by Cara Black
Aimée sensed a slight thaw in her attitude. “Just an address, so I could send the funeral announcement? I’m sure his friends would want to know.” She leaned forward. “A suicide.” Aimée blotted her eyes with a tissue.
“My condolences. But I’ll have to ask the director.”
If the director got involved, it became more complicated. And would take more time. Aimée’s gaze rested on the file cabinet drawer with A-Z listings from the year 1997. From where she stood, her view was blocked, but she figured the lower file drawers held the previous years.
“I’d appreciate that, Madame Delair. I’m sorry to take so much of your time.”
Aimée counted on the woman going to the director’s office. Instead, she reached for the phone. “He’s teaching a course. I forgot.”
Aimée dabbed her eyes again. “It’s not your problem, but since we’re from the North, the funeral’s so small, and my parents alors. . . .” She shrugged. “If none of his friends come. . . . It’s hard enough for them right now.”
The woman’s eyes softened as they gazed at the metal Quin-quin box Aimée held. “You’re a real Lilleoise, eh? My father’s side came from Roubaix. Whereabouts do you live?”
She’d never gone to Roubaix, didn’t know the North at all.
Didn’t every city have a rue Jean Jaures, named after the socialist? But she didn’t want to chance it. “But now with my job, I live in Lille most of the time. On rue des Arts,” she said, reading the Quinquin manufacturer’s address on the tin.
“I love Lille. All the art nouveau architecture in the vieux quartier. A real renaissance of a former industrial town.” Before the woman could wax more specific about the wonders of Lille, Aimée glanced at the wall clock.
“Excusez moi, but my parents arrive at Gare du Nord in twenty minutes.”
“Then I’ll have the director contact you.”
Just what she feared. A wasted trip.
“I’m sorry, there’s just so much to do.” She wrung her hands. “And so little time before the funeral. I’m overwhelmed.”
The woman patted her arm. “Calmez-vous. Hold on a moment.”
The woman took off down a hallway. She had to grab this chance. Feeling guilty but not guilty enough to stop herself, she slipped behind the counter, leaned down, and found the 1993 drawer right away. She opened it and saw folders labeled EXPENSES subcategorized “EDF” and “Tax.”
She pulled open another drawer. Files labeled MINISTRY OF EDUCATION GUIDELINES and EDUCATION BROCHURES.
Footsteps sounded in the hall. Voices. Only seconds until the woman came back. Perspiring, she scanned the reception desk. Underneath it was a cabinet labeled ENROLLED STUDENTS and another marked PAST STUDENTS. She slid it open. Names and more names. Riffling through at the back, she found “Spring 1993” and kept going until she found “Fall 1993.”
With a quick grab she took it, stuffed it under her coat, and edged out from behind the desk.
“Mademoiselle?”
Footsteps. Aimée sneaked past the orchid and into the tubular chair. She blew her nose.
“I thought you’d left,” Madame Delair said with raised eyebrows. “Where were you?”
Aimée sniffled, then covered her face in her hands. “I’m sorry, I can’t wait any longer.”
“The director concurs, Mademoiselle. Nicolas never enrolled.”
Aimée stood. She had to get out of here fast. “I apologize. A mistake.”
There was an accusing look in Madame Delair’s eyes. “The director remembers Nicolas well. Even though he offered Nicolas a tutoring position in lieu of partial payment, Nicolas still couldn’t afford to live and study. Nicolas mentioned that his family discouraged him: you in particular, Mademoiselle Evry.”
Is this what had changed Nicolas?
“Such a bright boy, too!” Madame Delair said.
Aimée had found what she came for and opened the door.
“So just now you’re feeling guilty?” Madame Delair’s mouth tightened. “I’m sorry for your loss, but what right do you have to come here now? None of his friends would appreciate your contacting them.”
But Aimée disagreed. If not, she’d find out.
