The Red Brick Cellars: A Tolosa Mystery
Page 9
Heart beating wildly in his chest, he got ready to leave. He was inspired by additional motivation for working with Catherine Marty: an opportunity to actually do something.
***
Louis spotted Catherine’s blond braid at the corner table of the café’s terrace. She was typing away on her laptop with a cup of tea forgotten behind its screen. Only an Englishwoman would drink tea in this heat.
“Mademoiselle, bonjour,” he said upon reaching the table. He bent down to do la bise, one kiss on each cheek. When he was centimeters away, confusion and a hint of panic entered her clear eyes, then she caught on to what he was doing and allowed him to greet her in the French way. Louis hadn’t been sure if their relationship was that close, but wasn’t about to shake her hand.
He plopped down in the wicker chair next to Catherine’s with his back to the café, facing the Capitole. They were under the cover of huge parasols protecting them from the blasting sun. The city hall stood across the square, stately and solid with its high windows, marble columns, and red bricks.
Despite the warm and sunny weather, the familiar setting, and attractive company, Louis felt glum. Could the police really have found proof of corruption in his father’s affairs? He had never bothered to follow the details of his father’s doings on the city council and thought he didn’t care about how Papa went about his business. But Louis realized that he always assumed his father followed all the rules, wasn’t tempted by money, and always put what was best for Toulouse first.
Louis brought his hand up to touch his scarf; a movement that had always calmed him, but it wasn’t there. For the second time in less than two weeks, he was without a scarf. His mother had kindly bought him a new one after they gave up on washing canal water out of the original one. There was still hope for washing the smell of fire out of the new one, but in the meantime, he had no scarf. His sister made fun of him for being an adult who carried his security-blanket around with him everywhere, but Louis saw no reason to get rid of it. It was a fashion statement, dammit. And he missed it.
A beautiful, petite, brown-haired waitress arrived at their table. “Pour vous, Monsieur?”
He smiled at the girl. “Un diabolo menthe, s’il vous plaît.” It had been awhile since he’d had the refreshing lemonade with mint syrup because this treat was not served in the States.
Louis turned to Catherine. “So what do you want from me, exactly?” he asked as the waitress moved away.
Catherine closed her laptop and picked up her tea. Looking at him through her eyelashes, she said in her English drawl, “I wasn’t sure if you’d even show up, what with the news this morning.”
Louis still wasn’t sure he could trust this woman, but it had nothing to do with the police or the news. Would she allow him to participate in the research and get a say on what would go into print? His reasons for being there were twofold: he wanted to learn what happened to his father and do damage-control on what the woman wrote.
“I’m here,” Louis said with a huff. “But don’t read too much into it.”
Catherine picked up her spoon and stirred her tea. “So you’re not angry about my article lighting a fire under the police’s asses?”
Louis hadn’t even thought of it that way. He had been more than annoyed by that article, but not because of the allegations it made against his father. At the time, he’d been confident the police would soon discard that theory. No, he’d been focused on the paragraph about himself and the impact it had on his family’s expectations. He waved a hand to dismiss the issue. “Don’t worry about it. I’d like to think the police would have done their job, regardless.”
A small grimace and tilt of her head showed Catherine apparently didn’t have much confidence in the Toulouse police force. Louis wasn’t impressed with what he’d seen so far either, but was determined to remain optimistic.
Time to get down to business. Fixing Catherine with a hard stare, Louis laid out the ground rules. “I don’t want to be quoted or referenced in any way in the newspaper. And I have to admit, if you don’t get that, I don’t see what’s in this for you.”
Catherine clenched her jaw and took a sip of her tea. “I like to get my facts straight and not make a fool of myself to my boss or the public. I know the city of Toulouse pretty well, but you know it better. And this concerns your father, so you could have valuable input in that regard as well.” Clearly responding to Louis’s increasing glower, she added, “I won’t use your name, promise. I think we should work together on this. I’d get an article that would be good for my career. You’d get the possibility of going after your father’s murderer.”
