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

by Cara Black

  "Who?"

  "The Gestapo doctors doing research on spinal nerve endings. They chose me to experiment on. Took me to Berlin, then exhibited me as a freak."

  "Please forgive me." Aimee shook her head. "I'm sorry."

  "I was, too." Odile smiled. "But I still try to remember the few good old times."

  "What happened to Laurent?"

  "Didn't see him towards the end. Disappeared with a lot of people. Who knows?"

  "What about his family?" Aimee said.

  "Shot." She pointed out the window. "Against that wall. His stepmother and father in 1943. Rumor had it that he informed on them."

  Aimee almost choked on her tea.

  "Who took over the building?" she finally managed.

  "Some cousin from his mother's side. You see, he took his mother's name, she had the money. After she died and his father remarried, he kept her name."

  "Which name?" Aimee said.

  "Always called himself de Saux. Hated his father for marrying again."

  Odile Redonnet paused, looking at Aimee for a long moment.

  "It's all about him, isn't it?"

  Aimee nodded.

  "Evil incarnate, but I can't even say that because he was amoral. No conscience. He'd do anything to hold power over someone. But Laurent disappeared, like so many collaborators after the war. He was seventeen or eighteen at Liberation. Who'd recognize him now in his sixties?"

  Aimee paused, recalling the torn page from Lili's journal. "I know it's him. Laurent." Lili's phrase that Abraham had repeated to her—"Never forget." Lili had recognized Laurent because he'd sent her family to the ovens. She'd never forgiven him.

  "He's back, isn't he?"

  "May I have this?" Aimee stood up. "I have to find out who he is and this should help."

  She put the photo in her bag, then took her teacup to the kitchen and put it in the sink. Odile's kitchen window looked on to a series of dilapidated courtyards. Number 23 was probably one of them.

  At the door, Aimee turned. "Thank you," she said. "But I disagree, Odile."

  "How's that?" Odile asked from her wheelchair near the table.

  "I'm beginning to believe he never left," Aimee said.

  THE FIRST bell she rang was answered by a fortyish woman in a zebra leotard, with flushed cheeks and a light beading of sweat. Aimee could hear the pounding beats of heavy drums in the background.

  "The owner? Don't know. Send my checks to a property management," she said, out of breath.

  "How about the concierge?"

  "Isn't one." Her phone started ringing. "Sorry," she said and she closed the door.

  None of the other doors she rang answered. She wandered to the back of the building where the garbage cans were kept, hunting for the gas meter. At last she found it behind a rotted wood half door. She wrote down the serial number of the meter. Easy to trace if she accessed EDF—Électricite de France, otherwise a tedious search at the tax office for ownership. Of course, she still might end up going there. Now she needed computer access and pondered breaking back into the Victor Hugo Museum to hit the keys on their state-of-the-art computer.

  Friday Afternoon

  SHE CALLED ABRAHAM STEIN from a public phone in the Metro station at Concorde since her cell-phone batteries had died. Sinta answered.

  "Abraham's talking with some big-nosed flic."

  "A chain-smoker, with suspenders?" Aimee asked.

  "You got it."

  "Please get Abraham, but don't tell him it's me." Aimee waited while Sinta fetched him. She heard the radio news broadcast blaring in the background, with a reporter's terse comments. "Riot police have been called to clear away demonstrators from the Élysee Palace where the European Union Summit Tariff will be signed. Sporadic confrontations between neo-Nazi groups and the Green Party are happening here and in parts of the 4th arrondissement, notably around Bastille."

  The phone scraped something as Abraham picked it up. "Yes?"

  "It's Aimee. Don't say anything, just listen, then answer with yes or no if you can."

  He grunted, then she heard him say, "Sinta, offer the detective some tea."

  "Is his name Morbier?"

  "Yes."

  "Has he mentioned me? Asked when you've last seen me?"

  "Yes, doubly so."

  "To do with Lili's murder?"

  "Yes."

  All of a sudden she heard Abraham clear his throat and Morbier's gravelly voice came on the line.

  "Leduc! Where the hell are—?"

  "Why are you setting me up, Morbier?" she said.

  "Wait a big minute. You didn't meet me or return my calls and now your partner got shot up," he said.

