The Red Brick Cellars: A Tolosa Mystery (7 page)

“
I
didn’t do anything,” Louis replied. “But the police searched our house this morning and left with a box full of papers and Papa’s laptop. They were following up on that article in
le Midi Républicain
.”

“So you think they found proof of corruption?” Mouad stared at Louis, but there was no accusation in his voice.

Louis drew a hand through his hair. “I don’t know. I hope not. But I think the Saint-Blancat name will be tainted by this affair no matter how it turns out.”

Mouad waved away the idea with the flick of a hand. “All politicians have rumors and accusations flung around on a regular basis. It’s inevitable.”

Louis leaned forward in his chair. “But what if it’s true?”

“Then your father’s reputation takes a hit.” He raised his glass in Louis’s direction. “But you are your own man, Louis. You don’t have to repeat your father’s mistakes. If indeed he was involved in corruption.”

If he couldn’t even convince his best friend that he wasn’t made for politics, shouldn’t that be proof enough that he should stay clear? Nobody would ever buy a word he said.

Two women made their way among the tables on the terrace. As they approached the door next to Louis’s chair, he recognized the blond woman taking up the rear.

“You!” he yelled much louder than planned. Blood flowed from his brain when he jumped up and his stomach was decidedly unhappy with the sudden movement. Eyes closed to keep the dizziness at bay, he cursed that fifth glass. He should have set a slower pace. After two deep breaths, he opened his eyes and stared balefully at the Englishwoman from his father’s wake.

The journalist.

“
Bonsoir
,” she said, looking at Louis as if he were a dangerous animal out of its cage. The woman’s friend also stopped at Louis’s outburst and hovered in the doorway.

“You took advantage of me,” Louis said. Then he winced. What a stupid thing to say. He had to figure out where his wits were hiding and get them back, straight away.

Her hair was up in a tight braid like in her picture on that bloody article. She looked him up and down and took in the meter of pastis, Mouad with his juice, and Louis holding on to the back of his chair for support. Louis wanted to scream at her for the pity he read in her incredibly clear eyes.

“I took advantage of the situation,” she said in her drawling English accent. “Not you.”

“Same difference,” Louis spat. “You used the information you eavesdropped on at the wake and wrote that awful article. And you didn’t even give me a heads up.” He threw his arms in the air in frustration, but quickly put one hand back on the chair. It wouldn’t do to fall on his face in front of this vixen, even if she presented a promising contact for reporting back to his sister.

What was her name again? The last name was Marty.
Louis remembered it because he’d noted it was French—one of the most common last names in Toulouse, in fact—and reasoned she must be married to a Frenchman.
Catherine, that was it.

The woman nodded. “I would have told you I worked on the article,” she said. “But I didn’t have your number or email, and neither did anyone else at the office.” As she turned her head toward her friend, Louis noticed her pointed, elf-like ears. It was a detail he hadn’t seen the other day when her hair was down.

Louis practically yelled, “Hah!” He dragged his wallet out of his back pocket and fished out an old receipt. “Let’s not give you that excuse in the future.” Louis looked to Mouad, who sat calmly in his chair, now halfway through his juice. “Do you have a pen?” Louis asked, leaning heavily on the table.

Mouad shook his head, but it must have been in judgment of Louis, not in answer to his question. He opened his bag and pulled out a black ball-point pen. “You’re supposed to get
her
number, not the other way around.”

“Shut up.” Louis scribbled his phone-number on the small piece of paper, then turned back to the Englishwoman and handed her his number. “Now you have it. There better not be any more inaccurate and misleading articles from you on me or my family.”

Catherine took the number and even glanced at it before slipping it into her purse. Where it would probably swim around for a year or two before it was cleaned out and thrown away along with her morals. “Thanks,” she said. “Are we good now?” She looked to her friend, who glowered at Louis, arms crossed.

Louis returned the scowl. He really should have let that fifth glass of pastis wait. He couldn’t think of a single thing to say, but couldn’t let the Englishwoman have the last word.

