The Red Brick Cellars: A Tolosa Mystery

by R. W. Wallace

  Suitcase only halfway full, Louis didn’t find anything else to shove in. What had he brought with him from the States? Did the gifts and souvenirs really take up that much space?

  No matter. His bags were ready. He would go to the opera with Mouad tonight like he had planned, and say goodbye to his friend. First thing tomorrow morning, he’d be on a train for Paris. He’d figure out where to go from there.

  First priority: get away from Toulouse.

  ***

  Louis’s father certainly knew how to choose seats at the opera. When his mother gave him the tickets, Louis readily accepted. He hadn’t been to the opera in ages. It wasn’t something he was ready to pay for out of his own pocket, but he came along gladly when his parents invited him in the past. His father had season tickets and planned to see Aïda with his mother. She didn’t want to go without her husband, so gave the tickets to Louis, telling him to invite a friend.

  So here he was in the second floor foyer of the Toulouse Opera having a glass of white wine with Mouad. One last positive memory with his friend before leaving Toulouse.

  Leaning on a covered grand piano doubling as a table in a corner of the room, Louis raised his glass to Mouad. “To friendship. I hope we’ll meet up again sometime soon. We haven’t really had time to catch up, I’m afraid.”

  Mouad touched his glass of orange juice to Louis’s, but wore a grim expression. “Nobody’s forcing you to leave, idiot. You belong in Toulouse. You should stay.”

  “Will you please stop telling me what to do?” Louis winced at the whine in his own voice. “I’m thirty-five years old, bordel. I get to decide what to do with my life.” To avoid his friend’s hard eyes, Louis pretended to study the pictures adorning the walls between the high windows. They showed various operas and ballets having been performed at the Théâtre du Capitole in the past.

  “All right,” Mouad said, fixing Louis with his chocolate-brown eyes. “What are you going to do, then?”

  Louis took on an indifferent air. “I don’t know. I’ll start by going to Paris and see if I can find a job there. Or perhaps go back to the States.” It might also be a good idea to contact the friend he planned to stay with in Paris and not just show up on his doorstep tomorrow afternoon.

  Mouad grunted and looked out the window next to him. The Théâtre du Capitole occupied a fourth of the Capitole, which was a great part of the opera theater’s charm. “Sounds like a grand plan,” Mouad mumbled. Even Louis’s best friend was judging him. It really was time to leave. But he didn’t want anyone to think he ran off with his tail between his legs. “What’s wrong with that plan? I happen to be happy with moving around and meeting new people.”

  “There are a million people living in and around Toulouse. It should be possible even for a Saint-Blancat to meet new people every day, right here.” Mouad was still looking out the window instead of at Louis. It was as if he was having the conversation in his head. Mouad didn’t expect to convince Louis. He’d already given up on him.

  Oddly enough, Louis wasn’t happy about that either. “Everybody here expects me to go into politics!”

  “Well, you should,” Mouad said, voice calm. “Toulouse needs you.”

  Louis sniffed. “Toulouse has one mayor and twenty-six deputy mayors. That should be more than enough to take care of one city.”

  Mouad turned his full attention on Louis. “You’re unable to see further than the Republican Party. It’s like you’ve chosen to see everything from only one perspective, which doesn’t even please you.”

  A couple of students slipped past Mouad to get to the window. The view of place du Capitole by night was stunning with the dark arcades over the Galerue, bustling cafés, and the huge bronze Occitan cross embedded into the center of the square. The cross was created by the same man who made the paintings in the Galerue, Raymond Moretti, and represented the actual cross with its twelve points—three on each of the four branches of the cross—each containing the depiction of a zodiac sign, and the drawn lines of the artist, less accurate than the finished cross. When standing on place du Capitole, it was difficult to make out the beauty of the design since it was so big and one usually found oneself in the middle of the piece of art. But from up here, a slightly different perspective, it was breathtaking.

