Murder in the Marais (Aimee Leduc Investigations, No. 1)

by Cara Black

  "My uncle is dead, isn't he?"

  The woman's eyes shifted nervously, then she nodded. "I'm sorry. Monsieur Rambuteau suffered a heart attack after the funeral. Now the reading of the will is blocked until your uncle's estate goes through probate."

  Aimee sat back down, shaken.

  "I'm sorry you heard it from me." The secretary bent down, patting Aimee's arm. Her eyes were kind. "Truly sorry." The woman took Aimee's shocked behavior for grief.

  "A heart attack?" Aimee shook her head.

  "Right after the funeral, on the way back to his apartment. And you have just seen him at the cemetery! What a shock for you."

  "And my poor cousin, Thierry. . .I have to go to him!" More than ever, she had to discover Thierry's identity.

  The secretary threw her hands up. "Please don't let Monsieur Barrault know I've told you. My job would be. . ."

  "Of course." Aimee nodded and stood up. "I'll find my cousin. We'll keep this between us."

  ENTERING HER office, Aimee was immediately alarmed by the look on Rene's face. He avoided her eyes and concentrated on his computer screen.

  "Rene, what happened?"

  He sucked in his breath, bowing his large head and pointing to the fax machine.

  Miles Davis scampered noisily into her arms as she bent down to pick him up. He licked and nuzzled her wetly with his nose.

  A long fax feed had come in from Martine, curling all the way down to the floor. Martine had scribbled at the top, "I've lost my appetite. . .let's do dinner another time."

  Enlarged from microfiche records were one-page cheat sheets titled, in crudely set print, CITOYEN—CITIZEN. Full of vindictive articles and accusations about collaborators, a starved and widowed France vented its spleen. J'ACCUSE headed each of the articles.

  There were photos of collaborators hung garroted from streetlights with swastikas painted on their grotesque figures, village squares filled with contorted bodies shot by vigilante firing squads, and groups of women with their heads shaved, being stoned by crowds. The rest was a hideous description. No wonder Martine was sick.

  Aimee looked sadly at these photos of women, herded like sheep before a people's street tribunal at Liberation. Just like Claude Rambuteau had said. The line under one photo read:

  Not only did French whores take the Germans' food while their neighbors starved but Jewesses slept with the Nazis as their families burned under Gestapo orders!

  In the motley-dressed group of women with shaved heads, one carried a baby. She looked young, her expression stony, her head held high. Aimee pulled a magnifying glass from her drawer to see the details more clearly.

  The next scene caught by the photographer preserved the ugly truth forever. A swastika had been tarred into her forehead. The young mother had sagged to the ground in pain, still holding the baby and keeping it away from the crowd. Could that be Thierry in the young woman's arms? Was this the Jewess who'd slept with a Nazi?

  In the crowd she noticed a leering adolescent girl. Around the girl's neck hung a gold chain with odd symbols. Peering closer through the lens she remembered seeing those same distinctive symbols before, twisted into the ligature marks. She recognized that face. A young Lili Stein stood in the crowd.

  "I LIKE your theory," Rene said. His fingers raced over his laptop. "Les Blancs Nationaux works as a front, financing Aryan hit squads, operating from DFU money via the Rambuteaus' joint bank account."

  "Makes sense," Aimee said. "The German funds provide perfect cover for the final solution Thierry earnestly believes in. Now we just have to prove it."

  Rene had already started accessing the Rambuteau's bank account on his computer. "For Thierry to murder Soli Hecht because he was an interfering Nazi hunter and Lili Stein for an initiation rite would fit," he said.

  Aimee opened the oval window facing rue du Louvre. The November chill did nothing to disguise the four coats of paint needed to cover the swastika. Maybe it was her imagination, but she could still make out the curved edges.

  "Look at this," she said, handing the blue envelope to Rene. "I stole it off Nathalie Rambuteau's will. Here's confirmation from his real mother."

  "His real mother?" Rene said. He hit "save" on his laptop. "Who's that?"

  "A woman named Sarah. The irony is, he's part Jew," she said. "Like they say Hitler was."

  She would leverage the truth out of Thierry. Not only would she display his incriminating bank account, she would show him the contents of the envelope.

