AL07 - Murder on the Ile Saint-Louis

Guilt pierced her; reducing an old man to tears hadn’t been on her agenda. Her ringing cell phone broke into his muffled sobs.

Torn, she didn’t know what to do. She didn’t even have a

tissue. In her bag, she found a moist towelette pack, LEON, BRASSERIE BELGE, with a green mussel imprinted on it. She tore it open and put it in his hands. Her phone kept ringing. Something wrong with Stella? Or Nelie calling?

“Allo?” she answered.

“It’s on the scanner, Aimee. Vavin’s been murdered,” Rene said, breathless.

“I know, Rene.”

In the pause she heard bleeps from the scanner.

“They’re on the lookout for a woman with spiky hair, wearing a red feather-trimmed jacket. . . .”

That damn security guard! Her heart sank to her wet high-tops.

“That’s me.” She couldn’t even go back to her apartment to change.

“What?”

“I found him.”

“What the hell’s happened? And Stella?”

“Later, Rene,” she said. “Stella’s with the babysitter at Martine’s.” She had to work fast. “I’m going to Regnault.”

“And run right into the flics? I heard the office address; that’s how I recognized him.”

“The flics will need to get a search warrant and that takes time,” she said. “I figure whoever killed Vavin is en route to his office. But I have the keys. That should give me some advantage.”

“Don’t go there alone,” Rene said.

“There’s not much choice. Or time.”

She heard the police scanner crackle in the background, glanced again at the wall clock. She’d have to hurry.

“I’ll meet you,” Rene said.

“You don’t have to, Rene,” she said, but she appreciated his offer.

“Where?”

“On the second floor,” she said. “Women’s restroom. Bring your laptop and a coat for me.”

“In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m a—”

“Then meet me by the fire door next to it. Hurry, Rene.”

The old man had sat in the chair again and he was far away, lost in his memories. “Monsieur . . .”

“Leave me alone.” He shrugged her hand off his shoulder and drained the wineglass with shaking hands.

She set her card down on the table, her fingertips blackened with surface grime. “I doubt that Helene killed anyone, but if she witnessed the murder, call me. I’ll use your back door if you don’t mind.”

In his galley kitchen piled with dirty pots, she opened the back door to a small courtyard. She looked back but he hadn’t moved.

She took a headband from her pocket, pulled it over her hair, fished out big black sunglasses from her bag. Put the jacket on inside out, on the red-and-orange-fiber side. Not bad. She looped a scarf around her throat to cover the Christian Lacroix label.

Several doors opened onto the small courtyard. She tried the one labeled HOTEL and walked through an even narrower passage—once the seventeenth-century tennis court of Louis XIII, who liked the fashionable sport a l’anglaise—that led into the lobby of the four-star Hotel du Jeu de Paume.

In the restored medieval timbered lobby, tapestries lined the walls and tall floral arrangements in Lalique vases adorned the tables. A woman whose face Aimee recognized from an eighties Louis Malle film stared at her. There was no time to waste.

She smiled at the young doorman, wishing the old White Russian who’d worked here for years was standing there instead. “Taxi, please.”

“You’re a hotel guest, Mademoiselle?” he asked.

“A guest of a guest,” she said. “I’m in a rush.”

“Pardon, Mademoiselle, but service extends to our guests only.”

That meant he wanted a big tip.

“He’ll appreciate my disappearance,” she said, palming fifty francs into the doorman’s hand. “Before the photographers arrive!”

One-upmanship was the only way to handle his type.

After a blast of his whistle, she stepped in a taxi and sat back on the leather seat.

“Six rue des Chantiers.”

She slouched down as the taxi sped past the flic cars.

Wednesday Early Evening

KRZYSZTOF RUBBED HIS goose-pimpled arms in the chilly lab. He stared at the row of labeled chemicals. Easy, so easy. He’d seen recipes for explosives on the Internet using HTH, the swimming-pool chlorination compound, Vaseline, and simple table salt. Concoct an explosive, plant it at the oil conference reception, threaten to detonate it unless they canceled the agreement. It should be easy.

Stop . . . what was he thinking? Violence against one of the hydra-headed corporations who polluted the world? Disable one and another would spring into its place. There had to be another way. He wished he knew what it was.

NIGHT THREW SHADOWS over the farm compound as Krzysztof entered the dark kitchen. It was deserted. The only evidence of the red-haired artiste was her welding torch on the scorched floor by her twisted pipe sculpture. Art—she called that art?

He climbed into his sleeping bag in the corner, exhausted. His cell phone bit into his side. He took it out, turned it on . . . no messages. His mind drifted in the enveloping down bag’s warmth.

Voices, guttural and low, invaded his dreams. “Explosives enough for a nice little scare.” Then low laughter. He blinked. A dim light from the artiste’s studio cast oblong shadows on the table. He realized that he wasn’t dreaming.

He sat up, rubbing his eyes. Saw beads of rain on the shoulders of huddled figures in raincoats. Craned to get a better look. Two men, crouching, The taller one stood and left. Krzysztof caught only the outlines of the other’s face; he was blond and hawk nosed. The face looked familiar, he’d seen him before but couldn’t place him. Then footsteps, the slam of a door, and the man was gone.

Krzysztof got to his feet, stiff from sleeping on the floor, and walked into the studio. The redhead, a shawl around her lace halter top, was stuffing something into the pocket of her torn jeans.

Cold drafts whistled under the warped window frames. Her welding torch was hooked onto a dark green gas canister, her protective visor was on the floor.

“Who was that?” Krzysztof asked.

“Quoi?” Her gray-speckled eyes darted from side to side. “How long have you been here?” she asked irritably. She put her hand over her jeans pocket but not before he saw the wad of francs.

Scattered pieces of copper wire snaked across the floor near metal pipes and smudges of black powder, like a clump of ants. He stiffened. Gun powder. How could he have been so naive?

“Long enough,” he said. “You’re making pipe bombs.”

“What’s it to you?” She combed her fingers through her red curly hair, caught it up, and twisted it into a knot. “You’ve overstayed your welcome.”

“You made the bottle bombs, too.”

“Art expresses itself in many mediums.”

“And set me up.”

“Phfft, not me. I manufacture to order only. Clients do what they want with what I make for them.” She gathered her shawl around her shoulders. “Boring. Instead of a militant, you’re just a scared