AL01 - Murder in the Marais

fiance. With Lili gone, I suppose no one will ever know.'

Aimee wondered why, if Lili had seen a murder, she hadn't told anyone.

Rachel turned and stared hard at Aimee. 'No good comes of bringing all this up again,' she said. 'Leave the dead alone.'

'This isn't the first time I've heard that. Are you going to put more obstacles in my way, Rachel? Threaten me again?'

Rachel shook her head stubbornly.

'You sent me the fax!' Aimee said.

'I'll say it once more.' Rachel's eyes hardened. 'Forget the past, it's over.'

'No, Rachel.' Aimee stood up. The story made sense now. 'You must relive it every day. Were you an informer? Fifty years isn't punishment enough, is it?'

Rachel's bravado disintegrated and she covered her face with her hands. 'It wasn't supposed to happen that way,' she wailed. 'They got the wrong apartment. I didn't mean to!'

'How can you tell me to forget the past?' Aimee said. 'You are haunted by it.'

'Three days later they took all of us.'

Aimee shook her head. Rachel remained hunched over, her eyes glazed and far off.

Aimee let herself out, emerging into busy rue des Rosiers. Lili's staircase contained answers. How to obtain them was the problem. A big problem.

She approached Abraham, ignoring Sinta's look. He cleared his throat.

'We need to talk,' she said.

'D'accord.' He turned to Sinta, but she'd already gone.

They walked slowly down the rue des Rosiers, past the Stein shop and towards the rue du Temple. At the Place Ste. Avoie, opposite graffitied Roman pillars, they sat down at an outdoor cafe.

'I apologize, Mademoiselle Leduc. You mean well, I know. The rabbi at Temple E'manuel told me I should be more helpful, not so intolerant.' Abraham Stein looked down at his hands.

She kept silent until the waiter served him a mineral water and her a double cafe creme.

'Things are difficult for you now, Monsieur Stein,' she said. 'I understand.'

On the sidewalk, a father grabbed his toddler daughter, who'd tripped on the curb, catching her before she tumbled into an oncoming car. He smothered her tears in a hug, then plopped her on his shoulders.

Aimee recalled her twelfth birthday when she refused to let her father continue chaperoning her to ballet lessons. Oddly, he hadn't been upset. He'd just shaken his head in exasperation, saying, 'You may be half French but you're all Parisian, every stubborn bit of you.' Then he hugged her long and hard, something he'd done rarely after her mother had left.

'What have you found out?' he said.

She shook off the memories. 'Last night I enlisted with Les Blancs Nationaux and almost bashed your synagogue.'

Abraham choked on his mineral water. 'What?'

She told him about the neo-Nazi meeting at the ClicClac and their target. She neglected the part about her shoulder and Yves.

His eyes opened wide in alarm.

'Please detail for me what your mother did last Wednesday afternoon.'

He stopped and thought. 'Wednesdays she usually took the afternoon off, ran errands, bought special food for Shabbat.'

'Did she cook?'

He shook his head. 'Normally we have Wednesday supper at my nephew Ital's apartment. But that evening Maman never showed up. So I came looking for her.'

'Ital lives nearby?'

'Around the corner on rue Pavee.'

She stirred her coffee excitedly. 'Near the cobbler Javel's shop?'

'Next door.'

Somehow this all fit, she thought, remembering the newly heeled shoes in the closet Sinta had commented on. 'Had she picked up a pair of shoes from Javel's that day?'

He paused. 'Ital's daughter's bat mitzvah is next week. Maman mentioned something about shoes. I'm not sure.'

'What else did she do?'

'She'd sort the garbage Wednesdays for me to put in the light well, then come over.'

Aimee almost dropped her spoon. Morbier's men had found evidence of a struggle near the garbage.

'Your mother had already been down in the light well.'

Stein shook his head. 'Maman never went in there. Refused.'

Something clicked in her brain—the closeness of Javel's shop, the light well where his fiancee had been found, and now where Lili Stein's blood traces were fifty years later. Everything was pointing to Javel.

She braced herself to explore an ugly avenue. 'Monsieur Stein. . .'

'Abraham.' He smiled for the first time.

'D'accord. Call me Aimee.' This made it harder. Too bad, she liked this man, felt his pain almost as her own. 'Please don't be offended. I'm sorry to ask this. Many women who fraternized with the Nazis got branded with swastikas on their foreheads after Liberation. Would there be a connection?'

Abraham sighed. 'I've heard that, too. But Maman was definitely not a collaborator. On the contrary, she pointed them out, as she self-righteously told me one time.'

His eyes squinted in pain and he buried his face in his hands. Aimee reached over to him and stroked his arm. She waited until he stopped shaking and gave him a napkin.

Giggling students scurried across the cobbled street, past the almost empty sidewalk cafe. She reached in her backpack and pulled out the first thing her hand touched. It was the wrinkled copy of The Hebrew Times she'd wrapped Lili Stein's coat in.

She gasped. Cochon l'assassin—Swine assassin—in bold angular handwriting was scrawled across a small photo and accompanying article. She smoothed the newspaper. Politicians and ministers were outlined by fat red lines in that writing. Aimee couldn't make out the faces but she could read the names.

She thrust the paper at him. 'Your mother wrote that, didn't she?'

'Ah yes, Maman ranted about this one night. A Nazi liar strutting in black boots, she knew all about him. She carried on so but when I asked her particulars, she shut up. Wouldn't discuss it. Maman wasn't the easiest person to deal with.' Abraham grimaced. 'But family is family, you know how that is.'

Aimee nodded as if she did, but she didn't.

He continued. 'Last week, Sinta noticed Maman went out a lot.' Abraham paused to drink some mineral water. 'Sinta remembers her saying that she wasn't going to be put off by ghosts anymore.' He stopped, hesitating.

'Go ahead, Abraham.' She wondered what he was afraid to tell her.

'I doubted you before, Aimee.' He looked down. 'Blame it on my old-fashioned thinking about women. But now, wrong or right, I worry for you.'

She was touched by his concern and didn't know what to say.

Abraham spoke in a measured tone. 'The last words I can remember Maman saying were 'I'll come to Ital's later,' as if she was expecting something.'

Aimee felt conflicted, wanting to tell Abraham that his mother had been expecting her. But if she did, that could put Abraham in danger and put her no closer to Lili's murderer.

Abraham continued. 'Then Maman said, 'You will take the boards down from my window tonight.''

She sat up. 'What did she mean by that, Abraham?'

'I don't know,' he said.

'Obviously it struck you as unusual,' she said. 'What do you think she meant?'

'With Maman you never knew. . .but maybe she felt guilty.'

'Guilty? For what?'

'That's just a feeling I got,' he said. 'No concrete basis.'