  "Then who is his father?" Rene said after he read the letter. "Or do you have ideas about that?"

  "A Si-Po officer who deported Jews from the Marais," she said. "But there's only one way to find out for sure. And Thierry will help me do that."

  Wednesday Evening

  AIMÉE WRAPPED HER FINGERS around the cold plastic of her 9-mm Glock and knocked on the door with her gloved hand. A white-faced Thierry Rambuteau appeared. He stared at her. A glimmer of recognition passed over his face.

  "You! What do you want?" he said.

  "We need to talk," she said.

  "Who are you, anyway?" He didn't seem to want to know the answer because he started to close the door.

  She stuck her boot in the door, still keeping her hand balanced on the gun handle in her pocket. "I have something you should see."

  He shook his head.

  "And I'm not going away."

  He stood aside. "Since you insist."

  She strode down the hallway. The breakfast room, formerly so bright and meticulous, appeared dull and gloomy. Papers were scattered over the sofa. Nathalie Rambuteau's framed photo watched her from the mantel.

  "Tell me why you tried to kill me," Aimee said evenly, her finger poised on the trigger in her pocket.

  "Me? Not me," he said. His wild bloodshot eyes darted around the room. Abruptly he shook his head, then ran his hands across his stubble.

  "Who else would?" she said, still not relaxing her grip.

  "I thought you were a flic but I certainly wouldn't pull a knife. Leif's the vicious one. I tried to stop him, but you got away."

  "Leif, the one in lederhosen, chased me?" she said.

  "Leif was right about you." He stood up and began mumbling to himself, pacing distractedly back and forth.

  "They are all amateurs! I must work harder so they understand." He ignored her and shuffled old newspaper clippings together. His blue eyes shone fiercely. "My obligation, my commitment is to the white race. I work for Les Blancs Nationaux out of love and sacrifice. Who else will keep the world pure if we don't?"

  She was appalled. "Was Lili Stein killed to keep the world pure?" she said. "Did you engineer both Lili Stein's and Soli Hecht's murders, then have your minions execute them? Tell me the truth."

  "The truth?" He laughed. "My father warned me. You're searching for who cut the old lady, eh? That's LBN turf. But murder is not our style."

  "Why should I believe that? You have a motive," Aimee said. "And no real alibi."

  "Motive? The flics questioned me," he interrupted, irritated. "I was in Istanbul, flew into Antwerp, picked up new videotapes, then drove back. It's stamped on my passport."

  She'd seen his credit-card activity on the A2 highway from Belgium the day of Lili's death. "Show me."

  "The flics kept it. Go ask them. If something juicy comes up, they plan to pin it on me." Thierry's eyes glittered.

  "New members of Les Blancs Nationaux kill as part of their initiation rites," she said. "To prove their commitment!"

  Thierry shook his head. Wonder shone in his eyes. "Aryan supremacy is real," he said. "No one has to kill for it."

  The irritating thing was she believed that he was being honest. It bothered her. Made it difficult to advance her theory of him as the killer.

  The harder part followed. He was a human being who had lost both parents. She'd have to push him to the edge, make him reveal the truth, prove or disprove her theory. She began reluctantly, "There's no easy way to do this." She stood in front o
f Nathalie Rambuteau's photo.

  "To tell me I'm adopted?" he said.

  She was surprised; how would he know?

  "My father told me you would come," he said. "Spin me a pack of lies. Now, get out. Play girl detective somewhere else. I know the truth!"

  Of course, Claude Rambuteau would try to discredit her. He'd promised as much.

  "My father died in my arms," Thierry said. His voice cracked. "Leave me alone. I didn't kill anyone!"

  "You better read this," she said. She tightened her hold on the pistol in her pocket as she withdrew the envelope with spidery writing. "This is for you. Your father planned on blocking the will, but he died and threw everything into probate."

  Thierry looked unsure.

  "Of course"—she opened it slowly—"I helped matters along at the lawyer's office. I think your real mother is alive, Thierry."

  "He said you'd try. . .," Thierry sputtered.

  "And you are a Jew."

  Thierry stopped dead. "What are you talking about?"

  "Technically," Aimee continued, "since you were born of a Jewish mother. Judaism follows matriarchal lines. But you're German too since your father was an occupying soldier. Probably Si-Po, responsible for the Gestapo who pursued enemies of the Reich."

