Sweet as Pie Crimes (11 page)

“No, I’ve come this far.  I have to go through with it,” I asserted as Xavier’s face remained set in stone.  Detective Morceau had probably invested so much of his career trying to catch Patric and slap him with a felony charge that he was resorting to desperate measures like my pending improvisational Oscar performance.

The car slowed to a stop as the police officer informed us that we were on the street where Patric was hiding out.  “We’re going to stay a few houses back, but we’ll still be close enough to come get you if you need help.  Just press that button next to your collarbone.” The officer indicated the device that had been attached to my chest for recording and emergency purposes.  “Now go to #45.  That’s where Patric is staying.  The white stucco house that needs a paint job.”

“Okay.” Letting go of Xavier’s hand, I took a deep breath and walked down the street, holding my head high.  As I crept along the sidewalk outside the hideaway house, I immediately recognized a familiar face from Paris.  But it wasn’t Patric.  Blinking in astonishment, I discerned the unmistakable flabby form of Yves gyrating around like an off kilter ferris wheel.

Chapter 8

Shrinking back against a row of bushes, I prayed that Yves wouldn’t see me and blow my cover.  But in his highly agitated state it seemed that Yves would be oblivious even if a Category 5 hurricane whirled into town and scooped his chunky body right up off the ground.  My ears were ringing from the fear stirring around in the pit of my stomach.  I shook my head, trying to relax and stay focused on the scene unfolding in front of me.  From nowhere, Patric appeared in a battle stance just a few feet away from Yves as they shouted at each other in vulgar French.

“Finally you come outside, you damn coward!  Afraid of me?  Well you should be!  You screwed me over!” Yves jumped in place like a bull preparing to charge as Patric stood calmly.

“You’ll get your cut, old man.  Just wait until Chérie is safely across the border and can sell the emeralds on the Black Market,” Patric said as I desperately fiddled with my recording device, hoping it would pick up his voice.  But I feared that the only sounds the device would record at this distance were trees blowing in the wind and cars passing by.  Carefully, I took a few baby steps closer to the confrontation.

“Why should I believe you?  You already said you would pay me forward and you haven’t done that!  I risked everything by baking those emeralds into the cream puffs so Ch
érie could take them and get them out of the country unnoticed!  And how do you pay me back, you bastard…”

I didn’t hear the next words Yves yelled because I was too stunned by the confession he had made.  So he purposefully baked the emeralds into the cream puffs and left the tray in the refrigerator
knowing
that Chérie was going to take them?  In fact, I hadn’t witnessed a robbery but a slickly strategized plan set in action.  It seemed like a brilliant scheme to hide the jewels inside the pastries so that she could safely escape France.  But where had she gone?  She couldn’t have left on a plane because the metal detectors at the airport would have easily scanned the emeralds even tucked inside the pastry puffs.  Marseille was a gateway between France and Italy…maybe she was in northern Italy…theories and conjectures swished around in my mind as the men continued to argue.

“Ch
érie should be in Italy by tomorrow morning,” Patric informed as I clapped a hand over my mouth, unable to believe how much was being revealed. 

“What’s the damn delay?” Yves screamed.

“Don’t give yourself a heart attack, dough boy.  She’s been hitching rides with friends.  There’s no way she can risk using public transportation.  We already have a buyer lined up in Italy and as soon as the sale is made, you’ll be paid.  But I think based on this temper tantrum that I should decrease your cut…” Patric trailed off, infuriating Yves even more.

“You’re not decreasing anything, you bastard!  You’re giving me what was promised!” The baker stomped his foot on the sidewalk as the concrete vibrated from his weight.

I clenched the recording device closer to my body, debating whether I should press the panic button and alert the officers.  Why couldn’t they just make the arrest now?  Even with fuzzy sound, my recorder might have captured every word of the criminals’ unwitting confessions.  Couldn’t that be enough?  There was no way I could muster the nerve to be a coquette with Patric now.  As my thumb hovered above the button, I felt a tickle breeze through my nostrils.  In horror, I realized that I was about to sneeze.  Willing myself to stay silent and not emit my signature sneeze that sounded like a sonic boom, I felt another tickle play with my nasal passage.  Fearing the sneeze was inevitable, I turned my head away from Yves and Patric, but it didn’t matter.  As soon as the massive ATCH----OOO escaped my throat, it echoed in stereo along the night wind. 

