Louis’s eyebrows shot up toward his hairline. “And you want to do that here? Now?”
“No, of course not here,” the tall man replied with a fake, placating smile. “We only wish to ensure your cooperation.”
Boy, were they going about that the wrong way.
Louis’s lips hardly moved as he spoke. “So I can go pay my respect to my father, your boss, now?”
The clown finally caught on that he was only making matters worse and signaled that yes, they could move along.
Louis mumbled “idiot” under his breath as they moved toward the casket.
Three
To live with a truly magnificent view of Toulouse, one had to be dead. Severe gray tombs vied for space and attention among tall dark cypress and cedar trees in the Terre Cabade Cemetery where Pierre Saint-Blancat was about to be buried. The late morning sun blazed down on the living and the dead alike.
Louis glanced toward the Toulouse city center spread out below him. Except for a short period in the 1960s, buildings had been limited to a maximum of six floors. A few sixteen-floor buildings were scattered throughout the city center, but mostly the city was flat, mirroring the gently rolling hills stretching in all directions. It allowed old buildings like the Jacobins Bell Tower and the Dôme de la Grâve, the old hospital, to show off the city’s rich history. Sunlight reflected off windows and made the red bricks glow, letting the city shine red and golden.
A thin white blanket covered the blue sky, giving some respite from the blasting heat of the last few days, but the heavy and humid air still stifled. Sweat soaked through Louis’s shirt hours ago; it was currently working its way through the suit jacket. His shirt chafed around the neck. He smelled and felt as if he’d played a complete soccer match in his suit. He wouldn’t remove the jacket. He needed to dress properly when his father’s ashes were deposited into the top left spot in the family tomb. There was room for his mother’s urn in the same slot—someday far in the future, hopefully—and the top right-hand one was for the rest of the family. Louis felt uncomfortable standing in front of what would one day be his final resting place.
His mother stood strong at the head of the group of twenty close friends and family. Sunglasses covered dark smudges under her eyes. So far she was holding up well, but Louis saw the façade starting to crack. He had no idea what he was supposed to do if the dam broke. She was the one he could always go to when he had problems and he wasn’t ready for the roles to be reversed yet. He didn’t know how to be strong for this.
Thankfully, the journalists were absent. The Saint-Blancats could pretend to be just another family putting a loved one to rest.
After the priest and cemetery workers slid the urn into its slot, the mourners broke into small groups, some meandering back to their cars, some staying back to chat. Louis’s mother stood alone at the crypt with a hand resting on the stone wall.
Louis’s sister seized the opportunity to pull him a few meters away from the group. Audrey was five years his senior, married with two children, and following the family tradition of dedicating her life to the city of Toulouse and the Republican Party their family had belonged to for several generations.
“I can’t believe Papa opted for cremation,” she said in low tones. “He never even talked to us about it.” She was almost a head shorter than Louis and had the same slim build. Two pregnancies had left some marks, but she was still a very pretty, dark-haired Toulousaine with an accent even more pronounced than Louis’s.
“Why would he?” Louis said. “It’s his funeral.”
“Yes, but he’s not the one who has to visit a heap of ashes. Besides, it’s so final.”
Louis eyed his sister. It wasn’t the place to be witty, but he couldn’t resist. “Yes, death tends to be that.”
Audrey swatted at him. “What if science comes up with a way to bring people back from the dead or something? There isn’t much you can do with a bunch of ashes.”
“There isn’t much you can do with a rotting body.” Louis tried but failed not to think about the dead body or ashes belonging to his father. “You’d want to be brought back from the dead two hundred years from now?”
“No, of course not.” Audrey shook her head and waved a hand like she always did when searching for words. “It feels weird to visit ashes in the cemetery. A body in a coffin would have suited me better. Funerals are for the living, after all. The dead don’t care.”
