Marie Antoinette, Serial Killer Read online

  “Now,” Pilar said, stifling a yawn, “where are my delicious French men?”

  “Oh, look, here’s one for you,” Hannah said. “Yummy.”

  The man in question was our van driver, who was neither mind-boggling nor soul-twisting. He was about nine hundred years old, shriveled and wrinkled with a massive fluffy white beard. On his head he wore a cable-knit cap, and his beady eyes watched us with a hefty dose of wariness as we clambered into the van.

  “Everybody, she is in the vehicle?” he asked.

  A chorus of yeses answered him.

  “Oui, merci beaucoup,” Madame Mitchell said in her clearest French-teacher voice, giving us all the stink-eye.

  As this was a trip for students of the various French classes, chaperoned by the French teacher, we were supposed to be immersing ourselves in the language. But we were all too tired to even think or speak in English, much less French.

  The van doors slammed shut.

  “Are you all right, Colette?” Hannah asked. “You look a little gray.”

  I felt a little gray. The combined effects of lack of sleep, an airplane-quality turkey sandwich, and being packed into a crowded van made my body buzz with anxiety.

  “Why don’t we switch seats?” Pilar asked. “I’ve seen Paris before.”

  I was on the verge of agreeing when Hannah spoke up. “It’s not like she doesn’t have nine days here. No one can be that excited about seeing the side of a highway.”

  “Yeah, thanks anyway,” I said to Peely. “But switching places would be a logistical nightmare.”

  As we drove on, it seemed Hannah was right — from what I could see of it, the highway was pretty much like an American highway, complete with unimpressive views of normal-looking buildings and untended grassy hillsides.

  But when we passed into the city, the whole world changed. I momentarily forgot to feel ill, craning my neck in the hopes of glimpsing some famous French sights.

  “À la droite, la Seine,” Madame Mitchell called from the front seat. We all looked out the right side of the van, where the River Seine cut through the middle of the city. I’d seen it a million times in movies, usually in a scene where the two main characters take a romantic nighttime stroll. But that was nothing like seeing it for real — the way the light reflected off the choppy water, sunken between two centuries-old stone walls and crossed by magnificent bridges with carved stone railings and ornate sculptures.

  “Et à la gauche, la cathédrale de Notre-Dame.”

  On the left loomed Notre Dame, the massive cathedral. Its two towers stretched through a foggy mist toward the cloudy sky.

  The van came to a jerky stop, sending all of us slamming into one another.

  I tried to see out the front window, but there were too many heads in the way. Girls in the rows ahead of us strained to look, and finally Audrey turned around.

  “It’s a roadblock,” she said. “Police cars.”

  “Oh, goody,” Hannah said. “Stuck like sardines in a can. What a way to spend our first night in Paris.”

  “We’ll be moving again soon,” Madame Mitchell said.

  But we weren’t. We sat in the same spot for nearly a half hour. The air inside the van was getting stuffier. My breath was growing quicker, and my fingers were ice cold.

  Madame Mitchell looked a little green, too. She leaned forward. “Pardon, monsieur,” she said to the driver. “Savez-vous pourquoi nous nous sommes arrêtés?”

  The driver, who didn’t seem interested in participating in our language immersion process, replied in English. “My wife call. She say there is another murder.”

  The word murder settled over the van for a moment, until Hannah broke the silence.

  “Wait — another murder?” she asked. “When was the first one?”

  “Last night,” the old man said. “This one is same, my wife say.”

  The blasé tone of his voice sent a chill up my spine.

  “The same how?” In her curiosity, Madame Mitchell forgot to parle français.

  “The same for the head,” he replied cheerily.

  The van was quiet.

  “What about the head?” Hannah asked finally.

  “The head.” He drew one finger across his throat, like a knife slicing it. “She is cut off.”

  My heart stopped beating for a second.

  Pilar’s eyes were as big as tennis balls. “She is?” she asked faintly.

  Hannah had hauled out her phone and was looking online, thanks to the gazillion-dollar international data plan her father had shelled out for. She and Peely were the only girls in our group with working phones.

