French Pastry Murder (A Lucy Stone Mystery) (14 page)

“Yeah. There’s just one bathroom, and it’s tiny. There’s no place for anybody to hide. She must have left through the kitchen. There’s a back door.”

“Did you ask the cook?” demanded Lucy. “Did anyone see her go?”

“I did ask,” said Elizabeth, “but he just shook his head.”

“I’ll ask the barman,” said Lucy, popping up. “
La jeune fille qui . . .
uh . . .”

“No, Mom, I’ll do it,” offered Elizabeth. “I don’t think your French is up to it.”

But all Elizabeth was able to get from the barman was a shake of his head and a muttered “
Désolé.
”

“People don’t just disappear,” said Rachel, her eyes huge. “Do you think she was kidnapped?”

“No way,” insisted Elizabeth. “She probably just encountered some guy. Could be the pot washer. I wouldn’t be surprised. She’ll go with anything in pants.”

“Really?” asked Rachel. “She seems like such a nice girl.”

“She seems to me like a girl who knows her way around,” said Sue.

“You can say that again,” agreed Elizabeth. “Honestly, I never know who’s going to be tiptoeing through my room in the morning, shoes in hand, heading for the door.”

Rachel’s eyebrows shot up. “I can’t believe it.”

“That’s very risky behavior,” said Lucy, remembering how the old guy had looked Sylvie over. Was it that simple? Was a look enough to initiate an assignation? Did Sylvie really just go off with anyone? She found the idea disturbing. “She could be putting you in danger, you know, bringing strange men into your apartment.”

“I know, Mom, and I’ve asked her not to do it, but she just tells me it is none of my beez-nees,” said Elizabeth, mimicking Sylvie’s accent.

“Well, what do we do now?” asked Sue.

“Back to the
marché?
” suggested Pam.

“I’ve spent all my money,” Lucy reminded her.

“I can’t afford anything I want,” said Sue.

“My feet hurt,” complained Rachel.

“Then I guess we’re done here,” said Elizabeth, signaling for the check. “I’m going to go home and hang up my poster, and then I’m going to spend the afternoon washing my clothes at the
laverie automatique.
”

“You’ll get no sympathy from us,” said Lucy, earning a few chuckles. “Between the four of us, we must have washed thousands, maybe millions, of loads of wash.”

When the footsore group straggled back to the apartment, they found Bill and Sid in the courtyard, cutting up wood, constructing a closet for Madame Defarge.

“A real American-style closet,” she announced, beaming. “All my friends will be very jealous.”

“It’s not a big deal,” said Bill. “We’re repurposing this door she had.”

“And we found some plywood in the shed. When it’s painted, it will blend in with the walls,” added Sid. “We’re not going to have to mess with Sheetrock at all.”

“Sounds good,” said Lucy, who suspected that constructing the closet was a peace offering to Madame Defarge, who had made it quite clear that she wasn’t thrilled about the group’s involvement with the police. Or maybe the two contractors simply couldn’t resist an opportunity to saw wood and bang nails and show off their abilities. “How long is it going to take?”

“The rest of the afternoon probably,” said Bill, releasing his tape measure, which rewound with a snap.

“We didn’t expect you back so soon,” said Sid. “Where are the packages?”

“I had them sent,” teased Sue. “I bought a dining table and a set of Louis XV chairs. Only fifty thousand . . .”

Sid clutched his heart. “You didn’t!”

“No, I didn’t,” admitted Sue as the doorbell sounded, and Madame Defarge went to answer it. She returned with a couple of uniformed policemen, one of whom was carrying a very official-looking warrant.

“Is Monsieur Goodman here?” asked the first cop, a very good-looking young man with dark hair.

“No,” answered Sid. “He went out with Ted. Didn’t say where they were going.”

“I’m his wife,” said Rachel, determined to be helpful and cooperative.

“No matter. We are here to search your premises. It will take only a few minutes, and you may accompany us.”

