by Cara Black
“Just give me your press card,” the woman said, in her breathless way. “I’ll put your name on the défilé list tomorrow. Save you time and spare you the rush.”
Fashion Week, of course. She’d forgotten.
“I’m here to see Mathieu Albret,” she said.
The woman’s gaze traveled to Aimée’s boots, the cut of her little black Chanel under her denim jacket, the cashmere scarf. All courtesy of the flea market.
Did she pass inspection? Aimée wondered.
“Retro and classic, you put yourself together well,” the woman said, her voice soft like the purr of a cat. “But he’s busy.”
Like a cat with claws outstretched.
“Sabine! We need the Milan color swatches.”
Mathieu stood with his back to her, riffling through fabrics on the glass table.
“Sabine, don’t tell me you didn’t find the swatches!” Mathieu looked up and his gaze locked with Aimée’s. His eyes widened in fear.
“Voilà, you wanted to talk with my husband?” the woman asked.
Mathieu’s mouth pursed, and he walked over and put his arm around Sabine’s shoulder, pulling her close.
Given the body language, she’d forgo confronting them united as a couple. Sabine would lie. She would have to get Mathieu alone.
“You know her, Mathieu?” Sabine moved a fraction of an inch away from his embrace.
“Of course,” he said, a weak smile at the corners of his mouth.
Sabine’s eyes narrowed into slits. Aimée doubted she’d been the first woman to appear here with a story.
“But I thought you’d come earlier, Mademoiselle,” he said, recovering. “With the collection tomorrow, I’m swamped, but I still need the textile list. You have it, non?”
She could lie too.
“Bien sûr,” Aimée said. “I’ve got the list and corrections. Over there?”
She pointed to the door.
“Bon. Chérie, bring the swatches to the team, please.” He kissed Sabine.
Aimée wanted to sink into the carpet.
“Join you in a moment,” Mathieu said.
Sabine rolled her eyes and walked away.
He grabbed Aimée’s elbow and steered her toward the bergères.
“Never come to my work,” he hissed.
“I’m not interested in your marital situation, Mathieu,” she said. “Rescind your statement to the police. Tell them the truth.”
“Forget it. I love my wife.”
His hostile look flickered with something else—guilt or shame.
“Admirable,” she said. “Hard to tell from the way you act, but that’s your problem. Mine is that I’m under investigation. I’m a suspect, and you could clear me.”
His voice changed. “Can’t you see this is the worst time? The collection previews tomorrow, a year’s work.”
“Funny, you had time to come to my place.”
He shrugged. “I’m attracted to you.”
“And that explains it? Call the Brigade Criminelle. Here’s the number.”
She passed over Melac’s card.
The techno beat volume increased. Reverberations pounded in her stomach. Aimée could have sworn the hydrangea vibrated in their vases.
“I can’t. We’re in couples’ counseling. I won’t ruin my marriage or hurt my child.”
“Shouldn’t you have thought about that before?” She shook her head. “It’s not my problem. But the flics don’t care about that. None of it pertains to your wife or your marriage. Your wife doesn’t even have to know.”
“Sabine . . . well, she’s sensitive. . . .”
Sensitive like an attack dog.
“You’ve done this before, it’s obvious. She’s wise to you, Mathieu.”
“That’s why I can’t endanger our relationship further. I want to save our marriage.” He folded his arms across his chest. “You know the way out.”
She planted her feet.
“Cut the clichés, Mathieu. Want me to tell Sabine about the birthmark on your hip?”
Taken aback, he shook his head. Then shrugged. “I love women. It complicates my life.”
“The video surveillance camera at my apartment building doesn’t lie.”
“What?” His eyes batted in fear.
“You’re caught on tape visiting my building.”
Too bad the video camera, just installed, hadn’t been hooked up yet. But he didn’t have to know that.
“So, shall I show the tape to Sabine?”
“How can you threaten me? After how I made you feel, don’t you care?”
“Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me,” she said. “I give you credit. I haven’t fallen for a married man in years; I thought I could tell.”
“The collection sales depend on this show. It will make or break our fashion house. I can’t leave.”
“Up to you, Mathieu.”
He stepped back in alarm. Then something in his face changed. “But you have the tape; you don’t need me to talk to this flic.”
He was calling her bluff. Shafting her again. She had to get him to cooperate. What more could she do?
“Let me put it this way. I can’t change your statement. But you can,” she said. “And I’m sure you will. The flics will check whether your wife was in Milan Monday night. Once you lie, it spins out of control.”
Mathieu backed away. “Leave us alone.”
Now a man in a velvet-collared smoking jacket and slim black trousers beckoned to him. And he left.
Mathieu loved his wife, no doubt the classic case of a husband fooling around on the side to obtain the spice and excitement he felt entitled to. Typically Gallic.
A good lover. But like everything else, too good to be true. Time she forgot bad boys; they never worked out.
Inside the shop on Place des Victoires, the shoes were displayed on low tables and in display cabinets along the back wall. Like a museum. These were shoes that had been worn once, on the runway. A pair of bronze leather strappy sandals with their glossy nail-varnish-red soles beckoned, a trademark of Louboutin. And half-price.
Even with all those fantasy new zeroes in the office’s account, she couldn’t afford these. Her spirits dampened, she tightened her grip on her bag.
Her phone beeped in her jacket pocket. A strange number was displayed on it.
René? Her hopes were high.
“Allô?”
“Look, lady!” A male voice with a strong New York accent came through the buzz of static. “What’s with the no-show?”
Jack Waller, the retired NYPD detective turned missing-persons hunter. She’d arranged to meet him at JFK.
“Désolée.” How did you say that in English? “I mean so sorry, Monsieur,” she said. “But I tried to reach you. Your voicemail’s full.”
“I waited for the next flight as well,” he said angrily. “Then another, when I heard some Air France flights were delayed. Do you operate under different standards over there?”
“There was an emergency with my partner. Alors, please understand. I still need your help to find my brother.”
“Lady, I’m busy. I wedged you in as a favor,” said Jack Waller. “You’re getting a bill for my time.” His voice sputtered. “Plus the time I spent in traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge, and then circling at JFK.”
“Bien sûr, I mean, of course. My plans changed and I called but you didn’t pick up, your voicemail was full.”
“Try another one, lady.”
“Monsieur, please investigate as planned. Check out that address for me.”
“Do you think I have time to waste?”
“But Monsieur, I’ll pay you.”
“Forget it. I’m booked for the next two months, on a high-paying investigation. Another thing, lady: the favor I owed Morbier, consider it paid. I showed up, you didn’t. And good luck with a peanut-sized case. Finding long-lost relatives isn’t worth the time. Save your money. Apart from my bill.”
Her phon
e went dead. Then bleeped. The battery had run out.
Her heart sank. At a loss, she left the shop and stood on the corner of rue Catinat. She kicked the leaves into the gutter running with water. Then, ignoring the chic displays in the shop window and the chauffeured Mercedes cars parked in a line, she turned, her heels clicking on the uneven pavers. Alone.
JFK Airport, New York,
Wednesday
“MERDE! ” S A I D JACK Waller, closing his cell phone.
Known in other circles as Jacques Weill, he was still trim even in his sixties, with a mane of grizzled, dyed-brown hair combed back over his large head. He reached for his wallet and made two calls from the public pay phone in the Air France terminal at JFK, using an international pre-paid phone card. The number in Lyon didn’t answer and he left a message, as agreed. The other number, a message center in the Bronx from which calls were routed to Langley, Virginia, answered on the first ring.
“Worldwide Delivery Express, may I help you?” said a man’s voice.
“Package delayed,” he said.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw a figure, the same figure he’d noticed five minutes ago. Instead of paying attention to the flight arrival information board, he could swear the woman was watching him.
