Murder in Saint Germain

by Cara Black

  After furnishing Frans’s number, Charlotte left to attend the two crying infants.

  Aimée unzipped Isabelle’s small metallic roller bag. Enough for a weekend: underwear, long-sleeve T-shirt, dress blouse and black pants, toiletries, makeup bag, an epinephrine auto-injector.

  A sad, simple explanation for a tragic accident.

  About to leave Charlotte and heft the roller bag down the circular stairs, Aimée tried Frans’s number and got a short voice mail message in Dutch, English and French. “I’m unable to take your call. You can contact my business line at . . .”

  Aimée fumbled in her bag for something to write with. Nothing.

  Her phone was almost out of battery, too—at this of all times.

  She hunted for a pen in Charlotte’s apartment. By the entry, she found a landline and a pad with a blue crayon.

  She called back to hear the message again and jotted down the information. The message cut off before the last digit.

  “Charlotte, do you have Frans’s other numbers?” Aimée called out.

  A yell from the hallway. “On the answering machine.”

  Aimée hit play, ready with the blue crayon.

  A real-estate agent asking for their signatures on copies of the lease agreement, a sales call from a local dry cleaner, a male voice asking for Isabelle.

  Aimée’s antenna perked up.

  “. . . She missed our meeting. Can you . . . give Isabelle a message?” Pause. “Sorry, this is Erich Kayser. I’ve got appointments for the rest of the day, but she can meet me Wednesday at 15 rue Servandoni. Apologies, but she gave me this number. Hope you don’t mind.” Then he gave his number.

  That name sounded familiar. Erich Kayser. Where had Aimée seen it?

  Next there was a message from Frans, saying he was going straight to the airport and leaving his contact information. Aimée replayed the messages and wrote down both Erich Kayser’s and Frans’s work number with a blue crayon in her Moleskine. Punched in Frans’s number on Charlotte’s landline to save the little battery she had left.

  “Gooday, dit is het kantoor van Frans Ideler,” said a pert voice.

  Great. She couldn’t speak Dutch. “Do you speak French?”

  “Bien sûr,” said the receptionist. “How may I help?”

  Aimée explained.

  “Meneer Ideler’s on a flight to New York. I’ll take the message.”

  “I have his deceased sister’s suitcase—”

  “Since I can’t reach Meneer Ideler until he lands—” Ringing sounded in the background. “Can you hold, please?”

  Taped classical music played, and played some more. She fumed.

  While she waited, she called Suzanne on the burner phone. Aimée would update her about Isabelle. Let her take it from here. Getting Frans to connect with her had been a last ditch, anyway.

  The call cut off before it could go to voice mail. She tried again. Voice mail box full.

  Now what?

  The pert Dutch receptionist came back on the line. “In the circumstances, it’s preferable if you leave it at the Dutch embassy. I’ve spoken to the ground-affairs liaison. Johan will expect you at their address, 7-9 rue Eblé.”

  So she was a delivery service? She pulled out her Paris map. It was only a few blocks away.

  Now she remembered where she’d seen Erich Kayser’s name—in the ICTY file. He’d been part of Suzanne and Isabelle’s team. So Isabelle had been on the way to meet with another member of Suzanne’s cohort team when she died? What a strange coincidence.

  Aimée tried Suzanne’s number again. Same result.

  Merde.

  Looked like it fell on Aimée to reach Erich Kayser. And by default, she’d become the emissary for poor Isabelle and her belongings.

  “My deepest sympathies,” said Johan, the tall young man who met her in the gilt-edged hôtel particulier salon. Chandeliers, black and white marble tiles—not too shabby, this Dutch embassy. With a few touch-ups, some cleaning, and quite a few francs, her seventeenth-century apartment could look like this, too.

  “Our vice-consul will handle the arrangements. I’ll relieve you of this.” He reached for that case Aimée had rolled in. “We’ll pass it along to Meneer Ideler when he comes in again to pick it up.”

