Assault and Beret

by Jenn McKinlay

  You know how when things are really good, so good that you just can’t help but push for more? Yeah, that was me. I couldn’t be content with a sexy, gravelly response that rocked my world. No, no, I had to push.

  I was panting when I caught up to him and fell into step beside him.

  “So, when you say ‘no,’ you mean—” I began but he interrupted.

  “No.”

  “‘No’ as in you wouldn’t be graceful, or ‘no’ as in we’re not talking about this?”

  “The latter,” he said.

  Of course, this just caused me to press him further.

  “Why not?” I asked.

  He spun toward me then. I turned to meet him, hoping for what, I do not know. That’s a lie, I was hoping he’d kiss me. There, I admitted it. Our faces were just inches apart; he totally could have but he didn’t.

  Instead, he narrowed his eyes at me in a look that devoured. Oh, my! Then he took a step forward. Instinct had me stepping backward. He took another and so did I until the white stone building behind me was at my back and there was nowhere to go.

  He raised his hands on the wall, one beside each of my shoulders, caging me in. His face was as serious as a heart attack.

  “Ginger, I am spending my nights on a sofa just mere feet from where you are sleeping, with a flimsy door in between us. I would say I’m sleeping, but there is no sleep happening given the situation, which I am trying to be very respectful about—”

  “But you—” I was about to tell him he didn’t have to be. Damn the consequences, which would be hearing my mother gloat for the rest of my natural-born days and all that, but he interrupted.

  “No.” He held up his hand. “If we start talking about us, I am going to kiss you, if I kiss you at this point, it won’t be enough, and you’ll end up breaking your vow of celibacy.”

  “You think you’re that good of a kisser?” I asked. Yes, I was taunting.

  He didn’t say a word, he just looked at my mouth with wicked ideas sparkling in his treacherous green eyes, and I felt my face fire hot like a beacon.

  He grinned. I frowned. We were most definitely at an impasse on this topic and I was pretty sure he’d just made his point. Was this the strife Viv had been talking about? It kind of made sense now, you know, in that whole “nothing worth having is worth getting easily” sort of way.

  “Fine,” I said, which of course meant it wasn’t.

  In a conciliatory gesture, he grabbed my hand in his and pulled me along the uneven sidewalk.

  “If it makes you feel any better,” he said, “if you had an ex pop up in your life at this point in our whatever this is, I’d likely punch him right in the mouth and then abscond with you and make you mine.”

  My heart took the express elevator down to my feet, and I felt dizzy at the rush. Did he really just say that? It was macho and ridiculous and I loved every scrap of it.

  I leaned close and put my lips near his ear, and whispered, “And I’d let you.”

  He closed his eyes for a moment and blew out a breath. Then he shook himself from his head to his feet, like a dog in the rain.

  “Come on, Ginger, before this conversation makes me rethink all of my good intentions,” he said.

  I let him lead, which right there let’s you know how rattled I was. Again, I wondered if there was a loophole in the promise I had made my mother. Darn it.

  We took a couple of sharp turns through even narrower streets in the neighborhood. Finally, we matched the building number to the one Alistair had given Harry. He’d said that William’s apartment was on the third floor.

  I glanced up at the red brick building. The third floor was the top one. On the first floor was a cigar shop with the words Tabac Noir scrawled in cursive on the awning that hung over the main door. The pungent aroma of tobacco grew stronger as we approached.

  “I am going to stop in the shop and see if anyone knows or has seen William,” he said. “Wait here and keep an eye on the door.”

  “Will do.” I nodded. The door that led upstairs to the apartments was just to the right of the shop. It had a glass window, which I peeked through to see a small vestibule.

  I waited until Harry went inside and then I made my way over to the door. It seemed to me I should at least try it to see if it was locked. It wasn’t, so I stepped into the vestibule. It was a narrow space with white tile floors and a line of mailboxes built into the wall. Since no one was in there, I decided to try the interior door. It was locked.

  I pondered my options. I could go back out and wait for Harry. I could wait until someone came down—

  The interior door opened and I put my head down and grabbed it, holding it open for the young woman who came striding out talking on her phone. She barely glanced at me, so I stepped into the building, letting the door swing shut behind me.

  Now if people are going to just open doors for you, shouldn’t you take advantage of the opportunity and continue on your way? I thought so, too, so I began to jog up the first sets of stairs. Thankfully, I have to climb two sets of stairs at home every day and I was hardly winded by the time I got to the third floor, which was also the top.

  I had to shake out my legs a bit before I could stride down the hallway, looking for William’s apartment. It occurred to me as I went that I didn’t know which one was his. They were numbered 7, 8 and 9. The doors were shut and there were no name plaques beside the doors. Darn it.

  I felt my phone vibrate in my purse and I answered it as I walked back to the staircase.

  “Hel—”

  “Where are you?”

  “Inside the apartment building,” I said. “I’m on the third floor, which number is William’s?”

  “Meet me in the lobby, now,” Harry barked.

