Murder in the Palais Royal (26 page)

“From a feeling of noblesse oblige? I don’t think so, Audric.”

“And then we never saw Nicolas again.” Audric’s mouth twisted. His teeth chomped nervously, then he regained control. “Gone, like smoke. Turns out he was in prison.” Audric wrung his hands now. “And you put him there!”

Did all spoiled rich aristo kids expect to get away with murder?

“Arson’s a crime, Audric. How would you like your apartment set on fire?”

His mouth twitched again and he covered it with his fist.

“Olivier bragged to you about the synagogue, the couple he’d hit, didn’t he, Audric?”

Audric shook his head. “That’s the funny thing. He didn’t. He wouldn’t talk about it.”

* * *

L
OW-LYING FOG MISTED the Seine, blurred the streetlights. A clammy wetness clung in the air. Aimée gunned her scooter over Pont Neuf onto Ile Saint-Louis. All the way, Audric’s words haunted her. If Olivier had burned the synagogue, she needed proof. With Clémence and Nicolas dead, unless Olivier admitted it, his guilt was almost impossible to prove. Mahmoud, the shopkeeper, had recognized him and put him at the location where the old couple were run over. But an Arab shopkeeper’s testimony, years later, wouldn’t hold up. It would only put him in danger of retaliation by Olivier’s high-powered parents.

The more she thought about it, the more it didn’t feel right. She recalled Olivier’s shock at the mention of the hit-and-run. The only honest reaction she’d noticed from him. Had she assumed too much?

But she had a nagging feeling that René’s shooting was a result of the threat she posed. To whom, and about what, remained the questions.

She parked her scooter. Tired, she mounted the worn marble stairs and opened her door.

Miles Davis scooted into her waiting arms. Licked her face. Rubbed his wet nose in her ear. She had a man, albeit with four legs and a spiky tail, who snored on the duvet. But all hers and eager to see her.

“
Alors,
Miles Davis,” she said. “You need spoiling after Madame Cachou fed and walked you.”

She threw him a shank bone from the fridge, ignoring the pile of mail Madame Cachou had left on the secretaire. She heard the insistent ring of her cell phone from her bag. She reached it on the fifth ring.

“Oui?”

“Lady, don’t you answer your phone?” The New York accent boomed over the crackling line.

“Please, Monsieur, go ahead.” She kicked off her heels and grabbed a pencil. Hopefully, she leaned forward. “I’m ready. You found an address for my brother?”

“When we meet. When’s your flight?”

But she’d forfeited her ticket. With her account frozen and her travelers’ checks needed to pay the rent, she was stuck. Not to mention that Melac wouldn’t let her leave the country.

“But, Monsieur, my plans changed. I told you that earlier. Tell me on the phone.”

More static.

“Look, lady, this costs money. And you owe me.”

“Bien sûr.
E-mail me the information, that’s easier.”

She stood up and reached for her laptop bag.

“I don’t do e-mail.” A snort. “And I don’t report on the phone. You understand?”

Understand? Did he think other people were listening? Or hacking into her e-mail? Horns and what sounded like a street cleaner roared in the background.

She didn’t get this. Or him. “But you called mentioning a contact in your message. That you found out about my brother.”

“Right. On condition she speaks with you in person.”

“In person? Impossible right now, Monsieur.”

“No deal then, lady. Forget it.” The phone buzzed. He’d hung up.

Her heart sank. Why couldn’t he understand and give her the information over the phone? Why did every lead vanish in smoke? Or was there an agenda behind Waller’s insistence that she leave Paris for New York?

She noticed the blinking light on her answering machine. Two messages. With her pencil she pushed PLAY.

“Aimée, I’m following the wire transfers,” Saj said, excitement in his voice.

Saj had risen to the task. Did she smell René’s hand in this? But that couldn’t be.

“The wire transfers jumped two accounts in twelve hours,” Saj said. “One to a bank in Malta, the other to Guernsey.”

Well-known money-laundering locations for offshore accounts and shell companies. Seemed even more like a setup to her.

“More later.” He clicked off.

She hit the next message. A woman’s voice.

“Remember you gave me your card? It’s Dita.”

Clémence’s roommate. Surprised, Aimée gripped the pencil.

