Paris, Before You Die

by Mary Bowers

  “No. I guess they’re not here.”

  “Is Daisy all right?” Nettie asked Danny. “Where’s Lauren? She was just in the breakfast room.”

  “They’re both in their rooms. Naturally, they’re very shaken. Maybe later, some of you ladies can go up and try to settle them down, but for right now, they both said they wanted to be alone.”

  “Well, I’ve got nothing to do with any murders, and I’m going to The Orangerie,” Margery declared.

  “I’ll go with you,” Nettie said immediately.

  “You will?” Henry whispered. Then, louder, he said, “I think I’ll go too. Did the police specifically ask that we stay together in the hotel?”

  “Uh, they didn’t say that, precisely,” Danny said, looking nervous. “They don’t want you to leave Paris.”

  “Well, there’s no point in sitting around here staring at one another, is there?” Margery said stoutly.

  “I’m not sure the police will agree – ”

  Margery verbally rolled over him. “Just tell them if they want us, they can find us in the middle of Monet’s swamp. They’ve got all our cellphone numbers. I, for one, am going to silence it in the art museum, but tell them I’ll check it from time to time. Anybody else want to go?”

  The others stared at her glassily, and she turned back to Henry and Nettie. “I guess it’s just us. Come on.” They moved off, leaving Danny spluttering.

  Outside, Margery took charge, unfolding a little map of Paris. “Got your Métro passes? Museum passes? Good. Let’s go.”

  * * * * *

  “’Monet’s swamp?’” Nettie said as they proceeded to the Métro station at a near gallop. “Dear me, that doesn’t sound like something that would come from a Monet worshipper.”

  Margery slowed her steps. “I was just frustrated. Like we all are.”

  “Truly worshipful people don’t let things like that slip out. They don’t even think them. They speak of the sainted masters in reverent whispers. Are you really that interested in the waterlilies?”

  “Of course I am. I’ve been saying so since the very first group meeting.”

  “Yes,” Nettie said coyly. “You felt you needed an explanation for why you were traveling to Paris alone, when in reality you have a husband and a son who would probably like to be here with you.”

  Margery stopped dead in the middle of the sidewalk. “I told you, I’ve never married.”

  “Then who were you doing husband-talk with in La Sainte-Chapelle? And who is this Billy you toured the chapel with a few years ago? I believe your husband’s name is Dan?”

  People started to bump into them and ease around them, and Henry came to a sudden decision.

  “Still want to go to the swamp?” he asked.

  “Actually, I do,” Margery said, but her whole personality had changed. It was a kind of magic, like watching an actor switch roles in the middle of a play.

  “Why don’t we step over there and have a cappuccino first?” He pointed at a small café just down the block and began to guide them in that direction.

  Margery, locking herself up tight, seemed to be trying to think fast.

  When they were seated within the little outside area on the sidewalk and had placed minimal orders – they were still full from breakfast – Nettie addressed Henry as if they were alone and said, “I do believe we have another undercover operative here.”

  “By golly,” he responded, “I think you may be right.”

  Then they both went back to staring at Margery.

  Their coffees came and were slid onto the table before them, but they didn’t even look at them. They were still having an ocular stand-off with Margery.

  Finally, Nettie said, “Is it possible you work at the same company that Grayson Pimm did?”

  Hardly moving her mouth, Margery said, “It’s possible.”

  “A company that has an intense fear of sexual harassment lawsuits?”

  She’d scored another hit; the look on Margery’s face showed it.

  “And,” Henry said, “Grayson Pimm looked at the female employees of his company as his own personal box of chocolates, am I right?”

  Nettie thought the concept of Grayson’s company spying on him must be new to Henry. They’d never discussed it. She gave him a twinkly smile, admiring his ability to jump onto a moving train so effortlessly.

  She settled into detective mode, and for the first time, she missed her bun hairpiece. She was playing a role she had often played when she was working undercover, the one she thought of as, “sweet little me.”

  “Well, dear?” she asked Margery.

