Murder Below Montparnasse (4 page)

“Now how do you feel?” She uncapped and poured the vodka. Handed him the towel.

“A scratch,” he said, clinked her shot glass. “I’m Yuri Volodya.”

“I know. You sent me five thousand francs.” She set down her card on the side table.

“So of course you came,” he said. “But too late. Hand me my glasses.”

Stubborn old Cossack, all right.

“There’s a pair hanging from your neck,” she said. “What’s this all about?”

He put on his glasses, and his voice changed. “You look just like her.”

Hope fluttered in her heart. “
Maman?
She’s alive?”

He shook his head. Winced in pain. “Forgive me. I thought you could help. You see, I owe your mother.”

“I don’t understand. Help how? And owe my mother what? When did you last see her?”

He averted his eyes and swigged the vodka. “I’m a bookbinder, I craft special editions. A commission takes a year.” He rubbed his thumb and fingertips together.

Why had he changed the subject? Nerves? He seemed anxious now, worried. Like he was saying one thing but meaning another.

“
Alors
, Monsieur Volodya, if we could talk about my mother, this painting.…”

“My craft’s for
les connaisseurs, vous savez
,” he said, as if she hadn’t spoken. “A certain clientele who appreciate the feel of a hand-bound book, the presentation of prints inside. Salvador Dalí commissioned my work,
des gens comme ça
.” Apart from his odd sentence structure—as if he translated from Russian construction—he spoke with a pure Parisian accent.

Under her boot she felt something hard and round. A brass button embossed with
LEVI’S
. Like the brass buttons on the Serb’s jean jacket. Her heart skipped. “What if this fell off the Serb’s jacket?”

“That man you ran over?” Yuri’s teary blue eyes widened. “Blame it on the Serb curse.”

“Meaning?”

“We have a saying about Serbs: An unfortunate man would be drowned in a teacup. But of that man I know nothing. Nothing.”

She doubted that. “I think this button came from his jean jacket. Maybe he trashed this place and came up empty.”

Yuri’s shoulders sagged, and the lines framing his mouth grew more pronounced. A quick scan told her the intruder knew exactly what to look for and where. The leather-bound books lining the shelves were untouched, as was an antique iron book-press on the worktable. An open calendar and notepad lay undisturbed on the desk.

“Life kicks one in the gut and we’re surprised?” he said. “As if one is the exception, not the rule?”

Since when do people refer to themselves in the third person
, she wondered.
An old-world thing
?

“Monsieur Volodya, I’m here to return your money.”

“Keep it. Find my painting.”

“Art recovery’s not my line of work,” she said, suspecting he’d mentioned her mother as a ruse. This smelled off.

“I’ll make up a list, tell you everything.”

Everything? “Tell me how you know my mother.”

His left hand trembled slightly. “Please, in my own way. Give me a moment.”

It was foolish to rush him. Of course he was still in shock. He’d seen a man die, his car damaged, and his home burglarized all within a short time.

“Damien, my neighbor, the political boy, just brought me back from dinner at Oleg’s place. Oleg’s my stepson, as he calls himself. My wife’s child. Not mine.” Yuri’s voice rose, petulant. “Oleg’s wife served burnt blinis, like cement—can you imagine?”

Aimée contained her impatience with effort. “Why contact me to protect your painting?”

“Pour me another.”

Frustrated, she reached for the bottle. His liver-spotted hand clamped on her gloved one with surprising strength. His confusion was gone.

“If the Serb left empty-handed,” he said, “someone else didn’t.”

He knew something. She saw it in his eyes. Suspicion filled her.

“So you claim a painting is missing, but the man who appears to have broken into your house didn’t have it. Strange, Monsieur. And I still don’t understand what any of this has to do with my mother.” She sipped the vodka. “Why do I feel all this is some ruse?”

There was fear in his eyes. He downed the vodka. His hand clenched in a fist, his knuckles white. “I’ve been rude to you, I’m sorry.”

He was wasting time she should have been using to help Saj. “
S’il vous plaît
, Monsieur Volodya, quit the guessing games.” She was angry with herself for getting caught up in this, for buying into his fishy story just because he’d mentioned her mother.

“So help me. I know you’re a detective. I wanted to hire you to protect the painting, but now it’s too late for that. I’m hiring you to get it back for me instead.”