  "Cut the crap," she said. "Who's behind this? I'm clicking off before your three-minute tracer locates me. I've got some questions."

  "By the way, your partner is cranky as hell," he said. "Pissed you left him. Seems he might not want to be your partner anymore."

  "Why are you asking Abraham questions when you've been taken off Lili's case?" she said, checking her watch.

  "Just curious if he's heard from you," he said.

  "Why the hell ambush me?" she said.

  "You're paranoid, what's gotten into you? Listen, Leduc, take a reality pill. No one's after you."

  "The only other explanation is that my phone was tapped, they heard where we were meeting. Javel. . ."

  He interrupted her. "Why are your prints all over his place anyway?"

  Her fingerprints were all over the rooms of a supposed suicide. Two minutes and fifty seconds showed on her watch as she hung up the pay phone.

  Aimee heard the whine of metal grinding metal and whish of air brakes as the train pulled in. She slid through the door of the train bound for Porte de Vanves, full of Parisians going home from work. She clutched the overhead rail as her head spun and she felt sick to her stomach. Who was telling the truth? Could Rene, her partner and friend since the Sorbonne, have turned on her? Had he really been protecting her when he told her to run? Of course he was. His protective behavior ran consistent with how he always treated her. Usually to her annoyance.

  Then there was Morbier. He'd lied about investigating Lili and had certainly been acting out of character.

  She got off at Châtelet. At the kiosk she bought a recharger for her dead cell phone. Commuters washed around her like a wave on the platform, parting before her at the last minute. In the black designer suit she blended in well with the professionals at rush hour. After she had inserted the charger her phone beeped immediately.

  "Yes." She looked at her wristwatch.

  "About time," Thierry said. "You're a hard lady to reach. Found her?"

  "We need to meet," she said.

  "Bring Sarah to my office in Clingancourt," Thierry said.

  No way in hell would she do that.

  "Meet me at Dessange in Bastille, thirty minutes."

  "You mean that hair place? How can. . .?"

  "In thirty minutes. After that I'm gone." She clicked off and called Clotilde.

  JUST BECAUSE she was on the run, with skinheads and the police all searching for her and unable to return to her apartment, it wasn't reason enough to have greasy hair. Clotilde lathered Aimee's hair with henna as Francoise, the proprietress, escorted Thierry to the shampoo area.

  Nonplused, Thierry asked, "What's this all about?"

  "Sit down. You could use a trim," said Aimee.

  He snorted. "Cut the smart remarks."

  "A full-service salon, nails, facials. Why not take advantage?" she said beneath the suds, smiling at Clotilde, who massaged her scalp. Thierry fiddled with his hands and looked uncomfortable. She indicated a space in the light and airy salon, bustling with colorists in lab coats, women with tin foil wrapped in strands like antennas from their heads, and huge blown-up photos of waiflike models on the walls. Hair dryers and vintage disco music kept the beat in the background along with the hot ammonia smell of permanent waves.

  Thierry either had to stand and
talk down to Aimee or lie back on a chair and get a shampoo. He chose to stand. "Have you found her?"

  "If I have, what does that mean to you?" Aimee said as Clotilde rinsed her warm soapy hair.

  "That's your job. I asked you to help me," he said. "Now that we found my father. My real father."

  "Why do you want to meet her?" she said.

  "It's only natural, isn't it?" he said.

  As Aimee sat up and Clotilde dried her hair, she noticed his bloodshot eyes and jerky movements. He clutched and unclutched the leather belt of his storm-trooper coat. She would never engineer a reunion between Sarah and Thierry in his present condition.

  "Look, I'm going back to the demonstration at the Élysee Palace," he said. "We're forcing the Greens to back down. Showing those idiots that people will take a stand. The agreement will be signed."

  He sounded petulant and whiny for a fifty-year-old man. And scary.

  "Do you mean the European Union Trade Agreement?"

  He nodded. "Let me see her, talk with her."

  "I'll ask her. Why did that scum in lederhosen have a heat-seeking rifle?"

  Thierry's eyes narrowed. "What?"

  "Tried to pepper me with bullets like a rabbit. In the courtyard of Hôtel Sully." Aimee slouched under the warm wet towel as Clotilde kept tousling her hair.