“This
mec
asked for Clémence this afternoon. Maybe it’s not important, but. . . .” Her voice paused, hesitant. “He told me he’d been Nicolas’s cellmate and had something for her. He mentioned a book, that’s all. But I thought of the notebook you were looking for. A strange
mec,
he sent chills up my spine. Hard to explain. When I told him Clémence was dead, he seemed more angry than sad.”

Nicolas’s cellmate Sicard, out on parole. She tried to remember what Clémence had said about him. If Sicard had Nicolas’s notebook, she had to see him. Her hopes rose.

She called Dita back. No answer.

How could she find him? Think. What options existed for a new parolee: family, friends, a hotel or a halfway house set up for transition? Every prisoner’s condition of parole involved reporting to a case officer weekly. And the case officer would have his address.

She called her contact in the parole office. By the time she collapsed into bed beside a warm Miles Davis, she had an address.

A
IMÉE PUT A franc in the
tronc
, the metal donation box under the round domed basilica of Notre-Dame-de-l’Assomption, and lit a candle for René. From the baptismal font she heard a crying infant held by a priest in a cassock intoning prayers. A well-dressed family completed the scene.

Outside the church, she headed to the side door, down the stairs to the basement stone crypt, and was met by the warm and inviting aroma of paprika and garlic. Polska, the resto in the crypt below the church, served Polish dishes to a mix of the quartier. Wild mushroom ravioli headlined the chalkboard special. Reasonable and filling in a quartier noted for couture boutiques and the nearby Ritz.

Morbier sat at a table covered by a red-checked tablecloth, among Polish workers and executive types who worked nearby.

“Borscht?” Aimée said, noticing his soup bowl with surprise. “You’re a
bifteck
and
frites
man.”

“Pas mal.
Try it.” Morbier raised his napkin, tucked it into his shirt collar. This was the Morbier she knew, clad in a worn tweed jacket with leather patched elbows. The tired look in his eyes, nicotine-stained fingers, and mismatched socks, one blue, one black, were familiar.

“For Xavierre.” She set a bouquet of apricot-colored roses on the table and sat expectantly. “So, how long have you two . . . ?”

“We’re not here to discuss that.”

A hurt look flashed in his eyes and then vanished.

“I just thought you should know. . . .” She hesitated. That irrational pang of jealousy stirred again. She’d never seen him with a woman or looking so happy before. “That she’s beautiful. I enjoyed meeting her.”

“I don’t want to talk about it, Leduc.” His tone was curt and all business.

So his hot date had gone wrong? Concerned, she leaned forward.

“Having a bad day, Morbier?”

“I’ve had better.” Morbier nodded to the waitress, pointed to the chalkboard
prix fixe
menu. “She’ll have the same.”

Aimée noticed the moustached man with big biceps who ladled the borscht. Hard not to, since the man’s eyes flicked Morbier’s way every few minutes.

“You’re making the moustache nervous,” she said.

“Jerzy? That’s not all I want to make him.”

“Eh? Jerzy’s planning a heist?”

“
Indicateurs
need to cooperate. I’m reminding him.” Morbier kept a web of informers who furnished him with the pulse of the community. Like all good
flics
. He nodded to Jerzy. “My visit’s a little reminder of our deal.” Then he turned a penetrating gaze on her.

“You rub people’s hide the wrong way, Leduc.” He shook his head, reaching for his spoon. The crevice of his right jowl sported a whisker tuft he’d missed shaving. “Countless times. It’s like you enjoy it.”

“And you call this helping me with Melac?”

“Consider this more than a warning. Melac’s interested in you. And not in a good way.”

Her knuckles tightened on the napkin. The waitress, a barrel keg of a woman, set down a plate of steaming borscht and tossed a basket of bread in the middle.

“So he doesn’t like me.” She ripped a piece of bread off. “I’m not competing for Miss France.”

But she groaned inside.

“I noticed.” He glanced at her black leather pants, worn cashmere sweater, and denim jean coat. “
C’est grunge, c’est-ça?
”

He pronounced it
greunch
.

“Then you know I’ve cooperated, even furnished him with a video. What’s Melac doing to catch the woman who shot René? Instead of investigating, he suspects
me.
”

“The financial
flics
find you interesting too.”

“Someone’s framing me, Morbier.”

He held up his thick age-spotted hand. “Not my turf. You asked for my help with Melac. I tried. But he’s got this bee in his bonnet that you’re laundering money.”

