Murder at the Lanterne Rouge ali-12

by Cara Black

  Jolted, she took a moment to stand up. At the corner she looked both ways. No one. Had she imagined it? But in the yellow streetlight she made out mashed footprints in the piling snow.

  It had all happened so fast, she thought, hurrying back to René’s car. Did Meizi have another boyfriend? Or was she in trouble?

  “Running off, Aimée? But you need to push again,” René said, twisting the wheels. Ice chunks spit and frosted her calves.

  Two more shoves of the camionette’s bumper and René’s Citroën broke free of the logjam.

  “Merci, monsieur,” she called after the jogger, who had already headed off into the shadows.

  In the passenger seat, Aimée pushed a wet blonde lock from her mouth and hit the heater. She longed for the leather seats to warm up. “Take a right at the corner.”

  He paused mid-shift, stepped on the clutch. “Did you see something?”

  She hesitated. Should she tell René? Reveal that Meizi had been two-timing him and stringing him along? But she didn’t know that. Didn’t even know if that was Meizi. Yet.

  “My wool hat you lent Meizi—I think I saw a woman wearing it. Up there.”

  René ground into first and shot down the street.

  For forty minutes they cruised the narrow, winding streets, back and forth, up one end of the quartier, down the other. No woman with Aimée’s cap, no answer from Meizi’s phone.

  René pulled up on Quai d’Anjou in front of Aimée’s seventeenth-century apartment on Île Saint-Louis.

  Before she opened her door, she asked, “Why would she lie to you about where she lives?”

  “I know what you’re thinking, Aimée,” René said, his voice tight. “You’re thinking she’s involved. But she’s not. She’s a country girl, innocent. I need to find and protect her.”

  Not before Aimée found her. She wondered who needed to be protected from whom.

  “But we don’t know what happened, René.”

  “Caring for a person means trusting her.” René turned on the ignition. “You should try it sometime.”

  Saturday, 6 A.M.

  DAWN, LIKE A silver pencil, outlined Aimée’s mansard bedroom window frame. Light slanted over Melac’s crumpled jeans on the wood floor and glittered off the Manurhin revolver poking from his back pocket.

  Aimée felt his warm breath in her ear. His tongue on her neck. His musk scent on her skin.

  Delicious. The white feather duvet bunched around her shoulders as she ran her toe along his warm ankle. She grinned to see his eyes were half hooded with sleep.

  Trilling came from the phone console on her escritoire. “Room service?” She nibbled his ear. “How thoughtful.”

  He shook his head and flicked his tongue over her neck. “Remind me to dump that in the river.”

  The phone clicked and went to the answering machine.

  “Aimée?” René’s voice, as tense as a taut bowstring. “Meizi’s phone’s disconnected. I’ve been out looking for her all night.” Pause. “Call me.”

  The red light blinked on her answering machine. Her throat caught. She imagined René driving in the ice, the cold. Alone. While here she lay, entwined with Melac in her warm bed.

  She reached for Melac’s cell phone on the Louis Quinze bedstand. Melac’s hand shot out to stop her. “Let René handle this. It’s our weekend, remember?”

  As a Brigade Criminelle inspector in the elite homicide squad, his hours varied according to his cases. He’d come over after his shift the previous night. Tired, she’d hesitated before giving him a brief account over a glass of wine. She figured le Proc would have referred the investigation to the Brigade Criminelle. When she’d asked him why he hadn’t been assigned the case, he shook his head. “Work’s over, we’ll talk later.” He’d pulled her sleeve and they’d ended up under the duvet.

  “René’s upset, I’m calling him,” she said, sitting up in bed.

  “You agreed with me, remember?” He traced his finger over her lips. “Our first weekend in a month.”

  “But René’s important. And it’s still our weekend,” she said, rolling over.

  Melac messaged her neck. “Leave it, Aimée.”

  She hesitated, pulled in two directions. But leave René stranded? “He sounds frantic.” The cell phone ringing in her hand interrupted her. A number she didn’t know. She showed him the screen.

  Melac bolted upright and took his phone from her hand.

  “Zut! Some double standard going on here, Melac?”

  “Oui?” he said into the phone.

