Murder on the Quai

by Cara Black

“Wrong. I’m employed by the victim’s daughter.”

  “Look at it anyway you like, kid. Just make the call.”

  And then Suzy had gone in a cloud of Chanel No. 5.

  A sudden burst of rain pelted the old glass market roof. Thrumming like her nerves. She was caught in a web. Whichever way she turned, it twisted tight around her.

  The Corsican gang controlling the quartier wanted to catch the murderer to keep street cred, enforce their turf. Anything with Corsicans meant bad news, her papa always said. So, in theory, catching the murderer would stick her between a rock and a hard place: Turn him over to the flics, who’d done little and would claim credit? Or to the Corsicans, to be made an example of?

  Who were they to pressure her?

  Cross that bridge if and when you come to it, she could hear her father say. Still, her stomach cramped in fear. What the hell had she gotten into?

  She needed to stay out of the gypsy taxi driver’s crosshairs long enough to find him.

  Back at home, rivulets of rain streaked the kitchen window overlooking the pewter Seine. Miles Davis snuggled on her toes, warming them. His tail, the color of bleached cotton, squiggled like a question mark.

  Questions, questions, that’s all she had looking at her butcher-paper chart. She read through the printouts René had given her. Bank structure, shareholders, numbers—all eye-glazingly boring. How could she convince Elise that Nazi gold had funded her family apartment, her schooling in Canada? Who knew what else?

  Then again, as René pointed out, Elise could either be in danger or behind all this. She struggled with the idea of Elise hiring her if she’d murdered her own father. Yet from the get-go Elise had fixated on Suzy, and had proved unhelpful at every step, avoiding Aimée’s phone calls, missing their Chambly-sur-Cher rendezvous, burning the diary. Would she have paid a sham retainer to hide her tracks?

  The back-up floppy and bookstore paperwork raised questions. Huge sums earmarked for an account—René had flagged these with a red pencil. Did Elise have a partner to help her—maybe her fiancé, Renaud? Or gone in cahoots with the bean counter, Pinel?

  Her father said, if you can’t convince someone of your way of thinking, or prove your point with fact, the best thing to do is to raise doubt. Doubt slivers friendships, erodes trust between couples—it’s corrosive and powerful. She’d raise doubt.

  Her nerves jangled at the ringing phone piercing her thoughts. Miles Davis’s ears perked up. Could it be his owner, calling the number on the announcements she’d persuaded her grand-père to post on the quai?

  “Oui?”

  Loud static, a buzz, then a clinking sound, like a coin dropping in a pay-phone slot. “Aimée?” her father’s unmistakable voice.

  “Papa, you’ve worried me.” Relief washed through her. Then she remembered he’d lied to her. That she was mad at him.

  But she wanted to tell him what had happened, how she’d messed everything up, gotten in over her head. Rushed headlong and hit a wall. Should she admit how incompetent she’d been?

  “I got what I needed, Aimée.”

  Her heart stopped. “You found her files? Maman’s files?”

  “How did . . . ?” Clicks, more static. “Say nothing.”

  “But Papa . . . ”

  “I’m hanging up.”

  He used to joke, if I ever hang up on you, it’s because the phone has ears.

  Their line was tapped. The clicks. The static.

  Buzzz. The line went dead.

  Fear hit her. Her big mouth again. Yet how was she to know? Why hadn’t he told her the truth in the first place?

  I got what I needed.

  Was her mother in danger? Or dead?

  From the hallway came the sound of a lock turning. Her grand-père’s cough, shoes scraping on the creaking hardwood floor. Miles Davis barked, leaped off the duvet and scampered to the hall.

  Pulling her father’s cashmere cardigan around her, she slipped into wool socks and ran to greet him. He stood with his raincoat glistening, a large, square brown-papered package in his arms.

  “Another painting? Where will this one go?”

  “C’est magnifique, Aimée.”

  He always said that.

  He unwrapped it. A black-and-white sketch of a figure leaning over a ballet barre. “Masterful strokes. Unsigned but probably an early Degas study. A steal at Drouot, so I had to.”

