AL01 - Murder in the Marais

glanced inside the hallway. A black leather storm-trooper coat hung from the hall coatrack. 'That's your son's coat, isn't it? Let me talk with him.'

He shook his head. 'He's not here now. I told you.'

'I'd like to clear up a few points, Monsieur Rambuteau. You can help me.' She edged closer to him. 'I'm getting awfully wet and I promise I'll go away after we talk.'

He shrugged. 'A few minutes.'

Shuffling ahead, he led her into an antiseptically clean windowed breakfast room. A long melamine-topped table held a place setting for one. Next to a sunflower-patterned plate, its matching cup and saucer, and an empty wineglass were vials of multicolored pills. Yellow roses wafted their scent from a bubbled glass vase by the window.

The man motioned for her to sit down on a couch by the window. He leaned forward and took off his dark glasses. From the kitchen she could hear the monotonous tick of a clock. Piles of papers and a cardboard box of yellowed press clippings littered the floor.

Aimee opened her damp backpack and took out a sopping note pad.

Embarrassed, she said, 'My ink will run on this wet paper. Can I trouble you for some dry paper?'

Monsieur Rambuteau hesitated, then pointed. 'On top of one of those piles should be a writing tablet. I was making a list.'

'Merci.' She reached for the nearest stack. On top was the empty tablet. She took it and a folder to write on.

He was nervously twisting the knuckle on his ring finger. 'Are you investigating Les Blancs Nationaux group?' A note of anguish stuck in his voice.

Aimee replied calmly, 'I'm exploring all possibilities.'

He let out a big sigh and rested his palms on the spotless white table, facing Aimee. 'My wife just passed away.' He pointed to a silver-framed photo sitting atop a glass-front china cabinet. 'I'm due at Pere Lachaise; her funeral is today.'

'I'm very sorry, Monsieur Rambuteau,' she said.

In the photo, a woman with thin penciled eyebrows wearing shiny leather pants and a rhinestone-flecked sweater peered out from under a helmetlike bob of hair. Her eyes had a surprised look that Aimee attributed to a face-lift.

'Her things,' he said, indicating the piles of paper.

'I know this isn't a good time, so I'll be brief,' she said. 'Did your son know Lili Stein?'

'My son gets carried away sometimes. Is that what this is about?' he said.

'I'll put it another way, Monsieur Rambuteau. Your home isn't far from the victim's deli on rue des Rosiers. Did Thierry know Lili Stein?'

'I don't know if he knew her or not. But I doubt it.'

'Why do you say that?' Aimee said.

'He didn't make a habit of. . .er. . .let's say, having social contact with Jews,' Monsieur Rambuteau said.

'Would he carry his feelings to an extreme?'

Startled, Monsieur Rambuteau looked away. 'No. Never. I told you he can get carried away but that's all. My fault really; you see, I've encouraged him. Well, at the beginning I was happy to see him get involved in politics. A good cause.'

Obviously, Aimee thought, Thierry's apple didn't fall far from the tree. She willed herself to speak in an even tone. 'A good cause, in your opinion, includes Aryan supremacist groups?'

'I didn't say that.' He cleared his throat. 'At the beginning, Thierry and I talked about their ideology. There are some points in their program, whether one agrees or not, that make sense. I'm certainly not condoning violence but as far as I know, Thierry hasn't been involved with them recently. Filmmaking is his field.'

'Would you say, Monsieur Rambuteau, that your son's upbringing was in a politically conservative vein?' she said.

He raised his eyebrows, then shrugged, 'Let's say we served sucre a la droite, not sucre a la gauche.'

He referred to white and brown sugar, the metaphor for right-wing conservatives and leftist socialists. She knew that in many households political leanings were identified by the kind of sugar sitting in sugar bowls.

'Did your wife hold these views?' she said.

'I'm not ashamed to say we held Marechal Petain and his Vichy government in the highest regard. You didn't live through a war. You can never understand how Le Marechal aimed to untarnish the reputation of France,' he said.

Aimee leaned forward. 'Is that why Thierry receives funds from a German right-wing extremist group and you support Les Blancs Nationaux?'

His eyes narrowed. 'You can't prove that.'

'Proving that Les Blancs Nationaux are bankrolled by the DFU Aryan supremacists isn't too hard. And that's sure to bother people who still remember Germans as Nazis and 'boches.''

Monsieur Rambuteau's cheeks had become red and his breathing labored. He reached for the bottle of yellow pills on the table in front of him. He shook out three, poured a glass of water, and gulped both. His shallow breath came in short spurts.

Finally, he took a deep breath and folded his hands. 'I'm a sick man,' he said. 'You'd better go.' He rose with obvious effort, and walked her to the door. 'My son couldn't hurt anyone,' he said. In his small, tired eyes, Aimee saw pain.

'You haven't convinced me, Monsieur.' She adjusted her beret and looked at him resolutely. 'I'll be back.'

He closed the door and Aimee walked out into the drizzling rain to the bus stop.

She would prove that Les Blancs Nationaux existed on neo-Nazi money with Rene's help on the computer. Twenty minutes later she stepped off the bus on Ile St. Louis near her flat and entered her neighborhood corner cafe. Chez Mathieu was inviting and much warmer than her apartment.

'Bonjour, Aimee.' A short, stout man in a white apron playing a pinball machine in the corner greeted her. Bells clanged as the pinball hit the targets.

'Ca va, Ludovice? A cafe creme, please.'

He nodded. The cafe was empty. 'I've got bone shanks for your boy.' He meant Miles Davis.

'Merci.' Aimee smiled and chose a table by the fogged-up windows overlooking the Seine. She spread her papers to dry and took out her laptop, but the marble tabletop was sticky and she needed to put something over it. She pulled out some paper and realized she held Monsieur Rambuteau's tablet. And a folder, too, that she'd picked up by mistake. She opened it.

Lists of Nathalie Rambuteau's personal belongings filled two sheets. Well-thumbed film scripts and old theater programs lined the folder next to a sheaf of photocopies, one labeled 'Last Will and Testament.' Curious, Aimee opened it. On the top was a codicil, dated three months previously: 'Suffering from a terminal illness, I, Nathalie Rambuteau, cannot in good conscience keep secret my son's origins. I cannot break the promise I made to my son's biological mother. Upon my death, I request that my son, Thierry Rambuteau, be informed of his real parentage.'

Stapled to the back of it was a note in spidery writing: S.S. letter with Notaire Maurice Barrault. Shaken, she sat back. Who was Thierry's real mother?

'Ca va?' Ludovice asked as he set her cafe on the table.

'God, I don't know. Got a cigarette?'

'I thought you quit.' He rubbed his wet hands across his apron and reached in his pocket.

'I did.' She accepted a nonfiltered Gauloise and he lit it for her. As she inhaled deeply, the acrid smoke hit the back of her throat, then she felt the familiar jolt as it filled her lungs. She exhaled the smoke, savoring it.

Aimee gestured to the chair. He untied his apron, sat down, and lit a cigarette.

'Let me ask you something—' she began.

'Over a drink. I'll buy.' He reached for a bottle of Pernod and two shot glasses and poured. 'What's the question?'

The empty cafe was quiet except for the drizzling rain beating on the roof.

'Do you believe in ghosts?' Aimee asked. 'Because I think I'm beginning to.'