The Miracle (51 page)

To make matters worse, Inspector Fontaine was a typical civil servant drone. born with a solid appearance of authority, graying now but of athletic build (she'd heard he was still captain of a local soccer team), he was an unimaginative man. She was sure that he woke early every day, shuffled papers, filled the march of hours, and enjoyed sound sleep. On the wall behind him. Inspector Fontaine had two framed photographs, one of Alphonse Bertillion of Paris, the other of Professor Edmund Locard of Lyons. They represented all the detective brain power in the room. Inspector Fontaine could not be expected to see that the brutal slaying of a gorgeous young French girl in this haven of healing might offer some possibilities for a story.

"So," said Liz, tired of the inspector's non sequiturs and digressions, "that's the latest word—no suspects."

"Because there are no clues," Inspector Fontaine repeated. "I lean to the belief that someone, some stranger, came in off the street to rob Miss Dupree, and she walked in on him, perhaps tried to stop him, and he killed her and fled."

"But if there was a robbery, something would have been stolen. The apartment belonged to Dominique, Gisele's waitress friend. Gisele

had next to no possessions there. And Dominique did an inventory and told you that not a single item had been removed."

"Probably the burglar was interrupted and fled before he could take anything."

"Possibly," said Liz, but "impossibly" was the word for the Inspector, impossibly thick-headed and dull.

"What makes our work more difficult," Inspector Fontaine went on, "is that Miss Dupree knew everyone, and everyone loved her. Not one local would have had a motive to hurt her."

About to close her notepad, Liz suddenly said, "What about someone not local, maybe a foreigner, a foreign pilgrim or visitor?"

"But you can see how difficult that is," said Inspector Fbntaine, "because of Miss Dupree's profession. She was a tour guide, and so many of her tour groups consisted of foreigners. They came and went, they come and go."

"Did she ever become friendly with any of these foreign tourists?"

"No, except—" Inspector Fontaine was thoughtful a moment, but Liz continued to doubt that he could think. "Now that you speak of it, there was one foreigner she knew a bit better than most. When I was forced to go to Tarbes to notify the victim's parents -- terrible duty, but it had to be done—I stayed on to discuss with the Duprees any persons that their daughter might have met recently. They knew not a thing about the tourists in her groups, but I do recall that her father mentioned one pilgrim, a foreigner, an American, who had come to room with them, and their daughter had helped the American commute to Lourdes. His name ..." Fontaine pulled a manila folder in front of him, opened it, and turned over some papers. "Samuel Talley, a professor from a university in New York, who came to Lourdes hoping for a cure. Dupree did not believe his daughter knew the American very well. Besides, Dupree said, the American was of spotless reputation. Nevertheless, we tried to find Talley and interrogate him, but by the time we located his hotel, he had checked out and taken a flight to Paris late yesterday. Routinely, we had the Paris Surete follow up, but Mr. Talley could not be located and it was presumed that he had returned to New York, although his name was not on any flight manifest. Of course, this could have been an airlines oversight."

"But you have no reason to suspect this Talley?"

"Not Talley, not anyone. We have not a single suspect at this stage of the investigation."

Liz snapped her notepad shut with finality, tucked it in her purse, and rose. "Thank you for your time. Inspector. If you come up with anything, Fd appreciate it if you'd call me."

He was on his feet, probably hoping that she would spell his name right, and he was seeing her to the door.

Leaving the Commissariat building, reaching the sidewalk of the Rue du Baron-Duprat and the relatively more stimulating world of the town, Liz barely avoided colliding with a pair who had turned o£f the sidewalk to go inside.

One of the pair, a youngish French blonde, took Liz by the arm. "Miss Finch, how are you? Michelle Demaillot—"

"Yes, the Press Bureau. Hello."

Michelle introduced a runty young man who was carrying a load of camera equipment slung over one shoulder. "This is a colleague of yours from Paris. Monsieur Pascal of Paris-Match. Perhaps you know each other?"

"I'm afraid not," said Liz, shaking the photographer's hand.

Continuing in her usual Chamber of Conmierce manner, Michelle said, "You are finding some good stories, I presume?"

"Not much to date," said Liz. "Not much seems to be happening."

"Except one dreadful thing. Did you hear what happened to Gisele Ehipree? You remember her, don't you? I saw you dining together in the Miracle Restaurant. You have heard?"

