Murder in the Palais Royal

by Cara Black

  Aimée pushed the demitasse of now-cold espress away from her feet toward Saj’s tea cup of Rooibos, red bush tea. This didn’t sound good.

  Saj typed, his fingers flying over the keys. Then he turned the keyboard in her direction. On the screen she saw a grid of numbers and columns of acronyms. One was TRACFIN.

  Saj clicked on the acronym, and reams of code came up.

  “Irritating, too,” he said. “Now they’re official and part of a European network-sharing and regulatory system.”

  “Can’t you wiggle in?”

  “We’re talking big boys with big resources, Aimée. This takes work. There are new EU banking-compliance safeguards against money laundering. Now if René were here, together we could worm in.”

  Saj cocked his head. His gray-green eyes clouded. Did even Saj distrust her?

  “You can’t think I shot him? Or that I know about this?” Aimée asked.

  He stared at her. “You did something.”

  “I went from René in the hospital to the flics dogging me. So far, it’s the worst seventy-eight hours of my life.”

  Apart from finding her father’s charred remains on Place Vendôme’s blackened cobblestones.

  “Feels like a kick in the gut from nowhere,” she said.

  “In the stream of life, all is relevant,” Saj said. “Witness the Sanskrit term around my neck, Sita: a furrow for planting seeds.”

  What did that mean? But if she didn’t convince Saj and get him on her side, she faced big trouble. She gave him a quick account.

  “So the bad boy Mathieu’s married and wouldn’t give you an alibi?”

  She nodded.

  “A typical piece of media fashion fluff,” he said. “Meanwhile, someone posing as you shot René, and the video you showed the flics led them to the taxi dispatch and straight to your door.”

  She nodded again. “Cold and calculated.”

  “Then the skinhead you put away four years ago cries ‘coverup,’ implying he’s put you in danger. And you think, somehow, that’s why René was shot?”

  The wind chimes tinkled from his bamboo curtain.

  “And now you want to get me implicated too?” he said.

  Her shoulders sagged. Even if she lost the business her grandfather and father had founded, she had no right to pull him down with her. “You’re right, Saj. I’ve already led to René being shot. I couldn’t stand it if you got hurt too. “It’s not fair to put either of you in more danger.” She started to get up.

  Saj was hunched over his keyboard. “It’s your aura, Aimée,” he said. “A clouded blue. Indicative of disharmony, disturbed cosmic connections.”

  Now he was blaming her on a karmic level. “Another nail in my karmic coffin, Saj?”

  Nicolas’s pained pleading eyes and the crowded visiting room in La Santé passed through her mind.

  “Straighten your back and we’ll try the lotus position.”

  “Not now, Saj.” With so much hanging in the balance, Saj wanted her to meditate!

  “This will help,” he said. “It will liberate the chakras and life force.”

  “Espresso does that for me.”

  Saj draped an orange prayer scarf printed in Sanskrit with “Om Mane Padme Hum” over her shoulders. “I received this from my Guru in Varanasi and dipped it in the holy Ganges. Three times.”

  No doubt it was a living, breathing laboratory of imported bacteria. Then she brightened. “You mean you’ll help?”

  “I’m implicated already, Aimée, just by working here.” He inhaled deeply, letting his breath out with measured puffs. “And with that aura, you do need all the help you can get. Me, too. Now, try cleansing deep breaths. Tracfin’s sophisticated; requires work.”

  She set her Valentino boots to the side, straightened her spine, breathed, and closed her eyes. Tight.

  * * *

  AN HOUR LAT E R , chakras aligned, Aimée pressed the button and the door buzzed open to rue du Louvre. Saj waved and headed to the Métro to meet a contact who’d dealt with Tracfin.

  “Aimée Leduc, non?” said a woman.

  Blond, in her early twenties, the woman wore a short black skirt, low black heels, and a long cardigan sweater that fell to her knees. With a nervous movement, she pulled her sweater tighter against the rising wind. On closer inspection, black roots showed in her limp hair.

  “Oui?” Aimée was confused. She’d cleared her calendar and wasn’t supposed to be here. She was supposed to be in New York with her brother. Who would look for her here?

