The Red Brick Cellars: A Tolosa Mystery

by R. W. Wallace

  A sardonic brow raised, Laurent replied, “With his head at the bottom of his sleeping bag? I’ve seen him drunk. He always managed to get into the bag feet-first. And with or without it, he never fell in the canal.”

  The hairs on Louis’s neck stood up again. “He was head-first in the sleeping bag?”

  “Like I told you before, I dragged up the bag by grabbing the closed end and there was his head. His feet were under water somewhere.”

  Twenty-One

  Catherine finished spreading her cheese-filled tortellini over fresh spinach just as someone knocked on her door. She wasn’t expecting anyone, and who dropped by unannounced just before lunch, anyway? Keeping silent not to give herself away and signaling to her dog Fluffy not to start barking, she set her small casserole on the stove and turned the knob. She poured some milk into it followed by the pieces of blue cheese she cut up earlier.

  The knock sounded again, this time accompanied by Louis’s voice yelling, “Catherine! Are you home?”

  Growling, Catherine went to open the door.

  Louis stood facing away from her in a white t-shirt, black and white checkered scarf, and close-fitting jeans. Luckily, he wasn’t the type to attach his trousers under the waistline, but Catherine’s eyes were still drawn to the way the fashionably worn light-blue fabric hugged his firm buttocks and muscular thighs. The left-hand back pocket had a rectangular white outline where he kept his wallet. The other one sported a frayed patch, done on purpose by the manufacturer to give a relaxed and timeworn look. The bottom of both legs was worn away on the heel as the result of a man’s incapacity to pick up a thread and needle when he bought jeans ten centimeters too long.

  Louis turned around. “Hello, Catherine,” he said as they did la bise. “I was in the neighborhood and have some news, so I thought I’d stop by.” He squinted into the darkness behind her. “Can I come in?”

  Catherine hesitated. The tiny apartment she lived in until the house was sold was nothing to be proud of. It was small and dark, had no personality, and only had one window. Besides, she was cooking.

  Louis looked her up and down. “Is there a problem?”

  He must be there because he’d found something relating to their lead on the SDF. She couldn’t turn him away because she didn’t want him to see where she lived. She should have thought of that two nights ago when she allowed him to walk her home. “Of course not. Come on in.” She opened the door to let him step inside. “You can leave your shoes on.”

  Louis looked down at his black pointed leather shoes, apparently not having had the intention of removing them in the first place. “Okay.”

  Whenever Catherine’s friend Véronique came over, they both sat on the cramped sofa, but Catherine didn’t feel comfortable sitting that close to Louis. She waved him over to take a seat and once he had sunk into the incommodious sofa with a wince, she leaned against the kitchen counter facing him. Fluffy went for Louis’s shoes the minute he sat down. His short black tail swished rapidly back and forth while his nose made its inspection. Finding nothing of interest, he moved on to the trouser legs.

  “And who’s this fellow?” Louis asked as he bent down to pat the dachshund’s head.

  “Fluffy,” Catherine replied.

  Louis gave her a blank stare, then turned back to Fluffy. “Aptly named.”

  Fluffy was black and tan and short-haired, and came with her from England three years ago. Naturally, there was nothing fluffy about him. Her father had trained him to hunt rabbits, which were sadly lacking in Toulouse. Fluffy made up for it by sniffing out everything new, down to the smallest detail. Catherine looked forward to seeing Louis’s reaction when Fluffy was done with the legs and jumped up to check the rest of the jeans.

  In the corner of her eye, she could see the milk heating up and the cheese starting to melt. Would Louis notice if she turned the stove off? “So you have news?” she asked.

  “Yes.” He shifted over to the center of the sofa to get away from the broken spring on the side he’d chosen. “I found the SDF who probably moved the bodies.”

  Catherine stood up straight. “You did? Where is he?”

  Wincing, Louis replied. “He’s dead. Found floating in the canal this morning.”

  Catherine hunched her shoulders in disappointment. “Is that a coincidence?”

