Paris, Before You Die

by Mary Bowers

  “Another detective?” Nettie said, looking at Henry. “This tour’s lousy with them.”

  “Let me see that,” Henry said, reaching for the tablet. He began to read. “The Lion Agency. A lion for a logo. Cute. Off the top of my head, I would have suspected she was looking for evidence to be used in a divorce, but that’s not what her agency specializes in.”

  “What is it?” Nettie asked, trying to see the tablet.

  He turned it around for her to see. It was displaying the home page of The Lion Agency’s website. “It looks like the agency works mostly for an insurance company. In my experience, detectives that work for insurance companies are usually investigating fraud.”

  “Fraud?” Audrey asked, taking the tablet back from Henry. “How in the world does that figure?”

  “Don’t know,” Henry said, thinking hard. “The Lion Agency might have some other corporate clients, but basically she’d still be looking for fraud.”

  After giving it a moment’s thought, Nettie said, “There was something about Jack being part of a class-action lawsuit against an investment company. Could that have been about a fraud? Maybe Hannah’s client was getting stuck with the payout, and it hadn’t been made yet.”

  “Maybe,” Henry said, but he didn’t sound convinced. “Any fraud on the part of a bank would be covered by the FDIC.”

  “This sounded like a fly-by-night operator.”

  “In that case, I don’t think the investors would be insured in any way. Remember Bernie Madoff?”

  “Oh, sure,” Nettie grumbled, “shoot down all my fantasies about having Jack arrested and taken away.”

  Audrey chuckled, then said, “Sometimes, as Freud tells us, a cigar is just a cigar. Maybe Hannah was just on vacation, like the rest of us.”

  “No,” Nettie said immediately. “If she wasn’t working on a case, why would she lie about her name and say she was a paralegal? If she didn’t want to admit she was a detective, why not just say she worked for an insurance agency? It would have been true, and it would have made her seem really boring. Nobody would have asked her about it from then on. She looked pretty disconcerted when Daisy piped up said she was a paralegal too. It was a bad break for Hannah, choosing the exact same career her roommate had. She might get caught, not knowing some of the things a paralegal should know. And what if Daisy wanted to talk shop?”

  “You’re right,” Henry said. “I’m willing to accept that she was on a job here. And I think it’s logical that if she was here with a hidden agenda, that’s what got her killed.”

  “You don’t think it was an accident?” Audrey said.

  “Not a chance. People on the same vacation tour don’t die, one right after the other, coincidentally. This may be the ex-cop speaking, but I don’t buy it.”

  “Okay,” Nettie said. “We accept that Hannah was killed because of something she was investigating. So if we reject Grayson’s suicide as a coincidence, the two deaths must be related somehow. He had something to do with what she was investigating. In fact, since she was having private discussions with him, he must have been the one who hired her.”

  Henry shook his head. “She wasn’t necessarily discussing her job with him. She might have just been flirting around with him, trying to get information. Maybe she was investigating him.”

  “And he figured it out,” Nettie said slowly, “realized he was about to be ruined for some reason, and killed himself?”

  “That’s the most convincing scenario we’ve come up with so far as to why a man like Grayson Pimm would kill himself,” Henry said. “Nobody considers divorce the end of the world anymore. A man like him would have just concentrated on keeping his wife from getting too big a chunk of his assets.”

  “And then moved right on to the next blond,” Audrey said.

  “Which could still have been Hannah,” Nettie pointed out. “If he was being investigated and she knew it, and she was also in love with him, she would have told him.”

  “But in that case,” Henry said, “who killed Hannah?”

  “And around and around we go,” Audrey said wearily. She got up and shoved her tablet back into her purse. “Well, it’s been interesting. I think I’ll go back to my room and think of stinkers to throw at Kat when she gets back from her pub crawl. Oh, excuse me, her bistro bash. She’s been spending an awful lot of time on this tour with a married man. I think it’s just a case of being left behind by the others, but I still want to be there when she comes back so I can needle her about it. Although, with what’s been going on, it’d probably be smarter to stay right here and be sure I’ve got alibi witnesses for whatever’s going to happen next.”

