part0016

Havilah awoke in the guest bedroom in the apartment of the man she liked a lot. Probably too much. She smelled coffee brewing and heard the teakettle whistling. She had slept fretfully, as was to be expected. Yet she still felt rested. The swelling in her fingers looked as if it had subsided, along with the throbbing pain. But she couldn’t really tell because of the bandages.

When she emerged from the bathroom after freshening up, it was 7 a.m. Thierry was already dressed handsomely in a tailored black suit, ready for work at the Élysée Palace. He was clean-shaven and smelled good. The dining table had breakfast provisions laid out: fresh fruit, juice, and a warm baguette accompanied by butter and jam.

“Morning,” she said as she stalked the television remote in the salon.

“Good Morning, Havilah,” Thierry responded in kind.

He placed a cup of tea and orange juice on the sofa table in front of her. He reached for her bandaged hand and began unwrapping it. He gently kissed the tips of her fingers. When she pulled her hand back from the frisson his lips on her fingertips had caused, he smiled knowingly.

She wanted to slap herself silly. She refused to ask him anymore about his friend Claire. She wondered if her Down South grandmother Naida’s witticism about men was right. Give me a sack a shit and I’ll make me a man , she’d said one morning as she rinsed strawberries and peeled peaches for one of her delightful cobblers while listening to a friend’s tales of woe about the hazards of dating in your eighties. Havilah wondered if Thierry and Lucian were molded from sacks of shit. High end, organic shit. Or common as cat shit?, a turn-of-phrase Naida often used to describe those who were ill-bred. But wasn’t shit still shit?

Her smirk turned to a frown when she saw herself, or more correctly, a vague likeness of herself in a sketch, on the television screen. She sat up straight. Her heart pounded in her ears. They blathered on about an American woman wilding out with a handgun at the restaurant and popping two caps in the head and neck of Didier Gilbert and Eva Amri. They never mentioned the word “black” as such descriptions were bandied about in America. Vive la différence!, she muttered to herself.

The broadcaster continued on about connections to l’affaire Lemieux , implicating the American woman as well.

“What the hell?!! Did you hear that?!!” she shrieked.

And then the thin-lipped journalist with a combover à la Donald Trump lowered the boom. He said a note had been found at the crime scene. It had been splattered with the victims’ blood. Forensic teams were trying to recover latent prints.

The note. She cleared her throat so she wouldn’t sound shrill in her panic. “Thierry, the note they are talking about. It gave me directions to the restaurant from Père LaChaise Cemetery.” Havilah jumped up pacing.

“So you touched the note?” he inquired, tilting his head as if he were adding up various scenarios.

“Yes, yes. Eva asked for it back. I didn’t think to grab it before I ran out of the restaurant. I’ve never been fingerprinted,” she said, trying to reassure herself that she wasn’t in some criminal database.

Thierry looked at her. “You have Global Entry. You were interviewed and fingerprinted for that. Every time you use the kiosk to bypass the lines at immigration, they snap your photograph and you place your fingers on the scanner. We have less than 24 hours. I’m going to your apartment to get your clothes and toiletries. I’ve already started trying to trace the key.”

He pointed to a computer screen that seemed to be scrolling rapidly through bank names and codes, churning data.

“You’ve got a conference that starts this evening. You need to be there and try to…”

“Act normal. I know.”

“Yes, and wear sunglasses outside and your reading glasses otherwise,” he followed up. “Hair down. I’ll need the key to your apartment.”

“I have lunch with Lucian as well at noon. And then there’s Aunt Neet.” She reached awkwardly into her purse with her left hand in search of her apartment key.

“Lunch with Lucian? By all means, Havilah. It’s not as if you are the prime suspect in three murders. I’ll be back by 8 am.” Thierry took the apartment key from her hand, picked up his car keys, and closed the door behind him.

Havilah felt deflated following his last remark about Lucian and lunch. She showered and waited. At 7:20, someone rang the apartment’s bell. She looked at the small security screen inside the apartment’s foyer, which provided a view of the building’s entry door and street in the background. It was Thierry’s colleague from Sunday. Why the hell is he here so early? Maybe he’s here to arrest me?

She panicked for a second. But then she remembered what Thierry said and what the journalist said about trying to recover latent prints. And no one knew as yet who she was. She then rationalized that this agent wouldn’t think that la belle Américaine and l’Américaine were one and the same. She buzzed him in. She decided to address him in the hallway to keep him moving along.

“Salut ! Thierry n’est pas là ,” she said from the platform looking down.

“Ah l’Americaine . You remember me. Étienne Belami. Thierry and I were supposed to meet. He needed me to help him recover something. He’s not here. Well, I’ll call him instead,” he replied in British English.

She could hear him telling Thierry he was at the apartment.

“He says he is at your apartment. And he’s picking out a few things out.”

Étienne looked up smiling at her with his gorgeous brown face and expressive light eyes. She wondered if he too was a sack of fine-grained shit.

Havilah smiled back and prepared to enter the apartment. She moved a little too quickly and twisted her fingers. She frowned and groaned all at once as she touched her hand.

“Are you all right?” Étienne asked, genuinely concerned before he turned to go.

“I’m fine,” she chirped pleasantly. “My tea’s getting cold and I desperately need to finish my remarks.”

“For the conference on immigration? Eh bien, I shall see you there then as well. Au revoir, la belle Américaine .” The SPHP agent smiled sheepishly when he slipped and called her by the other moniker. He waved goodbye nonetheless and opened the heavy entry door that let on to the Quai de Bethune.

When Havilah entered the apartment, she heard the computer make a loud pinging sound. She checked the screen. BNP Paribas 14 Rue Danielle Casanova . The bank where the safe deposit box was ! She knew that bank wasn’t far from the Hôtel Costes where she was to meet Lucian. She did a Google search and entered the address. A five-minute walk via Place Vendôme . She then followed up on something Étienne Belami had said.