* * *
AIMÉE TOOK THE short cut through Passage des Deux Pavillons, which was now open. The passage, covered by a glass roof in an iron framework, contained two levels connected by a dilapidated staircase. Once gas-lit, it had changed little since the Duc d’Orleans’s architect had designed it. The nineteenth-century working ladies, nicknamed hirondelles after the swallows that had once lived there, had spied on prospective clients, then swooped down to bring the men to their love nests in the small rooms above.
Now she noted a rare-book shop with a closed sign in the window, a pipe shop, and a store selling only ribbons, all a bit dated. She wondered how they stayed in business.
She needed to sift through this file she’d taken to find Nicolas’s friends. If any. And she hadn’t eaten all day. Emerging into the sunlit precincts of the Palais Royal, she could take care of two things at once.
* * *
AIMÉE SAT AT an outdoor table of the Palais Royal bistro where Clémence had worked. An early-afternoon warmth lingered. Light filtered through the canopy formed by the double row of lime trees. Shadows dappled the metal park chairs. A cool spray from the fountain misted her cheek. She set the Cours Carnot file on the table.
“You’re lucky,” the waiter said, handing her a menu. “We usually stop outside service in October, but with this weather!” He smiled. “Something to drink? Or would you like to order?”
“A Salade Niçoise, s’il vous plaît,” she said, without looking at the menu. “Does Carco work today?”
The dark-haired waiter stepped back. He looked about twenty and, from the perspiration on his brow, nervous. Or inexperienced. Or both. “He’s late.”
Or detained. No doubt the flics, after conversations with Dita and Madame Fontenay of the medal shop, had detained him in the garde à vue. That could stretch for twenty-four hours.
She sensed the young waiter’s hesitation.
“Did you know Clémence?”
“Clémence? I think she quit.”
“She was strangled.” Aimée pointed to the blackened stone arcade. “Last night, right there, after work.”
His Adam’s apple moved as he gulped.
“My uncle called me in to work this morning, that’s all I know.”
“Carco’s got a temper,” Aimée said. “Did her quitting last night send him over the edge?”
He adjusted his rolled-up shirtsleeves and brushed off his black vest. “Carco’s from Marseille. A hothead. Like all of them from the south.”
“See, you do know things,” she said. “Your name?”
He shrugged. “Paul. You some kind of flic?”
“A detective. I knew Clémence,” Aimée said. “We’d arranged to meet last night.”
“Carco blew up, oui,” Paul said. “The gas line to the range snapped. The kitchen ground to a standstill. On top of that, Clémence quit. Like that. The way my uncle tells it, Carco threatened to walk out, too, if we didn’t fix the stove.”
“I heard Carco talking on his cell phone, Paul,” she said. “He didn’t seem too happy with Clémence about ending their relationship.”
Paul’s cheeks expanded, then he expelled a gust of air. “Ask him. Ask my uncle. They worked on the range until the flics took him to the Commissariat.”
She fixed her gaze on him. “Did you know that Clémence was four months pregnant?”
His eyes bulged. He made a sign of the cross.
“Anything else you want to tell me, Paul?”
“Terrible. Alors, Carco’s all bluster. He’d never hurt her. Talk to him.”
“I plan to. And I’d like something to drink,” she said. “L’eau de Chirac.” Tap water, as everyone referred to it these days, after the presidential election.
His mouth turned down. Big spender. “Bien sûr.
/> ”
She crossed her black-stockinged legs, rubbed her sore toe. And in her bag found the crumpled pack of filtered Gauloises.
Just one drag. That’s all, she promised herself. She struck a match and lit the tip; but instead of letting smoke fill her lungs, enjoying that rush, she flicked the cigarette onto the gravel and ground it out.
The slow swirl of blue smoke rose from the gravel beneath her feet. Aimée peered over her oversize sunglasses at the dragonfly buzzing in the rose bushes bordering the garden. The warm rustling air enveloped her, accompanied by the muted click of clippers at work on the hedge. A nanny pushed a stroller under the lane of manicured trees. Birds chirped from nests in the arcades. An office worker sat with her feet up on the lip of the fountain.