  With that piquant remark, she made her exit.

  Once the door was closed behind her and they heard her shutting the door to her own room, Henry said, “I thought we were a duo, girlfriend. Why did you invite her into the brainstorming session?”

  Nettie slewed a look at him. “What do you think of her, Henry? I’m inclined to like her. She’s kind of a snot, but not really evil, and that type of person amuses me.”

  Henry was nodding. “She’s got a good heart. Remember the way she got between me and Grayson at breakfast that first day? I was just about to lose it, and she settled things down.”

  “You didn’t look like you were about to lose it.”

  “I can be sudden.”

  “Hmm. I’ll have to remember that. So you like Audrey too. But she’s definitely the strangest person on the tour, and the fact that we’re inclined to like her might be affecting our judgment about her. Does it concern you that we’ve got somebody in the group who’s hearing voices from the dead, and now we’re having a rash of sudden deaths?”

  “Why would Audrey want to kill two people she just met, in a tight group of suspects where she can’t escape scrutiny?”

  “Because she’s nuts.”

  “Oh yeah, that. Well, she admitted as much herself, I guess.”

  “There’s something else. Grayson was killed with one thrust of the knife. If he didn’t do it himself, how many people would know how to stab someone fatally? Have you forgotten that Audrey was a nurse?”

  He gave it some hard thought, then shook his head. “Nah. I’m scratching her off the list for now. Anybody can get all the anatomy lessons they want on the Internet. I’ve had a little experience with homicidal fruitcakes. They’re usually not entirely sure what planet they’re on, and Audrey is definitely down-to-this-here-earth. And if she’s trying to prepare an insanity defense, she’s going about it the wrong way, wisecracking all the time. It shows she’s got a pretty good grip on what’s happening around her.”

  “Well, at least we can be sure of one another. We were together when Hannah fell.”

  His gaze turned steady and calm. “But not while Grayson died, and after all, he’s the one I had plenty of reason to want dead. Yeah, we were in the same bar that night, but not all the time.”

  “You would have had to be pretty quick about it if you did go stab him. And how would you have caught him in the elevator? Besides, when I got back from the ladies’ room, you were right there at the table, waiting.”

  “But I’d been away from it too. Did you know that?”

  She shook her head.

  “I went to the men’s room. We don’t have long lines, like you ladies do. In and out and back to the table for more beer. No, it could have been done, but I didn’t kill him. I think I know who did. You’ve got it figured out too, don’t you?”

  “Yes. And I think I know how it was done. I’ve seen enough by now to have a pretty good idea. And since we’re alone, I may as well go ahead and tell you that I never did buy the suicide theory. If you wiggle around all the possibilities like we were doing with Audrey, there are hints of it here and there, but I’m still convinced he was murdered.”

  “And you think you know who did it?”

  “Yes. You’re right, he would have had to be pretty quick, but I’m convinced I know how he did it.”

/>   “He? You’re not still hoping to have Jack taken away in shackles, are you?”

  She smiled. “It’s a pretty picture, but no such hope. I’m beginning to think Jack is exactly what he looks like: a socially-aggressive, essentially harmless bore.”

  “Well then?”

  “Mmm, let me think about it a little longer before I name him. I’m not quite sure. What about you? I wonder if we’re thinking of the same person.”

  “No, we’re not. I’m thinking it’s a lady.”

  “Not Audrey,” she said. “She’s got an alibi too: Kat. They were together, at least when Hannah died.”

  “Ah, yes, Kat. The totally clear-headed, ideal witness, Kat. As far as I know, she’s not a crackhead, but other than that, she’s the most addled woman I’ve come across in a long time. Remember how she cleared us all of murder because we were in the same bar the night Grayson died? And you were in this bathroom, I was in that bathroom, she was waiting in line, and everybody was all over the bar all night long?”

