Murder in the Palais Royal (32 page)

“What does this mean?”

He had garlic breath.

“A wire transfer from this account was moved five times. We found it significant that the transferred funds landed right back where they had originated.”

Ritoux shoved his glasses onto his forehead and squinted, scrutinizing the paper. “Who’s working on the . . .” he paused, reading the numbers . . . “the flagged wire transfer from Luxembourg and the SAR report we discussed tonight?”

“Over here, Monsieur Ritoux,” said a man working on a laptop. “We questioned the employee, that long-haired hippie.”

“Him . . . that one? Then get him in here to explain this!”

Saj? Aimée tried to melt into the woodwork.

“Distribute the updates, Mademoiselle,” he said. “That’s your job, remember? Besides sniffing around with your team.”

“Of course, Monsieur.”

She consulted the file in her hands and tried to look efficient, but she knew she had to get out of here fast and somehow warn Saj.

“Where’s the 2134 Bursar’s Report?” said a man at her elbow.

What could she do? Flustered, she riffled through the papers. “2134? But they put in the 2130. Can you believe it? Let me get the right one.”

She backed out of the room and into the reception area, turned, and bumped into a man, his tie loosened, his shirt sleeves rolled up. Saj stood behind him.

She froze. Saj stared at her. “What in the . . . ?”

“Monsieur Ritoux,” she interrupted, her adrenalin kicking in, “needs this man to explain the information he’s just received about a wire transfer routed five times from a Luxembourg bank account and then
back again
according to information provided by a confidential informant.”

The man shook his head. “What’s that to me?”

She dropped the file, spilling papers all over the floor, and kneeled to pick them up. Saj kneeled, too. They only had a second.

“It’s Nadillac’s scam,” she said in an undertone. “The money’s all back home.”

“Understood,” said Saj.

Saj handed Aimée the papers he’d picked up, with a wink.

* * *

A
COUPLE WERE getting out of a taxi at the end of the street. She couldn’t believe her luck. “Clinique du Louvre,
s’il vous plaît,
” she said to the taxi driver.

She knew Saj could handle himself. With the account numbers René had furnished, he’d get out of Tracfin in an hour. Or less, knowing Saj. Maybe they’d even hire Saj to do the backdoor work they couldn’t.

She’d known deep in her bones that her mother had no part of this. Just Morbier, and his suspicions. She felt vindicated.

In the rearview mirror, she noticed a taxi following them, turning left when they did. A few blocks later, it stayed a car length behind as her driver weaved into rue Montmartre, then past Les Halles.

Not good, with the Clinique du Louvre only a few blocks away. She couldn’t lead whoever was tailing her to René’s location. It would be smarter to get her old backup laptop from the armoire at home, feed Miles Davis, then figure out where to go next.

She reached over the seat and handed the taxi driver fifty francs. “Make a right up there. See?” She pointed to a clump of trees and parked cars.

He nodded.

“Then speed up and finish the ride without me. But don’t go near the original destination.
Compris
?”

He nodded again. “Like in that old Lino Ventura movie?”

“That’s right.”

She crouched on the floor. As the taxi veered right, she hit the left back door handle and heaved herself out, covering her chest with her arms. She rolled over the sharp cobbles, feeling each one, and ended up on fallen branches. She waited until the car following her receded down the street.

Nothing broken, but there were oil stains on her skirt and dirt under her fingernails and an ache in her ribs. She walked toward the red Métro sign, rubbing her side. But the Métro gate was shut. The strike!

She punched in Morbier’s number. Only a message. She swallowed her pride.

“Morbier? Pick up if you’re home. Can Miles Davis and I borrow your couch tonight?”

A beep and the message ended. She waited. Then the phone buzzed.

* * *

S
HE BREATHED I N the musty air of her dark apartment. A faint rose fragrance came from the dining room, the only remnant of her dinner with Mathieu four nights ago.

“Miles Davis?”

There was no answering scamper of paws across the wood floor.

Usually, Madame Cachou walked him at night and brought him back. But considering Madame’s bursitis, she figured Chloë might have helped her out tonight. She didn’t want to switch on the light, which would activate the cameras the
flics
had mounted in her apartment.

In her bedroom, she rooted in her armoire and found the old backup laptop and grabbed her stovepipe jeans and a vintage YSL black-and-white polka-dot silk spaghetti strap top. It was the first thing to come to hand, but better than her oil-stained blouse.

