Murder in the Palais Royal (21 page)

“Banque Liban spells major trouble,” Saj said. “I can’t see Aimée involved in laundering money or committing a crime. Can you, René?”

The muscles tightened in René’s neck.

“
Zut,
René!” Exasperation sounded in Saj’s voice. “I sent you the tape Aimée discovered of the woman impersonating her getting in the taxi. Aimée didn’t shoot you.”

His heart told him she couldn’t have. But his eyes didn’t lie. Or had they, in the dark?

René’s gaze went to the
flic
speaking with the nurse at the intake station. “What can I do? They’re watching me.”

“I missed my meditation today, René,” Saj said.
“Alors,
my chakras need alignment. I need your help.”

He shouldn’t get involved.

“Only on one condition, Saj,” René said: “you keep this from Aimée. We deal with whatever I find together,
compris
?”

He heard Saj’s sigh of relief. “
Bien sûr!”

“Do me a favor, Saj. Print it out in a continuous sequence. Messenger it over inside a floral arrangement. I’m at the Clin-ique du Louvre.”

He leaned back on the pillow, wondering what he’d agreed to. None of his hacker friends who’d played with the big boys at Tracfin had emerged unscathed. But Aimée had a lot more to lose than hackers might. A business: her livelihood. His.

A
IMÉE LOCATED THE Cours Carnot
classe préparatoire
in a building behind the Palais Royal. Prime real estate, despite the soot-stained façades. When apartments here appeared on the market, they went from the mouth to the ear, as the saying went, snapped up via a concierge’s hint before the previous owner lay cold in his grave.

Cours Carnot prepared students for the tough second- and third-year entrance exams required for the École des Hautes Etudes Commerciales. She’d come up with a story to lead her to the students in the study group Nicolas had circled. And she didn’t have much time.

“Bonjour
,” Aimée said. “I hope you can help me, Madame.”

The middle-aged receptionist shot her a quick smile. Hennaed hair, too much makeup. Thick silver bracelets clanked on her wrist.

“Take an enrollment brochure,” she said. “That answers most questions.”

The small reception area, no bigger than a closet, branched off to a hallway to where, Aimée figured, lay classrooms. A pot of orchids on a stainless-steel cube, along with an uncomfortable metal tubular chair, completed the ensemble.

“
Merci
, Madame . . . ?”

“Delair. A Cours Carnot application’s inside the brochure. I assume this concerns your brother or sister who wishes to prepare for the concours?”

“My brother.” Aimée took a tissue from her bag. “I need to inform my brother’s friends of his funeral.”

“Quoi?”

“It’s terrible. So sudden.”

“
Désolée,
Mademoiselle, but. . . .”

“See.” She pulled out list and pointed to the circled group. “My brother Nicolas Evry attended your course four years ago in 1993. I’m Maud Evry.” She used the name of the sister from the La Santé list of relatives. “I live near Roubaix and don’t know how to contact his study group friends.” She paused. “He spoke of them so often. Yet I can’t remember their names. Could you help me?”

“1993? Nicolas Evry? But I worked here then, and I don’t remember him.”

Aimée felt her lead slipping away. Maybe he’d never enrolled. Maybe she’d be back at zero. Again.

“Could you check, please? It would mean a lot to me.”

The woman set down her pen. Her silver bracelet tinkled on her wrist. “As I said, I’m not familiar with his name. Of course, there’s also a confidentiality issue.”

Aimée sensed a slight thaw in her attitude. “Just an address, so I could send the funeral announcement? I’m sure his friends would want to know.” She leaned forward. “A suicide.” Aimée blotted her eyes with a tissue.

“My condolences. But I’ll have to ask the director.”

If the director got involved, it became more complicated. And would take more time. Aimée’s gaze rested on the file cabinet drawer with A-Z listings from the year 1997. From where she stood, her view was blocked, but she figured the lower file drawers held the previous years.

“I’d appreciate that, Madame Delair. I’m sorry to take so much of your time.”

Aimée counted on the woman going to the director’s office. Instead, she reached for the phone. “He’s teaching a course. I forgot.”

Aimée dabbed her eyes again. “It’s not your problem, but since we’re from the North, the funeral’s so small, and my parents
alors
. . . .” She shrugged. “If none of his friends come. . . . It’s hard enough for them right now.”