  He was mad. I didn’t see why. Since he refused to give me the number, I was the one who had to walk back down and then back up again. I had walked all day yesterday. Even with all of the seasonal snacking I had done over the holidays, I really did not need this much of a post-holiday workout.

  I trudged back down the steps. I could see Harry waiting in the vestibule through the door’s glass window. He looked peeved. I shrugged at him and he looked even more annoyed. So much for that. I opened the door and he strode in.

  “What were you thinking?” he asked.

  “Someone came out and I went it,” I said. “There really wasn’t much to think about.”

  “Clearly,” he said.

  “Not nice,” I said.

  “Well, pardon me if having you disappear brings out the surly in me,” he said. “I’m so sorry I care.”

  His hair was sticking up on his head as if he’d been running his fingers through it and there was a bit of frantic in the set of his mouth as if he’d been pressing his lips together to keep from screaming. Poor guy.

  I rose up on my toes and kissed his cheek. “You’re right. That was thoughtless of me. I’m sorry.”

  His shoulders dropped and he reached out and pulled me in for a solid rib cracker of a hug.

  “It’s all right,” he said. “Just don’t scare me like that again, please.”

  I’d actually just been apologizing to get him over his irritation with me, but now that I saw how freaked out he’d been, I actually meant it.

  “I promise.”

  “Thank you.”

  “But why are you so rattled? What did you find out?” I asked.

  “Quite a bit, actually. The man working at the counter at the cigar shop told me that some very dodgy-looking men were here yesterday, looking for William.”

  “Really?” I asked. “Did he know why?”

  “No, he just said they made him nervous so he hustled them out of the shop as fast as he could,” Harry said. “He told them that he hadn’t seen William in days, which he told me was, in fact, true.”

  “
We should go check upstairs,” I said.

  Harry nodded.

  By the time we reached the top, the burn in my thighs made me want to weep. I refused to let it show, however, shaking my legs out as Harry walked ahead down the narrow hallway to the apartment on the end. Of course it was on the end. I should have guessed.

  The other two doors were quiet. I didn’t hear any music or television noise, and I wondered if everyone was out for the day. Or maybe they were all dead. The thought made the pit of my stomach clench, repeatedly. Yeah, because I had to go there, to the darkest place possible.

  Harrison reached out to knock on William’s door. I grabbed his arm at the last second, stopping him.

  “Wha—”

  “Shh,” I whispered. “What if the bad guys are in there? What if they’ve taken over the whole building? What if it’s like a zombie apocalypse or something?”

  Harrison frowned at me then he snorted.

  “I’m not kidding,” I insisted. “I heard a story on the news last year, or the year before, there was a zombie event in Scottsdale, Arizona, and this zombie bride was actually found dead in a casket.”

  “That’s mental,” Harrison said. “Who could even think of such a thing?”

  “I’m just saying that crazy things can happen,” I said. “And maybe something crazy happened here. I mean, don’t you find it creepy that there’s no one about?”

  “It’s midmorning on a Tuesday,” he said. “I’m sure they’re just at work. These flats don’t come cheap, you know.”

  “Still, be careful,” I said. “There’s a very creepy vibe here.”

  He gave me an exasperated look and then raised his fist and rapped on the door. There was no answer. He waited a moment and then knocked again, louder. Nothing. I gestured to myself and he nodded.

  “Will,” I cried at the door. “It’s Scarlett, are you all right?”

  There was no answer. Harrison and I exchanged a look.

  “Maybe he’s out,” I said.

  Harrison reached for the doorknob. I fully expected it to be locked, thus ending our search, but it wasn’t.

  Chapter 14

  “Stand back,” Harrison said.

  Curbing the urge to argue, I moved behind him. He turned the knob and pushed the door open. I glanced around his shoulder and gasped.

  William’s apartment looked as if a bomb had gone off. Furniture was overturned, papers were strewn all about. Pillows had been knifed and their innards yanked out.

  “We should call the police,” he said.

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “But shouldn’t we go in and check that William isn’t here unconscious from a head injury or something?”

  “Good thinking,” he said. “You stay here.”

  “No.” I shook my head.

  “I had to try.”

  “It was a good effort.”

  “Stay beside me and do not touch anything.”

  “Promise,” I said.

  It was a small, one-bedroom apartment with just the bare necessities. When I looked more closely at the clutter, the papers were just newspapers and magazines and the furniture was the minimum. There was no sense that a person actually lived here. There weren’t any dirty dishes, no pictures on the walls, no jackets or scarves tossed across the back of a chair. Then again, maybe I was just a sloppy housekeeper.

  No injured body was found in the main living room–kitchen area, so we moved to the bedroom. Harrison went in first, and I followed. The same lack of personality filled this room, too, but it looked as if someone had been here making a mess. The sheets on the bed had been tossed. A stack of books on the nightstand had been dumped on the floor.

  “I’m going to check the loo, just in case,” Harrison said.

  I nodded. I’d let him have that one. I had no desire to find my cousin’s husband dead in the tub or worse.

  Instead, I went over and looked at the books. I thought it might give me some insight into the man who was William Graham. A mystery novel, very promising, a cookbook, fascinating, and a book on Renoir, not surprising given the painting I knew he was trying to authenticate.