She was still on the run, from whom she didn’t know. Gabrielle, Olivier, and Roland de la Pecheray had been carted off for questioning at the Brigade Criminelle. She’d discovered that Nadillac had moved the money to discredit her. But none of them had had anything to do with René’s shooting. Perplexed, she realized that she was no further than before in finding out who had tried to kill him.

Think. She had to think and put together the facts she had. Someone had set this all up with painstaking thoroughness. A woman her height, in clothes like hers, who could get into this building. Chloë? But Chloë was her friend. That was silly.

The only woman unaccounted for was Nicolas’s sister, Maud. But she’d been committed to a mental institution in Lille.

She wiggled into her tight jeans, stuck the phone in her back pocket, and stepped into black stilettos. On her way out, she took Miles Davis’s horsemeat from the fridge, stuck that, too, in her bag, and grabbed her black military-style wool coat for warmth.

Chloë must have returned from walking Miles Davis and, noticing the dark apartment, taken him upstairs. Thoughtful as usual. She envisioned a cup of tea from Chloë’s ever-full teapot, a place to sit down and think.

She had to go upstairs to check, if only to put her mind at rest and to pick up Miles Davis. She felt guilty even suspecting Chloë.

The stairs creaked, narrowing as she reached the fifth floor where the
chambres de bonnes,
the maids’ rooms, were located. She heard the droning of a radio, a speech broken by intermittent applause. She recognized Jean-Marie Le Pen’s voice, the distinctive haranguing tone of his call to “Keep France for the French.”

As she was about to knock, she saw the chinks of light around the edges of the doorframe and smelled gas. Her smile faded.

“Chloë?”

Miles Davis’s yelp answered her.

The door wasn’t locked. Aimée stepped inside.

Miles Davis was chained to the open skylight of the attic room. As he jumped on his hind legs, his yelp turned into a keening whine.

Each time he jumped, the chain attached to his collar choked him.

“What in the world?” She dropped her bag, rushed over and lifted Miles Davis up. She loosened the chain digging into his furry neck and held him close. His tongue licked her face all over; his leash trailed on the floor.

Then the door slammed shut behind her. The deadbolt clicked into place.

Chloë faced her, wearing a demure navy blue suit and perfect navy pumps, like an Air France hostess. Tortoiseshell glasses rested on her nose. A different person confronted Aimée.

“I’m disappointed, Aimée,” Chloë said. “I warned you about Mathieu, as your friend. But did you listen?
Non.
”

Aimée scanned the room, and her gaze fell on the beige crocodile loafers peeking out from under the bed. The ones worn by the woman in the security video. Shoes she’d never be caught dead in.

“You shot René and framed me,” she accused Chloë.

She’d believed that Chloë was a friend, confided in her, entrusted her with Miles Davis.

“Who are you?” she asked.

Suitcases sat by the door; a pile of clothes was heaped on the bed. Chloë was moving out.

“I studied you. Every detail. Now it’s your turn,” Chloë said. “You have to suffer.”

Aimée backed away. Something crackled under her feet. A cellophane candy wrapper. She recognized those red candy wrappers.
P’tits Quinquins
from Lille.

And finally it made sense.

“You’re Nicolas’s sister, Maud Evry,” Aimée said. With Miles Davis in her arms, she took a step back. Her head knocked against the slanting roof and her back met the wall. There was nowhere to go in this closet-sized garret under the eaves. “But you were in Lille, in a mental institution.”

“Let’s say I left on my own terms.” Maud smiled again. “But I was not in time to save Nicolas.”

Aimée tried to control her rising panic. Somehow she had to get to the door, slip the bolt, and summon help.

“Save him?” The pieces fell into place. “
You
killed Clémence.”

“That
putain,
nothing but a cheap slut. She never listened either.”

“Clémence was pregnant with his baby. You killed your own blood.”

Maud’s mouth twisted sideways. “You’re lying.”

“You vowed to make whoever put Nicolas in prison pay. Revenge. That’s what this is about.”

“High marks,” Maud said. “I wanted you to know. I almost told you myself.”

“Chloë . . . Maud, you need help. We’ll call your doctor.”

Aimée stepped toward the door.

“For more shock treatments?” She shook her head, her eyes glazed.