  Louis shook his head. “The police have filed it as accidental drowning. Apparently, they did a quick autopsy and that was the cause of death. But his friend who found him this morning said his head was in the bottom of his sleeping bag.” He held on to Catherine’s gaze. “I think someone drowned him. Or at least shoved him in the bag and threw him in.”

  The cheese had melted and was about to start boiling. Catherine leaned over to turn off the stove and shove the casserole to the side. “Are we sure this is the right guy? There are lots of homeless men in Toulouse.”

  “As sure as I’m likely to get,” Louis replied. He eyed the casserole on the stove, but said nothing. Fluffy was up on the sofa with him, attempting to sniff his crotch. Louis gently shoved the dog away and tried to distract him with some ear-scratching. “I got a picture of his dog and showed it to Alima. She was fairly certain that it was the same dog.” He put a hand on his lower back. “It has this bald patch on its back from a fight some time back.”

  “So where does that leave us?” Catherine asked, though it was mostly a rhetorical question.

  “Back to square one,” Louis said with the lift of an eyebrow. “We had a good lead, but the killer got there before us.” He craned his neck toward the casserole. “Are you cooking? It smells delicious.” He sniffed the air. “Is that Roquefort?”

  Catherine felt the heat rising up her neck. Her parents never wanted her to cook while she grew up. That was what the cook was paid to do. Whenever she had given in to temptation and prepared something, she’d always done so alone and with a feeling of guilt in her chest. Too late to throw the man out now, though. “Yes, it’s Roquefort.”

  Smacking his lips, Louis got up from the sofa to move closer to the kitchen part of her cramped lodging. Fluffy followed, tail wagging. “Excellent! Roquefort sauce? What do you eat it with?” He spotted the dish covered with spinach and tortellini. “On there? Wow.” His eyes danced with enthusiasm between the different ingredients.

  Taking some strength from his eagerness, Catherine moved to finish her dish. Might as well, now that she’d been outed as a foodie. “It’s not quite done,” she said. She upended the pot of crème fraîche into the melted cheese and put it back on the stove to mix everything.

  Louis stepped back far enough to let her work, but kept stretching his neck to see over her shoulders.

  Once the sauce was ready, she poured it over the tortellini and set the dish in the oven.

  Louis followed the dish with his eyes as it went past, his mouth slightly agape and smiling.

  She couldn’t possibly send him away now. “Would you like to stay for lunch?”

  He beamed at her, which went a good way to making up for the fact that she had been planning to eat leftovers for a day or two. “I’d be delighted,” he said.

  Catherine’s laptop stood open on the tiny table shoved into a corner of her kitchenette. It could just barely accommodate two persons. Catherine sat down in her usual chair. “Should we perhaps look at the case again while the food’s in the oven? It won’t be ready for another twenty minutes.”

  Louis gave the oven a longing look as he took his seat next to Catherine. He smelled of musky deodorant and chocolate.

  “So what do we try now?” Louis asked.

  A small smile lingered on his lips, but Catherine could see the frustration at getting nowhere with his father’s murder mystery in his slumped shoulders and the way he set his jaw. She hadn’t seen him clean-shaved since the wake; it seemed like his normal look was this two-day beard-growth. Catherine wasn’t usually a fan, but it did make him look more mature—actually, it made him sail straight into Catherine’s top ten handsom
e men. She focused on work.

  “I thought we should look into the other body. The police have identified her, but I haven’t heard of a link with your father. Perhaps that could give us some clues.” Catherine logged in to her laptop and opened an internet browser.

  Louis nodded. “Okay, that sounds like a good idea.” Pitying Fluffy on the floor, he allowed the dog to jump into his lap.

  Catherine couldn’t help but envy the massage those strong hands were giving. She launched a search for any information the police released on the second victim. “I don’t suppose you remember her name?” she asked, just in case.

  “Geraldine Hérault. Disappeared twenty-nine years ago. She had turned thirty-eight a week earlier and was the boss of a small hardware store on the outskirts of the city center.”

