Murder at the Lanterne Rouge

But Becquerel was dead.

“I just asked one of Pascal’s Gadz’Arts classmates about Becquerel.”

“And?”

“Nothing.” Aimee pulled out her cell phone. “I’ll need to confer with my partner.”

Mademoiselle Samoukashian nodded, her gaze glued to the screen.

Rene answered on the first ring.

“Any idea how Pascal could e-mail his great-aunt with an attachment a moment ago?”

Pause. “He had a dead man switch on his computer account,” Rene said. “Common practice for nerds to store secrets in encrypted files. Each time you log in, it resets the clock. But if you don’t log in within a certain period of time, it sends an e-mail. Then deletes files, if he programmed it that way. No telling how long ago he set this up.”

“So he could have programmed this a week ago, two weeks ago?”

She heard the clicking of keys in the background

“Shoot it to me right now with the attachment. Hurry.”

She typed in Rene’s address. Hit FORWARD and said a little prayer. “Done.”

Rene sucked in his breath. “Let me find a program to figure this out.”

“How long, Rene?”

“An hour, a day. Call you back.” He clicked off.

Aimee looked up. “I have to go.”

“You’ll find who murdered Pascal?” The old woman’s voice quavered.

Determined now, she nodded. “Count on it, Mademoiselle Samoukashian.”

Sunday, 9 A.M.

RENE RUBBED HIS shoulders. Two hours of endless configurations spent over Samour’s decrypted attachment and he still couldn’t get a grip on it.

At least he’d left Meizi safe at the hotel.

And his hip ache had subsided to a dull throb once he’d borrowed the portable heater from Luigi’s travel agency down the hall.

Aimee’s mahogany desk was piled with samples of their new security prospectus. Hadn’t she promised to come in? And why hadn’t she updated him on the museum?

Saj sat monitoring the spyware installed on Coulade’s computer.

“Any activity?”

Saj shook his head. “Not so far. I’m also trawling Coulade’s desktop files. Nothing interesting pops out.”

“What do you make of this, Saj?”

Saj’s sandalwood prayer-bead bracelet clacked as he peered over Rene’s laptop. “Hmmm … I’m hungry.”

“That’s all you can say, Saj?”

“A recipe.” Saj handed him a battered takeout menu. “Which reminds me, feel like ordering in?” Saj stretched his tanned arms high over his six-foot frame, cracked his neck. His billowing white muslin Indian shirt blocked Rene’s view. How could he wear almost nothing in January?

Rene stared at his screen, at the reams of code from Samour’s attachment. A cipher.

“Say that again.”

“We had sushi yesterday,” Saj said. “What about the new South Indian vegan?”

“No, I mean recipe.”

“See those interesting code breaks?” Saj pointed to the flat lines of script.

His curiosity piqued, Rene highlighted a section of the attachment that he’d already pored over several times. “You mean this?”

“Think of it in 3-D. Add dimension.”

Rene slotted in a disc. Hit the icon to open the program. “Like this?”

A raised bed of points and concave lines appeared.

Saj shook his head. “Try a line separation.”

Excited, Rene scrolled down and hit another key.

The script aligned to borders and line breaks.

“Reminds me of my grandmother’s recipe book,” Saj said, pulling up a chair. “Those configuration symbols start each line.”

Symbols. “Meaning what?”

“I’d say they represent numbers, quantity, or measurements, Rene. Symbols grouped in those kinds of configurations often indicate Roman numerals.” Saj nodded, pulling a scarf around his shoulders. “Or medieval drams and weights, I’d guess here.”

“Say fourteenth century?”

“Why not?”

Rene grabbed the takeout menu. “Order anything you want, Saj. We’ve got a long day ahead of us.”

Sunday, 10:00 A.M.

“OFFICER PREVOST, s’il vous plait,” Aimee said to the blue-uniformed flic on duty. The commissariat on rue Louis Blanc had been designed by Gustave Eiffel, and its corners needed dusting.

“Mademoiselle Leduc?” said the fresh-faced recruit who’d missed a spot shaving his chin. He opened a file and slid a typed proces-verbal form across the high counter. “Routine, please sign and date your statement, s’il vous plait.”

“But we had an appointment,” she said. She’d counted on worming the surveillance info out of Prevost. He’d promised her.

“You’re late. He left for a meeting.”

Merde!

Aimee scanned the typed up statement, noting the case number and file with a pen on her palm. Reading her statement, her mind went back to the snow dusting the plastic on Pascal’s unseeing eyes, the chunks of his flesh gnawed by rats. Her attack last night.

“Prevost?” an officer was saying on the phone from the other end of the reception counter. Her ears perked up. “He’s on call today. Out to early lunch.”

Meeting, my foot, she thought. He’d avoided her.

She scribbled her name. Pushed the statement back to the officer. Smiled.

“I’m starving.” She rubbed her stomach. “Know a good place around here?”

The flic paused in thought. A challenge for him, she could tell, a new graduate from the police academy who’d been transferred to Paris and no doubt ate in the police canteen in the basement.

He shrugged.

“But flics know the best places to eat,” she said, pushing it.

“Some of the older ones talk about a cassoulet place on Quai de Valmy. But I don’t know.”

She winked. “Merci.”

Several blocks down rue Louis Blanc she saw the red awning of a bistro, Chez Pepe, cuisine de Bourgogne. Definitely a place for cassoulet. She hoped to God that Prevost ate here. Not a moment later she recognized his sparse hair, that raincoat ducking out the door. She revved into second gear and, her luck still holding, found a narrow space to wedge her scooter into, next to the zebra crosswalk.

To find Prevost and a parking place—the gods were smiling on her. She set her helmet in the carrier, edged sideways between the cars to the sidewalk, and stepped into melted slush up to her ankle. Another pair of boots, vintage Fendis, ruined.

Prevost stood in Chez Pepe’s doorway, speaking on his cell phone and gesturing with his free hand. Before she reached him, he clicked his phone shut and went back inside.