  “I need to talk to you,” the blonde said, a strong Occitan drawl to her words. From somewhere in the southwest, Aimée thought. Toulouse? Wary, she hesitated to take this woman upstairs to the office.

  “Did we have an appointment?”

  “I’m Clémence.”

  So this was Nicolas’s ex. No bonjour or introduction. But there was a panicked look in her hollow eyes and pale face that excused this.

  “You left me the appointment notice for La Santé?”

  Clémence nodded.

  “You’re right, we need to talk. And you need to explain. I visited Nicolas in La Santé. He’s gotten me in trouble, hasn’t he?”

  Clémence clutched her stomach. She leaned against Aimée’s fawn-colored stone building. Passersby, bundled against the rising chill, stared.

  “Something wrong?” Aimée asked. She took Clémence’s arm. “Can I help you?”

  Clémence shivered and shook Aimée’s hand off. “You don’t know, do you?”

  “‘Know’? I think you’ve got things to tell me. Nicolas and I never finished our conversation. I waited under the prison wall, too, but he never appeared. I want to know why he was afraid.”

  “Too late.” Tears brimmed in Clémence’s mascara-smudged eyes.

  Concerned, Aimée gestured to the red-awninged café on the corner.

  “Let’s talk in there.” The canvas awning’s scalloped edges flapped in the wind rising from the Seine.

  Inside the café, wisps of cigarette smoke spiraled in the close air. Virginie, the owner’s wife, chatted with a man in overalls at the zinc counter and nodded at Aimée.

  “Bonjour, un espress et une Badoit, s’il vous plaît, Virginie,” Aimée requested.

  “Sit down, Clémence,” she said, pointing to the round marble table in the corner. “Now you can tell me why I’m in danger. Who ‘they’ are. Why Nicolas said he’d throw me his notebook over the wall, but didn’t.”

  “Look, Nicolas insisted he had to see you.” Clémence pulled her sweater tighter around herself, sniffling. “They just called from La Santé.” She paused wiping her nose with the back of her hand.

  What had happened? Aimée wondered. She searched in her bag for a tissue and came up with her LeClerc mirrored compact. “Here, it’s not that bad. Wipe your eyes. Check your face.”

  “Nicolas hanged himself.”

  Aimée dropped the open compact. The round mirror fell, shattering on the table top. Sharp glass shards gleamed in the sunlight. Clémence’s sobs mingled with the whoosh of the milk steamer. Seven years of bad luck, and more bad karma.

  “But I just saw him.” Aimée’s mind went back to Nicolas’s last look, the fear in his deep-set eyes. Her insides went cold. “Do you think he was really murdered?”

  Virginie appeared and wiped up the sparkling sharp mirror bits with a damp rag, then set down the espress and bottle of Badoit mineral water beaded with moisture. Without a word, she left, having read Clémence’s stricken face.

  Clémence pushed the bottle away. “You were supposed to find out what he wanted. I’m four months pregnant.” Clémence stared at Aimée. “It’s Nicolas’s baby.”

  “Don’t con me, Clémence.” Her shock was replaced by disbelief. “La Santé doesn’t have conjugal visits. And he said you wouldn’t even come to see him.”

  Clémence grabbed her arm. “He lied. Even after we broke up, I visited him. I felt sorry for him. We went to the parloir des bébés.” “What�
�s that?”

  Clémence said, “Those cloakrooms off the lockers.”

  “So?”

  “Didn’t you see the women and all those babies?”

  Of course she had. “You’re saying the guards look the other way?”

  “Where do you think the babies come from?” Clémence didn’t wait for her answer. “The parloir des bébés. The guards take a little cash and pretend not to know what’s going on. They call the kids ‘stairsteps,’ one for every year of their father’s stay.”

  Aimée knew the guards would look the other way for a price. But she’d never heard this. Then again, what woman would take someone else’s baby to visit her man in prison?

  “So Nicolas knew about the baby?”

  “We had history, but I knew it wouldn’t work. After all, you don’t need a man to raise a kid, eh? And Nicolas. . . .” She shrugged. “Brilliant, but always a dépressif, and then his white supremacy talk. I don’t know how much he’d changed. He had a good job in the kitchen, too. His cellmate Sicard helped him get it.”

