“Three people dead,” her assistant replied, and then looked at us in alarm, as if he had just realized something. “Do you think Millie is in danger?”
“You are still a member of Les Académies?” Louis asked.
“Election is for life,” Fleurs replied.
“Then I suggest you take every precaution,” I said. “At least until the police have a suspect in hand.”
“Perhaps you should finish the last dress at home,” Alexandre said.
“Nonsense,” the designer snapped. “This is my atelier. No one is scaring me away from it, at least until the princess is pleased and a check has been written. There’s too much riding on this. You of all people should know that.”
Her assistant nodded, but he wasn’t happy. “You are the boss, Millie. As you wish.”
Chapter 51
MY CELL PHONE rang me awake after a much needed nap back in my suite at the Plaza. Groping for the phone on the nightstand, I knocked it to the floor and had to turn on the light. By the time I had the phone in hand, the ringing had stopped. When I checked caller ID, it said, “Michele Herbert.”
Before calling her back, I went into the bathroom and splashed cold water on my face. My cell rang again, and I answered, “How’s my favorite art professor?”
“I wouldn’t know, Jack,” Justine said.
“Oh,” I said. “I didn’t realize it was you.”
“I got that,” Justine said coolly. “Anyway, I’m just leaving UCLA Medical Center. Sherman Wilkerson has come out of the coma.”
“Thank God,” I replied. “How is he?”
“The doctors say he could be a lot worse.”
That made my heart sink. “That bad?”
“He’s disoriented and had no idea who I was, even after I identified myself for the fourth time,” Justine replied. “But he knows who you are, and he remembers that you are protecting his granddaughter.”
“You didn’t tell him we lost her, did you?”
“No, I figured it would upset him too much,” she replied, and then paused. “The problem is he thinks Kim is twenty, and taking a junior year in Paris.”
“Oh, that’s sad.”
“Heartbreaking, actually,” Justine said. “He kept talking about how she loved hot chocolate, and how her favorite place in Paris served the best hot chocolate in the world.”
“Okay…”
“I’m just giving you a report. Nothing on your end?”
“Kim’s vanished. And honestly, we haven’t had a minute to look for her.”
“Who has the beef with Les Académies?” she asked.
“Jacques Noulan, for one.”
“Noulan,” she said, impressed. “I owned one of his dresses once. Made me look glamorous.”
“You always look glamorous.”
“Sweet,” she said, softening. “And you almost always look dashing.”
“How’s Cruz’s mother?”
“Fading,” she said. “Going into congestive heart failure.”
“Sucks.”
“It does. I’ll be back to talk with Sherman in the morning, and I’ll call you afterward with an update.”
“That works,” I said, and hung up.
After a deliciously hot shower and a shave, I tried Michele Herbert and got her machine. I left a message that I was sorry to have missed her call. I dressed and ordered a croque monsieur sandwich and a salad. The melted ham and cheese on a fresh baguette was fantastic, and I was thinking I should order another when something dawned on me, and I picked up my phone again.
“You awake?” I asked Louis Langlois.
“I never went to sleep,” he said.
“Are you some kind of freak of nature?”
“You hadn’t noticed before?” Louis laughed.
“Can you come get me?”
“Of course,” he said. “Where are we going?”
“To search for the best hot chocolate in Paris.”
“A much debated subject, Jack,” he grunted. “Liable to start a fight. Or a squabble, anyway.”
Chapter 52
ACCORDING TO LOUIS, every Parisian has his or her own idea of where the best foods can be found in the city, from croissants and baguettes to cassoulet and goat cheese.
“But with hot chocolate, the argument verges on impossible,” Louis said as we stood outside the Plaza waiting for an Uber car.
“C’mon,” I said.
He shrugged and walked over to several other patrons of the hotel who were waiting for cars or taxis.
“Mon ami,” Louis said loudly to the doorman. “Where is the best hot chocolate in Paris served?”
“Angelina,” the doorman said without hesitation. “Rue de Rivoli.”
“For tourists!” cried a young woman smoking a cigarette. “Jean-Paul Hévin on Rue Saint-Honoré, no doubt. The blend they serve is heaven. An aphrodisiac.”
“Ah,” scoffed her friend, a sallow man in a suit and a thin tie. “I have nothing against aphrodisiacs, but the hot chocolate at Les Deux Magots is sublime.”
A fourth person chimed in to nominate the Café Martini, and a fifth said Carette in the Trocadéro was without a doubt the best purveyor of hot chocolate in the world.
The Uber car pulled up. Louis was roaring with laughter when we pulled away, and they were all still arguing the point. “I love Paris,” he said. “I really do.”
We went to Angelina first. The staff at the Viennese-style tearoom did not recognize Kim Kopchinski from the pictures we showed them. Neither did the various waiters and waitresses we talked to at Jean-Paul Hévin, Les Deux Magots, the Café Martini, and Carette.
It was almost 4 p.m. by then, and I’d all but decided that this was nothing but a wild-goose chase. When we climbed back into the Uber car outside Carette, I was going to declare surrender and suggest that we return to Private Paris. But then something occurred to me.
“Where was the best hot chocolate in Paris seven or eight years ago?”
Louis looked perplexed, but the driver said, “That’s simple. Besides Angelina, in those days it was definitely the Hôtel Lancaster on the Rue de Berri. Best hot chocolate of the new millennium.”
I shrugged. “Can’t hurt.”
“And it’s not that far,” Louis said. “We go.”
About ten minutes later, we pulled up in front of the Hôtel Lancaster, another of Paris’s famed five-star hotels. The entrance was far more understated than the Plaza’s, and we had to search for the front desk, where we asked about the hot chocolate.
We were directed to a tearoom overlooking a courtyard, and soon found an older waitress named Yvette, who took one look at the photograph and smiled.
“C’est Kim,” she said. “She’s been coming here off and on for years.”
“Lately?” I asked.
She nodded and said, “Yesterday, about this time. And the day before that.”
We thanked her, and she walked away.
“She’s not a celeb or a high roller,” Louis said. “She’ll be coming in the main entrance.”
We crossed through a lobby to a short hallway that led to double glass doors, where the valet and doorman were posted. I’d taken two steps when I saw Kim Kopchinski sprinting diagonally across the street, heading for the opposite sidewalk with Whitey in close pursuit and carrying a pistol.
Chapter 53
BY THE TIME Louis and I burst out of the Hôtel Lancaster, they were well down the block, heading south and west. I took off after them, with Louis bringing up the rear.
I was closing the gap when I realized that Big Nose was running ahead of me on the opposite sidewalk, paralleling them. Just shy of the Champs-Élysées, he cut across the street.
Kim and Whitey reached the corner.
A blue van screeched to a halt in front of them.
Whitey grabbed Sherman’s granddaughter, and she screamed, “I don’t have it anymore! I threw it-”