by Cara Black
René nodded. Thoughtful.
She headed to the old surveillance TV monitor and inserted the bank’s VHS tape. Hit play. As she watched, she copied the bank’s feed onto a CD she could upload onto her computer. She wanted Suzanne to be able to see the footage for herself.
The feed ran from 7:20 p.m., an hour before Suzanne had remembered seeing Mirko buying cigarettes, until an hour after she thought she saw him. For a mind-numbing hour, Aimée stared at footage of a summer night outside café tabac: passing buses, the steady then dwindling stream of people emerging from and descending the stairs of the Métro entrance. She scanned the faces of shop assistants, the office crowd, families—a mother holding a child’s hand, the father carrying the child’s trottinette—a kick scooter—heading home from the Jardin du Luxembourg. As the footage continued, Aimée noticed a shift: now she was watching couples and friends meeting for a drink in the café, locals stopping by for cigarettes—a mixture of young and old, all kinds patronizing their quartier café tabac.
No one matching Mirko’s photo popped out at her.
She switched the playback to slo-mo and studied the video, hitting pause each time she saw a single man.
No Mirko.
Aimée saw Suzanne’s blonde hair as she strode down the pavement. Suzanne paused, looked at her hand. Pedestrians passed by. She’d turned her back. A phone call? Checking a message?
The next moment Suzanne headed into the tabac. Aimée watched the time counter. Fifty seconds passed. A minute and a half. A red-haired man entered the tabac. A bus passed. Two minutes.
A woman, baguette and leeks peeking from her shopping bag, stopped as her dog sprayed the curb by the Métro stairs. Suzanne exited the café. She looked both ways. Hurried up the street. Paused. Turned back, hesitated, then disappeared from the frame.
Just in case, Aimée wanted René’s eyeballs on this. She called him over, showed him Mirko’s photo. He hunched forward to stare at her screen, then played and replayed the three-minute clip in slo-mo. He shook his head.
“She can’t let go, eh?” René pulled his goatee. “Poor Suzanne.”
“Now she’s on about Isabelle, her Dutch colleague, being missing, René.”
“Say Suzanne gets an email from Isabelle’s brother, jumps to conclusions. Suzanne is paranoid about her ghost sighting, and she alarms the brother,” said René. “Gets him so worried he’s calling the hospitals searching for his sister. No luck.”
She knew how that went. She listened to René’s scenario sadly, realizing he might be right.
“So now the brother’s checking the unidentified female corpses, the Maries at the morgue . . .” René shook his head. “Think about it, Aimée. How will Suzanne feel when Isabelle turns up hungover and sheepish?”
She looked at The Hague report. Isabelle seemed like a seasoned professional, with several missions in Sarajevo and Pristina and a commendation for valor.
“On the other hand, what if she is in the morgue?” Aimée asked.
“Save yourself the trouble. Forget it. She’s not paying you to take this any further.”
Aimée picked up her phone and called Serge, her pathologist friend, to see if he was on shift. Got put through to his assistant.
“He’s on break.”
She hung up.
“Look,” René said, “I wanted your opinion on this other school for Chloé. Their scholastic ratings—”
“I know you believe Chloé’s gifted.”
René nodded. “So bright, and above her percentile in so many areas.”
Sometimes René acted as if he’d given birth to Chloé himself.
“You’re right, alors, but bébé geniuses need love first.” She grabbed her trench coat. “Back later. We need to arrange a time when you can watch Chloé.”
“Where are you going?”
“To tie up loose ends.”
Serge’s black-framed glasses slipped down his nose. A thread of carrot was caught in his black beard. Aimée handed him a café napkin from her bag.
“It’s freezing in here, Serge.”
Serge handed her his cup of coffee. She sipped. Ice cold.
“And quiet,” he said. “Nobody finds me in here except you.” Around them the stainless-steel handles gleamed on the cadaver drawers. “I thought you didn’t like coming to my ‘retreat.’”
“Café Cadaver’s not my favorite place.” She’d claimed her father’s body, what bits remained of it after the explosion, from drawer number five.
