The Paris Secret (3 page)

“If people think you don’t know any better they’ll tell you anything, especially if it makes them feel better about themselves,” concluded Brian.

By the time we finished up our meals and ordered dessert, Brian had detailed all the ins and outs of the dry cleaning business.

“Do you come from a family of librarians?” asked Jarrod.

I hesitated before answering. Since I’d grown up in foster care, questions about my family always made me uncomfortable. I honestly had no idea what kind of family I’d come from. I went into foster care when I was two, after my adoptive parents were killed in a car crash. There wasn’t a family member who was willing to take me.

“Nope. I’m the only one,” I said simply.

It was dark and chilly when we left the restaurant two hours later. Brian and Jarrod talked me into walking over to the Eiffel Tower with them to watch it light up. They waited in front of the restaurant for me while I ran back to the hotel to get a jacket. I headed up to my room and ran smack into Meryl Berman on her way down.

“Oh, Maya, you gave me a fright. Are you having a nice time?”

“Pretty much. How about you?”

Her face fell. “Haven’t had a chance to see much yet. Ted slept all afternoon and I was too afraid to go out on me own. Then we went out to get a bite and he had too much wine and argued with the waiter. Now he doesn’t want to go anywhere. He gets so mean and stubborn when he drinks. Maybe tomorrow I’ll get a chance to see the sights.” She was miserable.

“I’m walking over to the Eiffel Tower with another couple from our tour. Why don’t you come with us? It’ll be fun.”

“Are you sure?” Her face brightened.

“I just need to get a jacket and I’ll be right down. Just wait for me in the lobby.”

I had my key card out and ready when I got to my room, but the door was already open a crack. I pushed it open all the way and flipped on the light. The room was wrecked. The contents of both of our suitcases were strewn all over the room. The desk drawers had been pulled out and dumped on the floor. The mattresses were askew as if someone thought something might be hidden underneath them. And the room reeked of cigarette smoke. Damn it! Either Juliet must have left and neglected to pull the door completely shut behind her, or someone broke into our room. Either way, it looked like we’d been robbed.

My open suitcase was on Juliet’s bed. As I rushed over to check the hidden compartment in the bottom where I kept my passport, my feet got tangled in the straps of a black bikini top that must have been Juliet’s, and I tripped, almost knocking my head against the desk. I angrily kicked the top across the room and then searched my suitcase. My passport was still there.

“Thank God.”

In fact, I couldn’t find anything missing, making me wonder if Juliet trashed the room. She’d been pretty upset when I’d left. But why trash the room? And where did she go? The bathroom door was closed. Was she in there? I walked over and pressed my ear to the door. I couldn’t hear anything except a slow steady drip from the sink. I knocked on the door.

“Dr. Rice? Are you in there?” There was no answer. I knocked again. “Dr. Rice?”

My own reflection in the mirror startled me when I opened the bathroom door. The smell of blood and burnt flesh smacked me in the face. Something large and motionless was behind the shower door, obscured by the pattern on the glass.

I took a deep breath and pulled the handle on the door. Juliet, nude, bruised and bloodied, was crammed into the small shower stall. Her face had been beaten into an almost unrecognizable pulp. One of her eyes was swollen shut; the other stared ahead unseeingly, the blue clouding over to white. Her broken nose hung at an unnatural angle; her bottom lip was split. A telephone cord bound her hands behind her back. Cigarette burns covered her arms and legs as if she hadn’t been tortured enough. But that’s not what caused my knees to buckle. I grabbed the sink for support as I fell back on the toilet.

A small replica of the Eiffel Tower had been jammed to the hilt into the side of Juliet’s neck.
My
Eiffel Tower corkscrew. A profusion of dark blood from the wound had run down her neck and between her breasts. A low moan escaped my lips. And suddenly screaming—loud, ragged shrieks—filled the air. I covered my mouth but the screams wouldn’t stop.

Because I wasn’t the one screaming. It was Meryl Berman. She must have come up looking for me when I took too long. She was standing in the bathroom door looking into the shower. I got up to block her view but she kept screaming. With me shaking so badly, it was a miracle I managed to get the two of us downstairs to the lobby. Meryl sat sobbing on the bottom step while I pounded on the bell for the desk clerk.