Like she needed to add to Leduc Detective’s workload. They were already drowning. “Like I said, Monsieur, we don’t do art recovery.” She couldn’t resist adding, “You didn’t really know my mother, did you?”

“Of course I knew your mother. The American.”

Aimée gripped his hand. “How?”

“It’s complicated.” He stiffened. “I didn’t know her well.”

Aimée didn’t know her well, either. Sydney Leduc had abandoned them when Aimée was eight years old. “But you knew her. When?” Hope fluttered despite his vagueness.

“Of course, she was much younger then. Changed a little, but … it’s been years.”

Years? Her heart sank. “Where … how?”

“Now I want to make good on my debt.”

“Debt?” Why wouldn’t he give her a straight answer? “Is this about the painting?”

Footsteps crackled over the glass, and a draft of cold air rushed through the atelier. “Monsieur?” It was the
flic
with the clipboard.

“Please, Monsieur, how do you know my mother?”

“Not now.” Yuri put his finger to her lips. Dry, rough skin.

She’d had enough. She reached into her bag for the francs, about to tell him to forget involving her, when he whispered,
“I’m being watched.” He held her hand. “Tomorrow. Wait for my call. I’ll tell you about her.”

“But I can’t take your money—”

“Recover my painting.”

“Monsieur, I need your car registration,” said the
flic
. He glanced around, noticing the scattered objects. “Your house was broken into as well? Is anything missing?”

“My wife. She died last year.”

“Desolé,”
he said. “But I’ll need to take down the accident details before I make a robbery report.”

“No report,” Yuri said, shaking his head. His defiance belied the fear in his eyes. “I’m remodeling.”

She wondered why the old man was lying.

The
flic
’s eyes narrowed. Maybe he wondered the same thing. Yuri pulled open a drawer in the Art Nouveau chest, the most expensive-looking piece in the room. Took out a folder and handed it over.

As the officer noted the vehicle info, Aimée watched Yuri sit hunched in his chair, his mouth set, the blood clotting on his cheek. She wasn’t sure she believed him about her mother, or trusted him about his missing painting, but she felt pity for him.

“Let me ask a medic to look at your cut, Monsieur.”

He waved his wrinkled hand in dismissal. “Now both of you get out.”

O
UTSIDE
Y
URI’S DOOR
on narrow Villa d’Alésia her hands shook. A man dead, her friend injured and in police custody, an old man who claimed to know her mother, and now a stolen painting. A sour aftertaste remained in her mouth and it wasn’t from the vodka.

The day had gone from bad to worse after René’s departure. She wanted this all to go away. To go home, crawl under the duvet. But first she had to help Saj.

Aimée needed her laptop case and reached for the car door handle. Couscous
végétarien
dripped all over the back floor.

“Not so fast, Mademoiselle,” said a balding
flic
. “I’ll need to search the car. And you.”

They suspected her now? “Search the car? I tell you, the man ran into us. Not our fault.” She hoped to God that René hadn’t left his unlicensed Glock under the seat.

“If you’re in such a hurry, better give me the details at the
commissariat
, Mademoiselle.”

A “midnight special” in a wire-frame holding pen? Forget it. Weren’t they supposed to offer her a trauma counselor?

“You call that procedure?” She flashed her
détective privé
license at him. Time to pull out the big guns. “I’m sure my godfather Commissaire Morbier will be interested, since that’s his dinner all over the floor.” A little lie, as Morbier’s appetite ran to
bifteck-frites
. But a way to take the focus away from her—and maybe divert it to Yuri. She gestured to the spilled takeout. “Care to explain to him why you think picking up takeout somehow involves me in the robbery of an old Russian man’s atelier?”

The
flic
’s mouth tightened. “Morbier’s into couscous
végétarien
now?”

So he knew Morbier better than she’d guessed. Oh well, she had to roll with it now. “Part of his new healthier lifestyle.” One could always hope.

“Robbery of the old Russian, you said, Mademoiselle?” The
flic
didn’t miss a thing.

She nodded. Let him draw his own conclusions when he saw the blood behind the old man’s armoire. “Too bad you can’t ask the Serb about the robbery. Right place, right time for him to know something.” She shivered, pulling her jacket tighter. “Don’t you find it strange the victim didn’t bleed? There’s no blood here on the street. Do you understand it?”

“No, I don’t.” He shrugged. “Maybe there was internal bleeding. We’ll know after the autopsy.”

