Death á la Drumstick: The Claire Baskerville Mysteries, #44

By Susan Kiernan-Lewis

Just find a turkey, rustle up some trimmings, grab a few loved ones...and track down the missing mother of your au pair. Did the woman leave voluntarily? Or was she forcibly taken? Those are the questions facing American expat Claire Baskerville who is spending her third Thanksgiving in Paris, away from home and family. 

In a city where she struggles with the language and has trouble finding cranberry relish let alone a turkey, Claire must search the city's streets for a mystery woman who, as it turns out, may very well be the key to everyone's happy holiday.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Susan Kiernan-Lewis
• Release date: Sep 10, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223225218

Susan Kiernan-Lewis

USA TODAY Bestselling Author Susan Kiernan-Lewis is the author of The Maggie Newberry Mysteries, the post-apocalyptic thriller series The Irish End Games, The Mia Kazmaroff Mysteries, The Stranded in Provence Mysteries, The Claire Baskerville Mysteries, and The Savannah Time Travel Mysteries. Visit www.susankiernanlewis.com or follow Author Susan Kiernan-Lewis on Facebook.

Book preview

1

Iguess it shouldn’t surprise me that cranberry sauce is not readily available on the Île de la Cité.

Unfortunately, I realized my error too late in the day and now here I was—stuck without a key ingredient for my American Thanksgiving and no time to find a satisfactory substitute.

From the bench where I sat in the park behind Notre-Dame Cathedral I squinted at my grocery list and then at the pile of groceries I’d loaded into the stroller.

Stuffing. Check.

Celery. Onions. Potatoes. Check.

Chicken broth. Check. A true French housewife would’ve made it from scratch of course. But then, what true French housewife would be making a Thanksgiving dinner with all the trimmings?

My ward Robbie yawned from the confines of his stroller and gave me a baleful look.

Us go home now, he said. "Pwease."

I smiled at him. At three years of age, the child could easily walk the distance from our apartment in the eighth arrondissement to the Latin Quarter, and the exercise would’ve helped tire him out too. But I’d brought the stroller today because I needed it for all the stops and starts of all the visits to the produce market, le boulangerie, la boucherie, la grande épicerie, le comptoir de la gastronomie and of course the wine shop.

In a perfect world I wouldn’t have brought him at all but his sitter was in school and my dear friend and neighbor Geneviève, to whom I might normally have entrusted him, had other plans for the day.

Soon, sweetie, I assured him, although another look at my shopping list belied my words. I pulled a small baggie out of my coat pocket and found a handful of caramel corn which I passed to him. It wouldn’t appease him for long.

The snow from the week before had melted but the bite in the air seemed to threaten to bring the white stuff back any moment now. I glanced at the massive structure of the back of the imposing Notre-Dame Cathedral and realized I should have picked a bench in the sun instead of in the deep shade of Our Lady.

I shivered and massaged the stiffness out of my back. These days it only took a few minutes of not moving to make all my joints and muscles freeze up as if I were a decrepit old lady of eighty and not a spry and well-oiled sixty-three.

I stuffed the grocery list back in my purse. There was nothing for it. I wished I’d had the sense to order the cranberries from Amazon or even a local culinary website before now—the day before Thanksgiving. But I hadn’t.

I’d picked up the turkey yesterday morning which I’d ordered online well before Halloween. For some reason I hadn’t thought of cranberries as being particularly exotic or hard to find in Paris.

More fool me.

Oh, well, I thought. It was already after two in the afternoon and I still had another errand to run before heading home for a nice cup of Earl Gray—and a nap for Monsieur Robbie.

Robbie was my adorable and much-loved ward and also the love-child of my late husband and his airhead girlfriend. I winced at my lack of generosity. It was true that Courtney hadn’t been terribly bright, but she’d had a voracious appetite for living.

Too bad her bite of it had been so short.

I handed over another couple of kernels of caramel popcorn to mollify Robbie and then pointed the stroller in the direction of the eighth arrondissement.

Because Thanksgiving wasn’t a holiday in Paris, I’d be able to run out and get the bread for dinner the morning of the big day. I’d briefly thought about making holiday cookies but with no fewer than thirty thousand patisseries in Paris alone it seemed a definite waste of my time to bake cookies myself.

As it was, I’d make the angel rolls—something I’d never seen in a French bakery—and the pumpkin pie. Rounding out the dessert board would be une tarte aux noix de pecan which I’d get at the patisserie nearest my apartment. It would be as good if not better than the pecan pie I used to make back home in Atlanta.

This was my third Thanksgiving in Paris and while I’d have loved for my daughter and grandson to be here for it, Catherine had informed me that Paris was in their rearview mirror for the foreseeable future. She’d suffered terribly the last two times she’d come over to visit me, and I couldn’t fault her for not wanting to return any time soon.

Still, Thanksgiving, although ostensibly all about gratitude or gorging, was really all about family. And without Catherine, I had to admit to feeling at odds with the world and the season.

Somewhat worse than not having a Honey Baked Ham sitting on my counter to augment the holiday was the realization that my own flesh and blood child seemed to pretty clearly define the concept of family celebration as one not necessarily including me.

2

The theater space of the American Paris School was bustling with teachers, students and parents. A concession stand lined the back wall of the room which faced the stage on which a group of teenagers sat and drank Cokes, laughing and talking.

I didn’t expect to recognize anyone. Even in spite of my neurological disability which made that impossible, I didn’t have a child enrolled in the school.

As soon as I rolled the stroller into the theater space, Robbie’s mood perked up. When he saw Haley coming toward him, he began to climb out of the stroller.

No, Robbie, I said sternly but uselessly as he kicked clear of the stroller and ran to her.

It’s okay, Missus B, Haley said, catching Robbie in her arms.

It always surprised me when I saw Haley outside the environment of my apartment. She was fourteen with jet black hair, and a uniform of all-black. I don’t know if goth dressing is still a thing for young people. Even if it isn’t Haley has put her own spin on it. I know she’s struggled to make friends at the American School here in Paris. One glance at the other students helped me see why.

Most of the other girls wore their hair long—not cropped jaggedly to the ears as Haley did. And their earrings were—quelle surprise—in their ears not their cheeks or noses.

How come you’re here? Haley asked as she hoisted Robbie up on one hip.

Mrs. Murphy asked me to bring a DVD of the pilgrims celebrating the first Thanksgiving, I said.

The upcoming play was to be a loose rendition of Thanksgiving as written by a precocious thirteen-year-old student. I hadn’t seen the script but I knew that the real pleasure of the performance would be limited to those parents who had children in the production.

A DVD? Haley said, one side of her mouth beginning to quirk upward.

She had a tennis racket in one hand, reminding me of her latest and most enduring interest: tennis. The fact that Haley had picked up a hobby at all was a shock in itself