“I’ll go,” offered Rachel. “I don’t think we all need to be there.”

“D’accord,” said the second cop, who was shorter and darker than his colleague.

“It’s this way,” said Rachel, leading them to the entryway.

“
Mon Dieu!
” exclaimed Madame Defarge when the door had closed behind them. “I am so embarrassed. Those other men, they weren’t police at all, were they? But I was in a hurry to get to the market, and they looked like policemen. They were in uniform. I would not have let them in otherwise.”

“It’s understandable,” said Pam. “They must have been in disguise.”

“What did they look like?” asked Lucy.

“Young men. They looked like flics. Good-looking. Polite. I never thought . . .”

“Were they dark? Blond? Beards?” persisted Lucy.

“Je ne me souviens pas!” wailed Madame Defarge.

“She doesn’t remember,” said Lucy, translating.

“It doesn’t matter,” observed Sue. “We don’t know many people in Paris. We probably wouldn’t recognize them, anyway.”

Lucy didn’t agree. “A description would help the police. Whoever searched our place is probably connected to Chef Larry’s murder, right? They could even be the murderers.”

“I didn’t think of that,” admitted Sue.

“But wait! We have a camera,” said Madame Defarge. “A TV camera.” She pointed upward, to a corner of the courtyard, where a small surveillance camera was perched on a windowsill.

“You have CCTV?” asked Bill.

She nodded. “It’s part of the security system. I don’t bother with it, but a man comes every month and checks it.”

“Can we look at the film?” asked Lucy.

“
Bien sûr,
that is, if you know how to . . .”

“Let me take a look,” offered Sid. He followed Madame into the concierge lodge and a few minutes later appeared in the doorway, beckoning to the others.

They gathered inside the cozy living room, all eyes on Madame’s tiny TV. Sid used the remote to fast-forward through the grainy black-and-white images, which were as jerky as old silent films. They laughed, recognizing themselves, looking very tired and jet-lagged on the day they arrived, and they saw themselves coming and going in the days since, as well as the other occupants of the apartments that shared the courtyard. Then, when Lucy was beginning to feel slightly dizzy from staring at the speeding footage, the two fake cops appeared.

“Stop!” she ordered.

Sid hit the remote, and everything slowed down. They all leaned forward, studying the image. “It’s their backs,” complained Rachel.

“They have to come out,” said Bill, and Sid hit FORWARD once again, until the two men reappeared, exiting the apartment entryway. He hit STOP, and they could see blurry images of their faces.

“I’m not sure,” said Lucy, “but they look a lot like . . .”

“Those friends of Elizabeth’s. We met them at the birthday party,” added Bill. “What are their names?”

Sid hit REWIND and played the footage again, and a third time.

“Adil and Malik,” said Lucy. “I think that’s them, but why? What were they looking for?”

“Adil and Malik,” repeated Bill. “What the hell?”

Chapter Twelve

W
hat on earth were Adil and Malik doing, breaking into their apartment? And what were they looking for? Lucy remembered how their supplies of kitchen staples had been dumped out, as well as Rachel’s creams and bath salts, all clear indications they were definitely searching for something. But what? And why? It was all very strange, very puzzling. “They seemed like such nice boys,” she said, thinking aloud.

“What did you say?” demanded Bill. They were walking along the narrow sidewalks to the rue Saint-Antoine with Ted and Pam, on their way to meet Richard Mason at his favorite seafood place. It was a chance for the journalists to talk shop and for the others to enjoy
les fruits de mer
.

“I said Adil and Malik seemed like such nice boys, so well mannered,” said Lucy.

“Yeah, well, I don’t think breaking and entering and tossing somebody else’s place is exactly good manners,” said Bill. “The cops left the apartment just as they found it.”

“Rachel said they didn’t seem to find whatever they were looking for,” said Lucy as they turned the corner and encountered an amazing display of fish and shellfish, arranged on a mountain of ice contained in a metal counter, right on the sidewalk outside the restaurant, complete with a waterfall, which provided a cooling backdrop for the fresh seafood.

