French Fried (30 page)

“Once we arrived in Avignon, she made me feel so bad that I left the banquet, and then she attempted to shoot Jason and hit Mercedes instead, making it look as if I’d done it when I wasn’t even there. We found what may be the gun in her apartment; and in fact—this hadn’t occurred to me before—Albertine, do you remember when Charles de Gaulle knocked her down at Fort Andre? Maybe he realized that she planned to push me off the tower.”

“Of course,” Albertine agreed. “That explains his behavior.”

“Madam Guillot, you give your dog too much credit. You think he can read minds?” asked the inspector.

“Why not?” I said. “He can open refrigerators.”

“Well,” said Villon, “I can believe that a woman would fail in so many attempts on the lives of you and your husband, but you have given me no motive. Is this a ménage a trois that has—”

“Of course not,” I snapped. “She blames my husband for the suicide of hers fifteen years ago. We can show you the paper Jason wrote calling Maurice Bellamee’s work in question. It’s a matter of science, and all in her head anyway.”

Villon snorted with laughter. “Attempted murder over science? Sex, I could believe. Money, I could believe. Did the suicidal husband lose money because of your husband’s criticism?”

“No one makes money on scientific papers,” I retorted. The inspector obviously knew nothing about academia. “In fact, the author or his university pay to have papers published. I insist that you search her apartment. I can show you pictures of the evidence, but it is all in place for you to find and document properly.”

“And how did you, madam, get into this lady’s apartment? Did she invite you in to find evidence against her?”

“She’s at the conference. A student of hers had a key and let us in.” This was the tricky part. What we’d done was probably against the law, especially since Martin had had the key copied without permission. Maybe it was a good thing that he’d left.

“Your theory of the crime is ridiculous, and how do I know that all these other things happened? Please leave my office and take the canine with you. He has drooled on official documents.”

“All you have to do is get hold of Inspector Roux in Lyon. He can outline the whole case for you.”

Sneering, Inspector Villon picked up his phone and told someone to contact Lyon. Obviously be expected to learn nothing. However, Roux came on the line and, when he heard what Villon had to say, asked to speak to me. I told him about the evidence, and he congratulated me on my persistence, then told Villon that he would have someone fax the case file, which he hadn’t time to go over in person because Lyon was under attack by midnight rioters, who were being rounded up, when possible, the next day. Then he asked to speak to me again and complained that a famous Toulouse industrialist had dragged him away from a burning school the night before, furious about being attacked by a dog and identified as a terrorist.

“He looked just like your fax,” I said. Evidently Monsieur Dubois had also called several of Roux’s superiors. Then Roux asked to speak to Villon again and told him, loudly enough that Albertine could overhear and translate, that if the mad female professor from Lyon killed either of the American tourists, our deaths would be on Villon’s head.

Thoroughly outraged, Inspector Villon ordered me to leave my camera with him and wait for a call in case the faxed files made it necessary for him to search the apartment of Professor de Firenze. Albertine gave him her cell phone number because I didn’t have one, and Villon expressed his disdain for Americans who felt it perfectly proper to attack Iraq on the basis of false information and to travel around Europe without cell phones, which all civilized persons carried. I provided my hotel and room number, scowling all the while, and then we headed for the door, with the two officers, who were afraid of the dog, trailing behind to make sure that we actually left the premises.

Before we could enter the hall, another officer appeared carrying a large Styrofoam box. Charles de Gaulle leapt forward and snatched it between his teeth, after which he dashed into the hall, dropped the box, and tore into it. Before he could be stopped, he had wolfed down a sausage and started on the inspector’s French fries.

There was, needless to say, another heated argument between Albertine and the inspector, who resented the poaching of his lunch. “We have just solved the case,” she said. “If you attempt to imprison my dog, you may be sure I shall tell the newspapers that your case was solved by two ladies, a graduate student from Normandy, and a dog.” The inspector, face dark red with fury, decided not to punish the dog, and we were allowed to leave.

Martin was lurking outside, looking abashed, so we took him to lunch and plied him with delicious food and wine until he was much less stressed about the possibility of being arrested for letting us into Catherine’s apartment.

She hung up, and I rushed to the window, where I saw four men pile out of the car and Marie-Solange, waving her arms and berating them.
Mon Dieu.
Were they here for me? I had things yet to accomplish. Perhaps I could still kill the woman if she was at her hotel. The man no, he was at the palais. I could not embarrass my colleagues by killing him in front of everyone. And there were things I would need to take with me. No time for everything, even things that might incriminate me if the police came here, but things I’d need. Even as I thought this, I began to collect, in my haste to escape down the back stairs, the things that would suit my purposes.

After lunch, Albertine,
Charles de Gaulle, Martin, and I set out to entertain ourselves while we waited for word from Villon. Martin was astounded at the idea of driving around to visit more sites, but he was equally nervous about running into his research director at the conference, so he accompanied us.

We visited the eighteenth-century Comedy Theater, a square two-story building with a nice balustrade on top and ugly windows that had been added later. In fact, according to Albertine, both inside and outside had been ruined when it closed and was purchased by soulless business interests. Later the city bought it back and began refurbishing. The Place Crillon, where it sat, had paving of squares within squares within squares. I do love the many configurations of paving in Europe. I even saw one such display of intersecting brick half circles outside a store at home, but that area was very small. I’d have taken a picture of Place Crillon, but Inspector Villon had my camera.

We also drove by some nice city gates inset in the walls. Martin was more interested in those and thought the walls so fine that Normans must have built them. At the church of Saint Didier, we stopped and went inside to see a famous marble altarpiece called Le Portement de la Croix or Notre Dame du Spasme. The background buildings didn’t look at all like Jerusalem in the early Christian era, nor did the clothing. I’d have guessed Assisi and the Middle Ages, but the altarpiece was said to be one of the oldest works of the French Renaissance, so what did I know?

While we were looking at a large Annunciation fresco, Albertine’s cell phone rang. It was the inspector, and whatever he said caused her to drop into a pew and shake her head. “What?” I asked. “He decided not to search her apartment?”

“No, he checked the faxes from Lyon against our pictures and information, and they made the concierge open the apartment. The woman insisted that Catherine was there, but she wasn’t.”

“Well, of course not. She’s at the conference.”

“She hasn’t been seen at the palais since lunchtime and isn’t there now.”

My heart sank. If Catherine had come home and detected our visit, she might have fled, or be out looking for us. “We’ve got to call Jason and warn him.”

Albertine nodded. “The concierge was talking to Catherine on the telephone, telling her about the strangers she’d seen, which is to say us, when the woman saw the police drive into the courtyard.”

“I didn’t see any cars in the courtyard.”

“They’re not supposed to be. Anyway, she mentioned that to Catherine and then left to insist that they park on the street.”

“And Catherine got out the back way. Is there a back way?”

“Yes,” said Martin. “Stairs.”

“So she’s escaped. She’s probably halfway to the border of Spain by now,” said Albertine. “How could she tell we’d been there? We didn’t take anything. We didn’t move anything.”

“Maybe she noticed the sausage and cheese missing from her refrigerator,” Martin suggested.

For safety’s sake, Albertine called her husband so that mine would be warned while I fretted that we’d left the gun behind where Catherine could get it. Then we all went over to the palais, seeking safety in numbers, while the police searched Avignon for Catherine.