Crêpe Murder_A Seagrass Sweets Cozy Mystery

by Sandi Scott

  “He’s going to talk to the other restaurateurs,” Patty said, “and ask them to help him out.”

  Ashley said, “With what?”

  “Tracking Serge down for the police, probably,” Patty said confidently. Over her shoulder, Malik, who hadn’t said a word through the entire conversation, chewed on the inside of his cheek as if questioning whether the restaurateurs would limit themselves to gathering information.

  “Everyone knows someone in this town,” Patty said. “Someone will know where Serge is. That’s all.”

  CHAPTER 16

  That afternoon, on the walk back to Patty’s apartment, Patty said, “So tell me about your plans. When you go back to Texas, what are you going to do?”

  Ashley had to stop and close her eyes for a moment, she felt like she was never going to be able to go home again. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “Maybe I’m going to be stuck in Paris forever. Not that I dislike Paris at all, but right now ...”

  “Right now, you fear Serge is around every corner.” Patty completed her thought, adding, “You are always looking over your shoulder, and sometimes you catch his face out of the corner of your eye and you turn your head, but it turns out to be someone else entirely, and you think, what if it is Serge, and the mistake is that I think he’s someone else? I remember what it’s like.”

  “Wow,” Ashley said. The feeling was one of those things that she didn’t like to dwell on, but Patty seemed to describe it perfectly.

  “I had a terrible ex-boyfriend in New York when I was in college,” Patty explained. “Remember? I told you that I had to be rescued, but I was very young, only twenty. I ended up transferring as an exchange student to France to get away from him. Whether he was stalking me or not, I couldn’t get over the idea that he was always behind me. Everything turned out for the best.”

  They resumed walking. After a few moments, Ashley had herself under control again. She said, “I haven’t really thought about what I’m going to do. I assumed that I’d be going back to work for the same company as before I left, if I can get a job there again. I did a lot of programming work.”

  “But ...?” Patty prompted her when Ashley was quiet.

  “But now, l no longer think I have to do that. Now, I have options.”

  “Oh well then, what you should do is open a bakery.”

  “A bakery?” Ashley had always fantasized about opening a bakery, of course, from a young age. But she’d thought there wouldn’t be any money in it, so she’d gone into computer programming instead. The fact that she’d been so good at programming had always seemed like a sign that she wasn’t destined to be a baker.

  “Why not?”

  “I’ll starve, not literally of course. But you know there’s no money in it.”

  “You won’t,” Patty said. “With a little luck and some capital investment, you’ll be fine. Most businesses fail because they don’t have enough money behind them to smooth out the rough spots.”

  “I don’t have a ton of money saved up,” Ashley admitted.

  “Then, you can get a loan.” Patty, sensing that Ashley’s head was spinning like a top, changed the subject, but only slightly, “Let’s talk about something else. Tell me about where you live. I know you’re from Texas, but where?”

  Ashley smiled. That was something she could do. She told Patty about Sweetgrass, Texas, for the rest of the walk home. “And all the houses near the beach are on stilts to keep them above water when the hurricanes roll in.”

  “Hurricanes?” Patty said. “I don’t know if I could deal with those!”

  “Oh, they’re not that bad. I mean, sometimes they are bad, but not too often. House insurance is a pain,” Ashley said, remembering her parents’ complaints, “but most of the time you don’t think about that. You sit out on your verandah overlooking the Gulf of Mexico, and you say to yourself, ‘Isn’t this amazing? It’s almost like a tropical country.’”

  “That’s a point in its favor. I could live without snow. Manhattan is like the North Pole in the winter, with the wind howling between the buildings trying to sandpaper your eyeballs off. And in the summer? The smell is so awful . . . and there’s always a couple of old people found in apartments with no air conditioning, dead of heat stroke.”

  “And you’re worried about hurricanes?” Ashley teased her.

  “There’s no place on earth that’s exactly paradise,” Patty admitted.

  “Not even Paris? I thought you loved this place?”

  “I do,” Patty said. “Or at least I did.”

  “What’s making you change your mind?”

  “This loan!” Patty exploded. “I’ve been here for years. I have a great credit rating. I have all kinds of good references and my business plan is immaculate, still I get the feeling that they’re looking for an excuse to turn me down. I feel like they don’t want me to start a restaurant here. Oh, sure, if I were some type of celebrity chef, they’d be bending over backwards to give me a place, but I’m not a celebrity chef! All I want to do is run a restaurant and make people full and happy. The situation is worse here than it ever was in Manhattan. Everyone wants you to work for cheap and buy their food, and nobody wants you to turn into competition.”

  Ashley didn’t know what to say. “You could always try Texas?” she said finally, as they were climbing the stairs up to Patty’s apartment. “I mean, the barbecue market in Sweetgrass is pretty much wrapped up. We have some of the world’s most famous barbecue cooks there. One guy, named Smoke Daddy Lee, runs his own year-round campground because people love his barbecue so much that they travel and take their vacations just to eat it.”

  Patty laughed. “I’m used to hearing stories about people being obsessed about good food in France, but America?”