“Non,
of course not,” Aimée said, trying to think fast, “but let’s sort this out.”

A short laugh. “You call isolation in a straitjacket ‘help’? They chained me, like your dog.”

A copper pot boiled on the cooktop; heat filled the room. The smell of gas mingled with the odor of rot from the roof timbers.

Maud gave a little sigh. “The
putain
gave me no choice.” She flicked on all the burners on the gas stove. Little rings of blue flame blossomed. “Ever try dog meat?”

Miles Davis emitted a low growl.

“They say it tastes like rabbit.”

With a quick movement, Aimée lifted Miles Davis up through the narrow open skylight and shoved him onto the roof. She counted on him to scamper to the flat part framing the gutter.

“Silly girl!” Maud stepped closer, a small snub-nosed revolver in her hand.

Prickles ran up Aimée’s spine. She was being threatened by a psychotic with a gun, whom she’d thought was her friend. She edged around the bed piled with clothes and towels, toward the stove, scanning the dirty frying pans, the knives on the counter.

Miles Davis’s barks from the roof competed with Le Pen’s rising rhetoric from the radio . . . “We must stop immigrants from stealing French jobs.”

The blue rings of flames licked higher, close to a lace curtain.

“Turn off the gas.” Aimée grabbed a wet towel from the bed and threw it on the burner, dousing the flames.

“Why did you do that?” Maud said.

The gas pilot flame in the small old-fashioned water heater unit flickered above the sink. Gas fumes laced the close air.

“Don’t you see that the pilot light’s too near the burners?”

“You put Nicolas in that stinking hellhole.” Maud’s voice rose. “Full of lowlifes and filthy immigrants. Now you’ll pay.”

She echoed Le Pen.

“He was brilliant, he had a bright future, but he turned to the skinheads,” Maud said.

“Blame yourself. How could he study for entry to a Grande Ecole when you refused to support him?”

“He’d get no help from me while Clémence was around.” Maud’s eyes narrowed. “I told him.”

“He needed money, so he agreed to take the blame for Olivier de la Pecheray and went to prison,” Aimée said. “After four years, he’d had enough. He wouldn’t cover up the death of the old Jewish couple any longer.”

“Jews, Arabs,
Noirs d’Afrique,
that’s right. Unless the government takes control, they’ll infest us.” Maud stood so close, Aimée could see the fine beads of perspiration on her fingers holding the gun. “They’re like rodents.
They’re
the ones to blame.”

“Wrong,” Aimée rejoined. “Olivier’s father had Nicolas murdered in prison. And he was going to get away with it.

Nicolas knew too much; he presented an obstacle to Roland de la Pecheray’s climb up the ministry ladder.”

The gas smell became stronger. The place could blow up.

“So
you
say.” Maud’s smile disappeared. “It’s a crime how those Jews stick together. They still control the banks. We should have taken care of all of them in the ovens.”

Aimée whacked Maud hard against the door. The revolver blasted a white flash. Burning pain grazed Aimée’s rib. Plaster rained down as a thin white powder from the bullet’s impact. She had to shut the gas off before it exploded; she couldn’t understand why the bullet hadn’t ignited it.

She clutched her side, stretching for the burner knob, but her fingers wouldn’t reach far enough.

Maud grabbed her legs. Aimée twisted, kicking Maud sideways. Haze burned her eyes; gas reeked, fogging her brain; pain smarted along her side. She felt the gun prod in her ribs.

“Your turn, Aimée Leduc.”

She gritted her teeth. “Not in your lifetime.”

Aimée spun, hitting Maud with all the strength she had. Maud howled with pain. Le Pen hadn’t stopped orating.

Aimée pulled a chair under the skylight, somehow hoisting herself up. Another gunshot stung her leg.

“You’re not going anywhere,” Maud shouted.

But Aimée kept pulling herself up. She crawled over the skylight ledge, panting for air, and slid, face first, down the blue slate tiles. She grabbed a pipe, hanging on for dear life.

Warm wetness spread over her ribs. She saw a dark red stain over her chest. The YSL blouse was now totally ruined. Her jeans leg had been ripped by a bullet. Gas fumes came from the skylight under a smatter of stars. Below, the Seine glittered, pockmarked with lights. But everything felt far away. A tongue licked her ear and she realized she’d reached the flat part of the roof.