And through it all, Ma tracked Mary Odermann’s credit card into Paris and into restaurants and museums and bars and clothing stores. And, most especially, into Hotel L. Empire, and a few days later, into Boutique Hotel Konfidentiel on Rue de l’Arbre where it looked as if she’d settled in.
And then, seventeen days after Jeri was killed, we were ready to go.
“Marti” and I flew out together as husbands and wives often do. We flew out of San Francisco. Sarah drove to Las Vegas and was on a flight that left a day later. Sarah was Ashley Gilley. All of us were going to Paris for pleasure, not business. What that pleasure was, I didn’t specify and neither did Ma, but it wasn’t sightseeing.
The flights were long but uneventful. The food was marginal, as airline food has become. Customs in France was no problem. The officials weren’t even rude, which was a surprise. Steve and Marti sailed on through, caught a shuttle into Paris proper, and settled in at Boutique Hotel Konfidentiel. Ashley arrived a day later and got a room not far away at a hotel called France Louvre on Rue de Rivoli.
We met at noon in the lobby of the Konfidentiel the day after Sarah arrived and made plans. Ma was still able to track “Mary’s” credit card, so we knew Julia was still around. Asking the hotel staff for her room number didn’t seem like a splendid idea given what we were there to do, so we began the process of stalking.
Ma and I hung around the lobby of the Konfidentiel. I was an old guy who read newspapers, mostly The Connexion, which was in English. In French, I might’ve held the damn thing upside down. I also thumbed through magazines. Ma moved around some, into the hotel’s restaurants and the gift shop, keeping a sharp eye out. Julia, of course, wasn’t going to look at all like the wife of a murdered presidential candidate so we had to give women a close look without appearing to do so.
Sarah had been to Julia’s house in Reno, asking for water, so she wore a curly black hairpiece that spilled halfway down her back, dark glasses, bright red lipstick, sandals, a long black skirt, an ivory shirt, and a lightweight navy blue jacket. She circulated more widely, outside the hotel and into nearby shops and restaurants that Julia had frequented. She didn’t stray far, but she covered some likely ground.
It took only two days.
At three thirty of the second day, Ma watched as Julia came off an elevator—a lift—strolled through the lobby and out the door without a word to anyone. She was a blond with bouffant hair under a wide-brim hat, sunglasses, a tight-lipped, standoffish look that didn’t invite conversation.
Ma got on the phone. Sarah answered with “hi,” and Ma said, “Yellow dress, cream sweater, big hat, front door.” At the door she looked out and said, “West on Rue Saint Honoré,” and Sarah said, “Got it.” Julia didn’t make it sixty yards from the hotel before Sarah was on her tail.
Ma’s job was to ride the elevator up with Julia once she made it back to the hotel. She settled into a chair in the lobby beside me to wait. She didn’t fidget, tap her foot, anything; like a spider waiting for meat, she just waited. I felt more like a black mamba, wanting to strike, to sink in poison-filled fangs.
Sarah followed Julia from fifty to a hundred yards back. They went west on Rue Saint Honoré to Rue du Louvre, then to Rue de Rivoli, south to the Louvre. Julia didn’t go into the museum. She kept on to the Seine, then along the Quai du Louvre, turned north again on Rue du Pont Neuf where she sat at a tiny outside table and took her time with an espresso as people passed by on the sidewalk. Then she wandered north on Pont Neuf, pausing to examine colorful clothing in shop windows, entered a few of them, came out of one with a bag that held a newly purchased something, and finally reached Rue Saint Honoré again where she turned a corner onto Rue de l’Arbre and headed back to the Konfidentiel.
Sarah phoned it in.
I saw Julia come in. I wanted to kill her then and there, but that wasn’t the plan. My fingers tingled as the woman who’d murdered Jeri crossed the lobby, paused for half a minute at the main desk, then continued on to the elevators where Ma was standing, looking at a row of illuminated numbers that indicated on which floor the elevator cage was at the moment.
Julia
