by Cara Black
In this building, she figured most residents flew south for the winter to Nice or Monaco. They could afford to. She found the top-floor site of the geranium window box, a shutterless oval window.
She’d question all the inhabitants of the building, working her way up. In the entry, she hit the first button. There was no answering buzz. She stared at the numbers on the digicode plate.
From her bag she took a slab of plasticine, slapped it over the set of buttons, and peeled it back. Greasy fingermarks showed which five numbers and letters were most used. In less than five minutes, after she’d tried twenty combinations, the door clicked open.
Inside the building she climbed the wide marble steps, trailing her fingers over the wrought-iron railing. On the first floor, a young woman answered the door, a toddler on her hip and another crying in the background. Aimée saw suitcases and a car seat stacked inside the door.
“Oui?” the woman asked.
“Sorry to bother you but I’m a detective,” Aimée said. “I’d like to question you about a homicide that occurred last night across the courtyard on the roof of the building undergoing renovation.”
“What? I know nothing about it.” The toddler pulled the strand of beads around the woman’s neck and she winced. “Non, chéri.”
“Did you hear or see anything unusual at eleven o’clock last night?”
“You’re kidding. My baby’s teething. I can’t keep my eyes open that late,” she said, looking harried.
The toddler clung to his mother’s neck, gnawing at her beads; the other child pounded a metal truck on the floor. “We were asleep. I put the children to bed at eight; half the time I fall asleep with them.”
“There was a party in the building, maybe your husband noticed something.”
“He passes out before I do,” she said. “I’m sorry but I have to get the children ready.”
“Merci,” Aimée said. “Here’s my card just in case.”
“My husband’s picking us up in five minutes. We’re leaving for a month.”
The woman stuffed Aimée’s card in the pocket of her cardigan and closed the door. Aimée hoped the toddler wouldn’t eat it.
She knocked on the doors of the two other apartments on the floor but no one answered. No answer from the other three apartments on the next floor either. On the third floor, an aproned housekeeper answered the door at the apartment where Aimée figured the party had taken place.
“Bonjour, I’d like to speak with the owner,” she said.
“No one’s here, I’m sorry. Monsieur Conari’s at the office.”
Even this early, the rich went to work.
Aimée showed her ID. “Perhaps you served at his party last night? I’d like to ask you some questions.”
“Not me, I come to work in the morning,” the woman said. “They use caterers for parties.”
“Did you speak with Monsieur Conari this morning? Maybe he mentioned the homicide across the courtyard?”
The housekeeper dropped her dust rag. “They’re never here when I get to work. Sorry.” She picked the rag up and started to close the door.
It’s important,” Aimée said. “Can you give me a number “where I can reach Monsieur Conari?”
The housekeeper hesitated, rubbing her hands on her apron. “I never bother him at work, eh, but this—”
“Oui, it’s very important,” Aimée said.
The woman took the pen and paper Aimée handed her and wrote down a telephone number.
“Merci, I appreciate your help.”
Aimée continued up the wide stairs. Her goal, the top flat, encompassed the entire floor. Here she had to find answers.
She heard low voices, music, a radio? She knocked several times. No answer. Then knocked again until she heard footsteps.
“J’arrive,” said a voice.
The door creaked open. The middle-aged woman who opened the dark green door wore a flannel nightshirt and Nordic wool slipper socks, and was sipping something steaming and smelling of cinnamon.
“Forgive me,” Aimée said. “I don’t mean to disturb you—”
“No salespeople allowed in the building, I’m sorry,” the woman interrupted in a nasal congested voice. “They shouldn’t have let you in.”
Aimée flashed her identification card. “I’m a detective, investigating a homicide in the building opposite you.”
“Homicide?” The woman pushed her glasses onto her forehead and rubbed her eyes, which were a striking aqua blue. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. You’ll need to excuse me, I’m sick.”
This woman must have been at home last night. Aimée couldn’t let her shut the door in her face. “Sorry to insist, but this will take just a moment. Probably you’ve answered these questions already,” she said. She wanted to see the view from this woman’s apartment. And there should be geraniums near a window facing the courtyard.
“What do you mean? No one’s spoken to me,” the woman told her. “What homicide?”
“Haven’t the police questioned you yet?”
The woman shook her head.
Aimée wondered why not.
“Let me see your identification again, Mademoiselle.”
Aimée handed over her PI license with its less than flattering photo: squinty eyes and pursed mouth.
“The pharmacy’s late.” The woman glanced at an old clock on the wall and handed the license back. “They were supposed to deliver my medicine by now.”
“A man was murdered last night,” Aimée said, wiping her wet boots on the mat. “I need to ask you some questions. May I come in?”
“It’s nothing to do with me,” the woman said, about to close the door.
“Let’s talk inside,” Aimée said.
“Non. I can’t deal with questions,” the woman replied.
“Just while you wait for the pharmacy delivery.”
“Non,” the woman said, alarmed. “I’m sick.”
“But if we talk now, Madame—”
“I don’t go out.” The woman smothered a cough. “I won’t go to the police station.”
An agoraphobic? Aimée heard something in her voice, was it the trace of an accent?
