Opera Cake Murder (A Patisserie Mystery with Recipes Book 8) (2 page)

“
L
a heiress
,” Inspector Cyril St. Clair exclaimed, clapping his hands together. “I’m surprised to see you here.”

Clémence crossed her arms and tried not to roll her eyes.

“That was sarcasm, if you didn’t get that,” Cyril said.

“Loud and clear.” Clémence gave in; she did roll her eyes.

“So what happened here? Someone ate another one of your desserts and died?”

Clémence’s face turned pink. Cyril snickered, knowing that his words had a poisonous effect on her mood. A few fashion people and the security guard were within earshot. But she would not let Cyril’s words start a chain of rumors about her patisserie chain, and she pulled him aside.

“No. That’s not what happened. I know you’re unprofessional, but I can sue you for saying things like that.”

Cyril raised an eyebrow. “Somebody’s a little sensitive today.”

“Shouldn’t you be doing your job instead of trying to get a rise out of me?”

“
Au contraire
. I am doing my job. Whenever I come onto a murder scene, who better to go to than the source?”

He waved her to the room where Clémence had initially found Natalie.

“I hear the body’s in that room,” he said. “Care to look, or have you seen it already?”

“As a matter of fact, I was the one to find the body.” Clémence gritted her teeth. She could hear herself getting defensive, and she had to silently tell herself to cool it.

Cyril chuckled. “Why am I not surprised,
mademoiselle
?”

It was so easy for Cyril to push her buttons. His smugness and arrogance never ceased to prompt her disdain. He was a man in his late thirties with smile lines like parentheses on the sides of his mouth. Not that he smiled. Rather, he smirked. He had a strong, hawk-like nose and green eyes that were pale, like a dead fish’s.

She wondered if what she felt for Cyril was what Tata felt about most of the people she worked with. If it was, Clémence was starting to sympathize with her more and more.

A man on Cyril’s team opened the door for the inspector. Cyril put on his gloves and instructed Clémence not to touch anything. Clémence winced again at the sight of the dead body. Only a couple of hours ago, she had been talking to the dead girl.

Natalie’s head was turned to the side. Her eyes were half open. With her right cheek squished on the floor, her saliva had dripped from the side of her mouth to mix with the blood. There was so much blood.

“Struck in the back with a knife,” Cyril stated the obvious.

Clémence stopped herself from making a snide remark about that. She couldn’t afford to irritate him, no matter how much she wanted to, since he would soon find out that the knife belonged to the Damour patisserie.

She decided to offer this fact up front, to get the accusations out of the way.

“Why did she have the knife?” Cyril turned to her with more suspicion in his eyes, as Clémence expected.

The faster she cleared her name, the faster they could move on to actually solve the case, so she helped him.

“She was holding onto it for me because we were going to surprise Marcus, the designer, with a cake.”

She explained her patisserie’s collaboration with the Marcus Savin collection and how Natalie had stored the cake somewhere in the building. Clémence had been trying to find her backstage so they could bring it out for Marcus.

“How do we know that you didn’t have a disagreement with—” he snapped his fingers at one of his men. “What’s her name?”

“Natalie Albert,” the young man replied.

“Natalie here, and you stabbed her with your knife?”

Clémence sighed. “I know you’d start with that. It’s not possible because I was watching the runway show. Natalie was last seen alive working backstage before the show started. There were a million cameras out there to capture me in the audience, so it would’ve been impossible for me to kill her from here. Once the show was over, I came backstage and asked around for her. If you interview the witnesses, you’ll find many people who saw me. Marcus, for example, or Tata Milan, the makeup artist, who I talked to just before I went behind the screens to the office door and opened it. You’re wasting your time if you want to pin this one on me.”

“Whatever you say.” Cyril shrugged.

He began to ask her a string of other useless questions, like what she had done that day and why she had come to the show. A photographer was snapping away at the crime scene, asking Cyril and Clémence to step back. The rest of the crew were noting and gathering evidence. As she spoke, she noticed a slight, faint footprint in the blood.