“Have you started the tracking process?” the man on the phone asked.
“That’s not in my contract,” he said. “Matter of fact, my contract’s over.”
“We’ll extend it.”
“Same terms?” he asked, ever alert to the business end.
“Correct. And indefinitely.” Now this would turn into some God-awful mess that wouldn’t end here, he thought.
“Agreed.”
He hung up, frustrated. Now he’d have to call this Mademoiselle Leduc back. Come up with some story.
First he needed to think about what he’d say. He’d be more inspired over a glass of red at a nearby airport motel. He belted his raincoat, picked up the briefcase he’d stowed between his legs, and took the escalator down. The cold wind from outside the open automated exit doors ruffled the potted palms. Near the entrance to the Air France baggage- claim area, he noticed the woman again. She was standing by the baggage carousel.
Merde! He hated to think they had caught on to him this quick. A sigh escaped him. He was getting too old for this kind of thing. He edged his way toward the waiting figure. Arrivals crowded the area wheeling suitcases, clogging the space, blocking his way. By the time he reached the carousel, she’d gone.
Wednesday
“CONTINUE, GABRIELLE,” SAID Minister Ney. He sat at his desk, eyes closed, pinching the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger. The gilt-framed Corot landscape hung by the marble mantelpiece. Broyard, the assistant deputy who’d been caught with the hooker, sat, legs crossed, on a spindle-back chair.
“According to the police report, Broyard,” Gabrielle said, “your actions—”
“Lies. All lies,” Broyard interrupted. His visage flushed red. He was handsome, dressed in a three-piece pinstriped suit, a “comer” amidst the phalanx of bright, ambitious, and arrogant Grandes Écoles’ alumni.
Gabrielle glanced out the minister’s tall window at the dark blot of trees in the Palais Royal, then at her watch. Her secretary would have returned from his “errand.” He would have delivered the money. She made herself concentrate on the duplicate of the Police Judiciaire file in front of her.
She had to word her questions with care in order to figure out how to craft responses to the questions she’d scripted for Cédric, the télé host. Cédric had caved when she mentioned his drug-possession file. The things she did in her job left a bad taste in her mouth.
“Tell me in your own words what happened, Broyard,” Gabrielle said. “Stick to the incident, please.”
He threw his arms up. “You need to deal with this. I told you, it’s lies.”
“I see. So in two hours, you’ll announce on the nation’s most-watched evening interview show that it’s lies,” she said. “And it will be just your word against that of the fifteen-year-old hooker who’s proving talkative to the tabloids.”
The determined set of Broyard’s jaw and flashing eyes boded disaster.
“Remember the upcoming National Archives ruling, Bro-yard.” The Minister had raised his voice. “Fifty thousand sealed documents from the Occupation, a dark era. Unsealing them would expose the ministry’s complicity in matters we’d prefer to remain buried. And embarrass people at the highest level of government, even destroy their lives. No one needs the past brought up. There’ll be untold damage if this happens. Remember that.”
Names like her father’s. The minister’s uncle. She had to salvage the situation and please her boss. She had to find a solution in less than two hours.
“But according to the report, you mentioned you’d stopped at the traffic light,” Gabrielle said. “Did the girl—”
“The whore looked twenty.”
“She’s fifteen. A minor.” Gabrielle kept her voice even.
She’d had an idea. “Would you say she could have been arguing with another prostitute? Could she have been escaping from a quarrel, or that you thought she’d be attacked?”
Weak, but a start. She glanced at Ney, saw him straightening his shoulders.
“Broyard, could she have jumped into your car to escape? Could you have thought she’d be attacked? And, not knowing she was a prostitute, you offered her help?”
Broyard ran his hand through his coiffed brown hair. “I’m the victim. It’s a plot to sabotage my career.”
He sickened her.
“Not so fast,” Gabrielle said. “Didn’t you insult the flics, and I’m quoting here, tell them ‘Don’t forget that your jobs depend on me’?”