  Thierry reluctantly followed them to a hydraulic chair that Clotilde pumped with her foot. As she looked in the mirror, Aimee found she resembled a drowned furry creature while he looked predatory and disheveled.

  "Maybe you want to tell me about it," she said.

  "Sounds like you're getting paranoid," he said, shaking his head. "He's busy organizing the demonstrations."

  "Not anymore," she said. "And it's too late to ask him."

  Thierry twisted the chair around so fast that Clotilde's scissors and set of combs went flying. Canisters of mousse and styling gel clattered to the floor. All eyes turned to her, straitjacketed in a barber's smock, and a nearly frothing Thierry, who gripped the armrests, shoving his face into Aimee's. Several stylists automatically picked up hairbrushes and one clutched a heavy-duty hair dryer defensively.

  "You took out Leif?" Thierry eyes opened wide in disbelief.

  "Him or me. That's what it came down to," she said uneasily. "Leif looked too greasy to be Nordic."

  "Idiot!" he said. "A recognized Korporal in our corps."

  "He shot at me from the roof," she said. "I won't apologize for making it out alive."

  All of a sudden, Thierry looked up and noticed the stylists watching him with raised beauty implements.

  His voice dropped to a whisper. "Bring the Jew sow," he hissed. "Meet me at the office tonight. If not, the dwarf won't make the morning."

  It was her turn to be surprised.

  "Room 224 in St. Catherine Hospital—your partner, Rene Friant."

  And then he was gone, leaving a whiff of stale sweat.

  Francoise rushed over. "Should I call the flics?"

  "No, please," said Aimee. "Thanks, but nothing really happened."

  Francoise nodded. "Bad news, eh?"

  "In more ways than one," Aimee agreed.

  With dripping hair, she grabbed her cell phone and immediately called St. Catherine's Hospital.

  "Friant, Rene? He was discharged five minutes ago," the floor nurse told her in a flat voice.

  She called their office. No one answered but she left a message in a code they'd worked out. She warned Rene and told him to meet her at her cousin Sebastian's later. She left the same message at his apartment. Now she felt somewhat reassured. If she couldn't find Rene, she doubted Thierry could. At least not right away.

  The hum and buzz of a busy salon had returned and Clotilde looked at her expectantly, comb and scissors poised.

  "Let's talk about color, this brown's too mousy," Aimee said.

  Clotilde just winked and pulled out some swatches. Aimee pointed at several. With a new hair color, dark glasses, and the tailored suit, no one would recognize her in a crowd. In her radical departure from jeans, leather jacket, and scuffed boots she could sing the computers electric anywhere.

  While Aimee sat there, she played out all the scenarios in her head. Even though she wanted to blame Thierry for the attack on her, he had seemed genuinely surprised.

  Suppose Leif worked for Laurent, whoever he was. Could Laurent, with Leif's help, have disposed of Lili, shut Soli Hecht up, tried to kill her, supposedly shut down Morbier's investigation, trailed Sarah, strangled Javel, and made it look like suicide? To do all that, they'd have needed more help.

  One part she didn't get—why not put the rope in her hand, make it look like she killed Javel? The only reason she could think of was that maybe a customer had come in and the killer didn't have the time.

  Or the killer wanted attention deflected from Arlette's murder in the past. Make Javel out as morose; after missing Arlette all these years, he'd decided to join her in memorial. That would make sense, Aimee thought. Ever since the TV and morbid tabloid coverage of the Luminol extravaganza, things had heated up. The killer or killers had certainly been working overtime.

  And that all brought her back to Laurent. She had to ferret out his identity and protect Sarah.

  Her cropped hair now streaked with pale blond highlights, Aimee stepped out into the small cobbled street. A loud appreciative whistle came from the old man behind the nearby fruit cart. She winked at him and smiled to herself.

  Opposite the salon, a well-dressed Yves came out of the wrought-iron entrance doors of Brasserie Bofinger. For once she knew her hair looked fantastic and she was dressed to match it. Nervous and delighted, she wondered what to do.