  Louis faced Mouad. “What kind of perspective are you proposing?”

  “The one of the Socialist Party.”

  Louis gave his friend a sharp look and downed his glass of wine. “I can’t go to the PS.”

  “Sure you can,” Mouad replied lightly. “There’s no rule saying a Saint-Blancat can’t sign up with the PS. You’re not even affiliated with the Republicans; you’re free as a bird.”

  Louis felt more like a caged bird. Poked at from all directions with no way out. Everybody had an opinion on what he should do and how he should think. “I’m not signing up anywhere,” he replied with an unfortunate sullenness in his voice. “I’m leaving tomorrow.”

  Mouad stared at Louis while he finished his orange juice. He smacked his lips, then started walking toward the bar across the room. As he passed Louis, he got in the last word. “Coward.”

  Pursing his lips, Louis decided to let the subject lie. He was leaving tomorrow and that was final. He happened to think it was more courageous to walk away from something he was passionate about for the good of his family than to follow any personal whim without considering the consequences.

  As Louis looked out the window for a final glimpse of the Occitan cross, he spotted a familiar silhouette. Catherine, wearing what could be a gym-bag over her shoulder, stalked across the bronze cross in the direction of rue du Taur, or perhaps rue Pargaminières, in the far corner of the square. The rage from that morning reignited in Louis’s chest. He should go down there right now and confront her and her sleazy English tactics. But the last act of Aïda was about to begin, and at the speed she was going, she would have left the square before he got down there, anyway.

  Louis started as a hand squeezed his shoulder. Turning around, he was faced with the smiling face of Mayor Jean-Paul Bousquets. “Louis,” he said as they shook hands, “how fortunate that I ran into you.” He cocked his head and the smile turned self-deprecatory. “Actually, I asked your mother where I might find you and she directed me here.”

  He brought a thick wad of papers out of the inner pocket of his suit. Louis had opted for jeans and an ironed shirt despite the expensive seats. “Here you go,” Jean-Paul said, keeping his voice low so only Louis would hear. “The list of inhabitants you asked for. I’m sorry it took me so long, but I tried to keep it under the radar and actually had some trouble figuring out who I needed to ask to get it.”

  Louis accepted the list. Each page contained about a hundred names and addresses, and there must have been twenty sheets of paper. “Thank you,” he said to the man who had taken over his father’s job. “I appreciate it.”

  “Don’t mention it,” Jean-Paul replied. “I hope it can be of help to you and your family.” He left Louis at the piano and followed the stream of people returning to the last act of the opera.

  “Great,” Louis said to himself. He looked out the window again, but there was no sign of Catherine. She was long gone. He shoved the papers into his back pocket and ran to get back into the theater before they closed the doors.

  He had pretty much given up on finding his father’s murderer, but the least he could do was look through the list and see if any names rang a bell. Perhaps he could read it on the train tomorrow. Should be fascinating.

  But right now, it was time to watch Radamès and Aïda be buried alive.

  Twenty-Five

  The steps behind Catherine had the same cadence as hers, but still managed to gain on her.

  She turned down rue des Lois to get a bike. There were rental stations all over the city to pick up a bike and she could drop it off at the station by the Canal du Midi, which was the one closest to her home. However, as she started down the street, she heard those footsteps
and her hackles stood up. It was probably just her mind playing tricks on her, what with her being close to the zone where all those people had gone missing, but there was nobody else in the street with her and Catherine felt exposed.

  She walked straight past the bikes not wanting to stop. She could, of course, simply look back to make sure the long legs didn’t belong to a homicidal maniac, but she wasn’t able to bring herself to do it yet. At some level, she believed it was a murderer back there.

  Catherine quickened her pace. The steps behind her were closer this time. The scuff of a boot on the pavement came again, even closer. Catherine tried to speed up, but was at her maximum speed without downright running. She brought her gym-bag in front of her and opened the side pocket with one hand to search for her pepper spray. She felt stupid when she bought it after her divorce, but right now it felt like the best investment she’d ever made.