“
Oui, madame,
” he said smiling.

“There’s been a murder,” I told him.

Within fifteen minutes the hotel was swarming with police.

We plan, God laughs.
And I’m living proof. Because had anyone asked me yesterday how I
planned
to spend my first night in Paris, I’d have said any number of things. And none of them would have involved sitting in a stark, brightly lit police interrogation room being grilled about the murder of a woman I’d known for all of two hours. I don’t know if God was laughing. But I damned sure wasn’t.

“Madame Sinclair, if you could just take us through it one more time, we’d be most appreciative,” said Police Captain Claude Bellange with a smile.

At least I thought he was smiling. I could barely see his mouth beneath his thick, bushy mustache. But his eyes crinkled. His ruddy skin stretched tightly over his round cheeks, reminding me of baked apples right before the skins split. He was a heavyset man of about sixty and a chain smoker. Lighting yet another Gauloises cigarette with the still-lit one he’d barely finished, he inhaled and blew a thin stream of smoke out of the corner of his mouth. I was a reformed Benson and Hedges girl, whose nicotine cravings came back during times of stress, and the smell of the smoke was making me twitchy.

Lieutenant Thierry Bernier, Bellange’s subordinate, was a gaunt, balding man of about forty with a big gap between his two front teeth. Impatient with restless energy, he stood to stretch his legs before perching on the end of the table. He swung his right leg slowly and glared down at me with his shoulders hunched and rounded like Snoopy doing his vulture routine.

“Look, I’ve already told you—”

“From the beginning,
si vous plait,
” barked the unsmiling Bernier, his voice cracking like a whip. He was the less friendly of the two men, more intense and easily annoyed.

I’d already been over what happened half a dozen times in the two hours I’d been there. At first, I thought my crappy French, combined with both men’s heavily accented English, was causing communication problems. However, after I’d been asked to go over my story for what seemed like the millionth time, it dawned on me they were just trying to see if I’d trip myself up and change my story. Not hardly. I’d replayed what happened in my head nonstop since it happened and unlike the air in that interrogation room, it was still very fresh.

By the time I’d finished telling my story yet again it was one o’clock. Bernier had moved from sitting on the table to pacing the room impatiently. Bellange seemed a little antsy as well. He tapped an empty cigarette pack against his hand as if he was hoping sheer will could make a cigarette appear. Bernier cleared his throat and suddenly Bellange snapped to attention. He balled up the empty pack and tossed it in the trashcan in the corner then pulled another pack from his suit pocket.

“Can I have one of those?” I asked impulsively. I hadn’t smoked in five years, not since I was in grad school. It seemed like an excellent time to start again.

Bellange was mildly surprised as he slid the pack across the table at me. I pulled out a cigarette and savored the feel of it between my fingers before leaning across the table to let the old French cop light it for me. I inhaled deeply and then began to cough and choke. My chest burned. My eyes watered. Either I’d taken too deep a drag, or my American lungs weren’t used to the unfiltered Gauloises. Bernier sighed and rolled his eyes. Bellange fought a smile. I did what most embarrassed people do. I faked righteous indignation.

“Why am I still here? I don’t know what more I can tell you that I haven’t already.”

“Oh, I’m not so sure,
madame,
” said Bellange. “What do you think happened to Dr. Rice?”

I was amazed. Surely he knew what had happened. It was clear enough to me.

“Well, it’s obvious that whoever stole my bag earlier today and took my hotel key card tried it on every door until they found the right one. Dr. Rice must have still been in the room when he broke in and…and…” My voice trailed off as I relived the horror of Juliet’s body in the shower.

I certainly hadn’t liked the woman but no one deserved to die the way she had. It was my fault she’d been stuck in a room with me in the first place. And then because my bag had been stolen…Bernier and Bellange exchanged glances that unnerved the hell out of me.

“Shouldn’t you be looking for the person who stole my bag? Maybe one of the hotel staff or one of the guests saw this person.”

“If there’s one thing we do know, Madame Sinclair, it is Paris pickpockets.” Bellange folded his hands over his large belly.

