Paris, Before You Die

by Mary Bowers

  “You became close quickly,” Nettie said. “Poor Hannah. She had such a run of bad luck in Paris, except for finding a friend in you. That first time on the Métro, somebody tried to get into her purse, remember?”

  Daisy blinked and wiped at her dewy eyes. “That’s right. Somebody unzipped all her zippers. And then later, her purse was actually stolen. And now she’s dead.” She focused suddenly. “Do you think somebody has been targeting her since we first got to Paris?”

  Nettie nodded thoughtfully. “Maybe so. Did she ever mention to you that she was . . . afraid? Suspicious? Did she seem to shy away from anybody in particular?”

  “No, not that I can think of.” Then she cracked a smile. “I started warning her not to be too obvious about how hot she thought Eric was. She practically started panting the first time she got a look at him, and that was just a glimpse. And then when he brought her purse back, she almost put her tongue down his throat. I told her she was going to make Ashley jealous, but she thought I was making too much of it.”

  Looking pensive, Nettie murmured, “Ashley’s not a blond.”

  The others turned to her, mystified.

  “So what?” Daisy said.

  “Oh, just an idea I had, but it doesn’t make sense.”

  “You mean because Grayson preferred blonds? He didn’t automatically try to seduce every woman he happened to see,” Daisy said, laughing. “Well – maybe one in three. If you’ve been thinking that Hannah was having an affair with Grayson and the thing with Eric was just a bit of misdirection, you’re wrong. She told me so herself.”

  She recounted to them their conversation at the bistro, when she and Hannah had sat separately from the group. “She knew Grayson’s type, and she wanted nothing to do with him. You guys didn’t look like you were having much fun at the time,” she remarked when she’d finished. “What was going on over there?”

  “Grayson was humiliating Lauren,” Margery said. “Again.”

  “He was good at that,” Daisy murmured. “The last time I saw him before the tour, he actually slapped my face.”

  “So why did you decide to come anyway?” Nettie asked.

  “I wanted to come to Paris. And truth be told, I wanted Grayson to see me looking like a million bucks and not caring what he thought. And I’ll go ahead and admit it: I found it therapeutic to see the way he treated his wife. I finally got it through my head that no self-respecting woman would even want a man like that. I needed to see it for myself, so I could finally let go. And I did let go,” she said defiantly.

  “Did you?” Margery said. “You just said you were glad he was dead.”

  Daisy shrugged. “All men like that deserve to be dead.”

  Margery lifted her eyebrows and said, “Really? Did you consider filing a sexual harassment suit against him? You two worked at the same company, didn’t you?” she added innocently.

  “No. Good God, why would I consider making a fool of myself like that? And I would have just gotten myself fired, in all probability.”

  “You would indeed,” Margery said.

  Daisy rounded on her. “You’re enjoying yourself, aren’t you? Even Grayson saw it. That last night in the restaurant, before he killed himself, he realized you were staring at him, hoping he was going to go off, once he got drunk enough. When he yelled across the room, he wasn’t yelling at me or Hannah, he was yelling at you. Why were you staring at him like that?”

  “I’m a nosey parker,” Margery said. “I can’t help myself. All us spinsters enjoy other people’s dramas, because our own lives are so dull. You should know that.”

  Still suspicious, Daisy said, “You were the one keeping things stirred up in the bistro that day, too. I was sitting across the room in the window with Hannah, and we could even see it from there. You were jabbing at him, keeping him angry. What did you say to make him leave the table like that?”

  “That wasn’t Margery,” Henry said thoughtfully. “That was Ashley. It seemed like she was angry with him for some reason, too. I thought it was odd at the time.”

  “She was just defending Lauren against him, when he told her to stop drinking,” Nettie said, remembering. “Eric and Ashley took a liking to Lauren. That was the starting point, I guess. After that, they always seemed to be protecting her, trying to intervene when Grayson upset her. I thought it was kind of sweet . . . .” She ground to a halt, pouting.