  “His meat is really good,” Ashley said. “But other than that, the restaurants in Sweetgrass aren’t that great. They don’t have any French ones, that’s for sure. Plus, there are a ton of wealthy tourists and gated communities in the area, or you could go to Galveston and set up a place. They don’t have French food either.”

  Patty didn’t say anything as she unlocked the door. Belle greeted them happily. Ashley petted and scratched her while surreptitiously checking the apartment for damage or other surprises, but Belle had been good all day.

  “Good girl!”

  “So, what are the bakeries like?” Patty asked.

  “Nothing in Sweetgrass,” Ashley said. “Lots in Galveston, though.”

  “Any good?”

  “One or two,” Ashley admitted, “although they do mostly wedding cakes and big, fancy things like that. There are a bunch of cupcake shops, but their cupcakes are kind of so-so with a bunch of frosting on top—better to look at than to eat.”

  “Is anybody making crêpes?” Patty asked off-handedly.

  Ashley laughed. “I can just imagine it. A Tex-Mex crêpe truck. We’ll have chipotle-cream crêpes stuffed with shredded pork, jalapeños, and shredded cabbage.”

  “Tres leches crêpes,” Patty said.

  “Oh, that sounds good. Vegetarian black bean and salsa crêpes. I wonder what cornmeal crêpes would taste like?”

  Ashley had clipped on Belle’s leash and was about to take her outside for a walk when Patty stopped her and kissed her on both cheeks. “Thank you for cheering me up, ma chère.”

  Ashley hugged her friend. “No, thank you. I hadn’t realized how much I was worried about the future. I know I can at least go back home and start something new, not get trapped back in the same old programming rut again.”

  “Do you want me to come with you for your walk?”

  “No,” Ashley said. “I need to face my fears. Practically everyone in the arrondissement is watching for Serge now. I’m just being paranoid. He came back, got his stuff, and is long gone by now. Probably in South America somewhere.”

  “Probably,” Patty agreed.

  Ashley went outside and kept a smile on her face, but there was still a sour feeling in her stomach as she
walked Belle toward a small park nearby. It would fade, with time.

  WHEN ASHLEY CAME BACK, Patty’s face was white, and her eyes red-rimmed from crying. She was sitting on the couch with her hands clutching her knees.

  “What is it?” Asley asked, ready to panic.

  “The loan,” Patty said. “They’re seriously considering dropping me because I’m a suspect in a murder investigation. I told them I hadn’t been charged with anything, but they said that didn’t matter.”

  “Oh, no,” Ashley said. She sat next to her friend, and Belle put her head in Patty’s lap. “What do you want to do? Is there anything you can do about it?”

  “No,” Patty said. “There isn’t a single thing I can do about it. I’m finished. They finally found a way to get rid of me.”

  Ashley said, “I need to go back to my apartment and get my laptop.”

  Patty frowned at her. “Didn’t you say you were worried that Serge had hacked it? Or that he’d put a tracking chip on it?”

  “I did say that,” Ashley admitted, “but I don’t think that Serge is really interested in me anymore. He has what he wants. He’s had a lot of chances to hurt me since he left, and he hasn’t. Like I said earlier, I think he’s long gone.”

  “Why do you want the laptop?”

  Ashley explained about the video camera over the small garage door where M. Babin was murdered. “And if we know who the murderer is then we could at least – I don’t know – help the police direct their attention that way.”

  “But haven’t the police reviewed the video already?”

  “I think so,” Ashley said, “but nothing seems to be happening in the investigation lately. There have been no arrests, no rumors that they suspect anyone, and they haven’t definitely said that you’re not a suspect, either. I’m starting to wonder what’s going on.”

  “Me, too,” Patty said grimly, “but I can’t ask you to do something illegal for me.”

  “Would you do something illegal for me?”

  “Depends on what it was,” Patty said cagily, “and I’d make sure that you never knew about it.”

  “I’m terrible at lying and keeping secrets from people I befriend,” Ashley said. “I just tell them, sooner or later.”

  “You’re terrible at keeping secrets?”

  “No, not in general, just to people I care about.”

  “Well, that’s not so bad ...” Patty said. “All right. You can do it.”

  Ashley grinned. “Just because I told you about my plan doesn’t mean that I wasn’t going to do it anyway.”

  CHAPTER 17

  The two of them walked back to Ashley’s apartment with Belle, bold as brass. They knew that the rumors were already flying through the neighborhood. When Ashley started climbing the stairs back to her apartment, she did have a moment’s hesitation. What if Serge has booby-trapped the apartment somehow? What if he’s been back since I left and put up hidden cameras or something? What if he’s changed the locks? But she was able to let herself in the door without any trouble. Mme. Guibert opened her door as soon as she heard the key in the lock.

  “Mademoiselle Adams? Is that you? I feel so badly that I didn’t hear when your American friend went into your apartment without permission that I have been jumping up to check the door a dozen times a day.”

  “Oh, no!” Ashley gave her a hug. “I’m so sorry that you’re worrying so much about it. You really don’t need to. Serge got what he wanted. I’m sure he’s long gone now.”

  Mme. Guibert only shook her head. “With men like that, you can never know for certain.”

