Murder in the Sentier

array of storage alcoves. A wonderful chill traveled up her legs.

“That’s better,” the old woman said, shuffling forward. A faint fragrance of violets trailed her. “My key ring has my storage key.”

Cobwebs, sticky and heavy with dead insects, caught on Aimee’s sleeve. They clung like skin when she tried to brush them off.

“Which one’s Romain Figeac’s?” she asked.

“Number 311, that’s his,” the old woman said, turning the corner of the dank tunnel. “Right here.”

Aimee pointed her penlight.

The busted lock shone, hanging by a hinge.

Beaten to it. Again! Her hopes sank.

She touched the door, which sagged open. Inside lay balled-up newpapers on the packed dirt. A water- stained plywood piece closed off the old stone wall.

Beaten at every turn.

“My storage stall sits over there.” The old woman pointed. “By the old exit. Mind helping me?”

“The old exit?”

“Bien sur,” said the old woman, clutching her scarf around her. “Paris sits on a big Swiss cheese, that’s what my papa used to say.”

Aimee grinned. She’d never heard it referred to like that before. “Like the catacombs in the Marais?”

“Older. Underneath here, it’s limestone laced with holes. Much of the quartier’s built on limestone, like Montmartre.”

Maybe that’s why so much of Paris had stayed the same for centuries—the foundation wouldn’t support new construction. Fascinating, but Aimee didn’t understand the connection.

“How does that make for another exit?”

The old woman rubbed her arms in the dank chill. “They all connected at one time. Probably some still do. There was a colony of underground people, rumor had it.” She shrugged. “Stories, eh? But during the war, people came down during air raids when they were too lazy to go to the Metro.”

Aimee looked at the faded writing on the wood. “Looks unsafe.” She peered closer. “Does this go to Place du Caire?”

“Wouldn’t surprise me,” the woman said. Stacked plastic boxes stood inside the woman’s coved storage space. “What’s that?” she said. “I haven’t put anything down here in years.”

Curious, Aimee stepped closer. Papers filled the clouded plastic. Had Figeac hidden his work here?

“How about we open one, just to check?” Aimee asked.

Before the woman could say no, she stepped in a puddle, rank and brown, then knelt down. The plastic cover stuck. Keeping her hand steady, she pulled, using so much force that when the top came off she fell back in the dirt.

Eager, she shone the penlight. Scraps of a browned discharge certificate and war medals attached to crumbling blue, white, and red ribbons.

“What does it say?”

“Yvon Edelman, distinguished service,” Aimee said.

“My uncle,” the old woman said. “I forgot, of course, I asked my grandson to bring these down. He carries the light things, always forgets the heavy ones.”

Disappointed, Aimee put them back.

“Madame, did you know Romain Figeac?”

Aimee was surprised to see the old woman’s mouth purse in disapproval.

“Of course! The great Monsieur ‘Figeac,’ as he called himself. Alors, try Monsieur Finkelstein—his real name! Maybe that didn’t fit on those book covers. His father was a tailor like mine. From the same street in Lodz even!” She rolled her eyes. “Yet the way he acted, who’d know it. But the old poseur’s gone. I shouldn’t speak ill of the dead …” Her voice trailed off.

That’s why Figeac lived in the Sentier—he’d been born here.

“Dabbled in politics, didn’t he?” Aimee asked. “Wasn’t he married to an actress?”

“That’s him,” the old woman nodded. She’d become reenergized. She stood up straighter in the thin flashlight beam. “He played at life. Never read his books so I don’t know about them. But he still could run up a fine inseam, like his papa taught him. The young one, his son, seems so hapless!” She shook her head. “When he was little he was a sweet lost lamb. He’s never gotten his life together.”

Poor Christian. She could see what the old woman meant.

Ahead of them hung a rope ladder. Aimee grasped the rope, damp and frayed at the edges, and climbed. But her head hit something hard. She peered up to see a wooden hatch. It didn’t budge.

She climbed down, dusted her legs off, and escorted the old lady upstairs.

“Have you noticed anyone hanging around … any strangers,” Aimee asked.

“Like you, you mean?” The woman shook her head.

“I work with the arson investigators,” Aimee said, stretching the truth. “If something comes to mind, here’s my card. Please, give me a call.”

The old woman trundled off to her apartment.

And then Aimee saw it. A bullet hole in the wall. Like a splattered graphite flower. She sniffed. Gunpowder … fresh or at least recent.

If a silencer had been used, as with Jutta, would the old woman have heard it?

She wished she had a fireman’s hatchet with which to chop out the piece of the wall. She knew a .25 didn’t blast a crater like this.

She found her metal nail file, Swiss Army knife, and clippers in her backpack and got to work. Finally the plaster gave way. By gouging, poking, and levering she managed to scrape down to something metallic. Five minutes later, she’d hooked the curved nail file edge under the bullet and pried it out.

The slug of a .357. She dropped it in a Baggie, put it in her backpack, and left.

TIRED, NO taxi in sight, and only few francs in her secondhand Vuitton wallet, Aimee caught the Metro, changed at Chatelet, and exited at Pont Marie. The soft summer night’s wind lofted from the dark Seine. Blue lights of the bateau-mouches glided under her.

What a night, she thought, crossing the bridge—meeting Etienne at the squat but not Christian; Georges and Fredo’s reminiscing about her mother; discovering the ancient underground vaults in Romain Figeac’s building and then the fresh bullet hole in the wall. More questions and she was still no closer to her mother.

She strode along the edge of the walkway, kicking a pebble against the low stone wall, when she noticed lights shining in her apartment. And for a moment, time was suspended … someone was home waiting for her … like her papa … or Yves once … but her papa lay in the cemetery and Yves had returned his key…. Rene? Non, he always called first.

“Maman?” escaped her lips.

A woman walking her dog on the quai turned to look at her as she ran, crossing the cobbles at breakneck speed. She hit the numbers on the digicode and barreled inside her building. She bounded up the marble stairs, grooved and worn from centuries.

In the black-and-white-diamond-tiled hallway her apartment door lay open, the drone of conversation and static from a police radio coming from the foyer.

Nom de Dieu!

Of course, her mother wasn’t here … what had got into her?

She went to the door. Someone caught her elbow. Gripped and held it. She turned to see a middle-aged blue-uniformed flic with a radio to his ear.

“Where might you be going in such a hurry?”

She surveyed the foyer. “I live here.”

“You can prove that?”

She pulled out her carte d’identite, flashed her detective badge.

“Merci, Mademoiselle Leduc,” he said. “Seems you’ve had a break-in.”

Her heart hammered.

“A break-in … who informed the police?”