Clémence could see it, a very faint “S.” She’d seen that footprint before. It was from a certain brand of luxury shoes, but she couldn’t recall the name. It had been trendy all season, and she was sure plenty of the fashion set owned a pair of shoes from that brand.

“Look,” she pointed out, stepping forward carefully, closer to the faint footprint.

“A footprint,” Cyril said wearily. “We have eyes. We’ll get on it.”

“No, don’t you see the S? It’s a certain brand. Whoever killed her was wearing shoes from this brand. That’s a major clue. It’ll be much easier to narrow down the suspects.”

Cyril squinted at the S and instructed the photographer to take more close-up photos of it.

“Well, what’s the brand called?”

Clémence racked her brain. “Styra! It’s pretty popular.” She looked at the bloody footprint again. “It looks like it could have come from boots, but also heels. The S is printed at the front of the sole. It’s faint, but I’m sure that’s the logo.”

“So all we have to do is gather up the people who are wearing this brand,” Cyril said. “We’ll check the soles of every man and woman backstage.”

C
lémence went
home to her apartment on Avenue Kleber, utterly exhausted. She had only expected to be gone three hours at the most to support her friend at his fashion show in the early afternoon and ended up coming home at eleven in the evening.

When she opened the door, her little dog Miffy came running to her. Miffy jumped up and down, excited to see her. She was a white West Highland terrier and the happiest dog in the world. Perhaps it was the way Miffy’s mouth was shaped, but Clémence thought she was always smiling. Even Miffy’s eyes shone when she was happy.

“
Coucou
, girl,” Clémence greeted her. “Sorry I’m late.”

“I got your texts.” Arthur Dubois came down the hall at the sound of her voice. “Are you okay?”

Her boyfriend gave her big hug and a passionate kiss on the lips before Clémence got a chance to reply. Arthur had recently moved in with her. They’d met because they were neighbors. Arthur’s family lived in the same building, two stories down.

The two of them had not liked each other when they first met. Clémence thought Arthur was a massive playboy, which he was, but when he fell in love with Clémence, all that changed. A romantic was who he was at the core underneath the snotty, gruff exterior.

Clémence’s apartment wasn’t exactly hers. It belonged to her parents, who were living in Asia for the time being to oversee new Damour locations opening up in major cities. They were due back home earlier than expected, in two months, and Clémence didn’t know where she would live after that.

She supposed it would be time to buy her own apartment, but would she do it with Arthur? It was time to start thinking about the future, but Arthur seemed so content in their relationship that she didn’t want to have that talk with him yet. Not that she was in a major rush to get engaged. She could wait. They were head over heels in love with each other, but they hadn’t even been together for a year yet. Madeleine had dated her boyfriend forever before he had proposed recently.

“Everything’s fine,” Clémence said. “I’m not a suspect.”

“Come on, I made you dinner. You must be hungry.” He took her hand and led her to the kitchen.

He had made pasta—one of the few things he knew how to make, but she beamed nonetheless. Smelling the fresh tomato sauce and cheese made her realize just how hungry she was.

“Merci, cherí.”
She gave him a quick kiss on the cheek before sitting down and devouring the food.

“I ate without you,” Arthur said. “I was starving.”

“Don’t worry about it. It’s so late, of course you’d be starving waiting for me.”

She was glad he gave her the time to eat before she could tell him what had happened in her day. Talking about it would make her ill—thinking about Natalie’s body like that, the knife sticking out of her back and all the blood on the floor…

After she finished her plate, she had a glass of wine with Arthur, their preferred way of ending a meal.

“There were around forty people backstage,” Clémence was saying. “A zoo. The models, Marcus and his team, a few members of the media, and me. And of course, I had to be the one to find this body.”

Arthur grinned, his brown eyes laughing. “It’s your fate in life.”

“I wish my fate could be finding rainbows or something.”

“It is. Your life is pretty great, except for the murder cases that seem to come by every few weeks.”

“Yup.”

“But you know you enjoy solving a good case. Who’s on your suspect list this time?”