  He was keeping up to speed on everything going on in this case, that was certain. Then again, it was his father who had been murdered. Catherine wasn’t on the best of terms with her parents, but even she would have wanted to catch the killer if one of them was assassinated. “Thank you,” she said kindly, and typed the name into the search engine.

  With Madame Hérault’s disappearance dating from before the internet, there weren’t many hits—except for a woman in the Alps who was clearly a homonym. She found the scan of an article dated a week after the woman’s disappearance and skimmed through it. It contained all the information Louis had just given her, plus interviews with a friend from school and a man who worked in her shop. Neither of them thought she had run off without telling anyone. She had a husband and a six-year-old daughter and her shop was doing relatively well. The friend talked of her as a loving mother and caring friend. The colleague was less enthusiastic. Though generally fair, Madame Hérault wasn’t greatly appreciated by her staff. “Cold” would apparently describe her attitude toward coworkers.

  Hardly a reason to kill her, have her mummified for twenty-nine years, and then dump her in the Galerue.

  Catherine pondered the article’s title. “Young Mother Missing for Over a Week.” She looked at Louis. “Perhaps we should check if there are similar disappearances over the last thirty years in Toulouse?”

  Louis sat back in his chair and folded his arms across his chest. “We can try. I’m not sure if it will help us, but we don’t have any other leads.”

  Catherine found a website listing all unsolved disappearances in the county of Haute-Garonne. After removing the ones predating Geraldine Hérault’s disappearance—there was no guarantee she was the first one, but they needed some criteria to narrow down their search—they were left with a list of close to fifty persons. Catherine pasted all the information into a file, making sure the font was small enough for it all to print out on one page. Il n’y a pas de petites économies, as the French expression went. There are no small savings.

  She gave the printout to Louis.

  “Now what?” Louis said as he scanned the descriptions.

  “We try to find some sort of logic, see if anyone—or preferably a group of people—could fit together with Geraldine Hérault.”

  Eyebrow cocked, Louis picked up a pen from the bookshelf next to him. “Okay. I’ll try to check for similar ages first, I guess.” He looked up at Catherine. “Though I’m not sure if I should look for someone born at about the same date or someone who disappeared at the same age?”

  “Don’t look at me,” Catherine said without looking up from her laptop. “I’m as clueless as you are. I’ll focus on the women first.”

  They worked in silence. Catherine didn’t come up with anything by looking at only the women. They didn’t appear to have anything other than their sex in common with Geraldine. Not to keep any prejudice, she did the same with the group of men, but that also gave zero results. Moving on to working situations didn’t help nor were there many young mothers.

  Getting up to take the food out of the oven, Catherine asked Louis, “Any luck?”

  “No.” Louis crossed out the fifth item on a list he’d made in the margin of his printout. “Including Geraldine, there are three disappearances of the same age—actually one was a little bit older as she had very recently celebrated her thirty-ninth birthday—but I don’t see anything else common. Perhaps the place they were last seen. Geraldine and this one,” he pointed at a description, “both presumably disappeared in the city center. But the other two lived in the suburbs.”

  Catherine closed her laptop and moved it to the sofa, then deposited the dish on the table and went to get two plates and glasses. “I tried that too. I also saw several being spotted last in the city center. But I’m not sure that means much because that’s where people go when they’re having a night out with friends, right? One of mine was last seen leaving a restaurant close to place de la Daurade, heading for the Capitole metro station. She’d been celebrating her twenty-first birthday with her friends.”

  Louis eyed the table getting ready, but his gaze was focused on searching for links. “Maybe we should try to keep only the ones who were in the city center. If that theory with the mummies being created in a crypt like the one at the Cordeliers church is correct, the bodies would need to be transported to the city center, anyway.” He focused on Catherine. “The old texts are quite clear on this phenomenon only happening in a very small portion of the city center.”

