Chapter 13
13
Cass Middleton has wide-set eyes and an athletic build. With her tan and her blonde hair pulled back high in a ponytail, she looks like she could compete in beach volleyball, which makes me wonder if she’s spent the last year lying low here or somewhere much sunnier.
I don’t wonder about it long, though, because I’m worried about getting out of the shop without letting on that we were poking around, investigating her criminal activities.
“ Bonjour ,” she says. “Are you looking for something in particular?” Her voice is amiable as she speaks to us in French, a shopkeeper who doesn’t want to lose a sale. But her gray eyes are sharp and piercing, like she smells a thief—or two.
I don’t have a plan, but I improvise one in a hurry. “Sorry. I don’t know French,” I say, widening my eyes and adopting a flat, broad American accent. People are used to clueless tourists.
Cass Middleton repeats the question in English, in her native British accent. “Were you looking for something in particular? Our store was closed for a few minutes, so I didn’t expect to see anyone in here.”
“Oh, gosh,” I say, widening my eyes in innocence. “I didn’t realize the store was closed. I just tugged on the door, and it opened right up.” I laugh as I wave toward the street.
Something wiggles in my pocket where I stashed the key.
That’s . . . unexpected.
It’s moving around in there.
Awesome.
I turn quickly to the nearest display, arranged like a lady’s dressing table, and grab the purple hat perched on a lamp. “We were looking at this hat. It’s just the kind of thing we hoped to find in the Marais.” I make sure to butcher the pronunciation. “Right, sis?”
Sophie nods, doing a good job of looking overwhelmed by all the Frenchness around us.
“It’s a lovely hat,” Cass says as the key wiggles a little more. “Shall I wrap it for you?”
“Yes. That would be great.”
“I’m glad you enjoyed looking around,” Cass says, appraising me with her stone-gray eyes. “My family and I pride ourselves on our unique items.” She heads to the register and rings the item up. I drum my fingers against the counter as she wraps the fake gift, purchased by a real thief, from one of the preeminent fake artists of the last few years.
A real thief with a key shimmying in his pants.
I dip my hand into my pocket like I can settle it down. But then, it’s gone.
Now you see it, now you don’t.
Or rather now you feel it, now you don’t.
I root around surreptitiously just to make sure, but nope. The key has vanished.
Good riddance, I say.
When Cass hands me my package and says, “Come back,” I finally make my escape with Sophie, some euros poorer, but with proof of the fraud that will keep Clio’s painting safe.
I wait until we’re a block away from the shop before I turn to Sophie and say, “I thought your brother would be here by now.”
She points down the street, and I look to see Remy walking toward us. “Did you find them? The fake papers?”
“Julien found them,” Sophie gushes. “And you’ll never guess what else.”
I jump in before this becomes a game. “ What else is what I want to know,” I tell Remy. “Any other bombs you want to drop besides how I’m supposed to be this . . . human muse?”
Remy, no surprise, doesn’t look repentant. He just glances at Sophie and asks, “You told him?”
She folds her arms, her chin jutting out. “You didn’t.”
“Yeah. It was the perfect timing, really, finding that out while we were breaking into an art forger’s shop.”
“Well, it was,” Sophie insists. “Otherwise you wouldn’t have been able to make the key to let us in.”
Remy’s gaze bounces between us. “I think I missed quite an adventure.”
“I’m sure Sophie will give you all the details,” I say, “since you tend to leave things out.”
He laughs first, then catches the look on my face. “Julien, you’re not seriously mad, are you?”
I sigh—one of Sophie’s loud, meaningful sighs. I’m more irritated than angry. “You couldn’t have said something the night we talked about all this at your home?”
“Would you have believed me back then?” he asks, about as serious as I’ve seen him.
“I don’t know,” I answer truthfully.
“I thought it would be too much at once,” he explains, a note of apology in his tone. “I was worried you’d just walk away, and we need you.”
Before I can reply to Remy, my phone rings, and when I look, I see that it’s Simon. He rarely calls when he can text.
“What are you doing in the Marais?” he asks immediately.
“How do you know where I am?” I demand.
“Look falafel-ward.”
I glance across at the falafel restaurant and see Simon give me a cocky wave through the window.
“Be right there,” I tell him, then I hang up and turn to Remy. “Listen, I’m going to get something to eat and then give these papers to Adaline. She’s really worried about the Renoir.”