Louis pondered this as he chewed the inside of his cheek. “How would this work, exactly?”
After another sip of her tea, Catherine’s lips lifted in the beginnings of a smile. “I guess we start by going through all the information we have and see where we can go from there.” She set down her cup and flipped her laptop open.
Louis watched as a taxi drove by in front of the café. Since most of the city center was closed to everyone but residents—and taxis—the experience of enjoying a cup of coffee on the central square was greatly improved. It was still far from calm with hundreds of people chatting in the various cafés and restaurants, the din of vendors drawing customers, and the slow trickle of tourists coming to visit the Capitole.
Perhaps that taxi was about to pick up a tourist, as the taxis weren’t greatly appreciated by the locals. They had been able to hold off any public transport going to the airport for years, despite the airport’s increasing size and the fact that Airbus was located by the runways, meaning thousands of people went there to work every day. The argument was that if there was public transport going there, the taxis would lose most of their clients. Of course, if they had been applying affordable prices like in Paris, people would have used them anyway. But a 20 euro fare for a ten minute ride to the airport was unacceptable.
The waitress arrived with his bright green cold drink and Louis paid her. He took a sip, letting the mint fill his mouth and tease his nose, reminding him of summer vacations with his family. He’d always been so proud to get a drink with colors as bright as the grownups’ alcoholic beverages.
As a thought came to him, Louis set his dew-covered glass down on the table. “The taxis,” he said, and leaned back to watch the taillights of the one he’d seen driving down rue Gambetta.
“What about them?” Catherine asked in an annoyed tone. She’d been in the process of talking and he hadn’t heard a word. A brilliant start to their collaboration.
“I’m sorry, I was distracted. It just struck me that the taxis would have a motive for getting rid of my father.” He slumped back into his chair, wincing. It sounded better in his head.
Catherine, however, was all ears. “How so?”
“The police said they found proof of bribes from the public transport company. But unless that was actually blackmail…” He scowled. “And my father was not doing blackmail.”
Catherine raised her hands and put on an angelic face that must serve her well and often. “I didn’t say he did.”
Louis continued his explanation. “Who are the losers if the public transport get what they want? Who have been pitched against them for more than a decade in a fight over the transportation of people to the airport?”
Arms crossed, Catherine curled a lip in doubt. “The tramway that’s about to be opened to the airport has been in the pipes for years.”
“How long have you lived in Toulouse?” Louis countered.
Keeping her closed-up attitude, a defensive tone crept into her voice. “A little more than three years.”
Louis nodded. “This conflict has been going on far longer than that. In fact, that was probably about the time the winds started to change on the subject.”
Catherine started tapping on her keyboard. “Are you telling me the taxis managed to hold on to a monopoly of transporting people to the airport? And got away with it?”
&
nbsp; Shrugging, Louis replied, “That’s the way it was. And it wasn’t a secret. Whenever something was done that could take customers away from the taxis, they blocked the ring-road to express their discontent.” Louis’s thoughts were spinning. If he accepted that his father might have taken bribes, wasn’t it possible he’d been taking them from the taxis? If he had suddenly turned his coat and taken sides with the public transport company—or rather their money instead—the taxis wouldn’t have been happy about it. He couldn’t bring himself to voice the idea to Catherine, though. If his father took more than one bribe, how many more had he accepted over the years?
Louis drank his mint lemonade while Catherine worked on her laptop. He could have leaned over and looked at what she was typing, but didn’t want to see the mirror of his own thoughts in writing. Let her get the idea out there somewhere so the authorities could look into it. Surely taking bribes couldn’t be a sufficient motive to kill the mayor of Toulouse? The man re-elected time over time based on his charisma alone?
Catherine looked up from her screen. “You ready to discuss the crime scene now?”
Louis upended his glass, letting the last of the lemonade and two half-melted ice cubes flow into his mouth. “Sure,” he replied around the ice. He felt heat running up his neck at the lack of manners. His mother would have a fit if she saw him talking with his mouth full. To get the ordeal over with, he bit down hard and made short work of the ice before he turned his attention to Catherine.
