Harper Lin - Patisserie 06 - Crème Brûlée Murder Read Online Free

her a flirtatious smile. “I can make a DVD and drop it off at Damour tomorrow, if you’re open.”  

    “We probably will be,” Clémence. “I talked to my parents earlier, and they want the store open. Merci . I really appreciate it.”  

    Arthur scowled at him, as he stood up and followed Clémence out the door.

    Out on the street, they had to call a taxi company for a pickup because the Métros had stopped running.  

    As they waited, Arthur turned to her. “I don’t like the way that Ralph was flirting with you tonight.”  

    Clémence played dumb. “Was he?”

    “The way he was looking at you, even when I was there.”  

    “Oh. You weren’t jealous, were you?”  

    “Jealous?” Arthur huffed. “I’m talking about respect.”  

    “So you’ve never flirted with a girl while her boyfriend was there in your playboy days?”  

    Arthur thought about it. “Only when I thought the girl deserved better.”  

    “Ha! I knew it. All men are slime.”  

    “So this surveillance guy thinks he’s better than me? Please.”  

    “You’re blowing things out of proportion,” Clémence tried to say gently. “Some guys just like to flirt.”  

    “So you knew he was flirting. And you flirted back.”  

    She rolled her eyes. “Come on. Don’t be that way. All you need to know is that I don’t have an interest in Ralph romantically. I don’t even know him that well.”

    Arthur took a deep breath as the taxi came. “All right. You’re right. Forget it.”

    “We have way bigger things to worry about than whether some guy was flirting with me or not.” Clémence leaned on his shoulder in the backseat to show that she wasn’t mad. “And it’s not to our disadvantage. He’s helping us.”  

    “Your company’s paying him to work for you. He has to help you either way.”  

    Clémence shot him a look.

    He kissed her forehead. “Yeah, I know. I’m sorry you didn’t have a better birthday.”

    Clémence laughed. “Don’t worry. I’m used to this type of thing by now.”  

    ***

    “Geez, maybe it’s a bad idea to be open this morning,” Clémence muttered to herself. Her bright blue eyes were fixed on the door of les toilettes . It was almost opening hour. The hired catering crew had helped clean up the night before, and her staff had done the rest.

    Since there was no evidence of foul play, the police didn’t think Damour was a crime scene. Clémence’s parents, who were still in Singapore, had agreed with Caroline, the head manager, that the store should stay open. Clémence didn’t think so, but she understood their reasoning. If Damour closed, it would’ve meant something was wrong. They were lucky enough as it was that no paparazzi had been around in the middle of the night. At one a.m., the tourists had also gone, and there were few witnesses to the police cars except the neighboring staff of other cafés and restaurants.  

    News might break sooner or later that Cesar Laberg had died in Damour’s men’s room, but business was business. It wasn’t as if anybody at Damour was responsible for Cesar’s death…wasn’t it?  

    However, Clémence did feel guilty about the whole thing. A murder wasn’t a fun way to end a party. And it didn’t feel right to let customers use the men’s room when it had recently hosted a fresh corpse. She made the executive decision to put an “out of order” sign, and she made the women’s toilet unisex.  

    Clémence told Caroline what she’d done before heading back to the kitchen, where Sebastien and Berenice were working at one table. The brother and sister were both making éclairs, piping the cream filling into the choux pastry.  

    “How’s Maya?” Clémence asked Sebastien. “She seemed a bit traumatized last night.”  

    Sebastien shook his head. “She’s probably sleeping in right now, because she couldn’t really fall asleep after all the madness yesterday evening.”  

    “Poor girl,” Berenice