  After a few more stubborn moments, Margery began to speak.

  Chapter 18

  “Actually, I’m retired,” she said. “I retired a few months ago. This assignment is a contract job. Woo-hoo, a free trip to Paris. Actually, I’d rather be home with my husband, especially now that the subject of my investigation is dead. What a mess.”

  “You were an investigator for Grayson’s firm?”

  Margery smiled, almost sneered. “No, dear. I was in the Human Resources Department of J.J. Worth. Grayson Pimm was an investment advisor with us. With the company. It’s not ‘us’ anymore, though I’ll probably never break the habit. I was with them for over thirty years. The head of my department suggested me for this assignment because he trusts me, and there are very few people in the executive offices that Grayson Pimm wouldn’t have recognized. When things were coming to a head with his philandering, the decision was made that he would have to go, but we needed evidence. He was no fool. He would have claimed wrongful termination and it would have been an expensive nightmare.”

  “His company was getting ready to fire him?” Nettie asked.

  “They were both going to be fired, as a matter of fact. His death may just have saved Daisy’s job, not that she’ll ever know it now. His affair with her was not the first, and in all probability, it wouldn’t have been the last. We didn’t know it was over when the decision was made to send me along on this tour. When her department head figured out that Daisy and Grayson were going to be here together, and she had signed up using the name Marguerite to throw everybody off, we thought we had them.”

  “Well, their affair actually does seem to have been over,” Nettie commented.

  “Right. It must have been her last, desperate play to keep him, but he was moving on. People in the Atlanta office said he’d already been using his special voice on one of their new attorneys. And of course, there was Hannah Sorenson – or should I say, Hannah Garden?”

  “She worked for your company too?”

  “Indirectly. She worked for our insurance company, out of White Bear Lake. I didn’t know who she was until Danny let her real name slip out, that first night at dinner. I checked with the office, and they confirmed she was with the agency we use to investigate fraud, but they didn’t know why she was here. Well, other than the obvious: she was having an affair with Grayson Pimm and took the opportunity to have a little vacation time with him. He’d been out at the Minneapolis office six months before the tour. If he wanted her to come along, they would have had time to book her onto the tour then. Also, he did a return trip to Minneapolis about a month ago, and nobody knows why. It must have been to finalize the details with her; kind of whet her appetite for what was to come.”

  “It doesn’t necessarily follow that they were having an affair,” Nettie said. “He was planning a divorce. Maybe he hired her to come on the tour and keep an eye on his wife. Oh, no, that can’t be it,” she said regretfully. “He’d only have done that if he suspected she was having an affair of her own, and she wasn’t. Even if she was, her lover is probably back in the States. You’re right, Hannah and Grayson must have been having an affair. And he didn’t know Daisy was going to be here, too. Could Hannah have found out through company connections that he was in jeopardy of being fired, and then told him?”

  Slowly, thoughtfully, Margery said, “That’s possible. Yes, that�
��s possible. The decision had already been made; the company was washing its hands of him; he was finished. So . . . he killed himself.” She trailed off, then added, “I didn’t think of that.”

  Nettie was looking very pensive. “The only other possibility is . . . do you think your company could have sent two investigators to keep an eye on him?”

  “Why would they do that? It’s bad enough that I had to come. I doubt they’d stump up for two people to go and then not let us know about one another.”

  “But Hannah was a detective, right?”

  “She was a fraud investigator, but I guess if you put it that way, an investigator is a detective.” She gave it some more thought, then finally said, “No. I don’t buy it. My first take was that Hannah was his mistress, and I’m sticking with that. Everybody on the tour thought so. And I don’t see how she could have known we were planning to fire him. Her agency works for our insurance company. It’s not a direct connection.”

  “Could she have recognized you?”

  “No. I recognized her real name, of course, when Danny said it; my department assigned a few cases to her agency, but only involving workmen’s comp and only for employees in Minneapolis. Communications went out over my boss’s name, not mine. She never came to the New York office. There’s no reason she would have recognized me or my name. Absolutely none. So that leaves us with just one obvious suspect: Daisy.”

