AL06 - Murder in Montmartre

Thursday Night

AIMEE SWERVED ON THE icy steps in time to avoid the old woman and her pet schnauzer. She hiked up the cascading series of stairways and stuck her nail file in her cell phone again. One message. Why hadn’t it rung? Bad reception on the butte? Or her missing antenna? If Rene had deposited Varnet’s money in the bank, she’d buy another cell phone.

She listened to her message.

Static, then Rene’s voice. “Aimee.” Short gasps came over the phone. “The building site off rue Andre . . . .”

The line fuzzed and the message ended. Had Rene tried to investigate without her and gotten into trouble?

She looped the long wool scarf twice around her neck and knotted it as she ran into the cold night. Forget the infrequent late night Metro, she’d make it there faster on foot.

Worried, Aimee ran up the steep rue des Saules, past the pearly dome of Sacre Coeur looming over the dark rooftops. She sprinted down winding rue Lepic with its shuttered windows. Music and a crowd spilled out of Le Jungle, the Senegalese club on rue Gabrielle. “What’s your hurry? We’ve got a table. Join us,” a man called to her.

“Non, merci,” she said, swerving away from his laughing figure, her footsteps pounding on the uneven cobbles.

In Place Emile-Goudeau, she slipped on the water overflowing from the gutter and almost lost her footing. She passed the squat Bateau-Lavoir washhouse, Picasso and Modigliani’s for- mer studio, now an art gallery. Out of breath, she paused by the green metal Wallace fountain, wishing her feet didn’t hurt and that sweat hadn’t drenched her shirt. Then she ran down the steps. Not far now, a few streets more, if she could just keep running.

Her lungs heaving, she crossed windswept Place des Abbesses and kept left. Down the staircase, clutching the double railing, past Cloclo’s station in the doorway of a building adorned with stone medallions. No Cloclo, just darkness.

Rue Andre Antoine was deserted except for the whipping wind. Then she saw two figures, short figures, just visible in a doorway.

“Rene!”

As she got closer, she saw his companion was a little boy with defiant eyes, who was shivering. She pulled off her coat.

“You must be Paul,” she said, draping the coat around him.

“Where’s your computer?”

Catching her breath, she grinned. “At the office.”

“About time, Aimee,” Rene said.

“I found Nathalie Gagnard, overdosed on pills,” she said. “Poor thing’s getting her stomach pumped but I found Jacques’s bank statements and something else that makes for interesting reading.”

He inhaled. “Sorry, maybe I overreacted. Varnet coughed up, that’s the good news. We’re solvent.” He paused.

Should she read between the lines to try and figure out what he couldn’t say in front of Paul?

Paul shoved her coat back at her and ran into the apartment building without a word, slamming the door.

“What was that about, Rene?” she asked. “Didn’t you convince Paul’s mother to let him give evidence?”

“His mother’s our witness. She saw three flashes.”

“Three? But she drinks, doesn’t she? I thought Paul—”

“I’ll explain on the way back,” Rene said.

Friday Morning

AIMEE TWISTED THE WHITE porcelain knob of her claw-footed tub. The water heater had fired up, thank God. She poured in lavender essence. Steam rose as she sank her cold legs and aching feet into the hot water.

As she inhaled the citron-tinged lavender, her mind wandered. Rene’s recounting of Paul’s mother’s story, the names of planets, the phrase “searching the stream,” Bordereau’s mention of a data-encryption leak, and the computer printout in Nathalie’s files whirled in her head. Five minutes later, with the water still only up to her hips, the gas flame sputtered and died.

Great.

She toweled herself dry, pulled on her father’s worn flannel robe and woollen socks. With the printout, she worked on her laptop in bed, searching and culling encryption sites. Without success. She needed Saj.

As orange dawn streaked the sky, she curled up under the duvet and slept, exhausted. She was awakened by the phone ringing in her ear and opened her eyes to see the cursor on the laptop screen blinking by her face.

“Allo?”

“Aimee, big problem,” Rene said. “Maitre Delambre’s gone to a hearing in Fontainebleau. Isabelle’s having second thoughts.

She says she can’t give evidence. What should I do?”

She couldn’t let their witness get away.

“Meet me at 36, Quai des Orfevres,” she said. “Bring her with you, any way you can.”

She filled the sink with ice cubes and stuck her face in, to wake up. Holding her breath, she kept her face immersed until her cheekbones went numb. She pulled on black tights, a woolen skirt, and a black cashmere sweater and zipped up her knee-high boots. At the door she grabbed her coat and ran down the worn marble stairs, swiping Stop Traffic red lipstick across her lips.

She called La Proc as she ran along the quay. She was their only hope. Eight minutes later she met Rene and Isabelle huddled by the guard post. Gunmetal gray snow-filled clouds threatened above. Around her ankles, a flurry of wet leaves gusted from the gutter.

“Bonjour, we have an appointment,” she said, showing her ID to the two blue- uniformed guards.

She herded Rene and a hesitant Isabelle inside the courtyard of the Prefecture, turning left under the arcade to the wide brown wooden doors.

“Where’s Paul?” Aimee asked.

“At school.” Isabelle glanced at Rene. “Where’s her computer? You said she works on a computer.”

“Sometimes we have to do things the old-fashioned way,” Rene said.

They climbed several flights of the brown-tiled stairway. Aimee remembered counting them as a little girl. Five hundred and thirty-two steps, still the same. When she got to the top, if she’d counted right, her father would give her a Carambar. At the Enforcement Section, she showed her ID again.

Isabelle pulled back, staring at the group of policemen standing by the head of the stairs.

A uniformed flic ushered them along a high-ceilinged corridor, past open-doored offices. Their footsteps echoed on the polished wooden floor. A few heads looked up as they entered the long arched corridor of the procureur general’s wing. Aimee heard laughter, a snatch of conversation—“Barring the miracle of the loaves and fishes, her sighting puts the mec in the boulan-gerie at the time of the murder”—and smelled the aroma of coffee.

She paused. Isabelle had come to a halt and was buttoning her coat, her mouth tight. “I’m leaving.”

“What’s the matter, Isabelle?”

Isabelle shook her head. “Forget it.”

Dread hit Aimee. Too late now, she wanted to say. So much depends on you. Instead, she nodded. “This place makes me nervous, too.”

“Stupide, I’m leaving, I can’t get involved.”

“It’s a lot to ask of you, I know,” Aimee said, perspiring. “We wouldn’t impose, Rene wouldn’t be so persistent, unless we had to. Remember, it’s not about you and Paul.”

“Easy for you to say!” Isabelle turned away.