  His soon-to-be-ex, Nathalie? She stifled a groan. Or his eleven-year-old daughter, Sandrine? Melac, a devoted part-time father, spent every other weekend in Brittany. This could take forever.

  Melac leaned forward, his warm arm slipping away. A chill settled on her skin where it had been. He cleared his throat. “A car in ten minutes?”

  Aimée felt a sinking in her stomach. Unfair.

  Springing into action, he rose from the bed, grabbed his jeans, and disappeared into her bathroom, all in one motion. She heard running water, his voice on the phone with the taxi company.

  Running out. Just like her papa used to do whenever he was called.

  He returned a moment later, dressed, looking for his shoes. “Let me guess, you’re going to the boulangerie.” She kept her voice even.

  “Sorry.” He sat down on the bed, stroked her cheek with his damp, warm hand.

  “No croissants?” Her glow gone, she fluffed the feather pillow.

  “I’d like to crawl under the duvet and continue where we left off, but I’m reassigned. I meant to tell you.” His gray-blue eyes were full of his urgency to leave and worry about other things. Things she didn’t know about.

  She pulled the sheets around her shoulders. “Don’t tell me. A new posting?”

  “A promotion, a new six-month assignment,” he said. “One I can’t talk about.”

  “Or you’d have to kill me?”

  He smiled. “I signed a confidentiality agreement. Took an oath.” He stood. “Désolé. Don’t count on me this weekend.”

  The call, his sudden departure … it all happened too fast. She put on her father’s old wool robe, tied the belt. Fear clutched her stomach.

  “Were you going to tell me, or just wait until—?”

  “Tonight, over dinner and that bottle of Veuve Clicquot in your fridge,” he interrupted. “It’s a step up for me. Think of the bright side.”

  Hard to, with an empty weekend ahead.

  “Trust me, Aimée.”

  Trust a flic? Never, she wanted to scream. She’d lived this while growing up with her father, the long years he was a policeman, and even after he left the force to be a private investigator—all the nights he never came home, the stakeouts, the toll showing on his face. The terrible not knowing if he’d turn the key in the front door again. Then the bomb explosion in Place Vendôme. His charred body parts …

  “Trust you?” The words caught in her throat. She’d gone against her code to never get involved with a flic. It never worked out. “Two minutes ago my partner called for help, but that didn’t matter. Now your job rang and you’re leaving. Phfft, like that. At least I know where I stand.”

  “Zut! It’s an opportunity I can’t pass up, Aimée. Takes care of my alimony. We’ll carve out next weekend.”

  She looked away.

  “Didn’t we agree,” he said, cupping her chin in his hand, “at your suggestion—non, at your insistence—that our work took priority? No recriminations if work called. I respect that.” His eyes clouded. “Of all people, I thought you understood the demands of my job.”

  His ex, Nathalie, hadn’t.

  Part of her wanted to lock the door, barricade him in. Tell him she wouldn’t live like this. Break it off. The other part itched to help René.

  “Nice to use my own words against me, Melac.” She reached for her cell phone.

  Melac sat back down on the bed. “I’m not your father.” He took her f
ace in his warm hands again. “I always come back. You won’t be able to get rid of me.”

  Melac put on his down jacket in the hallway. She hesitated. But Melac knew everyone.

  “Ever had dealings with Prévost?” she asked. “A flic in the troisième arrondissement?”

  Melac’s grip tightened on his scarf, emblazoned with hearts—his daughter Sandrine had knitted it. “Middle-aged, thin lips, married to a Chinese woman?”

  She nodded, shivering. She turned the sputtering radiator’s knob to high.

  “Why?”

  “He questioned us last night.”

  Melac shrugged. “A fixture in that area. Speaks some dialect. A plodder. I worked with him once. There were rumors.”

  She was instantly alert. “Rumors like what?”

  “That he’s a frustrated Ming dynasty classical scholar, a disillusioned Orientalist.” Melac shrugged. “He liked the horses. And cards.”

  That gave her food for thought. “Liked? Past tense?”

  Melac shrugged again. “Disciplinary action years ago.”

  “So you’re saying he’s bent, on the take?”