“What the hell was that?  An animal?” Patric asked as I felt mortified.

A second sneeze uncontrollably shook my body as Patric and Yves walked towards the bushes.  Still sneezing, I sped into motion, running towards the car as the men cursed and shouted behind me.

“Isabelle!  Is that you?!” Patric boomed in shock.  “I knew I couldn’t trust you!”

I glanced over my shoulder watching as Yves squeezed himself into his sedan and drove in the opposite direction.  Patric had slipped back into the house, perhaps to get his own car keys.  Hiding would be futile at this point; the only chance he had of escape was by getaway car.  Inexplicably, I giggled, thinking how absurd it was that Yves had driven away without him.  I guess the fat old fellow meant to have his revenge against reptilian Patric.

Breathlessly, I reached the police car, flinging the door open and hurling myself onto the seat.  The officers regarded me avidly, waiting for me to speak.

“Quick!” I urged.  “Patric’s accomplice just drove away! And I’m sure Patric is going to try to escape too!  Go after them!  That way!”

“What happened?  We couldn’t pick up anything on our earpieces,” the driver gritted, climbing a curb in his haste to turn the car around.

“That’s because I just listened to a conversation between Patric and Yves!” I conveyed, still trying to catch my breath. 

“Who the hell is Yves?” The other officer barked.

“Patric’s accomplice!  He’s the head baker at Collette’s Pastry Shop where I work…or I mean he used to be!  I overheard him confessing to baking the emeralds into his cream puffs so that the other accomplice, the female one, could flee the country without being caught!” My words were glued together in quick succession as the officers swore as violently as the criminals just had.

“Damn it, we have to get them!  All of them! Call for back up!  And get some officers to scour the house Patric was hiding in! We don’t have time to get a search warrant.  Either we get them now, or we lose them!” Driving like an out of control avatar in a video game, the cop smacked his hand on the armrest and let out a grunt of frustration.

“I hope the wind wasn’t too loud for the recorder to pick up their confessions,” I interjected as Xavier held my hand again for support.

“We have all kinds of advanced audio technology that can raise the volume and eliminate outside sounds.  If you were within 1,000 feet of the criminals, we’ll be able to extract their confession.  But that won’t matter if the bastards get away!”

I looked out the window, knowing that at least one of the criminals had already gotten away.  That slow moving lardass Yves had actually managed to slip away in his car.  In the frenzied moments when I was running back to the police car, I hadn’t been able to discern even one letter or number on the license plate.  But it was obvious that Yves was just a minor player in all of this.  One of Patric’s pawns.  Patric and Chérie were the ones who really needed to be caught. 

“Ch
érie is on her way to Italy!” I blurted out as the crucial detail surfaced in my harried mind.  “Patric says that she’s going to sell the jewels on the Black Market.  Then they’re supposed to split up the cash, and Yves is going to get a share too.”

“Great.  Now we need Interpol,” the cop muttered, referring to Europe’s international police organization.  “This just keeps getting uglier and uglier.”

Xavier caressed my hand as I leaned against his shoulder, feeling the adrenaline leave my body.  I felt like I had failed in the police mission.  Even though I seriously doubted seducing Patric would have worked---he was suspicious from the moment he saw me just as I knew he would be---at least I could have prevented that deafening sneeze.  Maybe if I had stayed quiet and tiptoed back to the car, Patric and Yves never would have noticed me.  Then, the police could have discreetly pulled up in front of the hideaway house and nailed down the admitted criminals.  Why didn’t I just pinch my nose to stop the catastrophic sneeze?!

Pressing my lips against Xavier’s ear, I whispered, “You were right.  I
do
have a sneeze that could wake the dead!”

