discovered that the apartment wasn’t really all that far from the Île de la Cité, where the hospital was located.

  “I’ve got cabin fever,” she said, testing the water. “I think I’ll see if the Monoprix is open, or maybe one of those little tabacs.” Nobody protested or warned her not to go, not even Bill.