Crêpe Murder_A Seagrass Sweets Cozy Mystery

by Sandi Scott

  Ashley chewed on the inside of her cheek. Time of death wasn’t that easy to determine, was it? Maybe the information was wrong. Or, maybe it wasn’t.

  “What happened next?”

  “Oh, he went away.”

  “Could you see anything on the backpack?”

  “Like blood?” the woman asked, knowingly. “Non. It was just a backpack. He walked through the alley and disappeared.”

  “He didn’t have a bicycle?”

  “Non. If he did, he left it outside the alley.”

  Ashley had gone over the security camera files in front of the garage for that whole evening already and knew that nobody she recognized had walked past that camera.

  She dug out her phone and scrolled through the pictures. She still had her job selfie pictures on her phone. She pulled one up and held out the screen. “Was this the woman?”

  The woman took her phone and squinted at the screen. She didn’t just need tools, she needed glasses.

  “Oui, and that was the gentleman.” She jabbed a finger at the screen then handed back the phone. Chef Lemaire was the only man in the photo.

  Ashley said, in as calm a voice as she could manage, “Thank you.”

  “I hope everything turns out for the best.” It wasn’t likely to, really it wasn’t. Ashley thanked her anyway and got the woman’s name, Mlle. Khadmi. She also gave her the market owner’s name as a person to contact if she wanted to leave a message for Ashley. Better not to tell her to leave a message at L’Oiseau Bleu, there was going to be trouble at L’Oiseau Bleu, soon.

  SHE WASN’T FEELING well after her conversation with Mlle. Khadmi. Her whole body felt shaky and feverish, as if she were coming down with the flu. So far, she’d been lucky not even catching more than a sniffle during her time here. But now? Ashley knew she wasn’t sick. She was just worried. Terrified, actually.

  She somehow made it on autopilot back to L’Oiseau Bleu and stood on the sidewalk in front of the restaurant. Oscar Metais was at the crêpe cart, determinedly making crêpes for the few customers waiting for him. He gave Ashley a dirty look. As she watched, Jan Hamelin’s truck drove past on the street, turning toward the alleyway leading to the back of the restaurant. He was making a delivery.

  Ashley steeled herself, opened the door, and went inside. The restaurant was busy but not packed. She spotted Chef Lemaire in the back, talking to someone that Ashley didn’t recognize for a moment. Then, it hit her, the man was the police detective that she’d spoken to earlier, Monsieur Marais. Both of them looked toward her at the same moment and shut up as if they’d been talking about her.

  Ashley straightened her spine and walked toward them. “Good afternoon, Chef Lemaire. Detective Marais.”

  “Is something wrong?” Chef Lemaire asked.

  Ashley swallowed. She didn’t want to talk to Chef Lemaire with Detective Marais listening in, what if her suspicions about Patty were wrong? But she had to have some kind of excuse for being here, it was supposed to be her day off. “I’d like to change my schedule,” she said. “I have to take Belle to a vet and have her checked over and given a rabies shot.”

  “Oh?”

  “If I don’t get a call from her owner soon, I’m going to try taking her back with me to the States.” Ashley had only intended to give him some random excuse, but as soon as the words were out of her mouth, she realized that was what she really wanted to do.

  Chef Lemaire nodded. “One moment, please. If you will allow me to finish my discussion with Monsieur Marais, I will speak with you next.”

  “Thank you.”

  Ashley walked into the back of the restaurant and saw Malik working along with several of the afternoon people that she didn’t know as well. “How’s it going?” he asked. She shrugged. She didn’t know what to say. He burst out laughing. “You look like a Frenchwoman now for sure. All you need are a pair of dark sunglasses and a cigarette. You have the shrug.” She smiled at him but was too worried to speak.

  The back door opened, and Jan Hamelin came in with a trolley of cardboard wine cases. He grunted when he saw her. “You.”

  “Jan, I have to ask you something.”

  “Well, ask.”