She couldn’t help but run her fingers over the handle now. Everything came back to her.
She shivered. “I’m supposed to meet Isabelle Ideler’s brother. I’m not sure what his name is . . .”
“That the one who’s bothering the chief?”
“Dutch?”
Serge nodded. “A big man. They’re very tall in the Netherlands. Statistically the tallest in Europe. But he was one of the tallest men I’ve ever seen.”
The door swung open, the plastic panels, hanging like clear fettuccini, flapping as an attendant stuck his face in.
“Open chest cavity in four needs your expertise.”
Serge threw the remains of his salad in a bin, finished the coffee, and donned his sterile surgical gloves. She followed him down the chill corridor, their footsteps echoing on the green tiles.
“You’re not allowed in here, Aimée,” he said.
“Has that stopped you from helping me before? Look, just find out if his sister’s on a slab or not. Simple.”
Serge paused. “My wife and I haven’t gone out in months. My mother-in-law is taking them next month, but she’s not here until . . .”
Not babysitting his twins again. Here came the negotiations. Always a price. But that had to mean Isabelle was here. She’d have to find a way to squeeze in time to babysit his kinetic twin boys.
Or.
“How about a culinary treat, Serge? Très spécial. Your wife loves not to cook, n’est-ce pas?”
She flashed the gift card Jules Dechard had given her.
“At École Ferrandi?” Serge looked impressed. “This books up a month in advance.”
“I’ll want the autopsy report, too.”
He glanced at his watch. “She’s in three. A glimpse only.” A door pinged open. Serge checked the toe tag on the body on the table inside. “Isabelle Ideler. Identified by her brother.”
“Cause of death?”
“Asphyxiation.” He pulled down the white sheet from the head. The woman’s face was white and her lips blue tinged. Her blonde hair was combed back. So young.
“She was strangled?” Aimée looked for petechiae in the whites of the open eyes.
“Beestings. Closed her air passage.” Serge pointed to the swollen neck. “In her case, it only took a minute or two. She was highly allergic. Too bad. With an anaphylactic attack, there are so many things an emergency medical team could have done to save her—CPR, adrenaline, antihistamines.” He shrugged. “If they’d gotten there in time.”
“Has it been ruled a suspicious death?”
“An accident, Aimée, clear and simple. I’ve submitted my conclusions. No reason to regard it as suspicious.”
“A highly allergic person gets stung by bees . . .”
Serge pulled out a file from the wall. “In Jardin du Luxembourg? Happens all the time. It’s summer, remember. She’s wearing a sundress. She walked right by the hives.”
“Wouldn’t she carry an EpiPen?”
“Maybe she did but grabbed it too late.”
“How many stings, Serge?”
“Hundreds. She got swarmed.” He scanned the report. “Her dress had traces of a sweet, sticky drink on it. I’m guessing Orangina based on the color and content. So she spilled her drink on herself, which attracted the bees. And then, bad luck, she’s foreign, doesn
’t know the garden or that she’s walking by the beehive.”
“How long before she was found?”
“The storm closed the gardens Monday afternoon.”
“Does that coincide with her time of death?”
“Roughly, give or take an hour. The beekeeper found her yesterday morning. Under a hedge.”
She’d lain there all night in the storm.
“No one saw her? Aren’t the flics investigating?”
“An accident?” Serge opened the door to the hallway. “We all concurred. Nothing in the toxicology or marks on her body to indicate anything other than a terrible mishap.” He gave her a copy of the prelim autopsy report.
“Where’re her things?”
“According to this”—Serge tapped his gloved finger on the report—“her brother, Frans Ideler, signed for her belongings. He’s making arrangements for her burial in the Netherlands.”
Talk about quick.
Aimée put the gift card in Serge’s waiting palm. “And I’ll find her brother, Frans, where?”
“Room two eleven. Tell them I sent you.”
Frans had already gone, leaving an address in Utrecht. He’d accepted his sister’s death was accidental. Arranged the paper work for her body to be transferred.
