AL07 - Murder on the Ile Saint-Louis

She reported Krzysztof’s look of recognition when he’d scanned the papers in the Regnault file.

“Why didn’t he identify his girflfriend in the morgue?” Rene asked.

Good question.

“There is a reason, Rene.” She sat down at the laptop. “I have to find out what it is.”

“Wait, you’re not suggesting—Aimee, we work for Regnault, Alstrom’s publicity firm. So, in the first place, delving into Alstrom’s affairs is unethical,” Rene said.

“Did I say I was going to do that?”

“You don’t have to,” Rene said. “Second, if Alstrom suspects you are checking on internal procedures in their company . . .” He cleared his throat. “We’ll never land another computer security contract, Aimee.”

She stared out at the arms of the Seine, then back at her laptop screen, trying to figure out where Orla would have entered the water. “The Net’s an open door if you know how to navigate, right? We do it all the time, Rene. How do you think Liberation scooped the bribes camouflaged as campaign contributions to the Socialists? Some geek on the inside fed them the information.”

He shrugged. “We’re in the computer security business, we’re not muckrackers, Aimee. We have enough trouble of our own. The tax refund due since last year still sits on a bureaucrat’s desk, not to mention the fact that we have to eat and pay rent. Our security contracts pay our bills. Focus on our problems. Leave the rest to the activists.”

Right. Of course he was right. “Good point. But it’s the tip of some iceberg, Rene. An iceberg of scandal.”

“And Regnault? The company that pays us? I’ll ask you again, do you think what you intend to do is ethical?”

“Vavin begged me this morning to sign a new contract.”

Rene opened his briefcase. “And that would consist of?”

“Patching their firewalls, which were hacked right before we came on board. Continued system administration. See. Boring, routine and . . .”

“With a nice check in payment for our work,” Rene interrupted, scanning the contract. His eyes brightened. “We need it right now.”

“Vavin’s desperate, his sysadmin’s in the hospital. He tripled our fee.”

“Glad you took the initiative. I’ve handled the firewall, for now” Rene said.

“With your usual threat to hackers, I suppose.”

Rene nodded. “If you read this, you’re dead,” was his signature threat.

Stella stirred, her eyes blinking open. Time for another bottle. Aimee opened the baby bag, then glanced at the mail on the table she’d picked up from downstairs.

In the pile of bills lay a smudged, unstamped manila envelope bearing her name: Aimee. Hand delivered. Visions of the tire iron filled her mind, of the figure who had chased her on the quai. Her arm shook so much she dropped the envelope.

Rene asked, “What’s the matter?”

Her face paled. “Everything or nothing.” She took latex gloves from a drawer, slit the envelope, and shook it. A page torn from a magazine fell onto the table. It displayed a crossword puzzle filled in with smeared ink. The capital letters ran off the page.

Aimee recognized it as the back page of Mots Croises, the weekly crossword magazine sold at street kiosks. Underneath the puzzle were words printed in the same scrawling block letters: WAIT ONE MORE DAY. HER MOTHER BEGS YOU TO TELL NO ONE, OR THEY’LL KILL HER, ME, TOO. HER LIFE AND THE BABY’S ARE IN DANGER, DON’T CONTACT THE FLICS, OR TELL ANYONE.

Aimee’s hands trembled.

Kill her, me, too. The shaky letters recalled old penmanship books from the thirties. She wondered what she should do . . . could do.

“You believe this?” Rene asked. But she saw fear in Rene’s eyes, too.

“Do I have a choice?”

Her buzzer sounded. Nelie? She ran to the open window to gaze below. Morbier, her godfather, who was a commissaire, stood on the cobblestones. Alone.

“Leduc, thought I’d stop by for a cup of coffee,” he shouted up. A cloud passed over and briefly shadowed his corduroy jacket with its leather patches on the sleeves, his salt-and-pepper hair, his basset-hound drooping eyes.

He hadn’t “stopped by” in five years.

“What’s the occasion?”

”Invite me up. As I was in the quartier . . .”

In the quartier . . . an interesting way to put it. No doubt he had been called in to investigate Orla’s death.

The last thing she needed, Morbier up here with the baby. “Un moment, Morbier. There’s plaster and stucco all over. I’ll come down, we’ll go to lunch. My treat.”

She ducked back inside. “Can you give Stella a bottle, Rene . . . please. Watch her for a little bit.”

“Again?”

“She’s so good. Never a peep from her.”

And then Stella contradicted her by crying. Aimee picked her up, patted her back. The cries subsided.

“She likes to be held, Rene, that’s all.”

“But Regnault’s firewalls need more protection . . .” She heard the doubt in his voice.

“Program the new safeguards while she drinks the bottle. When I get back I’ll handle the rest.” She had to get his mind off her predicament and on to work. “Vavin assured me he’d propose our new package to his boss. Count on his support.”

Rene looked undecided.

“You saw the note. Morbier’s fishing. But I have to find out what he knows. Please, Rene!”

She thrust Stella into his hands.

“Do I have a choice?” he asked.

She grabbed her bag.

AIMEE WILLED HER shaking hands under the red-and-white-checked oilcloth to be still. She’d steered Morbier to the bistro around the corner. It had a dark seventeenth-century timbered ceiling and a stone fireplace big enough to walk into. Now the fireplace held a gas heater piled with menus.

“Still remodeling your apartment, Leduc? Business must be good.”

Morbier stored information, compartmentalized it in a way that put a database to shame. Old style and with the human touch, better than any profiler could do with a computer.

“Good? The ancient gas lines in the ceiling are still live; that was our latest setback.” She had to divert him and get him off the track. Then maybe she could discover what he knew. “Every time they drill a hole I end up in the bank manager’s office. Asking for credit.”

She reached for the bread basket at the same time he did. Their hands touched. Age spots she’d never noticed showed near his knuckles.

And not for the first time she wished that their relationship had been different. Or that she could share things with him as she had with her father. But five years ago that had changed.

“So, Morbier, you’re hobnobbing here with the nobility and just dropped in to visit me?”

“That’s me all over.” Morbier grinned. A dyed-in-the wool Socialist, Morbier had lived until the year before in the working-class slice of Bastille he’d grown up in, in the same fourth-floor walk-up apartment over the old metal foundry he’d been born in.

“The special looks good.” He gestured in the direction of the blackboard and raised two fingers at the man behind the counter.

“Oui, Commissaire, two specials.”

Morbier tucked the napkin into his collar. Sniffed and cocked his eyebrow. “New perfume?”

Eau de baby, instead of her usual Chanel No. 5. “I’m trying new fragrances,” she said. She looked down, noticed a clump of clotted formula on her blouse, and flicked it off. “Last time you ‘stopped by’ was for Papa’s