"Aisling Grey, Guardian- 01 - You Slay Me" - читать интересную книгу автора (MacAlister Katie)
My dress was still limp when I went downstairs an hour later, but at least I was clean, my hair was combed, and I'd washed out the worst of the bloodstains. I followed my nose to the small room in the basement of the hotel where meals were served, stopping by the reception desk to inform the management that my bag had been stolen from my room.
The woman in charge didn't look very happy with me when I told her that, and I ended up wasting another twenty minutes by having to tramp up the five flights of stairs to accompany her while she examined the room for signs-of a break-in.
"You must have left the door open when you left," she finally decided. "A stranger must have entered and taken your bag. The hotel is not at all liable for damages in such a situation."
I protested my innocence, but she had made up her mind, and I was too exhausted to argue with her. To be honest, I kind of wondered if the police hadn't taken it. They certainly had the time to sneak in and grab it while I was being questioned. "If someone turns my bag in, will you let me know? There's nothing valuable in it, it's just my clothes and cosmetics, but right now, they're all I have."
She sniffed and returned behind the smooth wooden desk that served as reception, giving me a disparaging eye. "There are many shops in the Rue des Mille D6ces. You will wish to avail yourself of them before you return to the hotel, yes?"
I brushed at my still-damp dress and bared my teeth in what I fervently hoped was a grin. "Afraid I'll bring down the tone of the neighborhood? Yeah, I'm going shopping, don't worry. Later. After I have some breakfast."
I left her pursing her lips as if she'd like to refuse me admittance to the dining room, but breakfast was included in the price of the room, so I trotted downstairs to a cheery whitewashed room that looked out over a petite little garden. I took a table in the corner and concentrated on consuming as much caffeine and food as one person could handle in a half hour.
By the time breakfast was finished, I'd come to several decisions. First, I wasn't going to call Uncle Damian. Not just yet. My stint in the police station had made it quite clear that although they did not have enough evidence to charge me, they considered me a suspect. Probably the only suspect because Drake had so conveniently skipped out.
I drew circles on the tablecloth with my spoon, my now-caffeinated mind going over the events of the evening one more time. A lot of the past twelve hours was a dulled blur, most of it consisting of me sitting around in a small, airless room waiting for a translator to show. Then Jean-Baptiste Proust, a small, balding man who was the head of the criminal investigation department arrived, and things began to happen. A call was put in to the American Embassy. My fingerprints were taken, as were samples of the blood on my dress. People asked me questions, some in English, some in French. I explained who I was, showed my passport and visa, and the invoice for the aquamanile.
"Where is this valuable artifact?" Inspector Proust asked in a softly accented voice. Everything about him was quiet, from his mild brown eyes to the neutral tones of his brown pants and jacket. I knew, however, that you don't get to be the head of a police unit without having a razor-sharp mind.
"It was stolen. Just before the police arrived."
Inspector Proust looked down at a notebook another policeman had given him. "Ah, yes, by the man you claim was an agent of Interpol."
"I'm not claiming it; he is. He said he was an Interpol detective. He even showed me his badge, although I didn't get a good look at it. I was ... uh ... distracted." By the nonsense about demons, but I wasn't about to tell Inspector Proust that.
He looked at me with sad eyes. "You are aware, Mile. Grey, that Interpol does not have detectives?"
I stared at him, my hands suddenly going clammy. "They don't?"
"No. Interpol is an organization dedicated to the sharing of information between countries only; they do not have a police force of their own."
He waited patiently to see what I would say. I didn't say anything but "Oh."
That's not all I was thinking, of course. My brain was whirring about madly, angry at Drake for stealing my dragon and fooling me, furious with myself for having ignored Uncle Damian's strictures about security. I see one dead body and what do I do? I throw away everything I know about safeguarding the aquamanile. Damn Drake. It was all his fault. Well.. . mostly his fault.
I didn't say any of that to Inspector Proust, though. I answered his questions, then the same questions asked by other members of his investigation team. Over and over again, I answered the questions, until I knew them so well, I started answering them before my interrogators had the chance to ask them.
,But I never once told them that I had frogs in my bidet. I was oddly proud of that fact, too, which just goes to show you how deranged you can get when you don't have any sleep while being suspected of a murder you didn't commit. The truth is, I was certain that I was going to be tossed into some dark, dank, rat-infested jail cell and left to rot there until the U.S. Embassy was notified of the horrible events that had overtaken me, but to my surprise, twelve hours after I was taken to the police station, M. Proust strolled into the interview room and announced I was free to leave.
"Free?" I asked, blinking, my voice rough and hoarse from talking so long. I was a bit groggy from lack of sleep and food, but I didn't think 1 was quite to the point where I was hallucinating. Yet. "Free as in I can leave? Walk out of here? You're not charging me with murder?"
Inspector Proust made a sort of a half-shrug that I'd seen several times during the course of the night. Although he'd been awake the night through, as well, he didn't look as if he was the least bit troubled by lack of sleep. "You say you had nothing to do with Mme. Deauxville's death, so I have no grounds to charge you. Unless there is something else you'd like to tell me?"
I smiled at the question in his soft brown eyes. "I didn't kill her, honest. I don't know who did, unless Drake murdered her, and he says he didn't, but then, he lied to me about being an Interpol agent, and he stole my dragon, so how much of what he said can I really believe? Besides, he's too handsome. I don't trust handsome men like that. They think they're god's gift to women, and they go around grabbing you and kissing you and smelling really nice, and making your legs turn to mush when you're pulled up tight against them, not to mention filling your head with all sorts of really wicked thoughts about what you'd like to do to them with a small bowl of ice cream and your tongue. Well, not your tongue, my tongue. And speaking of that, just how did he know the aquamanile was gold?"