  “What is it?” Henry asked.

  “Well . . . do you remember in Montmartre, at the church, when Eric was comforting Lauren outside and Ashley was waiting inside? I thought that was strange. Why wasn’t she outside with them?”

  Henry nodded and said, “Woman to woman – that would have been more natural. Especially since Lauren was crying.”

  “Was she? At that distance, you wouldn’t know whether or not someone was crying unless they were outright wailing. She only turned away and covered her face after she saw us looking at them. We only assumed she was crying. Ashley told us Eric went to Lauren first, and she didn’t want to crowd in around her, so she went ahead into the church.”

  Margery and Daisy were listening closely, trying to follow what they were describing, since they hadn’t been there.

  Nettie went on. “Then Ashley said she was hungry and she was going to go out and tell the other two it was time they went for lunch. But why did she ever leave them alone in the first place?”

  “Because they didn’t even know she was there,” Henry said as it dawned on him. “I think you’re right. Ashley saw them, but they didn’t see her. Instead of joining them, she slipped into the church.”

  “Exactly,” Nettie said. “Think about it – he’s outside with another woman and she’s inside the church praying? And the tour guide had already taken us through the church, so it was unlikely that any of us would backtrack for another look, so Eric and Lauren could be reasonably sure nobody would see them there. But Ashley went looking for them, and when she saw them, she went inside to pray. I’m surprised we didn’t pick up on the subtext of that little scene right then and there.”

  They were all startled when the room’s telephone rang. Daisy answered it, murmured a response, then hung up.

  “They want us down in the lobby,” she said, turning back to them.

  With a sinking feeling, Nettie said, “Why?”

  “Something’s happened. Something else.”

  “I don’t think I can take anything else,” Nettie said.

  As they left the room, Lauren was just leaving hers, looking exhausted and bleary. “Do you know what’s going on?” she asked them. “I got a call from the desk clerk telling me to come down to the lobby.”

  “We did too,” Daisy told her, taking her arm.

  At first, Lauren looked as if she were about to recoil and then there was a moment of silence.

  Finally, almost inaudibly, Lauren said, “We were both victims, weren’t we?”

  Daisy nodded. Lauren took her arm tentatively and they led the way to the stairs with the other three following.

  At one of the stairwell landings, Henry took over for Daisy, steadying Lauren’s steps. She was so shaky he was afraid she was going to fall, and they could all see her hands trembling. When they finally got down to the lobby level, they exited the stairwell into a crowd of gray-faced people, and Danny said, “All right, officer, I think that’s everybody.”

  “Oh, lord, the police are back,” Daisy said. “What happened?” she asked Jack. Twyla was clinging to his arm looking petrified.

  “Eric’s dead. Stabbed to death. In the alley, back by the kitchen service door. I never even noticed that there was an alley.” Then he looked them over as a group. “Have you all been together for the last two hours?”

  Margery began to answer, but Henry cut in. “We’ll explain it to the police,” he said. “It’s going to be a long day, and we’re all going to be talking until we’re hoarse.”

  Chapter 19

  “Well, at least you’ve got an alibi this time,” He
nry said to Nettie when they were finally alone again, that night. “You and Margery were together the whole time. Of all times to get a call from nature. If I hadn’t dropped off at my room, if I’d stayed with you and Margery, I’d be in the clear. As it is, I’m one of the few guests who were actually in the hotel at the time Eric was killed, and the only one without an alibi.”

  “It must have been one of the others who had left the hotel. Jack, for one, claimed he never noticed the little service alley, but why would he even bring it up unless he was trying to divert suspicion away from himself?”

  “Still hoping to get rid of Jack, are you?” Henry teased. “Well, with all the detectives among us, one of the victims included, they should be able to get all the information they need to make an arrest,” Henry said. “Although I bet they still haven’t been able to get into Hannah’s cellphone. It’d be interesting to know exactly what the relationship was between her and Grayson, if any.”