  He looked dapper and businesslike in a navy blue double-breasted suit. Not like a neo-Nazi. Clotilde had brushed off the lint so the black suit looked runway-ready. A few buttons, remnants of the dumpster, had rained on the floor of the salon, and Aimee had told Clotilde the story as they giggled.

  She seriously contemplated raising her arm to hail Yves, when an unmarked Renault screeched to a halt beside him in the small street.

  The car wedged him into a doorway. Two plainclothes types pulled him, struggling and kicking, into the backseat. The doors slammed and the Renault screeched down the street.

  She leaned against a window, shaken. She assumed they'd been undercover cops. After all, he was a neo-Nazi. . .wasn't he?

  Friday Afternoon

  HARTMUTH AND THIERRY S AT across from the Victor Hugo Museum by the playground in Place des Vosges. Children's laughter erupted from the swings under the barren-branched plane trees. The vaulted stone arcades surrounding the gated square, filled with fountains and grassy patches, reflected the late autumn sun's last rays. Over the worn stone cobbles wafted the smell of roasted chestnuts. Hartmuth's hands shook as he folded the newspaper he'd been pretending to read.

  "I only agreed to meet because you said it's important," he said. "What do you have to say to me?"

  "Millions of things. You are my father," Thierry's eyes shone, almost trance-like. "Let's start by getting to know one another. Tell me about my German family?"

  Hartmuth stirred guiltily. "You had a sister once," he said after a long pause as he watched the children. "Her name was Katia. I wasn't a very good father."

  Thierry shrugged.

  "Who raised you?" Hartmuth asked.

  "Some conservatives who lied to me." Thierry kicked at a pigeon anxious for crumbs. "But I've always been like you, believed in what you fought for. Now I know why I joined the Kameradschaft, it's natural that I would carry Aryan beliefs like you."

  Hartmuth shook his head. He stood up and walked along the gravel path. He stopped at a slow gurgling fountain near the statue of Louis XIII on his horse.

  Thierry stirred at the memories of Claude Rambuteau handing him crumbs for the pigeons at this very statue. Why hadn't the Rambuteaus told him his true identity?

  "I said goodbye to her," Hartmuth said. "Here."

  Startled, Thier
ry asked, "Who do you mean?"

  "Your mother, before my troop shipped out to the slaughter at the front." He paused. "She's still beautiful," he murmured wistfully.

  "How can you say that?" said Thierry, aghast. This wasn't how he imagined his Nazi father would act.

  "I loved her and I still do," Hartmuth said. "She thinks it's all in my mind. Let me show you where we used to meet." Hartmuth strode across the square, pulling Thierry along.

  None of the scurrying passersby paid much attention to them, a piercingly blue-eyed man and slender silver-haired gentleman, who, if one looked carefully, had a definite resemblance.

  Halfway down the rue du Parc Royal, Hartmuth turned and pointed up at the arms of Francois the First, the marble salamander sculpted into the archway.

  "I first saw her here, on these cobblestones," Hartmuth said. "But over there is where you were conceived, underground."

  "Underground? What are you saying?" Thierry asked uneasily. Opposite, on rue Payenne adjoining Square Georges-Cain, Hartmuth agilely climbed over the locked gate. He started rooting in the plants among the ancient statuary. Thierry could hear clumps of dirt landing in the bushes. He was afraid Hartmuth was losing his mind.

  "What are you doing?" Thierry asked, after he climbed in behind him.

  "Come help me," Hartmuth said. He beckoned to Thierry, his eyes shining as if possessed. "Move this pillar." Hartmuth tried to push the broken marble column. "It's got to be around here."

  "You're crazy. What are you going on about?" Thierry raised his voice.

  The dusk was settling and the street lamps came on one by one.

  "The entrance to the catacombs!" Hartmuth said. "We'll find it, they've been here since the Romans. They haven't gone away. This city is honeycombed with the old Christian tunnels." He took Thierry's hand and stared at him. "I used to hide in them with your mother every night."

  Thierry felt embarrassed by the longing evident in Hartmuth's eyes. "Why do you call her my mother? I never knew her, she abandoned me, she was a filthy Jew!" His hysterical laugh climbed to a high pitch. "Filthy, that's perfect! Rutting in the dirt with an Aryan."