Paris, Before You Die

by Mary Bowers

  He looked around the packed lobby expectantly and was met with blank faces.

  “Can we think it over and let you know in a little while?” Charley asked.

  “Of course. As you are aware, the police have set up a workstation in the breakfast room, so Carmichael Global will comp breakfast for you in the restaurant of your choice. Within reason.”

  When this led to further confusion, Henry said, “There’s a nice coffee shop around the corner that has pastries and breakfast sandwiches. It’s a small place, and we’re going to overwhelm them, but on short notice, it’s all I can think of. Any other ideas?”

  Nobody else had any ideas at all, including Danny, so they descended on the little coffee shop in what looked to the barista like an unending stream coming in her door. She’d had it propped open to let the breeze in, and the enticing smell of coffee out, and now she seemed to regret having unlocked it at all. Gazing with eyes that got wider and wider, she eased out her cellphone and called for help.

  Including stools along a small counter at the side of the room, there was barely enough room for the entire tour group and their guide. Some of them spread out and took seats while others lined up at the counter at the back wall, where the barista seemed to be deciding whether to take orders or make a run for it.

  For a woman who had been dumped by her lover, Daisy seemed devastated at Grayson’s death. She walked in the café door and took a seat at the first table as if she really needed to sit down. Hannah leaned toward her and said, “What can I get for you?”

  Daisy waved a hand, disinterested, but Hannah insisted. “You have to eat. You need caffeine. Straight-up coffee, or cappuccino? Latte?”

  Daisy finally pulled a trembly smile. “Just coffee.”

  “Coffee and a muffin,” Hannah said firmly. “Coming right up.”

  Affected by Hannah’s kindness, the others stood aside and let her go to the head of the line.

  “Nice to see those two getting along,” Margery whispered to Nettie, behind her. “Two pretty girls like that, the type that’s usually on the make . . . have you noticed that they even go ahead and wear similar clothes? Like they’re enjoying the joke.”

  “That’s just because they’re the same kind of people,” Kat said from behind Nettie. “Same age, same type, same coloring, so they have the same kind of clothes.”

  Nettie lifted her eyebrows, said, “‘On the make?’” and left it at that.

  Margery smirked and turned around.

  The travelers were patient and things went smoothly, if slowly. By the time the barista’s help arrived, the crisis was over and the group was seated, most of them at a row of postage-stamp tables going inward from the propped-open front door.

  Having let the ladies order first, the men seated themselves last. By that time, preferences had been established, so that Nettie waited at her table for Henry, Twyla sat at a stool at the side counter waiting for Jack and Charley, and Ashley waited for her husband at a table beside Nettie. Hannah sat at the table just inside the door, encouraging Daisy to eat.

  On the sidewalk, people were passing by on their way to work. Several regular customers hesitated in front of the café and then decided to go somewhere else today.

  Danny’s attempts to get them to focus on anything other than Grayson’s death quickly failed. Sitting across from him at the last table in the row, Margery regarded him with a little smirk and prepared to enjoy herself.

  “Well, at least we all have alibis,” she began. “Nobody even went into the hotel when he did, and we all stuck together afterwards. At least,” she said, looking around, “I don’t think anybody went off by themselves. Did they?”

  “We were with Henry and Nettie,” Kat said, including Audrey in her “we.”

  “Not all the time,” Audrey said. “After that scene in the restaurant, nobody used the restrooms there, and I’m sure we all took turns at the ones in the bars we went to. I know I did, and there was quite a line. It was a while before I got back to the table, and that bar is only a short block from the hotel.”

  “Don’t be silly, Audrey,” Kat said. “Why on earth would either one of us want to kill Grayson Pimm. We didn’t even know the man. And Andre says nobody else came in. It’s obvious he killed himself.”

  “I’ll never believe it,” Margery said. “He wasn’t the type. He might murder somebody else and never turn a hair, but suicide? Not him.”

  “But it’s impossible,” Kat said. She turned to Henry. “You’re a detective. You’ve probably seen suicides before. Explain it to her.”