“Why not say I’m milking the moon? That makes as much sense.”

“Wake up, Leduc.” He wiped his soup bowl clean with a chunk of bread. “Haven’t you ever wondered if she’d use you one day?”

Fear crawled up her spine.

Her mother. He meant her mother.

She pushed the bowl of borscht away. A wave of soup splashed over the rim, leaving a deep pink stain on the cloth. “Melac’s theory makes no sense. Who knows if she’s even alive?”

But the wheels were spinning in her mind.

“Unless you’re not telling me something, Morbier?”

He shrugged. She couldn’t read the look in his eyes.

“Wait a minute,” she said. “That’s what it’s all about, your helpfulness connecting me to Jack Waller in New York. It’s just to track my mother, isn’t it?”

Morbier set down his spoon. “Paranoid as usual, Leduc. That woman—”

“‘Woman’? You can’t even say her name, can you? You’ve always refused to talk about her.”

The waitress took the soup bowl and shoved a plate of
tarama
— fish eggs with a side order of sauerkraut—in front of her.

“There’s nothing to say.” His mouth tightened. “Eat your sauerkraut, Leduc; they do it well here.”

She tasted the sweet-and-sour cabbage. And let her fork fall on the plate. “How well do you know Jack Waller, Morbier?”

“Jack Waller?” A lift of his eyebrows. And then Morbier’s face changed, his gaze faraway. “I knew him as Jacques Weill. Our fathers were
cheminots,
railway workers, at Gare de Lyon during the Occupation.”

Morbier rarely spoke of his childhood. Or the war. She remembered a tale fueled by a late-night bottle of red. The empty shops and his family’s hunger drove him to trap pigeons in the park for dinner.

“Resistance comrades. That creates a bond, Leduc.”

“To hear people today, everyone served in the Resistance,
non
? Funny, considering only three percent of the population participated.”

“Resisting took different forms,” Morbier said. “Small acts of courage. Especially if you needed to put food on the table. My father and Jacques’s loaded the wrong freight on rail cars, they did what they could.”

His voice was wistful. “Jacques’s family moved to New York in the fifties.”

“Jack Waller will only talk to me in person. He says I have to come to New York or forget his help.”

Morbier paused. “And that’s suspicious?”

“It smells.”

“Ingrained habits die hard, Leduc.”

“Meaning?”

“Jacques made captain in the NYPD, no small feat. Freelanced, did some work for the Company and Interpol.”

“You mean the CIA?” She clutched her napkin.

“They all do that,” he said. “Reciprocal arrangements, man on the ground the best thing, you know.”

His matter-of-fact tone grated on her. What she had thought suspicious now stank to high heaven. “You connected me to a man who works with Interpol and the CIA?”

“Who else, Leduc? He knows the terrain. A retired New York City police captain. Who better?”

Surprised, she took his hand. “You’re naïve, Morbier.”

He snorted. “I’ve been called a lot of things. But naïve? Never.”

“My mother’s. . . .” The words stuck in her throat. She kept her hand on his. “Good God, don’t you see?”

“That she’s on the World Watch List?
Bon,
you’re looking for this brother,
non?
”

And then an awful thought hit her. What if the letters were a plant? A ruse to get her to New York?

But why would anyone think that would draw her mother there too? And after all these years, why now?

“
Et alors,
Leduc.” Morbier cupped her hand with his for a moment, then let go. He removed his napkin, took out a packet of tobacco and Zigzag papers, and with a deft movement rolled a cigarette. He tamped the loose blond tobacco into the tip, lit it, inhaled, and sent out a plume of smoke.

She wanted to grab the cigarette from him.

Instead, she waved the smoke away to join the cloud hovering over the smokers in the basement crypt.

“Leduc, I try to help you, and you see phantoms, monsters.”

She shook her head. He didn’t get it.

“This obsession with the past—your mother—it goes nowhere.” He knocked off his ash into the Ricard ashtray, took a toothpick packet from his pocket. Aimée recognized the goose-feather toothpicks he used. Le Coq. Her father had used them too.

“You’re a big girl. Face it. If Jacques found a link to this ‘brother,’ you’re lucky. Otherwise, take it the way it’s meant.” He put an open hand over his mouth as he picked his teeth.