Chapter 4
Tomi was right. Paris was cold.
We were all sitting at a small café overseeing the Eiffel Tower. Tomi and Clive had been complaining about being hungry.
I flipped through my French phrasebook. Since none of us knew French, we were going to need it.
"Okay… help is au secours and 'it was you' is c'est vou. Got that?"
"What if we need to call the police?"
"Clive, police in French is the same as it is in English."
"Oh."
o-0-o
Soon enough we were roaming the streets of Paris. We weren't, however, looking for the hypnotist. No, we were looking for my wayward uncle.
A short old lady bumped into me. "Excuse me," she mumbled.
I smiled and pulled my wallet out of her jacket. "Nice try, uncle."
"How do you do it?" Clive asked, obviously impressed.
The lady pulled off her disguise, revealing a tall, long-nosed mustachioed man.
"A true master never reveals his secrets, my boy." Don Paolo flicked his mustache into place. "Anyway, I heard about this hypnotist of yours. Her name is Shanton."
"How'd you know?" Clive asked suspiciously.
"This is Paris, my boy. People like her tend to stand out."
"Can you tell us more about her?"
"Gladly."
As we walked back to the hotel, I heard a loud scraping sound above us, like someone was pushing something very large and very heavy.
"Clive, look out!" I pushed Clive forward at the same time as I pushed myself backwards.
A giant vase burst on the sidewalk, right where we were standing a few moments ago. It surely would've bludgeoned us if we hadn't gotten out of the way.
"How did you…?" Clive looked at me funnily.
"Lucky guess," I breathed. I remembered the letter from earlier.
"Well let's get out of here before she gets even luckier." Don Paolo grunted.
o-0-o
I nearly died twice at the hotel. Once when Clive and I were leaning on the railing of the hotel balcony and it gave way. It was a good thing that we were only on the second floor and Don Paolo was standing nearby. Another time when we ordered room service, I smelled something off about my drink. Turns out it was poisoned.
"Someone is trying to kill you." Gina concluded.
"That's preposterous. Why would anyone want to hurt Katarina?"
I was thinking about sharing the letter with them, but it would probably just scare them, especially Clive since he was mentioned too. I decided to keep quiet, just in case.
"What about this Shanton lady?"
"Oh yes. She's about 28 years old, lives alone, a knockout, French-"
"How does this help?"
"I was getting to that. Anyway, she's a hypnotist. She sings a song and whatever she says, the audience does."
"We already knew that."
"Ok… well, the song isn't in French. Mostly. At the end, it's French, but the rest is pretty much a whole lot of gibberish."
"Mm-hm. I'll look into it."
I heard a muffled noise coming from one of my suitcases. I opened it, revealing two teenagers, a boy and a girl.
"Flora! Luke! What are you doing in here?"
The two stowaways brushed their clothes off.
"How many books does one person need?" Luke pulled of a book impressed into his back.
"You didn't take any out, did you?"
"Well, yeah. Do you really need thirteen books on hypnotizing? What were you planning to do? Hypnotize the professor into not liking puzzles as much?"
"Not a bad idea actually… but no. Weren't you listening to what the case is about?" Luke shrugged.
"Why?" I asked out of desperation.
"We wanted to come along."
I raised my eyebrow. Should I tell the professor and have him take them home or keep them along? I should've sent them home, considering I was being chased by a crazy, psycho homicidal maniac while chasing a potential one.
"Fine. But you are going to call the professor, not me." I handed them the phone from the bedside table.
Luke exchanged a nervous glance with Flora. He took the phone carefully and dialed in the professor's number.
"Hello professor! No, we aren't in school. We're, um, with Katarina and Clive." You could hear the professor yelling at him, despite being on the phone.
"Paris! Paris! You stowawayed to Paris!"
"Flora can have the phone." Luke handed the phone to Flora.
"You better put me back on Luke. I'm not done talking to you yet!"
Don Paolo hung up the phone. "If he really wants to talk to you, he'll come all the way here.