“Arthur.” She looked up and smiled. “You are my Watson.”

“I must be,” he joked back, “since we share the same bed.”

Clémence laughed and sipped her wine. Although her day had been hectic, she loved knowing that she could count on Arthur at the end of it.

She told him about the Styra footprint.

“Three women were wearing Styra shoes,” Clémence said. “Gabrielle, the supermodel, left before she could talk to the police. I don’t know what she was wearing. I doubt she would be the killer, though. She closed the show. After the show, she would’ve only had a small amount of time to kill Natalie.”

“And you didn’t see Gabrielle during that time?”

“No. I was still in my seat in the audience. By the time I went backstage, Gabrielle was changing, and the makeup artist was waiting to come back to help her take her makeup off. Apparently Gabrielle greatly prefers Tata Milan to touch her face, which is why Marcus paid a lot more to hire Tata.”

“Who’s Tata? What a strange name.”

“She’s a famous makeup artist. The strange name is making her millions, since it’s also the name of her makeup brand.”

“I know nothing about makeup,” Arthur said.

Clémence smiled. “Anyway, Tata didn’t seem very personable, so I don’t know why Gabrielle likes her so much. Then again, I don’t know Gabrielle at all.”

“Talented people can get away with a lot,” Arthur said.

“That’s true. If you’re talented and you have a lot of money and influence, I suppose people would try harder to like you. Maybe Gabrielle is cut from the same cloth. She left the crime scene even though she wasn’t supposed to. Like Tata, she probably doesn’t care about other people, either.”

“When I was younger, I used to date models,” Arthur said.

“You mean last year?” Clémence raised an eyebrow.

“Okay, okay, I know I used to have shallow taste. Until I met you. The models, well, I got tired of them looking at their reflections all the time.”

“It took you long enough to stop looking at them, though.”

Arthur grinned. “Men are dumb. They take a while to learn their lessons.”

“I bet you had fun learning.” Clémence stuck her tongue out at him.

“Let’s go back to talking about the case,” Arthur said lightly. “So what happened? Who were the other women wearing the shoes?”

“Let’s see. Two of them were models, and one was a fashion blogger. Only the fashion savvy wear this brand. It’s too cool for me. The police are probably still questioning them. They kicked me out.”

“Were the models wearing the shoes during the show, too?”

“No. The models had to wear these high, strappy shoes from Marcus’s collection. They’re pretty cool, but not practical. I don’t think I would be able to walk in them. The thing about Styra shoes is that they are relatively comfortable, because they have chunky heels. The heels are not that high, either. The models probably shouldn’t have changed into their own shoes so soon after the show, since some of the press were still there, but I suppose Marcus’s shoes were so uncomfortable that they had to change back. I love Marcus, but nobody wears his shoes except rich Middle Eastern princesses who never have to walk anywhere.”

“So do you think the police have a handle on this from now on?”

Clémence shrugged. “Do they ever have a handle on anything? I should hope so. They have all the suspects. I hope they know what to do with them this time.”

C
lémence’s workplace
, the Damour flagship patisserie, was only down the block at 2 Place du Trocadéro.

The patisserie was in a prime location with a great view of the Eiffel Tower. In the summer, patrons could sit outside and enjoy the view and people-watch, but since it was starting to get colder now, the terrace seats were nearly empty when Clémence came by in the morning.

She entered through the patisserie section to check on the selection of their baked goods. The subtle but fresh smell of the pastries hit her as soon as she opened the door, which she knew was more than enticing for the long line of customers. It was early in the morning, but locals and tourists alike needed a piece from Damour to start the day.

After greeting the patisserie employees, she crossed over to the
salon de thé
section, which was also full. Half of the tables were occupied by tourists, and the other half seated were wealthy locals who had so much money and time on their hands that they could spend half the day in a cafe reading the paper and their smartphones. Sometimes Clémence spotted celebrities in the pack, which would excite some of the staff.

She continued to the back of the patisserie, where she worked with the other bakers and chefs. Everybody greeted her with enough cheer given the time of day.