“Madame, you don’t need to go to the Commissariat,” Aimée said. “I’m a private investigator, we’ll talk right here. And I must see the view from your window.”
The woman pulled out a wad of tissues from her pocket, reconsidered, and blew her nose. “All right, but just five minutes.”
Aimée stepped inside the pale yellow hallway, eighteenth century by the look of it. A green plastic shopping cart was parked on the black-and-white diamond-patterned floor by a pair of worn snow boots. She expected a place dripping with antique chandeliers, but instead Art Deco sconces and Surrealist collages lined the walls. Several Man Ray silver-gelatin-print photographs hung over a gleaming Ruhlmann secrétaire. One appeared to be an original of Violon d’Ingres, the famous Surrealist image of Kiki, Man Ray’s lover, in a turban, musical notes drawn on her bare back down her spine.
“Such a lovely apartment,” Aimée said, aiming to get this woman to talk. “You’ve lived here a long time, Madame?”
“Zoe Tardou,” the woman admitted, showing Aimée to a room furnished with sleek blond-wood Art Deco pieces and mod-erne thirties-style rugs. Black blankets hung at the floor-to-ceiling windows. Aimée’s heart sank. How could Zoe Tardou have noticed movement on the roof with these blankets blocking the windows?
“Tardou, like the Surrealist?” Aimée asked to keep the conversation going.
“My stepfather,” Zoe Tardou said, her mouth tightening.
No wonder she could afford this expensive apartment covering the entire floor. But from the way Zoe Tardou’s mouth had compressed, Aimée figured she hadn’t gotten along with her stepfather.
Zoe Tardou switched on the light, illuminating silver-framed black-and-white photos. Beachfront family scenes from the sixties and celebrity snapshots covered the baby grand piano. A late-
model television sat in front of a damask-covered sofa. But an unlived-in feeling permeated the large room.
“You’re an artist, too?”
“My mother was a Dadaist poet and did figure modeling,” Zoe said.
One of the Surrealist muses?
Zoe Tardou took a deep swallow of her steaming drink. She beckoned Aimée to a small nook behind the sofa. “Medieval scholarship’s my field.”
Here a blond joined-wood desk piled with notebooks and books angled out from the wall. Well used. Above the desk, mounted on the wall, hung an ancient crucifix and framed manuscript pages bearing ornate gold lettering and ancient black script. Definitely at odds with the Deco-period furnishings.
The cold air in the darkened apartment began to chill Aimée. Didn’t this woman ever turn on the heat?
“Were your windows open last night?”
“Always,” she said. “The human body needs fresh air at night.”
For a woman into health, she looked miserable.
“So, you would have heard the party below despite the storm?”
”I don’t know the neighbors. I keep to myself.”
“Mind if I take a look?” Aimée walked to the window and quickly pulled the blanket aside. The older woman’s eyes blinked at the sudden light.
Directly across the courtyard lay the scaffolding under the roof of the corniced apartment where she’d discovered Jacques’s body. The skylight on the roof level opposite glittered in the weak sunbeams from a sudden break in the clouds. She saw the path she’d taken with Sebastian, aghast at the steepness of the roof they’d climbed.
“Do you keep these blankets up at night?”
Aimée didn’t remember seeing them.
“Non.” Madame Tardou blew her nose. “Look, if that’s all you need to know I’d appreciate if you left.”
But the woman might have noticed something after all, even if she didn’t realize it.
“If you’ll permit me to clarify a few things. Think back to eleven o’clock last night. Did you hear anything unusual on the roof, see any lights over there?” Aimée pointed at the apartment windows almost directly opposite.
“I did hear snippets of conversation,” Madame Tardou replied. “At first I thought they were speaking Italian.”
Italian? Excited, Aimée took a step closer. The woman reeked of eucalyptus oil.
“Do you speak Italian?”
“Non. And it must have been some drama on the télé. I was drifting in and out of sleep with this terrible cold.”
“What made you think it was Italian?”
“We used to go there on holiday,” she replied.
“What did they say?”
“Maybe it wasn’t Italian.”
“Please, it’s important. Can you place the language?”
Zoe Tardou shook her head. “I know they talked about the stars and planets.”
Had Zoe Tardou been dreaming after all?
“How could you tell?”
“Sirius, Orion, and Neptune, those names I could understand.”
“Male or female voices?”
“Male voices. Two, at least. I remember, in the village people talked about the constellations,” Zoe Tardou said, her gaze somewhere else, speaking as if to herself. “It didn’t seem so odd.” She shrugged. “Almost familiar. At least where I came from.”
Curious, Aimée wondered how this tied in. If she didn’t pursue the words of this strange woman she feared she’d regret it later.
“Where’s that?”
“Near Lamorlaye.”
Lamorlaye? Why did that sound so familiar? Her mind went back to the scratched yellow Menier chocolate tin always on her grandmother’s counter, the words fondé 1816 above the braids of the Menier girl with her basket filled with chocolate bars. And every summer afternoon her grandmother preparing her a tartine et chocolat, a thick slab of Menier chocolate laid between halves of a buttered baguette.