“It smells like home,” said Lucy, momentarily transported to the fish pier in Tinker’s Cove.

“They’ve got every sort of fish you could imagine,” said Ted. “Look at that red one. I’ve never seen it before. What is it?”

“Orange roughy?” said Lucy, taking a guess. “Red snapper?”

Pam, however, wasn’t quite as taken with the display as the others. “Are we supposed to eat seafood that’s been sitting out here on the street all day?” she asked. “It doesn’t seem very sanitary to me.”

“After eating
tête de veau,
I think my system can handle just about anything,” said Bill, causing them to laugh.

“Fantastic, isn’t it?” asked Richard, joining the group. “I reserved a table, so let’s go on in. It’s my treat,” he announced. “Order whatever you want.”

Richard was known at the restaurant, where he dined often, and was warmly welcomed. The group was immediately seated at a big table by the window and provided with an enormous platter containing all sorts of shellfish: several kinds of oysters, pink crayfish, blue crabs, and enormous shrimp, all artistically arranged and punctuated with lemon slices and bowls of vinaigrette.

“No cocktail sauce?” asked Bill.

“You mean that red stuff? What is it? Horseradish, lemon juice, and ketchup?” asked Richard. “They don’t do that here. They think it interferes with the natural flavor of the shellfish.”

“I think they’re right,” said Lucy, raising her chin and tipping a firm and juicy oyster into her mouth. “Delicious!”

“That’s a Cancale, from Brittany,” said Richard.

“I can see why you like living in France,” said Pam, biting into a large and plump shrimp.

“Oh, come on, Richard,” said Ted. “Aren’t you tempted to come back to the good old USA? Don’t you get tired of the French attitude? Don’t you miss steak and cheeseburgers and . . .”

Pam finished for him. “Chocolate milk shakes!”

Richard laughed. “Sometimes I do miss home, like when I have to pay five euros for a very small Coke. And there is an American grocery store. It’s actually not too far from your apartment, over on the rue Saint-Paul. I could get peanut butter and Duncan Hines brownie mix, if I wanted.” He chose an oyster, holding it in his hand. “I’ve gone by it often enough, but I’ve never been tempted to go in. Not when there are beauties like this to savor,” he said, slurping the oyster out of its shell.

“But as a journalist, isn’t it hard operating in another culture?” asked Lucy. “Our friend Bob, he’s a lawyer. He’s really struggling with the French justice system.”

“It wasn’t easy at first. I’m not pretending it was. But I’ve been here for more than twenty years, and I’ve got the hang of things.” He paused to crack open a crab claw and extracted a chunk of meat, which he popped into his mouth. “I was quite the ambitious young man, and I didn’t have a job waiting for me, like you, Ted, at a family-owned newspaper. And the community news thing, it wasn’t for me. I’ve always been interested in the big picture, not whether the board of selectmen is going to support the new school.”

“Hey,” protested Ted, “that’s important stuff. Schools, taxes, police and fire, all the stuff that makes a town work.”

“I’m not saying it’s not important. I’m just saying it’s not important to me. I’m more interested in what the IMF is going to do about the Greek debt, and whether the French are going to step up and play a role in Africa, or if they’re going to let the Chinese take over.”

“The Chinese are in Africa?” asked Lucy.

Richard laughed. “Big-time. I did a three-part story for the
Times,
front-page stuff, but Americans don’t really care what goes on in the rest of the world. You’re all focused on the price of dump stickers. . . .”

“Going up,” said Ted.

“They are?” asked Bill. “I suppose that means contractors’ waste fees are going up, too.”

“Oh, yeah,” said Ted. “Double.”

“Oh, nuts,” said Bill.

“See what I mean?” demanded Richard with a self-satisfied smirk.