  “The scorned woman, who coincidentally is assigned to share a room with her rival,” Nettie said quietly. “My God. And I’ve been feeling sorry for her. She and Hannah seemed to be getting so friendly.”

  “Well, they would make it seem like that, wouldn’t they?” Margery said briskly. “They both had hidden agendas.”

  Henry finished his coffee suddenly and looked around for the waiter to get the check. “There’s one way to find out,” he said. “And we’d better do it in a hurry.”

  “Why?” Margery asked sharply. She hadn’t gotten over being outed as a detective.

  “To save your neck, among other things,” he said smoothly. “If we figured out you were a detective on Grayson’s trail, other people might have too. And if one of them happens to be a killer – as they say in the detective stories, you could be next.”

  “Oh, don’t be childish. You are not planning to question Daisy about all this, are you?”

  “Why not?”

  “I can think of a few reasons, but if you’re going, I am too. Coming, Nettie?”

  “I wouldn’t miss it for the world. You wouldn’t happen to be armed, would you Henry dear?” she asked sweetly.

  “Only with my devious brain, turtledove.”

  Margery looked at them both with disgust and slapped down some euros for her share of the check.

  Back at the hotel, Danny seemed relieved to see them. “So you changed your mind about the museum, did you?”

  Margery brazenly said, “It seemed heartless to go on enjoying ourselves while others are suffering. We decided to come back and comfort Lauren and Daisy.”

  “Well I’m glad somebody will,” he said. “Nobody else seems to want to go near them. They all decided to leave the hotel right after you did.”

  Assuming a saintly look, Margery led Henry and Nettie to the doorway to the stairs.

  * * * * *

  Daisy’s and Lauren’s rooms were on the same floor: the fifth. As they got to the third floor, Henry excused himself to go to his room and use the bathroom. “I’ll be right up; you two go ahead.”

  Margery and Nettie continued the climb, speculating whether or not Daisy and Lauren would actually be together, but both doors were closed when they got up there, and they couldn’t hear voices from either room.

  “Must have been awkward, huh?” Nettie said breathily as they approached the doorways. They were both puffing a bit from the climb.

  “Tell me about it,” Margery said largely. “Popping out the door and seeing your last mistress, your next mistress, your lover’s wife, take your pick. The mind boggles.”

  Nettie knocked gently on Lauren’s door and called her name. Looking around behind her, she met Margery’s gaze. Margery stepped forward and knocked loudly, calling, “Lauren? Want some company? It’s Margery and Nettie.”

  There was no response from Lauren’s room, but behind them, Daisy opened her door.

  “She’s asleep. Don’t wake her up. I thought we’d sit together, but she said she’d taken a sedative and wanted to get into bed. No surprise, huh? I can’t say I blame her for not wanting to be around me at a time like this. She probably thinks I killed him. What about you two? Want to come in and comfort the Scarlet Woman, or would you rather interrogate her? Right now, I’ll take either one, just to have some company.”

  “Don’t beat yourself up too much, dear,” Nettie said. “Of course we’ll come in and visit a while. Leave the door open. Henry’s coming along in a minute.”

  Daisy ushered them inside a room that roughly corresponded to all the others, only the view from this window was loftier and hazier. The window box held the same perky geraniums. “How were the waterlilies?” she asked.

  “We didn’t go,” Margery told her. “We didn’t have the heart.”

  “Well, maybe you’ll get a chance before we can leave the city.” There were meaningless smiles and nods. Then, in an unexpected burst, Daisy said, “Listen, guys, I need to tell you something. I just don’t know how. I – I think I could have prevented this. Oh, not Hannah. I mean Grayson. I thought I was doing the right thing at the time. The police said . . . .”

  “Come in, Henry,” Nettie said.

  He was breathing hard from the stair climb, but looking very alert. He’d heard the last part of the conversation. After a slight pause, he came in and closed the door.

