The Blood Promise: A Hugo Marston Novel (18 page)

“I wouldn’t dream of it.”

“I’m glad to hear that. And yes, someone’s putting a search warrant together right now in the bowels of the prefecture.”

They reached the store and without pausing walked in, a bell jangling lightly as the door opened. Inside, the place was cluttered but neat, the wide-planked floors cut into narrow aisles by antique furniture and table-top displays of smaller items for sale. A bookcase filled with leather-bound volumes caught Hugo’s eye, and he reminded himself he was there to investigate, not browse. Garcia started slowly down the aisle to the right, so Hugo took the one on the left, their eyes open for the proprietor.

They found old man Capron in his office, totally absorbed by whatever was playing on the screen of his laptop. He snapped it shut when Garcia poked his head into the tiny room, his eyes alight with surprise at the intrusion. “
Oui
? Can I help you?”

Garcia and Hugo held up their credentials and Capron squinted to study them from eight feet away.

“You have something that doesn’t belong to you,” Garcia said. “Showed up on your online catalog and we need it back.” He put his badge away and handed over a computer printout of the necklace.

Capron wrinkled his nose as he looked over the paper. “You people come in here claiming things are stolen. How do I know you are not stealing from me? Where is my compensation?”

Garcia bristled. “I imagine it’s in the profit from the stolen items you manage to sell before we show up.”

Hugo glanced at Garcia. It was unlike his friend to be so confrontational, especially from the word go, but this was the French detective’s show, not Hugo’s.

“I steal nothing, and if I sell stolen property I do so without knowing it.” He rose and walked past them into the shop. “I want a receipt for this, my insurance company insists.”

“You’ll get your receipt. Where is the necklace?” Garcia asked.

Capron walked behind the sales counter and fished a bunch of keys from his pocket. He bent down and unlocked the sliding glass back of the case where his smaller and pricier items were on display. With a grunt he reached in and carefully scooped up the necklace, laying it gently on a velvet cloth.

Hugo looked back at where it had lain to see the price. “Two thousand Euros?” he asked.

“
Bien sûr
. This is entirely made by hand here in France, it’s solid eighteen-karat gold. And look at these, seven of them I think, fine hand-crafted needlepoint flower sections, each one in a hand-made gold frame.” He glanced up, as if he were talking to prospective buyers. “You can see, it has five strands of chain connecting each section, and the catch here has its original enamel trim.”

“Distinctive,” Garcia said to Hugo.

“Definitely,” Hugo agreed. “How old?”

“I would think mid-eighteenth-century, something like that.”

“Seems to me, it’d be a lot more expensive than just two thousand,” Hugo said. “All that quality, its age.”

“You’re an expert, are you?” Capron said, not hiding a sneer.

“Should be pretty easy to check, and if you’re selling it for half price, well, I’d think that’s good evidence you know it’s stolen.”

The sneer dropped from Capron’s face and his eyes darted between the two policemen. “I charge what the market will bear. If something is worth more, well, I mean . . . if people won’t pay what it’s really worth, what am I to do?”

“What indeed,” said Garcia. “Now for the important question. Where did you get it?”

“I don’t know.” Capron straightened up and sighed. “You always ask me that and I never tell you. In this case, I don’t know but my customers would not be my customers for long if I kept giving their names to the police.”

“No, they’d be in jail,” Garcia snapped. “And you really think we’re just going to take ‘I don’t know’ for an answer?”

“You’re going to have to. My son brought this piece in and he didn’t tell me who he bought it from.”

“You must have paperwork showing that,” Hugo said.

“Sometimes we do, sometimes we don’t. It’s not required by law, you know.”

“Where is your son?” Garcia demanded.

“Out.”

“Out where?”

“With a girl. Buying antiques. At the movies.” Capron shrugged. “He is a grown man so when he goes out he doesn’t ask my permission and doesn’t tell me where.”

