Coq au Vin by Charlotte Carter

Author:Charlotte Carter
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781497691810
Publisher: Open Road Media Mystery & Thriller

CHAPTER 9

Parisian Thoroughfare

“Oh, what a head I have today, children!”

Morris Melon was drinking a fizzy concoction from the stainless steel tumbler of the bar blender.

The old wag-scholar-expatriate was looking ragged, his big bean-shaped head lolling around on his neck.

We all took our places at the long table where the Bricktop staff ate their supper before the doors opened for the dinner crowd.

The potatoes were superb and the steak with onions was fork tender. The collards had an indefinable Parisian spin—piquant but not too spicy. And oh those hot rolls! Taking second or possibly third helpings from the circulating platters, Andre was boarding, as my grandmother used to say of anyone going at his food with gusto.

I got up and refilled the ice pack that Morris Melon had been pressing to the back of his neck.

“Thank you, young girlfriend.” He moaned and buried his face momentarily in the cold. “Oh…Oh, Father, that’s better.”

The meal proceeded—waiters gossiping and grousing, pitchers of lemonade and tea and wine crisscrossing and changing hands. It was the idealized image of restaurant worker camaraderie. A family you choose, rather than the other way around. The kind of thing you see as a lonely teenage nerd and fasten on. It takes actually getting a job as a waitress and standing on your foots seven or eight hours at a time—not to mention the asshole customer factor—to disabuse you of your romantic notions about restaurant work. I lasted about six minutes one summer, trying to make some bucks for the next semester at school.

Old Melon, about halfway back to the land of the living, retired to his office to nap, sipping from a glass of tomato juice as he shuffled off.

Gigi Lacroix showed good timing. Andre and I had just finished our set and repaired to the bar when I was called to the telephone. The pickpocket was not just pulling his chain, after all, he said. Gigi was in Les Halles now, and we should come to meet him in the square across from the Centre Pompidou. Martine would join us for a drink.

Oh goody. The four of us back together again. I knew Andre would be overjoyed to hear it.

I snatched my man’s wineglass out of his hand and began tugging at him. “Let’s go.”

He grumbled and fussed the whole ride on the métro. Not only were we going to be rooked out of more money by the fatuous Gigi, he pointed out; we were heading into the nighttime carnival that is Les Halles, which was always pumping with ugly tourists and junkies and panhandlers and runaways and the dreaded wandering mimes in their cheap French sailor shirts and ghostly white makeup.

“Just where I feel like going at the end of a long day,” he spat at me.

I rolled my eyes and endured it. I could endure just about anything. We were closing in on Viv!

It took ten or fifteen minutes to locate Gigi. Lady Martine was the first pointer. I saw her moving toward us, more swiftly than I ever thought possible, considering the height of her heels.

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