Murder in the Sentier

“Talk to me, Stefan,” she said. “Have you seen my mother?”

“Jules came back. Sooner or later he’ll show at Action-Reaction,” he said. “Chances are she’s with him.”

Aimee’s heart sank. Didn’t her mother want to see her? Or had she been watching Aimee, following her, even as Aimee was seeking her? But purposely not making contact as Rene had warned.

“Where are you? I’ll help.”

His voice sagged. “Help me? I doubt it once you hear what I’ve done.”

“Weren’t you a little fish caught swimming with the sharks?” she said. “Or did you become a shark, too?”

“The old hunter,” he said, his voice jagged with regret. “I buried his things under a tree. His family should know what happened to him.”

She nodded. “Making some amends will help you.” She held back the questions about her mother, realizing Stefan had to unburden himself in his own way.

Then what sounded like a glass shattering.

“Ca va?”

“Later,” he said and she heard the dial tone.

He’d wanted to talk but something had happened. She slapped the counter … so close, yet again out of her reach!

She hit the call-back key.

The phone rang and rang. She was worried. The steaming espressos were on the counter and she reached for them.

But Teynard had opened the door and was walking down the passage. Rude again.

She grabbed the first bill in her pocket, threw down a hundred-franc note, and rushed after him. Pedestrians crowded the busy corner of rue de Turbigo. She ran to catch up with him. He stood at the curb facing the zebra crossing stripes, his back to her, white hair glinting in the late afternoon sun.

“Look, Monsieur Teynard, you’ve got to stop … ,” she called out.

He turned and the rest of her phrase was lost in the revving of a motor scooter.

She raised her hand to shield her eyes from the sun. “We didn’t finish talking.” They were still several feet apart.

“Quit following me,” he said.

Teynard’s annoyed look turned to surprise. His shoulders jerked. Then jerked and jerked again.

And she knew something was wrong.

He clutched his side, grimacing as if in pain.

Aimee pushed through the crowd of hot, tired Parisians. Several exclaimed in irritation. Teynard staggered toward her, then slumped to his knees, as the crowd parted around him. A woman screamed as he reached for the handle of her baby stroller. Three gaping red-black holes showed in his linen jacket. Teynard staggered and fell face down onto the hot pavement.

Startled, Aimee looked up to see the scooter with a black-helmeted driver pull away. A battered green scooter. The rest of her view was cut off as a bus pulled up and the pedestrian throng crossed the street.

Everything had happened in seconds.

“Call a doctor!” someone shouted.

And then it hit her. The green scooter was the one Rene had loaned her. Her spine tingled. Someone had stolen it. Teynard had been shot by someone riding her scooter. And if she wasn’t mistaken, that someone was Jules Bourdon.

So he was watching her. Or Gisela was. Or her mother? Waiting for her to lead them to the diamonds?

Scared, she backed away. She heard murmurs in the crowd … “raised her arm” … “following him.” Were they talking about her? The eyes of the couple standing next to her narrowed in suspicion.

An ambulance siren bleated, coming closer. She tried to melt into the crowd. Disappear. She had no wish to explain and no time to spend at the Commissariat. She was being hunted, too.

She’d almost made it to the passage when the woman with the stroller looked over and pointed at her. “Her … her … it was her … she shot him!”

As Aimee turned her heel broke.

She took off both shoes and ran.

“Stop … don’t let her get away!” the woman yelled.

Aimee ran by the two sculptures of Commerce and Industry flanking the white stone of Passage du Bourg- l’Abbe.

The cafe owner came out, waving a fifty-franc bill at her. “Keep the change!” she yelled. Footsteps sounded behind her. There was a loud ouff as he knocked whoever was chasing her to the ground. She turned around to see the cafe owner wave and give a big grin.

She ran out of the passage and turned right onto rue Saint Denis. Sex shops and wholesale clothing stores lined the street. She entered the first one and plunked five hundred francs on the smudged glass counter, careful to avoid touching it.

“That one,” she said, panting and pointing to the pink pageboy wig. “And this.” The man handed her the leather choker-type bondage necklace. She looked around. Most of the outfits had too many holes to wear on the street. She chose the one that provided the most covering. “This one, too.” He pushed the items over the counter. She heard the siren wail in the distance. She had to hurry.

“I need to change.”

He jerked his head toward a back booth. She went straight there, not looking to either side, or at what was going on outside.

She tried to hold her breath for as long as it took her to shimmy out of Michel’s miniskirt and into the tight black vinyl PVC cat suit. But she couldn’t. She tied the choker, adjusted the wig, and pulled a snub-nosed pair of Manolo Blahnik’s sexy version of Minnie Mouse heels onto her feet, then stuffed her clothes into her bag.

Now if she didn’t have to run, she’d be okay. Black PVC in this humidity could become a steambath.

By the time she’d gone a few blocks, a middle-aged man had offered her five hundred francs, which she’d declined; she hadn’t really planned on recouping the investment in her outfit. A police car cruised by but she blended in with street life. Perfectly. Prostitution was legal, though solicitation was not and since the Middle Ages, rue Saint Denis had been the working girls’ beat.

She stopped at the corner of rue Blondel and rue Saint Denis.

Twilight descended over the street, the first rays of neon casting their glittering reflections on the rain- spattered car windshields. There was a bite to the wind on rue Blondel. An infamous bordello had flourished here before and during the war, referred to affectionately by some as le trente deux, the thirty-two.

Even Picasso and Brassai had talked about “the flowers of rue Blondel.”

“Cherie, you working or you buying?” asked a woman, her black shiny boots and straining halter top just visible from the dark passage entrance ahead of her. “You want to check with me first, eh? You’re on my corner.”

Oops. Bad move. She didn’t want to get in trouble with this woman or her pimp. Where could she go? Jules probably knew all her friends’ houses … even Rene’s. But Etienne Mabry’s apartment was near, in the back courtyard, or so his card said.

Aimee grinned. “Pardon, I’m looking for someone upstairs. My partner forgot to tell me which floor.”

“Those computer cretins?” The woman’s booted foot tapped on the cobbles, echoing in the passage.

Another working girl sauntered by, saw the boots, and kept walking.

“They like to play with themselves on the Internet. What kind of a world is this, eh, when a mec gets off on a computer?”

Business must be tough for these working women … especially if they were of a certain age.

Aimee nodded. “I remember coming here after school. My friend’s mother had a zipper factory near here, but it’s all different now.”

Aimee could see the woman’s highly made-up face now, and the sagging skin on her arms, goose-pimpled in