AL01 - Murder in the Marais

SATURDAY

Saturday Morning

AIMEE, IN BROWN wool jacket and pants, strode through the narrow passage behind the rue des Rosiers. She rested her gloved hand in her lined pocket, keeping it warm. Fog crept through the Marais, almost to Place des Vosges. Centuries-old stone, worn smooth by countless footsteps, lined the alley. Above her, red geraniums spilled from window boxes.

A broken street lamp buzzed and blinked randomly. Nearby, on rue Pavee, stood a fancy charcuterie selling imported meats, Javel's cobbler shop, and a small dry cleaner's. She held the partial receipt copy she'd made at Homicide and hoped she'd find the other half.

First she checked the charcuterie. The owner busily informed her that all his customer receipts were yellow copies, unlike the scrap of paper in her hand. Try next door, he suggested.

Aimee opened the spotlessly clean door of Madame Tallard's dry cleaning establishment. Warm air redolent of laundry starch drifted from behind the chipped formica counter.

'Bonjour,' said a white-haired woman from behind a steamy laundry press.

'Bonjour, Madame.' Aimee held up her copy of the paper. 'Would you recognize this?'

The woman emerged from behind the press, feeling her way along the counter. She grinned sightlessly. 'Put it in my hand. There's a lot I can tell from touch.'

The woman was blind. Aimee couldn't believe her bad luck. 'I wondered if this was a cleaning receipt from your shop,' she said.

One of Madame Tallard's eyes was milky white, veiled by a cataract, the other crossed. 'I'm minding the shop for my daughter. The baby's sick.' She reached for something on the counter. 'Here, check yourself.' She thrust a receipt book in Aimee's direction.

'Thank you.' Aimee flipped through a standard receipt book with smudged carbon copies.

No numbers matched, but the forms did.

'Hmm, don't see it,' she said. 'But the receipt looks like one of yours.

'I help my daughter if the items don't have spots or touch-up areas.' Madame Tallard cleared her throat. 'My good eye gets tired easily. We do a very careful job and pay attention to detail. Nothing's too important, I always tell my daughter, for a customer with couture wear.'

Aimee tried being hopeful. Madame Tallard might recall something. 'A Chanel! Maybe you remember it?'

'My daughter mentioned one. . .hot pink?'

'Why, yes,' Aimee said. 'With big knobby buttons.'

'Like these?' She pulled a box of buttons from a drawer under the counter. Her fingers moved over them until she handed Aimee a pearl button with raised interlocking C's. 'I keep buttons in case a customer needs one.'

'Exactly. Only pink,' Aimee said, recognizing the type of Chanel button from Morbier's evidence bag.

'The suit was picked up Wednesday night.' Madame Tallard slapped her palm on the counter. 'But it's not yours. . .'

'I apologize.' Aimee automatically took out her ID. 'I'm a private investigator with Leduc Detective. Who picked up the hot pink Chanel suit?'

Madame Tallard bristled. 'My clientele is private. This is intrusion!'

'Murder is more intrusive, Madame Tallard,' said Aimee. 'Especially when it's around the corner. Your corner.'

'You mean the woman with the swastika?' Old Madame Tallard's hands trembled.

'I'd like your cooperation, Madame.'

Madame Tallard shook her head. 'My daughter told me about it.'

'And what did she say?'

'That being old in the Marais is getting dangerous these days.' She felt her way and perched on a three- legged stool. Aimee leaned over the counter.

'I'm working on behalf of the victim,' she said.

'Did any of those imbeciles see you enter?'

Aimee paused. 'Who exactly do you mean?'

'Imbeciles who paint swastikas on my windows!'

Madame Tallard was afraid, she realized.

'The street was deserted when I came in.' Aimee peered out the window. Nobody. 'Still deserted.'

Madame sighed. 'The suit belongs to Albertine Clouzot. She lives on Impasse de la Poissonnerie.'

Aimee nodded. Impasse de la Poissonnerie, a passage with a neo-classical fountain of the kind noted by Voltaire, led to private cobbled courtyards. Very exclusive.

'Madame Clouzot always sends her dry cleaning here,' Madame Tallard said. 'Tells me we're the only ones who clean the pockets. That's true. What would it have to do with her?'

Aimee felt excited. Maybe Madame Clouzot had been an eyewitness. 'What time did she pick up the suit on Wednesday?'

'Not Madame. Her housekeeper,' Madame Tallard said primly. 'I have nothing to hide.'

'The housekeeper?'

'She came just before I closed. Said that Madame Clouzot needed her suit for a late supper party. And that's all I know.'

'When you closed up the shop did you hear a radio playing loudly?'

Madame Tallard rubbed her lined forehead. 'I didn't linger, I went home.'

She asked more questions but Madame Tallard assured her that she hadn't heard anything unusual. Aimee's heart raced excitedly. Now she could question the owner of the Chanel suit and her housekeeper.

But how would a neo-Nazi from Les Blancs Nationaux following Lili Stein fit with the Chanel suit picked up by the housekeeper? She filed that in her memory and continued down the narrow street.

Her goal, the cobbler shop Chaussures Javel, stood several doors down from the dry cleaner's. She'd been wanting to talk with Javel ever since Rachel Blum mentioned the long-ago concierge's murder the night they met at Lili Stein's.

Bells jingled on the door as she entered. The purr of a cat, industrial strength, came from the window ledge under dingy lace curtains.

'Bonjour. Monsieur Javel?'

'Oui.' He pronounced it 'Wae' as Parisians did. A shriveled brown walnut of a man with thick white hair, he was working on a pair of black lizard pumps. His once blue apron, smudged by shoe polish, was tied behind his back.

After being surprised by Madame Tallard, Aimee decided to be up-front with Javel. That didn't mean she couldn't get her boots reheeled at the same time.

'Can you fix this heel?' she asked.

Javel's face matched the leather he worked on. 'Un moment, sit down.' He indicated a gouged wooden stool with his hand.

The water-stained walls were lined with a yellowish dado border. The dark veneer wooden floor sagged as she stepped on some loose slats near a modest showcase of arch supports and heels. In the corner, a heater emitted dribbles of heat with kerosene fumes. A sense of neglect pervaded his shop.

As Javel stood, reaching for a tool above him, she saw his legs. They were so extremely bowed, they resembled parentheses. He hobbled as he took a step and it was almost painful to watch.

He motioned to her to take off her boot. 'I'll try.' He began to root through his work tray. 'Safer to reheel them before they wear down this far,' he said.