French Fried (24 page)

“We have crutches,” said the doctor soothingly, “but remember to walk. Walking is healing.”

I wanted to tell him to shut up; instead he told me to rest, and I obediently closed my eyes. I was truly in less pain. With luck it would abate even further.

“Madam Carolyn Blue?” asked a commanding voice. I jerked out of my doze and stared, confused, at a man I hadn’t seen before.

“Yes. Has the cab come?”

“You will not be leaving immediately. I have questions to ask.”

“For the bill, I suppose. Will Blue Cross pay most of it, do you think? Jason took care of the bill in Lyon.” I felt very fuzzy. Perhaps the added pain pills hadn’t been a good idea. “My ankle does feel better,” I murmured to myself.

“I’m pleased to hear that, but it is not your hospital bill I wish to discuss. You are the wife of Professor Jason Blue,
non
?”

Of course, I was. Hadn’t I just mentioned my husband?

“Where did you leave the gun?”

“What?”

“Do not dissemble. We know you shot the student from the Chapelle de Saint-Martial and then left with the help of a palais guard, after which a fall and a broken ankle foiled your escape. But we did not find the gun in your handbag, so you must have hidden it. In the palais? In the ambulance?” He bellowed to someone leaning against the wall in the corner, and that person scurried out.

“I don’t have a gun. What are you talking about?” Who
was
this person with his square, pitted face and tiny eyes?

“Even the victim says you shot her, Madam Blue, and of course we understand these spousal quarrels that end in violence. Our courts will understand, as well, but you must confess. Failure to express remorse will make your punishment more severe.”

I closed my eyes, sure I was having a bizarre dream, but when I opened them again, he was still there. “Perhaps you have the wrong person,” I suggested wearily, wishing that he’d go away and let me rest. “I don’t know of anyone who’s been shot, and I certainly don’t have a gun. I’m a tourist. Guns aren’t allowed on planes, you know. Are you a policeman?”

“I am an inspector of the Avignon—”

“Then you must know Inspector Theodore Roux in Lyon. Perhaps you’re even the inspector whose name he gave me. Maybe you should call him. He’ll tell you that I’m the victim, my husband and I, not a criminal.”

“A Mademoiselle Mercedes Lizarreta was shot this evening in the papal palace while in your husband’s arms,” he said very slowly.

“She was?” I took that in and then added, “Well, I didn’t shoot her.”

“You will admit that you had cause?” he persisted.

“Certainly not. There is never cause to shoot anyone, and I have never done so—well, in New Orleans,” I amended, remembering that incident. “I guess you could say I shot the priest, in a manner of speaking.” The inspector’s mouth dropped open. Perhaps mentioning the priest hadn’t been a good idea. “He wasn’t a
real
priest, and it was
his
gun. I thought it was a toy, so I tried to knock it out of his hand. It fired and hit his ear, but even the New Orleans police agreed that having one’s fingerprints on the barrel is not evidence that one has shot someone. He was a known criminal.”

“Madam obviously has an interesting history,” said the inspector dryly, “but I am interested in the location of the gun you shot from the Chapelle—”

“I didn’t do that. I wasn’t in any chapelle tonight, and all you have to do is check my hands for—what’s it called?—gunshot residue. It’s something you get on your hands if you shoot a gun. I’ve seen it on TV.” When I held out my hands, he scowled.

“Since you offer, no doubt you washed it off.”

“Where?” I asked. “In the palais? I only know one ladies’ room there and couldn’t find it. If I had, I’d have ducked in and washed my face. Or maybe you think I washed my hands in the alley. Maybe I rubbed the residue off against the stones after I fell, or cried it off because my ankle hurt so much, or they washed it off in the ambulance or here in the hospital. Ask the medical people. The only thing on me that’s been washed is my leg, and that hurt. So just do whatever you do to look for gunpowder residue.” He did.

Then my cab and crutches came, and I said if he wasn’t going to arrest me, I was going home to sleep. Because the inspector evidently didn’t have enough evidence for an arrest, I was wheeled to the cab, helped in and later out by the driver, and escorted upstairs by Bridget with the help of the crutches, which I couldn’t handle well. Maybe starting to walk tomorrow was the right thing to do. With that thought, I fell onto my bed and into sleep.

