by Lin, Harper
About eight acts in, Clémence was thinking that the whole thing was kind of lame. Then Ben stepped on the stage.
He looked strong underneath the spotlight. Dressed in his signature black clothes with his nearly black hair and paper white skin, he looked like a haunted figure in one of those Gothic Victorian novels, like Mr Rochester in Jane Eyre.
His voice had a lovely cadence when he read, and Clémence quickly got absorbed in his poem, “The Black Cat”. It was about a lonely cat walking along Parisian rooftops spying on neighbors through their windows: families arguing, children playing, happy singles, lonely souls. The Black Cat finally goes into the apartment of an old bachelor and curls up at his feet.
What Clémence liked about his poem was that he was telling a story, and it completely pulled her in. She felt a little like the black cat, trying to spy on her neighbors. It got her thinking about the case again. She wondered if the inspector had found anything yet.
Sam read after him. He read faster, almost rapping, talking about the finer points of living in Manchester and the homeless people he often encountered.
They were both talented. The girls congratulated and complimented them when the set was over. The boys seemed to grow taller with each admiring glance and kind word from the beautiful French girls. Upstairs near the bar, they all ended up drinking around a table.
“Vive la Paris!” Ben stood up on his chair with his wine glass up, saluting everyone at the bar. Some patrons cheered back. The mood in the bar was jolly and it reminded Clémence of the great night she had in Mexico with her friends a year ago. She loved the nights when everyone got together and had fun. It made her feel less lonely, less like the black cat.
She was glad to see Celine flirting with Sam. Maybe she’d finally get over the taciturn Sebastien, who had little interest for anything. Celine was fun and outgoing. She needed someone who was more like her and Sam certainly had a lot of energy.
She also had a feeling that Berenice was charmed by Ben. Of course she was. He was just her type.
The later it got, the drunker they became and Clémence realized that they had missed the last Métro.
Ben was too drunk at that point and Clémence was afraid that he’d fall over on the side of the street if she had to lug him home in a taxi and help him go home.
Luckily Sam lived a block away and put him up for the night. Rose lived so close that she walked home. The rest of the girls split a cab.
“I’m going to a tapas bar with Sam next Friday night,” Celine said.
“That’ll sure to make Seb jealous,” Clémence said, but she slapped a hand over her mouth when she realized that Berenice wasn’t supposed to know about Celine’s infatuation. “Sorry! The alcohol made me say it.”
“Seb?” Berenice turned to Celine. “My brother Seb?”
Celine shook her head. “All right, fine. I had a crush on Seb for a while, but he doesn’t seem interested.”
Berenice chuckled a little.
“Don’t take it personally. He doesn’t show interest in everything. I don’t even know what he’s up to half the time.”
“Please don’t tell him,” Celine groaned. “It’s so embarrassing.”
“I won’t, I promise. Girl code.”
“Forget him,” Clémence said.
“It’s been so fun tonight,” Celine said when Berenice was dropped off first. “We should hang out more often!”
Clémence was next to be dropped off. She was glad to have rounded up a group of friends together. She had always been friends with Berenice and Celine, but separately. Now perhaps they could hang out together outside of work more often.
When she got home, it was close to 2:30am. No way was she going to wake up on time to go into work the next morning to help the bakers in the kitchen. Celine had a lunch shift and it was Berenice’s day off. And Ben, she didn’t know what he did with his days did except write in his little room.
When she went inside the iron doors of her building, she noticed that the door to la gardienne’s apartment was slightly open. A small light was on inside and it was moving—a flashlight! At the sound of the iron door clicking to a close, the flashlight went off.
Clémence thought about calling the police. There was a chance that it could be the silly inspector in there, but why would he do it in secrecy? It had to be the killer, looking for something.
Clémence waited. Sure enough, after a few minutes, the flashlight came back on. Whoever it was kept searching. Then the door opened. A tall figure dressed all in black came out. Clémence hid around the entrance to her building. When she heard the front door close, she went outside to take a peek at who it could be.
As soon as she opened the door and took a step outside, she felt a blow to her head and then she was falling, falling to the ground.
CHAPTER 15
Sirens sounded in the distance. Clémence opened one eye and then the other. Arthur’s face was inches away. Was he the one who had hit her? A hot flash of anger went through her, but she was too tired.
