Murder in Bel-Air

by Cara Black

  “How?”

  “People she knew. Friends? I’m not sure. My daughter got so upset when Germaine left. I haven’t seen Germaine or Séverine since.” She wistfully observed the photo of Sydney. “You know, people fly into my life and out. My philosophy’s to treasure them while they’re here.”

  Aimée had to keep the woman on track. “What was Germaine so upset about? Did she say?”

  Madame Triquet looked away. “Les maudits—the curse never stops haunting them.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Germaine’s whole family. Bad juju.”

  The woman actually believed that?

  Aimée took out the copy she’d made of the saying she had found in Germaine’s stashed baggie. “Can you tell me why this would have been important to her?”

  Use gifts for good, not evil, or suffer their curse.

  “A curse followed that family,” Madame Triquet said.

  “Curse? Why do you say that?”

  “Allez, look what happened. Everyone’s dead now, non? Germaine’s mother married a Frenchman, and rumors were an uncle had a shaman put the hex on her. Her whole family. He got the plantation.”

  “That wasn’t a hex, or bad juju, madame. Those were political murders.”

  “They died in a car accident.” Madame Triquet shrugged. “You can believe what you want. I spent enough time in that country to think it’s possible. Many Ivoirians wear protection amulets.”

  Aimée tried to piece together what she knew. “How did you keep in touch with Séverine?”

  “You’re scared, too. Why?”

  “Séverine tried to help Germaine. Now she’s in danger.”

  The woman’s eyes were far away. “I thought she had a husband. Why isn’t he trying to find her?”

  A husband? Another life Aimée had no clue about? She put that aside for the moment. Had to get something useful out of this rambling, superstitious woman. “Were you the one who told her about the playgroup in Picpus?”

  “Playgroup? The one Florence takes my grandson to?”

  Aimée nodded.

  “That’s right; Séverine did ask about a playgroup for her grandchild.” Aimée heard a beeping from the lanyard around the woman’s neck. “Time for my pills.” She stood in a too-swift movement and stumbled. Aimée caught her before she fell. Handed her a plastic medication holder from the table—it was labeled morning, afternoon, and evening.

  “I’ll get you a glass of water.”

  In the small kitchen, Aimée turned on the tap. Noticed the pill bottles on the windowsill. Donepezil. Wasn’t that Alzheimer’s medication?

  When she returned with the water, Madame Triquet was speaking on the phone. “Oui, Yvon, I’m taking my pills. There’s a nice woman bringing me water. Who? I’m not sure. I was working in the yard, and then . . . I’m not sure.”

  On the refrigerator Aimée had seen a pamphlet about a school in Côte d’Ivoire. After watching Madame Triquet take her pills, she went back to the kitchen to return the glass and stopped to read it. Donations left at our office will help our school program in Abidjan, which is run entirely by volunteers.

  If her mother had gotten involved with Germaine through Madame Triquet and the organization that ran this school, Aimée would chase down every detail. No stone unturned. Aimée copied down the address.

  She pulled a colorful blanket over the woman, who’d fallen asleep on the couch.

  Friday, 4 p.m.

  A short bus ride on the number 56 took Aimée past Place de la Nation’s massive stone pavilions, octroi, once toll gates and part of the eighteenth-century city wall. A block later she arrived at Empress Eugénie’s foundation on the corner of rue du Faubourg Saint-Antoine. The building was designed in the shape of a necklace. Empress Eugénie had refused her wedding gift, a diamond necklace, insisting a charity for poor young girls be built with the money. Today, it housed a vocational school, école maternelle, offices, and student housing. It was also the address of the nonprofit that ran the school Aimée had found the pamphlet for on Madame Triquet’s refrigerator.

  She followed behind a student, hurrying through the security gate and into a burst of color—a circular autumn garden of purple hydrangeas, orange dahlias, marigolds, and red and purple anemones.