Shaken, Aimée didn’t know what else to do. For a moment, she’d thought Isabelle had been murdered, that it couldn’t have been an accident. But she’d been wrong.
Poor Suzanne. An ache of pity stabbed her. But there was no conspiracy or hit man.
No evidence.
Then she remembered Isabelle’s friend whom she was supposed to stay with. Perhaps the brother was staying with her? She checked the report. A mention of a Charlotte Boyer, listed as living on rue Madame.
Maybe Aimée could catch Frans there.
Suzanne might better accept Isabelle’s death as accidental if the news came from her brother. Listen to sense, since so far, Aimée’s words had fallen on deaf ears.
She rang Charlotte, introduced herself and said she was looking for Isabelle’s brother.
“Frans might come. I don’t know,” said Charlotte. “I’m glad you called. I need to talk with you about Isabelle.”
“Why?”
“It’s all my fault.” Her voice quavered. “Please!”
Aimée hurried up rue Madame to Charlotte Boyer’s address. A block from the Jardin du Luxembourg, this was a très desirable pocket of Paris with nineteenth-century limestone façaded buildings. The neighborhood had a playground, a puppet theatre and carousel, tennis courts, boules courts, and an orchard with myriad varieties of ancient apple and pear trees. Crowning it all was Marie de Médici’s seventeenth-century palace, her orangery still sheltering orange and lemon trees, palms and oleanders. Statues, fountains, chairs under the hanging chestnuts where people stopped to read or just contemplate. Part of Aimée’s childhood and so many Parisians’.
This slice of Paris was central yet tucked away, with a residential air and a tiny hardware store where Nobel Prize winners, politicians, editors, and actors shopped for nuts and bolts. Aimée knew Catherine Deneuve preferred the café tabac on rue de Fleurus. Not an area anyone left if they could avoid it. Even three antiquarian bookstores kept their toehold on a single street. If Saint-Germain was the intellectual center—the brain—of the sixth arrondissement, then Saint-Sulpice was the heart and the Jardin du Luxembourg the lungs.
Aimée passed a café whose front tables were almost empty. It was too hot today, too close to the annual August exodus. The city felt listless, lazy. She wished that she were done with this and taking Chloé to the puppet show, that they could cool off in the shade.
“Madame Boyer’s expecting you?” said the concierge, holding a squirming little boy’s hand. The boy was holding a sand bucket and shovel.
Aimée pulled out the card she had ready. She’d donned her wig and office worker outfit again just in case. “I just spoke to her on the phone.”
“You’re the detective?” The concierge gave her an appraising look that settled on her ballerina flats. “Third floor, right. I’m taking her boy to the park.”
In this quarter, buildings still had dedicated concierges who, in addition to taking the trash out and mopping the common areas and staircases, ferried the local children to and from lessons, camp, and school. In many parts of Paris, concierges had been replaced by Digicodes.
At the apartment door, a puffy-eyed woman about Aimée’s age, her light brown hair clipped up, greeted Aimée. “I’m Charlotte.” Her hands worried her paisley maternity-blouse sleeve.
“I’m Aimée Leduc.”
“I know. The detective.” Charlotte Boyer leaned against the doorway, shaking. “Frans went straight to the airport.”
There went Aimée’s idea to have Frans tell Suzanne about Isabelle’s death. Now she needed to think of another way to throw Suzanne off her obsession. “You wanted to talk, Charlotte?”
Charlotte’s shoulders shook, wracked with sobs. “I don’t know what to do.” She sagged against the doorway, overcome by a fit of crying. Concerned, Aimée shepherded Charlotte inside, brewed her a cup of herbal tisane in the eggshell state-of-the-art kitchen.
Ten minutes later she’d settled Charlotte on the designer burlap couch. Light streamed in from the courtyard. Aimée wondered if this woman had anything important to add, apart from grief. How long before Aimée could decently ask for Isabelle’s brother’s contact info?
“What did you mean about Isabelle’s death?” Aimée prompted her. “Why did you think it was your fault?”
“I urged her to come to Paris. Begged her.”
Great. Charlotte wanted to vent. Get absolved of her manufactured guilt.