Her eyes were closed again and she dreamed of black cats, drunk poets, and killers dressed like shadows.
When she woke up, she was in a hospital room. A doctor stood over her.
“No concussion,” he said. “You’re very lucky, young lady. You could’ve had permanent brain damage too.”
Brain damage? Clémence sat up. She had a headache that was worse than the jetleg headache she’d just gotten over. It was more like a hangover headache. She had been drinking after all—and someone had hit her…
“You’ll experience some headaches and minor dizziness that will last for the next three or four days,” the doctor said.
“What happened?” she asked.
“Last night I came home and found you lying on the street.”
Clémence was surprised to see Arthur sitting calmly in a corner of the room.
“You!” Clémence exclaimed. “Are you the killer?”
“The killer? What?” Arthur looked offended.
Clémence explained what she remembered, that she had caught a glimpse of someone coming out of la gardienne’s apartment dressed all in black. It was probably the same person who’d hit her.
“You think I’m the killer?” Arthur spat out. “If it wasn’t for me, who knows what would’ve happened to you!”
“What were you doing home so late?” Clémence asked.
“I could ask you the same thing,” said Arthur. “I was out.”
“How can you prove that you’re not the killer?”
“Look, if you must know, I had a friend with me.”
Clémence leaned back. She raised an eyebrow. “One of your many girlfriends?”
“A girl, yes,” Arthur shot back. “So I have a witness. We found you lying on the ground in the middle of the sidewalk and we immediately called the police.”
“And you stayed here all night?” Clémence.
“Yes,” he said, less defensive this time.
“You didn’t call my parents did you?”
“Not yet.”
“Please don’t,” she said. “I don’t want them to worry.”
“Well don’t you think they have a right to be worried?”
Cyril came in through the door.
“Not you too,” Clémence groaned.
“Nice to see you too,” Cyril said, a little too cheerfully.
“Have you been listening the whole time?” asked Clémence.
“Yes. And this figure in black you saw—did you notice anything else?”
“No,” Clémence muttered. “I wonder what he or she was looking for.”
“The place was a mess,” said Cyril. “The person had been looking through papers looking for documents.”
“So la gardienne still has something on this killer?” Clémence wondered out loud.
“We have reason to believe that la gardienne had been opening the tenant’s mail and resealing them,” Cyril said. “She was looking through the tenant’s mail for mon
ths to obtain their private information in order to blackmail them. We found a short note on her desk threatening someone else for 20,000 euros”
“She had been blackmailing my father,” Arthur said. “Yesterday night, I confronted my father, and he said that he had indeed been blackmailed.”
“Then she was conveniently killed,” Cyril said.
Arhur turned to him with a stern look. “It wasn’t my father. I told you where he was already that night. He’s a cheater but not a killer.”
“Who else has she been blackmailing?” Clémence asked.
“Nobody we know of,” said Cyril. “It could be a number of people. We found a bag containing 76,000 euros so far under her bed. All cash.”
“Oh my God,” Clémence exclaimed.
“What about your parents?” Cyril asked. “Maybe la gardienne has tried to get money from them.”
“I don’t think so,” said Clémence. “They have nothing to hide. I would know otherwise.”
“Isn’t it a little suspect that they left for Asia?”
“No, that can’t be. It’s just a coincidence. Otherwise they would tell me. I talk to them all the time and they never sounded worried. They’re having the time of their lives opening new Damour stores in Asia. Business is going really well for our company.”
Cyril squinted. “Okay. Maybe.” Cyril held out two plastic bag with a sheet of paper inside each one. “This is the note that Monsieur Dubois received. She’d been writing similar notes too. This is the one that la gardienne was working on before she was killed.”
40,000 or the cat’s out of the bag.
The writing was clumsy and shaky, probably written with a left hand to disguise it, but Clémence recognized something familiar about it.
“It’s Lara’s writing!” she exclaimed. “I recognize the a. The loop in her cursive goes half way down.”
“C’est vrai?” Arthur peered at the note. “How do you know?”
“She wrote her name and number down for me when I said I was interested in her cleaning services.”
“The handwriting on the two notes are different,” said Cyril. “Although both are incredibly shaky looking.”