  “Okay, you can stop it now. I get it. Well, at least we can rest easy about Hannah’s death. You and I were together the whole time, so it couldn’t have been one of us.”

  “I wonder if the police are going to believe that.”

  “Why wouldn’t they?”

  “It depends on what the rest of our tour mates told them about us. We have been hanging around together a lot.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  He leaned in, smiling, catlike. “People will say we’re in love.”

  Catching her off-guard, he kissed her lightly on the forehead and stood up. While Nettie gaped at him, not knowing how to react, he put the capper on by saying, “And of course, if Daisy really was the intended victim and not Hannah, we’ve been going around in circles for nothing all evening. Good night, darling.”

  After he left, she sat blinking in her chair for a full three minutes. Mother would have required her to be offended at the liberty of a stolen kiss, even a quick forehead job, but Mother, bless her 20th Century heart, was a bit of a prude. Nettie was more thrown by the suggestion of mistaken identity than the chaste little kiss.

  She sat thinking things over for quite a while before she came to a decision.

  There was still another day of touring to go, if anybody felt like it after what had happened at Versailles. But she was pretty sure that at least Margery would go on tomorrow, even if nobody else would. They were supposed to see Monet’s waterlilies the next day. Even if it turned out to be just her and Danny as her guide, Margery would insist on going after she’d specifically said she came to Paris just to see them. It would look suspicious if she didn’t.

  Nettie decided that if Margery was going to The Orangerie Museum, she was going too. She’d been wondering about Margery for pretty much the entire tour, and she was determined to have a talk with her tomorrow, waterlilies or no waterlilies. And if nobody else wanted to go, so much the better.

  Oh, well, it was all right with Nettie if Henry wanted to go.

  “But it would be best if it was just the three of us: a flat-out liar, my kissing bandit, and me,” she said aloud, and then she got up to settle herself in bed with a book.

  It was no surprise to her when she couldn’t concentrate on the book, so she turned out the light and lay in the dark, thinking, until Twyla came in. She was somewhat early, for once.

  Chapter 17

  At breakfast the next morning, Audrey and Kat joined Henry and Nettie at their table again. Twyla’s place beside her aunt seemed to be permanently taken over by Henry now.

  Twyla had given herself a stern talking-to at the bathroom mirror that morning, and was now at the corner table with Lauren, murmuring a constant stream of comforting words at her old friend. Lauren, for her part, was sitting in sort of a trance state, as if she were alone. Twyla had to keep encouraging her to eat. Eric and Ashley were at that table too, as usual, and Jack had simply pulled an extra chair over and mashed in with them, sitting very close to Twyla. He always seemed to be leaning toward her, while she leaned the other way toward Lauren. They all seemed crammed together and very uncomfortable.

  Charley, always the last to arrive, had squeezed in at the other table beside Kat, putting five people at both tables. Daisy wasn’t present at all.

  As soon as Audrey seated herself, she fixed Nettie with a mystical eye and said, “Do you remember when you said that if I just relaxed and stopped worrying about what Jeanne wanted, it would come to me?”

  With a sinking feeling, Nettie tried to look inquisitive, even pleased. “Are you getting something now?”

  When Charley murmured, “Who’s Jeanne?” Kat took the opportunity to get close to his ear and begin to whisper, gesture, and run through a series of tragic facial expressions, while he listened with growing alarm. After sharing a brief look with Kat when she was finished, Charley quietly ate his breakfast and didn’t ask any more questions.

  “Yes,” Audrey told Nettie. “Definitely. I’m sure now. As soon as I understood, Jeanne stopped screaming at me, so I knew I had it right. I know now that Grayson and Hannah were both murdered. There was a connection . . . .” She seemed to drift off and her eyes glazed over.

  “A connection?” Nettie prompted.

  Her voice sinking, growing stranger in affect, Audrey said, “It’s like I said that first night. Love. Money. Fear. Did I mention fear? I don’t think I did, but there’s definitely fear. And the fear is still there.”

  “I see,” Nettie said. “But the danger is over now, isn’t it?”