“This will sound terrible,” said Charlotte. “I’m ashamed. I was so annoyed with Isabelle.” Her lower lip quivered. “I should have been worried.”
Aimée gave an inner sigh. Part of her wanted to walk away—she didn’t even know the young woman. “What makes you say that?”
“When she didn’t come home . . . I should have looked for her.” Pause. “At the . . .” Charlotte sniffled. “How did Isabelle look? Did it hurt? Was she in pain?”
The questions people always asked.
Aimée shook her head. Her scalp itched under the wig in the heat. Too late to take it off now and freak this poor woman out further.
Charlotte covered her eyes. Silence.
“Alors, can you give me her brother’s contact—?”
“First, I must tell you about her,” Charlotte interrupted.
The whole story of their friendship poured from Charlotte. On a law school term abroad, she’d roomed with Isabelle in Utrecht. They’d been friends ever since. Charlotte had just moved here from Bordeaux, because of her husband’s new job. She had three-month-old twins as well as the toddler Aimée had met downstairs, and she felt overwhelmed.
“You see all the unpacking left.” She indicated the boxes in the hallway. Aimée spotted one labeled antiques and another labeled cashmere. “Isabelle knew we’d just moved in, weren’t settled. But she pitched in to help me. She worked morning till night on Sunday putting things away and cleaning. And then the next day she goes out and doesn’t come home. She’s single, you know—I assumed she’d met someone. I was so annoyed with her for just disappearing when she’d come here to help me, angry when I should have been worried—so selfish . . .” Charlotte dissolved into tears again.
Something niggled at Aimée’s brain. “Alors, didn’t Isabelle have work appointments? Meetings?”
“Did she? Maybe. She didn’t mention any. Isabelle seemed so happy. She’d never been to Paris. Since my first baby, we hadn’t been in touch as often. Now I’m a full-time maman . . .”
With an efficient and obliging concierge and a high-ceilinged, stylishly remodeled nineteenth-century flat. Aimée almost blurted out, I�
��m full-time, too, only I also run a business. How she’d wanted to stay home with Chloé that morning.
Most women Aimée knew worked. But in this part of the Left Bank, work meant something different for a wealthy wife and mother than it did for Aimée. Not all of the women here were stay-at-home moms, though—didn’t Suzanne live in her husband’s family flat nearby?
Aimée didn’t have time to listen to more grief-filled rambling. She was about to ask again for the brother’s contact information when Charlotte said, “Wait, I remember now. Two days ago, when she was leaving, she seemed as if she was in a rush. Her colleague—yes, Isabelle mentioned a colleague.”
“You mean Suzanne from the ICTY team?”
“A man. Lived nearby.”
“What’s nearby?”
“The other side of the garden.” A vague wave of Charlotte’s ringed hand. “I think she went to visit him.”
So it was Isabelle’s first time in Paris, and she crossed the garden for a meeting, not knowing about the apiary. Made sense, except . . .
“Didn’t Isabelle carry an EpiPen—you know, since she was hyperallergic to bees?”
Charlotte gestured to a small roller bag. “The airline lost her luggage. It arrived twenty minutes ago. Can you believe it? I couldn’t even get it to her brother. All he could take was her laptop and her rucksack.”
New sobs wracked Charlotte’s shoulders.
“Postpartum—I’m sorry. Who knows how much longer the twins will be asleep?”
Aimée knew the feeling. Felt guilty she’d been quick to judge this woman whose friend had just died.
A cry came from the back of the apartment. Charlotte blinked and swallowed her tea. Damp spots had appeared on her shirt. “I’m leaking. Got to nurse them.”
Nursing twins presented a challenge, Aimée thought, saddened her own milk had dried up. She chided herself for thinking she had it hard with only one baby.
“You’ve got a lot on your plate,” she said. “My daughter’s eight months old, and I know how it goes.” She moved next to Charlotte and squeezed her hand. “I’m so sorry, Charlotte.” Now Aimée had an excuse to be in touch with Isabelle’s brother. “Let me take care of sending her suitcase back to Frans, okay?”