“
Non
? Maybe we’ll put a police car out front until he comes back. Could be inconvenient for any customers coming in, they’d all have to be questioned, asked for identification. How does that sound?”

“You do what you have to. And so will I.”

The two Frenchmen were squaring off across the counter and Hugo could see this going from unhelpful to disastrous. Whatever was eating at Garcia had devoured his objectivity, his professionalism, and if he kept this up it could easily derail the investigation.

“Look,” Hugo said, “this necklace is more than just stolen property. The owner was murdered during the theft. Which means Capitaine Garcia is right, we can’t take ‘I don’t know’ for an answer. Whoever sold you this could have murdered an innocent woman. At the very least, your son is a link to that person.”

Doubt flitted across Capron’s face. “What murder? I don’t know anything about that.”

“I don’t think you do,” Hugo went on. “But this necklace cost a woman her life, and right now it’s the only lead we have. So
I’ll
ask you this time: Who sold it to you?”

Capron’s face hardened. “And I’ll tell you what I told him. I don’t know because my son acquired it.”

“Call him,” Hugo said. “Or show us the paperwork.”

“I will not call him because he’s busy. And if you want to see the paperwork, you’ll need a search warrant.”

“No!” Garcia slammed his fist onto the counter. “You will show it to us now!” The capitaine’s face was red with anger, his body taut as he leaned over the counter toward Capron. “Now, damn you, and if you don’t I’ll put handcuffs on you until the warrant gets here. And maybe forget to take them off after we’ve torn this shack apart.”

Capron flinched at Garcia’s anger, but it had the effect Hugo was afraid of: the store owner became more belligerent himself. “Get out of my store! You come in here and make accusations with no proof, you don’t have the right to treat me like this.”

Garcia was huffing mad and even Hugo was done being polite. If there was one thing that riled him up it was a crook acting indignant, and this old coot was playing the injured-businessman role to the max. Hugo scooted around the counter and took Capron’s arm.

“Ow, you’re hurting me!”

“Shut up,” Hugo snapped. “We’ve been nice and polite, we even said ‘please’ a couple of times. So now you can sit down and keep quiet while my colleague gets his search warrant and we have fun taking this place apart.”

Garcia closed his mouth, obviously trying to hide his surprise at Hugo’s response to the old man. He pulled a pair of handcuffs from his belt and snapped them efficiently around the shocked Capron’s wrists. As the jeweler sputtered with outrage, Garcia steered him to a chair and plopped him down, none too gently.

“You can’t do this! Go get your damn warrant but leave me and my store alone until you have it. This is illegal, you can’t hold me here like this, you have to go away until you have the authority to—”

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” Hugo said. “But that’s not how it works, you don’t get time to hide or destroy evidence.”

“What? No, I wouldn’t—”

“
Ta gueule
!” Garcia snarled.
Shut the fuck up.
He turned to Hugo. “You OK to hang out with this idiot until I get back? If the warrant’s drafted, which it should be, I’ll find a friendly judge between here and the prefecture, I should be back within the hour.”

“Sure.”

“What if I need to pee?” Capron whined. “I can’t sit here for an hour like that.
C’est pas juste.
”

Hugo looked around, then spotted the perfect solution. He grabbed it from a tabletop and put it between Capron’s feet. “Porcelain, late nineteenth century. Not handmade because, well, they needed to mass produce these. Everyone had a chamber pot back in the day.”

Garcia’s eyes sparkled with delight and he clapped Hugo on the shoulder as he made for the door. He flipped the sign from Open to
Closed
as he went out, giving Hugo and André Capron a parting wave as he shut the door behind him, the tinkle of its little bell making Hugo smile again as the outraged old man shoved the chamber pot away from him with little pokes of his foot.

Hugo spent his time nosing around the store. He pretended to be browsing but he wondered if maybe he could recognize other valuable, and potentially stolen, items. His best bet, he thought, was with the used books, an area of antiquity in which he had some knowledge. He picked books from the shelves one by one, opening the front covers of those he recognized to see whether they were first editions before turning them over in his hands to check their condition. Most were battered, reprints, and moderately worthless, but a couple were worth the price Capron was charging. One was a copy of
Der Steppenwolf
by Herman Hesse, a first edition published by Berlag in 1927.

