Paris Love Match - By Nigel Blackwell Page 0,17
in her hands.
Piers stared at her.
She pinched her eyebrows together. “What?”
He shrugged. “I thought you didn’t have any money.”
Sidney covered her wallet with her hands.
Piers mouth hung open. “Wait a minute.” He grabbed for the wallet, but Sidney was quick and tucked it into a pocket.
Piers leaned forward. “You took his wallet, didn’t you?”
“No.”
“Well, what was that?”
“What?”
“The thing you just hid.”
“Mine.”
“Your wallet?”
“Of course.”
“Didn’t look like a girl’s purse.”
“I prefer a wallet.”
“Really?”
“Yes, really.”
The waiter returned and thumped two coffees on the table. He stared at Piers.
He nodded at Sidney. “She’s paying.”
She fumbled in her bag, keeping it under the table, and produced a twenty-euro note. The waiter rummaged in his pockets, cheerlessly dumped her change on the table, and stomped off.
Sidney scooped it up and dropped it into the wallet. Piers got a clear view this time. It was light tan, worn thin, but clearly leather. Equally clear was a big red stain. “Nice decoration.”
Sidney bit her lip and lowered her gaze. She turned it over in her hands. “He wasn’t going to use it, was he?” She licked her lips. “I mean, I don’t think he’d mind.”
Piers shrugged. “Hard for him to express an opinion now, isn’t it?”
Sidney gave a big sigh. “Look, I’m not proud, but I haven’t had any money for days. Do you know how expensive it is to live in Paris?”
“I’m learning.”
Piers leaned back and took a sip of nearly cold coffee. “I should be mad … but what’s in it?”
“I haven’t looked.”
Piers slapped his forehead. “Well, let’s not worry about sorting out the mystery of who this guy is, and what he did.”
Sidney glowered. “All right. It’s not like I’ve had a lot of spare time.” She pulled the money out of it and flung the wallet onto the table. “You search it.”
Piers stared at it for a moment. At least it had landed blood-side down. It didn’t look ominous. It wasn’t a valuable possession, not something someone rich and powerful would have. Not that someone rich and powerful would have been running from gunmen; they’d have been sipping martinis and assembling their lawyers from their penthouse suite. No, this wasn’t the wallet of someone who sipped martinis.
He picked it up and turned it over. The ugly red stain ran across one side like a river, twisting and turning, changing direction under the influence of invisible forces. One corner was frayed and he toyed with a thread that was unraveling before looking inside. There were five credit cards and a wedge of credit card slips. He pulled them out.
The cards were standard fare: Visa and MasterCard, but no gold cards. “Auguste Chevalier,” he said.
Sidney stared at him. “Does that help?”
Piers shrugged and went back to examining the wallet.
The paper slips were from various automated machines. Piers sorted them into piles and found equal-sized transfers from one card, to a bank, to another card. They weren’t big amounts, a few hundred euros, but clearly the man had been jugging his debt.
“Nothing personal in—”
He stopped to look at two small pieces of thin card that Sidney was waving in front of him.
“They were mixed in with the money,” she said.
He reached for them, but she drew them away. “Say please.”
He sighed and held his hand out. “Please.”
She looked at him with mock seriousness. “Say, well done, Sidney, for finding out about Mr. Chevalier.”
“Just give me them, would you?”
She raised her eyebrows.
He forced a smile. “Please.”
She smiled and handed over the cards.
Piers flipped them over. “Train tickets.”
“Boy, you’re a genius.”
“To Milano.”
“Milan,” she said.
“Boy, you’re a genius.”
She stuck her tongue out at him and turned away.
“Shit.” Piers jumped up, grabbing the wallet and its contents and shoving them in his pockets. “We’ve got to go.”
“Why?”
Piers waved the tickets. “This train leaves in twenty minutes.”
“So? He’s not going to be catching it. He’s dead.”
He waved them again. “Two tickets.”
Chapter 10
Piers pounded up the steps from the Montparnasse-Bienvenüe subway to the railway terminus above. Sidney was a good flight of steps behind him shouting, “stop.”
According to the station clock they had seven minutes to find Auguste Chevalier’s traveling companion. He surveyed the monitors and found the Milan train.
Sidney staggered to his side, doubled over, and grabbed a railing. “When I say stop, I mean fucking stop.”
He patted her on her back. “You’re doing great. Come on. Platform four.”
“Platform nothing. I can’t move.”
Piers hooked his arm under hers. “Come on, we can’t split up.”
She wriggled, but he kept a firm grip and dragged her toward platform four.
She thumped his back. “Let go