Murder at the Lanterne Rouge

So the old woman related to Chinese illegals. Did she know Meizi? Was she trying to protect her, hide information?

“Meizi must feel so alone. Lost.”

“But there are always places to hide, to meld into the woodwork, like we did.” Mademoiselle Samoukashian shrugged, her eyes far away. “Pascal was a funny boy. Sweet but odd.”

From the sound of it, the woman would tell the story in her own way. Aimee needed to be patient. She took a sip of coffee, a thick mixture like silt with a cardamom aftertaste.

“His parents had him late in life,” Mademoiselle said, glancing back at the pot before continuing. “My nephew, his father, was held in a Siberian POW camp until the sixties. Never was the same, but don’t get me started. Pascal’s mother died from TB in a sanatorium.” She shrugged. “He came to live with me until he passed the exams for Ecole Nationale Superieure d’Arts et Metiers.”

The prestigious grande ecole of technical engineering. “Quite an accomplishment,” Aimee said, wondering how this fit in.

“But Pascal still lives … lived nearby. Always fixed this, took care of that.” Mademoiselle waved her hand around.

Aimee took in the recessed halogen lighting, felt the warmth from the floor, surveyed the high-tech console of buttons labeled Heat 1, Hall, Boiler.

“Pascal did all this. You’ve noticed, eh?”

And lusted for a renovation like this for her own seventeenth-century flat. Right now Aimee would settle for consistent heat in their office.

“Beautiful and innovative,” Aimee said, noticing the high-tech chrome laptop, a model that their part-time hacker Saj kept mentioning. The woman was more tech-savvy than most people half her age. “I imagine, a small repayment for devoting yourself to his upbringing.”

She snorted. “Not so much. No one called me the nurturing type, but I provided. I managed stage sets at Theatre de la Gaite Lyrique, the wardrobe. Pascal used to play back stage sometimes, but he grew up across the square in the Musee des Arts et Metiers. After school I’d find him there. The machines, gadgets stimulated his mind. Too much.”

Aimee turned this over. “By that you mean …?”

“He loved making ‘inventions.’ Obsessed.” The old woman rolled her eyes affectionately. “Following the beat of a different drummer, as they say. Never played in the park with the other boys. He told me, when he was still a boy, that one day he’d work at the Musee. Because the Musee still kept alive the spirit of science, art, and invention of the medieval guilds that built the cathedrals. Can you imagine a teenage boy saying that?”

Mademoiselle Samoukashian gave a little shrug, sipped her Turkish coffee.

“Yet as a youngster he wore the dunce hat in the corner of the classroom, a tete de Turc.”

Aimee nodded. “Me, too, for daydreaming.” She took another sip. But she wondered at the point of this fable. What agenda lay behind this, other than reminiscing about her murdered great-nephew? Maybe this woman just needed to vent. “But what an accomplishment, that Pascal entered a grande ecole,” she said.

“Mais oui, but only after two years of competitive prep to pass the mathematique superieur,” Mademoiselle Samoukashian said, a hint of pride in her voice. “Another exam with a technology component for Arts et Metiers. Of the two thousand who pass the test, they accept six hundred.”

“Sounds grueling.” She was painting a picture of Pascal, Aimee realized.

“It was only the beginning!” she scoffed. “Then, a grande ecole. Before his first year, their assignments included figuring out how to write verses of Gothic script on matchsticks with a Rotring pen nib. He needed a magnifying glass to even see what he was writing, never mind figure out how to write it.” She shook her head. “The bizutage, the ritual hazing, got worse in his first year. A strange group, if you ask me. Medieval.”

Aimee needed to steer this back to Meizi. “Mademoiselle, the investigating flics suspect Chinese in your nephew’s murder.”

“You’re the detective,” she said without skipping a beat. “You found his body. What do you think?”

Aimee had thought a lot of things, all related to Meizi. Hoped to God she wasn’t involved in his murder. Thoughts, like air, came cheap. “That’s not my job. I’m looking for Meizi.”

“Pascal never drank, hated gambling. He was so shy and awkward around women,” said Mademoiselle Samoukashian. “No Chinese would kill him. No one here, young or old, trusts the flics. Alors, he spent all his free time volunteering at the Musee.”

Whatever his involvement with Meizi, he had kept it from his great-aunt. Aimee had a thought. “Mademoiselle, with Pascal’s grande ecole credentials, I wouldn’t have thought he’d teach at an engineering trade school. Couldn’t he have had any job he wanted?”

Mademoiselle Samoukashian bristled, her eyes sparkling with anger. “Aimed higher, you mean. Command a top salary. Serve and sup with the elite.”

Aimee wanted to kick herself. Tactless again. “Desolee, I didn’t mean that the way it sounded.”

“Of course you did.” She shrugged. “You’re not the first. Blame my Bolshie upbringing, but Pascal did me proud. He wanted everyone to benefit, not just a sliver of the top crust.”

Mademoiselle Samoukashian took Aimee’s demitasse, studied the dregs coating the sides. Nodded.

“I see a road. A long road. A wall, rounded like a tower. You are going to see a person. A place.”

Foreseeing such a vague future in coffee grinds, Aimee thought, was less than helpful.

“Weren’t you the one in the paper?” Mademoiselle Samoukashian said suddenly. “A kidnapping, murder case before Christmas?”

Aimee cringed at the memory—her godfather, Morbier, had been a suspect in his girlfriend’s murder; then there were the high-profile repercussions of recovering a Spanish princess who had been kidnapped by Basque terrorists. Aimee had hated the reporters besieging the office, the new flood of calls for help from distraught families of murder victims. She had promised herself all that was over. She’d never do criminal work again. And she’d kept that promise for all of a month.

“My firm does computer security,” she said.

“But you’re also a licensed private detective,” Mademoiselle said, looking at Aimee’s card. “According to this.”

Aimee could learn nothing else here. She stood, slid her arms in her coat sleeves, and took a step toward the old woman. “Wonderful cafe, Mademoiselle.”

“But this woman, this Meizi, you said there’s a connection to Pascal?”

Aimee nodded, hoping this had jogged her memory. “Maybe you remember something Pascal said?”

Mademoiselle Samoukashian clamped Aimee’s hand in an iron grip. “But you’re looking for her. You think she saw who murdered my Pascal.”

“I don’t know,” Aimee said.

“God shouldn’t let a child die before his parents,” Mademoiselle Samoukashian said, her voice small. “But I don’t qualify; I just raised him.”

Aimee leaned down and hugged her where she sat in her thatched chair, felt the thin shoulders, the heaving chest of this tough little old woman. Like her own grandfather, who’d stepped in to help raise her when her mother left. He’d pitched in when Aimee’s father was on a stakeout, taken her to piano lessons, the auction gallery, supervised her homework.

When Aimee looked up, she saw tears pooled in those dark brown eyes. A look of despair.

“I don’t trust the flics,” Mademoiselle Samoukashian said. “Won’t you help me?”

“I’d like to, but …”

“How much?” She reached under the piled napkins, pulled out a rubber-banded wad of francs. “Never mind, take it,” she said, and thrust it into Aimee’s hand.

“Mademoiselle, I can’t take your money.”