  Ashley wanted to ask him if he’d seen either Patty or Chef Lemaire in M. Babin’s neighborhood that night, but she was interrupted by the sound of an argument from the front of the restaurant. Voices were raised. Then came the sound of glass smashing. They all jumped and ran to the front of the restaurant.

  Patty had arrived, and Monsieur Marais was in the process of arresting her while she struggled. Chef Lemaire was moving around, waving his arms wildly. “I didn’t do it, you idiots!” Patty was shouting loudly. Customers were getting up and leaving while Chef Lemaire was trying to talk the detective into taking the altercation into the back of the restaurant. It wasn’t doing any good. Patty was not about to let herself get dragged anywhere.

  “Help! Help!” she shouted.

  “Hush, Patty,” Chef Lemaire was saying. “You know that we will help you get out of this in any way we can. We know you were only doing it to help convince the neighborhood to accept you so you could buy your restaurant. We know you didn’t mean to let things go that far and of course we will do everything to try to help you. You know that I would do anything to protect you.”

  The restaurant had completely cleared out. Patty was still shouting and struggling.

  Jan said, “Come on, girl. You don’t need to see this.” He took Ashley’s shoulder.

  “She didn’t do it!” Ashley said. She hadn’t realized but she was crying, her face was wet with tears.

  “Of course, she did,” Jan said. “She rode up on her bicycle and got in a fight with M. Babin that night. There were witnesses.”

  “Who?”

  “The people who live back in the courtyard. The homeless refugees.”

  Ashley shook her head. “I spoke to Mademoiselle Khadmi. That’s not what she said. Or not all that she said. She said that Chef Lemaire came to M. Babin’s back entrance and let himself in with the code. It was after when the police said M. Babin’s died. but he came out a few minutes later with a blue backpack.”

  The room seemed to have frozen in place. “What is this?” the detective asked.

  Chef Lemaire turned toward Ashley with a look on his face that reminded her of something, but she was too intent on saving Patty to figure out what exactly. “You ...” Surprised, she took a hasty step backward.

  “You were supposed to be with the neighborhood restaurant meeting the whole time!” Ashley stated. “You shouldn’t have been there in the first place!”

  Chef Lemaire began stalking toward her. Slowly, his hands reached in front of him toward her neck. “I should have known better than to trust an American,” he said. “That’s what they told me. I should have known!” Jan suddenly stepped in front of Ashley. “Get out of my way!”

  “Non, monsieur.”

  “You said you would help us cover this up!”

  Jan Hamelin said, “I said I would talk to the homeless people in the area. I did not say I would tell them to deceive anyone. It’s my fault for not asking more questions.”

  “You were supposed to help me hide the evidence of what Patty had done!”

  “We spoke nothing about that,” Jan said.

  “I didn’t do anything,” Patty screamed. “You imbécile! I thought it was Monsieur Babin who texted me and said he was thinking about selling his cart, and that I should come and see him before he changed his mind! And then, when I got there he didn’t seem to remember that I was supposed to meet him! I thought he’d gotten drunk and forgotten about the text! When I showed it to him, he insulted me and tried to hit on me! I pushed him against his cart and he hit his head. He certainly wasn’t dead when I left him! He was throwing ladles at me!”

  Chef Lemaire, who was a big man but not big enough to tangle with Jan Hamelin, spun around on his heel and glared at Patty. He pointed at her. “You killed him!”

  “Tha
t doesn’t explain why you had the code to his door,” Ashley asked quietly.

  “He sent me an email, saying to come and meet him! Be quiet, come to the back door, and use this code. I want to get out of the business, but I won’t sell to that American – I won’t say what he called you!”

  “He sent you his door code?” M. Marais said.

  “Yes!”

  “What time did you leave here?”

  “At ...” Chef Lemaire stopped and lifted his chin. “I don’t have to talk to you without an attorney.”

  “Your statement earlier was that the meeting with the other restaurateurs lasted until well after midnight. Quite late. Did they know you had left? Will they wish to change their statements when they find out that you were seen?”

  Chef Lemaire refused to speak.

  “And what was this about the backpack?” M. Marais said.