Peaceful and quiet. Hard to believe that Clémence had been murdered here last night. She opened the thick Cours Carnot file and found stapled dossiers. About fifty. Each contained a front page with the student’s name, address, field of study, enrollment, attendance, sessions, and dates. The following two pages contained matriculation exams studied for and study-group attendance.
Now to winnow it down. But how? She didn’t know the exact exam Nicolas had aimed at. Most of these students by now had passed the exam and were attending a Grande École or had even graduated.
She remembered he’d circled the summer/fall study group in the papers she’d found in the cellar. All she had to do was search through each dossier, find those who had attended that summer’s study group, and come up with a list.
After an hour spent over a Niçoise salad and fifty dossiers, she’d culled it to ten names and phone numbers: the ten who might have known Nicolas. With luck, some had been his friends. And with more luck, they’d talk to her and reveal what had turned Nicolas toward the neo-Nazi Les Blancs Nationaux, the significance of the Jewish prayer book, and what the connection was to René.
Her mind flickered back to her little brother’s letters. What happened to him in the past ten years? How had he turned out? Was he in touch with her mother?
With a sigh, she pushed this thought away. She inhaled the fragrance emitted by the rose bushes, felt the sun warming her back, and ordered an espress. Near the small cannon converted to a sundial, an old woman in a tattered overcoat tossed bread crumbs to pigeons flocking at her feet. A pigeon ate from her hand. A look of rapture crossed the old woman’s face.
Paul set down the demitasse of espress she had ordered, with a small square of chocolate beside the sugar cube on the saucer.
“Paul, may I talk to your uncle?”
“He’s arranging with the priest at Saint Roch to offer a mass for Clémence and her baby.” His throat caught.
“Do you know anyone who’d want to hurt Clémence?”
He shook his head. A man raised his hand at a nearby table for his bill.
“Excusez-moi,” Paul said. “I’ve got to work.”
So did she.
The Cours Carnot files presented tedious, time-consuming work, the reasons she’d hated criminal investigation. But her father always said if you didn’t fire the shot, you couldn’t hit the target.
Aimée pulled out her cell phone and got to work. She reached the voicemail of the first three students. She left a message saying she was conducting a Ministry of Education survey concerning their educational path and attainments after taking the Cours Carnot. Two phone numbers didn’t answer; the next had been disconnected. She tried the next few; answers ranged from “My parents made me sign up” to “I didn’t attend much.” After thirty minutes, she had yet to speak to a single student who remembered Nicolas.
Aimée rubbed the grid marks left on her thighs from the cross-hatching of the rattan chair. Scraps of conversation floated from the benches obscured by trees . . . “Velvet cufflinks, body jewelry.”
Not much raised eyebrows in this quartier; one kept one’s private life behind the salon doors. Curious, she leaned over the marble-topped table, straining to hear more. Under the windows of Colette’s former apartment two well-preserved matrons were sharing a bunch of purple grapes, lace handkerchiefs on their laps.
“. . . murdered in that sex club?”
“Non! Can you imagine, they found the girl right here!” one said. “We’re not safe in our beds!”
So word had spread in this village-like enclosure, this exclusive slice of the first arrondissement, whose inhabitants ranged from senior Banque de France and Ministry officials to concierges, shop owners, and bourgeoise matrons like these women.
She downed her espress. No time to get lulled into relaxation by the gushing fountain. She left a thirty-franc tip with her bill, crossed the gravel, and stepped under the arcade into the bistro.
From the look of the place, they needed wait staff and the sooner the better. Instead of waiters and waitresses preparing for the evening service with fresh place settings and floral arrangements, dirty dishes, soiled wine glasses, and empty wine bottles littered the tables.
On narrow rue de Valois at the bistro’s back entrance, she recognized Carco right away in his white side-buttoned chef’s shirt and black-and-white checkered trousers. He smoked, leaning against the crumbling wall. A pile of cigarette butts clogged the gutter at his feet.
To Carco’s right stood an open semicircular window flush with the pavement, through which a chute led to the basement. Wooden produce boxes were piled next to it.
At last. She rooted in her bag, found her pack of Gauloises, and pulled one out.
“Got a light?”