  She sighed.

  Another find at the auction house. He had a whole library full of them. Even in their cavernous seventeenth-century flat, there was no more room left for new acquisitions.

  “We’re going to Giverny . . . the gardens.”

  “In the rain?”

  “You know she paints the garden chaque saison. Arguments don’t work with her.”

  His mistress.

  “Take care of your cough,” said Aimée.

  “Only if you let me bring Meels Daveez. He needs exercise.”

  “He’s not ours. You shouldn’t get attached.”

  A snort. “No one’s ever called, eh? Face it, he’s ours.” He leaned down and ruffled Miles Davis’s fur. “On y va. She’s waiting in the car.”

  “Now?” Aimée had so much to run by him. She wanted to get his take on the suspects whose names she’d written on the butcher paper. A horn honked.

  “We’ll stay at the auberge tonight. Don’t worry, I’ll bring the pooch back tomorrow.” Her grand-père grinned. As if reading her thoughts, he took her hand. Squeezed it. “You’re thinking, at my age? But life’s only worth living if you live, ma puce.”

  He pulled her close, hugged her, his scratchy mustache on her cheek.

  “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,” she said.

  He set the drawing on the hall escritoire, grabbed Miles Davis’s leash and another scarf from the rack. Winked.

  “Oh, I will, ma puce.”

  The door shut and she was alone.

  Aimée reread the bookstore accountings page by page, comparing transaction sums with the account numbers René had red-penciled. It was mind-numbingly tedious. But she found all the links she could have hoped to find. She was sure now—or as sure as she figured she could be—there was a dormant account, like a reserve, which had gone for review prior to a sell transaction. It must hold several million francs.

  As she was about to call Elise’s apartment, a rumbling came from the fax on the desk in her room.

  Plans changed. Now meet me at the apartment, I’m waiting.

  Bring your report so I can pay you. Elise

  What could Elise mean? She’d already given Elise her report, gotten her retainer. Odd. She tried calling the apartment number. Busy.

  A trap? Still, she needed to ask Elise about this huge transaction.

  Her father’s old adage about flics working in pairs to cover each other’s back sounded in her head. With her grand-père and father out of the picture, she needed backup if she’d even consider going to Elise’s.

  Better tell someone, just in case. She paged René. Waited. No answering call. Was she overreacting? She felt silly. Did she really think Elise might be dangerous? In league with the gypsy cab driver? Her instincts told her no, but her instincts had been wrong about so many things.

  She changed, pulling on stovepipe jeans, her nautical navy-and-white-striped marinière, her Roger Vivier ankle boots—a last-season bargain from rue Saint Honoré, just waterproofed at the cobbler’s—and topped it all off with her motorcycle jacket. Wool cap and gloves for the raw November wind. She stuffed the papers in her big leather sac.

  She heard the phone, ran and caught it on the sixth ring.

  “Aimée?” René’s voice wavered, horns blared in the background. Sounded like a pay phone on the street. She pictured him straining on his tiptoes to reach the receiver. How high a public phone must be to someone his
size.

  “Sorry, René. Listen, I’m going to thirty-four rue Lavoisier to get answers from Elise . . .”

  “Quoi?”

  Poor René. “Thirty-four rue Lavoisier. Remember that if I don’t . . . ”

  The phone cut off.

  She tried Elise again, just in case. Busy.

  In the courtyard the rain had left puddles among the cobbles, the veins of rain pooling in the cracks reflecting the overcast sky. Pigeons cooed as she biked along and she almost hit a slow-moving seagull who’d swooped over the quai on Ile Saint-Louis.

  All the way she wondered why Elise had faxed instead of paging her. The fiscals she’d been looking at bothered her. Why had the bookstore requested the new review prior to the sell transaction? Most of all, she wondered if Elise had even ordered this transaction. Was Elise part of an elaborate money-laundering conspiracy, one that had escalated to murder? Or was she someone else’s pawn, or future victim? What exactly did she need Aimée for? What was Aimée riding toward?

