AL05 - Murder in Clichy

number. Seconds later the phone rang in the small reception area.

He glanced at the phone, his eyes unsure.

“Go ahead, I’ll wait,” she said, still keeping the smile on her face with effort.

“Please sit. Wait over there,” he said, entering the reception cubicle to answer the telephone.

Fat chance. She ran past him and into the back yard, skidding on the wet concrete in time to see a white- haired man slipping into a dilapidated lean-to shed. Rabbit hutches covered with wire-mesh lined the old wall, celery stalks peeking through the holes. She slammed the hotel door shut with her booted heel, found her Swiss Army knife, and wedged it between the door jamb and door handle. The Russian gorilla would have to kick the door down to open it. She had no intention of losing Gassot now.

“Monsieur Gassot, I’m not a flic,” she called. “I know you’ve been avoiding me. You were an engineer at Dien Bien Phu. I read your article about the looting of the Emperor’s tomb.”

The shed door scraped open. A knife blade glinted.

All she had in her bag was a can of pepper spray and Chanel No. 5.

“Who are you?” he asked.

She had to get him to listen to her. “Aimee Leduc. Your friend Albert was murdered. You could be next.”

What if he’d been responsible? But whatever he’d done she needed to gain his confidence. Convince him to talk to her.

He edged out of the shed. Even under the 1960s-era gray twill raincoat she saw his well-built frame and muscular arms. And his limp.

“What’s that to you?”

“I was hired by a Cao Dai nun to find a set of jade astrological figures. Let me do my job. Talk to me.”

The Russian kicked at the door.

“Call this mec off,” she said. “Or I’ll treat him to pepper spray.”

“Where’s your gun?” Gassot asked.

She shook her head. The gutter dripped. Big splats of water landed on her boots. “I’m a private detective. No gun.”

Too bad it sat in the hall drawer of her apartment.

Gassot stood, rain glistening in his white hair, holding the knife with an unreadable expression.

“Why was Daudet killed? Why are they after you?” she asked.

And by his eyes, she knew she’d said the wrong thing. She’d lost him.

“I’ve lived this long, so you should know I’m not stupid enough to fall for your approach. I know you were hired to avenge the past.”

“Avenge? Wait a minute, you’re confusing me with someone else.”

Gassot’s mouth twisted. “It was a mistake. We never meant to do it.”

Do what? She had to reel Gassot in. Get him to trust her. She remembered what Linh had said.

“War’s a series of mistakes,” she said. “But you couldn’t have been more than nineteen or twenty years old. What did you know? The important thing was you saved a Vietnamese man’s life. The life of this nun’s father.”

“What nun?”

“A Cao Dai nun named Linh asked me to bring her the jade figures.”

“She wasn’t a nun then.” Gassot flexed his knuckles but he still held the knife. “Not when we fought at Dien Bien Phu.”

“His grandchildren are in need of the jade hoard. One’s in a Vietnamese prison for protesting the regime and his sister’s this nun who is petitioning the International Court of Justice to bring about his release,” she said, embellishing. “And you were in the Sixth Battalion, one of the men who looted the jade treasure after the battle.”

Gassot’s mouth trembled.

Aimee lifted the absinthe-green disk into the dull gray light. It glowed.

“Didn’t you find this?”

Gassot’s mouth trembled. He stepped closer and let out a deep breath. “And a lot more. We were surveying, digging trenches, but we hit an old ammunition box. There were twelve figures inside. The next day they were gone.”

She’d been right. She placed the jade disk on the rabbit hutch ledge, staying far away from Gassot’s knife.

“There’s another, isn’t there? It’s called the Dragon. The most sacred.”

Gassot turned over the small jade disk in his hands, then punched the rabbit hutch, his shoulders beaded with rain.

“You have it, don’t you?” she said. “And the dragon makes the set complete.”

“By rights they’re all ours. But I never saw them again.”

“A museum director put the figures up for auction here in Paris a month ago,” she told him. “Then they were withdrawn. He was murdered in the men’s bathroom of Parc Monceau. You know that, Gassot, don’t you?”

Silence. She saw defiance in his eyes.

“If the jade is stolen from its true owner, bad luck follows the thief,” he said.

“So you killed Thadee, then Albert, because he wanted a bigger share. Demanded it.” She was guessing. “Did you arrange to meet Dinard and murder him, too?”

Gassot shook his head. “Think what you want.” He turned the jade piece in his hand again.

“You’re not the only ones who want the jade,” Aimee said. “Albert’s wife said you and the others concocted some scheme.”

“But the rumor. . . .” Gassot hesitated.

Had she put it together wrong?

“Go ahead, Gassot. What rumor?”

“The man I saved told me the de Lussignys had stolen the jade. I never saw him again, so I couldn’t question him further. Albert insisted Thadee knew something, but he couldn’t get it out of him.”

The door splintered and the Russian stood there. And so did Blondel.

The spillover from the broken rain gutter beat a pattern on Aimee’s boots. She wished she had Rene for backup. Though she’d found Gassot, she had walked into the eye of the dragon.

“Time for that talk, Mademoiselle Leduc,” Blondel said. His zipperlike mouth and dull, flat gaze bothered her, but not as much as his clenched fists.

“About your dope running in Clichy?” She had to deflect him, get out of here. But how? Keep talking. “So you pay off someone in the Commissariat. I’m not interested.”

“You weren’t nice to Jacky; he remembers that,” Blondel said, motioning to someone behind him. “But I’m on someone else’s franc.”

He worked for someone else? She glanced at Gassot.

“Thadee owed you money,” she said, “Why kill him, and Albert? Whose side are you on, Gassot?”

“My own.”

“Meaning you double-crossed these mecs, and they’re after you?”

“Something like that,” Blondel said.

“I never did business with you, Blondel!” Gassot said.

“But your comrade did. And look what happened to him.”

“Albert? He talked too much but he’d never deal with the likes of you,” Gassot said, a quiver in his voice.

“Think again,” said Regnier, stepping into the doorframe. His riveting black eyes locked onto hers.

Aimee stifled a gasp. Why hadn’t she put that together? But the truth, as Oscar Wilde had said, was rarely pure and never simple.

“You work for Olf don’t you, Regnier?” she asked. “You hired Blondel to do your dirty work.”

His eyes never left her face. A small smile painted his thin lips. “Took you awhile, didn’t it?”

“You killed Thadee, Albert, and Dinard. And kidnapped Rene, to force me into—”

“A little too late for those observations, isn’t it?” Regnier interrupted. “But you two make a nice couple. Now we’re going to get the jade.”

“Why? To get back at the Ministry and the RG?”