  He shook his head. "Why are you doing this?"

  "Read it," she said.

  Doubt flickered in his eyes.

  "Nathalie wanted you to know your real parentage, Thierry," Aimee said. "Her soul couldn't rest after her promise. Secretly, it hurt her to see you hate the Jews. Especially. . ."

  Thierry grabbed the letter out of her hands. He went to the window and read it. For what seemed an eternity, she heard the monotonous tick of the kitchen clock.

  "How could this be true?" His eyes flashed at Aimee. He sat down and reread the letter. "All these years? Lies, a pack of lies! Is this why she drank?"

  "I can't answer that," she said. She caught his wild gaze and held it. "How does this involve Lili?"

  "How would I know?" Thierry's voice dropped. "Nothing makes sense. It's like I've been hit by a wave in the ocean and my feet can't touch the sand. I don't know which way is up for air." Then he asked simply, "Why didn't they ever tell me I wasn't theirs?"

  He looked devastated. Even though she felt sorry for him, she still had to know the truth.

  "Did you kill Lili? Make an example of her death?" She watched him closely.

  He shook his head. "From an airplane? I told you, I flew in from. . ."

  "Who did it?" she interrupted.

  "Someone's trying to frame me," he said. He began rummaging through papers near the window.

  "What are you looking for, Thierry?"

  "Something that tells me who I really am." Thierry picked up papers, never taking his eyes off her. "All this reveals is. . ." But he couldn't say it.

  "That your mother was Jewish and your father a Nazi?" she finished for him.

  "What does this mean?" Thierry said with a strange look. He pulled Nathalie Rambuteau's photo out of the silver frame and lifted up a scrap of paper. "Is this my Jew name?" He thrust it at Aimee.

  She took it. Sarah Tovah Strauss, nee April 12, 1928, was printed on a yellowed, otherwise blank scrap of paper.

  "Can you believe that?" he said. "Even with all my work in Les Blancs Nationaux I've never really felt like a Nazi," he laughed.

  He hurled the frame on the floor. Nathalie Rambuteau stared up, filtered by glittering shards of glass.

  "Maybe that's because I'm half-Jew," he said.

  SHE HATED going to the Archives of France but if any record of Sarah Tovah Strauss existed, besides in the Centre de Documentation Juive Contemporaine where it was not, that was the only place it would be. The old palace, glacially cold and littered with rodent droppings in its corners, was open late on Wednesdays. Napoleon's records and Nazi documentation along with most of French history filled much of the adjoining mansions, hôtel de Soubise and hôtel de Rohan. Her level-two access card allowed her entry twenty-four hours a day.

  She followed a clerk with a thinly curled moustache who reeked of garlic-laced rabbit stew. They entered a glassed-in lobby, filled with large wooden reading tables.

  "The material is quite heavy. Use a cart." He pointed to a high-tech metal wire construction resembling an Italian sports car.

  Off this parquet-floored area, open and light due to myriad skylights, stood racks and racks of leather-and cloth-bound volumes.

  She approached the small checkout desk. "Bonjour, I'm looking for records from 1939 to 1945 in Archives of the Commissariat general on the Jewish question."

  "Something specific?" the librarian asked. "We have thousands of files."

  "Strauss, Sarah Tovah," Aimee said.

  The librarian clicked on the computer. "Living or deceased?"

  "Well," Aimee stumbled. "That's why I'm here."

  "I only ask because some patrons already know." The librarian smiled understandingly. "Find the AN—AJ 38 division. The Deceased section is to the left, oddly numbered. Aisle 33, Row W has volumes with the names starting with S. Unknown or nonreported deceased are to the right." She indicated a much smaller area. "Please call if you need assistance. Good luck."

  At the entrance to the racks, a sign proclaimed that the blue labels were German Occupation Documents, orange labels were Allied Forces documentation, and green labels were French National Records. Most of the racks were filled with blue-labeled material. Aimee knew the German reputation for recording details but this was staggering. She picked up a sagging blue volume tied with string and read a five-page itemized list of the contents of a clock factory at 34 rue Coche-Perce owned by a Yad Stolnitz. A red line had been drawn through his name. She often walked on narrow, medieval rue Coche-Perce, which angled into busy rue St. Antoine, full of boutiques and sushi bars. Once it had thrived with small Jewish bakeries and falafel stands.