  “All right,” Catherine said, satisfied with the reasoning. “So that will remove at least half of our list. We’ll need something more, though.” Plunking a mug of water down on the table, she said, “Why don’t we eat first. Maybe the food will help our brains with making connections.”

  Louis eagerly agreed. He set his paper and Fluffy down on the floor and poured water into both their glasses. “This looks delicious, Catherine,” he said. “I’m going to have wet dreams about what you might come up with for an important occasion.”

  The idea of a gorgeous man like Louis having wet dreams about her food made Catherine smile. She was quickly getting over her issues with having people see her cook. It saddened her a little to think that she wouldn’t come up with anything fancier for the occasion ten days away; her birthday would go by without celebration. She didn’t have enough money to invite anyone to do anything. No matter. She would soon get money from the house sale and could celebrate then.

  The ladle in her hand stopping just before touching the tortellini, Catherine stared at Louis. “Birthdays.”

  “I’m sorry, what?” Louis now gave the dish on the table his undivided attention and clearly wondered what was taking her so long.

  To get him to focus on what she was saying, Catherine quickly dished out some pasta and spinach to the both of them. Once he had his first mouth-full, she said, “How many times did you read about one of those missing person’s birthdays? I’m sure I saw several people disappearing just before, just after, or even on the day of their birthday.”

  Louis chewed as he considered her words. “I think you’re right,” he said. Instead of taking another bite of food, he bent down and picked up his sheet of paper. Moving his plate over to make room for work—it was something of a balancing-feat considering the size of the table—he started crossing out some entries and circling others. After a minute, he looked up, victory shining in his black eyes. “All the people who disappeared within two weeks of their birthday were last seen in the city center. I’d even narrow that down to within ten minutes on foot of the area between the Capitole and the Garonne. This is it!”

  Catherine returned his smile, but had to disappoint him almost immediately. “But where does that actually leave us? Do we go out and tell people not to walk around alone in the city center around their birthday? My birthday’s coming up and I can’t make a guarantee of that sort.”

  Louis’s face fell. “Damn, you’re right.” He looked again at his circled missing persons. “We’ll keep thinking about it. It’s got to help one way or another.” He set his paper back on the floor and started in on the tortellini with Roquefort sauce.

  At least there was one
good thing to say for this day: Catherine discovered the joy of cooking for an enthusiastic eater.

  ***

  Louis leaned back as best he could in the uncomfortable chair. His stomach was more than full, but he still wanted another helping. The woman could cook, no question about it. He couldn’t even begin to imagine what she had been doing at his father’s wake the first time they met. She had clearly been there for the food, but who would do that when they could prepare something this fabulous themselves?

  Emptying his glass of water in the vain hope that it would help him find the energy to get up, he watched as Catherine cleaned the table. The kitchenette had no dishwasher, so she filled the sink and started doing the dishes.

  Good manners got Louis on his feet. “Let me help you with that,” he said. He brought the rest of the dishes over next to the sink and picked up a towel. He grabbed the first clean plate, dried it, and set it on the table. He hadn’t paid attention earlier and didn’t know where anything went.

  “Thank you,” Catherine said, though her ears were turning pink.

  Fascinated, Louis leaned closer. “You have elf ears,” he said before he could think better of it.

  Of course, said appendix now brightened from pink to red.

  “Sorry,” Louis hurried to say. “I didn’t mean to embarrass you. I haven’t seen ears like yours before. They’re nice.” Now it was Louis’s turn to blush. His flirting skills really were rusty if he was complimenting a woman’s ears.

  Catherine stopped washing and turned to look at him with an incredulous expression.

  Louis was saved by the bell. The doorbell—which Louis was unable to find when he’d arrived an hour earlier—rang with a long buzz. Louis grabbed another plate to dry while Catherine opened the door.

  Thirty seconds later, the ex-husband entered her small flat. Louis found the place quite nice and cozy, but three really was a crowd. And he felt ridiculous with a red-and-white checkered towel in his hands, but struggled not to let it show.