He produced a lighter from his pocket. Flicked it. He had such big meaty hands. Strangler’s hands?
“I saw you last night.” Carco’s forehead creased. “You’re the detective.”
Thanks to Paul, the weasel, informing him.
“And you’ve got a temper,” she said.
“So her arty roommate hired you? The bitch.”
No one had hired her. She could use a paying job. But her neck was in a noose and Melac burned to tighten it.
“Not at all,” she replied. “Right now she’s down at the morgue identifying Clémence’s body.”
The smoke filled her lungs and gave her a jolt.
“You’re angry, a hothead,” Aimée continued. She expelled a plume of smoke. “But the flics didn’t question you very long, did they?”
He fixed a glare on her. “Could I wring Clémence’s neck with ten plats du jour in preparation, appetizer garnishing, a sous chef at my side, the patron at my heels, and a broken stove to repair?”
He ground his cigarette under his shoe.
“Last night I never left that furnace of a kitchen for a minute. Not even for a cigarette. Even the owner backed me up.” He hefted a crate of green peppers, shot it down the chute. “The flics believe me.”
They’d let him go.
“You’d wanted to move in with her, right, Carco?” she said. “She refused. That made you livid. You followed her.”
“Follow her? No point.” He shrugged. “C’est fini.”
“Then what do you think happened, Carco?”
A mixture of defeat and sadness washed over his face.
“Tant pis, I should have known she had someone else,” he said. “She was two-timing me.”
Another man?
“With her ex in prison?” Aimée said. “I think she just felt sorry for him.”
“I don’t know.” He shook his head.
“But you harassed her.”
He leaned down to pick up some loose white asparagus that had fallen from a crate into the gutter.
“Zut! Try cooking for a bistro of people with no gas and one waiter,” Carco said. “I didn’t even know she’d quit until I saw the orders sitting there getting cold.”
No chef allowed his orders to go cold. She believed him.
Despite the heat, a frisson ran down her arms. Granted that Clémence worked in a busy understaffed kitchen, still she could have told Aimée more over the phone. Clémence had held something back. Earlier, sh
e’d refused Aimée’s offer to accompany her to La Santé. Run away angry. Then her insistence that they meet. And for a brief moment she wondered again if the alleged notebook had been a ruse. A way to lure Aimée into the passage, a deserted place.
She realized Carco’s eyes were tearing. “The baby wasn’t mine. She hadn’t let me touch in her months. Maybe she didn’t know whose it was.”
“Could she have gone to meet this other man?”
“I think she wanted to get the hell out,” he said. “Someone called her here every night.”
Thoughts spun in Aimée’s head.
“A jealous man, another boyfriend?”
Was that what this was about? That mec, Manu?
Rather than answer her, he stomped into the bistro.
After her visit to the prison, Clémence had known too much. Had her call to Aimée complicated things, some arrangement that backfired? Aimée imagined someone—a contact—catching up with Clémence, demanding the notebook or that she keep quiet. Say Clémence refused or demanded money, attempted blackmail, desperate to leave, for some reason Aimée didn’t know. An argument, and the killer took advantage of the deserted passage to stop her, choking her, then stole her bag to make it appear like a robbery.
And who was the person calling her at the bistro?
If the notebook existed, was Aimée the only other person to know about it? Did it contain the proof that Nicolas had been bribed? Say the killer knew, too. And had trailed her to the sex club, then to the Métro.
Was she next?
Goose bumps shivered her arms.
She made her way to Passage des Deux Pavillons. A caged white-plumed cockatiel warbled from an upper window; a woman shook a dust rag in a doorway. The shops lay shuttered and closed.
Nothing here.
Aimée walked back the few steps to the Palais Royal and paused amidst the alternating slants of light and shadow in the columned arcade.
“Papa, I’m a statue.” A small boy stood on one of the black-and-white-striped Buren columns that were ranked in assorted heights.
“Get down, Alain,” his father said. Khaki pants, guidebook in hand. A tourist from the provinces. Beside him a woman droned, reading aloud from her guidebook.