  Aimée didn’t know what else to say. It felt abrupt handing over Isabelle’s belongings to a stranger, but then again Aimée hadn’t known Isabelle, either. But rendering a service was a way of showing respect for the dead, for the poor young woman she’d seen on the autopsy table.

  Serge had nailed it when he’d said these Dutch were tall. Johan’s head grazed the doorframe. He grinned, noticing her look. “We drink a lot of milk in Holland.”

  “Frans Ideler must drink a lot of milk, too,” said Aimée.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Isabelle’s brother. He’s tall, too. The medical examiner mentioned that. One of the tallest men he’d ever seen.”

  “Do you mean the man who came to—?” His phone rang. Johan looked at its screen and shook his head. “Sorry, I must take this. Again, thank you.”

  “Wait.” Aimée felt a prickling on her neck. “Frans Ideler stopped by here?” And now she realized Johan had just said, “When he comes in again to pick it up.” But the Dutch receptionist had said Frans was on a transatlantic flight, that she had made the arrangements with Johan on the phone. Something was off. “Today? A very tall man?”

  “Pas du tout.” He answered his phone. “Short.” He walked off, phone to his ear, rolling the suitcase behind him.

  Who had Johan spoken to?

  The ghost?

  Impossible. Non, this was some mix-up, either Serge or Johan misremembering. None of her business. Isabelle’s death was obviously accidental—there was no way someone could have planned circumstances like that.

  Was there?

  It seemed Suzanne’s paranoia was contagious.

  On the other hand, a member of Suzanne’s team dying in unusual circumstances on the same day Suzanne saw her ghost—it was quite a coincidence. Aimée remembered what her father had always said about coincidences. No coincidences with criminals, only mistakes.

  Dusk was falling. Aimée looked at her watch. All this had taken up precious time. Babette had agreed to bathe Chloé and put her to sleep. Thank God, she thought as she trudged toward Erich Kayser’s address.

  Her goal—tell him about Isabelle’s accident and insist that he speak to Suzanne.

  The ground floor of 15 rue Servandoni was a shop front displaying picture frames in the window; above were apartments with white shutters and tall windows. A gallery stood across the narrow, sloped street, a bistro on the corner of rue Canivet, and not far beyond jutted Saint-Sulpice’s baroque medieval struts. Lanterns, once gaslit, provided infrequent dots of light on the mostly dark cobbled street. If it weren’t for a Renault hugging the fat lip of the pavement, it could have been 1964. Or 1864.

  Along the street, several buildings’ shutters were flung back, windows open to catch any cool breeze. She heard laughter, voices, a violin sonata playing on Radio Classique, the station René liked. It was so hot and humid. The clinging damp hadn’t let up. Dusk had fully fallen, compressing the orange-copper sunset to a thin band over the park’s trees.

  She had the phone number she’d scribbled in blue crayon, but her phone was out of battery. The cheap burner phone got no reception in this narrow street carved between tall buildings.

  No Erich Kayser listed on the building’s Digicode by the blue wood door. The lights glowed from within the frame shop.

  The framer, a woman in her sixties, peered at Aimée over her glasses. She held a chisel over an intricate Art Nouveau frame that was in pieces on a long table. On the atelier wall were testimonials from clients: a minister, a publisher, a media mogul—all locals, it seemed.

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�Never heard of him,” the framer said. The woman used the front of her wrist to push her hair from her glistening brow. “But then, I know few of the people upstairs.”

  Fat lot of good that did Aimée.

  “What about the concierge?”

  “Le Sénat owns most of the flats, I think.” The woman nodded toward the wall. “Code’s up there.”

  The local café or shop always had the code for a building’s Digicode. A quiet secret in Paris.

  The phone on the wall began to ring. Aimée borrowed a pen and wrote the code down on her palm as the woman went to answer it.

  Merci, Aimée mouthed, and the woman smiled and waved her off.

  She dreaded leaving the bad news for Erich Kayser, a man she didn’t know, concerning a woman she’d never met. Yet maybe connecting with him would help Suzanne.

