AL06 - Murder in Montmartre al-6

by Cara Black

  “So Marie-Dominique told me,” Conari said. “On the outside she’s a sparrow; inside, a protective hawk, like all the Vescovatis women.”

  A vein pulsed in Lucien’s forehead, just visible under a black curl. So Conari’s wife had warned Lucien.

  “Why, Félix?”

  “Ask him,” he said. “Ever since Marie-Dominique phoned, I’ve tried to find him. There’s some misunderstanding. But don’t worry, I’m going to salvage the deal with SOUNDW-ERX.”

  “I thought Kouros pulled out.” Lucien’s mouth tightened.

  “Lucien, my boy, we signed the contract!” Félix said. “Look on the bright side.”

  Lucien shook his head. “But Kouros didn’t sign it.”

  “His handshake’s his word, remember, Lucien?”

  “Not if there’s any taint of the Armata Corsa. He made that clear.”

  “We have a contract, Lucien,” Conari said. “I’ll get you into the recording studio as soon as I can. Right now, I have to concentrate on my construction contract.”

  “How long has Petru worked for you?” Aimée asked.

  “Six months or so. He does odd jobs,” Félix Conari said. “His cousin married my sister. He’s from a different clan than Marie-Dominique.”

  “Does that explain him turning on Lucien and sabotaging his recording deal?”

  “Corsican hotheads make no sense to me, Mademoiselle,” Conari said. “I married into a family and I try to help people like Lucien when I can. But ancient wrongs don’t interest me.”

  “Was one of his little jobs to cover up the shooting of a flic on the rooftop opposite yours during your party?”

  Conari’s eyes widened. “Petru? You think he shot someone? No, he was serving at dinner. At the table. You saw him, Lucien. We all did.”

  “A witness heard men speaking Corsican on the roof,” she said.

  Félix Conari shook his head. “In that howling storm?”

  “I think the police will be interested, Monsieur Conari.

  Especially if they learn you’ve employed a suspected Corsican terrorist.”

  Lucien’s hands twisted on the grip of his music case.

  “Terrorist? Petru? There’s a mistake. Maybe some macho posturing. . . .” Conari pulled his lower eyelid down with a fingertip, an old-fashioned gesture meaning, Who are you trying to kid? “I want to help but I have no idea why he’d plant false information. My wife could have misheard.”

  “Yet you said he’s disappeared.”

  “We have to straighten this out.” Conari took his cell phone, hit the speed dial. “Petru, I’m back, we must speak,” he said. Then Conari snapped his cell phone shut. “I got his voice mail. The moment he calls me, I’ll let you know.”

  “His number?” she said. She was programming the number into her cell phone as Conari showed it to her.

  “Does he live in your apartment?”

  Conari shook his head. “Petru lives somewhere in the quartier.”

  “Don’t you know where he lives?”

  “He just moved, but he has been secretive about a lot of things,” Conari said. “When I think about it, it is odd.”

  “Where did he live before?”

  “Near Place Froment, above a Turkish grocery,” Conari said.

  “Something more specific, Monsieur Conari?”

  “We picked him up there once,” he said. “I waited in the car by the cemetery wall. Let’s see, I remember my driver fetched him. The shop had everything—food, hookahs, even Turkish videos.”

  Lucien hitched the backpack onto his other shoulder. “I’ve got to go. I’ve got a gig, Félix.”

  “Lucien, believe me. Mademoiselle Leduc, I’m sorry for what happened. Petru’s got a temper. But to fly off like this? I don’t understand.”

  “Where were you, Monsieur Conari?”

  “I’m negotiating with the Ministry. It’s difficult with these Separatist attacks aggravating the situation.”

  Wasn’t everything blamed on the Separatists? And he still hadn’t answered her.

  “Where were you, Monsieur Conari?”

  “The isle of beauty,” he said. “Corsica.” He let out a sigh.

  The priest beckoned to Conari.

  “Excuse me, I must thank the padre.”

  “LUCIEN, WHERE exactly did you see those lights?”

  Aimée stood shivering before the building on whose roof Jacques had been shot.

  Lucien pointed. “The lights came from over the railing. You can see the hole from here.”

  “Where?”