  After making her way down long corridors, mounting multiple staircases into different wings, and taking several wrong turns, she found the organization’s name on an office door.

  Knocked.

  No response.

  Knocked again.

  “Donation?” asked a young woman’s voice.

  “May I come in?”

  “No one’s here. I just accept donations for them.”

  “D’accord. But I’ve got a donation question.”

  “The requirements are on the flyer.”

  Irritating. Why wouldn’t she open the door?

  “But Séverine Lafont told me I could ask her—”

  “She’s not here. No one’s here. I’m not allowed to let people in.”

  “Can I leave a message for her?”

  “Suit yourself. Write it down.”

  “Any idea when she’ll return?”

  “Like I said, no one’s here. There’s no set schedule for office hours. I’m the cleaner.”

  Aimée believed her. She tore a page from her Moleskine. She was conflicted over what to say: Are you okay? Where are you?

  Wrote: Assembled donation package, unsure of recipient’s bkgd—then crossed it out.

  Ended up with: The right thing seems the wrong thing—call me.

  Lame. But she hoped her mother would understand what she meant.

  Knocked again.

  “Slide it under the door,” the woman said.

  “Okay. Has Séverine Lafont been in the office recently?”

  “No idea.”

  Friday, 4:30 p.m.

  Aimée found her way back to the garden, a tight knot of dread between her shoulders. Morbier hadn’t returned her calls. The DGSE had disappeared along with GBH. The Crocodile was still on the loose. And no word from her mother, fate unknown.

  Or help from Delorme. Nor anything from Martine’s contact on the African desk. Too many pieces were missing. How could Aimée make sense of what had happened? Her mind scrambled for the meaning of it all.

  The purples and oranges blurred and faded in and out. Her depth perception was wavering.

  Not now. She couldn’t let this happen now. Couldn’t lose control.

  Panicked, she remembered the doctor’s dictum: You have no control. Rest, déstressez, and it will pass. Fighting the symptoms won’t work. She found a bench. Sat and closed her eyes. Breathed in. Let it go.

  The sunlight warmed her legs as she inhaled the drifting scents of the flowers. The bark of a dog came from the distance.

  Breathe; inhale and exhale. Her mind slowed.

  She sat for she didn’t know how long.

  Her phone bleeped. Her eyes popped open. Shards of sunlight made diamond patterns on the gravel path.

  “Saj and I think you should look at something.” René’s voice sounded tight.

  Right now? “René, what’s up?”

  “Meet us at my go-to motherboard mec’s.”

  He thought someone was listening in on her phone.

  She knew the place, by Montgallet. She was close.

  “En route,” she said.

  Friday, 5 p.m.

  Store after store on rue Montgallet specialized in computer sales, parts, and repairs, prices negotiable. In the seventeenth century, the narrow street had been a country road named rue des Six-Chandelles, street of the six candles. René liked to joke the place had always been tech minded.

  Upstairs at René’s friend Ming’s shop, computer skeletons and wire boards filled the benches. The air smelled o
f metal solder.

  The documents she’d found in the mausoleum were spread out over a long table on top of a flight route map of the African continent. Tacked on to a wall were flight routes between the former Soviet Union and the Gulf States.

  “My source at Air France came through,” said René.

  “Et alors?” Aimée said.

  “It’s simple if you know what you’re looking for,” said Saj.

  “Care to explain?” she asked.

  “We retraced the plane’s route via refueling receipts and bills of lading, which are on file at every airport stopover,” Saj said. “This flight originated in Belarus. Stopped in Tehran, with Bouaké in the central part of Côte d’Ivoire as the final destination. Cargo items are listed as farm equipment.”

  “We knew all that already, Saj,” she said.

  She sat on a rickety stool by René. He looked up from a computer screen. “I’ve been serving our paying clients.”

  Touché, René.

  The cash register’s ting drifted from Ming’s shop below.

  “But we didn’t know the plane, a Soviet-era workhorse identifiable by its registration, crashed somewhere in the border area of the two countries,” said Saj, “Côte d’Ivoire and Liberia.”