  She climbed up the small library stairs and found the Service for Jewish Affairs, the 11—112, of the Sicherheitsdienst-SD, the intelligence agency of the SS. Among the S volumes, "St-" alone took up sixteen volumes. She loaded up her high-tech cart carefully with yellowed documents and wheeled it to a reading table.

  Sadly, Aimee sat and turned page after page, filled with Parisian Jews who were no more. Straus, Strausz, Strauz, she read, going down columns of names. Every single derivation of Strauss had been drawn through with a red line. There was a Sara Straus-man listed but no Sarah Tovah Strauss. After two hours her eyes ached and she felt guilty. Guilty for being part of a race that had reduced generations to ashes or ooze in mass-grave lime pits.

  Convoy lists composed most of the Unknown section. Jews who had arrived at death camps were checked off but no further records existed. No Sarah Tovah Strauss listed here either.

  Back in the Deceased section, Aimee discovered that the Germans also cross-referenced deportees with their arrondissements in Paris. They had sectioned the city into areas with Judenfrei status. Probably the idea of that Gestapo brown-noser in the memo to Eichmann who'd worried he couldn't get them to the ovens fast enough. She wondered how human beings could do this to each other.

  Well then, she would start with the 4th arrondissement, the Marais, where most of the Jews had lived. Streets, alleys, and boulevards listed names and addresses. Forty minutes later she found a household at 86 rue Payenne cross-referenced from an Strauss, Ruben with this under it:

  Strauss, Sarah T. 12-4-28 Paris Drancy JudenAKamp Konvoy 10

  A red line ran through the name, like all the others on the page. The Strauss family were routed via the Vel d'Hiver transit camp. Sarah T. Strauss had entered Drancy prison and then was listed on Convoy number 10 to A, meaning Auschwitz. How could this Sarah Strauss be Thierry's mother?

  Aimee noticed how bright the red line through Sarah's name was compared to the others. Odd, she thought, every other red line had faded to a rose hue. It almost looked to her as though the A had been squeezed next to the non-Aryan classification column, w
ith its bold black J for Jew. As if the A for Auschwitz had been added later. But that didn't fit with what she'd discovered.

  Claude Rambuteau had seen Sarah alive when she handed them the infant Thierry. Aimee remembered Javel's comment. He'd mentioned the bright-blue-eyed Jew who'd given birth to a boche bastard.

  As she returned past the desk, wiping her hands of dust, the librarian said that it was their policy for the librarian to reshelve.

  "Find what you were looking for?" she inquired.

  "Yes, but it raises even more questions," Aimee replied.

  "A lot of people who come here say that. Try the National Library in Washington or the Wiener Library in London. Those are the major sources besides Yad Vashem in Jerusalem."

  Aimee thanked her and slowly walked down the sweeping marble stairway. She felt dirty after touching those pages and her fingers reeked with a special musty smell that clung to the catalog of the dead. At home she collapsed and thought over all the events of the day. She took a long shower and stayed under the hot water until it ran out. But she couldn't get rid of the smell or erase the red lines from her mind.

  THURSDAY

  Thursday Morning

  "I'VE GOTTEN EVERYTHING CHANGED since the break-in," Rene said. "Here's your new access code and keys to the safe."

  "HOPALONG?" She laughed, eagerly punching in her new access code. "Where do you get these, Rene?"

  "My perverted childhood spent with pulp Westerns." He winked. "I'm CASSIDY."

  "What a poet!" She frowned. "Finding the Luminol fingerprint is going to be harder than I thought. Fingerprint files have been centralized. It's all through FOMEX out of Neuilly."

  "Try to interface with LanguedocZZ via Helsinki," Rene suggested. "The main menu originated with them."

  "Good thinking, Cassidy," she said.

  Twenty minutes later, she'd accessed FOMEX, the repository of files from the prefecture of police of every city or town in France that had its own prefecture. By the time she got to the main catalog of fingerprints, the only title that was close was FINGERPRINT, BLOODY, of which there were three subsets: Pending, Active, and Deceased, and thousands of files under each. It could fit all three. She called Morbier.