  “Oh, here it is,” Hannah said, and read out loud. “‘Serial killer on the loose in Paris … Gabrielle Roux, up-and-coming model … Pierre Beauclerc, son of … some-French-name-I-can’t-pronounce Beauclerc.’”

  “A model?” Pilar asked. “That’s terrible.”

  Audrey peered at us, one eyebrow raised. “Only ugly people deserve to be killed?”

  Hannah waved her off.

  Alarmed voices rose up like a bunch of yelping puppies. Brynn wore an expression of worried disbelief. “Are we going to get … like … murdered?” she whispered.

  Madame Mitchell turned around. “Calm yourselves, ladies. I’m sure we’re all quite safe. However, this is a good reminder of how important it is to stay together as a group.”

  “Or you’ll get murdered,” Hannah added.

  “No!” the teacher said. “Honestly, Ms. Norstedt.”

  Hannah gave me a wicked grin, and I couldn’t help grinning back.

  That was the thing about Hannah — she could be really funny.

  But that was also the thing about me when I was around Hannah. I laughed at her jokes, even when some deep, dark part of me didn’t think they were very funny at all.

  Eventually, we detoured across a bridge and turned onto a road that led us into Saint-Germain-des-Prés, the neighborhood where we’d be staying. It was made up of dozens of little avenues, all connected like a spiderweb.

  It was everything I’d pictured Paris to be — chic boutiques, little cafés, flower shops, and open counters selling baguettes. The narrow cobblestone roads bustled with people who hopped onto the itty-bitty sidewalks to avoid our van.

  We pulled to a stop on a tiny side street, hardly more than an alley.

  “Hôtel Odette,” the driver announced with a weary sigh.

  “You get the idea that these were the worst hours of his life,” Pilar said.

  “I bet he’d rather quit than drive us back to the airport,” I said.

  “I know being in the van is great and all,” Hannah said, “but could you two please move?”

  After I got my suitcase, I stopped to look around.

  The buildings were made of stone or smooth plaster and held little storefronts under apartments with curtains fluttering in their windows. I’d never been to a real city where you could just run downstairs and find grocery stores or a café. It felt so connected, so alive, as if the place were feeding off the energy of the people who lived in it.

  And the people were magical.

  I could have sat on a bench and watched them for hours — there was just something so perfectly Parisian about them. Even the little old ladies walking their tiny dogs had an extra “something” — a scarf or a pair of red boots or a baby-blue trench coat. The women dressed with great care but not the faintest trace of fussiness — they never looked overdone or like they were trying too hard. I was immediately inspired and ran through a mental list of the clothes I’d brought, planning modifications to look less like a girl from Ohio and more like a young mademoiselle from the sixth arrondissement.

  “Nice, right?” Pilar looked up at the buildings around us. “This is my favorite neighborhood in the whole city.”

  “I love it,” I said. It was mid-March, and the air was still crisp and cool, with a brisk breeze coming from the river. It ruffled my hair and brushed against my cheeks.

  �
��I knew you would,” she said, leaning her head on my shoulder. “I always thought you were like a French person. You have that je ne sais whatever.”

  I felt like a French person. I closed my eyes and inhaled the mingled scents of spring flowers and smoky sweetness from the tea shop two doors down. Even though I was in a foreign country halfway across the world, I felt weirdly like I belonged here … like I’d come home.

  “Come inside, girls,” Madame Mitchell said. “Let’s get settled.”

  Passing through an elaborate wrought-iron gate, we entered the tiny hotel. Inside were marble floors and fancy old chairs. To the right was a small restaurant with a sign that read CAFÉ ODETTE, and to the left was the reception desk. Madame Mitchell made a beeline for it.

  “Norstedt, Sanchez, Iselin,” she called a minute later. “Come get your room keys.”

  We were the only people staying three to a room — but that was because Hannah’s dad had decided that only the penthouse suite was good enough for his little princess. I’d be sleeping on the pullout sofa, but I didn’t mind. I wasn’t paying any extra, so I didn’t have any reason to expect a bedroom of my own.

  The clerk held out a little envelope marked 501, with three keycards inside, and Hannah snatched it from her.