It was a big kitchen, with plenty always going on. While Clémence was an introvert who needed plenty of quiet time, she also thrived on working at Damour. She had grown up in a kitchen, and she felt comfortable and at home in one.

Sebastien Soulier perked up when he saw her.

“How was the fashion show?” he said. “Was the cake a hit? Sorry I couldn’t be there.”

“Oh, I guess you didn’t watch the news?” Clémence said.

“No. I drove back late last night.” Sebastien had been out of town to visit his grandparents in Lyon for their wedding anniversary. “And I woke up early as usual for this shift, so I’m not caught up on my Parisian news.” He frowned. “Did something happen?”

Clémence sighed and told him all that had transpired the day before.

Sebastien was surprised but not shocked. Like Clémence, he was used to hearing about Damour-related murders. His girlfriend had also been falsely accused of murder once.

“It seems like there’s a murder around here at least once a month,” Sebastien remarked.

“At least it’s not every week.”

“You see the glass half full,” Sebastien teased. “Only you can put a positive spin on these kinds of things.”

“I know, how very un-Parisian of me. In all honesty, I still find it very disturbing. Maybe I’m just always in the wrong places at the wrong times. Hopefully the police have arrested the right person by now.”

Sebastien started flattening his dough to make buttery croissants. Clémence helped him cut the dough into triangles.

“So whatever happened to the cake?” Sebastien asked.

“The cake?”

“You know, the opera cake we made for Marcus. The edible one.”

“Oh, I guess with all the commotion, I forgot about it. Since Natalie was the one who put the cake away, she’d know. It’s in the building somewhere, probably a cafeteria or staff room where there would be a fridge.”

“So it’s just going to rot there?” Sebastien sounded alarmed by the thought. “After all that work?”

“I suppose,” Clémence said.

“It took a lot of work to make that cake. It’s a masterpiece. We can’t just let it go to waste.”

An opera cake had many fine, delicate layers—almond sponge cake, coffee filling, chocolate icing. Since it was also an oversized cake, it must’ve taken Sebastien and a couple of helpers almost two days to make it, after some trial and error.

“That’s true,” Clémence said. “Maybe I should go fetch it. Give it to Marcus. Poor guy, he just wanted to throw a good fashion show. Are you free to go with me after your shift? We can take it to Marcus to cheer him up. I mean, there should be nothing wrong with the cake if it was untouched.”

“Sure. You need someone to drive, right? We’ll take the Damour delivery van. It should be free after the guys get back.” Sebastien looked at her. “That’s funny that you’d ask me to go with you and not the delivery guys. Why is that?”

“What do you mean?” Clémence said innocently.

“You know what I mean. I’m a renowned, in-demand baker. You want me to do a menial thing such as fetch a cake…”

“Hey, I’m an heiress to an international chain. I have to do grunt work all the time.”

“Actually, you don’t. You get our guys to deliver the cake. You could’ve gotten them to get it this time, too, but you want to go, and with me, too. I think I know why.”

Clémence crossed her arms. “And why is that? Why don’t you explain it to me?”

“You want to snoop around the crime scene some more, don’t you?”

“Oh, why does everyone think I need to stick my nose into this case?”

“Because the police do a horrible job, and you love solving these things. You want me to go because you trust me.”

“I also thought Marcus would like to meet the baker.”

Sebastien patted her on the back. “I’m sure that’s part of it, too, but admit it, you want to gather some more clues.”

Clémence shook her head, then finally relented.

“Okay, fine. I guess I don’t completely trust Cyril and his guys. Maybe we can talk to some of the staff at the building, too.”

“Let’s do it. You know, I rarely get to help you on your cases, so this should be fun.”

“I think you’ve been watching too much
Sherlock
.” Clémence chuckled. “It’s not so much fun as frustrating and dangerous.”

“Isn’t the danger the fun part of it? It’s much more exciting than making croissants.”

“I thought you loved making croissants. And macarons and cakes.”

“I love it, but it doesn’t mean I’m always on the edge of my seat. Well, except when the milk overboils. Then I throw a fit.”