Remy frowns, looking like he might try and explain again, but I wave it off. “Don’t worry about it. But maybe you should write up a user’s manual, because this on-the-job muse training is the worst.”
Remy gives me one of his open-handed shrugs. “You’re the first one. Maybe you should write it yourself.”
“Maybe I will.”
I say au revoir to him and Sophie and head into the falafel house. I also pull the papers out of my jeans and look at them again.
“Hands in your pants again, Garnier?” Simon calls to me from his throne booth in the middle of the restaurant.
“Some days I just can’t help myself,” I say as I slide onto the bench across from him, dropping the bag with the hat next to me. Lucy is here too, sitting against him, two jigsaw pieces with interlocking edges that fit just so.
“What have you got there?” Simon asks, nodding to the papers in my hand.
“It’s complicated.”
“But is it interesting?” Lucy’s voice is a purr, and her green eyes are the perfect complement to the emerald streaks that curve like streams down her cascade of dark hair. “Complicated can be dull. Or complicated can be fascinating.”
“More of the latter,” I tell her.
Simon slaps a hand on the table, decreeing, “Well? Let’s hear it.”
Where should I start? Muses. Dust. Paintings that come alive. The voices I heard in Remy’s cellar. Voices that sounded like poetry, like history, like music, like art.
“Do you believe in Muses?” I ask Simon and Lucy.
He pulls her closer, which I didn’t think was possible. “I believe Lucy is my muse,” he says, then ducks in for a quick kiss.
“And what does she inspire you to do?” I ask, ignoring their sappy grins.
“To order falafels,” Simon says. “Want one?”
“Sure.”
He raises a hand, and the waiter appears as if by magic.
Magic. The word rolls through my brain like a marble in a tilting maze. There is magic in Paris. Magic in art, magic in dust, magic in my hands. I can’t help the grin that spreads, big and wide, over my face. These things are real, and they’re magic, and they’re happening to me.
Clio is real, and she is happening to me.
But there are also curses, and art getting sick at the Louvre, and Renoirs fading from sunlight they never see. If there’s good magic, wouldn’t there be bad magic too?
After we order, Simon returns to the question. “So, Muses. You mean the nine ladies who inspire artists, writers, musicians, and so on?”
“Yes. Those Muses.”
“Sure, I believe in them,” he says, surprising me a little.
“As you should,” Lucy offers. “The Muses are powerful women.”
I chuckle silently. Not all muses are women. “No argument from me.”
There’s a pause while I tap my fingers on the table, wondering how much of the truth I can share. The thing is, I have to tell somebody something , even just part of it, or I’ll burst.
“So,” I begin, “there’s this guy who came into the museum claiming to own the Renoir painting we just hung, when he clearly doesn’t. So I followed him out of the museum, and, long story short, I found these documents.” I put my hand on top of them on the table. “They’re versions of the fake papers he offered Adaline as proof that he owns the painting.”
“Look at you.” Simon grins as if he’s proud of my cunning. “You’ve gone from cat burglar to detective.”
“I’m just full of special skills. Speaking of,” I say, “can you put yours to good use and research someone for me?”
“Anything for a cat-burgling detective.”
I give him Max’s full name and ask him to research his family, who they are, where they’ve lived, what they’ve done, and any notable details about them.
“Do you want us to follow him too?” Lucy asks, and her eyes light up, mischief in full bloom. She turns to Simon. “Wouldn’t that be fun?”
“What I did for my summer vacation,” Simon quips, narrowing his eyes and shifting them back and forth. “Espionage.”
“Actually,” I say, my thoughts racing, “that’s not a bad idea.” Sophie seems to be doing Remy’s legwork. Simon can help me with mine. “That would be great if you would.”
The waiter brings our food, and we eat. Then I remember the hat, and on impulse, I ask, “Lucy, would you like a purple hat?”
“I would love a purple hat,” she says, and then coos when I hand it to her. She models it, tilting her head just so.
“That hat is turning me on,” Simon says, which is my cue to leave. I place some euros on the table, and the pair of them barely seem to notice.
Walking back across the city, I rehearse a slightly more detailed version of what I told Simon about my discovery of these papers, because obviously I’m going to have to tell Adaline something , even if it’s half-truth and half-fable.
But overall, I count the day a win.
Especially since Clio isn’t going anywhere.