  “On purpose?” Aimée asked.

  “We don’t think so. This was a well-oiled operation. Similar planes flew this same route each month for a year.”

  “Similar planes?”

  “Interchangeable, from the old Soviet fleet. Warlords hire Belarusians and ex–Soviet Air Force pilots and Ukrainian crews who know the planes. If one crashes in the jungle or the desert, they salvage parts and tool up another one.”

  “Germaine’s brother, Armand, died in a shootout in Bouaké,” said Aimée. “He supported GBH’s revolutionary movement . . .”

  “Say instead of farming equipment, the plane contained arms and contraband destined for whoever could pay the price,” Saj suggested.

  She’d wondered about that, too. “Any evidence?”

  “I found UN reports in Genelle’s documents that mention arms and contraband carried in similar flights earlier this year.” Saj leafed through a report. “Try this for a working theory. Armand heard about the crash and wanted whatever the cargo was. He went out to collect the contraband.”

  “How’s that legal?” said René, always the straight arrow.

  “Who says any of it’s legal?” Aimée said.

  “Then he got shot by rivals,” Saj went on. “But let’s say before that, Armand had managed to give these documents to his sister. Telling Germaine this and showing her the contraband location at the crash site. Say Germaine knew this would essentially mean giving GBH the keys to the castle. Or in this case, arming his takeover. Funding the coup d’etat without the French.”

  René looked at the maps. “Why wouldn’t Germaine furnish all this to the group herself?”

  “Maybe she couldn’t?” said Aimée, poring over the report. “Or she’d promised her brother she’d flee the country. A good friend of hers lives here, and she thought she could come hide out for a while, but after realizing she’d been tracked, she didn’t want to put her friend’s family in danger. Kept looking for GBH, who was hidden in a safe house by the DGSE. So she asked my mother for help—she’d met her at Madame Triquet’s house.”

  “Who?” René and Saj said in perfect unison.

  Aimée told them. “She’s in early-stages Alzheimer’s and got cloudier the more she spoke.”

  “Did I miss something?” said René. “How’s your mother involved?”

  “Does her working with the CIA help to explain?” Aimée said.

  Both René’s and Saj’s eyes popped. Ming, who’d just reached the top of the stairs, zipped his fingers across his mouth and returned the way he’d come.

  “You’re kidding, right?” said René. “If not, count me out of this.”

  “All I know is what Nancie, a liaison from the US embassy, told me.”

  Saj stood and stretched. “You know what liaisons do, Aimée?”

  “She trailed me from the Prosper seminar, thanks to the fact that René emblazoned my name on their website.”

  “Now it’s my fault?” said René.

  “Non, she’s a plodder,” said Aimée, realizing that had come out wrong. “She would have found me anyway.”

  “We’re about getting Leduc’s name out there for business,” René said. “I always do that.”

  No time to argue over that. She needed his help. “The CIA okayed a payment for an asset, presumably GBH, and has heard nothing else since.”

  “Blood money,” said René. “The CIA funds his coup. They stay in control.”

  Aimée sucked in her breath. “That would make sense,” she said. “GBH could wait for the sweetest bidder for the contraband. Still doesn’t explain why the DGSE enlisted me, implying my finding GBH was the only way to keep my mother safe.” What detail was she missing? “Any luck on the diplomatic plates I saw at the African secretariat?”

  René nodded. “Embassy of Côte d’Ivoire.”

  She looked back over the flight plan, the list of names, the reports. Again, that nagging feeling of a missing puzzle piece. “Something’s wrong.”

  Friday, 5:30 p.m.

  “Wrong how?” asked Saj.

  She pointed to a report. “Why would someone carry this UN report on an illegal flight?”

  “They wouldn’t,” said Saj.

  “So did Germaine or her brother add this to the packet?”

  “Looks like it.”