Yet, apparently, their father had cared while he was alive. Louis was relieved that everything had been taken care of beforehand. He would not have wanted to make the decisions on cremation or burial, flowers, or the wake at the Capitole. At least this way, his father’s wake had been in his image: big and with lots of food for the attendees.
“I’m giving a press conference in two days,” Audrey said. “I want you to come, to show everyone that the Saint-Blancat family is standing together and that we are still working for the Republicans and Toulouse.”
Louis sighed. He’d been back for two days and already they were starting in on him. This was why he had jumped at the occasion to work abroad ten years ago. He got tired of saying no to his family and being put down if he expressed an opinion different from theirs. He didn’t want to fall into that old routine again.
“You’ll have to do the press conference without me,” he replied in a soft voice. “I’m not even sure if I’ll still be in Toulouse in two days.” He glanced at the family tomb. Thin and tall, it had eight slots; four pairs. A few meters behind it, at the entrance to a path leading to smaller graves farther back, sat a decapitated angel with clipped wings. Instead of a head, it had three rusting steel rods sticking out of its neck as if the blood pulsing out of the body had frozen in place. It was about time the municipality finalized the cemetery maintenance budget before it all went to waste.
Audrey poked him in the shoulder. “You can’t leave after only two days. Maman will kill you.” She looked to where her husband sat on the steps of a neighboring tomb with their children on his lap. “And so will I. You hardly know your niece and nephew. You’re not leaving until you’ve spent some time with them.”
Chloé would soon turn five. Benjamin was two and that was about the extent of Louis’s knowledge of the boy. They all talked on Skype from time to time, but little Ben was too shy to talk to his uncle on the computer. Louis had been home during vacations, but spent most of his time catching up with friends. His sister would apparently not let him do that this time around.
“Besides,” Audrey added in a whisper, “you have to wait until they find out who killed him.” She folded her arms across her chest. “I can’t believe it possible that the mayor of Toulouse was killed on place du Capitole—the very navel of the Toulouse city center—and nobody saw anything. I don’t think the police have a clue about who did it.”
“Wasn’t there a witness?” Louis’s throat constricted in frustration when he thought about that annoying police officer from the wake.
Audrey let out an ironic laugh. “The body was found by a prostitute on her way back to work by the Canal du Midi. She was clearly dead drunk or just plain crazy, seeing the story she told the police.”
“And what was that story?” Louis had wondered since talking to the policeman, but there hadn’t been an opportunity to ask anyone yet. Not someone who wouldn’t start a landslide of rumors, anyway.
Audrey turned so her back was to their mother and the group of mourners talking among themselves. She stood face-to-face with Louis. “You know they found his body with the skeleton of a woman, right?”
Louis hadn’t known that, but nodded affirmatively anyway. That would be the plural bodies that the annoying officer mentioned.
“Well,” his sister continued with some color rising high on her cheeks, “the prostitute claims that when she found the bodies, they were just that. Two bodies. Not one body and a skeleton. She was apparently a beautiful woman with a horrible expression on her face, but when the prostitute touched her to check
if she was alive, everything but the bones turned to dust.”
Louis studied his sister’s face. She had never been big on making jokes and this would be a strange time and place to start, but the story really was very…out there. No wonder the police said the witness was unreliable. “So they have nothing?”
Audrey rolled her eyes, then fixed her gaze on the city below them. “Basically, yes. They’re trying to identify the bones of the dead woman, and will look into the people Papa met with over the last weeks. But I’d say they’re clueless. They don’t even know when he died; nobody had seen him for two days.” She turned her chocolate-brown eyes on Louis. “So will you be there for my press conference? Back me up? Show the Toulousains that the Saint-Blancat family is still here for them?”
Exasperated, Louis raised a hand toward the family tomb. “Papa has been in there for less than five minutes and you’re already scheming to get ahead in your political career.”
She didn’t even flinch. “Of course I am. Papa would be proud and you know it. You’re running away from your responsibilities—again. That he would be less enthusiastic about.”