The corner of her mouth lifted a fraction to one side.
Well, her finding it funny was better than her being insulted. “Where exactly was he found?” he asked, shuddering as the ice made its way toward his stomach.
Catherine waved a hand behind her. “Right back there in the Galerue.”
“Really?” Louis glanced beyond her in the direction of the arcades. Was that why she’d chosen this location to meet? Luckily, they weren’t planning to eat.
“They were apparently right beneath that painting of the two women.” She was staring intently at her laptop now. Louis leaned over and saw she was reading her own article.
“Two women?” Louis searched his memory. There were twenty-nine paintings on the ceiling of the covered arcades, all made by Raymond Moretti in 1997. Each represented something important to the history of Toulouse. There was only one with two women. “Oh, you mean La Belle Paule and Clémence Isaure?” He leaned back to have a look at the paintings closest to them. There they were. To make sure, he pointed at the mostly red-and-black painting. “That one?”
Catherine pushed her chair out to look. “Yes. Two women.” As she pulled her chair back, she gave Louis a look that said she questioned his sanity.
Louis smiled. “That’s Clémence Isaure in front, famous for starting the literary society called Jeux Floreaux back in the Middle Ages, which actually had little to do with flowers. The other one in the back is La Belle Paule, the beautiful Paule. So nicknamed by François The First when he came to visit in 1533. She was very beautiful, see?” Louis glanced at Catherine to admire her long blond hair—unfortunately still stuck into a tight braid—and beautiful lines. She actually looked a lot like La Belle Paule, but he wasn’t sure it would be a good idea to tell her. They weren’t that close. “After that, the Capitouls—the rulers of Toulouse at the time—required she come out on her balcony at least once every day so the populace could admire her beauty.”
Catherine stared at him. “And she went along with that?”
Louis grimaced. “She was only fifteen. And it was the sixteenth century.”
“Right.” Catherine started typing on her laptop, but looked up at Louis with some skepticism. “How do you know all this, anyway? You were also familiar with the paintings inside the Capitole, if I remember correctly. You some sort of art whiz?”
“Hardly,” Louis replied. He cocked his head in thought. “Only if the art is in Toulouse.”
“Ah,” Catherine said, flashing a big smile at him. “A Toulouse whiz. Well, that’s perfect for what we’re doing.”
Louis shook his head, but refrained from making a come-back. He failed to see how his knowledge of Toulouse history would be of any help to track a killer. “So they were found under the painting with the women. What else?”
Catherine folded her hands in her lap. “It turns out that what the prostitute said about the second body was true. As you can see in the picture I was sent, the woman’s body appeared to be in perfect shape. I guess if that part of her tale is true, we can also assume the other part of her story can be believed; that the skin turned to dust when she touched it.”
Louis frowned. Catherine was about to start talking again, but he stopped her with a raised hand. “Just a second. This reminds me of something.” He racked his brain. Why had his heart sped up at Catherine’s description? He covered his face in his hands to block out as much of his surroundings as possible. For a second, he was back in his room, reading a book. Something had fascinated him to the point that he’d read far into the night, despite the text being written in old French forcing him to read the text out loud for it to make sense.
What had he been reading? And why did he think of that now?
Dead bodies and La Belle Paule. He had found the travel journal of a poet nicknamed Le Bouffon Plaisant…the amusing buffoon. The man had visited Toulouse after losing his wife at a very early age and made some grossly inappropriate observations while touring one of the city’s crypts where the bodies of the dead were naturally mummified. This man claimed to have seen the body of La Belle Paule and found her most agreeable, not saying a word when he felt her up.
Louis put his hands down and looked at Catherine. “I’m afraid it won’t be of much help to you. But I remember reading a text about the body of La Belle Paule”—he waved in the direction of the painting—“which was also perfectly preserved in a crypt in the city. She was apparently less beautiful than when she was alive, though.”
