“Indirectly. I went to the hotel, and my daughter introduced me to Serge d’Amboise. He’s an assistant manager. I didn’t want to admit to him that I’d broken the rules and gone into Larry’s room, so I just told him that Chef Larry was no longer unconscious and was recovering.” She took a deep breath. “Also, as I told you before, the two boys who broke into our apartment, they also work at the hotel. Their names are Adil Sadek and Malik Mehanna.”

“Ah, yes, I will look into this connection,” said Lapointe.

“I just wanted to get this off my chest. I know I behaved very foolishly.”

“Indeed,” said Lapointe. “This is very serious, interfering with an investigation.”

“I am most sincerely sorry,” said Lucy, once again imagining the dark, dank cell that most probably awaited her.

“No matter,” said Lapointe with a wave of his hand. “Go to your husband and daughter, and do not involve yourself anymore with this matter. Today it is bœuf bourguignon at the café on the quai, and I can recommend it. And the house wine is not bad, either. Allez.”

“Merci,” said Lucy, somewhat shocked and definitely puzzled. She would never in a million years understand these French people.

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Fifteen

As she made her way to the café, Lucy decided that perhaps France really wasn’t so bad, after all. No one in America would expect an employer to grant a worker time off for equilibrium recovery, but it was apparently the norm here in France. And there was no eating breakfast on the run or eating lunch at your desk, either. You never saw anyone carrying around an enormous cardboard container of coffee and a doughnut, as you did in the States, and snacking was out of the question. Instead, the entire country paused at noon for a three-course sit-down lunch with wine. And nobody rushed through that meal, either. She thought of the gentlemen she and Bill had sat next to a week or so ago, when Bill ordered that dish of tête de veau. They were obviously businessmen of some sort, but they were in no hurry to get back to work. Not only were they the two founding members of the clean-plate club, but they had each polished off a generous carafe of wine, too, and had even lingered afterward for coffee and brandy. In America, she thought, that sort of thing was a relic of the past, resurrected for the twenty-first-century audience’s amazement in the TV show Mad Men.

It was a bit early for lunch, so Bill and Elizabeth were able to get a table by the window in the café, where they were studying menus.

“Get the bœuf bourguignon,” suggested Lucy when she joined them. “It comes highly recommended.”

“Okay,” said Bill, always agreeable when it came to food.

“Not me,” said Elizabeth. “I will have a salade niçoise.”