  “Oh, there had to be one. There’s too much smoke for there not to have been a fire.”

  They were alone in Nettie’s room. Twyla was out with Jack again. She had clung to him all throughout the day, she claimed, again giving him an alibi. Poor Charley had gone off on his own that morning, and for the first time he was showing signs of being irritated at being constantly deserted by his traveling buddy. He, more than anybody else, was beginning to loudly complain about not being allowed to go home.

  Henry’s room was another two floors up, and by the time the police had let them go neither he nor Nettie had felt like making the extra climb, so they were in Nettie’s room.

  The hotel staff were beginning to regard the Carmichael Global group as a gang of thugs, and for those who knew themselves to be innocent, it was just another insult. But even the members of the tour group had to admit that the suggestion that all the deaths were unrelated was becoming laughable.

  “Did you see Lauren’s face when she found out Eric was dead?” Nettie said.

  Henry nodded.

  “What a terrible scene. She seems to be losing her mind, and who can blame her? Eric was killed in exactly the same way Grayson was.”

  “She’s going over the edge all right, claiming her husband’s ghost did it – something about his still having the knife – that he’d be coming for her next.”

  Nettie shook her head. “She knew he had the knife all along – for days, apparently.”

  “Makes you wonder why she didn’t get rid of it.”

  “By that time, she was probably so terrified of him, she couldn’t do anything to cross him. And she said she only saw one knife in his drawer, but he must have taken two: it was a knife from the same restaurant that was used to kill Eric. Did he take two of them, in case she found one and got rid of it? Either that or somebody else took a knife, too. What are the odds of that?”

  Henry thought about it. “The only one who paid special attention to the knives that night was Eric.”

  “And yet the second knife was used to kill Eric, himself. Could he have killed Grayson, then been killed by somebody else in retribution? Maybe using a knife from the same restaurant was symbolic, somehow. The killer could have gone back to get one.” Nettie frowned, then shook her head. Suddenly, looking startled, she said, “Oh,” and looked up with wide brown eyes.

  “Yep. I think so too: more than one murder must have been planned right from the get-go. Hannah’s death was accomplished by a simple push, so there was still one knife hidden away somewhere. Makes you wonder where, since all our rooms were searched.”

  “By now the whole hotel has been searched, but before, after Grayson’s death, I don’t think they would have gone over every inch of the building. Who would have expected another knife to be hidden somewhere? So what are you thinking now?”

  “What about you? You said you thought you knew everything. Have you changed your mind?”

  “I had to,” she said regretfully. “My main suspect is dead. I thought Eric killed Grayson somehow when he put him into the elevator. I couldn’t think why he’d do it, but it was the only time I could think of when somebody could have got at him.”

  “But the desk clerk would have noticed a little thing like that, don’t you think? And he said he heard Grayson speaking inside the elevator as Eric walked away.”

  “Go ahead, rub it in. I figured the desk clerk must have been mistaken about that one little detail. What about you? You suspected a lady.”

  “I think I’ve known right from the beginning,” Henry said, sagging. “And I was meant to be the patsy. When everybody found out about the fact that my son’s suicide happened while he was working for Grayson Pimm, and how I felt about it . . . look, Nettie, if we don’t find a way to prove how this all happened, I think I might have been set up bigtime and I may not be able to wiggle out of it.”

  “I’ll help you any way I can,” she said immediately. “I’m pretty sure I know what you’re thinking, and I think it’s diabolical. How are we going to go about it?”

  “I just need to know one more thing,” he said. “And I don’t know how we’re going to find out by direct questioning. Nobody’s going to admit anything at this point.”

  “No, why should they? You know, it’s all been very clever. If it hadn’t been stretching coincidence too far to have three deaths in one small group in such a short time, Grayson’s death would have been written off as a suicide, Hannah’s as an accident, and Eric’s as a mugging. If not for exigent circumstances, the murderer would have gotten away with it.”

