“Oh wow!” Panda exclaimed. “We’ve been there!”

We were looking at an article Mom had left up on her laptop while she was taking a break from working on her blog. It seemed as if there had been a robbery at the Louvre, the famous museum in Paris that we had visited in April of 2018!

“Yes,” I replied. “It was really fun, too. Remember we brought Mom a Paris coffee cup?”

“And we saw the Mona Lisa and the Picasso exhibit,” Panda added. “But I did always think the Picasso Museum was in Madrid.” I thought for a moment before answering. “Yeah, it’s strange how stuff like that happens to us on adventures. Oh well, let’s read the article and see what got stolen.”

“Jewels stolen from Louvre in shocking heist worth more than $100 million,” I read in disbelief.

“Brazilian Louvre robbery crew may have been hired by collector,” Panda read when I clicked to the next screen. “But why would they come all the way from Brazil?” I tried not to laugh as I corrected him. “It’s doesn’t say Brazilian, it says brazen. Brazen means right out in the open without trying to hide it. They just ran in and took the jewels and left, in broad daylight.” Panda looked a bit perplexed. “That doesn’t sound like it was very smart,” he commented. Suddenly we looked at each other, and we knew we were both thinking the same thing. “We’d better go back to the Louvre!” we exclaimed in unison.

Since we already knew the way, it wasn’t long before our travel tunnel was gliding over the Paris skyline. “Hey Foster!” Panda exclaimed, as we flew over a part of town we had never seen before. “Are those rooftops seriously turquoise?” I had to agree that they were, at least in this light. “Mom would love seeing this,” I ventured. “But I think she’d be too scared to get in a plane and fly over it.” Panda agreed. “Raised by Swedes,” he quipped.

Before I could reply, we found ourselves landing in somebody’s back yard! We were wondering how that happened when we heard a voice from the fence above us. We looked up to see a large, orange cat eyeing us curiously. “Who are you?” the cat asked, briskly though not in an unfriendly manner. Then he turned his attention to Panda. “Are you a real panda or a stuffed animal?” he demanded. “And is that a real pocket?”

The cat listened with interest as we introduced ourselves and explained why we had come to Paris. “Tres bien,” he said thoughtfully as we spoke. We knew from Mom’s “Hercule Poirot” audio books that “tres bien” was “very good” in French. “Well, mes amis,” he said when we had finished our story. “Would you care to go with me to have a delicious snack?”

As we waited for our food and cafe au lait, we discussed the jewel heist with our new friend, whose name turned out to be François. “Do you think it was an inside job?” François asked gravely. “We don’t know,” Panda replied. “We do have a couple of suspicions, though.” We told him about the men in orange jackets and how they were always stealing things. François listened attentively, nodding every now and then and murmuring things to himself in French. “Mes amis,” he said finally, in a confidential tone. “Have you as yet had the good fortune to make the acquaintance of – ” he lowered his voice – “les pingouins?”

“The penguins!” we exclaimed in unison. “Are they here? How do you know them?” François explained that he was an undercover agent with the French police. He had met the penguins recently, as they had come to France to help with the Louvre investigation. They were staying in a hotel across town. “We will take the bus to their hotel,” he said, “and then we will all go to discuss the case together.”

We were overjoyed to see our penguin friends. We were also pleased to see that the hamster was with them. The last we’d seen any of them was in New York where they had been working for the NYPD. Once our friends had grabbed their cell phones and locked up their hotel rooms, we all got back on the bus. Fortunately, we were the only passengers, so we were able to discuss the case freely. Everyone had a different theory as to how the men in orange jackets had gotten out of jail in the first place, much less come to the Louvre to steal the jewels. And if they had done it, where were they hiding them?

Suddenly the bus stopped with a jolt. Hearing a commotion outside, we all looked out the window to see what had happened.

Imagine our surprise when we saw that there was a police blockade in front of the Arc de Triomphe! Panda consulted his Paris travel brochure and remarked that we were about a nineteen-minute drive from the Louvre. “Do you think this has anything to do with the jewel heist?” he asked, voicing the question that was in all of our minds.

Then suddenly, Panda jumped down from the bus window and ran up to stand behind the French police officers! I followed, knowing it was my responsibility to keep him from getting lost. Behind us we could hear an officer saying something to the bus driver in French, and the bus continued down the street, leaving us in a cloud of diesel exhaust. Inwardly mumbling about Panda’s disregard for the “element of risk”, I tried to hear what the men in front of us were saying. I thought I caught the French phrases, “les hommes” and “vestes orange“, but I couldn’t be sure.

Meanwhile, our friends, realizing there was nothing they could do to stop the bus, continued to the end of the line and found themselves downtown. The penguins told us later that they had decided to stop at an outdoor cafe for a snack. At first, they didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary, other than the lack of customers, and the fact that the entire cafe was orange.

