Murder in the Palais Royal (17 page)

“You had a bad dream. The nurse says you can communicate now.” Melac, the detective, leaned over him. His breath smelled of Mentos. Dark circles showed under his eyes.

“W—water, please.” His voice rasped in his raw throat.

Melac stuck a straw between his lips. Cool and wet, the water swirled in his dry mouth, trickling over his parched tongue.

“We’ve moved you to a secure clinic. A
flic’s
posted at your door,” Melac said. “No worries, Monsieur Friant; and, thanks to your physical condition, an excellent prognosis from the surgeon.”

Every part of René hurt. His head pounded.

“But I don’t want to tire you.” Melac set the cup down on a dog-eared paperback of de Maupassant short stories. “I only need a positive identification. Witnesses saw your partner, Aimée Leduc, shoot you.”

Was it a dream? Had Aimée really shot him? Why would she? Something was wrong. And then he remembered the hundred thousand francs in their bank account.

“More water, Monsieur Friant?”

He nodded, took a sip, wet his lips.

“What can you tell me, Monsieur? We need your help to proceed with the investigation. Witnesses heard you calling her name. We identified the Beretta that wounded you as hers. Isn’t there something you want to tell me, Monsieur Friant?” Melac stared at him. “No one can hurt you here. No visitors are allowed. Not even Mademoiselle Leduc.”

René’s head hurt. His heart hurt. He felt wetness on his cheek.

Melac looked away. “I’m sorry.” He reached in his jacket pocket for a tissue, dabbed at the tears running down René’s cheeks. “But I have to ask you this. Did you see Aimée Leduc, your partner, shoot you?”

“Too d-d—dark.” René’s thick tongue got in the way of his words. “Couldn’t see.”

“Time’s up, Inspector.” The nurse’s brisk tone matched her step as she glanced at Melac. She released the brake on the hospital bed’s wheels. Shot a wink at René. “Late-night MRI special, Monsieur Friant. Our tech’s warmed up the machine especially for you.”

The rubber wheels ground over the linoleum into the hallway, but not fast enough for René to get away from Melac’s probing look. The paperback in his pocket, Melac stood watching until the bed rounded the corner.

A
IMÉE LOOKED AROUND Club Eros, a sand-blasted stone-arched cavern lit by hundreds of flickering votive candles. Floor to ceiling, red silk panels billowed in the breeze of a fan whirring somewhere. A dense humidity mingled with scents of perfume, peppermint lubricant, and other odors that Aimée didn’t want to explore.

“First time?”

And the last, she thought.

The voice belonged to a balding man in his fifties wearing spandex bicycle shorts and nothing else. His chest glistened with oil.

This was one membership where she wouldn’t get her money’s worth.

“I love to show novices the ropes,” he said.

She recognized him as a well-known Left Bank literary critic; his picture appeared often in the weekly book review section René read. “I’ve never seen you at a Rouge et Noir night.”

So they’d adopted Stendhal’s title for a sex-club event. An
echangiste,
a swingers’ club, with literary pretensions?

“Use a little
huile de coude
, elbow grease!” moaned a woman from a cubicle. Aimée shuddered.

“This might relax you.” He offered her a black-and-white Pierrot face mask. “Join my wife and me.”

Ménages à trois
weren’t on her agenda tonight. Or ever. She had to get out of here as soon as the
flics
left the courtyard.

A naked woman on a velvet rope swing hung suspended from the ceiling, dropping rose petals on those below . . . couples, trios, limbs intertwined, from what she could make out in the flickering vanilla-scented candle light, a scent that made her want to sneeze.

A rank of people watched from the walls as if glued there. Voyeuristic kicks, she assumed, as some watched and some performed. People from the suburbs, or offices, or a smattering of the elite. The age range varied.

“Call me Xedo. Like to whet your appetite at the buffet?”

Buffet? He gestured to a banquet spread out on a table piled with food. They ate before they got down to business, as if to store up energy for an athletic event. A do-your-thing kind of club. Food, casual partner-swapping, all lubricated by good bottles of wine, she noticed. Where was the other exit? They had to have one for deliveries: the fire code demanded it.

Xedo’s glistening bare chest was too close for comfort. Rolls of fat hung over his bicycle shorts.

