leaning against the stone wall below a peeling circus poster. The cobbled courtyard smelled of yesterday's garbage. To her left, a vacant concierge's loge guarded the entrance.
On the second-floor landing, the dark wood door of Lili Stein's apartment stood ajar. From inside, a radio program blared. She knocked loudly several times. No answer. She pushed the creaking front door open.
Slowly she entered the dim hallway of a musty apartment, reluctant to invade someone's privacy. She hesitated. Still no answer.
Inside, her eyes adjusted to the darkness. From the hall, she peered into the dim living room, then walked inside. A pine sideboard held a cloth runner embroidered with the Star of David and bearing brass candlesticks. Beside that, a vintage radio stood next to a recliner, the upholstery worn and spattered with grease spots. Approaching the radio, she saw a framed sepia photo on the wall. In it a young girl, wearing an old-fashioned school uniform, stood arm in arm with a stout aproned woman before a shop window. Both wore stars embroidered with JUIF on their chests. Aimee paused, saddened. She recognized that window as the one below on rue des Rosiers belonging to Delices du Stein. Under the photo a single white rose bloomed in a vase.
Lili Stein must be deaf to play the radio so loud, she thought. Maybe the old woman had a serious hearing loss.
She approached the radio, an old crystal set with knobby dials and yellowed channel band. She turned the volume lower. Used tissues littered the floor. 'Madame Stein, I'm here with your packet!'
No response.
Her neck muscles tightened. Water trickled from somewhere out in the hallway. She didn't like this. Wasn't the old lady expecting her?
She paused beneath the living-room door frame. Across from her in the bathroom, a leaky faucet dripped onto a brown stain in the basin.
Her hand brushed the dark paneled wall searching for a switch. But her fingers only came back greasy.
Her anxiety mounted. She passed the dingy bathroom and edged down the narrow hallway. At the end, what looked to be a bedroom door stood partly open. She felt for her keys in her leather bag, positioning the pointed edges between her fingers as a weapon, her first lesson from the martial-arts dojo.
Carefully, she wedged the door open wider. In the dim light an old woman was sprawled on the bed, her stockings rolled down.
'Madame, Madame?'
She switched on the light. The woman's ashen face stared vacantly at the cobwebbed ceiling. Aimee walked towards the bed, then froze. Someone had carved a swastika into the woman's forehead. She gasped, gripping the bed frame as her legs buckled. Her heart pounded. She took a breath, then forced herself to touch the cheek. Smooth and cold like marble. . .
She reached for her Phillips screwdriver, part of the mini-tool set she carried in her bag, scanning the room for the attacker. But the only other inhabitant was a bloated angelfish, its silvery bubbles rising in the tank on the old rolltop desk. Wooden slats were nailed over the room's lone window, blocking all but a ribbon of light from the light well.
She stepped gingerly around the bed. After checking the armoire and peering into dust balls under the sagging mattress, she felt convinced no attacker lurked in the bedroom. A fly buzzed, circling near the unblinking eyes whose gaze was locked on the ceiling. Disgusted, she shooed it away.
Alert for an intruder, she padded down the hallway, examining each closet and scouting every room. Empty.
She hadn't come face to face with a homicide since working with her father. Her impulse was to run out of the apartment, call the
In the bedroom she surveyed the dead woman more carefully. Deep and bloodless, the swastika stretched from her eyebrows to the wispy gray hairs at her hairline, exposing bone and pulpy tissue. A gold chain with Hebrew letters hung twisted in the bloody ligature mark around her neck.
She swore, shooing the persistent fly, who'd alighted on the woman's wool skirt that crumpled up at her knees. Swollen ankles puffed out over scuffed shoes. Aimee noticed the scratches and bruising on the pasty legs; the hands, in half fists, lay at her side as if she'd died struggling.
'In Lili Stein's hands' was what she'd promised Soli Hecht. That no longer made sense as the woman was dead. She wasn't superstitious but. . .she bent down, peering at the woman's hand. Bits of wood splinters were embedded in her palms. Aimee looked around her. No marks were scratched in the wood slats nailed over the window. Crutches lay uselessly on the floor. Her fingernails were broken and jagged. Like a cornered animal, Aimee thought, she'd tried to claw her way out.
Aimee carefully put her fingers on the blue-veined wrist. She pulled out the envelope with the photo image and touched it to Lili's cold hand, not yet stiff with rigor mortis.
In that moment she felt the murderer hovering in this dank room. Foreboding washed over her. She became aware of the nasal-voiced radio announcer. In a prerecorded message yesterday to the labor unions at Lille, Cazaux, the French trade minister and expected appointee for prime minister, had promised strict foreign immigration quotas. 'French industry, French workers, French products!' Cazaux's familiar voice ranted as crowds roared.
Just what France needed, she thought, more fascism.
'Maman?' A man's deep voice came from the hallway.
Startled, she stood up too quickly and knocked into the bedroom's rolltop desk. The angelfish tank swayed, and she reached out to steady it. That's when she saw the torn photo under the tank, barely visible through the black gravel. She pulled it out, quickly aligning the encrypted photo next to this torn piece. They matched. Shaken, she realized she held the missing corner of the photo that this woman might have been murdered for.
'Maman,
She slid the photos into the envelope and stuffed it down the calf of her leather boot.
'Monsieur, don't come in here,' she said loudly, summoning authority in her voice. 'Call le Police.'
'Eh? Who. . .' A middle-aged man, rail thin and tall, walked in. He stooped as if apologizing for taking up space. His forelocks were worn long in the Hasidic style under a black felt hat with an upturned brim.
She blocked his view. 'Is Lili Stein your mother?'
'What's happened?' He stiffened. 'Maman is ill?' He peered over Aimee's shoulder before she could stop him. 'No, no,' he said shaking his head.
She edged toward this man, trying to help him.
'Who are you?' Fear registered in his eyes.
'I'm working with. . .' She caught herself before she mentioned Hecht. 'Temple E'manuel. I'm a private detective, we had an appointment.' She guided him towards an alcove hung with rolled scriptures. 'Sit down.'
He shook her off. 'How did you get in here?' His eyes grew wide in terror.
'Monsieur Stein?' She kneeled at his eye level, willing him to meet her gaze.
He nodded.
'I'm sorry. The door was ajar. I found her a few minutes ago.'
He collapsed, sobbing. She pulled out her cell phone, punched in 15 for SAMU, the emergency service, and gave the address. Then she called 17, Police Centrale.
By the time the SAMU van screeched to a halt in the courtyard, waves of the Brigade Criminelle then the Brigade Territoriale had already tramped through. The Police from the 4th arrondissement came next. A rotund figure puffed up the stairs, a droopy mustache above the half smile on his face. Aimee blinked in surprise. 'Inspecteur Morbier!'
She hadn't seen this old friend of her father's for several years. Not since the day of the explosion. Everything came flooding back to her: the reek of cordite and TNT, the hiss and pop of cold rain falling on twisted hot metal, her palm burning on the surveillance van's door handle. She had watched as the force blew her father into a smoking hulk.