“Meaning what?” The hairs on the back of my neck started to prickle.

“Meaning,” said Bernier, pulling up a chair next to me and sitting uncomfortably close, “no self-respecting thief would steal a bag and only take worthless trinkets and leave behind money and valuables. They leave nothing behind,
madame.
They will take everything you have because everything can be sold. Everything.”

“You think I’m lying about my bag being stolen?” I was incredulous. “Why would I lie? You can ask them on the cruise I took if you don’t believe me. I reported it to one of the crew.”

“Ah, but you’ve already said that you found your bag in the restroom after you reported it stolen. As far as the crew is concerned, you could have just forgotten you left it in there in the first place, no?” concluded Bellange.

“And you are far from a paragon of truthfulness,
madame.
Might I remind you that you’ve already admitted that your dishonesty regarding your lover’s reservation caused the hotel mix-up with Dr. Rice,” added Bernier.

Panic began to set in. I wanted out of that room. I wanted to be someplace safe and familiar. I wanted to go home. This trip had been a big mistake. I should have never come alone to Paris. What had I been thinking?

“I didn’t have anything to do with Dr. Rice’s murder. I was at dinner with a couple from my tour group in a restaurant full of other people. And besides, why would I kill her?”

“No one has accused you of a crime,” insisted Bellange. “But you must look at this situation from our point of view. You were the last person with Dr. Rice before her murder, and you were seen arguing with her in the hotel lobby. Witnesses reported Dr. Rice telling you to leave her alone, yet you followed her up to the room you both shared. No one else saw Dr. Rice after that confrontation, but you were seen leaving the hotel in a hurry. Your hotel room was trashed, indicating a robbery, but like the mystery of your stolen bag, nothing was taken. Now, I ask, what would you think?”

Of course, when it was laid out like that the whole thing sounded fishy. But I couldn’t help that. They were the police. It was their job to figure out what happened, not mine.

“I wasn’t the only one who argued with her. What about the man she was arguing with on the bridge?”

“As you’ve already said, Dr. Rice denied she was on the bridge when you asked her about it. And as you’ve also admitted, you had quite a lot of wine to drink with lunch,” said Bellange.

“I wasn’t drunk. I know what I saw!”

“Why would Dr. Rice lie if you had indeed seen her?” asked a sneering Bernier.

Because she was an arrogant cow who was probably embarrassed that I’d witnessed her argument with that green-eyed hottie,
I wanted to say, but didn’t.

A knock at the door kept me from having to answer. Bernier got up and opened the door an inch and a manila envelope was handed to him through the crack. He closed the interrogation room door and pulled the contents of the envelope—five photographs—out and examined them one by one. A smirk lifted one corner of his mouth as he handed the photos to Bellange. Bellange took one look at them and then laid them out like playing cards on the table in front of me.

“Tell me what you see.” He shoved the pictures roughly toward me. They were photos shot from multiple angles. Each one showed injuries I hadn’t seen when I’d found her. Feeling queasy, I pushed back from the table and put my head in my hands.

“Why are you doing this to me? I didn’t kill her!” Hot tears flowed down my cheeks. Bernier grabbed my chair from behind and pushed it back up to the table.

“What my partner
meant
to say was, what
don’t
you see?” His lips were practically touching my ear.

The asshole enjoyed seeing me so upset. He probably had a hard-on. Not about to give him any more satisfaction, I sat up straight in the chair and reluctantly looked down at the pictures. It was then that I realized what he meant. Everything about Juliet’s murder scene was exactly as it was when I’d found her except for one thing, one very big thing. The Eiffel Tower corkscrew—my corkscrew—was no longer in the side of her neck. It was gone.

It was after two in the morning when they finally cut me loose. I was issued a strong warning to stay in Paris and make myself available for further questioning, at least until they were satisfied I wasn’t involved in Juliet Rice’s murder—and they were far from satisfied.

I was just relieved not to have been arrested—and to be alive. Whoever killed Juliet must have still been in the room when I came in. After Meryl and I left, he must have taken the corkscrew and disappeared into the night. I shuddered. I could have just as easily been next. What was worse was that Bernier and Bellange thought I lied about my bag being stolen—they thought I tried to make it look like someone else killed Juliet. They just couldn’t prove it.