  “Attends, look at this,” said René, pointing to a document he’d pulled up on his screen. “It’s the same one here on the UN website, a report on a sanction on Liberia’s arms import.”

  “That’s right,” said Saj. “Germaine’s docs include this part of the UN report. There’s a clause here saying arms shipments to Côte d’Ivoire need an exemption.”

  “Arms shipments to Côte d’Ivoire need an exemption?” said René. “Yet there’s no exemption included and no actual proof of arms. Not a lot of help if it’s a continent away.”

  “Whoever holds the cargo’s contents holds the balance of power in the upcoming coup d’etat,” she said. “I don’t know how, but that’s the only way it makes sense.”

  “The CIA, DGSE, and Delorme at the secretariat all want to back the winning horse,” said René. “Feed it sugar to keep it sweet.”

  “So they’re all in on this,” said Saj.

  “Don’t forget an Ivoirian with diplomatic plates had an audience after me with His Highness the grand meddler of l’Afrique.” Her phone vibrated on the table. She checked the display. “Speak of the devil,” she said, then answered, “Oui, Monsieur Delorme?”

  “I think we should talk, mademoiselle.”

  “Concerning?”

  “I’ll explain. Fifteen minutes?”

  Friday, 6 p.m.

  Delorme sat alone at the round table in the dry air of the salon. No former president’s son this time. He offered her a chair, and she took it.

  “You said we should talk,” she said. “What do you have to tell me?”

  “Mademoiselle, there are two things you need to know.” Delorme’s pained smile, meant to garner sympathy, she imagined, left her cold. “Our French special forces in Côte d’Ivoire live by the motto that every mission only works if it’s accomplished by, with, and through the local population. We prize our elite units for their ingenuity, adaptability, language skills, and because they know who to finance and how.”

  Her ears pricked up. The money. What was he really saying?

  “The units partner with local forces and broker strategic alliances with local leaders. That’s how success in l’Afrique works.”

  Aimée crossed her legs. “Et alors?”

  She wasn’t there f
or a geopolitical lesson.

  “The second point: it’s like chess,” he said. “We play the long game.”

  “Meaning?”

  “We plot several moves ahead for the country’s stability. Take into account all possibilities. Plan countermoves for every scenario.”

  “Sounds like manipulation to me.” Diabolical.

  “It’s called diplomacy.” Delorme opened a photo album. “Here are some examples.” He flipped the pages. Photos of him with Bokassa, de Gaulle, Mitterrand, and several African leaders Aimée didn’t recognize. In each photo, Delorme stood on the periphery, easy to spot with his distinctive glasses and baby face. The shadow puppeteer. Among the photos of African dignitaries, she noticed several of the former president’s son, Jean-Christophe, in a safari suit. “I call these men friends. Relationships built over decades. I’ve attended their sons’ baptisms and then their weddings.”

  What had he called her in to tell her? “How does this relate to Sydney Leduc, Monsieur Delorme?”

  “A Côte d’Ivoire coup d’etat is imminent.”

  “Nothing to do with me.”

  “Hear me out, please. It doesn’t suit our interests, or anyone’s, that General Mgwanga’s acting up. He arrived after your visit, full of demands.”

  No doubt the man she’d seen alighting from the car with the Ivorian diplomatic license plates. The one Delorme had mentioned with ties to Liberia.

  “He was poorly raised, that one. Thinks he’s entitled to always get his way. His father never listened when I told him spare the rod, spoil the child.” He sighed. “I’ll get around Mgwanga. With your help.”

  “By help you mean furnishing information to this Mgwanga, who, in your words, supports Liberian death squads, while there are UN arms sanctions against the country? Sounds like offering matches to a pyromaniac.”

  And getting no closer to finding her mother.

  “Mgwanga’s easily appeased. He likes to feel he’s in control. He’s not. However, he causes too much collateral damage with his Liberian connections, using mercenaries, kidnapping women for female soldiers. He needs to be kept in check.”