Having escaped from
the hospital and failed to contact Carolyn at the hotel, I headed toward the palais. Lately Carolyn’s complaints had involved Mercedes, and she’d been right. The girl did have designs on me, but that didn’t mean I was guilty of anything.

It seemed to me that Carolyn might have returned to the banquet from, say, the ladies’ room, heard that I’d left for the hospital with Mercedes, and taken her place at our table, leaving me to the mess for which she blamed me. It just wasn’t possible that she’d actually shot Mercedes. Was it? No. I felt better by the time I arrived at the Grand Tinel.

Dessert was being served; Jacques Laurent was on the podium at the far end of the hall speaking in French, while a translator gave a shortened version in English; and people were looking at me strangely. Only then did I remember that Mercedes had bled all over me. No wonder they were staring. The apparition at the feast had just walked in.

Closer to the table, I saw the Guillots, but not Carolyn. So much for optimistic logic. I’d rather my wife had been there and angry than missing and unaccounted for. Albertine glared and refused to answer when I asked if she’d seen Carolyn. Several people asked how the “Mexican girl” was, and I replied that the bullet had been removed, and she was recovering at the Centre Hospitalier d’Avignon.

“And why would someone have shot her?” Adrien asked curiously. “It seems a strange thing.”

“I imagine the gunman was targeting me,” I replied. “This is, after all, attempt number four.” I needed to say that to absolve my wife, but just saying it gave me chills. Was attempt number five being planned? Or had the person—perhaps, as Carolyn thought, a terrorist—caught and killed her, after failing with me? I left. In the square, where the musicians were still playing, the strollers were leaving because of the chill and the threatening sky. From there I ran to the hotel and finally burst into our room. The door was unlocked, a very bad sign.

But after all my anxiety, my wife lay fast asleep in bed. I could see her by the light coming through the window from the street below. She had simply left the banquet without telling me, come back, and—I couldn’t believe it. Without even turning on a light, I growled, “Where have you
been,
Carolyn?”

She sat straight up, groggily, and stared at me. “Where have
I
been? Well, I went to the banquet, all dressed up to please you, although you didn’t say one single nice thing to me.” Her voice was slurred. Was she drunk?

“And there you were with Mercedes, her arms around your neck, your hands on her waist, right there in the banquet hall in front of everyone. How do you think I felt? Catherine saw it and said if it were her, she wouldn’t put up with a husband who couldn’t even carry on an affair with discretion, who threw his sexual forays in her face—her exact words. I was so humiliated. I was so
hurt
, and on the verge of weeping and embarrassing myself even more. So I left.”

She swung her legs out of bed and groaned when she tried unsuccessfully to stand.

“What’s that on your leg?” I asked, distracted from the tongue-lashing I’d just received.

“My ankle is broken. I fell in an alley while I was trying to get away from all those people who felt sorry for me. I’d still have been on that hill, in agony and freezing to death, if Martin hadn’t come along, called an ambulance, and carried me down to the square.
He
came looking for me. Tell me, Jason, when did you realize I was gone? When the banquet was over?”

By now Carolyn was back in bed, crying, still wearing the black dress. And I felt terrible. “You—you don’t know what happened after—I guess after you left. Someone shot Mercedes.”

“I can see her blood,” Carolyn said bitterly. “Was she in your arms when it happened?”

“Well, not exactly. She—stepped in front of me, and the bullet hit her.”

“Weren’t you lucky, and shouldn’t you be comforting her? She may have saved your life.” My wife didn’t sound as if she cared.

“I was at the hospital, and sweetheart—”

“Don’t call me that.”

“You have to let me tell you the rest. There was an inspector there who seemed to think that you shot her. I told him that was ridiculous. Of course you didn’t.” Then I couldn’t help asking, “Did you?”

“No, Jason, I didn’t.” She went, in just a second, from sarcastic to furious. “Even if you don’t love me anymore, you ought to know that I wouldn’t shoot anyone, even Mercedes.”

“But, Carolyn, I do love you. I was never interested in her. She’s a student, for Pete’s sake. I can’t help it if she— she had a thing for me, which she evidently did, but I told her to forget it.”