  Ashley said, “Madame Khadmi said he was carrying a backpack.”

  The detective said, “Monsieur Lemaire, you will have to show me the email that you received from Monsieur Babin, or I will have to take you to the police station.”

  “Am I under arrest?”

  “Let us say that you will be unless you cooperate.”

  “You can’t do this to me. I want my attorney!”

  M. Marais gave a shrug. “Eh, if you wish. Your hands?”

  “What?”

  “If you will not cooperate, then I will have to arrest you.”

  “You have no proof!”

  Ashley said, “Patty?”

  “Yeah?” Patty was leaning against a prep table, looking ill and shaky.

  “You said you pushed Monsieur Babin, and he fell and hit his head. What did he hit it on?” Ashley was persistent, “Was it on one of his griddles?”

  “Maybe.” Patty wasn’t sure, “He fell back against the cart, that’s all I saw.”

  “Did he throw a griddle at you?”

  Patty gave her a baffled look. “What?”

  “Did he take a griddle off the base and throw it at you?”

  “I don’t know, possibly after I closed the door on him. I left in a hurry.”

  “We need to talk to Oscar Metais,” Ashley said. “He’s been using the crêpe cart for several days with both griddles in place even though one of them was supposed to be missing, according to M. Marais. And I remember him mentioning, that he had to put the griddles back together when he was able to go back to the garage for the cart. He blamed the police, but now I have to wonder.”

  CHAPTER 20

  M. Marais had called for backup on his cell phone and within minutes several officers arrived on their bicycles. A few moments later, Oscar Metais was brought into the kitchen. “What’s this all about?”

  M. Marais gave Ashley a look as if to say – You asked for him, now what?

  She said, “How are your griddles working?”

  “Eh? They are fine, both fine.”

  “But the iron top on one of them was missing. Isn’t that right, Monsieur Marais? Wasn’t that what you hinted at when we first spoke that morning after the murder?”

  “Oui,” said the detective.

  Oscar Metais shrugged. “I didn’t know it was gone. When the police released the cart, it had two griddles, but one of them had been taken apart. I had to put it back together.”

  Ashley gave the detective a look. He nodded. She asked, “Do you recall that a backpack was missing?”

  “Non, I don’t recall whether one was or not, but M. Babin did have one, I know that, a blue one. I could check and see if it is missing.”

  M. Marais looked toward her with one eyebrow lifted. Anything else?

  Ashley licked her lips. “I’m sorry, this is very private I know, but can you tell me the code that you use to get into the garage?”

  “What?” He looked at M. Marais to see if this was really something he had to do. M. Marais nodded curtly. “Oh, well, it was 37781. But when I was fired, that is when I fought with Monsieur Babin, he cut off that code so I couldn’t use it anymore. Now I’m using 55515, which I got from Monsieur Babin’s brother.”

  M. Marais was watching Ashley’s face rather than that of Oscar Metais. “Your thoughts, mademoiselle?”

  Ashley took a deep breath. “I think if you contact the security company, they can pull up the logs for that system and see what codes were used to log in, and when. I think a different code will show up, a weird new one that no one else uses.”

  “I concur,” M. Marais said. “I, too, suspect that is what we will find.”

  Ashley said, “But . . . there’s another thing. If the griddle was used to bash in Monsieur Babin’s head, and it went missing for a while . . ., then it had to have been missing for a reason. For example, there’s something about the griddle that might have identified the murderer if the police had seen it.”

  The detective laughed softly. “This, too, is what I think.”

  Chef Lemaire turned slowly back toward Ashley.

  M. Marais said, “The code you were given, Monsieur Lemaire? Either you will show me the email, or you will be charged and arrested.”

  Chef Lemaire didn’t answer. Over what seemed like an endless, heart stopping amount of time, chef looked over at Ashley, glaring at her with burning hatred in his eyes. Then, his eyes seemed to shutter. He visibly dismissed Ashley as not worth his time or anger, and the burning hatred was turned aside, toward Patty. He said, “You will never have a restaurant in Paris, Mademoiselle LaFontaine. I have friends who will see that your loans fall through, your ingredients rot, and the inspectors find what they should not.”