As she passed him to approach the bar, he caught a whiff of the same lavender scent she had exuded at the wake and said the first thing that came to mind. “You should wear your hair down. It suits you much better.”

He should have kept his mouth shut. Before she could turn around completely, Louis let himself collapse into his chair. He could feel his cheeks heating. Quickly, he turned his chair so his back was to the door and the hellcat, which left him staring straight into the laughing face of his friend.

“Oh, that was excellent,” Mouad managed between bouts of laughter. “I see you’ve forgotten everything you knew about flirting while you were in the States. What
was
that?” He even spilled some juice on his pants, he was laughing so hard.

Louis adjusted his scarf and crossed his arms in annoyance. “That was
not
flirting.”

“You got that right,” Mouad agreed. “But it
was
funny. Too bad Audrey wasn’t here to witness it.”

***

After several tests of sobriety—or lack thereof—Mouad allowed Louis to walk home by himself. His friend wanted to accompany him to his door, but Louis needed to clear his head and preferred doing it alone. He gave the last four glasses of pastis to one of the neighboring tables where a group of students were catching up after two months of vacation, by the looks of it. His brain still kept going off on weird tangents, but that shouldn’t keep him from getting home in one piece.

As he reached the short canal linking the much more impressive Canal du Midi to the Garonne River, he heard raised voices on the path in front of him. At a bend where the plane trees lining the canal rose up higher than the surrounding apartment buildings, two groups of young men argued.

Louis had no wish to get involved, but neither did he want to climb back up the steep bank to the road to avoid them. He put his hands in his jean’s pockets and kept most of his face buried in his black and white checkered scarf.

“We don’t need rich snots like you telling us what to do,” a tall blond man with a severe case of acne said. He looked to be about fifteen, which probably meant he was in his twenties; all students looked younger than they were to Louis. “This city is as much ours as it is yours.” He had a short military haircut and wore a Paris Saint-Germain t-shirt with white sweatpants, which miraculously stayed up despite resting just below his butt.

A young man from the second group, wearing a button-down shirt and pressed pants, his hair artfully disheveled, retorted, “We never go into your decrepit neighborhood. You stay out of ours!”

Great. Louis had walked right into a social dispute. If he had to guess, he’d say the young PSG fan and his two black friends were from the Mirail neighborhood or one of the other poorer parts of Toulouse, whereas the young buck and his three equally neatly dressed friends were likely studying Financial Sciences at the Social Sciences University not two hundred meters from where they now stood. Probably kids of rich families planning on continuing the family tradition of wealth.

“We go where we want.” One of the black giants had a low rumbling voice like distant thunder. So far there was no real threat in his voice, but his arms were crossed over his chest and he gave his opponents a dirty look. “Now get out of our way.”

The rich boy wasn’t impressed. “How would you guys feel if we showed up on
your
doorstep? If we started talking to
your
girlfriends?”

The black man rumbled a laugh. “Then you’d be in serious trouble. Our girls could take you pussies any day of the week.”

Acne-face leered. “Sounds like you feel threatened by us being here. Afraid your girlfriends will run off with us?”

Louis had to work hard to suppress a smile. From the looks on the rich boys’ faces, he’d guess they didn’t even have girlfriends right now, but realized it wouldn’t be a good idea to use that as a comeback.

“Excuse me,” he said as he approached the two groups blocking the path.

Rich boy number two was a rather unfortunate-looking boy with no chin to speak of. He whirled around, eyes ablaze. “What do you want?”

Louis attempted a diffident smile and indicated the path ahead of him. “I just want to be on my way, friend.”

“I’m not your friend, old man,” the rich boy replied.

“He certainly isn’t ours,” acne-face interjected.

They all turned to face Louis, who suddenly found himself alone against seven men. Perhaps he should have let Mouad walk him home after all.

Up on the top of the bank, Louis glimpsed a group of girls stopping to watch the commotion down by the canal. He was relieved there were witnesses; he didn’t like the openly aggressive stares everyone gave him. He was three sheets to the wind and coming up with sensible things to say was not an easy task. He also felt a pull toward the canal, as if gravity had shifted sideways a few degrees. He planted his feet farther apart—he was not going to fall into the canal all on his own.