“I’m meeting someone,” she told him, handing back the mask.

He winked. “We all meet someone here.”

She never thought she’d be nostalgic for a bordello. Compared to this event, a commercial establishment seemed
passé
. She hoped she wouldn’t run into anyone’s father or cousin from the Sorbonne. It was that kind of place.

She edged toward the entrance to see if the
flics
had left yet. Then her gaze fell on Léo Frot.

Léo had moved to the Finance Ministry last year. He’d avoided her calls after she’d done him a favor. A big-time favor on his credit authorization, in return for giving her entry into the police database. Not that she felt like catching up. Especially since he was wearing a cloak and, she imagined, nothing underneath. But he owed her. And she’d kick herself if she didn’t grab this opportunity to dig for a connection to Tracfin.

“You swing, Léo?”

His eyes glittered. “Call me a gangster of love, Aimée,” Frot said.

Self-important, as usual.

“But you’re dressed, Aimée. Get into the swing.”

Léo pronounced it “sweeeng.”

“How’s life at Bercy, Léo?” People in the know referred to the Ministry of Finance by its location, even though it had moved there ten years ago.

“Forget it, Aimée. I come here for pleasure, enjoyment; not work.”

“Don’t you remember, you owe me?”

“Not officially.”

He knew everyone. “Connected” was Léo’s middle name. “So, unofficially, can I reach you. . . .”

“Near the whipping post.” Léo smiled and swept away, his cloak trailing on the floor.

Dangle something and reel him in, she thought. But at the whipping post, a fur-covered contraption, she hesitated. Flagellation wasn’t her thing, especially with a bald man, sweat dripping down his back, moaning in ecstasy “I’m so bad, bad, bad. . . .”

Léo asked her, “Why don’t you cool off?”

“Like this?” She unbuttoned the top button of her blouse. Thank God she’d worn her Agent Provocateur black bra edged with fuchsia lace. Tease and retreat, that was her plan.

Her last button undone, she shook her hair back, then forked her fingers through her hair. “You will serve me.” She directed Léo to the cubicle behind him. “Now.”

“Yes, mistress.”

Léo, abject and wanting domination. She’d guessed right. She’d use this opportunity to worm a name out of him. And, with luck, avoid that cape and what was under it.

She sensed a presence, edging closer in the shadows of a figure wearing a harlequin mask. She saw the glint of studs on a motorcycle jacket. A hand cupped her shoulder, pulling her. Léo had disappeared into the cubicle.

The hair rose on her neck. “Get your hands off me.”

“I think you and I belong together”

The grip tightened, like a vise digging into her skin, tugging her behind the billowing red silk panels. She leaned down, biting his knuckles hard. The hand let go; a yelp of pain was muffled by the mask he wore.

The exit; where was the exit?

She ran behind the silk panels, reached the door, and slipped outside. In the courtyard, the static of a walkie-talkie echoed above in the chill air. Light shone on the cobblestones from the lit apartments above. The
flic
was still questioning Dita; she’d have to wait until he left. Her mind went back to Clémence’s pale face, her lifeless body, the small swelling in her belly.

Then the club’s door opened. Disco music drifted out, accompanied by the clomp of boots. She had a brief glimpse of a leather jacket.

She had to leave. Now.

She kept to the shadows, hugging the building, pulled the entry door open, and ran out to the street. The orange, blue, and white light bar on the roof of the empty
flic
car bathed the buildings. Her heart beat to the clicking of her heels on dark rue Thérese. Footsteps sounded behind her, at first keeping pace. Then gaining.

Shivering in the chill air, she turned her head. A dark figure. A man or a woman, she couldn’t tell; but the sheen of a black leather jacket that caught the streetlight.

She ran now. Her legs pumping, perspiration trickling between her shoulder blades. Another block and she’d reach Avenue de l’Opéra and the Métro.

At the corner, she spied the sign and ran down the Métro steps into the station. At the turnstile for the Number 7 line, she pulled out her Métro pass. Expired. Her chest heaving, she rooted in her bag for change. None.

She set her hands on the turnstile, heaved herself up, and swung her legs over. A train rumbled on the platform below. Sprinting, and knowing she’d feel it tomorrow, she ran like hell down the steps. She regretted that last cigarette. Three weeks, two days, and four hours ago.