  “I’m saying that’s old news. Ancient history.”

  “Any idea who’s assigned to this case at la Crim?”

  “Not me.” He buttoned his leather jacket.

  “Smelled like the RG’s involved.”

  “A task force?” He shook his head.

  She’d have to ask Morbier, her godfather, a commissaire. But he was in Lyon, and hadn’t returned her calls.

  The taxi’s horn sounded from below.

  “Go.”

  He gave her a long, searching kiss. A moment later the hall door slammed shut behind him.

  At the window, she watched him leave, but he never looked up. A pang hit her. Like her father. Her mind went back to her last day of école primaire. The playground, the swings, landing on concrete. Her skull fracture.

  So vivid in her mind, like yesterday.

  Her father’s worried face drifting in and out. Overhearing the doctor—“The operation’s touch and go.”

  Beside her father at the hospital bed was white-faced Morbier, a man who didn’t pray, with a priest. The smell of incense, the cold holy water, administering the last sacrament. The huddling nurse. “The operating room’s ready, mon curé.”

  Then the sun-filled room, her stuffed bear on the pillow, the tubes in her arm.

  She remembered her father’s smile: “Ma princesse, you’ll need to quit the acrobatics for a while.” The nurse saying, “She needs to take lessons and learn to fall correctly.”

  Aimée shook her head. She’d made it.

  She said a silent prayer Melac would too.

  RENÉ’S HORN TOOTED from the quai below her kitchen window. She opened the window to the smell of wet foliage and flashed René five fingers. The sluggish gray-green Seine slapped white crests against the stone banks.

  Miles Davis licked the last of the horsemeat from his new Sèvres bowl. In her bedroom Aimée pulled on a cashmere sweater over her black lace top, hitched up her stovepipe, stonewashed suede leggings, and stepped into her friend Martine’s high-heeled Prada ankle boots. At the door she grabbed her vintage Chanel jacket. Miles Davis wagged his tail expectantly and sniffed his leash. “On y va, furball. Madame Cachou will do the honors.”

  Miles Davis scampered down the wide marble staircase, his leash trailing on the worn steps grooved in the middle, to the concierge’s loge in the courtyard. Madame Cachou’s early morning yoga on the télé had finished. Perfect timing.

  In the loge, Madame Cachou ruffled Miles Davis’s ears. “My favorite little man.” The concierge, who was in her sixties, perspired in a purple yoga outfit. A matching sweatband encircled her gray hair. “I’ve lost five kilos, not even a twinge of bursitis.” Her eyes narrowed at Aimée’s pale face. “You should try it.”

  That and a lot of things.

  Aimée smiled and handed her the leash. “Merci, Madame.”

  Plumes of exhaust came from René’s Citroën idling at the curb. Oyster-gray clouds hovered on the horizon. Another frigid day. She stepped over slush in the cobbled gutter, felt the urge for a cigarette, and visualized her concierge’s glowing face. She could go without a cigarette. Five more hours and she’d be a month, cigarette-free.

  “I forgot Melac had the weekend off,” René said, turning down the radio weather forecast. Another brewing storm. “Désolé.”

  “Not anymore.”

  She slammed the door shut. Relationships—she was just no good at them. Never picked the right man. She should know better. And a flic!

  “The dojo’s open for early practice,” he said. They counted on finding Meizi’s real address in the dojo membership. “Thanks for coming, Aimée.” René swung the Citroën into sparse traffic on Pont de la Tournelle.

  “You think I’d let you do this alone, partner?” She checked the backseat. “Where’s your martial arts bag?”

  “Not important. Meizi’s in trouble. You were there, you saw—everything was fine until she got that phone call.”

  Aimée noted the dark hollows under René’s eyes. “You look like hell, René.”

  “Not enough beauty sleep.”

  She felt for him.

  Inside the dojo, the gong signaling a meditation session reverberated. The Thai monk in orange robes raised his folded hands in greeting. The young French nun, her shaved head covered by a wool cap, ran her fingers down the membership ledger. “I don’t see Meizi Wu listed.”

  Odd. “Try W-O-O,” Aimée suggested.

  René added, “She sometimes goes by Marie.”