But while they were waiting for their food, something shiny under one of the chairs caught their attention. As they moved closer to investigate, they saw a pile of colorful jewels. Thinking it must have something to do with the heist at the Louvre, they scooped them up and put them in their pockets for evidence.

François and the hamster had gone to a different cafe, where François said some of his informants regularly hung out. “We have not seen anything unusual today,” said a pretty calico named Adele. “But yesterday we found a pile of jewels at the orange cafe across the street.” When François asked what they had done with the jewels, Jacques, the brown and white tabby, spoke up. “We did not touch them for fear of getting our paw prints on them,” he said. “We left them where they were, under one of the chairs. We tried to text you, but your phone must have been off.” François frowned, checking his phone. “I was probably inside the Louvre. There is practically no cell service in there.”

Meanwhile, Panda and I had followed the police officers until they came to the entrance of the Louvre. Since the museum was still open to visitors, we followed the crowd inside.

As we wandered through the exhibits, we saw a lady sitting on a chair drawing a picture of one of the statues. “Hey, is that Mom?” Panda asked in surprise. We tiptoed closer for a better look. It wasn’t Mom, but a nice artist who greeted us cheerfully. “Bonjour,” she said. “Can you stand over there so I can add you to my drawing?” We were happy to oblige. “Merci,” she said when she had finished. “My drawing is now a true masterpiece!” We thanked her for letting us be in her picture, and continued on our way.

This time we decided to go through the jewel section, which we had somehow missed on our previous visit. “I thought the crown jewels were stolen,” Panda remarked, as we looked through the glass at a crown and a diamond ring. “They were,” I replied. “But not all of them. And the thieves even dropped some on their way out.” Panda shook his head slowly. “Not smart,” he said. “Who would do something like that, besides. . .” He didn’t finish his sentence, because we both knew what he was going to say. The men in orange jackets!

Soon we came to a lovely tiara made of diamonds and sapphires. “I want to see this close up,” Panda said, jumping over the glass and into the exhibit. “Panda!” I exclaimed. “Get out of there! You’re going to get in trouble!” But it was too late! I heard a voice behind me saying, “Attrapez-le!” Get him!” Before I knew it, a police officer had grabbed Panda and was taking him outside!

“Come with me, monsieur le panda,” was the last thing I heard the officer say before they disappeared around the corner.

Panda told me later that he had been held for questioning at the Paris police station. After proving to them that his pocket was indeed real, and that he had no jewels in it, they decided he was innocent. But they still had no idea what to do with him. He waited patiently while they discussed the problem. “He says he’s from Fresno, but who knows where that is,” said one officer, who was holding Panda a bit too tightly, considering that he had no plans of trying to escape. “Maybe we could put an ad in the newspaper,” his partner replied.

Since I had assumed the police would take Panda to the station, that was the first place I went to look for him. When I came up to the front gate, I was dismayed by what I heard. “A newspaper ad might work,” the officer holding Panda was saying. “But where should we put him in the meantime?” The officers hadn’t noticed me, so I decided to speak up. “Umm, excuse me, officers,” I began, “but that’s my friend you have there.” The men stared at me, amazed. “Do you mean to say this is your panda? What kind of a cat owns a panda? C’est incroyable!” It took me a few minutes to explain that while Panda was my best friend, he didn’t actually belong to me, at least not in that sense of the word. Panda, who appeared to have temporarily lost his voice, found it again and said, “Please, sirs, can I go now?” The officers agreed to let him down if he promised not to go into anymore museum exhibits. “Believe me, he won’t,” I assured them as Panda jumped down and hurried over to me.

After convincing the officers that we posed no threat to the jewels, we explained the real reason for our visit. They listened with interest as we walked along the street until we came to the front of the Louvre. There was nobody in sight, and the museum was obviously closed. “So you are saying that these men, the ones with the, as you say, orange jackets, may have stolen the jewels?” one of them asked. We nodded. “They are always stealing things,” I explained. “But they always get caught. They’re known for international intrigue.” The officers looked at us, then at each other. One of them rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “L’intrigue internationale,” he repeated in French, while the other nodded. “We’d better get back to our hotel,” Panda said politely, “but we’ll let you know if we find out anything.” We left the men to guard the museum and continued down the street.

A few minutes later we got a text from the hamster telling us to meet them at “La Crème de Paris” cafe. When we arrived, everyone was waiting for us. “We have news,” the head penguin announced gravely. “And we don’t know whether it’s good news or bad news.” Breathlessly, we waited for him to go on.

“We were having lunch at François’ house, and his owners were reading the news on their laptop. When they went to the kitchen to get some coffee, we were able to see the articles. It seems as if the police have arrested the jewel thieves!” François spoke next. “And,” he said in a somber voice, “it was not the men in the orange jackets.”

A Suivre (To Be Continued. . .)

Author’s note: The background photos for this story are from Unsplash.com, a royalty-free photo site. The news photos are screenshots from Google searches. French phrases from Google Translate. French is not one of Mom’s two and a half languages.