“When was this? After I warned you about her? After I begged you to—”

“Well, it was before she went into surgery.”

“That must have done her a world of good.”

“She’s fine. She’s probably given up on me. God knows, I hope so. What we have to do is figure out how to convince the police that you didn’t—”

“I doubt that you’re the person to do that, Jason. You aren’t convinced yourself. As for me, I was grilled by some square-faced inspector while I was drugged with more painkillers. I told him to take a sample from my hands for gunshot residue and then leave me alone. Since I haven’t held a gun since New Orleans, he’ll have to give up the stupid idea that I shot her. Let me guess? Did
she
tell him that?” Before I could stammer out an answer, Carolyn said, “I’m going back to bed. Sitting up makes my ankle hurt. I need to get some sleep so I can start walking tomorrow.”

“You can’t be serious. You said your ankle was broken.”

“Don’t tell me what to do, Jason, and I’ll never forgive you for not thinking I looked pretty in my new dress, and shoes—well, the shoes were a mistake, and don’t you dare say ‘I told you so,’ but the hairstyle was pretty. You’re really mean and stodgy.”

With that she flopped down on the pillow and ordered me to put the sheet and blanket over her. I had to wonder if I’d ever be forgiven. How had our comfortable marriage come to this? We’d been so happy. I sighed and went into the bathroom. When I returned, my wife was deeply asleep, and she didn’t move so much as a finger or change the rhythm of her breathing when I climbed into the other bed. At least, she
was
breathing. The stalker hadn’t killed her.

I had the
hazy impression that it stormed all night, but if so, I hadn’t awakened, probably because I was both tired and drugged. My ankle hurt, mostly when I moved, which made the doctor’s advice to walk as much as possible, as soon as possible, very hard to take seriously. On the other hand, I was awake because I needed to use the bathroom, something I couldn’t put off forever. I viewed the partially open door with a rueful eye. Jason wasn’t here to help me. I then turned to the clock on the nightstand. Nine-thirty. He was at either the conference or the hospital. Much he cared about me!

I sat up and edged the booted leg over and then to the floor, using my hands to hold it at the knee so that it wouldn’t thud down. Actually the boot didn’t weigh that much, which was a good thing. With my second foot on the floor, I looked for the wretched crutches and spotted them and the Lyon cane leaning within reach against the nightstand. At least my husband had given my condition
some
thought before he left.

I chose the cane, grasped it with my left hand, and stood up on my right foot. Rising revealed that I was now lop-sided because the boot had a thick sole. I tried shifting my weight from the cane to the right foot and back, dragging the boot. That hurt so much I felt faint. Obviously I had to walk on both boot and foot, which would cause me to limp and look ridiculous, as well as hurt.

And it was becoming crucial that I get to the bathroom, so I did, groaning all the way and reaching the facilities without a moment to spare. The doctor had said I could bathe or shower without the boot as long as I didn’t put unsupported weight on my ankle, fall down, or knock it into anything. Three impossible conditions to meet.

I got off as many clothes as I could without rising—my beautiful, dust-covered, torn black dress, my slip, and the bra that I’d worn. The expensive hose and the shoes had been bagged at the hospital. I pulled up my panties; then, using the cane for leverage, I rose and wheeled to the sink and mirror for a much needed sponge bath. And what did I find when I faced the mirror? A Post-it note from Jason. “I love you. Take care. Will call at ten.” He was thinking of me!

The bath that followed was more exhausting than trying to keep up with Catherine at Fort Andre. Drying could be managed only with much precarious twisting about while standing on one foot. After that I was too tired to favor the broken ankle. I just put my full weight on it and—surprise! —it didn’t hurt as much. I got to the bed in time to pick up the ringing phone without causing myself horrendous pain.

It was Bridget, asking if she could send up breakfast? Of course, she could, I answered. It was only after I’d hung up that I realized I couldn’t open the door wearing only my panties and boot. I dropped my head into my hands, vanquished, until I remembered the robe and spotted it lying across Jason’s bed. Had he been thoughtful? Or just neat? Anyway, I could and did put on the robe.
Now
I could go to the door.