  Audrey stared at her. “Of course not. I thought you understood.”

  “But – why?”

  Audrey looked confused. “You’re supposed to tell me. Don’t you know?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Darn it,” Audrey said vaguely. “You ought to know. I was sure you did by now.” Then she sharpened and stared at Nettie. “Well, anyway, I know how to open up and let it come now. I just need to stay relaxed and receptive.”

  “And then you’ll know?”

  “No,” Audrey said, sounding irritated. “I thought I made myself clear. You’re supposed to know. You’re supposed to tell me.”

  “Audrey,” Henry said, breaking in suddenly and using a low voice, “please do not go around telling everybody that Nettie is going to expose a murderer. We don’t even know for sure yet that these actually were murders, and if they were, you could be putting Nettie’s life in danger.”

  “And while we’re at it,” Nettie added quietly, “if you make it look as if you’re getting psychic messages about who a murderer is, you could be putting yourself in danger. Do you understand?” She looked at Audrey closely, trying to make a firm connection with her and feeling that she hadn’t. Audrey simply looked puzzled.

  When Kat spoke up suddenly, very loudly, it startled everyone in the room. “I told y’all she was psychic, didn’t I? And she’s always right.”

  Nettie and Henry looked around in dismay and saw that everyone at the other table was now listening to them.

  Oblivious, Kat said, “Have a croissant, Charley, honey.”

  * * * * *

  Danny asked them to assemble in the lobby after breakfast, and as they did, Nettie found her first opportunity to ask Henry what he thought about Audrey’s psychic revelations.

  “Definitely fake,” he said in a way that shut down argument.

  “I’m beginning to feel the same way,” Nettie said, “and I’m very disappointed in her. Why would she do that? She’s been such a straight-shooter up until now.”

  “Trying to keep up her reputation as a psychic? Maybe she just wanted to see how we would take it. I don’t really care, but I hope she doesn’t try that on the police. They’ll lock her up, either in jail or the booby hatch.”

  “Did you have psychics coming to you when you were with the police force?”

  “Yeah, sometimes. It depended on how high-profile the case was. They always knew where the missing person w
as. They were always in a lonely place with trees, near water. Hell, everything is near trees and water, if you don’t say how far from the water and how many trees. Is it a forest? A neighborhood? An island in the middle of the Pacific?”

  “And none of them were ever right?”

  “Oh, they all thought they were right,” he said. “If we didn’t find a body, we just didn’t understand all their hints, and if we did, well, sure enough, they’d described it perfectly. Water! Trees! Somewhere within a 50-mile radius there were water and trees, just like they said, even if the water was running through pipes behind the wall and the trees were out by the sidewalk.”

  “Now, now, settle down,” Nettie said with a little grin. “Sorry if I touched a sore spot.”

  By that time, Danny was calling them to order.

  “I’ve been in conference with my head office,” he began, “and they advise at this time that we discontinue the tour. You will be given refunds.”

  “What kind of refunds?” Jack wanted to know.

  “Survivors’ refunds,” Audrey said drily.

  But Jack was persistent. “Cash? Vouchers for other tours? What?”

  “We don’t know that yet,” Danny said. “The company is working out an equitable compensation, and you’ll be notified, probably before you leave Paris.”

  There was reaction, both positive and negative, with Margery’s voice topping everyone else’s, saying, “I came to see the waterlilies, and I intend to see them!”

  “You still have your museum passes,” Danny said. “You can go see them if you like. Our scheduled expert guide will not be available, though. Carmichael Global Tours will accommodate you as far as we possibly can, but we’ve been asked by the police, and really folks, it’s our better judgement at this point, that we end the sightseeing.”

  “So you’re going to help us make arrangements to go home?” Charley asked.

  Danny got a stricken look but went on. “The Paris police have asked that you keep yourselves available to them for a few short days. Just a few short days,” he repeated as the revolt began. Somebody said they were being treated like criminals, and Nettie, looking around, asked Henry if he could see Daisy or Lauren. Audrey’s remark had made her wince.