  He put his hands around her waist. Strong hands. And lifted her up. Only an inky black hole fringed with frost met her gaze.

  “Dots of moving lights,” he said.

  A tunnel?

  He set her down. His hands rested on her hips a moment too long.

  “Tomorrow, I’ll sniff around Petru’s old place if I can find it. Meanwhile, if he reappears, call me.” She handed him her number. “Don’t you have a cell phone?”

  “Against my principles,” Lucien said.

  Annoying, and it made him difficult to reach.

  “If Petru gets in my way, I’ll take care of him.” Lucien shouldered his bag. “I’m really late for a job.”

  “Look . . .”

  “Leave a message with Anna at Strago.”

  “I already did.”

  “Just a word of advice.” He paused, his face in shadow. “A girl like you ought to stay away from types like that mec.”

  Angered, she stepped back. Her heels sank into the slush.

  “The mec with the knife? You think I invited it? He chased me,” she said. “And threatened me, after I found Zette, the bar owner, garroted. Another Corsican.”

  The crash of a can and the screeching of a cat came from over a wall. She paused. “Your type’s the one I should watch out for.”

  And then his hands encircled her waist and he was kissing her on both cheeks. Soft kisses. Warm and lingering. She took a deep breath, enveloped in his warmth and the wet tang of his leather jacket. There was the cold promise of snow in the air.

  “Especially my type, detective,” he breathed in her ear.

  She watched until the shadows swallowed him and the echo of his footsteps faded, still feeling his warmth on her face.

  Thursday night

  LAURE TRIED TO SCREAM. Only garbled sounds came from her mouth. The green walls looked different, they’d moved her.

  “Nurse, the patient’s agitated. Monitor the EKG. Now!”

  A white-coated doctor stood over her, his prominent nose and plastic-coated badge catching the light from the blinking machines. “Laure, take it easy. Don’t struggle. Do you feel this?”

  A pinprick. Cold.

  She shook her head. Thought she shook her head. Only her thumb and index finger moved. She concentrated.

  “Blink, Laure,” he said. “Once for yes, two times for no. Can you do that?”

  Laure blinked twice.

  “What’s that? You’re trying to say you didn’t feel it?”

  She blinked two times again. Felt her eyes bulging from her head. Couldn’t he see her fingers moving on the white sheet. Look, she wanted to scream, my fingers. The doctor leaned forward, his stethoscope swinging over her chest under the white sheets.

  Do it. Touch it. Show him.

  But her hand didn’t respond. Her eyes followed the path where her fingers would go; she could almost feel how smooth the steel disk would feel. How cold to her touch. But like a stalled engine, trying to kick over, coughing, choking, sputtering to a stop, the rest of her didn’t cooperate.

  “Give her two milligrams of Valium,” the doctor said. “We’ve got to control the tremors or the tubes will pop out.”

  Look at my eyes . . . my eyes! She blinked twice in rapid succession. No more drugs, no more slowing my mind and words. She had to communicate. To tell them.

  Find Aimée.

  “Doctor, she’s trying to tell you something,” said the nurse.
“That dose will knock her out.”

  “Just do it, nurse.”

  Laure pinched his stethoscope so hard it popped off his neck.

  Thursday Night

  AIMÉE DIDN’T NEED LUCIEN Sarti’s kind of trouble. Why couldn’t she get the way his eyelashes curled out of her head?

  At the bookstore on Place des Abbesses that had stayed open late for a poetry reading, she found an edition of that morning’s Corse-Matin, the Corsican daily newspaper.

  At least the bookstore had a heater, so she could get the chill out of her bones. On the third page she found two articles datelined Bastia. One reported a bomb threat to the central Bastia post office, discovered to be a hoax. A shorter article described vandalism of a fighter jet on the runway at a military installation, blaming workers from the nearby construction site. The construction company, Conari Ltd., declined to comment. Félix Conari’s firm.

  Flights had been canceled, and the airspace over Corsica declared a no-fly zone. Overreaction? That was a precaution the military enforced when national security was at stake. Even at an outpost on the tip of Corsica, far from the French mainland? Yet Conari had flown back.

  Her eyes fell on another stack of newspapers.

