Read Online The Red Brick Cellars: A Tolosa Mystery by R.W. Wallace - Free Book Online

friend, who glowered at Louis, arms crossed.
    Louis returned the scowl. He really should have let that fifth glass of pastis wait. He couldn’t think of a single thing to say, but couldn’t let the Englishwoman have the last word.
    As she passed him to approach the bar, he caught a whiff of the same lavender scent she had exuded at the wake and said the first thing that came to mind. “You should wear your hair down. It suits you much better.”
    He should have kept his mouth shut. Before she could turn around completely, Louis let himself collapse into his chair. He could feel his cheeks heating. Quickly, he turned his chair so his back was to the door and the hellcat, which left him staring straight into the laughing face of his friend.
    “Oh, that was excellent,” Mouad managed between bouts of laughter. “I see you’ve forgotten everything you knew about flirting while you were in the States. What was that?” He even spilled some juice on his pants, he was laughing so hard.
    Louis adjusted his scarf and crossed his arms in annoyance. “That was not flirting.”
    “You got that right,” Mouad agreed. “But it was funny. Too bad Audrey wasn’t here to witness it.”
    ***
    After several tests of sobriety—or lack thereof—Mouad allowed Louis to walk home by himself. His friend wanted to accompany him to his door, but Louis needed to clear his head and preferred doing it alone. He gave the last four glasses of pastis to one of the neighboring tables where a group of students were catching up after two months of vacation, by the looks of it. His brain still kept going off on weird tangents, but that shouldn’t keep him from getting home in one piece.
    As he reached the short canal linking the much more impressive Canal du Midi to the Garonne River, he heard raised voices on the path in front of him. At a bend where the plane trees lining the canal rose up higher than the surrounding apartment buildings, two groups of young men argued.
    Louis had no wish to get involved, but neither did he want to climb back up the steep bank to the road to avoid them. He put his hands in his jean’s pockets and kept most of his face buried in his black and white checkered scarf.
    “We don’t need rich snots like you telling us what to do,” a tall blond man with a severe case of acne said. He looked to be about fifteen, which probably meant he was in his twenties; all students looked younger than they were to Louis. “This city is as much ours as it is yours.” He had a short military haircut and wore a Paris Saint-Germain t-shirt with white sweatpants, which miraculously stayed up despite resting just below his butt.
    A young man from the second group, wearing a button-down shirt and pressed pants, his hair artfully disheveled, retorted, “We never go into your decrepit neighborhood. You stay out of ours!”
    Great. Louis had walked right into a social dispute. If he had to guess, he’d say the young PSG fan and his two black friends were from the Mirail neighborhood or one of the other poorer parts of Toulouse, whereas the young buck and his three equally neatly dressed friends were likely studying Financial Sciences at the Social Sciences University not two hundred meters from where they now stood. Probably kids of rich families planning on continuing the family tradition of wealth.
    “We go where we want.” One of the black giants had a low rumbling voice like distant thunder. So far there was no real threat in his voice, but his arms were crossed over his chest and he gave his opponents a dirty look. “Now get out of our way.”
    The rich boy wasn’t impressed. “How would you guys feel if we showed up on your doorstep? If we started talking to your girlfriends?”
    The black man rumbled a laugh. “Then you’d be in serious trouble. Our girls could take you pussies any day of the week.”
    Acne-face leered. “Sounds like you feel threatened by us being here. Afraid your girlfriends will run off with