  After Aimée let herself into the building, the concierge, a small man, answered the door of the refreshingly cool loge. “But Monsieur Kayser’s upstairs, expecting you.”

  Expecting Isabelle, maybe. She’d use it. Play along.

  “What floor?”

  “Third floor, left, on the street side. Take another package of lightbulbs with you. His lights burned out. Tell him I checked the fuses, and they were fine. It must be some bad bulbs.”

  Aimée trudged up. When she reached the dark third-floor landing, she flipped the minuterie, but the timed light switch didn’t turn the light on. She knocked on the door. No answer. Knocked again, and as she did the door swung open.

  “Monsieur Kayser?” she said.

  She stepped inside. It took a second for her eyes to adjust to the darkness of the apartment. Only the lamp glow from the street allowed her to make out the silhouette of a chair. She turned and realized she’d walked into a kitchen.

  She went back to the hall.

  Eerie. She heard what sounded like the bang of a shutter. “Monsieur Kayser?”

  A scream came from the street. Shouts. “Mon Dieu!”

  Good God, what was going on?

  Aimée rushed back inside the apartment. “Monsieur Kayser?”

  More screams came through the open window. As she hurried toward it, she heard a scraping sound, but before she could look to see what it was, there was another scream.

  A hanging light fixture swung by the open window, its old-fashioned plastic cord trailing along the window frame. A stepladder lay on the floor next to it.

  Aimée looked out. A body lay on the cobbled street directly below. A man.

  Aimée’s stomach lurched.

  White shirt, black trousers, legs splayed in the way only the legs of a dead body would. In the streetlight she could see dark red liquid pooling under the blond head and settling in the cracks between the stones.

  A couple on the narrow street moved away in horror. Someone had knelt beside the body, feeling for a carotid pulse. A man standing in the third-floor window opposite pointed at her. “There. From that window.”

  Bystanders looked up.

  “Her,” the man said.

  Idiot! she almost yelled.

  Adrenalin kicked in. Had the man fallen by accident while installing a lightbulb, or was someone else here? She felt a chill as she remembered the scraping sound she’d heard a moment ago.

  A quick scan of the dark outlines of the furniture revealed no one. She flipped on her penlight, flicked open her Swiss Army knife, and checked the other rooms. No one.

  A wallet and a small pocket calculator sat in an open briefcase on a chair. A black suit jacket hung over its back.

  She pulled a scarf out of her bag so she wouldn’t leave fingerprints and opened the wallet. From his driver’s license in the wallet’s plastic holder, Erich Kayser stared back at her. It was unmistakably the man lying in the street.

  Whether he’d fallen or been pushed didn’t matter—she couldn’t be here. But she’d been seen. The picture framer, the concierge, the idiot in the window opposite. Footsteps pounded up the stairs. Or were they going down? Away from her? The killer?

  Or had Erich fallen while screwing in a lightbulb? Another freak accident like Isabelle’s?

  Now she was certain—the footsteps were coming up the stairs.

  Get out! screamed a voice in her head.

  She quickly ran through her memory to see if she could recall touching anything. Only the main light timer in the hall, which would yield tons of unusable smeary prints. She’d get out clean.

  She threw the wallet back in the briefcase, and her penlight beam caught on a ring of keys on the table—there was something shiny underneath. The jewel case of a CD-R. Looking closer, she saw the stuck-on label: icty 99.

  International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.

  Knowing she’d regret it later, she grabbed the CD, dumping the keys back on the table, and stuck it in her bag.

  She slipped off her ballet flats and stuffed both them and the lightbulb package in her bag. She switched off her penlight, moved into the shadows of the corridor. By the time the footsteps reached the landing, she’d glided up to the next floor. Voices—she recognized the sound of the concierge’s and saw the beam of a flashlight.

  Someone was calling the flics on a mobile phone.

  She had to keep going up.

  The fifth floor had a narrow corridor with several doors—the traditional chambre de bonne—maids’ rooms. And a skylight.

  Always a skylight and a ladder in the corridor of the fifth floor. Fire regulations.