The woman’s eyes softened as they gazed at the metal Quin-quin box Aimée held. “You’re a real Lilleoise, eh? My father’s side came from Roubaix. Whereabouts do you live?”

She’d never gone to Roubaix, didn’t know the North at all.

Didn’t every city have a rue Jean Jaures, named after the socialist? But she didn’t want to chance it. “But now with my job, I live in Lille most of the time. On rue des Arts,” she said, reading the Quinquin manufacturer’s address on the tin.

“I love Lille. All the art nouveau architecture in the
vieux quartier
. A real renaissance of a former industrial town.” Before the woman could wax more specific about the wonders of Lille, Aimée glanced at the wall clock.

“
Excusez moi,
but my parents arrive at Gare du Nord in twenty minutes.”

“Then I’ll have the director contact you.”

Just what she feared. A wasted trip.

“I’m sorry, there’s just so much to do.” She wrung her hands. “And so little time before the funeral. I’m overwhelmed.”

The woman patted her arm. “
Calmez-vous
. Hold on a moment.”

The woman took off down a hallway. She had to grab this chance. Feeling guilty but not guilty enough to stop herself, she slipped behind the counter, leaned down, and found the 1993 drawer right away. She opened it and saw folders labeled EXPENSES subcategorized “EDF” and “Tax.”

She pulled open another drawer. Files labeled MINISTRY OF EDUCATION GUIDELINES and EDUCATION BROCHURES.

Footsteps sounded in the hall. Voices. Only seconds until the woman came back. Perspiring, she scanned the reception desk. Underneath it was a cabinet labeled ENROLLED STUDENTS and another marked PAST STUDENTS. She slid it open. Names and more names. Riffling through at the back, she found “Spring 1993” and kept going until she found “Fall 1993.”

With a quick grab she took it, stuffed it under her coat, and edged out from behind the desk.

“Mademoiselle?”

Footsteps. Aimée sneaked past the orchid and into the tubular chair. She blew her nose.

“I thought you’d left,” Madame Delair said with raised eyebrows. “Where were you?”

Aimée sniffled, then covered her face in her hands. “I’m sorry, I can’t wait any longer.”

“The director concurs, Mademoiselle. Nicolas never enrolled.”

Aimée stood. She had to get out of here fast. “I apologize. A mistake.”

There was an accusing look in Madame Delair’s eyes. “The director remembers Nicolas well. Even though he offered Nicolas a tutoring position in lieu of partial payment, Nicolas still couldn’t afford to live and study. Nicolas mentioned that his family discouraged him: you in particular, Mademoiselle Evry.”

Is this what had changed Nicolas?

“Such a bright boy, too!” Madame Delair said.

Aimée had found what she came for and opened the door.

“So just now you’re feeling guilty?” Madame Delair’s mouth tightened. “I’m sorry for your loss, but what right do you have to come here now? None of his friends would appreciate your contacting them.”

But Aimée disagreed. If not, she’d find out.

* * *

AIMÉE TOOK THE short cut through Passage des Deux Pavillons, which was now open. The passage, covered by a glass roof in an iron framework, contained two levels connected by a dilapidated staircase. Once gas-lit, it had changed little since the Duc d’Orleans’s architect had designed it. The nineteenth-century working ladies, nicknamed
hirondelles
after the swallows that had once lived there, had spied on prospective clients, then swooped down to bring the men to their love nests in the small rooms above.

Now she noted a rare-book shop with a closed sign in the window, a pipe shop, and a store selling only ribbons, all a bit dated. She wondered how they stayed in business.

She needed to sift through this file she’d taken to find Nicolas’s friends. If any. And she hadn’t eaten all day. Emerging into the sunlit precincts of the Palais Royal, she could take care of two things at once.

* * *

A
IMÉE SAT AT an outdoor table of the Palais Royal bistro where Clémence had worked. An early-afternoon warmth lingered. Light filtered through the canopy formed by the double row of lime trees. Shadows dappled the metal park chairs. A cool spray from the fountain misted her cheek. She set the Cours Carnot file on the table.

“You’re lucky,” the waiter said, handing her a menu. “We usually stop outside service in October, but with this weather!” He smiled. “Something to drink? Or would you like to order?”