  As Catherine’s fingers grazed the bottle of pepper spray, something touched her shoulder. “Excusez-moi, Madame,” said a soft female voice.

  Catherine slumped in relief. All that stress and it was just a woman coming up behind her. She pulled her hand out of her bag, but before she finished turning to see what the woman wanted, something stung her in the neck below her left ear. “What…?”

  She finished her turn and heard a metallic snap, then a few drops of liquid trickled into the neckline of her t-shirt.

  Catherine faced the other woman, but saw only a tall outline.

  Were those red highlights reflecting the street lights?

  Catherine felt her eyes close and lost control of her legs.

  “There,” she heard the kindly voice say through the mist invading her brain. “You’ll come with me now.”

  ***

  Catherine woke up to a cold, wet, heavy liquid falling on her stomach. Her mind was a haze. All limbs heavy, she didn’t feel like moving, so she didn’t. She focused on trying to remember where she was.

  She had gone to her yoga class. That much she remembered. The workout was quite hard for once, so she’d decided to get one of the city bikes, but had no recollection of actually getting on one.

  More coldness covered her thighs.

  “There we go,” a female voice said from somewhere above Catherine. “A few more buckets to go and you’re all ready.”

  Where have I heard that voice before? And where am I? Instinct told her not to move—she decided to listen to her sixth sense. It served her well when doing research for work; perhaps it was as efficient in life-threatening situations.

  The click of a door banging shut echoed through the room.

  Silence.

  Even Catherine’s eyelids felt heavy, but with some effort she pried them open. The room was in near darkness with only a faint light from somewhere in the direction of her feet. Above, she saw a central pillar holding up the roof with a palm of a dozen or so fronds arching out to what she assumed was the rest of the room. It reminded Catherine of the enormous palm in the Jacobins’ Church…the tallest in France or Europe or something. This one was much smaller; the roof couldn’t be more than three meters above her.

  All right, so far so good.

  Catherine turned her head to the right. There was some resistance—more of that liquid stuff she was half-covered in—but it was manageable. More roof, two of the fronds meeting a stone wall…and some more stone much closer. A hand’s breadth from her face, a gray stone barrier covered the bottom half of her view.

  Attempting to move other parts of her body, Catherine groaned. Nothing was responding as it should. Everything was sluggish. Her next discovery was that she was cold. And naked. Something pinned her arms to her sides. A thin wire or something similar dug into each wrist. One hand was along her thigh, the other a little farther away from her body at a thirty degree angle. As if she was pointing at something.

  Giving up on her arms for the moment, Catherine applied herself to moving her head. On the left side there was more roof, more fronds, and again, that stone right in front of her face. Taking a deep breath, she used all the force she could muster and lifted her head. She didn’t get far, but it was enough.

  The pillar had fronds going out in all directions to hold up the roof of an oval room of about six by eight meters. A handheld lamp attached to a nail high up on the pillar provided moderate lighting. More importantly, all around Catherine’s body—which was half covered in mud—was a stone box the size and shape of a coffin.

  She was being buried alive.

  Twenty-Six

  Joyous tones filled the arrival hall of Matabiau, the Toulouse train station. Louis leaned against the publicity posters on one of the central pillars watching two young men having fun at the black Yamaha piano posted in the hall for anyone who wished to play. These two had to have played together numerous times before; four hands ran across the keys so fast it was difficult to say which hand belonged to which man.

  Louis wasn’t the only one enjoying the impromptu concert. At least twenty people stood around waiting, some looking frequently toward the staircase where the arrivals would come up, others checking their watches or phones to make sure they didn’t miss their train. The departure hall was fifty meters to Louis’s right and always packed with travelers waiting for their train to be assigned a track. There was no music over there.

