Murder Below Montparnasse (20 page)

Oleg’s mouth parted in surprise. Deflated, he stared at the water rings on the zinc countertop.

“What happened?” She needed to know his take.

“You won’t understand.” He shook his head.

“Try me.”

“Yuri abandoned me,” Oleg said, “like his father had done to him. Some role model. My mother sent me to boarding school when I was six. It broke her heart.” He shrugged. “Still, we’re the only family each other has … had, now.
Alors
, he liked to complain about Tatyana’s cooking but he ate it.”

Hurt showed in Oleg’s eyes. She believed him. The only thing he’d said that rang true.

“
Mon Dieu
, such a big mouth, he told everyone about that painting. Damien, the art dealer.…”

Just what Damien had said. Poor Yuri, his big mouth had gotten him killed. And yet, she hadn’t been able to get the story out of him. Sad and frustrating.

“You took him to Luebet, the art dealer, when?”

“Sunday. We warned him to put the painting away. Hide it. At least until this morning.”

Part of her wanted to believe him. The other part figured he was telling a version of the truth.

“He called me after the accident last night,” Oleg said. “Told me he’d spoken with you. Hired you.”

She chose her words. “Hired me?”

“To recover the Modigliani.”

“A Modigliani?”

“Don’t play dumb. He called you, didn’t he?”

“Not dumb, cautious.” She decided to trust him. A little bit.

“But why would someone torture him for a painting that was already stolen?” Oleg said, his brow creased.

Aimée wondered the same thing. She pulled out Luebet’s Polaroid. “Of the four people who’ve seen the painting, only you and Damien are still alive.” She left out his wife. “Did you take this?”

Oleg stared at the photo.

“Doesn’t do the painting justice,” he said. “Even in the humidity, that dim light, the shadows, the painting … it spoke.” Oleg’s eyes glowed.

“Go on.” Oleg seemed more than acquainted with the art world, from the way he spoke. “You’re an artist?”

“When I was at boarding school, every Sunday I was the only boarder who never went home.” Self-pity stained his voice. “The art teacher used to take me to the
musées
in Bordeaux.”

“Now you’re an art teacher, that it?”

“You’re a detective, all right,” he said with sarcasm that could have sliced stale bread.

The mirror behind the counter reflected the gauzy, fleecelike light from rue Daguerre’s street lamps.

Oleg reached for his espresso. “This glimpse into Lenin moved me.” He turned and his eyes pierced her. “Where is it?”

She almost choked on her espresso. “Like I know?”

His cell phone vibrated on the polished wood counter, but he ignored it. Oleg patted his jacket pocket, turned his back to her. In the mirror behind the counter, she saw him checking
something from his pocket—what looked like a glossy hotel brochure with a logo she couldn’t make out.

She averted her eyes as he turned back.

“Your stepfather wouldn’t make a robbery report,” she said, switching to another tack. “That only makes sense if he feared something.”

Oleg ground his teeth. “Do you speak Russian?”

She shook her head. “Do you?”

“My wife, Tatyana, is from Ukraine.”

“Meaning you don’t and she does.”

He didn’t deny it. She had no idea why he had asked her in the first place.

“I don’t know why, but he trusted you.” Oleg hung his head. “More than me.”

And then she understood. “He knew my … mother.” The word caught in her throat. Sounded strange coming out of her mouth.

“How?”

“I don’t know.”

“Come on, you just said—”

“We never got that far, Oleg.”

Her mother
—words never spoken by her father, never used while she grew up. This phantom spirit in the house no one ever talked about. Like the elephant in the salon everyone pretended not to see.

She came back to the conversations in the café, the hiss of the milk steamer, what Oleg was saying. “Yuri asked me to find a buyer.”

Should she believe him?

“I’ve got someone who’s interested.”

His cell phone vibrated non-stop.

“What do I do?” Oleg looked lost.

He was asking her?

“Besides ignore that call?” She leaned closer. “If you didn’t
steal the painting, who do you think did? Your stepfather hired me before he discovered it was missing—why? Threats, extortion?”

“He told me he owed someone.”

Yuri’s words about owing her mother thudded through her mind.

“Like who? Any specifics?”

“A woman
—oui
, that’s right.”