Rich boy number two eyed the space between himself and the canal. “How much room do you need?”

“Right.” Louis furiously tried to get his mind into gear, but kept slipping on the clutch. “I heard your argument—”

“Who says we’re arguing?” the black giant said. There was more of an edge to his voice now.

“There shouldn’t be any need to,” Louis said, striving for the voice of reason. “The city is big enough for all of us.” Now he sounded like he’d walked straight out of a cheesy Western.

The third student spoke up for the first time. “Didn’t your mother ever teach you it’s rude to eavesdrop?”

With both groups turned against him, Louis pointed a finger at both groups. “Now you listen here,” he said, then had to smother a burp, which brought the taste of pastis and childhood memories into his mouth. His head spun and gravity again shifted in the direction of the canal. All of Louis’s strength went into staying on his feet and in control of his stomach.

Acne-face spoke up with a sneer. “The guy’s so drunk he can’t even finish a sentence.” He glanced at his friends. “We should pitch him into the canal.”

Both groups snickered.
Well,
Louis thought,
at least they’re not arguing with each other anymore.
He had control over his stomach now, but still had to fight to keep his feet under him. And in any case, he’d forgotten what he was about to say to the idiots.

A movement on the road above them drew Louis’s gaze. A police car stopped next to the group of girls. One of the girls talked to the officer driving the car, pointing down at the argument in progress.

“I think I’ll go,” he said, and took a step forward to get away.

“Not so fast,” the closest rich boy said, and put a hand on Louis’s shoulder. He applied a light pressure in a clear threat to push him into the canal, like the other boy had suggested. “We’d like to hear what you have to say.”

A short blast of a police siren sounded. Louis breathed a sigh of relief and relaxed, too soon. The young man boy next to him had the opposite reaction. His hand tightened on Louis’s shoulder and then gave a great push.

Louis toppled into the canal. He bumped his shoulder in the grassy bank once before plunging into the water. Too drunk and surprised to think, he went in eyes and mouth open. He saw nothing except a murky line of lights—the streetlights on the other side of the canal. He tasted earthy water and even got a clump of something touching his tongue before he spit everything out and closed his mouth. He kicked around in the water until he had the right side up and finally found footing. As he straightened up, his feet sank into the muddy bed of the canal and his head cleared the water. He drew in a deep breath, then started spitting. The water was exactly as disgusting as it looked. It was so murky he could barely see his own chest in the water. His feet slipped in the mud, but he ended up finding footing on something solid, but round. A bottle? The taste of dirt and decay wouldn’t go away, and he had something lodged behind a tooth. He picked it out with his little finger and held it up to the light. A piece of plastic. Louis shuddered and threw it away before he could identify exactly what it was. Ignorance was bliss.

On the path, three police officers had joined the young men. Two checked the identities of everyone—Louis couldn’t help but notice they started with the black guys—and the third shimmied down the bank to hold a hand out to Louis. Gratefully, Louis took it and together they hauled him out of the water.

Louis peeled off his scarf. The white had turned brown and the whole thing looked like it had been through a complete soccer match on a muddy field during a storm. He sighed. He’d have to try to clean it, but had a feeling it was a lost cause. The rest of his clothing was soaked through, of course. He felt chilly, but luckily the September nights were still warm. He’d be all right until he got home.

“Do you have an ID, please?” the police officer asked him.

“Sure,” Louis replied. He had to squirm and wiggle for a moment, but ended up extracting his wallet from his back pocket. With a wince, he pulled out his dripping ID and showed it to the officer.

The man glanced at it, then at Louis, and nodded. “Thank you, Monsieur Saint-Blancat. Might I suggest you go more easy on the alcohol in the future? It’s not very deep, but people do drown in there from time to time.” He nodded in the direction of the canal.

Louis bristled. “I didn’t fall in because I’m drunk. I was pushed.” He pointed at the culprit. “By that guy.”

“Of course you were,” the officer said smoothly. “Would you mind coming with us to the police station? We’d like to make sure you don’t fall—or get pushed—in again.”