Liz nodded wearily. "Yes, I heard. I was quite shocked."

"Unbelievable," said Michelle, showing honest grief. "So terrible, especially when things were going well for her. Gisele had called me just the day before, told me she'd turned to writing in her spare time. Actually got a magazine assignment to do a piece on the famous Russian foreign minister—you know, Tikhanov—whom she'd met at the United Nations. Gisele needed a picture of Tikhanov, and I remembered Pascal here was flying in to do a layout. So I phoned him in Paris and asked him to bring along some art on Tikhanov, and he did, and Gisele picked up the photos the night before last."

Something tinkled in Liz's head. "She picked up the pictures of Minister Tikhanov?"

"Yes, I left the package for her and she picked it up."

"The article on him she was writing, had she finished it already and prepared it for mailing? Or was she still writing it?"

"Still in the process of writing it, I think."

Odd, Liz thought. After finding Gisele's body, she had gone through Gisele's apartment, hastily but thoroughly, yet had come across no notes or manuscript about Tikhanov, nor the Paris-Match photographs, either. If Gisele really had them, they would have been somewhere in the apartment. Gisele had no office of her own at the tourist agency or anywhere else. The Tikhanov material must have been

in her borrowed apartment. But Liz had discovered Gisele's body, searched the apartment, and there was nothing. It was as if someone had been there before Liz to remove the photos -- to kill Gisele and remove them.

Parting from Michelle and the photographer, Liz started back to the hotel, turning the oddity over in her mind, and gradually accelerating her pace.

The minute that she was alone in her room, she picked up the phone and put through a call to Bill Trask in Paris. She did so without hesitation, because as a loser already, she had nothing more to lose.

When she reached Trask, she said, "Bill, there's something Td like you to have someone in the office look into for me."

"Okay."

"It is about Soviet Foreign Minister Sergei Tikhanov. I'd like to know if he's in Paris."

"You're covering Lourdes right now. What in the hell has Lourdes got to do with Tikhanov?"

"Just what I want to find out. I have a hunch that Tikhanov may have been in Lourdes recently."

"Looking for the Virgin Mary?" Trask burst out laughing. "What is this, the silly season or what? Tikhanov in Lourdes? That's plain funny."

"I think so, too. That's why I'm calling you. Because it is funny, the idea of it. But I have a reason for asking you to check on him."

"Well, if you have a reason—" said Trask doubtfully.

"Bill, please have someone ring the Soviet Embassy and find out if Tikhanov is there. Then buzz me right back. I'll be in my room waiting for your call."

"Okay, let me see. Stand by."

Liz hung up and literally did stand by. She was too restless to sit, so she stood up, and wondered if her wild hunch, based on an oddity, could be converted into a last-hour newsbeat that would save her job and save Paris for her.

She had just noted that six minutes had passed, when the telephone rang.

Trask wasted no time. "Liz, we called the Soviet Embassy, as you requested. Yes, Foreign Minister Tikhanov is here, which is hardly unusual, since he's always bouncing back and forth. Tomorrow he will be in Moscow again."

"No." Liz had to restrain herself from crying out. She said excitedly, "Bill, don't let him get away. He's got to be detained for questioning.

"Questioning about what?"

"The murder of that French kid in Lourdes yesterday, the girl I told you about."

"Oh, that. How am I supposed to detain the foreign minister of the Soviet Union?"

"By getting the Stiett to put a hold on him until he can be questioned."

"If the Stiett were to hold him, they'd have to charge him with the crime. What evidence do you have—"

"He may have killed the girl to get back some damaging information she had on him."

"Liz, hard evidence, real evidence."

"I don't have any yet, but given half a chance—"

"Liz, I haven't quite finished what I was saying. Even if the Surete had such real evidence, they couldn't do a damn thing about it. Young lady, haven't you heard? Sergei Tikhanov is the foreign minister of the Soviet Union. He's a top-notch diplomat visiting France. Have you ever heard of diplomatic immunity?"

"Oh, shit, they wouldn't invoke that."

"You bet the Soviets would invoke that. Besides, what difference, you don't have the goods in hand. Listen, stop spinning wheels. You forget Tikhanov. You keep your eyes open for the Virgin Mary. You hear me? That's an order."

"All right, boss," she said in a small voice.