The September night air was cold. I shivered when I stood out on the sidewalk in front of the station. Hugging my bag to my chest, I headed off in the direction of the Hotel de l’Elysee in search of a metro station as a dark green Peugeot with tinted windows pulled along side me. The passenger-side window began to roll down, but I heard someone call my name. Monsieur Marcel, my tour group guide, stood by a waiting cab parked across the street. His snowy white hair shone like a beacon in the moonlight. I practically flew to him. The Peugeot sped off.

“Madame Sinclair, are you okay? You have not been harmed, have you?” The Frenchman was genuinely concerned.

He was still dressed in the same immaculate blue suit and red bow tie he’d worn to meet us at the airport. It seemed like a lifetime ago. I assured him I was as well as could be expected and he ushered me into the waiting cab. As it turned out, Brian and Jarrod had called him when the police had whisked me off to the station. He’d been waiting for me the entire time.

“Thank you for the ride,
monsieur.
” I could feel the tears coming again. He handed me a crisp white handkerchief with a gold monogram.

“Not a problem my dear. I’m always happy to help out a beautiful damsel in distress. I’ve taken the liberty of arranging a new hotel room for you, although, regrettably I was unable to book you into different hotel at this late hour.”

“But there were no rooms available until the morning.”

“As circumstance would have it, Dr. Rice’s murder has made many people upset and fearful for their own safety. Guests checked out en masse. There are now plenty of rooms to be had at the hotel.”

“I’m so sorry to put you to so much trouble.”

“It is I who should apologize to you. This isn’t at all the trip you should be having. It is my sincerest hope that while the police work to clear up that unfortunate professor’s death, you can put these bad memories behind you and get to know Paris as you were meant to.” He patted my hand and gave me a smile.

I was relieved to be treated like an innocent person, but could I really get to know Paris as if nothing happened?

I slept through breakfast the next morning. If the maid hadn’t knocked on the door I’d have still been sleeping. As long as I was asleep, I didn’t have to think about everything that had happened the night before. But a maid running the vacuum would have keep me up, making it hard to escape reality. I asked if she could please come back later to clean my room. She apologized profusely and backed down the narrow hall like she was afraid I might stick something sharp and pointy in her neck. However, one look in the mirror and I understood why I had scared the maid. Wearing slept-in clothes, a puffy, sleep-swollen face and bed-head from hell, I looked like a hot-ass mess. Even a shower wouldn’t help matters too much. All of my things, including the new clothes I’d bought for the trip, were now considered part of Juliet’s crime scene. I had a feeling I wouldn’t be getting them back any time soon.

I started to crawl back into bed when there was yet another knock at my door. Hoping it wasn’t the police this time, I opened the door to find Brian and Jarrod loaded down with shopping bags.

“Don’t get your undies in a knot, babe.” Jarrod pushed past me. “It’s just a couple of gays bearing gifts. Are you okay?” He dumped his bags on the rumpled bed and gave me the once-over.

“I’m fine. What’s all this?” I ran my fingers through my messy hair, trying in vain to smooth it down.

“We saw the police carting bags full of stuff from your room last night and figured you’d need a few things. I hope this stuff fits. We weren’t sure about these European sizes. Things tend to run smaller over here.” Brian sat on the bed and started opening the bags.

“Here,” said Jarrod, handing me a Styrofoam cup of steaming black coffee and a bag of still-warm croissants and pain au chocolate rolls.

Brian pulled out a pair of khaki cargo pants, a pair of jeans, a black V-neck sweater, a white long-sleeved shirt, a package of cotton underwear, toothpaste, toothbrush, mouthwash, deodorant, soap, lavender scented body lotion, half a dozen colorful scarves.

“Oh, you guys are so sweet! Thank you!” I flung my arms around each one of them and kissed their cheeks. Brian blushed. Jarrod grinned from ear to ear.

“Where’d you get this stuff?” I took a bracing sip of coffee before retrieving money from my wallet to reimburse them.