“Did he let on why? Their connection?”

“I thought you were the detective,” Oleg said, standing up abruptly. “Fat lot of help you’ve been to me.”

A swish of air and he’d gone. Left half his espresso and her with the bill. Her gaze followed him to an idling late-model Peugeot, a blonde at the wheel. She glimpsed a flash of something red as he opened the door. Then the car roared away down Avenue du Général Leclerc.

Aimée’s mind spun. Was Oleg playing an elaborate game? Had the painting been stolen while Yuri dined at his house? Was he pretending he didn’t have it to force her hand, find out what she knew, what Yuri might have confided in her? But that was all conjecture.

When you hit a wall, think of the opposite scenario
, her father always said.

What if Oleg figured she knew the painting’s whereabouts? And he clutched at her connection because of what Yuri had led him to believe?

Had her mother stolen the painting? Aimée’s stomach clenched. In Yuri’s last message, he had been adamant that she leave it alone. Too dangerous.

Crazy. She had to stop these crazy thoughts.

But she’d learned that he had a buyer. A buyer and, she was guessing, no painting. That’s why he’d met her.

In his shoes, she’d be off to stall the buyer. Hold him or her in the wings until the painting surfaced. Or, if he was the one who stole it, until attention died down and it was safe to sell it.

Oleg hadn’t even hounded her for money for Yuri’s damaged Mercedes.

A race to recover the Modigliani and she’d gotten ensnared in it. She downed her espresso, caught the waiter’s attention, and slid some francs over the counter.

“Your friend uses our café as a meeting place,” the waiter said as he made change. “But he doesn’t pay for his drink?”

She pushed the coins back at him. Waiters knew the clientele in the quartier. “But I bet his father Yuri did.”

A shrug. “Old Russian, gray hair?”

“The bookbinder,” she said.

“That’s right.” He nodded and smiled. “All that Russian winter of the soul.”

A waiter quoting literature? She tried to remember if that had been a question on the baccalaureate exam. Or had René, a voracious reader, quoted that from a crime novel?

He noticed her quizzical look. “Tolstoy.”

R
IDING THE
M
ÉTRO
back, she took out her to-do list, wrote down:

Damien

Oleg—nervous

Letters

Off rue de Rivoli, she stood in line for takeout
salade niçoise
, thinking of those black agnès b. cigarette pants. She needed to lose a kilo before she’d be back to her normal size. Awful. She’d never let this happen before. Time to swim laps.

For the second time she called Morbier to check if he’d pulled strings for Saj. Only voice mail. She left a message for him to call her back. Frustrated, she tried the criminal ward at Hôtel-Dieu. A new nurse who refused to give her any information.

Tired of voice mail and people who gave her the runaround, she headed to her office. She had reports to finish up, a security scan to run. And Maxence’s printouts on Yuri Volodya to go through. But when she punched in the entry code on the keypad, no answering click opened the door.
Merde
. On the blink again.

She searched in her bag, dropped the boxed salad, and found the old key after a minute. Picking up the salad, she inserted the key, turned it twice, and finally the tumbler turned. She’d complain to the concierge. First the lift didn’t work, then the door. Always something. And a long, empty evening of work ahead.

She hit the timed light. Nothing happened.

Then she heard scuffling, felt a whoosh of cold air.

“What the …?”

Before she could turn in the darkness, something was pulled over her head. And then everything went black.

R
ENÉ’S HANDS SHOOK
in his jacket pockets. He faced Andy and Susie, who towered over him on strappy sandals and tanned legs. Only one door out of the back supply room, and that was blocked by the rent-a-guard.

“Reconsider, René. Two new investors fly in tomorrow. The pot’s growing. With the three we’ve got so far, that IPO gives you twenty million, give or take. Put that against two hundred thou’ a year, René.” Andy shook his head. “Why would you say no to a two hundred percent profit increase? Doesn’t make sense.”

“Andy, it’s wrong.”

“Sounds right to me. Do the math.”

“You can’t think—”

“Think all you like,” Andy said. “You’ve set the relay and delay mode. It’s all your work.”

“While you monitored me, and never even provided me access to the whole system. It says ‘Chief Technology Officer’ on my door, yet you used my work and froze me out.” He glared at Susie. Her cool hazel eyes met his for a moment, but she had the grace to look down. “You had me do the dirty work.”