  He was on his seventh page of the city center inhabitants list. He felt he owed it to his father to at least look through it, but had no idea what he was looking for. Did he expect the killer to have MURDERER next to his name? Still, his train didn’t leave for another ten minutes and he was capable of scanning the list while he listened to the piano tones skipping around.

  His phone rang in his pocket. It wasn’t the Zebda song he’d programmed for anyone in his register, but the classic ringing of a phone from the good old days. Someone he didn’t know.

  Shoving the papers under his armpit, he answered.

  “Bonjour,” a high-pitched female voice said. Louis could tell she was panting, but didn’t recognize the voice. “Is this Louis Saint-Blancat?”

  “Moi-même,” Louis replied. “Who is this?”

  “My name is Véronique Hubert, I’m a friend of Catherine? You don’t actually know me, though we met very briefly at Chez Tonton some time ago.”

  Louis closed his eyes and sighed at the memory of his drinking night fiasco. “Right.”

  “Have you heard from Catherine today?” she asked.

  “No.” His reply may have been a little too brusque, but he really wanted nothing more to do with the back-stabbing Englishwoman.

  “I think she’s missing.”

  Louis straightened up. As the old man standing next to him glanced at his watch and made his way toward the departure hall, Louis took the phone away from his ear for a second to check the time. His train would leave in less than five minutes. “What do you mean, you think she’s missing?” he asked as he grabbed his suitcase and strode after the old man.

  “I talked to her on the phone last night and have been to her place this morning. She’s not there. I don’t think she got home after her yoga class.”

  Louis had seen her the night before from the foyer of the Capitole Opera. She’d been walking in the direction of her home with a gym-bag. “How can you be sure she’s not just sleeping or refusing to open the door?”

  The woman blew into the phone. “I have a key to her place. When she didn’t answer, I tried calling her, but got only voice mail. Then I went back home to get her keys. She’s not there. And her dog was starving.”

  Louis reached the platform. The train was there. He glanced at the clock at the end of the platform. Two minutes.

  “Why are you calling me?” Louis asked irritably. Why hadn’t she gone home? Seeing the love she had for that ugly dog, he had trouble believing she would leave him to starve. “Why don’t you call the police? And did you feed Fluffy?”

  “Of course I fed him. Otherwise, I think he would have eaten me. I have him with me right now.” She pa
used and Louis could hear the sound of cars in the background. Was she out walking the dog? “The police told me to get back to them if I had any elements that could classify this as inquiétant. They’re not about to upend the city to look for a recently divorced adult Englishwoman who probably went back to her island.”

  “Without Fluffy?”

  “Yes, well, the man I talked to was clearly not a dog person. He’d leave the dog behind in a second. And if you don’t consider the dog in the equation, there’s not yet enough of a basis to conclude something criminal might have happened.”

  Louis was on the platform in front of one of the train doors. The station master looked ready to signal the train’s departure. Louis gazed at the wad of papers still in his hand. And then a name jumped out at him. On one of the streets close to where the Cordeliers church used to be, a house was inhabited by three persons: Lucien, Ghislaine, and Marie-Pierre Ezes. The deputy mayor he’d had dinner with just a few days ago and who’d tried to get him involved in helping the elderly in the heat.

  It could be a coincidence.

  Or not.

  Had he not mentioned to Marie-Pierre that he was interviewing SDFs when he met her at the soccer game? That poor homeless man turned up dead the next morning. And Alima, who he’d also mentioned, went missing not long after that.

  The stationmaster blew his whistle. Still staring at the sheet of paper, Louis registered the train moving in his peripheral vision.

  “Monsieur Saint-Blancat?” Véronique said on the phone, apparently not for the first time. “Are you still there?”

  “Yes.” What are the chances that a woman who devotes most of her spare time to the elderly of the city—though she is certainly strong enough to physically overwhelm most people—is responsible for Papa’s death? And that of a woman who disappeared, presumed dead twenty-nine years ago? Slim to none. But Louis couldn’t take his eyes off the names in front of his eyes.