“Oui,” said Lucy, still panting from the exertion of holding the door shut. “Breathless.”

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Sixteen

The Jean-Paul Belmondo cop wasn’t interested in talking to Lucy, but he and his shorter, darker partner were questioning Elizabeth closely, nodding along as she showed them the broken locks and the duffel bag that had concealed the cash-filled envelope. When she’d finished, he called headquarters and asked for Girard. After a somewhat lengthy conversation, which Lucy couldn’t follow, he informed them that the apartment would be sealed as a crime scene and Elizabeth would have to move out temporarily.

“Not again,” sighed Elizabeth.

“Do you have a place to go?” he asked, rubbing his cheek with his index finger.

Lucy thought his tone was rather too concerned; next thing he’d be offering to put Elizabeth up at his place. “Yes, she can stay with me and her father,” said Lucy.

“D’accord,” he replied with a professional nod.

“You must be very careful, mademoiselle,” advised the partner.

“I will make sure she does not go anywhere alone,” said Lucy, feeling like a nineteenth-century chaperone. “And you are taking the money?”

“Oui, oui, I have the papers right here,” said the partner, producing some closely printed documents on very thin paper. “You must sign here, please.”

So Lucy signed and handed over the envelope while Elizabeth, once again, packed a bag. Then a taxi was called, and Lucy and a rather sullen Elizabeth went back to the vacation apartment, where the friends were just sitting down to a simple dinner of pasta with cheese, salad, and bread.

“Comfort food. Just what we need,” said Lucy, tucking in. Even Elizabeth, she noticed, had loaded up her plate and was eating as if she’d never heard of calories. There was nothing like a near brush with danger to perk up the appetite. “We’ve had quite an interesting afternoon,” she said, going on to tell the group about discovering Sylvie’s cache of cash. She’d just started to tell them about the attempted break-in when Richard arrived, bearing a box of assorted pastries.

“So Sylvie was a call girl,” suggested Sue, who was arranging the colorful fruit tarts and the éclairs on a plate. “I’ve heard that can be very profitable, if you have the right clientele.”

“And the Cavendish Hotel would certainly have plenty of the right clients,” said Richard.

“But she would have to be terribly discreet, or she’d lose her job, wouldn’t she?” asked Rachel.

“And how much could she earn that way?” asked Pam. “I mean, fifty thousand euros is a lot of, well, bonking, for lack of a better word.”

“Bonking’s fine with me,” said Ted with a leer.

Elizabeth glanced at her mother and rolled her eyes, sending the message that this was just the sort of thing she couldn’t stand about her parents’ friends.

“I mean, what does a first-class bonk cost?”