The Paris Mysteries (Confessions #3)(15)

“C’est Dominick. Qui est à l’appareil?”

Afterward, Harry and I dressed quickly and neatly. I even put on some lipstick. Jacob was very kind at breakfast. He looked into my face, really studied it. I smiled.

“I’m okay,” I said. “I feel really good.”

He said, “Good recovery, Tandy.” He smiled and sprinkled crushed nuts on my oatmeal. Poured me a big mug of milky coffee.

“We’re going to the Louvre,” I said. “If it’s okay.”

Harry added, “We’re going to rent headsets and do the masters the right way.”

Jacob gave us each some folding money and said, “Your phones are charged, right? Make sure. Call if you need me. Have fun and please be home in time for dinner.”

When we were on the street, Harry and I caught a cab at the queue and sped off to Montmartre. It was an artsy village on a very famous hill that was rife with cafés, street musicians, and landmarks, especially la Basilique du Sacré Coeur, a church with an unparalleled view of Paris out to the horizon.

But Harry and I had no time for sightseeing or leisurely strolls through the postcard vignettes of Paris. We were on a quest, wherever it took us, and with luck, we’d still have time to see the Mona Lisa before dinner.

Dominick Tremaine’s address was on one of the seamier streets in Montmartre; it was narrow, twisting, and, according to my street app, notorious for sex shops and prostitution. Our cabdriver looked at us well-dressed, clean-faced twins in his rearview mirror and asked, “Dois-je attendre?”

“Thanks, but don’t wait. We’ll be okay,” I said in French, hoping it was the truth.

Harry pushed euros into the driver’s hand, and we hopped out of the cab at the foot of a winding street banked by shuttered residential buildings with crummy shops and bistros on the ground floors. I saw a painted sign with a street name and led the way up steps cut into the side of the street until we reached a doorway that listed names of tenants beside corresponding apartment numbers and buttons.

We rang, and the door buzzed open. Harry took the lead as we climbed two steep staircases. I was panting when we reached the top landing, maybe because I suddenly realized what we had done. Harry and I were alone in a strange place. No one knew where we were, and we were knocking on the door of the man who had probably been the last person to see Katherine alive.

Had he been her lover?

Had he gotten her killed?

How would he react to seeing Katherine’s younger sibs?

Harry rapped on the door. I heard the sound of shoes on a hardwood floor, and then the door opened a crack. A dark eye looked at us for long seconds; then the door closed, hard.

“Wait,” I said.

But I’d jumped the gun. A chain slid along a track, and this time when the door opened, there was a very good-looking man in his mid-to late-twenties standing in the doorway.

In fact, he looked the way my brother Matthew had warned me French men all looked.

Dominick’s black hair was uncombed and falling loose to his shoulders. He hadn’t shaved in a couple of days, and it looked as though he’d slept in his clothes.

But although he looked older, rougher, and, I have to say, sadder, I recognized this man from the photos I’d seen of him with Katherine. I said in French, “We spoke on the phone this morning. I’m Tandy Angel, and this is my brother Harry.”

He said, “You are alone?”

“Yes.”

He said, “You speak French almost as well as Katherine. S’il vous pla?t, entrez.”





Dominick’s flat was as comfy as an old sweater.

The sitting room had three dormer windows, each with a sliver view of Sacré Coeur. The walls were lined with bookshelves, filled with probably five or six thousand books with tattered jackets, either secondhand or just really well read, on subjects ranging from fine art and architecture to history, astrophysics, astronomy, and even poetry.

An orange cat sprawled on a two-seat sofa opposite a lounge chair. Books and manuscript boxes were piled on the floor alongside the chair, and there was another short stack on a side table, along with a laptop and a gang of pill bottles.

Dominick shooed the cat away, offered us the love seat, then brought over an opened bottle of wine and three glasses.

I was pretty sure wine would reignite my headache big-time, but I held the glass in my lap, and in a few sentences, I gave Dominick the shortest credible explanation for why we were in Paris. I explained that our parents had died, that our deceased grandmother had owned a home in the Sixteenth Arrondissement, and that our guardian had brought us to Paris to help settle family affairs.

“Not your uncle Peter?” Dominick asked.

“No. Our uncle Jacob. Kath told you about Peter?”

Dominick dipped his head, and his hair fell across his eyes. I couldn’t read him, and by then Harry was saying, “We found your name and pictures of you with our sister in our grandmother’s house.”

Dominick nodded and said, “I’m glad you found me. I’ve had no one to talk to about Katherine. This has been killing me for so long.”

He got up, took a framed photo off the wall, and brought it over to the love seat. Tears jumped into my eyes. I couldn’t help it. The photo was a gasper.

Dominick was astride a big honkin’ motorbike, like a souped-up Harley. His hair was pulled back in a pony, he wore tight black leathers, and his face radiated joie de vivre. Our dear Katherine was on the seat behind him, her arms tightly wound around his waist, a helmet capping her long hair. She looked so happy, and you could just see that she loved and trusted this man.