After they demolished the mountain of shellfish, which was merely a first course, they proceeded to their second courses of various savory fish dishes, followed by green salads, desserts, and, finally, cheese. It wasn’t until they were sipping their coffee that Richard asked if there was any progress toward regaining their passports.

“Now that Chef Larry’s dead, the investigation is heating up,” said Ted. “I’m hoping they will wrap it up soon and let us go.”

“The oddest thing happened,” said Lucy. “Ted told you how the apartment was searched, absolutely destroyed, and we thought it was the police. Well, it wasn’t the police at all. The police finally came today. The concierge apologized and showed us video. They have a security camera, and it turns out the searchers look an awful lot like two guys who work with my daughter at the Cavendish Hotel.”

“We can’t be sure,” said Bill. “The images are fuzzy, but we thought we recognized them from a party at Elizabeth’s place. Adil and Malik, that’s their names.” He took a sip of coffee. “If it really is them.”

“There’s a lot of unrest in the Arab community right now, overflow from the Arab Spring,” said Richard. “Are they Syrian?”

“Egyptian,” said Lucy. “But they’re not first generation. Their parents emigrated when King Farouk was thrown out.”

“Everybody seems to be getting a turn in Egypt,” said Richard, leaning back in his chair. “First it was the army, then Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood, but the mob got rid of them. Believe it or not, there’s even a royalist group that wants to put Farouk’s son—his name’s Fouad—back on the throne. They hate Morsi, they hate the Muslim Brotherhood, and they want to bring back the monarchy. I wrote a story about it.”

“We read your story,” said Lucy. “And these boys are in that group. They told me all about it. But in your story you said that Fouad himself isn’t too interested in claiming the throne.”

Richard chuckled. “That’s right, and who can blame him? Right now the Egyptians are more interested in demonstrating and overthrowing governments than in keeping them. Fouad leads a quiet life in Switzerland. And he’s getting on in years. He’s not a young man.”

“And I imagine he must have bad memories of his family’s expulsion and exile,” said Pam.

“I don’t know about that. He was just a baby at the time. The prime mover behind the group is Khalid Sadek. His father was Farouk’s closest advisor. He’s trying to pressure Fouad emotionally . . . you know, ‘Restore your family’s honor,’ that sort of thing. But he’s also raising money, hoping to tempt Fouad with a big pile of cash,” said Richard.

“Well, this is all very interesting,” said Bill, “but it doesn’t explain why two young men, certainly French now but of Egyptian heritage, would ransack our apartment, does it?”

“No,” agreed Richard. “It’s usually drugs. They steal stuff to sell to get money for drugs.” He paused. “Maybe they were acting on orders from Sadek, stealing stuff that he could sell for cash to finance the movement.”

“You interviewed this Sadek fellow, right?” asked Ted. “Do you think he’d do something like that? Encourage two young men to steal for him?”

“I wouldn’t put it past him,” said Richard. “I did get the impression that he runs a tight ship. He’s very authoritarian,” said Richard.

“It’s a moot point, anyway,” said Lucy. “Nothing’s missing. They didn’t steal anything.”

“Well, that is odd,” said Richard, signaling for the check. “I suppose you could chalk it up to youthful high jinks.”

Bill and Ted both reached for their wallets, but Richard insisted on paying the entire bill, saying he’d invited them and it was his treat. “My pleasure,” he said as they thanked him effusively for what they all knew was a very expensive dinner.

When they got back to the apartment, Bill announced that a big meal always made him sleepy, and got busy shooing the others off to their rooms and unfolding the sofa bed, wasting no time climbing in and settling down for the night. Soon he was snoring away. Lucy, however, felt far too full to attempt sleep and headed down the long hall to the bathroom, planning to have a nice long soak.