  Slinging her bag over her chest, she positioned the ladder, climbed, unscrewed the bolt, and lifted the skylight. She was out in seconds. She propped the skylight open, pulled up the ladder, then closed it. That should give her valuable minutes.

  Breathing hard through her nose, she made her way toward the tin roof’s edge. She crouched at the gutter, keeping low.

  Sweat dripped down her neck. Heights—she hated heights. But from here, her pulse jumping, she had an aerial view of the surrounding streets as well as of the people crowding around the body on the street below. Was anyone running, walking fast?

  The damn nanny cam was poking her hip. She pulled it out. Here goes nothing, she thought, and pressed record, panning along the street to the opposite building, the neighbor pointing out the window. He was yelling, “It’s her! It’s her!” at every woman who passed. That kept everyone looking down, and no one was looking up at her. She silently thanked the idiot.

  Was that a figure hurrying up rue Servandoni? She panned the camera, but whatever she’d seen disappeared into the shadows. Then came the whine of a siren.

  Time to go. Barefoot on the tin-tiled roof, she fought for purchase as heat-slick pigeon poop slimed between her toes. She prayed she wouldn’t slip before she could reach the next roof. All the Senate-owned buildings seemed to be connected, from what she could see.

  All the buildings except this one and the next one.

  A huge, yawning gap to the next building’s roof. Below her was a courtyard.

  Great.

  If this were a movie and she were an action hero, she could try and jump it. But even her long legs couldn’t make that leap. She picked her way back to the light aluminum ladder, dragged it to the edge of the roof, and hefted it across to the adjoining roof, hooking its feet into the rusty gutter. She tried not to think of the fallen stepladder in Kayser’s apartment. The fact that he had dropped from only the third floor. She was almost twice as high now. If she didn’t want to be thrown in a cell for questioning, she had to get to the next roof and escape via the parallel street.

  You can do it, she told herself. Just don’t look down; that’s what they always said. Don’t look down.

  Wednesday, Twilight

  Pauline limped to the school yard’s grilled gate on rue d’Assas. Her ankles were swollen after a working day on her feet. The evening was the worst.
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br />   A young woman stood outside the gate. She’d rung and rung the bell until Pauline responded. Pauline shook her head. “The school’s closed.”

  “Did she suffer?” asked Charlotte Boyer.

  She was pushing a double stroller, one of those fancy designer things that looked like space pods to Pauline.

  “Who?” One of Pauline’s eyebrows arched.

  “My friend Isabelle was stung to death by bees, right there by the apiary.” She pointed to the Jardin du Luxembourg’s closed gate.

  “Alors, what do you think? Why ask me?”

  “Our concierge says you have second sight.”

  That was what they called it now?

  “You see the world beyond, Pauline. Receive visits from the other side. Tania told me. Tania said you’d help me.”

  Tania and her big mouth. But Pauline had seen this young mother pushing the stroller in the park. She’d registered her older son here for the fall term. A local.

  “You’re Charlotte?” Pauline said.

  She nodded. Then reached for Pauline’s hand through the metal bars. “Please, please can you help?”

  “Why do you want to know?”

  “Isabelle is my . . . I mean, was . . . a good friend. I let her down. It’s all my fault.”

  They all wanted to know the same thing. “Did she blame you? Is that what you want to know? Could you have prevented what happened?”

  Charlotte’s face crinkled. Tears formed at the edges of her eyes. “I have to know.”

  “I can’t tell you tonight. Meet me Saturday for a walk,” said Pauline. “You’ll show me the place. But I know already you couldn’t have prevented it.”

  Charlotte took a breath. “How do you know?”

  “Because she wasn’t alone.”

  Wednesday Night

  Aimée swallowed hard, her mouth dry. She concentrated on crawling across the ladder, focusing on the jagged slate roof line of the next building, not the gaping courtyard below. She prayed her feet wouldn’t get caught on the rungs as she braved each yawning gap. The acacia-scented breeze cooled her perspiration-covered skin. Of all the times for there to be a breeze.