“Huh?” He muttered, reflexively pulling away as my breath fanned against his earlobe.

“The reason Patric and Yves started running is that they heard me sneeze!” I whispered as softly as I could, although with the commotion of shouting and walkie talkies in the front seat I doubted the cops could hear me.

Xavier stifled a laugh.  “Well, if anything would make a man run, it’s that bombastic sneeze!”

I jabbed him in the shoulder with a pointy fingernail as he winced.  “Sharp, aren’t they?” I provoked as he returned to his placid state and slid over to the other side of the vehicle where he was safe from my finger blades.

“We’re dropping you off at the police station,” the driver announced.  “There might be a car chase, and we can’t risk civilian lives.”

“Am I free to go back to Paris?” I asked, brutally disappointed that I wasn’t going to experience a thrilling car chase.

“Yes, of course you are.  But we would prefer if you stayed nearby.  We might still need your assistance,” he responded with a shadow of a plea in his otherwise commanding voice.

“I’ll stay,” I declared.  “And I wouldn’t mind coming along for the ride even if there is a car chase,” I added hopefully.

The officers laughed heartily.  “You’re a brave young woman, Mademoiselle Nouvelle.  But we need you to give a description of Yves so a sketch can be drawn up.  And here we are outside the police station.  Go ahead.  We have your phone number, and believe me we’ll use it if we need you again.” Each officer reached into the back seat to shake my hand as I felt
even more like a failure.  They thought I was brave, but what had I done other than cooperate? 

Xavier and I exited the car and rounded a bend into the police station.  Detective Morceau was seated in a glass enclosed office, gesticulating maniacally as he communicated on the phone.  Upon noticing Xavier and me, he waved us over to his office, unlocking the door and setting down his phone.

“I guess you heard what happened?” I surmised.

“Of course.  Now what do you know about this Yves?” Detective Morceau asked avidly, poised with a notebook and pencil to jot down all the pertinent details.

“Not very much.  He was the head pastry chef at the bakery where I work in Paris.  He just got fired actually…” I stopped myself, recalling an odd comment Yves had muttered after Collette gave him the boot.  “Come to think of it, I’m not that surprised that he was involved in a jewel heist.  When my boss fired him, he whispered something about being ready to quit anyway and that he didn’t need to work there.”

Detective Morceau glanced up from his notebook with momentary interest, then furrowed his brow.  “Well, a comment like that makes perfect sense considering what he confessed to.  Implicating him in the crime shouldn’t be a problem.  It’s finding and capturing him that could prove to be very tricky.  Did you get a look at the car he was driving?”

“Not at all,” I replied sullenly.  “It all happened so fast.” Unraveling the recording device, I handed it to the detective who swiftly plugged it into a set of speakers.

“Let’s see what audio you were able to get for us.” He pressed play as a garbled jumble of noises streamed through the speakers.  Distantly, male voices were audible, but their words were incomprehensible.  Gripping his desk tightly, the frustrated detective stopped the track.  “I’m going to have to send this down to the audio lab.  The only thing we’ll get out of listening to this tape raw is a migraine.”

“The other police officers said that they have enough technology to salvage their entire conversation.  Is that true?” I asked hopefully.

Detective Morceau was prudent in his reply.  “Ideally, yes.  But we can’t guarantee it.  Fortunately, they have a brilliant audio lab in Marseille, and if they enhance the sound enough, we should be able to hear the entire conversation.  Hopefully.”

“But even if the technicians
can
enhance the audio enough, it’s useless if the criminals are on the run,” Xavier pointed out pessimistically as I glared at him.

“That is correct,” Detective Morceau replied gloomily.  “That’s why we have every Interpol agent we can find working on catching them.  Border police have also been notified in Italy, which reminds me, where is that damn sketch artist?  We need your description of the mysterious Yves.  Anguisson’s mug is already on file---many times over---so he should be much easier to catch, although he’s a slippery one.  And we also have a sketch of Ch
érie based on the information you provided us in Paris.”