  Back again now for the second time today by the park enclosing Chapelle Expiatoire. An overalled worker swept leaves in the running gutter. Behind him lay an open manhole with a sign: Attention—travaux des égouts. She chained her bike to the rain-wet metal fence under a gold fleur-de-lis.

  The massive blue door of Elise’s building opened to her buzz. She stepped inside the black-and-white-tiled foyer.

  A taped sign on the elevator read out of service and below it a handwritten note: Aimée, I’m down in the garage packing the car. Level 1.

  Didn’t she have a housekeeper for that?

  Aimée listened at the door leading to the underground garage. Quiet apart from the ticking of the timed light. She reached in her bag for her Swiss Army knife. Palmed it and felt along the stucco walls as she wound her way down. As she reached the bottom, the light went out.

  Merde. Only the lit exit sign from above the metal fire door. She pulled the handle, hit by a wave of cold, concrete-scented air. Several cars were parked under the dim lighting.

  A Mercedes had its trunk open, a carryall bag on the ground. About to call out for Elise, Aimée noticed the car parked next to it. A taxi.

  She stifled a gasp, ducked down and crab-walked around the Mercedes. LA VILLE written on the side—the gypsy taxi?

  Scraping sounds and voices came from the cellar adjoining the garage. Horrific thoughts filled her mind—Elise abducted by the gypsy taxi driver, tortured? Worse?

  Should she run back upstairs and get help?

  An older man wearing a work smock—the concierge, she figured—appeared at the stairs of the cave, stooped under something heavy he was carrying.

  “Monsieur, where’s Elise Peltier?”

  “Eh, who are you? Why did you come down here?”

  “I’m her cousin,” she said. “There was a note on the elevator to meet her—”

  “Vraiment? I’m loading up her car.”

  None of this made sense.

  “So she’s upstairs?”

  “Took a taxi,” he said.

  Aimée’s blood froze. “How long ago?”

  “Half an hour?”

  “Did you see the taxi?”

  He shrugged. “Didn’t pay attention. She and the monsieur, that nice one, said they’d be back.”

  “You mean her fiancé?”

  He shrugged again. Her thoughts raced. What about the impending bank transaction? Now that all the old men were dead, was Elise making a run for it with all their money? Moving a secret stash of cash and jetting back to Canada, maybe?

  It all fell into place—Peltier’s daughter had been out of the country for years, far away from any whiff of conspiracy; she’d studied economics, bided her time until . . .

  Could Elise really have murdered her own father and come to the Leducs for help in covering up her crime?

  Only one place where Elise could be—a place with an online connection to the bank.

  Back on her bike, Aimée pedaled as fast as she could toward Saint Philippe du Roule Church. Eight blocks and two traffic jams later, she chained her bike in the narrow passage hugging the old soot-grimed church. The place where the gypsy taxi driver had trapped her and pulled her inside his cab. She was shaking. She didn’t know how she’d do this, how she’d confront Elise on her family’s turf.

  The Fermé sign hung on the bookstore door.

  No doubt Pinel, the obstructive directeur financier, was in on it with her.

  Dusk fell early in November and few people waited at the bus stop facing the church. A choir practiced and melodious voices drifted from the open church doors. She remembered the bookstore’s back door, the yard and trash bins she’d glimpsed behind it. It gave her an idea. Baret’s apartment was several doors down. Would the concierge remember her?

  She was about to buzz the door of Baret’s building when it opened and a young man with a toddler rushed out. “Excusez-moi,” he said. Smiled and held the door for her.

  A piece of cake. So far. She stepped inside and held her breath. No one. The concierge’s loge was dark.

  She hurried through the courtyard to the old stables, now garages. Now what? Climb atop the shed roof and shimmy over the stone wall? She suspected Baret had used a back entrance connecting the yard to the rear of the bookstore for discreet access. Like her father always said, master crooks keep it simple.

  She delved into the ivy cascading over the wall, pulling apart the strands, and then she found it. A door.

  A shove and it scraped open to a dirt walkway behind the shed in the next back courtyard. A minute later she’d skirted the mulberry bushes and was looking in on the back of the hunting bookstore. Lighted and empty.