  IN COLD BLOOD, MY HUSBAND’S PARTNER SHOT HIM! The headlines stared back at her from Le Parisien. Next to a photo of Jacques Gagnard in uniform, a sidebar said: “as told by Nathalie Gagnard.”

  Sick to her stomach, her anger simmering, Aimée stuck her metal nail file into the antenna slot of her cell phone, wiggled it, and called 12 for information. She requested the number of Nathalie Gagnard and was connected.

  “Allô, Nathalie?”

  “Why ask me for ideas? You’ve already planned Jacques’s funeral,” said Nathalie, her voice slurred.

  Drunk?

  “Nathalie, you’re going to retract those lies in the newspaper article,” she said, controlling her tone. “Taking vengeance on Laure won’t bring Jacques back.”

  “What? You salauds. I have n-n-no money to pay . . . Jacques . . . gambled it all.”

  Aimée caught her breath.

  “Gambled?”

  A sob answered her. “Debts. I can’t even pay to bury him.”

  It began to fall into place. Jacques gambled yet he had a new car. He was in debt. But something on that snow-covered roof was supposed to make him a rich man.

  “Nathalie, it’s Aimée Leduc. I’m coming over.”

  The line went dead.

  On her map, she found the nearest station—Lamarck-Caulincourt, one of the deepest stations, carved out of the old gypsum mines.

  Ten minutes later she emerged in the drizzling mist under the curving Art Nouveau arch of the Metro. An inviting yellow glow came from the bistro by the steps. Dark stairs like parentheses ran up both sides of the hill. Then another flight of stairs, a street, and more stairs. They looked like rows of sagging accordion keys. At the top, the frosted white dome of Sacré Coeur resembled a pastry made of spun snow.

  Plastic bags tossed by the wind fluttered and caught on a metal grille. Like her progress in this investigation, she thought, every step impeded and whipped about by the wind, ending nowhere. Laure’s innocence was still in doubt. She’d have to make Nathalie admit Jacques’s gambling habit to the authorities. Aimée wouldn’t leave until she did.

  Deep inside, Aimée felt that a larger conspiracy existed, and that Laure was enmeshed in it, like the fly in a spider’s web. If only Laure were to recover and could talk!

  The green metal lamppost illuminated the little-trafficked side of Montmartre where the occasional café still sold charcoal. A chic pocket of intellos, bourgeoisie, and the occasional Socialist bookshop in which Trotskyite pamphlets still filled the shelves. This was where the Surrealists had invented the “kisso-graphe.” To most, it meant a flight of stairs instead of a street; a climb of several flights, hauling groceries after a long day, rewarded by a breathtaking view.

  Out of breath, she paused, noticing the walled Saint-Vincent’s cemetery entrance with placards illustrating various plans for coffin burial. Three-deep coffin burials were the most economical. She turned left on rue Saint Vincent, passed the rose-walled Lapin Agile cabaret, and the last vineyard in Paris, its bare stalks of vines coated by a rim of frost.

  Nathalie Gagnard’s building adjoined the rue du Mont-Cenis stairs. Not thirty minutes ago, she’d stood at the top with Félix Conari and Lucien, overlooking another cemetery.

  Circles . . . she’d gone in circles all night.

  She pushed Lucien out of her mind.

  The building was once a hôtel particulier, now chopped into apartments. Aimée saw the worn digicode numbers and letters. Too bad she’d left her plasticine back at the office. Frustrated, she pulled out her miniscrewdriver, unscrewed the plate, and connected the red and blue wires. The door clicked open. She stuck her boot in the opening, screwed the plate back on, and entered a dark hall.

  After hitting the light switch, she scanned the mailboxes, found “Gagnard,” and hurried up the spiral staircase before the timed switch could cut off.

  “Nathalie?” She knocked on the door. “Nathalie! It’s Aimée Leduc!”

  Silence, except for the measured ticks of the timed light.

  She pounded on the door. “Are you there, Nathalie?”

  A man wearing chunky black motorcycle boots peered from behind a neighboring door on the landing.

  “Mind keeping it down?” he said. “We’re conducting a séance in here!”

  A séance?

  “Sorry, I’m worried about Nathalie. . . .”

  “I feed her parakeet. Nathalie was fine the last time I saw her.”

  “Her voice sounded slurred over the phone. Do you have her door key? Would you mind opening the door for me?” She flashed her detective badge.