  With a thoughtful look, Henry said, “I’d like to know more about that service entrance the desk clerk mentioned, when he said deliveries couldn’t be made to the kitchen this morning.”

  There was a pause while the others took this in.

  “Oh,” Kat said. “Oh, dear. So you mean . . . .”

  “We don’t have alibis after all,” Nettie told her. She didn’t seem surprised. She turned back to Henry. “Do we?”

  He shrugged. “It depends on how the police figure it happened.”

  “I still say it was a sudden impulse,” Kat said stubbornly. “After all, he killed himself with a steak knife from the restaurant. He must have made up his mind right there and then, before we even left the place. He was in a foul mood all evening, and suddenly he decided he couldn’t take it anymore.”

  “But he didn’t have a steak,” Audrey said. “He had the fish, like me. He must have taken somebody else’s knife.”

  Only lowering her voice slightly, Margery said, “Poor Twyla! She had a steak, didn’t she, and she was sitting right next to him. He must have used her knife. I bet she feels terrible.”

  Twyla, at the side counter with her back to them, seemed perfectly happy with Jack and Charley surrounding her. They were the only ones in the café laughing.

  “I’m sure she hasn’t given it a thought yet,” Nettie said. With a piercing stare, she added, “And I would rather you didn’t mention it to her, Margery, dear.”

  “It’s irrelevant anyway,” Henry said, leaning forward to see Margery, down the line. “It wasn’t one from the restaurant we were at last night. I had a steak myself last night. The knife Pimm used was a better one – better quality than the ones they gave us last night.”

  “Of course you would have noticed that,” Nettie said. “You’re used to seeing crime scenes, and noticing everything at once. And you’re the only one of us who saw the bod . . . the . . . you know, him.”

  Henry nodded. “The handle on the knife was different.”

  “The ones they gave us last night had wooden handles,” Eric said immediately. “And they’d been in the dishwasher. No respectable restaurant puts fine-quality cutlery in the dishwasher. It turned me against the place from the start, but I didn’t want to say anything. So what kind of a knife was it? Did it have a silver handle?”

  “No,” Henry said. “It was from the restaurant we were at the first day of the tour. I recognized it.”

  “A Meinkler? Black resin handle with a stainless steel blade? Gold rivets?”

  “That’s it.”

  “Yeah, they had them at that first restaurant. I took a good look at them. Good lord, he must have had it with him all this time. He must have been thinking about doing this at least since Sunday night.”

  Daisy briefly met Hannah’s eyes, shook her head slightly, then looked down into her coffee again. Hannah took an uneasy glance down the line of tables but said nothing.

  “Well,” Henry said, “he’d made up his mind to do something with it. Either to himself or somebody else. Maybe both.”

  With a shiver, Ashley said, “Lauren didn’t go upstairs after him last night, did she? Thank God.”

  “She wanted to, but I stopped her,” Eric said. “Now I’m glad I did. It took a while, but I finally got her to see reason. She was waiting in front of the hotel by the time I came outside again, and only Margery was with her.”

  “Wait . . .” Daisy said,
startled out of her brooding. “Margery was with us – me and Hannah, at Le Chat Noir, just around the corner. At least, she was for a while. Then she went off to the ladies’ room and never came back. By the time we started getting worried about her, we took a good look around and saw her sitting across the bar with Eric and Ashley. What was that all about, Margery? Were we boring you?”

  “Don’t be silly. There was too much going on. I decided to nip back to the hotel and make sure everybody was all right,” Margery said. “The line to the ladies’ room was so long, I thought it might be shorter by the time I got back. And frankly, I was worried about Lauren. I intended to go up and knock on their room’s door to see if everything was all right, but I found Lauren in front of the hotel. She was waiting for Eric, and it took forever for him to come out. What took you so long?”