  “I think you’re probably right. Hannah’s and Eric’s murders were done on the fly, probably because they knew too much. So, where do we go from there? We’ve got the added pressure of everybody getting ready to go back to the States and scatter.”

  Nettie shook her head. “The police won’t let us go for at least a few days, maybe longer. We’ve got the time we need. And I think I’m going to recruit Kat. She’s the type who’ll ask anybody anything. We can get her to throw out one of her point-blank, out-of-the-blue questions for us. We won’t even need to tell her why. We can do this, Henry.”

  “We’d better. Or all of you will be going home and I’ll be sitting in a French jail.”

  Chapter 20

  The next morning at breakfast, Daisy sat at the corner table with the two new widows, Ashley and Lauren. Each woman in her own way had suffered a loss, and it showed. All three of them looked haggard.

  Margery had taken the fourth chair at that table. In strong contrast to the other three, she looked alert and eager. When the others weren’t looking, she shot quick, sharp glances at Nettie, at the next table but never spoke to her.

  Jack and Twyla were back at their table for two. When they had come in, Lauren’s table had already been full, but they stopped by for a few gentle words. Then they moved on to their usual table and began to talk quietly.

  The night before, Henry and Nettie had gone up to Margery’s room, across the hall from Henry’s, and recruited her. Then, this morning, Nettie had cornered Kat in the stairwell while Audrey drifted on ahead of them and asked for her help, too. Not understanding what exactly was going on, but always ready to jump into a conspiracy, Kat agreed: she’d ask Daisy a series of specific questions and she’d be loud about it.

  Nettie, Henry, Audrey, Kat and Charley were all at the table for four just beyond the corner table. Although everyone else had simply come down for breakfast, Nettie and Henry were on a mission, and even those they had asked for help didn’t know the whole plan, or what they suspected. There had been an eerie atmosphere of waiting before Kat, at a nod from Nettie, finally spoke up.

  “So Hannah was a detective?” she called across to Daisy at the next table. “I just found out. That’s so weird. What did you two girls talk about when you were alone in your room? Do you think she was trying to get information out of you? Who was she working for?”

  Daisy looked back at her wearily, but Kat just continued to stare, head tilted like a curious puppy. Finally, wearil
y, Daisy answered.

  “She admitted to me that she was working. It was that last morning, the day we went to Versailles. We’d gotten to be friends. She admitted that Grayson had hired her to come on this trip.”

  There were general noises of surprise, and all faces swiveled around to face the corner of the room, where Daisy was sitting.

  “Hired her for what?” Kat asked fatuously.

  Daisy gazed at Lauren ruefully. “I guess it doesn’t make any difference now. Your husband thought you were having an affair.”

  Lauren stared, speechless, and Kat jumped in again. “With who? Somebody on the tour?”

  “He didn’t know. Or Hannah didn’t want to go that far, telling me about her assignment.”

  Kat stared at Charley and said, “Well, there’s only so many guys it could be.”

  “Don’t look at me,” he said a little wildly.

  Kat winked at him, then looked back to Daisy. “Did she find out anything?”

  “I think so. Positive or negative I don’t know. But she was already writing up her report when she died. Unfortunately, her computer is passworded and her cellphone got locked down like all of ours did, so the police haven’t been able to find out anything about that.”

  “Yet,” Kat said, eyes shining. She looked at her friend, Audrey, with an excited face, but Audrey seemed to be in her own little world that morning. She hadn’t spoken to anybody as yet, not even to say, “Good morning.”

  Nettie had been prepared to let things keep rolling on their own, but there was a pause in the action, so she gave it a little push. “The only person she seemed to pay special attention to was Eric,” she commented. “I think she was rather smitten with him. Very innocently, of course,” she added as Ashley turned around and looked at her. “I’m sure you realized that.”