  Why would Nicolas, about to become a father and up for parole, hang himself? Aimée wondered.

  Clémence accused, “He wanted to talk to you. You’re the last person from outside to see him. You could have saved him.”

  “Me?” Aimée thought about the way he’d looked, what she took for his paranoia. Had she caused his death? Had it been murder? “The only thing Nicolas had time to mention was his lawyer saying ‘they’ were in this together against him, he wouldn’t cover up for a rich ‘salaud,’ and ‘they’ knew about me. That’s all.”

  “See, he tried to explain,” Clémence said. “Now I have nothing.”

  “He said he had the proof in his notebook. Visiting hours ended. Then, when he didn’t appear to throw it from the wall, I finally left.”

  Clémence covered her face with her hands.

  Aimée stirred her espress. She suspected Clémence knew more than she was letting on. Time to stretch the truth. “Nicolas said to talk to you.”

  “Why?”

  “Didn’t information about this coverup get him killed?”

  Clémence bowed her head, then looked up, pushing her hair back. Her fingernails had been chewed to the quick, Aimée noticed, as Clémence gripped the bottle of Badoit.

  “My partner was shot in our office. Nicolas implied there was a connection between that shooting and his ‘proof.’ I need to know what it was, Clémence.”

  She blinked. “C’est vrai? What should I say? He talked big, but it was always vague, nothing specific. I hadn’t even seen him in four months.”

  Clémence’s surprise seemed real.

  “Hadn’t he said anything that might point to what he knew?” Aimée asked.

  Clémence thought. “It seemed strange,” she said, pausing. “I threw him cell phones over the prison wall—that’s how it’s done—he sold them to other prisoners. Even with that, and the credit he earned in the kitchen, it didn’t amount to much.

  Still, he sent me money until last month.”

  Dust motes swirled in the weak autumn light slanting through the café window. A crisscross pattern of shadows covered Aimée’s boot.

  “Where did the money come from?”

  “Who knows? But it stopped. And I’m broke.” Clémence shrugged. “I’ve got to go. Before I return to work, I need to sign some forms and pick up Nicolas’s belongings.”

  “You’re going to La Santé? I’ll go with you, Clémence.”

  “Why?” Clémence slung her bag on her shoulder.

  “Don’t you realize Nicolas may have been murdered?” she said, desperate now. “His notebook might indicate why my partner was shot. While we’re there, we’ll arrange an appointment with his cellmate.”

  “You think someone killed Nicolas?”

  “It’s possible.”

  Clémence averted her eyes. “Like I said, he talked big. He thought you could speed up his parole. Why would they kill him?”

  Aimée had no answer.

  “I don’t need your help,” Clémence said.

  Odd. Aimée had thought she would welcome it.

  “Stupid to think you could’ve helped him. Anyway, he’s gone. He was a dépressif, I told you.” Clémence sighed. “So he killed himself, who knows why. I’m quitting my job and going home.”

  “But what if Nicolas was murdered?” Aimée asked. “You may be needed in the investigation.”

  “I won’t raise my baby here.” She pulled her sweater around her. “Four long years, and I still have to struggle to make the rent.”

  “Let me help, Clémence.” She needed Clémence to claim the notebook.

  Clémence slapped a franc down next to the Badoit bottle. “And ruin your record? Forget it.”

  “How can I know what Nicolas meant unless I see this notebook?”

  Fear flickered in Clémence’s eyes. And then it was gone. “Nicolas liked to talk, and prison walls have ears. If I were you, I’d watch my back.”

  The café door slammed behind her.

  Aimée threw a few francs on the table, grabbed her bag, and stood, but an old woman with a cane blocked her way. By the time she reached the bus stop, the Number 85 bus had left. There was no sign of Clémence; she must have gotten on it.

  Aimée didn’t even know Clémence’s last name or phone number. She ran to the taxi stand. A long line waited. Frantic, she ran a block and raced down the Métro steps.

  * * *

  “I’M SORRY, MADEMOISELLE.” The gate guard at La Santé shook his head. “I haven’t seen the woman you describe.”

  “But she came to pick up Nicolas Evry’s belongings.”