“Courtesy of the local Monoprix store around the corner. We got the scarves and the grub at the street market under the metro tracks. But that’s not important, babe. What the hell happened last night? We waited around for you forever then the next thing we knew the hotel was crawling with police. Someone said the professor had been murdered,” said Jarrod, helping himself to a croissant.

While I ate, I filled them in on everything. They sat on my bed, their mouths hanging open.

“Sweet Jesus!” was all Brian could say when he regained speech.

“Are you sure she wasn’t a hooker?” asked Jarrod.

“She isn’t anything except dead now.” I shook my head. “I’m surprised you two are still here. Monsieur Marcel said half the guests got scared and checked out last night.”

Brian nodded.

“It was like Exodus. Most of our tour group took flight. They wouldn’t even listen when Marcel tried to tell them rooms were scarce all over Paris. The city’s hosting the World Rugby Cup. Some of them came slinking back this morning and the rest demanded refunds and went home.”

“We don’t scare that easily. We paid for a Paris vacation and we’re not leaving ’til we’ve had it,” said Jarrod matter-of-factly.

“Well, what about that Australian couple from our tour group, the Bermans? Have you seen them? Meryl Berman walked in when I found the body. She saw Dr. Rice in the shower, too. She could tell the police about seeing my corkscrew,” I said.

“Sorry, Maya,” said Brian, shaking his head. “After the police left last night, her husband packed her and all their crap into a cab and we haven’t seen them since.”

That was not good. It meant the French police weren’t concentrating on anyone but little old
moi.

“This is just insane! I can’t even go home if I wanted to. I’ve been told I have to stay in Paris until this mess is cleared up. I’m just a librarian from Columbus, Ohio!”

We sat in silence for a few minutes while I polished off the remainder of the bread.

“This is completely ridiculous!” exclaimed Brian, standing up. “Get dressed, Maya. You’re coming to Versailles with us. We’re not going to let you sit around feeling sorry for yourself and hiding out in this little room like you’ve got something to feel guilty about.”

“Yeah,” said Jarrod, laughing. “There’s nothing like wandering around the palace of a woman who ended up headless to make you realize your problems aren’t all that.”

“I can’t leave the city, remember?”

“It’s not like you’re hopping a plane home, babe. We’re only going a half an hour outside the city. Besides, if they thought you were truly guilty they would have just arrested you,” Jarrod assured me.

“Take your time. We’ll be waiting in the lobby,” said Brian, following Jarrod out the door.

They were gone before I had a chance to protest further. I didn’t want to go out. Hiding in my hotel room sounded like a pretty good plan to me. But Brian had a point. I wasn’t guilty and I had nothing to hide. Why should I act like a criminal? I paid for my trip, or rather Ben had.

It was the thought of Ben that got me out of my chair and into the shower. I owed it to myself to have a great time on his dime. I wasn’t about to ruin the rest of my trip. If I had to be stuck somewhere, Paris wasn’t too shabby.

I took a long, hot shower and changed into the jeans and black sweater. The jeans were a little loose, so I used one scarf as a belt, another to tie back my hair into a ponytail. I dabbed on a little lip gloss to complete the look. Figuring I looked pretty good for a suspected murderer, I headed downstairs.

At first I wasn’t sure he was cop. The guy following us on the RER commuter train to Versailles blended right in. He looked like an aging athlete whose muscle had turned to fat. His polo shirt was rumpled, as though it had been bunched in the bottom of a suitcase too long.

I didn’t point him out to Brian and Jarrod because I didn’t want to spoil their day when they’d been so nice to me. He seemed just like a tourist amongst all the other tourists headed to Versailles. He sat in front of us and opened a newspaper, but I caught him casting furtive glances in my direction over the paper. And as he flipped through the pages, I noticed an unusual red birthmark on his right forearm.

That’s when I realized that like the rest of us tourists he was headed to the Palace of Versailles, one of the most famous sites in France. But unlike us he carried no camera or any other sightseeing paraphernalia. And then I caught a whiff of something familiar—a combination of sweat, stale cigarettes and disinfectant clung to him. He smelled just like the police station. It wasn’t a smell I’d soon forget, and he reeked of it.