Catherine took notes. “Where did you get this information?”
Louis leaned back in his chair and took a deep breath of the warm autumn air. Talk of bodies and crypts was giving him chills. “It’s not going to help you, but you can look up a guy nicknamed Le Bouffon Plaisant. I can’t remember his real name. He wrote about visiting Toulouse, probably in the middle of the seventeenth century.”
The Englishwoman didn’t seem daunted in the least at being sent off to read a centuries-old text written by an idiot. Though if she’d been working as a journalist in Toulouse for the last three years, she must have a good grasp of French. That article on his father’s death certainly was very eloquent.
They continued going over what they knew over the next hour, but didn’t have any eureka moments. Louis kept getting chills despite the warm air. Perhaps he shouldn’t have had that mint lemonade, or more specifically, swallowed so much ice to recover from his rudeness as quickly as he had. He touched his throat, longing for his scarf and feeling naked without it. Still, that didn’t account for him looking over his shoulder every two minutes.
He’d found the descriptions of the crypts’ inhabitants wonderfully thrilling at thirteen. Twenty years later, his father was dead under mysterious circumstances and the only lead he had was a dead beauty.
Louis signaled the waiter and ordered a cup of tea.
Fourteen
“The police claimed to have found proof of bribes from the manager of Toulouse Transports to Pierre Saint-Blancat. What is this proof? What is the goal of their investigation? At the press conference held yesterday, they did not say if their goal was to go after Monsieur Sanchez for bribing his way into contracts or if they suspect him of being in some way related to the murder of our beloved mayor. Surely that is their priority? The Toulousains do not wish for this crime to go unpunished and cannot feel safe until the subject is put to rest.
If the police do think the bribes are related to the murder, are they taking this to its logical next level? Are they involving the taxis in their investi
gation? It is common knowledge that the taxis are not happy about the tramway opening at the Toulouse-Blagnac airport.”
Catherine sat back in her chair to take a short break. She had finally mastered the skill of switching her brain to write in her adoptive French language so she didn’t need to do constant translations, but it was still very trying.
Her two hours before meeting with Louis Saint-Blancat were spent preparing an article on Louis’s taxi theory at one of the free access computers in the main library of Toulouse, the Médiatèque José Cabanis. She studied the people around her. Old ladies read articles on the internet, young men played computer games, and people of all ages read newspapers made available for free by the library. Catherine enjoyed working here as it offered fewer distractions than her own home, and easy access to a variety of research material.
Louis’s idea on the taxis was a good hunch and she was about to milk it for everything it was worth. Besides, she had the feeling the police weren’t looking into it, and really should. So far, it was their only reasonable clue. She couldn’t quite decide if Louis was in favor of her writing the article. It did imply his father had been taking even more bribes in the past, but he had given her the idea and watched her taking notes. If he hadn’t wanted the article in print, surely he would have told her.
Catherine finished her article, then proofread it twice—once on screen and once on paper—before sending it by email to her boss. He better not try to refuse her because of the underlying implications about the old mayor. She had kept the focus on the taxis and Transport Toulousain as much as possible. It was a good piece.
Fifteen minutes before Louis was scheduled to arrive, Catherine opened a new webpage and typed in the address to Leboncoin, the French equivalent of Craigslist. She made a quick search to check if Maxime had put their house up for sale like he promised.
Two minutes later, she found the right page, then stared at it for several minutes while her thoughts ran in all directions. The good news was that he’d put the advert up. The bad news was many-fold. He’d put up only one picture, which was of the living-room. It was taken with the curtains drawn, clothes and books spread around on every free surface, and only the sofa in focus. He could have taken a picture of the beautiful red brick exterior and high windows: a typical Toulousaine. He could have cleaned up first. He could have opened the curtains to show how much daylight that room entertained. He had done everything you’re not supposed to do to sell a house. Which, of course, was perfectly normal, since he didn’t want to sell. But he’d done as she asked: he’d put it up for sale.