  The apartment looked unchanged, but then, it had looked unchanged the last time that Serge had been there. Ashley told herself that she was just going to have to get used to it. She couldn’t impose on Patty any longer, it was ridiculous to be so terrified of standing in her own apartment.

  Patty went over to the little refrigerator and started taking things out and putting them on the counter. “Where is the dog food? Do you have any left?” Soon, she had a mound of food on the counter, along with Ashley’s other string bags. “What are you doing?” she asked. “Go get your laptop and whatever clothes you need for now. We’re still going shopping, but it might be nice to have a few of your old things.”

  “What are you talking about?” Ashley asked.

  “What are you talking about? You’re just standing there like you’ve been hypnotized.”

  “I’m trying to get over how scared I am just standing here.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s crazy to have to stay with you when I know very well that Serge isn’t coming back, and it’s perfectly safe to be here, especially because I still have Belle.”

  Patty snorted. “That’s not how this works. Don’t try to fool me. I know exactly what this feels like. Go get your things. You don’t have permission to stay here until after you’ve had some time to calm down a little. You only just found out he was here yesterday. It’s going to take at least a week. If you come back here before then, you won’t be able to sleep a wink.”

  Ashley let herself get talked into leaving again. Soon, she had her laptop packed into a smallish hiking backpack that she’d never used. Another promise broken—she and Serge hadn’t gone hiking at all. She went over the backpack as well as she could before packing-up the laptop and some clothes, but she knew that, with the metal frame, Serge could have planted an RFID chip inside the frame and she wouldn’t be able to find it without destroying the whole thing.

  He hadn’t, she reminded herself. He had only come back to the apartment to get his stuff. That was the official story, and she was sticking to it.

  Soon, they were ready to go, Patty laden down with string bags full of dog food, half-eaten cheese, a few bottles of wine, and other bits and pieces of Ashley’s life in Paris. Ashley had finally broken down and accepted that she was never going to be able to truly search her shoes for microchips without peeling the soles off and took a pair of comfortable walking shoes so she could return Malik’s sister’s shoes to him.

  “What about dancing shoes?” Patty asked when she looked over the clothes Ashley was packing.

  “I don’t feel like dancing.” That lasted about two seconds. A pair of pretty flats was shoved in on top of everything else.

  “One does not ‘feel like’ dancing. One goes dancing and then, one ‘feels like’ living again. And you, my friend, are going to live.”

  Ashley looked over her apartment before closing and locking the door behind her. And you, my friend, are going to be proved to be innocent.

  ASHLEY WENT TO WORK on her laptop. She had to work slowly and carefully, the last thing she wanted was to get caught hacking at this point. Not only could it mess up Patty’s case, but it might also undermine her argument that she had known nothing about what Serge was really up to in her own case.

  She wasn’t too paranoid about getting caught, though. Programming was a completely different world, one that she was far more familiar with. What the police should have done was asked her to help track down Serge. With official approval she might have been able to find him by now, or at least his financial records, for most people that was pretty much the same thing.

  But they hadn’t asked, and she’d been too overwhelmed and upset to offer more help than she’d already given them. Maybe she’d contact Monsieur Marais, the detective, and ask if he did want her help. Maybe they already had it under control.

  She was able to find the manufacturer and model of the camera and identified that it came with a default software package, one that she had researched for on one of Serge’s earlier projects. She was able to track down the Internet Service Provider for M. Babin’s block, then hack into it and identify all the customer accounts.

  Their security was really not the best, especially considering that it advertised itself as being highly secure. She rolled her eyes. Places that were highly secure didn’t just advertise it, they backed it up with a guarantee insuring their customers’
data, which this place did not. It was a small provider though, and those varied widely. Some of them were tighter than Fort Knox. She’d just lucked out with a bad one, still it annoyed her.

  M. Babin had a website for his crêpe cart business, showing when and where his cart would be, making it easy for his regulars to track him down. She noted that he had shown himself at the same address on the Rue Daguerre “by special request.” But whose request? Ashley couldn’t tell from the files she had.

  She shivered. What if Serge had been the one to ask M. Babin to move his cart exactly where he had, just to make her life difficult? She found the address of the computer that most commonly logged into the admin password for the website and traced it back to M. Babin’s computer. It wasn’t powered down, and she was able to set up a brute force login attack to run overnight.

  With luck, she’d be able to get into his system remotely by tomorrow so that she could go through his files. She would have thought that M. Babin’s computer would have been seized as evidence and taken to the police station to have the Paris computer forensics team start going through the files. Maybe there was some kind of bureaucratic delay. After all, it had been only four days.

  PATTY SAID, “YOU’RE a good programmer. I can tell.”

  Ashley looked up. “Hmm?”

  Darkness had fallen outside, and Belle was giving her the look. The one that said, I would like to go out for another walk before it’s time to sleep, please. The small table next to Ashley’s elbow held a wine glass, a coffee cup, and an empty plate with a fork. She didn’t remember eating, and she really didn’t remember what it was she’d eaten. Her neck hurt, and when she set the laptop aside and stretched, a few of the bones in her spine popped.