“Maybe Lara helped her with the first letter and she did the other one herself,” said Clemence. “Where is Lara now?”
“If I’m not mistaken,” Arthur said. “she’s working at the hair salon on Rue Saint-Didier.”
Clémence slowly got out of bed so her head wouldn’t spin as much. She was still wearing her clothes from last night that smelled of booze and cigarette smoke.
“Where’s my purse?”
Arthur got it for her. It was hanging from the back of the door.
“Hold on now,” said Cyril. “This is still my investigation.”
Clémence gave him a look. “I just helped you out big time. Lara is connected to this whole scheme. Let’s go get her.”
CHAPTER 16
The inspector was a horrible driver. He’d almost run over three pedestrians on two separate occasions on the way to the hair salon. She’d felt safer riding on the back of a motorcycle four months earlier in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.
Several policemen were already standing outside of the hair salon when they got there. Cyril had called them in case he needed to arrest Lara, but he would give them the go-ahead after he talked to her.
Cyril, Clémence and Arthur went inside the salon, where two women and a man were in the middle of getting their hair cut or colored.
“Lara Silva?” Cyril glanced at the brunette who was washing a client’s hair.
“That’s not her,” said Clémence. She suppressed the instinct to groan. He was supposed to know that Lara was the cleaner.
Lara was sweeping in one corner. Her plum lipstick was freshly applied on her lips, and there were bags under her eyes. Had she been crying recently?
“We’d like to speak to you in private,” Clémence said firmly.
Lara’s boss, a woman in her late forties with cat-eyed glasses, demanded to know what was going on. After Cyril told her that he needed to speak to Lara and that he was an inspector, she let them use her office in the back of the salon.
Lara noticed Arthur glaring at Lara, who sat down and seemed to deflate in a chair. Cyril began right away.
“We know you’re involved with la gardienne’s blackmailing scheme.”
At first, Lara remained stone faced, but her cheeks turned red. Tears welled up in her eyes.
“What were you doing, writing a ransom note to Monsieur Dubois?”
Lara shook her head as if she didn’t want to hear anything further.
“Come on Lara,” Arthur said. “You did enough to our family. You owe it to us to tell us.”
“All right,” Lara sobbed. “Fine, I’ll tell you.” She took a tissue from the desk and blew her nose. “It was la gardienne’s idea that I seduce Monsieur Dubois. Her plan was to catch us and then blackmail him by threatening to tell his wife. Then she promised to split the blackmail money with me.”
Clémence heard Arthur take a deep inhale, but he stayed silent.
“So it was successful then,” Clémence said.
Lara nodded. “She got the money from Dubois that afternoon, and I had been over and she’d given me my money.”
“Then why were you so upset?” asked Clémence. “You went upstairs and shared a drink with your neighbor Ben. Shouldn’t you be happy?”
“Upset? Well. The truth is, I’d come to care for Monsieur Dubois.” Lara couldn’t look Arthur in the eye. “I thought he cared for me too, but after he gave the money to la gardienne, he wanted nothing to do with me, even though he didn’t know I was behind her scheme. He really didn’t want to be caught, even though he was always complaining about his wife and telling me how happy he was with me. I didn’t expect his rejection to sting so much but it did. I needed a drink when I went home, but I didn’t have any wine left and the stores were closed because it was late. I thought Ben might be able to comfort me, but he was quite dull. He kept chatting and I waited for him to make a move, but he never did, so I left.”
“So who killed la gardienne?” Cyril asked.
“I don’t know,” said Lara. “She was bragging about getting some money from some other tenants that she’d blackmailed and that she was about to hit a jackpot with someone new, but she didn’t give me the details. When I heard the news the next day, I’d assumed that one of her blackmail victims had killed her. I didn’t want to get involved of course, so I didn’t tell about Dubois.”
“My father didn’t do it,” said Arthur. “For the last time. He was so drunk after dinner that he fell asleep in the living room and we left him there.”
“I didn’t think he did,” Lara softly. “He’s not the type to do something like that.”
“But the type to cheat on his wife,” Arthur muttered. “With some cheap—”
“Okay,” Clémence interjected. She steered the interrogation back on track. “Any idea who the other victims were? What kind of dirt did she have? Did she make any other plans to trap tenants into uncompromising situations like with you and Dubois?”