“Check this out, René,” Andy said, handing him the business page of the
San Jose Mercury
. “Detained corporate French spy awaiting trial. Just last month. Caught at the airport. Terrible. Looks like San Quentin for him.”

San Quentin, the prison?

“You’ve set me up.”

“More like we took out insurance, René,” Susie said, her voice thin. “We bought you, now finish delivering. Make nice.”

He had to figure out how to blow the whistle on them. And get out alive. “Give me some time,” he said. “I’ve got to think.”

“What’s to think about?” Susie said, edging forward.

“You engineered the back door, René,” Andy said. “If you talk, we deny all allegations. Report you to immigration. They’ll be watching for you at the airport. Detain you.”

“What?” Fear flooded him.

“Just another foreign corporate spy detained for questioning at immigration.”

Andy lifted his phone and checked a message. “Hurry up, René. The meeting’s starting.”

“Front running’s illegal,” he said, hating how weak he sounded.

“Don’t want to play? Think you’ll blow the whistle on us?” Susie said. “But no one understands all the technical jargon, René. Of course, if you try we’ll tell them it was you, some idea you wanted to show us on our platform. How we had no clue you tried to sabotage us.”

Andy flicked off his phone. Jerked his thumb at the guard, who put a cardboard box on the floor. Inside was René’s coffee cup, the brass plate with his name, a blank memo pad, and his own laptop. The motherboard open and exposed.

“You’re out of here, René.”

René realized that was Andy’s plan all along.

Susie opened the supply room door, glanced down the corridor. “All clear. The guard will escort you out.”

In shock, René picked up the box. Threatened and now fired—what could he do? They’d covered their tail. Shut him up for good.

But he had an idea. They’d be preoccupied with the looming investor meeting—if he hurried he could do it.

“Dude, I’m so sorry. I wanted us to work together. You know, be friends,” Andy said, that rocket-bright smile back on his face. At the door he paused, turned to the guard. “One more thing, empty his pockets.”

The guard took René’s token and office key.

“Y
OU’RE WALKING FUNNY
, René,” Bob said from his Cadillac window. “Did they beat you up?”

René ducked out of the El Camino Real bus shelter and slid into the passenger seat. “This car’s got eight cylinders. Use them, Bob.”

Bob hit the gas. “What the hell’s going on?”

“Not right now. Just get me to the motel before they discover what I stole and change the passwords.”

He reached down in his shoe. The token he’d cloned using Susie’s ID bit into the ball of his foot. He unlaced his shoe, moved it to the side. Safest place for now.

They wouldn’t be able to change the pass codes for a while. René figured that, given all the reconfigurations that would be required once they did realize what he’d done, it would take a minimum of twelve hours. Bare minimum. But if they didn’t catch on to his cloning the remote access token, he’d have twenty-four to forty-eight hours.

“Bob, I need to get out of the country.”

“I can drop you at SFO, no problem.”

Bluff or not, he wouldn’t chance them tipping off immigration. Ruining his chance of ever working in this country again.

“No commercial airport, Bob. Ever hear of Mexicali?”

“That bad?”

Bob pulled up in front of the motel.

“Keep the engine running,” René said. “Call me if.…”

“I see suspicious people? Sure, René. Never knew about your flair for the dramatic.”

René slammed the car door, slid the key card into his room
door. He threw everything in his bag. Reached for his laptop and backup drive. His phone rang. Bob.

He ran into the bathroom near the pink hot tub, found the plastic Aéroports de Paris duty-free bag and stuffed the laptop and backup drive inside. From the bathroom window overlooking the back door of a Mexican restaurant came the smell of refried beans.

The phone rang again. René hurried back to the front window and peered out a chink in the drapes. Bob’s big-finned, baby-blue Cadillac was nowhere in sight. Only two big men at the door with baseball bats.

A
IMÉE HEARD THE
sea, the lapping water. Her mind went to white sand, the pine scrub near the shore at Cassis. Was she on holiday? Dreaming?

A wave of dizziness overtook her. She blinked and realized she couldn’t see because a blindfold was covering her eyes. Nausea rose in her stomach. She gagged, but her mouth was taped shut.