The Paris Mysteries (Confessions #3)(22)

I asked, “Monsieur Laurier, how well did you know my grandmother?”

He smiled, and it was almost as if he was glad I had figured it out.

“Would it surprise you if I said I was in love with her?”

Later, when Monsieur Laurier walked me out to the taxi, he gave me a beautiful powder-blue box tied with gold ribbons.

“This is a collection of Hilda’s favorite parfums,” he said. Then he kissed me on each cheek and wished me a bonne journée.

I clutched the package as the driver headed toward Gram Hilda’s house. And I actually picked out one fragrance wafting through the package.

Maybe I had inherited my Gram Hilda’s nose.

The fragrance was Se Souvenir de Moi.

Remember me.





I sat back in the rear seat of the taxi and watched the grand, timeless architecture of one of the world’s great cities go by. As the cab sped along the Quai des Tuileries, the driver said to me, “By chance, do you know the car behind us?”

I turned my head and saw a black SUV.

“How long has this car been following us?” I asked.

The driver said, “I think I saw him waiting at the corner when you got into my taxi. I cannot be sure. Anyway, there he goes.”

The black car sped past us on the inside lane as we went through an underpass. I couldn’t see the driver or anyone in the black car, but inside the sudden deep shadow of the tunnel, I felt a chill.

Had James told me the truth when he said his father was more dangerous than I knew?

I pulled my phone from my bag and called Jacob. But my call went to voice mail—twice. And then my taxi was drawing close to home. I looked out the back window—no one was behind us. I checked out the main streets and the side streets and saw no idling cars, no men under streetlamps. I saw nothing suspicious at all.

The driver stopped at Gram Hilda’s front gate, and to my tremendous relief, I saw lights on inside the house. I paid the driver and thanked him, and after entering the front garden, I trotted up the walk and turned my key in the front door.

Jacob was in the parlor.

He whipped around when he saw me, and there was something frightening in his expression.

“Tandy, I’ve been trying to reach you.”

“What? Why?”

“Hugo is missing.”

“Jacob, what do you mean?”

Jacob said, “One minute he was beside me at the soccer field. He said he wanted to go to the bathroom—and then—he was just gone. Monsieur Morel is looking for him all around the field. I’ve called the police, but he’s only been gone for three hours. Not quite three hours, but he has never done this before. I have never been this frightened.”

“Maybe he’s with Harry?”

“Harry hasn’t seen him or heard from him. Harry is on his way home now.”

Jacob, who rarely panics, was panicked now. And that only made me more afraid. Had whoever was in the black SUV captured Hugo? Was my little brother a prisoner?

Jacob’s Israeli accent was now so thick, it was hard to understand him.

He said something like, “Let’s put our heads together, Tandy. Say he’s just having a good time. That he’s not in trouble. Say he’s not thinking that he’s giving us heart failure because he’s missing. Where would he be?”

I forced myself to stop thinking about black cars and a little boy in the back with a hood over his head, hands and feet duct-taped together.

As soon as I put the fear away, a very different picture appeared in my mind. Of a confident, impetuous, no-rules-apply kid who had the strength of a grown man.

“I have an idea,” I said. “I don’t know if it’s right or wrong, but at least it’s an idea.”





Having known Hugo his whole life, I had pretty good insight into what he might be thinking.

On our third night in Paris, Hugo had discovered Ladurée, a famous pastel-green-painted tea and pastry salon with seductive confections in the window on the magnificent Champs-élysées.

We had gotten lucky that night, Hugo, Harry, Jacob, and I. There had been a table available on the first-floor terrace. We had a terrific meal, but rather than taking in the outrageously gorgeous crème de Paris view, we were fascinated by Hugo.

I could still see him that first time at Ladurée. My little brother gorged on dinner, then doubled down on dessert: a dozen of the house specialty macarons, which are like rainbow-colored meringue Oreos stuffed with jam, cream, or chocolate.

I think that for Hugo that meal was a peak experience.

Hugo had begged to go back to Ladurée almost every night since that first time, but we were grounded most nights, and when we weren’t eating Jacob’s home-cooked dinners, there were other places to try. We were in Paris.

But Hugo had fallen hard for Ladurée.

Only minutes after Jacob called him, Harry’s arrival at Ladurée coincided with ours and the three of us made a plan. Jacob interviewed the ma?tre d’ and pressed some bills into his hand, and then we spread out and searched the establishment for a kid with chocolate on his face.

I took the ground floor, Harry frisked the five rooms upstairs, and Jacob checked out the kitchen and all the bathroom stalls.

We met up again in the main salon—empty-handed.

“He’ll be here,” I said. “I just know it.”