Minister Ney said, “Keep going, Gabrielle. Details later.”
“Maybe the officer misunderstood your words? Maybe he misquoted you, when you meant to say ‘So much depends on my job. . . .’ Her voice trailed off.
“Exactly!” Broyard said. His eyes lit up; he was catching on. He took off his jacket.
Gabrielle nodded. “Alors, let’s go back over this.”
Ney needed him until the resolution to unseal the National Archives was defeated. After that, Broyard’s resignation, worded in such a way as to not admit guilt but to protect the junior deputy from further malicious allegations, et cetera. A little time in the country, working with his constituents to create a groundswell of support. Another year, or two or three, and Broyard would be appointed to another post in Paris. The usual.
How many times had she done this? And not for the first time, she wondered how many more there would be.
“We’ll return in a few minutes, Gabrielle.” Ney motioned to Broyard to join him in the antechamber.
Gabrielle waited until they’d left, then slipped into her secretary’s office.
“Mission accomplished, Jean-Georges?”
Jean-Georges looked up from Gabrielle’s appointment calendar. He handed her back the envelope that she had asked him to deliver to Robard. “I regret that, according to the florist next door, the old man suffered a heart attack. The shop’s closed indefinitely.”
Gabrielle’s smile froze. Her second attempt . . . would the blackmailer lose patience?
Years of training kicked in. She had to buy time. Dodging mines was in her job description, as well as navigating the ins and outs of the Ministry. She made her feet move and walked to the water cooler, leaned down, and took a sip. Broyard’s loud laugh echoed down the carpeted hallway.
“Your son Olivier left a message,” Jean-Georges said. “But I didn’t want to disturb you.”
Gabrielle looked up.
“It sounded urgent. He said. . . .” he hesitated. “He’d seen a ghost.”
Wednesday Evening
THE PHONE WA S ringing as Aimée unlocked the frosted glass door of the office of Leduc Detective. She caught it on the fifth ring.
“Leduc Detective,” she said, breathless, hoping to h
ear René’s voice.
“I have what you want,” said Clémence. Again no greeting. In the background Aimée heard clanging, what sounded like plates clattering. The hiss of something frying.
“You’ve got Nicolas’s notebook?”
“For ten thousand francs I do.”
Aimée set her bag on the desk, threw her denim jacket on her chair. “Why should I pay for something he wanted to give me, Clémence?”
“Because it concerns you.”
Aimée shivered.
“Bring cash,” Clémence ordered.
“Do you think I can lay my hands on that amount? On short notice?”
“You want to know, or not?” Clémence asked. “People will pay to keep this quiet. You’ll make money with this, Aimée, but I don’t have time.”
Blackmail. Clémence was a manipulator. It added up.
Nicolas hadn’t trusted Clémence. So she’d arranged the prison visit, counted on Aimée being able to pry information from him. Did she really think Aimée would blackmail whoever Nicolas had named in this coverup?
“I’m a detective, Clémence. I don’t blackmail people.”
Aimée kicked the steam radiator, without result. There was no issuing warmth. Then she kicked it again. There was a rumble.
“Nicolas didn’t commit suicide, did he, Clémence? He was murdered, and now this is too big for you to handle.”
“I leave tonight,” Clémence whispered. “My kid will grow up in the south, where it’s green, not gray. You want to help me? Bring cash and the notebook’s yours.”
Aimée heard the clattering of plates, a muttered “Merde” ! Then, “Table 4 wants their bill!”
“Bon, I guess you’re not interested,” Clémence said. “I thought you were sharp. Guess not.” She paused. Shouts and hissing noises filled the background. “Sad, too.” Her voice was now a hurried whisper. “He said you were the only one who’d be able to expose them. But obtaining justice, doing the right thing, alors, that’s easy to promise, when you’re not broke, hard to accomplish.”
A little voice inside told her that if she didn’t agree, Clémence would make her own deal with the devil. And then she’d never find René’s shooter.
