AL05 - Murder in Clichy

“What do you mean?” Linh stepped back, shocked.

“Forgive me. I hid the pieces of jade, and someone broke in . . .”

“But Thadee gave them to you, non?”

Aimee nodded.

“Everything’s gone?”

Aimee reached in her pocket. “Here’s the envelope you gave me for him.”

“How do I know you’re not lying?”

“Someone must have followed me and stolen the jade after I hid it in my doctor’s office.”

“Why hide it there?”

“I needed stitches. I knew the doctor. I’m sorry, I thought it would be a good hiding place.”

“Stitches . . . why?”

“From a bullet’s ricochet,” she said. “Linh, I’m all right, but Thadee Baret . . . was shot and killed.”

Linh closed her eyes, fingering her amber beads.

Aimee felt sick with guilt. “My mistake.” Then she remembered. The jade disk! She reached into her coat pocket.

“I do have this.”

Hope, then sadness, filled Linh’s eyes. “So you did have the jade.” She nodded. “You must find the rest and get them back for me.”

“Forgive me,” Aimee said. “But . . . why didn’t you warn me? Why did you entrust such things to me, almost a stranger?”

“I had no choice.” Linh’s eyelids fluttered in the nervous mannerism Aimee remembered. “The Communists’ grip has loosened. Next year or the one after, the country will open up to foreign trade. We should be able to return too. But to legitimize and rebuild our congregation, we must have the jade.”

“Legitimize in what way?”

The wind rose and whipped around them. “If we want to return, we must give the jade to the government. It’s a national treasure that was in our care. The Cao Dai safeguarded it. Then just before the French left, it was stolen from us. It must be returned to my country.”

“This jade was looted during the battle of Dien Bien Phu?”

Linh nodded.

“But how did Baret come to have it in his possession?”

“We’ve searched for a long time. We don’t know how he ended up with the jade. All I know was that he needed money, quickly, and promised to deliver the jade in return.”

“We should go somewhere and talk,” Aimee said.

Cockleburs fallen from the row of chestnut trees littered the wet pavement. Ahead, steam billowed from the Metro grill vents. Passersby pulled their collars up and fastened their winter coats tighter.

Linh looked behind her. “It’s not safe,” she said. “Keep walking while I explain. There’s a whole culture of jade,” Linh told Aimee. “The ancients revered jade’s durability and luminous quality. Jade was believed to be a sacred embodiment of essential vital forces; it was used for ritual objects with cosmological and religious meaning.”

“Used how?” Aimee asked.

“To channel supernatural powers, to communicate between the mortal and celestial worlds.”

Aimee recalled the aura she’d felt radiating from the pieces.

Buses shot past on the wide boulevard. A siren resounded in the distance. In front of them, two women with wheeled shopping carts met and exchanged bisous on each cheek.

Linh pulled Aimee closer. “The vital force, the power of jade to channel the spirits of the other world, still exists.”

She gave the envelope containing the cashier’s check back to Aimee. “You’re my only hope. Keep this and the disk you still have. Find the rest for me.”

“But I wouldn’t know where to start.”

“Gassot, a French engineer, saved my father’s life at Dien Bien Phu. I never was able to thank him. He knew about the jade.”

Gassot . . . that name. He’d written the article she’d found online, about jade looted from the Emperor’s Tomb.

“Do you know if he’s still alive?”

“I have no idea.”

“How did you meet Baret?”

“I didn’t,” Linh said, pulling her robe’s hood closer about her head. “He contacted the temple. He knew we’d been searching. We’d heard a rumor that the jade was in Paris.”

“What rumor?”

“Something about an auction catalogue?” Linh asked, shaking her head. “I don’t know about these things. I understand your country less and less every day. Bloodshed. . . that’s not our way. We don’t believe in taking life, not even an animal’s.”

Yet, Linh came from a country that had been at war almost continuously for the past hundred years. Aimee had to keep her on track. “Linh, what about Baret?”

“He telephoned and said it had to be arranged quickly, but as we were the rightful owners, we could have the jade for a small payment. Somehow, I felt that he had a good heart.”

A good heart?

“Bad luck curses those who have evil intentions,” Linh said. “You will find the jade. I count on you.”

Guilt warred with Aimee’s promise to steer clear of this kind of thing.

Linh paused at the temple door. “Follow where this disk leads you.”

And Aimee knew she would. Not only to restore the jade to Linh and subvert the RG’s agenda, but also because, somehow, the trail might lead back to her father.

AIMEE STOOD in yet another cafe-tabac in the Clichy quartier, drumming her chipped boa-blue nails on the zinc counter. So far, in the six she’d visited, no one had seen or remembered Baret. If she had to drink yet another espresso she’d sprint down Avenue de Clichy and never fall asleep again.

“Une tisane, s’il vous plait,” she said, ordering an herbal tea. She caught the owner’s eye during a lull between commuters buying Metro passes and Lotto tickets. She pulled out the PMU betting receipt, handed it to him, and he ran it through the machine.

She was about to engage him in conversation when he slapped one hundred francs on the counter. “You won.”

Aimee had never won anything in her life. But she took the hundred francs. Thadee didn’t need it now.

“Monsieur, it belongs to my friend Thadee Baret. Maybe you remember, I called last evening and you passed him the phone?”

“Not me,” he said, ringing up a sale. “Too busy. Me, I work the early shift.”

“Bon, who would have answered?”

He shrugged and turned to another waiting customer.

“Monsieur, it’s important. Do you know who worked last night?” she asked, determined to discover more about Baret.

“Ask Gerard,” he said. “He’s stocking the beverage shipment.”

Aimee wound past the curved zinc and old streaked bubbled mirrors lining the cafe. Mechanics in jumpsuits, workers in blue smock coats and an old man with his dog at his feet sipped a morning espresso or un demi de biere blonde. This was a working class pocket of the old Paris like the one she had known growing up.

“Pardonnez-moi, Gerard?” she asked a thirtyish man, buff but bulky, in a T-shirt and stovepipe jeans, lugging a crate of Stella Artois beer.

“Did you work last night?” she asked, her feet crunching sugar cube wrappers littering the floor.

“Why?”