  His eyes crinkled in interest. “A detective in kitten heels?”

  “Let’s forget the fashion commentary.”

  “I bet you ride a scooter, too.”

  He meant Aimée didn’t look like a professional. What should a detective look like?

  “Should I wear some kind of uniform to look official and stand out in a crowd?”

  If René were here, he would have shot her a warning look. A ripple of chimes came from inside the neighbor’s apartment.

  “Désolé,” he said and slammed the door.

  Her feet hurt, the cold air chilled her legs, and her patience was exhausted. She pounded on his door until he opened it.

  “Look, I’m on official inquiry. You must cooperate with me.”

  His eyes widened and he stepped back. “Bossy, aren’t you?”

  “Nathalie’s in trouble,” she said. Deep trouble from the sound of her voice.

  “The spirits won’t like that.”

  “The spirits? Ask me if I care!” Too bad she hadn’t kept the fish-gutter knife. She stepped closer and glared at him.

  He read the message in her eyes.

  A moment later, he held out a key chain around the frame of the door. She took it, tried the keys until one fit, turned it, and opened the door.

  “Merci,” she said, delivering the keys back to him. Then at Nathalie’s door she called, “Allô?”

  She found Nathalie sprawled in her vomit on the parquet floor. Labored breaths whistled from her open mouth. The phone and pill bottle lay next to her.

  She panicked, then reached under Nathalie’s shoulders, dragged her to the small bathroom, and put Nathalie’s head over the toilet.

  “Come on, Nathalie, get the rest out!” she urged.

  Nathalie’s head rolled, her black hair clumped to her thin cheekbones.

  Aimée grabbed the rubber gloves by the bottle of CIF cleanser near the shower, pulled them on, and stuck her finger down Nathalie’s throat. A loud heave was followed by a spew. All over Aimée’s leopard-print heels and the floor, missing the bowl.

  And for fifteen francs more she could have waterproofed them.

  Then Nathalie heaved again, thi
s time on target.

  “Nathalie. Nathalie, can you hear me?”

  Her head lay on the toilet-bowl rim.

  So much for relentlessly questioning her about Jacques’s gambling.

  Aimée stepped out of her shoes, put them in the sink, and toweled off. In the other room, she picked up Nathalie’s phone and dialed 17 for SAMU, the ambulance corps, and gave the address.

  “I found Nathalie Gagnard unconscious with a half-bottle of Ambien, I got her to throw up—”

  Clicks and a sound like waves in the background.

  “You’ve got to hurry.”

  “We’re sending an ambulance that’s already in the area,” said a calm-sounding dispatcher. “It should arrive in three to five minutes.”

  “There are several flights of stairs,” Aimée said.

  “Aah, a Montmartre special,” the dispatcher said. “So no ballerina medics on this call. Thanks for letting us know.”

  “Any advice?”

  “Check for other pills.”

  Aimée rooted around on the floor and found some pills in the cracks between the wood slats. “I just scooped up more Ambien from the floor.”

  “Make sure her mouth stays clear and she can breathe, that there’s no obstruction,” said the dispatcher without missing a beat.

  THE STRETCHER carrying Nathalie bumped the wall, and one of the buff paramedics, a Hôpital Bichat armband straining around his arm, swore. Aimée shut Nathalie’s apartment door behind them, used the rest of the CIF to clean up the mess on the floor, and set her shoes to dry by the heating vent. That done, she located coffee beans in the freezer of Nathalie’s trunk-sized refrigerator, ground them, and found a beat-up metal Alessi all-in-one espresso maker. She lit the gas burner, which flared to life with a blue flame.

  She wouldn’t leave this apartment until she found some evidence documenting Jacques’s gambling. The two rooms, wrapped around the corner of the building, remained quasi-intact with a high recessed sculpted ceiling, and she realized this had once been part of a ballroom. A faded charm remained despite its crude conversion into living room and sleeping nook.

  While the espresso maker dripped and hissed, she searched the apartment. No desk, no files, no books. Nothing. Just a pile of well-thumbed Marie Claire magazines and a parakeet, asleep in a covered birdcage, a box of bird seed below. Where did Nathalie keep her bills, paychecks, records?