  The nun shook her head.

  “But I met Meizi here at practice,” René said, exasperation in his voice.

  “Check for yourself, René,” the nun said, pushing the list over. “But we don’t let people drop in on practice; they need to join.”

  Sandalwood incense wafted from the meditation room.

  He pushed the list back to the nun. “But you’ve seen her. Black ponytail, jeans, petite, a bit taller than me.”

  “Chinese?”

  René nodded.

  “But those girls clean the bathrooms.”

  Startled, René stepped back. “What do you mean?”

  “Cash, you know.” The nun rubbed her fingers together.

  So they paid girls under the table. No tax. No trace.

  “But I met her in a martial arts class,” he said.

  “One of the perks is taking a class for free,” said the nun.

  A stunned look appeared on René’s face, so Aimée broke in. “Don’t you have an address? Or a number to reach her at?”

  The nun blinked in alarm. “It’s not how it looks. We operate on donations, and it helps the girls out. I don’t want anyone to get in trouble.”

  “A bit late for that,” Aimée said. “She’s disappeared.”

  René spread his hands, pleading. “We’re trying to help her. Please.”

  The nun looked around the deserted teak-wood foyer. She pulled out a paper from the drawer. “Ching Wao. We call him and he sends girls to work.”

  “They’re illegals?” Aimée asked.

  “I don’t ask.” The nun paused. “But I hope this girl, Meizi, is all right.”

  RENÉ SPOKE INTO his cell phone outside the dojo as freezing wind off the Seine whipped the quai. He paced back and forth, trying to get reception as the Métro clattered on the overhead tracks from Austerlitz.

  Meizi had lied about living above the shop, and about cleaning bathrooms at the dojo. What else was she hiding?

  Aimée couldn’t bear to see René heartbroken. If she could find Meizi, talk to her, and … what? Get her to admit she had another man?

  Aimée opened the glove compartment and felt around. Under René’s car registration she found his licensed Glock pistol.

  With a full clip.

  Not only was he a crack shot, René had a black belt in judo. She’d always said he should register h
is fists as lethal weapons.

  René climbed into the car, brushing a soggy brown leaf from the shoulder of his wool overcoat.

  “Since when do you carry this loaded?”

  “The last time I was shot made me cautious.” A grim smile. “You never know what you’re up against.”

  True. Yet it didn’t ease her worry that René might go vigilante. She put the Glock on top of his car registration and shut the glove compartment.

  “Ching Wao understood when I said Meizi’s name.” He readjusted the height of his adjustable seat. “The rest was in Chinese. But we’ll go to his address on rue de Saintonge.”

  He gunned the Citroën up the ramp and over Pont d’Austerlitz.

  “René, you’ve known Meizi less than two months.”

  His jaw set in a hard line. She’d never seen him so upset. “You’re thinking she’s illegal. I don’t care. But I know she’s terrified, Aimée. And there’s nothing more to say until I get the truth from Ching Wao.”

  They drove into the honeycomb of narrow streets edging the Marais. Years ago her grandfather had told her the street names reflected the professions of the ancient quartier: rue des Cordelières, road of the rope-makers; rue des Arquebusiers, musket-makers; Passage de l’Horloge à Automates, watchmakers and windup machines. He never tired of reminding her that rue du Pont aux Choux—Bridge of Cabbages—was named after a medieval bridge spanning the open sewers. Or how he’d investigated a case on rue des Vertus—road of the virtuous—where hookers plied their trade.

  Traffic crawled, almost at a standstill.

  The image of the man’s body in the light of the red lantern came back to her. Her stomach clenched. His gnawed flesh, those vacant eyes.

  René parked near Cathédrale Saint-Croix des Arméniens, the small Armenian church. No. 21, their destination, sported chipped dark-green doors and a Digicode. Aimée tried to stifle her rising suspicions that Meizi was part of an illegal ring that preyed on Frenchmen. But that was ridiculous; she cleaned toilets.

  “Doubt your dental floss will work here, Aimée.”

  Wrong type of door. Damn, why didn’t she carry that casting putty anymore? The universal postman’s key, which she still hadn’t given back to Morbier, wouldn’t work either.