2 Éclair Murder Read Free Page A

staff.

    “I’m sorry guys. We’ll call you back in when this ordeal is over. In the meanwhile, enjoy the morning off.”  

    They filtered out, but Sebastien and Berenice lingered as Cyril’s team got started.  

    “What a pain,” said Berenice.  

    “Don’t worry,” said Clémence. “I know exactly what to do.”  

    “What?” asked Sebastien.

    “Call my mother,” she said.

CHAPTER 4
    After Clémence informed her parents, who were back in Tokyo after traveling around Japan, her mother called Cyril and gave him a piece of her mind. She said that if the store wasn’t reopened by tomorrow, she’d have the country’s best lawyers down Cyril’s throat. She also threatened to bill him with the profit loss because there was no way any of her staff had anything to do with this.  

    After she helped Caroline call and inform the customers with lunch reservations that the place would be closed for the day and that they would receive a 50% reduction for their next lunch, she put up two signs to inform walk-in customers of the closure as well.  

    Clémence was so mad that she turned down lunch with Sebastien and Berenice. She went home to feed Miffy and tried to calm down.  

    In her bedroom bathroom, she took a lavender bubble bath and tried to relax. She thought about the dead man in the bush. He had died eating pistachio éclairs. They had been fresh éclairs from what she could tell. It meant that they had been bought on the same day. There was no way that the staff would have had anything to do with this, on purpose or by accident. It wasn’t as if they had bottles of poison just lying around.

    But Clémence was worried. What if it was the éclairs? What if one of the bakers poured in something toxic by mistake, or some stranger had snuck in to do some damage? What if it was a competitor out to destroy their reputation?

    Clémence splashed water on her face. She had to relax. She just had to wait for the results. When Cyril concluded that Damour had nothing to do with this death, the store would be reopened and it would be business as usual.  

    She got out of the tub, ate lunch, and thought about how she could enjoy the rest of her day. It was an unexpected day off. If she were to hang out with Berenice and Sebastien, she would probably want to rant about Cyril, the whole situation, and get mad again. Maybe it was best for her to be alone and mellow out that day.

    She decided to paint. She had set up an easel on the balcony earlier that week with the intention of painting again, but she never got around to it since she had been so busy at work. But her first love was art after all. She did have great ambition to be a painter and put on her own show at a reputable art gallery someday.

    Clémence had graduated from École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, one of the best art schools in the country. She mainly studied the techniques of classical paintings. It had been a long, rigorous process, but she did it because she wanted to perfect the techniques of the masters so she would have to tools to develop her own style of painting.  

    What her style was, however, she didn’t exactly know yet, even after all the years at school. She personally loved the impressionist paintings, cubism, and anything surreal. She really liked the child-like whimsy in Marc Chagall’s work.  

    For now, she would try to have fun with art again. To loosen herself up, she decided to sketch Miffy. She sat down with a glass of wine and called Miffy out to the balcony.

    It wasn’t hard for Miffy to stay still. Clémence gently told her to sit, explaining that she was going to draw her in charcoal. Miffy smiled and wagged her tail as if she understood.  

    After an hour, she had five rough sketches of Miffy in various poses. She decided that she was ready to paint a portrait of Miffy.  

    It had to be good enough for her parents to want to frame and display in the apartment. The thought of that made Clémence