  “Meet in the café at eight for dinner,” Madame Mitchell said. “Peterson and Corbett, come get your keys.”

  Hannah, Pilar, and I started for the elevator — something I hadn’t considered. The penthouse was on the fifth floor. My mind raced for an excuse to take the stairs, but I couldn’t think of one.

  Finally, the door slid open. My heart sank even farther — it was the smallest elevator I’d ever seen, about the size of a bathroom stall.

  “Come on,” Peely said. “We’ll squish.”

  I hesitated.

  “Colette?” Hannah said.

  Just then, I heard voices behind me. Audrey and Brynn were rolling their bags over, talking animatedly about the city. I half-stepped out of their way, and they got into the elevator before noticing that I was standing there.

  “Oh, sorry,” Audrey said, seeing me. “We’ll get off and wait.”

  “Nah, forget it.” I rolled my bag over and shoved it in with the four of them. “Can you just get my bag, Peely? I’ll take the stairs.”

  “Sure,” Pilar said.

  I took a second to catch my breath, and then I started the long climb.

  When I reached the top, Pilar stuck her head out of a door and waved. She’d left my suitcase in the hall, near the elevator, so I took it with me. Still panting, I dropped onto the sofa.

  “That’s why you’re so thin, Colette,” Hannah said approvingly. “That, and you don’t just snack on whatever’s sitting around.”

  Pilar had already unwrapped a piece of chocolate from the fancy welcome basket on the coffee table. When Hannah turned away, she tossed the chocolate into the trash can. “Let’s explore,” she said.

  The penthouse was gorgeous, fit for a president or a queen. There were two bedrooms, each with a king-size bed piled with lush covers and overstuffed pillows, and its own bathroom, updated with gleaming white tiles and modern chrome fixtures. The living area was huge, with an additional bathroom off to the side and a beautiful flowered couch that converted to a pullout bed — the one I’d be using.

  It was incredible. And Hannah and Pilar, used to being fabulously wealthy, moved around it like they owned the place.

  While I, as usual, felt like a complete fraud.

  The cost of the trip included meals from the prix-fixe (fixed-price) menu in the hotel’s café. This was great for me, since I wouldn’t have to spend every meal thinking about cost. But for Hannah, who never stopped to think about the prix of anything, much less care if it was fixe-d or not, this was a fact worth sighing over.

  “So say a person didn’t want to drown herself in fat and carbs?” she said, staring dejectedly at the menu. “What then?”

  “I’m sure you can order from the regular menu,” I said.

  “Yeah — if a waiter would ever bother to come by,” she replied. “I meant to warn you, Colette. The service in France is dismal. And the waiters hate Americans.”

  Our waiter wasn’t dismal, nor did he seem to hate us — that is, until Hannah started bossing him around. Then he gazed down at us with a glare of disdain and took our orders without even the slightest hint of a smile. When he set our plates down with a series of unceremonious thunks, I gazed at the food.

  I’d ordered a spinach and cheese quiche. Mom made quiches sometimes because they were pretty simple — a bunch of eggs in a pie crust.

  But, with all due respect to my mother’s cooking, her quiches were nothing like the one in front of me. This one was orangey golden, its surface a perfectly burnt brown, flecked with the green of the spinach. The crust was crispy but buttery. I cut a slice and took a bite.

  “Oh,” I said, my mouth full of food. The rich salty, cheesy flavor hit my tongue. “Oh my word.”

  “Is it good?” Pilar asked, eyes wide. She’d let Hannah peer-pressure her into ordering a salad.

  I scooped a bite onto my fork and handed it to her. When she popped it into her mouth, her eyes closed, and she made a happy little hum sound.

  “You two act like you’ve never seen food before,” Hannah said, carving at the grilled fish on her plate.

  “I haven’t,” I said. “Not food like this.”

  She looked at me archly. “Just be careful — you don’t want to fly home with your belly hanging over your waistband.”

  “My belly already hangs over my waistband,” Pilar said. “Can I have another bite?”