  “His ex, you said? Then she’s the only one who’s certified to enter.”

  She handed him her card. “If you see her, would you give this to her, please?”

  “We’re not a message service, Mademoiselle.”

  “I realize that, Monsieur. But she was so distraught over Nicolas’s death. I should have accompanied her. Now I feel terrible.”

  “Nothing you could do, anyway,” the guard said. “Only family and relations are allowed.”

  “But as a small favor, can you give her my cell phone number, ask her to ring me? I want to help.”

  “In these difficult times, we do try to help the family,” he said. “I’ll do my best.”

  She figured he’d throw her card in the trash as soon as she rounded the corner.

  Now it was out of her hands, she thought; not that it had ever been in them.

  * * *

  SHE TOOK THE Métro back to Louvre-Rivoli, back to where she’d come from.

  Her feet carried her down rue du Louvre in the dusk, threading a path among the hurrying pedestrians. Past the boutiques and travel agencies whose once-wooden storefronts were now gentrified, whose courtyards contained remnants of the thirteenth-century wall enclosing the Louvre. Even the vestige of a tower, a semicircular trace left, fossil-like, indented in stone.

  She tried to clear her mind. In the crisp air brown leaves rustled, a siren wailed in the distance—the usual street symphony— accompanied by the smoky smell of roasting chestnuts. She bought a few francs’ worth from the street vendor. The hot chestnuts in the paper cone warmed her hands. She split the chestnut shells, crunched the sweet nuts, and thought.

  Surely Clémence would contact her again. She hadn’t heard the last from her. Clémence wasn’t telling her something.

  Right now, Saj was meeting with his bank contact. There was nothing more she could do there.

  Mathieu still hadn’t returned her phone calls. And unless he changed his statement, she had no alibi.

  The fleeting thought that Mathieu had been in league with the shooter surfaced.

  Had Nicolas’s paranoia rubbed off on her? She crumpled the empty paper cone, thrust it into her pocket, and hurried up the street.

  There was only one way to find out.

  * * *

  AIMÉE CHECKED MATHIEU’S business card for
his address when she reached Place des Victoires. It was a glorified roundabout, she thought, with its starlike profusion of six radiating streets. Designed by Mansard, the seventeenth-century pale honey-colored stone façades were supported by high pillars capped by sloping slate mansard roofs. The circular Place lay deserted, apart from the equestrian statue of Louis XIV. His original statue was torn down in the Revolution. The saying went around that Henri IV gave his people the Pont Neuf, Louis XIII gave his nobles the Place des Vosges, and Louis XIV gave his tax collectors the Place des Victoires.

  The Place des Victoires was the address for fashion houses and designer-label shops. And the best shoe shop, Aimée had found, for discards from the runway fashion shows. But she wasn’t here to shop.

  She entered a corner building and climbed a flight to the couture house of Soutien, where Mathieu worked. Occupying the whole floor, the decor harkened to Louis XIV with huge crystal chandeliers floating in the entrance and low bergère chairs covered in a pastel brocade in the waiting room. Already, Aimée wished she’d worn a better jacket.

  The designer, she read on the framed two-page Vogue article above the reception desk, was the son of a shoemaker, had graduated from the École des Beaux-Arts and introduced his own collection in 1987, proclaiming that his inspiration came from the wind blowing through the hair of a woman on a motorcycle, the smell of a ripe pear, and the old dancehalls where dancers only wore feathers and heels.

  As pretentious as Mathieu, who was employed in their media department. Clumps of blue hydrangea, dozens of them, stood in clear glass vases everywhere in the white-carpeted salon. The vegetal scent mingled with the sweat of stylists hovering under heat lamps, draping models in scraps of lime-colored fur. A low techno beat thudded from large speakers. She picked Mathieu out of the huddle of mediatheques and business types bent over an oval wood-inlaid table.

  “No press yet,” said a breathless, flush-cheeked woman with black bobbed hair. “For pre-show invites, give us an hour.” The woman waved Aimée to one of the chairs. She held multicolored wool samples in her hand and wore a three-quarter-length frock coat cut from an eighteenth-century floral tapestry. Trim, tapered, and unique. Aimée figured that with several more zeros in her bank account, she could have one too.