  Patty replied, “You set me up to take the fall for you, didn’t you? You sent the text, didn’t you? You and the other restaurateurs planned this whole thing.”

  Chef Lemaire bared his teeth. “Not I, madame. A mysterious benefactor sent me the code and told me about the text.”

  “You admit it! You killed Monsieur Babin!”

  “But what about the time of death?” Ashley asked, almost to herself. She wasn’t expecting to be heard underneath the storm of fighting in the kitchen. But M. Marais answered her right away, “Eh, well. Sometimes we lie a little bit about the time of death to the public so that when an alibi comes out ...” He shrugged. “What we released was an early guess by the coroner. After the autopsy, we had a better idea. M. Babin was killed at eight-thirty, not eight. It all fits. But we must see that email, and that griddle.”

  The underside of the griddle was shiny and bright, it had been cleaned with steel wool. It hadn’t been back in use on the crêpe cart long enough to have tarnished back to its old, grease-stained dullness. Ashley felt herself deflate when she saw it, but M. Marais nevertheless had it bagged up and sent to the forensics lab for testing.

  “I SUSPECT THAT WE WILL find traces of blood,” M. Marais told her when he called her and asked her to meet him at the police station on the Avenue du Maine later that afternoon.

  “Monsieur Babin’s blood?”

  “No, Monsieur Lemaire’s from that cut on his hand. Nonetheless, it will take some time.”

  “But he got the cut on his hand during service at lunch,” Ashley said.

  “No,” the detective said. “When I interviewed him, he kept his hands closed, like this,” he balled his hands up into fists, “and I began to wonder if he was trying to hide something. I saw him throw away a bloody bandage into a trash can when he excused himself to get a glass of water. I took it as evidence.”

  Ashley was shocked. “You suspected him even then?”

  “I suspected you, too,” he said. “In cases like this, it’s almost never a matter of not enough suspects, but too many.”

  She shook her head. Paranoia came with the job, she guessed. “Is there enough proof?”

  “Oui. The email he received with the door code was not from Monsieur Babin, but from an anonymous source that laid out the entire plan for him. He was instructed to kill Monsieur Babin with a blunt weapon of some type although the griddle was not men
tioned specifically.”

  “Who would suggest something like that?” From the sick feeling in her stomach, she already knew.

  M. Marais gave her a flat, humorless smile. “That is why I wanted to speak with you here. We think that the situation was arranged by your friend, Serge Payton.”

  Even though she’d been half expecting it, Ashley still felt dizzy and stunned. “Why? Why would he even ...”

  “He wanted to cut you off from your friend and protector, Mademoiselle LaFontaine. That is our best guess. But we have not found him, so we have been unable to question him.”

  “He could have just had me killed,” Ashley said. “He didn’t have to go after Patty.” She felt tears coming on again.

  “I suspect he harbors a grudge against you for cooperating with the police and wants to cause you the maximum amount of trouble.”

  Ashley shook her head. What had he expected her to do, go to jail for him? “Now what?”

  “That is up to you, mademoiselle. I don’t have anything to do with the other case, but as far as this one is concerned, you’re free to go. Your evidence is not necessary although I would like to take a more thorough statement. How long will you remain here in Paris?”

  “At least a month,” she said and explained about Belle’s rabies shot.

  “Without employment, will you be in difficulties?”

  “I might have to pick up some freelance programming jobs,” Ashley said, “for a couple of months, anyway with the café closed. Unless, of course, someone wants to hire me as a baker.”

  The detective nodded and showed her out. “Good luck, mademoiselle. I am sorry to have to give you such unpleasant news about ... your former boyfriend.” He didn’t say Serge’s name again for which Ashley was grateful. She thanked him and walked back to Patty’s apartment. Her head was whirling. Before she got back to the apartment, her phone rang, it was M. Marais, warning her that the police were going over her old apartment with a fine-toothed comb to find out whether Serge had set up any cameras or anything.