  I put half the quiche on a bread plate and handed it across to her, and we ate in near silence, relishing the flavor. Hannah clearly disapproved, but she didn’t say another word about it.

  Even she couldn’t resist the dessert plate made up of cookies and macarons, colorful French pastries with a sweet filling sandwiched between two fluffy discs. Delicious and completely addictive. And then the waiter brought over a tray of cheese — soft, melty, creamy cheese that practically collapsed on itself when you sliced it — and we all ate that, too.

  By the time the meal was done, Hannah had the same food-glazed look in her eyes that Pilar and I did.

  “I’m totally not sorry,” I said, heading back toward the stairs.

  “Me, neither,” Peely said. “But I’m taking the elevator.”

  “Who am I kidding?” Hannah said, laughing. “I’m not sorry, either. I’ll start my diet tomorrow.”

  When we got to the room, Hannah suggested we sneak out to some local cafés. But Pilar was already changing into her pajamas, and I couldn’t stop yawning. So we decided to call it a night, and a few minutes later, I was snuggled under the covers of the pullout couch.

  Despite the fact that I hadn’t slept in more than a day, I lay awake for a while, staring at the ceiling. The French ceiling, I thought. I didn’t want to waste one minute of my trip not remembering that I was in Paris — that the food I ate was Parisian food, that the people I met were actual French people, and that the ground I walked on was the most magical and romantic ground in the world.

  The only thing that wasn’t absolutely perfect was a tiny, nagging sense of unease about something — but I couldn’t put my finger on what it was. So I turned onto my side and closed my eyes, resolving to put any unnamed worries out of my mind for the next eight days.

  “WHO ARE WE waiting on?” Madame Mitchell asked.

  We were in the hotel lobby, ready to walk to the Saint-Michel station, where we’d catch a commuter train to our first official French destination: the royal palace at Versailles.

  “Hannah and Pilar,” Audrey said. “Surprise, surprise.”

  Although the way Audrey presented herself to the world physically was cringe-worthy, you had to admire the way she spoke her mind without worrying who she ticked off.

  Madame Mitchell turned to me, pushing her reading glasses up onto the bridge of
her nose. “Any idea when they’ll be down?”

  As if I had any influence over them? I shrugged.

  It had taken me about fifteen minutes to get ready — I wore a gray sweater, a cream-colored corduroy skirt, a pair of gray tights, and knee-high dark-brown walking boots. Based on what I’d observed on the street yesterday, I kept my hair simple, pulling it back in a low bun, and my makeup minimal — pale-brown eye shadow, light blush, and pink lips, no mascara. My only accessories were a pair of small silver hoop earrings and the medallion I’d found in the old box back home. It hung from its ribbon around my neck.

  I’d tried to convince Hannah and Peely that French women were lower maintenance than your typical Ohio prep-school student, but they both insisted on performing their usual elaborate grooming rituals.

  “Versailles has been there for almost four hundred years,” Hannah said, plugging in her flat-iron as I hurried to load my day bag. “I’m sure it can wait another few minutes.”

  Finally, I gave up and left them so I could eat breakfast and meet the rest of the group by nine.

  They came strolling into the lobby together at 9:14. Hannah had meticulously straightened her hair and wore gobs of makeup. She was in one of her doubtless brand-new outfits, a dark-blue minidress with a flared skirt and wide bell sleeves, paired with four-inch heels and a Marc Jacobs handbag the size of a small car.

  Pilar had gelled her curly hair into a bazillion shiny ringlets and wore a pair of skinny jeans with a voluminous bright-pink poncho-style top. On her feet were three-inch cork platforms.

  “Are you going to be able to walk in those shoes, girls?” Madame Mitchell asked, one eyebrow raised.

  “I hope so,” Pilar said. “These are the lowest heels I brought.”

  Hannah flashed a disdainful smile. “I can walk in anything.”

  But after two blocks, we all had to stop and stand around for ten minutes while Hannah went into a shoe store and bought a pair of knee-high flesh-toned boots. At least after that, we could move at a normal pace.

  “This is ridiculous,” Hannah said, coming up alongside me. “They need to repave these streets so people can wear real shoes.”