Murder in the Sentier

signed a release form, and agreed to meet Herve later for coffee. Too bad she had no intention of honoring that commitment.

Only when she reached the courtyard did she appreciate the irony. She’d have given anything to have found documents regarding her mother in the apartment, but doing so would have cost her life.

Uniformed pompiers rushed past her with more hoses, dampening the smoldering walls. A group with hatchets followed. Christian Figeac stood talking with a man who took notes and wore jeans. Either a reporter or an insurance adjuster.

White-faced, with soot smudges on his cheeks and hands, Christian seemed shell-shocked. He wore the same silver synthetic leather jacket, his hair more stringy than before. She couldn’t tell if he recognized her. The man handed him a card.

“Arson?” Aimee asked, joining them.

“Mademoiselle, after investigation the arson squad will inform us,” the man said, snapping his notebook shut. “It’s not what we’d call a typical Sentier fire. Contact me tomorrow, Monsieur Figeac.”

And he was gone.

“You see,” Christian said, turning to her, his gaze hollow. “A curse.”

“Curse?”

“Like the ghosts,” he said.

Stark halogen searchlights set by the fire crew illumined the dripping building foyer. Pompiers ran back and forth, shouting directions and releasing hose pressure.

Ghosts didn’t set fires.

She took him by the elbow to a corner of the wet, dark courtyard. Black puddles reflected the crescent fingernail of a moon.

“Tell me one thing and the answer goes no further,” Aimee whispered, pulling him closer. “Did you set that fire?”

Christian Figeac’s expression didn’t change. “You think I need the money?”

She figured that was a rhetorical question and stayed quiet.

“Money … there’s a lot,” he said, as if talking to himself, twisting his hands together. His dry skin made a raspy sound. “Accounts I never knew about.”

It wouldn’t make sense to burn the place down for the insurance if he had money.

“What did he mean by the typical Sentier fire?”

“In the rag trade,” Christian said, “say the merchant can’t sell last season’s overstock, he has a fire and collects insurance, probably makes a profit, too.”

Of course, this was different. But who could have done it?

“Would Idrissa set the fire?”

“Idrissa? She’s afraid of the spirits, I told you.” He shook her off. Anger sparked in his large eyes.

“I met her,” Aimee said. “She admitted she had worked for your father. But she was hiding something.”

Christian Figeac, clad in his thin jacket, the sleeves damp, shivered in the scant moonlight. He must have come home from jail only to find his father’s apartment burning.

She felt sorry for him. After her mother left, Aimee’s father had done his best to make up for it. Her grandparents had, too. But had Romain Figeac done the same for Christian?

“I’ve got an extra couch,” she said. “You’re welcome to it.”

He blinked, shook his head as if coming to. “What kind of an outfit … a plumber?”

“I tried to break into your place and find that panel concealing the tapes,” she said. “Are there any more?”

“In the bank maybe,” he said.

“First thing tomorrow you need to get them. Listen, this is about your father. We need to talk.”

He followed her out of the courtyard.

They skirted the ambulance, passed the parked fire trucks. On rue Reaumur, she raised her arm to hail a taxi.

“No, we’ll take my car,” he said, pointing to an olive Jaguar XKE, dented, with scratched paint. A battered classic.

Christian Figeac sank into the leather ribbed seat, switched on the engine.

“What do we need to talk about?”

He seemed calmer. She hoped he could handle what she had to say. Late-night strollers crossed in front of them, pale and caught, like frightened deer, in the Jaguar’s headlights.

“Where to?” Christian asked.

“Ile St. Louis, Quai d’Anjou,” she said. “My apartment.”

He gunned the engine and shot toward Boulevard de Sebastopol.

She didn’t know how else to say it. “I’m sorry, but your father was shot with a large-caliber gun, not the one you said he’d used.”

“How do you know?” he asked, surprised.

“From the residue on the wall. It’s not consistent with …” She hesitated. “A .25 has a nice recoil but it’s not a blaster. I took a sample from the wall to the lab yesterday.” Good thing she’d followed her instinct since everything had now gone up in smoke. And it struck her. “You know, that’s what the murderer wanted … all the evidence gone.”

He slowed down. “Murderer … why?” he asked.

“You tell me,” she said. “Did your father have enemies, someone who didn’t …?”

Her phrase was lost in a blare of honking klaxons. Christian floored the pedal. He cornered rue de Palestro. The Jaguar responded, roaring bulletlike down the narrow medieval street.

“But he left a suicide note,” Christian said. “How could he have been murdered?”

“Think back to when you found him. Tell me what you saw.”

Christian’s shoulders heaved. “It was dark, he was slumped over on the desk … like when he’d been drinking.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “But really he was killed.”

“Papa’s writing played the most important role in his life,” he said. “Everything else ranked below it.”

“You’re proving it yourself,” she said. “He wouldn’t have committed suicide.”

They sped through the empty Sentier streets. Dark buildings encrusted with grime illumined by globular street lamps peaked above them. Alleys and passages jutted like capillaries from a veinous hub, calcified by old coaching inns.

“Christian—if I may call you that—with a suicide, the gun stays there. The .25 wouldn’t …” She paused, trying to say it tactfully.

“I didn’t pay much attention but it was his,” he said. “The flics took it.”

“Check the coroner’s office, ask where it is,” she said. “The coroner’s making a report, they’ll open an inquiry.”

“Non,” he shouted. “Papa’s dead. I had enough of those reporters after Maman’s suicide. They printed those awful photos, the ones of her remains in the car. They’ll just hound me and want to rake up dirt.”

“It’s painful for you, I’m sorry,” she said. Of course, he was right and how sad. But, she thought grimly, it didn’t change the fact that his father had been murdered.

Aimee wished the bucket seat had a working seat belt. Christian Figeac seemed intent on crossing Paris in ten minutes.

“Why can’t the past leave me alone?” he said. He combed his hair back with his fingers, stubby and bitten to the quick.

“Don’t you see?” she said. “Someone murdered your father. Now they’re after you.”

He screeched his brakes on the quai before her apartment. They stopped with a jerk. “But I thought it was my fault.” He slumped over the wooden steering wheel, pounded the leather dashboard.

“Christian, why did you think it was your fault?”

“Below his standard, never reached his expectations … ,” he mumbled. Shadows curtained Christian Figeac’s face.