The tow-truck driver’s horn shrieked a blasting echo off the stone walls. “Finished?” he yelled out the window to a crime scene tech. “Last run tonight. I need to hook up the cars and process them at the yard before it closes.”

“Take your things, Mademoiselle.” The
flic
waved to the crime scene tech and hurried ahead. “Open them up, show the officer.” He paused and turned back, his shoe squeaking on the stone. “And the trunk.”

A
FTER FINALLY GIVING
her statement, Aimée hurried down the cobbled lane. In the brisk chill, she searched her old address book for the fifth-floor criminal ward phone number in Hôtel-Dieu. She hoped her contact, Nora, a nurse, was working the night shift.

“Nora’s off,” said an older female voice laced with irritation. “Who’s this?”

She needed to know Saj’s condition and hated dealing with the notoriously close-mouthed police medical unit. She thought quick. “Traffic division in the fourteenth arrondissement. Any status update on the man injured in the collision fatality on Villa d’Alésia?”

“But I don’t even have your report yet. Why so eager?”

“Make my life easy tonight, eh? The medics checked his vitals and took him for observation. Didn’t even list suspected concussion, head injury, whiplash, or superficial injuries. I need a possible diagnosis for my report.”

Yells and shouts came over the line.

“We’re busy tonight,” she said, “must be a full moon. I’ll get back to you later.”

“New regulations,” Aimée said. “We need to fill in all the boxes and I’ve got a few empty. Please.”

Sigh. “Just a moment. The patient’s here. I’ll ask his doctor.”

“Parfait.”
She had an idea. “I know you’ve got other patients. Put me on speakerphone with the doctor, it’s faster.”

Another sigh. The click of a button. A rush of background noise. “Doctor Robler speaking,” said a crackling speakerphone voice. “The patient shows possible shoulder muscle and neck injury.”

Poor Saj. “The patient’s with you? You’re taking him for X-rays?”

“Bien sûr,”
said Doctor Robler, “but after his questioning.”

Alarm spread over her. “Saj, only give your statement,” she said, hoping he was in earshot.

“Aimée?” It was Saj’s voice, tired and confused.

“There’s a robbery involved. Say nothing else until.…”

A loud buzz. The speakerphone disconnected.

M
ORGANE WATCHED HER
accomplice, Flèche, peer out the half-open blue shutter. In the moonlight, tendrils of ivy curved over the potted geraniums on the window ledge. Morgane hated working with amateurs. Amateurs with hairy palms, her uncle would say, so lazy they grew hair on their palms.

Where the hell was Servier? Twenty minutes late already and they didn’t have much time to hand over the goods. Her ears perked up as the gate clicked open below.

Flèche shook his head. “Just the hipster with a new conquest, like clockwork.” He yawned, running a matchstick under his fingernail. A pigeon cooed from the low rooftop of a two-story house across the courtyard. “Bores me stiff.”

“That’s a good thing,” Morgane said. Her shirt collar, damp with perspiration, weighed on her neck. She gathered her lank brown hair in a twist and clipped it up on her head.

“Too quiet. I don’t like it.”

Wary, she checked the walkie-talkie signal. All bars lit. “Nothing from control. Nerves got you?” Was he worried about the talkative owner of the
café-tabac
around the corner, where he’d bought cigarettes an hour ago? Like she’d told him not to. Never leave a presence, she’d warned him. “You think there’s a spotter?”

“I mean it’s dead here,” Flèche said. “Old people, kids practicing piano after dinner, the retiree on the ground floor who never goes out. Spooks me.”

“She’s agoraphobic.” That was the one Morgane worried about. An insomniac who telephoned her brother in Marseilles every night. A watcher with eyes like a crow’s. “You’re correct. It is dead quiet. The perfect place to hide.” She’d told him time and again. The 14th arrondissement was ideal, residential, a mix of working-class and arty types. “You know, at the turn of the century, the tsar’s Okhrana had more secret agents hidden in this quartier than in Saint Petersburg.”

“
Merde
. Don’t start with the history lessons again.”

“Hasn’t changed much. These people mind their business. Working-class solidarity.”

He flicked his cigarette ash in the Ricard ashtray, stuck the cigarette back in his mouth and inhaled. In the dark, the redorange glow from the burning tip made his face look ethereal. “A bunch of Commies.”