“A Salade Niçoise,
s’il vous plaît
,” she said, without looking at the menu. “Does Carco work today?”

The dark-haired waiter stepped back. He looked about twenty and, from the perspiration on his brow, nervous. Or inexperienced. Or both. “He’s late.”

Or detained. No doubt the
flics,
after conversations with Dita and Madame Fontenay of the medal shop, had detained him in the
garde à vue
. That could stretch for twenty-four hours.

She sensed the young waiter’s hesitation.

“Did you know Clémence?”

“Clémence? I think she quit.”

“She was strangled.” Aimée pointed to the blackened stone arcade. “Last night, right there, after work.”

His Adam’s apple moved as he gulped.

“My uncle called me in to work this morning, that’s all I know.”

“Carco’s got a temper,” Aimée said. “Did her quitting last night send him over the edge?”

He adjusted his rolled-up shirtsleeves and brushed off his black vest. “Carco’s from Marseille. A hothead. Like all of them from the south.”

“See, you do know things,” she said. “Your name?”

He shrugged. “Paul. You some kind of
flic
?”

“A detective. I knew Clémence,” Aimée said. “We’d arranged to meet last night.”

“Carco blew up,
oui,
” Paul said. “The gas line to the range snapped. The kitchen ground to a standstill. On top of that, Clémence quit. Like that. The way my uncle tells it, Carco threatened to walk out, too, if we didn’t fix the stove.”

“I heard Carco talking on his cell phone, Paul,” she said. “He didn’t seem too happy with Clémence about ending their relationship.”

Paul’s cheeks expanded, then he expelled a gust of air. “Ask him. Ask my uncle. They worked on the range until the
flics
took him to the Commissariat.”

She fixed her gaze on him. “Did you know that Clémence was four months pregnant?”

His eyes bulged. He made a sign of the cross.

“Anything else you want to tell me, Paul?”

“Terrible.
Alors,
Carco’s all bluster. He’d never hurt her. Talk to him.”

“I plan to. And I’d like something to drink,” she said.
“L’eau de Chirac
.” Tap water, as everyone referred to it these days, after the presidential election.

His mouth turned down. Big spender.
“Bien sûr.

”

She crossed her black-stockinged legs, rubbed her sore toe. And in her bag found the crumpled pack of filtered Gauloises.

Just one drag. That’s all, she promised herself. She struck a match and lit the tip; but instead of letting smoke fill her lungs, enjoying that rush, she flicked the cigarette onto the gravel and ground it out.

The slow swirl of blue smoke rose from the gravel beneath her feet. Aimée peered over her oversize sunglasses at the dragonfly buzzing in the rose bushes bordering the garden. The warm rustling air enveloped her, accompanied by the muted click of clippers at work on the hedge. A nanny pushed a stroller under the lane of manicured trees. Birds chirped from nests in the arcades. An office worker sat with her feet up on the lip of the fountain.

Peaceful and quiet. Hard to believe that Clémence had been murdered here last night. She opened the thick Cours Carnot file and found stapled dossiers. About fifty. Each contained a front page with the student’s name, address, field of study, enrollment, attendance, sessions, and dates. The following two pages contained matriculation exams studied for and study-group attendance.

Now to winnow it down. But how? She didn’t know the exact exam Nicolas had aimed at. Most of these students by now had passed the exam and were attending a
Grande École
or had even graduated.

She remembered he’d circled the summer/fall study group in the papers she’d found in the cellar. All she had to do was search through each dossier, find those who had attended that summer’s study group, and come up with a list.

After an hour spent over a Niçoise salad and fifty dossiers, she’d culled it to ten names and phone numbers: the ten who might have known Nicolas. With luck, some had been his friends. And with more luck, they’d talk to her and reveal what had turned Nicolas toward the neo-Nazi
Les Blancs Nationaux
, the significance of the Jewish prayer book, and what the connection was to René.

Her mind flickered back to her little brother’s letters. What happened to
him
in the past ten years? How had he turned out? Was he in touch with her mother?

With a sigh, she pushed this thought away. She inhaled the fragrance emitted by the rose bushes, felt the sun warming her back, and ordered an espress. Near the small cannon converted to a sundial, an old woman in a tattered overcoat tossed bread crumbs to pigeons flocking at her feet. A pigeon ate from her hand. A look of rapture crossed the old woman’s face.