Hugo held it up so Capron could see it. “Original dust jacket?”

The old man nodded. “Good condition, too.”

“Eight thousand Euros seems a little steep.”

“So don’t buy it.”

Hugo flashed an evil grin. “I wonder. It’s probably evidence, wouldn’t you think?”

“Hey, don’t you—”

“Stolen from some collection somewhere, I’d bet,” Hugo interrupted. “Like this one.” He slid another book from the shelf.
Where There’s a Will
by Rex Stout, very much the sort of book Hugo would buy and read. “First edition, published by Farrar & Rinehart in 1940,” he read aloud. “Love the Nero Wolfe mysteries, and I’ve not read this one.”

“Take these cuffs off and leave, you can take the book with you. Compliments of the house.”

“Two thousand Euros, you’re asking?” Hugo looked up, mock surprise on his face. “Wait, are you trying to bribe me?”

“It’s a book. Take it and go, leave me alone, will you?”

“I sure would love to own this book,” Hugo mused. “Shall we see what else you have?”

“Take two books,” Capron said, “three if you must.” Hugo wondered at the note of hope in his voice, as if the question wasn’t whether Hugo could be bribed, but how much it would take. If he’d had any doubts about Capron before, this wheedling attempt to buy his momentary freedom dispelled them. And because his freedom would likely be fleeting, Hugo was sure he wanted it to destroy evidence—specifically records of the purchase of that necklace.

Hugo was sliding the books back into place, watched by a rapidly deflating Capron, when the front door opened and a large, shaven-headed man stood there looking into the store, his bulk filling the doorway and small eyes blinking as they adjusted to the dim interior.

“C’est fermé
,” Hugo said. “Come back tomorrow.”

He chided himself for not locking the door. He’d assumed the sign would suffice, but before he’d finished speaking Hugo knew this man wasn’t here to browse for antiques.

The man didn’t move at first, then slowly stepped into the store. He stopped when he saw André Capron on the chair, hands pinned behind his back, but it was the old man who spoke first and as soon as Hugo saw what was happening he moved.

“
Allez, allez
!” Capron hissed, but the order to leave and Hugo’s sudden movement confused the younger man, who froze, giving Hugo time to slide between him and the front door.

“Bruno, I assume?” Hugo said.

“Who . . . who the hell are you?” His voice was like gravel, rough and scratching. “What’s going on? Papa, are you OK?”

“The police,” Capron said. “An American policeman. The real ones are on their way with a search warrant.”

Bruno’s eyes narrowed, then moved left and right, and Hugo knew he was figuring his chances.

“Don’t.” Hugo kept his voice firm. “Your father’s not going anywhere with those cuffs on, and it’s generally a bad idea to assault members of law enforcement. Even if you win the fight, which you won’t, the men in blue who back me up will be less than gentle when they catch up with you.”

“Why are you here?”

“You’re selling stolen property. Property from a murder scene, no less.” The first comment didn’t seem to faze Bruno, but the second did.

“Murder? We don’t know anything . . .” His words tailed off and he looked at his father, as if for confirmation that they really didn’t know anything about a murder. When he looked back at Hugo his eyes flickered with confusion and, Hugo thought, fear.

“Probably true. But when you buy stolen goods without asking too many questions, the chances are pretty good you’re going to find yourself neck deep in a situation you didn’t create.”

“Monsieur,” Capron senior said, “leave my son alone. He knows nothing about anything, just leave him alone.”

Bruno drifted closer to his father, the look of confusion lingering, and Hugo moved with him.

“But that’s not true, is it?” Hugo said. “You told us he’s the one who brought the necklace here in the first place. Which means he knows something about that, wouldn’t you say?”