Brian and Jarrod were oblivious to his presence. They concerned themselves with the day’s itinerary and where to eat dinner that evening. As they debated, I made eye contact with the cop and gave him my best dirty look so he would know I was on to him. He returned my glare and smirked at me. What Bellange and Bernier hoped to accomplish by having this guy follow me around was beyond me. If they wanted to waste police time and resources following a dead end, that was their business. But Juliet Rice’s killer was roaming free and that made me furious. The cop followed us off the train, hanging back about twenty feet as we made our ten-minute trek from the train station to the palace.

We wove our way around parked cars and tour buses in the dusty, crowded lot located in front of the gilded palace gates. Numerous African vendors in flowing tunics and skull caps hawked everything from handbags and sunglasses to T-shirts and 3-D puzzles of Versailles. The cop from the train was accosted by a particularly persistent vendor who kept shoving a fake Gucci bag in his face. I hurried through the gates and was moving so fast, my heel got stuck in a crack between the cobblestones, pitching me forward. A drop-dead gorgeous guy in dark sunglasses caught me before I ended up flat on my face. Even through the fabric of my sweater, his hands were warm. The gentle way he held me and the subtle tang of his cologne made me forget we were in a crowded courtyard. The stranger made sure I was steady on my feet before letting me go.

“
Merci,
” I mumbled, embarrassed. He flashed me a dazzling smile and my heart beat a little faster, then he disappeared into the crowd. Boy, did I need to get a grip on myself. Men were the last thing on my agenda.

I couldn’t help but be impressed by the sheer size of the place, let alone the palace’s gold detailing glinting in the bright September sunlight. It was easy to imagine Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI’s carriage rumbling across these very cobblestones hundreds of years ago.

Long lines formed at several entrances to the palace. People were taking pictures and babbling in English, French, Chinese, Spanish and other languages I didn’t recognize. Dozens and dozens of tour guides held up signs and shouted instructions to groups of people who followed behind them like chicks trailing after a mother hen.

“Crap! The marble court’s being renovated. I really wanted to see it.” Jarrod gestured toward the very center of the courtyard, which was obscured by scaffolding. I caught a glimpse of black-and-white marble tiles.

“Me too,” I commiserated as we hurried to catch up with Brian, who was headed past the long lines.

For the next two hours we toured the palace and I snapped picture after picture of gaudy fabulousness. Practically everything at Versailles was covered in gold. Even the ceilings were decorated with elaborate frescos framed in twenty-four-karat gold. I took a picture of Brian and Jarrod in the newly renovated Hall of Mirrors. They took one of me in Marie Antoinette’s floral-and-gold bedroom by the railing in front of an ornate feather-and-fringe-canopied bed. It was the bed in which she publicly gave birth to all of her children. By the time we emerged from the palace and headed into the ornamental gardens, it was early afternoon. Brian was pale and breathless. Jarrod guided him to a stone bench to rest and catch his breath.

“Is he okay?”

“He’s got a heart condition. He couldn’t sleep last night with all the excitement at the hotel and now all this walking we’ve done has wiped him out. I should really get him back to the hotel.” Jarrod rubbed Brian’s back. Brian didn’t protest.

“No…you stay here…Maya,” said Brian between breaths when I started to follow them. “We can come back another day.”

“Yeah, don’t worry about us. You stay and enjoy yourself. Don’t forget to see the Petit Trianon. We can meet up later for dinner.”

“Okay, here’s my cell number.” I quickly scribbled my number on a napkin from my bag and thrust it into Jarrod’s hand. “Call me and let me know when you want to meet.” They left and I felt both concerned and relieved. I wasn’t ready to leave. Since ditching the cop, I was finally starting to enjoy my trip.

After the over-the-top grandeur of the palace, the natural beauty of the gardens was a welcome change. I was heading down the garden steps to Versailles’s two largest and most famous fountains—the tiered Latona fountain, depicting titaness Latona and her children, Diana and Apollo, and the Apollo fountain, featuring the bronze god Apollo rising from the water, being pulled by horses—when my camera died.