The hotel’s restaurant was open only for breakfast and dinner, explained a young man in a black vest who seemed to be standing guard on the dining room, but the bar was open. If they took a seat there, he would send someone to take their order.
Rachel smiled her thanks. “Could I see a dinner menu while we wait, please?”
“We don’t begin serving dinner until seven.”
Taking a lesson from the receptionist, she kept the smile on her face. “Still, if you wouldn’t mind.”
Whether he minded or not, he retreated to the dining area and, after some shifting and searching, returned with a dinner menu.
“What are you doing?” Magda asked as they settled at a table near the glass and wood bar and the young man went off to find a waiter for them.
“I’m looking for …” Rachel said, running her eyes down the first page of the menu, flipping it over, then laying it crosswise on the table, resting her finger halfway down the laminated page, “… this.”
Magda craned her neck to the side. “‘Delicious pork, slow-cooked, shredded, then mixed with a barbecue sauce, served on a brioche grilled golden-brown, with pommes frites.’ It’s a pulled pork sandwich—so what? They can’t make it for you now. The man just said they don’t serve dinner until seven.”
“It’s a pulled pork sandwich, but it’s also an almost exact description of what Jack Ochs had in his stomach. Remember, the autopsy showed that Ochs’s last meal was shredded pork, sauce, some kind of bread, and pommes frites. Not too many restaurants in Paris serve any form of shredded pork, never mind with sauce, on a bun, and with french fries. That’s food designed to appeal to Americans. I think this is where he ate his last meal.”
A young blond man, also in a vest but tying a long gray apron around his waist, approached their table. “Bonjour, mesdames. What can I get for you?”
Rachel ordered a coffee for Magda and a Coke Light for herself. “And may I ask you a question?”
He looked wary but nodded.
“Do you remember that a guest here died in his room last month?”
Another nod, firmer this time. “He was killed in a robbery, yes? I remember hearing about it when I came in for my shift.”
“We’re making some inquiries on behalf of the family. Do you know if anyone who was working then is here right now?”
“I will go and ask in the kitchen.” His eyes lit up as he hurried off.
Watching him, Rachel wondered why people were so eager to associate themselves with violent death. But she knew the answer. It was a form of celebrity, and who didn’t yearn for even the slightest brush with fame?
In a few moments the waiter returned, bringing with him their order and a small Asian man whose broad face was lightly marked with acne scars and whose hair, otherwise deepest black, stood up in small bleached spikes at the top of his head. Their waiter introduced him as Kento. He had been waiting on tables on Friday night, their waiter explained, and had served the man who had died. He would answer their questions.
Rachel tapped her portable screen, tapped it again, made the expanding pinch that magnified the display, and held it up. It showed Ochs’s photo from the passport Alan had scanned to her earlier. “First, is this the man you waited on?”
Kento leaned forward to look, then nodded vigorously.
“Thank you. Okay, can you tell me everything you remember?”
In a thick Parisian accent, Kento explained that Monsieur Ochs had come into the restaurant at around eight on Friday night. Yes, he had ordered the pulled pork sandwich—he remembered because in his experience only American customers ordered it, and sure enough when he switched into English after Monsieur had placed his order, Monsieur had obviously been relieved. He had asked Kento if he could recommend a restaurant near the hotel that was open late and reasonably quiet. Kento had recommended La Traboule, just around the corner on the Rue de Penthièvre, which was not quiet but was managed by Kento’s brother-in-law. In Kento’s experience tired people didn’t look for a second option no matter how unsuitable the first, and since Monsieur looked fairly tired, he figured this was a chance to send a bit of business his brother-in-law’s way. He gave him directions to La Traboule, and Monsieur had thanked him and given him an enormous tip. The last Kento had seen of him, Monsieur was heading toward the bank of elevators in the lobby.
“He asked for somewhere that would be open very late that night, Friday night? Not the next night, Saturday night?”
No, that night. “He never said anything about Saturday.”
“Thank you. That’s very, very helpful.” Rachel dug out her wallet and gave him her own enormous tip, along with fulsome compliments on his excellent English.
“What do you mean ‘very, very helpful’?” Magda asked when their own waiter had gone off to fetch their bill. “All he did was confirm that Ochs had the sandwich and tell us he tried to con him into going to the wrong kind of restaurant.”
Rachel put a finger to her lips. She felt certainty and its accompanying confidence rising inside her. “Wait, I’ll explain. But first I need to talk to the receptionist.”