  “I figured I’d better talk to the night clerk,” Eric said. “Things had gotten pretty ugly, and by then I didn’t want Lauren going up to their room until he had time to settle down. I explained what had happened and told him to stop Lauren if she came in too soon, but he refused. Said he couldn’t restrict the guests’ freedom, or something. He just didn’t want to get involved, was what it boiled down to. I tried to convince him how serious the situation was, but he didn’t want to hear it. So I left.”

  “We had quite a time keeping her from going up, didn’t we?” Margery said. “We had to argue with her for about ten minutes.”

  Eric was nodding. “She wanted to go in and have it out with Grayson right away, and she wanted me to come with her, but I convinced her it would be better to wait until they both calmed down. I didn’t want her going up alone, and I sure wasn’t going up there with her. I’d gotten just about as involved in their problems as I wanted to, but at the same time, I thought things had gotten dangerous and I couldn’t just ignore that. The clerk wasn’t going to be any help, so it was up to us to stop her – Margery and me.”

  “I’m surprised you didn’t go inside the hotel to use your own bathroom,” Nettie said to Margery. “I mean, as long as you were there, and after giving up waiting in line at the bar, then walking back to the hotel . . . if you really had to go . . . .”

  “I guess I’d forgotten all about it by then,” Margery said, hooding her eyes. “I was more worried about Lauren. We just wanted to get her away from there. God, if we’d gone in, if we’d taken the elevator up . . . .”

  “But we didn’t go in,” Eric said. “We argued with Lauren a while and we finally managed to get her to come with us to the bar.”

  “I’m so glad you did,” Ashley said. “When you came in with her I was pretty relieved, and now I’m even more relieved. Who knows what he might have done to her?”

  “But he never made it up to the room,” Nettie said. “He did it right in the elevator. He must have had the knife with him all the time, in that man-bag he always carried.”

  “Maybe he waited for her to come up,” Margery said, “and when she didn’t, he came back to look for her but realized in the elevator that he couldn’t manage a murder-suicide with a knife in a public place. Somebody would have stopped him. So he just went ahead and ended it all, right there in the elevator.” She looked around to see what everybody else thought.

  Nettie and Henry shared a silent look. Nettie was developing an active dislike for Margery. Henry’s face was unreadable, but for her own part, Nettie was inclined to dismiss anything Margery said just because she didn’t like her.

  “I don’t know guys,” Hannah said slowly. “I think Margery was right the first time: Grayson Pimm didn’t seem like the suicidal type.”

  “But how else could it have happened?” Ashley asked. She looked to her husband, Eric. “You were with him last. Did he seem that bad off to you?”

  Eric opened his mouth to answer, then popped his eyes wide open. Shockingly fast, nearly knocking Hannah over, he got up, ran behind her chair and took off down the street through the open door.

  In their surprise, Hannah and Henry stood up.

  “What was that all about?” Daisy said, rising more slowly than the others.

  “My purse!” Hannah cried. She was looking around at the back of her chair. “I hung it there, and now it’s gone. He must have seen somebody snatch it.”

  “Oh, lord, what else?” Danny moaned from the far table in the row.

  But sitting across from him, Margery’s eyes were bright and interested. Nettie stared at her until she noticed and changed her expression to one of sympathy and concern. She would have leaned over and told her that it was time they had a little talk, but Audrey and Kat were at the table between them, and she didn’t want anybody else to hear. She’d bide her time.

  Chapter 12

  When they straggled back to the hotel, it had been generally decided to take a break from touring that day, but to stick together and go on with the scheduled sightseeing the next day. They’d have to skip the Louvre. With their museum passes, those interested enough could go on their own. Tomorrow, they would tour the palace and gardens of Versailles, as planned, unless the police demanded more interviews.

  The one bright spot in the day was the fact that Eric was able to return Hannah’s purse to her. He was modest about what he’d done, but somehow he’d managed to run the thief down and when he did, the man threw the purse one way and sprinted off the other.

  “I decided I’d better get the purse instead of keeping after the thief,” he said, a little shame-faced. “I had to let him get away.”

  “Did you get a good look at him?” Henry asked.