"An order and don't forget it," repeated Trask. "And get back to work. Get us something from Lourdes."

She heard the loud chck on the other end, and hung up, also.

She lowered herself into a chair, bereft. Another hope for survival had been snuffed out. She was trying too hard, snatching at anything, becoming too desperate. Shaking out a cigarette, lighting it, smoking, she tried to calm herself. There had to be something she could file from this danm place. Her thinking cap had become a helmeted Iron Maiden. There was no reach in her head, only a buzzing pain. Well, since there was no story here, what would be a story, even a lousy one, but an acceptable one? Her mind clanked slowly toward the only person she knew who might be a story. Edith Moore.

Reluctantly, Liz requested the information operator to give her the phone number of that new restaurant, or renovated one, the one now named Madame Moore's Miracle Restaurant. Once she'd obtained the phone number, Liz called it. She told the woman who answered the phone that she wanted to speak to Mr. Reggie Moore. "Tell him Liz Finch of API, the American syndicate, wants to speak to him."

There was hardly any wait at all, and Reggie was on the phone, sweet as molasses in his wrong-side-of-the-town London accent.

Liz had no taste for molasses this moment. "Mr. Moore, I want to do a story about your wife, an interview with her concerning her cure and her feelings about her imminent crowning as the new miracle woman of Lourdes. This will be a top feature for our international wire. Think she'll cooperate?"

"I—I'm absolutely positive she'll be delighted."

"All right, let's make it your restaurant at two o'clock tomorrow afternoon. We'll have tea and talk healing. You produce the body and I'll produce the story."

"Happy to do so," chirped Reggie. "Tomorrow, I agree. Looking forward."

As she hung up once more, not looking forward, Liz's mind flashed to her glamorous rival. Marguerite, and her glamorous scandal story on the glamorous Andrew Viron.

And she was left with the crumbs, the dowdy Edith Moore.

For the hundredth time Liz wanted to kill herself, but then philosophically decided that a girl's gotta live, gotta earn her keep, and make the best of it. In the interim she would go out and buy a bagful of eclairs to keep her busy.

Amanda made it back to Lourdes from Bartres in no time fiat.

She had the Renault's radio on all the way, and hummed gaily to the tunes of a French medley. On the passenger seat beside her were the original and three photocopies of Bernadette's last journal, and with the journal she knew that she had everything that she needed.

Entering Lourdes she was more aware than ever of the shops in the town, the hotels and cafes, the pious pilgrims on the sidewalks, and she realized again that on the seat beside her lay the material that would devastate the community, level it for all time. In a way she was sorry it had to be done to this French Pompeii. Even if Lourdes was a fake it had made millions of gullible people throughout the world feel better about their lot and it had given most of them hope. Nevertheless, Amanda assured herself, what she was about to do to the town would be appreciated by all the rational, civilized people on earth who wanted honesty and truth.

Nearing the Hotel Gallia & Londres, Amanda looked about for a parking place, luckily found one immediately. Grabbing the journal and the three photocopies she'd had made, she dashed into the hotel, eager to see Ken and have him read the journal for himself. She expected to find Ken on the bed, resting after another prolonged visit to the grotto.

But he was neither on the bed nor in the room. What was on the bed, instead, was a note, a sheet of stationery folded over and bearing her own name on it.

Unfolding the note, she found the handwriting barely recognizable, but realized it was from Ken. Deciphering the words, she read:

Amanda, became more ill this mom. The hotel arranged for me to be taken to Centre Hospitalier General de Lourdes, 2, Avenue Alexandre-Marque, for examination and treatment Don't worry. God will look after me.

Love, Ken

Amanda felt herself sag. Maybe it was too late. Maybe all her efforts, and her great find, had been for nought. Ken's potentially fatal disease was overcoming him, and now probably the hasty return to Chicago would do no good.

Amanda pulled herself together. Snatching up one of the envelopes that contained a copy of Bernadette's journal, she was immediately on the run.

Twenty minutes later, following the hotel receptionist's directions, Amanda was inside the Centre Hopitalier General de Lourdes, hurrying along the second-floor hallway until she found the number of Ken's room. There was a sign posted on the door stating "No Visitors." Ignoring it, Amanda nervously knocked. After a brief wait, the door partially opened. A woman poked her head out and gazed at Amanda inquiringly.