He shouldn’t have been surprised by this type of jibe having weathered them for years growing up, but something had been gnawing at him since he’d heard of his father’s death. His latest contract had ended in June, and he chose to stay in California instead of coming home to Toulouse and France for a spell. He had procrastinated, trying—but not too hard—to figure out what to do next. He supposed he had all the time in the world. So his father passed away without having seen his son for nine months, and without them having the chance to resolve their political differences. In a way, he should have been happy he didn’t have to continue that fight. Instead, a sinking feeling that there was something he needed to do played at the back of Louis’s mind. But he didn’t want to figure out what; he wanted to run away again.
However, his sister was right. He had to stay. To figure out what happened to his father and to spend time with his family. His mother shouldn’t be alone right now. He’d step up, be the man of the family. Though his sister had always been much better at that than him.
Four
A picture of Louis Saint-Blancat covered almost half the front page of that morning’s newspaper. On his arm, of course, a mystery woman. Catherine shoved the paper into her handbag. As she stepped up to the huge oak door of a building halfway down the narrow, none-too-straight rue Gambetta, she shook her head at her colleagues. Some covered the mayor’s death in what she considered a normal way—meaning they talked about how he died and the implications this would have on the city. But others were much more fascinated with the son, Louis Saint-Blancat, who was finally back home.
With the exception of one term, Pierre Saint-Blancat had been mayor for the last twenty years. His popularity had more to do with his natural charisma than his actual policies. Most inhabitants wouldn’t be able to say what his program was centered around, though they knew he belonged to the Republican Party. They also knew that if they wanted to chat with him, they only needed to go to the Marché du Cristal on Thursdays. The fruit and vegetables market on the boulevard de Strasbourg did business six days a week, but the mayor strolled through on Thursdays. He didn’t do any shopping, just stopped to talk to shoppers and vendors alike. Everybody loved him and loved reading about him.
Her boss at le Midi Républicain, the local newspaper, made sure to include at least one article on one of the members of the Saint-Blancat family every day. Catherine only very recently managed to extricate herself from writing those articles. She was finally allowed to concentrate on the actual politics of the city, to possibly make a difference for once. Then she went and made one little mistake and her boss told her to stay away from the story around the mayor’s death. The most interesting story since Mohammed Merah, at the very least, and she was banned.
Catherine was about to do something about that situation. She decided that the topmost label on the intercom might possibly say “Diatta” and pressed the button. The night before, Catherine had spent three hours trawling the Canal du Midi and talking to all the prostitutes. She was determined to talk to the woman who discovered the mayor’s body, no matter how unreliable that clown police officer considered her. An African girl of about twenty finally said she knew the woman. Mademoiselle Diatta hadn’t been feeling well since the discovery of the bodies and was not working that night. After some prodding and pleading, Catherine had obtained her address.
Static sounded through the intercom, then the door buzzed open. Catherine pushed inside and took a relieved breath of the cool air as her eyes adjusted to the long, dark corridor she found herself in. Toward the back of the house, another door opened to a back yard, and before that, a staircase with stone steps so used there were indentations in the center led up to the left. Assuming the top spot on the intercom meant an apartment on the top floor, Catherine started climbing. Most of these old houses in the city center didn’t have an elevator—there was no room for it.
The staircase turned up to the next floor, then another one took her yet farther up. The sun streaming in through windows at the end of the corridor on each landing was enough to see by. She had the impression it was cooler in the dark, which was always a godsend at the end of a long, hot summer in South-Western France.
The second floor appeared to be the last one. There were four doors, and none of them had a name-tag. As Catherine considered the possibility of knocking on the first one, it opened. A stunning African girl peeked out. One of the prostitutes Catherine talked to had said the girl was from Senegal. “Qui êtes vous?” she said in a honeyed voice.
Catherine put on a reassuring smile and answered the question. “My name is Catherine Marty. I work at le Midi Républicain. I’m working on an article about the mayor’s death and would very much like to talk to you about what you saw.”