“Lamorlaye, that’s near the Château Menier, the family that’s famous for the chocolate.”
Zoe Tardou sniffed and blew her nose. She sat down and rubbed her red-rimmed eyes.
“So you watched the stars at night?”
“Eh?” Zoe Tardou bristled defensively. “The orphanage bordered the observatory—” She stopped, covered her mouth with her tissue. Like a little girl caught telling tales out of school.
“What do you mean?”
“The countryside’s full of glue sniffers,” she said, her voice rising in anger. “I went back last year. The young riffraff lie around in train stations sniffing glue.”
Glue sniffing? Where had that come from?
“Excuse me but—did you water your geraniums last night?” Aimée asked.
Madame Tardou started and dropped her tissue on the floor. ”What if I did?”
“We think some men escaped across the rooftops and descended through your building’s skylight. Did you see them while you were watering your plants?”
“It’s not safe anywhere any longer.”
Aimée paused. “Madame, did you hear any gunshots or see anyone?” she asked.
The woman shook her head. “The world’s full of opportunists.”
“I agree,” Aimée said, trying to humor her before returning to her line of questioning. “But when you watered your geraniums, did you see men on the scaffold or any on the roof?
“I’m going to call the locksmith to get more chains and bolts installed.”
Did Zoe Tardou fear retribution if she gave Aimée information? She seemed to be afraid of something.
“Please, Madame Tardou,” Aimée said. “A man was murdered. We need your help in this investigation. Whatever you tell me will remain confidential.”
Now the doorbell buzzed.
“Let me get that for you,” Aimée said. Before the woman could protest, she answered the door, accepted a proffered package, and returned to find Zoe curled up in a chair.
“Here’s your medication.”
“I’ve told you all I know, I watered my geraniums, but I saw nothing. I don’t feel well.”
“Madame Tardou, your information may be important,” Aimée said. “If you don’t wish to cooperate with me, I’m sure investigators will insist on taking your statement at the Commissariat.” A threat; she hoped it would work.
Zoe Tardou clutched her flannel nightshirt, pulling it tight around her. “Why question me, why not that pute on the street?”
Aimée didn’t remember seeing a prostitute on the street. “What pute?”
“The one who hangs out around the corner. The old one, she’s in the doorway all the time. Ask her.”
“What does she look like?”
“You know the type, lots of costume jewelry. Now, if you’ll excuse me, you must leave.”
At least she had someone to look for now.
WITH RELUCTANT steps Aimée retraced the route she and Sebastian had taken. She pulled out her cheap compact Polaroid and took photos of the hall carpet, skylight, and the broken lock.
Outside, on narrow rue André Antoine, passersby scurried, late to work or school. She walked to the doorway of the building opposite. No prostitute. Disappointed, she tried Conari’s number.
“Monsieur Conari’s out of the office,” his secretary said.
All the reasons she’d hated criminal investigative work came back to her. Half the time potential witnesses were out of town, or at the doctor’s, or the hairdresser’s, and tracking them down took days. Leads turned to dust. Evidence deteriorated.
But Laure needed help. Now.
“When do you expect him?”
Aimée heard phones ringing in the background.
“Try again later.”
AIMÉE OPENED the frosted-glass-paned door of Leduc Detective, ran, and caught the phone on the second ring. Gray light worked its way through the open shutters into a zigzag pattern on the wood floor. She nodded to her partner. René’s short arms were full as he loaded paper into the printer.
; “Allô?” she answered the phone, at the same time grabbing the ground coffee beans.
“Mademoiselle Leduc? Maître Delambre here, Laure Rousseau’s counsel,” a high-pitched male voice said.
Thank God. But he sounded young, as if his voice hadn’t changed yet.
“I’m between court sessions so I’ll get to the point. We have reservations concerning your involvement in Laure Rousseau’s case.”
“Who’s we?” Aimée said, catching her breath. “Laure asked for my help.”
“The police investigation has been comprehensive and thorough,” he said.
He not only sounded young, but as if he needed to show he was in control. She hit the button on the espresso machine, which grumbled to life.
“So comprehensive, Maître Delambre, that they haven’t yet questioned the inhabitants of the building opposite or investigated a broken skylight?”
“That’s the investigating unit’s responsibility,” he said. “And just how would you know this?”
“As I said, Laure asked for my help,” she said. Better to explain and try to work with him. Not alienate him. “We’re childhood friends; our fathers worked together in the police force.”
“You have admirable intentions, I’m sure, but your involvement won’t help the case or be looked on as anything but meddling.”
In other words, back off.
“I’m a private investigator,” she said, figuring it would be better not to mention that computer security was her field. “That’s what I do. You don’t even seem interested to learn that there may have been an eyewitness.”
“Of course the police questioned all the people in the area,” he said. “I’m sure they’re aware of anything pertinent and will have it in their report.”
“I’d like to see this report and discuss this further.”
“As I told you—”
“Laure hired me and it’s in her best interests that we work together,” she said, stretching the truth. “But, naturally, it’s your call.”
Thick bitter steaming coffee dripped into the small white demitasse cup next to her.
“Meaning what, Mademoiselle Leduc?”