She left their waiter a gigantic tip of his own, then crossed the four-star lobby to the three-star reception desk. The brunette was frowning at the computer screen once more.
“Excuse me.”
The receptionist looked up, and after thanking her for her help—yes, seeing the room had been very helpful, absolutely—Rachel wondered if she’d be willing to answer just one more question. Well, re-answer it, really.
“I’m sorry to ask this again, but we need to be absolutely certain. Are you sure no one telephoned and asked to speak to Monsieur Ochs after the call on Friday afternoon? No one called on Friday night? Or on Saturday morning?”
The receptionist checked again. A shake of the head. No, there had been only the calls on Thursday and on Friday afternoon. By Saturday, of course, Monsieur Ochs was no longer—she shifted uncomfortably—using his room, but if any calls had come they would have been logged by the police.
Boussicault hadn’t mentioned any.
“And I’m sorry again—we should have asked you this before—but do you remember anyone coming in and asking for Ochs late on Friday night or on Saturday morning? Not just the people we showed you, but anyone at all?”
She looked upward, casting her mind back. No. Of course, once Monsieur Ochs’s body had been discovered, things had become very crowded and very busy, but exactly because of that she thought she would have remembered anyone asking for him, and she couldn’t. She was sorry she couldn’t be more helpful.
The twenty-euro note Rachel slipped across the counter seemed to cheer her up.
The pneumatic doors swept open, and once more there they were on the pavement. Rachel waited for the doors to close again before she spoke.
“He was killed before his meeting, and he was killed by whomever he was supposed to be meeting.”
Magda made a dismissive face. “How do you figure that, Sherlock Holmes?”
“You mock, but you are about to eat your words as surely as Jack Ochs ate a pulled pork sandwich. First, we know that Ochs received a call from his wife after his arrival on Thursday, then one from Dolly later the same day. Then there was a second call from Sauveterre on Friday afternoon. I think that second call was to move the meeting to Friday night. He was asking at dinner for somewhere quiet he could go later, and quiet suggests he was going to be having a conversation, which suggests a meeting. Second, he asked Kento for somewhere that would be open late. By eight at night, nine or ten isn’t late. So he must have been expecting to meet later than that.”
Magda caught on. “And Boussicault said time of death was in between nine and eleven. If later was later than ten, he must have been killed before he left for the meeting.” Rachel nodded. “Okay, but that only tells us that he was killed before the meeting. How do you figure it wasn’t by a thief?”
“Because we know no one called or came to the desk to ask for him. If you were supposed to be meeting someone and he didn’t show up, wouldn’t you wonder where he was? And if you knew what hotel he was staying in, or if you’d arranged to meet him there in the first place, wouldn’t you ask the desk to call up, or maybe ask for the room number so you could go up yourself? Or let’s say the person he was meeting figured he’d fallen asleep—it was late; he was jet-lagged—and they didn’t want to wake him by phoning or going up to his room. If that was the case, they’d call the next day, or maybe even stop by, to reschedule. But now we know no one did either of those things. Whoever was meeting him knew there would be no point in calling or stopping by to reschedule. Which means they knew he was dead.”
“Which means they killed him.” Magda looked impressed.
“Or paid someone else to do it.”
“Gabrielle.” Magda was firm. “It must be her. She bought the heroin. And those two phone calls Ochs got from Paris were from Sauveterre. One was probably Dolly calling to confirm, but the other one came after Guipure was dead.”
“So you caught that, too.”
Magda nodded. For a second they grinned in mutual admiration, then she went on. “The second phone call could have been Gabrielle. It would have been very easy for her to call from Sauveterre and arrange to meet Ochs herself. To head him off.”
“But why?”
“Well, that’s the big question, isn’t it?” Magda started buttoning her jacket. “We already know there are connections here that we don’t know anything about, and the Sauveterre archive was no help. I think this is my cue to go home and do a little digital digging.”
Rachel settled her bag on her shoulder. “I’m going to call Dolly again. She’ll be able to tell us for sure who’s attached to the extension number of that second call from Sauveterre.” Magda’s fingers paused for a split second. “What?”
She started buttoning again. “Nothing.” She finished. “Only … she worked for Roland, and we never looked into her very deeply. And we have only her word for why she was let go. Should we really feel sure about trusting her?”
Rachel considered this. It was true that they’d made no effort to check out Dolly, or to double-check her stories, and it was true that such lack of verification would be a murderer’s best friend. But on the other hand …
“Who else do we have?”