Mademoiselle Diatta studied Catherine for several seconds before replying. “I already said everything to the police. They didn’t believe me. You any better?” Her stance gave away her fatigue. Bloodshot eyes stared out. They weren’t openly hostile. Simply…resigned.
Catherine looked the woman in the eyes. “I won’t know if I believe you until I hear your story,” she said. “If you don’t want your name in the paper, that’s not an issue. You can be a nameless witness.”
Mademoiselle Diatta huffed a mirthless laugh. “I’m the only witness. It won’t take a genius to figure out who you talked to.” She looked Catherine up and down once, then turned and walked back into her apartment, leaving the door open.
Catherine stepped inside and closed the door behind her.
The young woman had apparently not cleaned or tidied much over the last few days by the look of the clothes and empty pizza-boxes strewn about on all surfaces. It was probably due to stress, Catherine thought, for underneath, the place was squeaky clean. And beautiful. A short hallway with three doors opened on a living room with a smart red and white kitchen in the corner. The left-hand wall was covered with books and three floor-to-ceiling windows opened up on the crown of the oak tree growing in the back yard. The white leather couch was definitely not from IKEA, and the wooden dinner table and matching chairs glowed in the sunlight. Hardly how Catherine had imagined the home of a prostitute.
Gathering her wits, Catherine sat down at the table across from Mademoiselle Diatta and took out a pen and a block note. “Tell me in your own words what happened that night, please.”
The prostitute kept her eyes on the tree outside while she talked. The leaves were starting to turn yellow. “I went home for a spell around two o’clock.” She glanced at Catherine. “I needed to take a quick shower before going back out there.” Catherine suppressed a shudder at the thought of what could make a woman in her line of business want to get cleaned up. Pretty much everything.
“I was on my way back out. It was probably around two thirty when I found them.” She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “I checked if they were dead.
Then I called the police.” Her big, black eyes challenged Catherine. They were coming to the part the police didn’t believe.
“Go on,” Catherine urged. “Can you describe what you saw?” She was scribbling down verbatim what was being said and kept writing nonsense even when the woman wasn’t talking. People often found it easier to confide in someone who didn’t appear to be paying one hundred percent attention. She had trained her peripheral vision, as best she could, to still be able to take in visual impressions of her interviewees.
The woman’s voice was stronger now. She accepted the challenge and would give her story, no matter how Catherine judged her. Good for her. “When I got there, I saw two bodies. They were both naked. And though it’s been a hot summer this year and I know you white people can’t handle heat very well, you don’t usually go about naked.”
Catherine smiled and looked directly at the girl. Deliberately, she pulled a handkerchief out of her purse and dabbed her forehead with it. This apartment was relatively cool, but she had been sweating non-stop for the last three months. It was the one thing she couldn’t get used to in Toulouse. Then she set her pen back to her notebook and nodded to her interviewee.
“Anyway. The man was bent down like a Muslim during prayer—except he was facing the wrong way—and the woman was sitting there like some sort of Cleopatra. When I got closer, I got a look at her expression.” She shuddered. “I’ve seen a lot of horrible things in my life, but nothing has put a look like that on my face yet.” She mimicked what she had seen: open mouth, wide open eyes, all teeth showing. This woman still managed to look beautiful, but Catherine got the general idea. “So I touched her shoulder. To make sure she was dead?”
Catherine understood her question meant she was still working out the whys in her own mind, and nodded. The prostitute wouldn’t be judged by her.
The black woman looked down at her hands fidgeting with the seam of her shirt and continued in low tones. “When I touched her skin, I could feel it contracting. Then there was something like a hiss of air, and all of a sudden, I was touching bone.” Her voice firm again, she fixed Catherine with her gaze. “The skin of the entire woman just turned to dust.”
The Red Brick Cellars: A Tolosa Mystery Page 2