  “The police took all Hannah’s stuff away,” Daisy told him. “Place looks kind of empty, doesn’t it? Oh, that’s right, you never saw it before. Well, take my word for it. It’s empty. Really empty. I liked her.” Her thoughts seemed to be scattering before she could take hold of them.

  “Daisy,” Nettie said gently, “what did you mean just now, when you mentioned Grayson? What could you have prevented?”

  “I knew about the knife. I saw it. If I’d taken it away, maybe he wouldn’t be dead now. Look, why don’t you all sit down? This is going to take a few minutes.”

  She drifted down onto her own bed and Nettie sat beside her. Henry took the chair at the little desk, leaning slightly forward. Margery carried the light, movable stool closer to the others and sat down on it.

  Haltingly, somewhat ashamed, Daisy told them about seeing Lauren holding a knife and standing in front of the dresser in her room, the morning of the day Grayson had killed himself.

  “I should have made her give it to me,” she finished bitterly. “I should have taken it away by force. If I had – ”

  “If you had,” Nettie said soothingly, “and he really meant to kill himself, he would have just gotten another one somewhere.”

  “Why didn’t you?” Henry asked matter-of-factly. Nettie gave him a disapproving look, and Daisy looked up with her beautiful, multi-color eyes shining.

  “She asked me not to. After all I’d done to her, I could at least keep her secrets, if she wanted me to.”

  “I see,” Henry said. “I think I understand.”

  “I don’t care if you don’t understand,” Daisy said blearily. “If she’d asked me to jump out the window, I probably would have.”

  “So you didn’t tell anybody.”

  “Well . . . just Hannah.”

  “Really?” Henry asked. “And how did she take it?”

  “About like I did. She really didn’t like the idea of the knife being there, but she didn’t know what to make of it.”

  “Did she tell anybody else about it?”

  The idea seemed to startle her. “Oh, I’m sure she didn’t. I asked her not to.”

  “Uh huh. But after she died, you did understand that you needed to tell the police ab
out it,” he went on.

  “Yes, I finally told them. They said the same thing you just did: he could have gotten another one anywhere. They were looking at me like I was an idiot, but I guess they figured there was nothing they could do about it now. They didn’t seem really upset with me.”

  “The police are used to people holding things back. It doesn’t surprise them. But they must have asked Lauren about the knife, after you finally did tell them.”

  “I suppose so.”

  “And they haven’t asked you about it since?”

  “No.”

  “Then she must have told the same story you did.”

  “Of course she did,” Daisy said, genuinely confused. “Why wouldn’t she?”

  Nettie began to talk aimlessly, quiet and gentle. “So much tragedy. So much loss. And you and Hannah were getting along so well. You made such a pretty sight, two lovely young women having fun together. And it’s understandable that you both seemed to be avoiding the Pimms. Well, maybe not Hannah, so much. She and Grayson seemed to go out of their way to see one another on the sly. They were seen together a couple of times. She was in love with him, wasn’t she?”

  “No.”

  “Oh, really?” Nettie let it pass, merely nodding as if she believed it. “Well, I just got that idea because I had a tendency to keep my eye on the Pimms, both of them, and it seemed to me that Hannah did too. Maybe I just imagined it. Twyla and I have known Lauren for so long, and we wanted to help her cope with her marital problems, but there didn’t seem to be anything we could really do except commiserate with her. We didn’t even have the chance to do much of that. My niece has been distracted, of course,” she said coyly, “so I tried to take it all on myself, but really, it was an impossible situation, wasn’t it?”

  She gave Daisy her “sweet little me” smile, but Daisy wasn’t looking. She was staring down at her hands.

  “What Lauren really needed was to get away from Grayson. He was crushing her.” Daisy looked up defiantly. “Are you shocked? We’re supposed to speak no ill of the dead, but I’m not going to lie – I’m glad he’s dead. But I sure wish Hannah wasn’t. She was turning out to be the first real friend I’d had in a long time.”