  Eric shrugged. His blush still hadn’t faded. “Ratty-looking jeans, gray hoodie. Kinda thirtiesh – not a kid. Skinny. I think he had dark hair, but I’m not sure. I was looking at the back of the hoodie most of the time. He turned around a few times to see if I was still following. When he threw the purse aside, I thought he must have taken the wallet, at least, but when I looked inside it was all there. Wallet, cellphone, Métro and museum passes. I don’t think anything is missing.”

  The purse itself had been valuable, a pale pink Gucci, and Hannah was ecstatic to get it back. She took a quick look through it, said everything was there, then she threw her arms around Eric’s neck and kissed him. In her enthusiasm, she aimed her lips directly onto his and prolonged the moment.

  Fortunately, Ashley, beaming at her husband the hero, didn’t seem to mind. When the moment seemed long enough, Ashley peeled Hannah away from Eric’s face and made a joke about it.

  Eric stood there sheepishly smiling and coming very close to shuffling his feet.

  Another thing that relieved everyone was the fact that Lauren was back. In the lobby, where everyone lingered, the group hovered protectively around her and offered condolences. Jack had been the first to step forward, and to everyone’s surprise, he handled the situation beautifully.

  “Twyla and I are here to help, and we want you to stay near us from now on,” he said in a gentler way than Nettie had thought him capable of. “I’ve been traveling on business all my life. I can make all the travel arrangements for you, and Twyla and I are going to go with you, when you decide you’re ready. We’ve talked it all over already, and we’re not taking no for an answer. Now, don’t feel like you need to make any decisions today. Whenever you’re ready, we are too, aren’t we Twyla?”

  “And if you’d like me to stay with you for a while in New York, I will,” Twyla said. “I’ve got some vacation time coming, and there’s nothing else I’d rather do with it.”

  After a hortatory throat-clearing, Jack added, “I’ve just been through this kind of loss myself, not too long ago. I can help with all the details.”

  “But,” Lauren said meekly, “you’ll miss the rest of your tour. You’ve come to Paris for the trip of a lifetime, and now you’ve found each other. The rest of us aren’t blind; we can all see what’s happening between you two, and I think it’s wonderful – beautiful. I won’t cast a shadow on your happiness. You have to stay and enjoy yourselves. I’ll be al
l right.”

  But Jack was holding his hand up. “There are going to be at least a few days’ worth of red tape, getting things in order before you can leave. We’re going to be right here with you to see it through; that’s more important to us now, isn’t that right, Twyla?”

  Twyla nodded, eyes shining, more focused on her hero than her friend.

  So Lauren could only thank them. “And bless you,” she added. “But for now, I’m exhausted. The police are done with my room. I just need to be alone for a while now. You understand.”

  “Of course we do,” Jack said, moving closer to touch her arm. “We’ll just get you settled and then leave you to rest.”

  After a forlorn look at the elevator, Lauren headed for the door to the stairway, with Twyla and Jack following.

  As others drifted away, Audrey and Kat took the loveseat in the lobby, and Henry lowered himself to a chair nearby. He looked up at Nettie, and she sat in the chair beside his.

  “So your niece was with Jack last night?” he asked.

  “She said they went to a bar about a block the other way from Le Chat Noir. They’ve reached the point where they want to go off on their own and not see the rest of us, I guess. Charley was with them at first, but he excused himself and said he wanted to take a walk to the Eiffel Tower and look at the lights. Being a pal, of course.”

  “Of course,” Henry said.

  “And we four decided to try a new place, too,” Kat said. “So we don’t know how the others were coming and going from their tables, but at least we were together all night. The four of us have airtight alibis.”

  The other three looked at one another but didn’t bother to correct her. The bistro they were at had been just as busy as Le Chat Noir, and they’d had the same absences from the table as everybody else. And it was only slightly farther away from the hotel, in the other direction.

  But if what Nettie was thinking was true, it didn’t matter. Nobody in the tour group really had an alibi.