Inspector Proust watched me silently for a moment,
I looked down at the white card that had somehow materialized in my hand. It was at that point that I realized I was not only babbling almost incoherently, but I truly was being released, as well. No ratty damp jail cell for me, woo-hoo!
"You'll let me know if you capture Drake, won't you? 'Cause my uncle is going to kill me if I don't recover that aquamanile. He's going to say it's my fault that Drake stole it, and that he'll have to reimburse Mme. Deauxville's family if I don't find it, and you know, I just honestly don't think I could ever make that much money, not with Alan-he's my ex-husband and a beach bum- leeching everything off me. So you'll tell me? If yon find Drake? Or my dragon?"
A grim little smile played around Inspector Proust's lips. "You may rest assured, mademoiselle, if we meet up with a man calling himself Drake Vireo, I will notify you immediately."
"He didn't believe me," I said softly to myself as I sat in the sunny hotel dining room, the remains of eggs and croissants littering the plate before me. I checked the tiny coffeepot, poured the last bit of it into my cup, and tried to force my brain into some fruitful thinking. Two things were obvious-I had to clear my name with the police before they would let me have my passport, and I needed to find Drake and get my dragon back. Surely the American Embassy could help with the former.
"Step one, buy new clothes. Then go to the American Embassy and throw myself on their mercy." I looked in my neck pouch. The money I had left was meant to last only through that morning, no more. But I had my plane ticket. Since Uncle Damian only used cash to buy such things, it meant I could cash the ticket in. That should keep me from starving. The hotel bill was another matter. I knew that Beth had paid for the first night with the company credit card-maybe I could just tell the hotel to bill the rest. It was worth a try. With the hotel and money for food and a change of clothes taken care of, I could concentrate on the two issues at hand-proving to the police that I wasn't guilty of anything other than having extremely bad luck, and getting the dragon back. I'd worry about how I would get home later.
"First things first," I said as I marched over to the lobby phone. I pulled out the grubby card Rene the taxi driver had given me and dialed the cell-phone number on it.
Ten minutes later, Rene pulled up opposite the hotel, a grin on his face that faded when he took in my rumpled, bloodstained dress. "You look as if you have just visited a foie gras factory. What has happened to you?"
"It's a long story, way too long to tell you here. Did you mean what you said? You'd be my driver for the morning for fifty euros? No limit on the number of stops and stuff?"
Rene got out of the car and opened the back door for me, his blue eyes narrowing as I fingered my neck pouch. "You will stay in Paris, yes? No drives to Marseilles or Cannes?"
I gave him a wry grin. "I don't know anyone in Marseilles or Cannes, whereas I know three people in Paris- you, a very bad man named Drake, and Inspector Proust of the criminal investigation department. I just have to hope that Drake hasn't left Paris."
"Inspector Proust?" Rene sputtered, but he didn't stop me as I climbed into his taxi. "You have had dealings with the police?"
"I said it was a long story. If we're go on the fifty euros for the morning, then would you please take me first to a nice but cheap shop so I can get out of this grungy dress? My bag was stolen, and I don't have anything else to wear. I promise I'll tell you all about yesterday while we're on the way."
He shot me a look that contained at least a dozen questions, but then got back into the car, flipping off the taxi meter. "I will take you to La Pomme Purfiee. It is a shop run by the wife of my cousin. Berthilde will give you a special price."
"Special sounds good as long as it's cheap. Oh, before we go there, I need to swing by and cash in my plane ticket. Is that on the way?"
His dark gaze met mine in the mirror. 'Won. But I will make it in our path. Now you will commence with your story. I am very much looking forward to hearing it."
By the time I'd cashed in my plane ticket (feeling a couple of twinges of guilt about that since I didn't pay for it in the first place) and visited the shop Rene recommended, I had made it through most of the story. The last bit was told as I stood in a curtained dressing room, trying on a couple of summer outfits, answering Rene's questions while I tried to decide between a very chic beige linen sleeveless tunic and matching pants, or a sexy 1930s-looking dress with big red poppies on it.
"What did Inspector Proust say when you told him about this man who stole your dragon?" Rene asked.
I parted the curtains and did a little twirl in front of where he sat waiting for me. "What do you think, too girly? I kind of like the poppies, but the other outfit is more sophisticated."
He did the Gallic shrug I'd seen earlier. "It is very nice/as well. Why do you not take both?"
I did a little mental arithmetic. The two outfits with accompanying underwear would eat up almost a quarter of my meager funds. Still, I was in Paris, buying authentic French clothes.... "What the heck, I'll just eat cheap for a few days. The answer to your question is nothing. Inspector Proust didn't seem to care anything about Drake. To be truthful"-I did a spin in front of the mirror, enjoying the way the dress flared out-"I don't think he believed me about Drake."
Rene didn't say anything. I turned back to him, my hands spread in front of me. "I'm telling the truth, Rene. I know it sounds fantastic, but it's the truth. You believe me, don't you?"
He stood slowly, waving to his cousin's wife, who was arranging a display in the shop window. "You do not have the air of a murderer. I believe you. But I am not the one you need to convince, eh? You must convince the inspector that you are telling the truth."
"Easier said man done. I don't know how to go about proving I didn't do something."
I waited while Rene spoke rapidly to Berthilde, who took the linen pantsuit and my stained dress, putting them both in a tote bag.
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