AL06 - Murder in Montmartre

paintings commanded higher prices. Then Montparnasse had beckoned.

“Voila,” she said, pointing to the gated building with leafless trees silhouetted against the lights of distant Pigalle.

The crime-scene unit and police vans were gone. Jacques’s car,too. Sebastian parked by a fire hydrant Parisian style, which meant wedged into whatever space was open on the pavement.

“Bring the equipment, little cousin,” she said. “Let’s go.”

Eighteen rue Andre Antoine, a white stone nineteenth-century building, faced others like it on a serpentine street. Gray netting camouflaged the upper floor and scaffolding of the roof, which adjoined the other buildings in the courtyard. A red-brown brick church wall partially occupied the rear of the courtyard, cutting off the view. She’d hoped to question the man who’d stood on the steps but he had not lingered. Only a crust of snow crisscrossed with footprints remained.

The wind had died down. From somewhere came the muted squeak of a creaking swing. The crime-scene unit must have left not long after she’d been evicted, evidenced by the light dusting of snow on the cars now parked where the police vans had been. Thank God, the architect Haussmann had been unable to swing the wrecking ball here. No one could tear these buildings down or the ground underneath would collapse. The earth was riddled with spaces and tunnels . . . like a Gruyere cheese, as the saying went. Aimee could never figure that out; Emmenthaler was the cheese with the holes. You received a certificate that the building was sound when you bought a place. But, as a friend had informed her, the latest geological calculations had been made circa 1876.

She rang the concierge’s bell, unzipping her jacket to reveal the blue jumpsuit Sebastian had brought for her, and noted that there were no names inscribed above the upper floor’s metal mailboxes. Several moments later, a sharp-eyed woman answered. She wore a man’s large camel coat belted by a Dior chain, black rain boots, and had a cigarillo clamped between her thumb and forefinger.

“Don’t tell me you forgot the body?” she said, exhaling acrid smoke in Aimee’s direction.

Startled, Aimee clutched a workbag labeled Serrurie and leaned away from the smoke.

“I’m here to change the locks,” Aimee said.

“But the locksmiths were already here.”

Aimee stamped the ice from her boots on the mat. “To secure the windows and skylight access?”

“Far as I know.”

“But we’re doing the rear windows. They didn’t finish.” She jerked her hand toward Sebastian. “We had the parts back at the shop.”

“What do you mean?”

Aimee thought fast, wishing the concierge would quit questioning her.

“Tiens . . . they didn’t tell you . . . the rear windows need special locks?”

The concierge sighed. “The apartment’s vacant. The upper floors are being remodeled.”

“Bon, we’ll go home,” Aimee said, turning toward Sebastian. “You can explain to the commissaire why snow blew in through the windows to blanket the apartment like a rug. Squatters will love it then.”

The woman glanced at her thumb, pushed the cuticle back. “The top floors have been empty for a month already.” She shrugged. Another sign of the gentrification that was invading the area. “Be sure not to disturb the old coot on the first floor. He’s furious as it is what with all the commotion,” the concierge said. Her mouth turned down and she stabbed the cigarillo out in an empty flowerpot. Then she thrust a small key ring at Aimee. “That’s the door key. I won’t wait up for you.”

“We’ll see ourselves out,” Aimee said, nodding to Sebastian, who shouldered the tool kit.

He followed her up the staircase, its worn red carpet held in place by bronze stair rods. The wrought-iron banister, an intricate pattern of acorns and leaves, spiraled up several floors. Once it had been exquisite, the latest style.

“Talk about a hike! What the hell can we find after all this time, Aimee?”

Sebastian’s words mirrored her own doubts. Yet new evidence was vital. “If one listens, the scene will speak,” she remembered her father saying. If there was any chance to prove Laure’s innocence she had to find it.

“Put on your surgical gloves,” she said, panting, wishing she hadn’t gained that kilo over the holidays. She left the key in the door. “Rooftop first.”

The snow flurries had subsided, melting onto the floor of the scaffolding. She and Sebastian pulled on woolen ski masks. Sebastian followed Aimee’s lead and dropped to his knees. With luck, they might find something the police had missed.

“What are we looking for?” Sebastian asked.

“Wood splinters, blackened metal on the scaffold, a discarded lighter, cigarette butt, scraped tile . . . anything.”

“Like in those shows on the tele?”

She nodded. She was doubtful but one never knew. The concierge had said the apartment had been vacant for a month. Was that why Jacques had arranged to meet his informer there?

The spires and roof of the church blocked the view of all but the adjoining roof and a dark neigboring building across the street. Witnesses, if any, would be few.

They crouched, moving silently to avoid detection from the adjoining apartments connected by the roof. One tall lighted window shone from across the courtyard. Below, from the construction site, came a pinprick glow like the tip of a lit cigarette. And then it disappeared. Into a hole in the earth? The remains of old quarries underlaid all of Montmartre. Gritting her teeth, she turned her gaze back to the roof.

For forty minutes, they crawled. They covered every centimeter of the scaffold, inspected chimney pots, stones, the windows and sills let into the mansard roof, and the small flat area of the zinc roof on top. Aimee’s hands were wet with snow, sore from abrasion by pebbles and rough stucco. Disheartened, she leaned against the chimney.

“Find anything?” she said to Sebastian, who was leaning over the edge and combing the rain gutter.

He held up a fistful of sodden brown leaves. “Toss it or . . .?”

“Wait.” She edged her way toward him, opening a plastic Baggie. “In here. What’s that?”

“Just a twig, like these,” he said indicating others clogging the gutter. “They need to clean this or . . .”

She pulled out a green stem. Smelled it. “Freshly broken, a geranium stem.”

“My cousin, the botanist!” he said.

She gave him a wry smile. “A Calvados says there’s a deck or window ledge nearby with pots of geraniums.”

“Proving what?” he asked.

A few stars glittered under the thinning clouds, just over the dark line of roofs.

“I’m guessing. What if someone leaned out their window and saw the shooting.”

“But, Aimee, people keep geraniums inside in this weather.”

He made sense. A dead end?

Right now, it was all they had to go on.

“Give me a boost, I want to check.”

Sebastian reached up the wall and tied the rope around the chimney bracer. Aimee tied the other end in a slip knot around her waist.

“Ready?” he asked, knitting his hands together and planting himself against the concrete. “On three.”

“One-two-three.”

Chill air and a dirt-encrusted skylight greeted Aimee as she reached the adjoining roof. She grabbed the roof edge, hoisted herself up further, and came face to face with a dormer window. Several pots of geraniums were visible within.

Now she knew where to start asking questions in the morning. But she’d found no evidence to indicate that anyone other than Laure had shot Jacques. Yet something . . . something had to exist.

“I’m coming down,” she said, gripping the ledge caked with pigeon droppings by one hand, the other braced against the smooth wall.

“Sebastian, can you shine your penlight over here?”

“Gifts from the pigeon gods?”