A Con Artist in Paris
Page 9
“Watch where you’re going, lady,” the pedestrian grumbled in a familiar voice as they struggled to disentangle themselves.
I realized why I recognized the voice as we ran toward them. It wasn’t a pedestrian. It was Chief Olaf!
“Grab her, Chief! She’s the thief!” I yelled.
Chief Olaf looked even more confused than usual, but he listened, gripping her wrists in a standard police hold while we caught up to them.
“Hey, Chief! Lucky we ran into you,” Frank hollered as we ran up.
“Lucky, my rear! The GPS trackers on your phones went dead and I followed you to the last place they showed up. Now you better tell me what’s going on,” he ordered.
“Huh, I guess it’s a good thing you bugged us after all. I thought we were on our own when we lost cell phone service in the sewer,” I said with relief.
“Let go of me, you oaf!” Simone demanded.
“Who is this woman?” he asked.
“That’s Simone Lachance, the owner of the gallery where Le Stylo’s work is being displayed. She and her security guard Luc conspired with a street artist called Ratatouille to steal Napoléon’s pen and frame Le Stylo for it. Only Ratatouille double-crossed them, so they kidnapped him to force him to tell them where he hid the pen,” Frank ran down the facts for him.
“Lies!” Simone screeched.
“Luc’s down in the Catacombs with a bullet in his foot from Simone’s gun, and Georges is still tied to a chair,” I added, ignoring Simone as I brought everyone up to speed on the part Frank hadn’t seen. “Georges St. Denis is Ratatouille’s real name.”
“I know nothing about any of this!” Simone protested. “I am the one who was kidnapped by those men! I am lucky to have escaped with my life, and no thanks to these meddling schoolboys.”
“Hmm, these boys may be meddlers, I’ll concede that, but I’ve never known them to be outright liars,” the chief said, keeping a cool head and a firm grip on his kicking suspect.
“This is a terrible injustice!” she shouted. “I am a very important person. If you do not let me go now, I will have you all thrown in jail for assault.”
The chief gave Frank and me a hard look and then nodded. He knew us well enough to know when we were telling the truth.
“Good thing I brought these along.” He pulled a long plastic zip tie from his fanny pack and zipped it tight around Simone’s wrists as handcuffs. “I was ready to use them on the two of you if I found out you’d intentionally ditched those GPS trackers.”
“You’ll regret this, you cretin!” Simone howled.
“Ma’am, I don’t know how things work in France, but in America suspects have the right to remain silent. I suggest you use it,” Chief Olaf advised her.
“My lawyers will hear about this,” she threatened, but she clammed up after that and stopped struggling.
“I’m sure Inspector Devereux will let you give them a call when he’s ready, although I’m guessing you’ll have more urgent things to discuss with them than the three of us.” Chief Olaf kept a hand on her arm as he scrolled through the contacts on his phone and hit the talk button. I could hear the phone ringing and a faint “Bonjour” on the other end as someone answered.
The chief had on his smuggest grin when he started talking. “Bonjour, Inspector Devereux! This is Chief Olaf, the American policeman you called unprofessional. My young detective buddies the Hardy boys and I solved your crime for you. We’ve got one of your crooks in custody and the other two are waiting for you in the Catacombs where they were hiding out. You might want to bring the paramedics with you. Apparently they had a little tiff, and one of them took a bullet in the foot.”
He gave Devereux our location and clicked off. “Boy, did that feel good!”
“Good work, Chief,” I said. “You caught the bad guy!”
“Even if it was accidentally getting run over by her,” Frank reminded us.
The chief looked like he was about to give us one of his signature growls, but started laughing instead. “I’m just happy you boys are safe.”
“I wish we’d gotten Georges to tell us where the pen is,” Frank lamented.
“Georges doesn’t know it, but he did!” I informed him happily. “It’s in the cup of brushes where I got the utility knife. I caught him looking at it when Simone was interrogating him. They must have really taken him by surprise, because he didn’t even bother hiding it.”
When Devereux and Inspector Livingston showed up a few minutes later with a caravan of police cars and emergency vehicles, we were able to tell them exactly whodunit, why, and where to find the missing pen.
“Fantastic detective work, lads,” Inspector Livingston said once we’d summed everything up for them. “I will suggest to my superiors that Interpol give you a civilian commendation.”
He turned to Devereux. “Perhaps the Paris police can do the same, Inspector.”
“Perhaps,” Devereux muttered bitterly. From his tone I figured “perhaps” basically meant “when baguettes fly.”
Turns out l’inspecteur also had one more question for us before he let us go.
“Surely Le Stylo played a role in the theft as well, no?” he asked, one angry eyebrow cocked.
“Le Stylo was framed, Inspector. He didn’t know anything about it,” Frank said matter-of-factly before adding, “Whoever he is.”
Frank and I hid our smiles. If Devereux was going to find out Le Stylo’s secret identity, it wasn’t going to be from us.
Chief Olaf gave us a suspicious look but didn’t say anything.
“I’m not even going to ask,” he mumbled on the Métro back to the hotel.
The news about how we’d cracked the case spread fast, and by the time we reached the hotel, we were practically celebrities. The IPAD attendees crowded around us, asking a million questions and hanging on every detail.
No one even seemed to notice when our famous detective dad finally arrived in Paris later that evening. The only Hardys anyone attending the international detectives conference wanted to hear about were Joe and Frank.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
FRANKLIN W. DIXON is the ever-popular author of the Hardy Boys series of books.
Don’t miss the next mystery in the HARDY BOYS ADVENTURES: Stolen Identity
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HARDY BOYS ADVENTURES:
#1 Secret of the Red Arrow
#2 Mystery of the Phantom Heist
#3 The Vanishing Game
#4 Into Thin Air
#5 Peril at Granite Peak
#6 The Battle of Bayport
#7 Shadows at Predator Reef
#8 Deception on the Set
#9 The Curse of the Ancient Emerald
#10 Tunnel of Secrets
#11 Showdown at Widow Creek
#12 The Madman of Black Bear Mountain
#13 Bound for Danger
#14 Attack of the Bayport Beast
COMING SOON:
#16 Stolen Identity
This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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First Aladdin paperback edition September 2017
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Library of Congress Control Number 2017943564
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