  I didn’t pick the books up but left them on the floor so the police would see the room exactly as it had been left. It hurt my heart a little bit to let them just sit there on the hardwood floor but I shook it off.

  Across the room the dresser had been gutted. Drawers hung out haphazardly and clothes had been yanked free and tossed about the room or left to hang sloppily from the open drawers like a tongue hanging out of an open mouth.

  The top of the dresser was bare and I glanced on the floor to see if whatever had been on top had been swept clear. I got the feeling that whoever had searched this place had been angry.

  I felt a crunch under my feet and glanced down to see the back of a picture frame. I knew I wasn’t supposed to touch anything but this was the first personal item I had found in the whole apartment and I was pretty sure I would actually die from curiosity if I didn’t look. Not an exaggeration, I swear.

  I hunkered down, and since I was still wearing my gloves, I gently flipped the frame over. It took me a second to see through the cracked glass to the photo behind it, and when I did, my breath caught.

  “Nothing in the loo,” Harrison said from behind me.

  I didn’t answer. I was too caught up in the photo. It was a close-up of Viv and William, obviously on their wedding day. Viv in a lavender-colored dress, with her blond curls swept to the side, was wearing a felt saucer hat in a shade of deep purple. It was trimmed with matching silk and organza flowers and several curled quills. It was definitely one of her finest creations. William was beside her in a dark suit with a white dress shirt and a tie in the exact same shade of purple as Viv’s hat.

  That wasn’t what made my heart squinch up in my chest, however. No, it was the look on Viv’s face as she gazed up at Will that cracked my heart wide open. Her lips were parted in a smile as bright as the sun, her eyes merry as they took on the dark hue of her hat. William was gazing down at her in an amused fascination as if he couldn’t believe she was actually there by his side.

  “Oh,” Harry said as he gazed over my shoulder at the photo.

  I could feel his weight at my back and it steadied me. I didn’t know how I was going to tell Viv what we had discovered. I didn’t know what it meant. And now, I didn’t know what to think about her relationship with her husband.

  Before, I had thought it was just another one of her crazy larks, but this, this photo, it was evidence that at some point, Viv had been very much in love with William Graham. It made my throat get tight.

  “I wonder if I should take the picture with me,” I said. “To give to Viv, you know, as something to remember him by.”

  “Steady, Ginger,” Harry said. “It’s not as if we’ve found him dead or anything.”

  I glanced over my shoulder at him. “But we have no idea where he is or who has him or why.”

  “Which is why we need to wait and proceed with caution,” Harry said. “I’m going to call Inspecteur Lavigne and then I think we need to visit Viv at the art school and let her know what’s happening.”

  I nodded. I flipped the picture back over, feeling guilty as I did so, as if I wasn’t doing enough to find Will.

  Harrison and I left the apartment just as we’d found it, shutting the door behind us as we went. Inspecteur Lavigne sent two uniformed officers to the apartment building. Harrison did the talking since the conversation was in French, and I tried to look innocent and charming, instead of guilt-ridden and miserable, which was what I felt.

  The officers said that Inspecteur Lavigne would be in touch and that we were free to go. We didn’t hesitate but quickly departed, hurrying for the Metro that would take us to Viv.

  * * *

  The Paris School of Art was housed in an old factory building on the Left B
ank or La Rive Gauche, as the French would say. The building was made of white bricks and stood several stories high on the end of a narrow street overlooking the winding river below.

  It had been many things, a factory, a storage facility, and a youth hostel, before it became the Paris School of Art, but the new occupation seemed to suit it as it had plenty of light from the north and sat in the heart of an area so many struggling artists had once called home, like Picasso and Matisse, even writers like Hemingway had resided in this neighborhood.

  The sense of history swirling around me as I walked down the street made my mind wander as it always does. So much life and death had been fought for in these streets. So many centuries of struggle, triumph, shame and grandeur had been endured in this place that it made my own existence seem very fleeting.

  That thought made me rethink the conversation with my mother. Did I really care if she teased me for the rest of my life? Well, yeah, I did. But what if something happened to me or Harrison like it had with Vivian and Will? What if he got snatched and I never saw him again? Could I bear it, especially if I wasted the time we could have been together, proving a silly point, that I was okay on my own, to my mother? I didn’t think I could.

  “All right, Ginger?” Harry asked.

  We stopped in front of the massive wooden door that led into the courtyard of the school. It was on the tip of my tongue to tell him what I was thinking but I didn’t. Now wasn’t the time. Instead, I just nodded.

  “Yeah, I’m good,” I said.

  He looked dubious but he didn’t press it. Instead, he pulled open the oversized door and gestured for me to go first. Viv had told me that the courtyard was where the factory workers used to take lunch. It had been remodeled since then and there were wrought iron chairs, potted trees and a couple of fountains, dry for the winter, scattered all around the big space.

  The main office was tucked just inside a door on the right. I glanced through the glass window and saw Lucas Martin talking to a woman with steel gray hair who was seated at a desk in the main room. I assumed she was his administrative assistant.