She caught the train’s doors as they started to close, pulled them apart with all her might, and ducked inside.

A man peered at her from behind a newspaper, then sniffed in disapproval. Panting and clutching her sides, she leaned her head against the glass door. A figure ran onto the platform as the train pulled out of the station. The
mec
who’d chased her from the club? But the train picked up speed; the smell of burning rubber and the screech of metal took over as the train entered the tunnel. She collapsed onto a seat and buttoned her blouse.

S
TANDING AT THE kitchen window, Aimée pulled her father’s old wool robe around her. Outside, dawn spread a hazy peach glow over the blue-tiled rooftops. Coffee in hand, she studied the Seine’s dark green eddies and lace-like foam from a passing barge. Brown leaves swirled in the current, sucked into the depths of a whirlpool, mirroring her feelings after last night: Clémence murdered, Nicolas’s notebook gone, René, wounded, in a clinic. She sighed. The list went on. Melac suspected her, and the financial
flics
expected answers concerning the hundred thousand francs plus, the source of which she had no idea about.

And, instead of finding her brother in New York, she still had only two ten-year-old letters lying next to the coffee press. She picked up the last one, struggling with the simple English, rereading the faded childish script:

We move all the time. Mom calls it traveling. She keeps your photo and says you’re my big sister. Sometimes she talks on the phone late at night in the booths near the public restrooms. But I don’t understand. She said “merci” once and that’s the only French word I know. Mom doesn’t know I found this address, so maybe this reaches you, maybe not. I don’t know who my Daddy is—but I don’t think we have the same one. You can’t write me back, she’d find out and who knows where we’ll be. I think we’re in trouble.

Julien

She stared at the name: Julien. He’d written so long ago, and here in Paris what could she do?

A wet tongue licked her ankle. “Hungry, furball?” Miles Davis wagged his tail.

At least she’d stocked up on horsemeat from the butcher. From her suitcase-sized fridge she pulled out a waxed paper parcel and spooned the horsemeat into Miles Davis’s chipped Limoges bowl.

Her bedroom phone rang. No one ever called her this early except René. She felt a flash of hope. “Let’s talk with uncle René, Miles.” But Miles kept his head in the bowl.

She ran to her room, caught her bare foot on the clothes she’d left in a heap on the floor last night, and stubbed her toe hard on the bed frame. She yelped in pain. Hopping up and down, she reached for the phone. And she noticed an overseas number displayed.

Jack Waller, of course. With the time difference, it was late afternoon in New York. The answering machine clicked on. Stupid, stubbing her toe, and not reaching the phone in time!

“Mademoiselle, an old address turned up a new lead. I recommend that you consider coming over.” His New York accent filled her bedroom, along with car horns blaring in the background. “My contact’s meeting me soon. But I’ll call you later. . . .”

She hit the callback number. A strange voice in incomprehensible English repeated itself several times. The gist of it, she figured, meant no calls accepted at a public phone booth.

He’d found something about her brother important enough to make him call her. That meant he hadn’t given up.

Her cell phone containing his own number sat charging in her office. But he’d said he would call her back. Her message light was flashing. She’d been too tired to check the answering machine last night.

She hit PLAY and heard Melac’s voice demand that she call him at his office, asking why she hadn’t answered his repeated calls to her cell phone.

Her excitement over Jack Waller’s message evaporated. A bad feeling came over her. Melac couldn’t have seen her last night. Or could he?

Prioritize. She had to prioritize. Nicolas’s notebook came first. If the killer hadn’t found it yet—a slim chance existed—she had to search Clémence’s apartment and question Dita. And print out last year’s tax statement before her appointment.

While the statement was printing, she grabbed the closest jewelry, oversize earrings. From her armoire, she took a geometric-print vintage dress, and found the only shoes she could wear with an aching, stubbed toe, peep-toe blue wedge heels.

Grabbing her secondhand Vuitton bag, she checked among her lipsticks, glad she’d taken care of that yesterday, and threw in mascara. She took the slim black coat from the rack. Downstairs, she let Miles Davis water the pear tree in the courtyard of her seventeenth-century building.