AL06 - Murder in Montmartre

There was a pause. “We wanted to make things easier, you know. The men . . . ,” he paused again, cleared his throat. “We wanted to relieve you of this unexpected burden.”

Her tears flowed, accompanied by sobs she couldn’t control.

“Do whatever you want.” She hung up, ashamed. They knew she had no money.

If only Jacques had been able to keep his hands off the machines. The gambling fever was a curse. Their debts mounted, they’d pay off one loan shark, then Jacques would gamble again and get in debt to another.

She ground out her cigarette in the full ashtray. A few months ago he’d joined a program on his own, tried to quit, surprising her. He’d told her he was quitting for himself, it was something he had to do. She hadn’t asked him why, just thanked the stars. And then, last week, those telltale shining eyes, that fevered look. Right away she knew. He’d gone back to the machines.

Mounting excitement, pills, big plans, a coup, he said, that would make all their debts disappear. Like every big idea he’d had, it backfired. And this time, it took him with it.

Her heart heaved. Jacques’s tousled hair, the way he’d tickled her under her knees, how he’d made her purr beneath the sheets. Life with him had been a joy—on good days.

She grabbed the half-empty bottle of Ambien pills and curled her legs under her on the couch. She longed for oblivion. To forget. She thumbed open the horoscope page in Marie Claire, as she did every month, and scanned the advice under her sign, a Scorpion, drawn biting its lethal tail.

Jacques had said she embodied Scorpio’s dark, jealous nature and secretiveness. And despite his free spirit, he’d seemed to like it during their five years of marriage. Opposites attract, wasn’t that the saying?

Under Scorpio’s Feelings Forecast she read: Venus rising indicates time for reflection. The same for dreams. Take time, ponder, the answers will come. A warm-colored sun illuminates your journey.

Answers will come? Already, as she’d told the reporter, that bitch was in custody. The little harpy with her cleft lip, like the upper lip of a hare, a sign still regarded in her Breton village as the malicious act of an elf or fairy. Old sayings and beliefs still held sway in the countryside. Hadn’t her mother refused to let her pregnant sister cross in front of a rabbit for fear of miscarriage?

That Laure was cursed and transmitted the curse to others around her. Nathalie known it the moment she’d laid on eyes on her.

Nathalie’s fist balled, knocking the pills over, sprinkling them across the floor. How many had she taken tonight? The doctor said two would dull the edge of anxiety. Two?

She’d vowed to Jacques she’d never go back on the street. She’d given her word. Did it matter now?

Jacques, fresh from the military in Corsica, and new to the police force, had found her. She would never forget that bitter February evening. The flics were making a routine sweep of rue Joubert; she was just a few months into The Life. At the Commissariat he’d grinned, handing her hot coffee and offering her a seat in his warm cubicle. He’d treated her like a human being and winked, offering her a “cousine’s” job, which was what they called informers. He’d promised her better things and, to his credit, later he had made an honest woman of her. She owed her life to him.

And it had been sweet, especially those last few days. Talking with him every day, sometimes twice, his saying he needed her, that only she could help him, and it would all work out. He’d leave the force, they’d settle in Saint Raphael, buy that little bistro. But now, it was all over, all due to that jealous whiner.

Proof? Why did they need more than Laure’s smoking gun? Those juges d’instructions got more fussy every day; soon, as Jacques had said, they’d need to video a crime before anyone got nailed.

What had Jacques put away, the night she came home early? Groggy, she reached down for the pills, picked them up one by one, put some back in the bottle, and took two more. Or was it three more?

Little was left to comfort her. Most days her only interactions were at work or with the cashier at Casino, the market, who lived downstairs. Her life had been mechanical and soulless since Jacques had left. And now he was gone for good.

The Marie Claire fell to the floor. Her muscles had relaxed. The walls glazed before her eyes, a hazy aura of vanilla light came through the window from the street. Hadn’t her horoscope indicated a colored sun . . .?

Thursday Night

“ I’M SORRY, I’M THE only one here,” said Felix Conari’s housekeeper. “Petru? I haven’t seen him. Madame and Monsieur are out.”

“Please,” Aimee said. “I must reach Monsieur Conari.”

“Monsieur Conari?” said the flustered housekeeper. “He’s gone straight from the airport to services at Eglise Saint-Pierre de Montmartre. That’s all I know.”

“Merci,” Aimee said, clicking off her cell phone.

“I have a gig,” Lucien said.

“First, let’s go to church,” she said.

THE TAXI stopped on rue Saint-Rustique, the oldest street in Montmartre, wide enough, she imagined, for a twelfth-century cart. She handed the driver thirty francs. “Keep the change,” she said, hoping to earn late-night taxi karma, and he grinned.

A gutter ran down the middle of the street, like an inverted seam, leading to Eglise Saint-Pierre, a church built on the site of Roman temples to Mars and Mercury. In the fifth century, an abbey, later the birthplace of the Jesuit order, had stood here. Now it was the oldest chapel in Paris. During the Revolution, it had been a telegraph station. In the Franco-Prussian War, a Prussian munitions depot. At the time of the Commune, a fortress against the Communards and starving masses who were reduced to hunting rats.

The bronze sculpted Italian doors stood open, revealing a candle-lit medieval stone chapel. A small crowd was leaving the mass. The courtyard, usually crowded with tourists, lay deserted this winter night.

The musk of incense made her nose itch. Their footsteps echoed as they passed the statue of Marie Therese of Montmartre and walked toward the columns crowned by sculpted leaves.

Felix Conari was shaking hands with the priest, clasping them within his own. A gray-haired man wearing a dark suit, red tie, and blue shirt, the uniform of Ministry types, stood next to him. His was a face she’d seen often in the paper next to that of the Minister of the Interior.

Church and state. Bad partners. She didn’t like it.

She caught Conari’s eye. If he was surprised, he didn’t show it. A few moments later, he excused himself and joined them.

“Forgive me, Monsieur Conari, but your housekeeper—”

“My wife didn’t tell you? Aaah, I forgot she’s at a reception, but it’s good you found me.” Conari put his arm around Lucien. “Ca va, Lucien?”

Lucien gave a hesitant nod.

“We celebrated the annual memorial mass for my sister. Come, let’s talk outside,” Conari said. His silk tie was rumpled, his eyes tired and red. Near the pillar, he picked up his brown overcoat, which was resting on a folded suitbag with an Air France luggage tag.

Outside the church, which was overshadowed by Sacre Coeur, he buttoned his coat and steered them to the adjacent cemetery gate. Mist topped the summit of rue du Mont-Cenis, the street that was once the ancient pilgrim route.

“We must clear up this misunderstanding, Lucien,” said Felix.

The dark cemetery, with a sign saying it was open once a year, revealed sinking sarcophagi pitched at drunken angles. Druids, Romans, medieval men, they were all under here, somewhere.

“How can we reach Petru?” Aimee asked.

“He was supposed to meet me at the airport.”

“Two hours ago he threatened us.”

“I haven’t seen him since Monday,” Conari said. “I don’t understand.”

He seemed as lost as she felt. She’d thought Conari would have answers. She’d been clutching at connections, grasping at straws driven by a feeling in her gut, unsubstantiated by anything more than an overheard conversation in Corsican, Zette’s body hanging from the WC door, a nine-year-old’s observations from the roof,