The tatty old bathroom was her favorite room in the apartment, and not only because of the previous day’s romantic interlude. She loved the big old-fashioned tub and the cracked tiles and the colorful glass panels in the door. In her opinion, the heated towel bar was an invention second only to bagged salad in improving the quality of life. But even the relaxing bath wasn’t enough to make her sleepy, so she decided to call Elizabeth. It was only a little after ten, and she was sure Elizabeth would be awake. It was Saturday night, after all. She hoped Sylvie had turned up and Elizabeth wasn’t worrying about her.

“No, she hasn’t come home, but I’m not worried,” Elizabeth insisted in reply to her mother’s concerned inquiry. “She’s done this before. She isn’t scheduled to work this weekend, so she’s probably out on the town. I’m not her mother, and she doesn’t tell me where she goes or who she goes with.”

“But don’t you think it’s funny she didn’t say good-bye to us?” asked Lucy. “It was kind of rude, and she seems so polite.”

“I’ve told you, Mom. Sylvie is very self-centered. She doesn’t think about other people. Like whether or not I enjoy sleeping on a futon and being wakened by some stranger tramping through at five a.m. Frankly, I’m glad she’s not home. I hope she stays out, because maybe then I’ll get a good night’s sleep before I have to go to work tomorrow morning.”

“Well, if you’re not worried . . .”

“I’m not, and you don’t need to worry, either.”

“I won’t,” promised Lucy. “Listen, have you seen Adil and Malik lately?”

“No. We’ve been working different shifts, I guess. Why do you ask?”

Lucy yawned. She was growing tired. “Well, you know how we thought the police had searched our apartment? It wasn’t the police. It was Adil and Malik. They were caught on video.”

“That’s crazy. It couldn’t be them,” said Elizabeth.

“It really did look like them.”

“Well, appearances can be deceiving,” insisted Elizabeth. “I know them, and I’m sure they would never do anything like that. Why would they?”

“You’re probably right,” said Lucy, too tired to argue. She yawned again. “I’m going to head to bed.”

“
Bonne nuit. Dors bien,
” said Elizabeth.

“You, too, sweetie. Good night and sleep well.”

Next morning they all slept later than usual, and at breakfast Sue advised them to eat lightly because Madame Defarge had invited them to Sunday lunch, her way of apologizing for letting the intruders search the apartment and to thank Bill and Sid for building the closet. “And dress nicely,” advised Sue. “Sunday lunch is a formal affair in France.”

At one o’clock they gathered in the courtyard and knocked on the concierge’s door. She welcomed them warmly and promptly served aperitifs, whiskey for the men and champagne cocktails for the ladies, along with delicious homemade cheese treats. Once everyone was supplied with a drink, she disappeared into her tiny kitchen. Gounod, her little dog, absented himself after the introductions and curled up in his basket, aware, no doubt, that he would be rewarded with the leftovers.

“These are delicious,” enthused Lucy. “What are they?”

“
Galettes au fromage,
” replied Sue. “And I bet we’ll have some sort of soup for starters, then a roast chicken with vegetables, salad, strawberry tart for dessert, cheese, and coffee. I hope you’re hungry.”

“Not terribly,” admitted Lucy.

“And it will all be served on her best china and crystal,” added Sue.

“That’s a lot of dishes to wash,” said Rachel. “We ought to offer to clean up for her.”

“Don’t you dare,” hissed Sue. “It would be considered an insult, and she would be offended.”

“That’s fine with me,” said Pam, sipping her cocktail. “I’d probably break the Limoges, anyway.”

The luncheon was almost exactly as Sue had predicted, and it was a leisurely affair, but Lucy found it surprisingly enjoyable. It was pleasant to take time over a meal and to savor each course. Somewhat surprisingly, Madame encouraged them to discuss each dish, and the conversation became quite lively as they shared favorite recipes and family traditions.

“What’s the best way to make an omelet?” asked Rachel, confessing that hers always stuck to the pan.

“You must use . . . I don’t know the English . . .
la beurre,
” advised Madame.

“Butter,” said Sue.

“But-tare,” she repeated, trying out the word. “Not only in the pan, but you put some in with the eggs, too.”