  Disembodied voices singing in Latin from the church drifted and disappeared. She shivered—not from the chill.

  Had she read this wrong, jumped to conclusions? Would she be caught at any moment for breaking and entering?

  A figure flashed by the window, disappeared into the office. Aimée crept closer, moving behind the door. Tried the handle. Locked.

  But the moisture-warped side window yielded to her nudge, centimeter by centimeter, until she could slide her forefinger in to shove the handle up. As she did, she popped her blood blister. Pinched it to stop the bleeding. Great.

  A moment later she’d squeezed through the window and shut it. Logs smoldered in the fireplace of the back reading room. A few charred sheets of paper curled. Burning more evidence?

  Warm, the place was so damn warm. Perspiration trickled down her neck. Her motorcycle jacket was stifling. Her nose was runny from the cold.

  The ringing of a phone from the interior office. She edged closer.

  “. . . don’t you see . . . ?” Elise’s voice.

  See what? She sucked on her damn finger and crouched to peer around the bookcase. One hunched step closer and she’d get a view . . . The wooden floor creaked.

  “Finally,” said Renaud, turning to her and beckoning. “Join us.”

  Caught. She straightened up, stepped inside the bright, halogen-lit high-tech office.

  “What’s going on, Elise?”

  Elise sat on a swivel chair at the desk before a computer. Her mascara was smudged around her red-rimmed eyes. Her hair was flat, and she wore the same pantsuit she’d worn yesterday.

  “Why did you fax me to meet at the apartment, Elise?”

  Elise looked up at Renaud. “Tell her.”

  “That you set me up, Elise? Used me to lead Royant and Dufard to their murder?”

  Elise’s wide-set eyes teared. “No, you’re wrong.”

  “They’re out of the picture, so you’ll control this financial empire,” said Aimée, scanning the humming machines. “This empire your father built on Nazi gold.”

  From the smile on his face, Renaud approved. He applauded.

 
“Bravo,” he said. “See, Elise, the med student’s got part of it right.”

  Her heart thudded.

  “I won’t sign, Renaud. I don’t believe it. You’ll have assets—”

  “When we’re married?” he interrupted, harsh. “Poor Elise, you don’t understand. That’s not the point.” His face hardened. “Sign.”

  Elise reached for the phone, her hands quivering. A sob. “I can’t.”

  And then Renaud had grabbed Aimée’s arm, yanked her around, and put her in a choke hold. She felt the cold metal of a pistol in her temple.

  “I won’t miss this time,” he said.

  Aimée’s knees wobbled. Idiot, she’d put it together wrong. He’d been after the old men’s money, picked them off, and planned to marry Elise for the empire.

  “Non!” Elise screamed.

  Aimée’s tongue stuck in her dry throat. Renaud’s grip tightened. She sucked air. It felt like forever, but it must have lasted only seconds before he shoved her into a swivel chair, keeping the gun trained on her.

  “So what’s the point, Renaud?” she gasped.

  “For someone so smart, you don’t get it, do you, med student?”

  “Put the gun down, Renaud.” Elise’s voice quavered. “What universe have I lived in the past few months? This whirlwind affair, your proposal . . . Where’s that sweet man I met, Renaud?”

  “You saw that man because that was the man I wanted you to see.” Renaud’s black eyes stared like the pit of a dark soul.

  Always the actor.

  “Now get signing the final trust assets into my account.”

  Aimée knew there was more to it than that.

  “Why now, Renaud?” she managed. “Why kill the old men? Why not just wait for them to die, take over gradually, legally?” Her neck stung, her mouth as dry as cardboard.

  “What’s your connection to the Chambly-sur-Cher mayor, the man in the photo? His name was Gaubert. He was shot as a traitor by the Resistance.”

  “He wasn’t a traitor.”

  “That’s right.” Aimée nodded. “An honorable man, Madame Jagametti said. He was your father, non? And it’s you in this photo, hiding behind his leg? You’re taking revenge.”