AL07 - Murder on the Ile Saint-Louis al-7

by Cara Black

  “Lots of interest in this victim. What do you know about her?”

  More to the point, what had he found out? “You’re the pathologist, Serge, you first.”

  “Two cavities, a healed femur fracture, and stunning good health for a dead person. I’m just curious since the flics and DRM hovered like bees.”

  The Direction du Renseignement Militaire? Did that explain Morbier’s interest? She shoved that aside for later. Her fingers tensed on the worn satinlike wood of the confessional railing. She had to know.

  “Had Orla given birth recently?”

  Serge cleared his throat, and paused, as though reading from a report. “No evidence of cervical enlargement, distortion, or a C-section.”

  Medicalese for no, she recalled that much. Relief and surprise filled her. Still, she had to be sure.

  “Had she ever been pregnant?”

  “Never. According to traces in her bloodstream she took the pill,” Serge said.

  So Nelie, a fugitive, was the mother. She hated to ask the next question, yet the dead had no privacy once they’d succumbed to the big sleep. “Her stomach contents . . .” she paused, hesitant, thinking of the open organs with their overflowing contents.

  “Oh yes,” Serge said, gusto in his voice. “Crêpes Provençal for lunch and a last espresso, though I doubt she knew it was her last one. With sugar. But the river water diluted . . .”

  “Serge,” Aimée interrupted, “was she dead before she hit the water?”

  “The water in the lungs indicate respiration. The blow would have stunned her, rendered her unconscious. Her natural reflex to breathe caused her to open her mouth and swallow. That’s the usual way. The bruise came from the drain grille later. I’d say, according to the type of discoloration, that it was inflicted after death.”

  Serge cleared his throat. “I’m coming, Adjutant General,” he said.

  The big brass must have stepped in to listen. She heard shuffling footsteps, the clang of dropped metal on the floor, and someone saying, “Merde . . . my foot! The rib spreader fell on my foot!”

  “In our report we concluded she had been a victim of foul play,” Serge said.

  “But did the beads on Orla’s jeans match the jacket?” Aimée whispered, seeing a black-cassocked priest standing nearby.

  “According to my tests, Inspector,” Serge said into the phone, “the results correlate.”

  “Merci, Serge,” she said and hung up.

  TRAGIC AND PUZZLING. The beads matched. Orla had left the baby wrapped in her denim jacket in Aimée’s courtyard, been murdered, and dumped in the Seine. She thought back to the rust-colored bloodstains, the garage mechanic saying Nelie looked odd, Janou’s observation of her limping. It might make sense if Nelie, injured and desperate, had gone into hiding and sent her a message on the crossword puzzle that she feared for her baby’s life. Aimée thrust the phone into her bag. What had she written on her baby’s skin?

  She imagined the two women, wanted, trying to escape from the police—or someone—unable to keep the baby at the hostel. Again she drew a blank. Pieces of the puzzle were missing—the why and who.

  She left the church. Would she have the heart to turn Nelie in? Turn her in like someone had turned her own mother in, to go to prison?

  And then . . . foster care, or that of distant relatives, or adoption for Stella? She was rationalizing.

  She shivered in the rising wind and rain, called her friend Martine, and left a message. On the narrow street, a man brushed by, a small child atop his shoulders. The wet-haired child, laughing, ordered, “Gallop faster, Papa!”

  “Chocolat chaud to the winner,” the red-cheeked mother said, bringing up the rear.

  She couldn’t test René’s already frayed patience any longer. She, too, ran.

  SHE FOUND HER apartment as warm as an oven, the printer running. René’s voice came from the kitchen.

  “The database, oui,” he was saying. “I’ve entered the information. Bien sûr, the framework’s been redesigned. You’ll appreciate the new ease of use.”

  He was talking into the speaker phone. A laptop screen displaying an antivirus program stood on the kitchen counter. His gold cuff links were in the soap dish by the sink.

  She stared, openmouthed, watching him stand on a chair to reach into a high cabinet, the sleeves of his handmade Charvet shirt rolled up, a lace-fringed apron tied around his waist. Steam rose from the kettle humming on the stove. Miles Davis lay curled, his tail wagging, next to Stella, who was sleeping in a computer paper box together with a stuffed pink pig. Where had that come from?

  The domestic scene, the result of fortuitous circumstance, gave off a sense of family. For the moment, it felt like her family.

  In her room she took off her wet blouse and skirt. She searched her armoire and found jeans, a black cashmere sweater, and an old Sonia Rykiel lined khaki raincoat. Urban chic? Non. She decided on a warm waterproof parka from her Sorbonne days. Nondescript and utilitarian. She picked items from her computer tool kit and stuck them in her backpack.

  Back in the kitchen she said, “We have to talk, René.”

  Startled, he reached to untie the apron. “I didn’t hear you . . .”

  “You’ve got it all under control,” she said. “Amazing.”

  René’s large green eyes took in her outfit. He frowned. “You didn’t tell Morbier, did you?”

  “He called in favors I owe him. So I’ve agreed to assist him.”

  “And somehow neglected to mention Stella.” He jerked his thumb at the baby. Relief or something else filled his eyes.

  “Her mother’s alive. And wanted.”

  René lost his balance and grabbed the cabinet handle. She reached him before he fell and helped him down. He took off the apron, summoning a stern look.

  “What do you mean ‘wanted’?”

  “Martine’s checking on that. But if students can ‘steal’ from a secure nuclear fuel processing site, military security’s in trouble.”

  René gave a wry smile. “And I’m six feet tall.”

  “I’ve got to find her first, René. With you here, I will. Here’s the deal—I’ll take the late shift—”

  “And put our work in jeopardy?”

  She ignored his reproach. “Tonight I’ll continue monitoring the network and finish the firewall protection. Hell, we can do this half awake.”

  She squeezed the stuffed pink pig at Stella’s side and it squeaked. A price tag on the floor caught her eye.

  “She’ll love that, René.”

  He turned away but not before she saw the funny look on his face.

  As she raced down her worn marble steps, she wondered why René hadn’t admitted where the stuffed toy had come from.

  Tuesday Night

  IN THE GALLEY kitchen in the back of his brocante, or secondhand shop, Jean Caplan sighed and smeared a knife full of Nutella onto a warm baguette. Better humor her as usual, he thought. The poor thing.

  He shuffled past a chair piled with melamine ware, cracked Ricard ashtrays, and old Suze liquor bottles, all layered with a film of dust.

  “Voilà, Hélène.” He set the chipped Sarguemines plate on the marble-topped table next to which the old woman sat. Rain pattered outside on the courtyard, streaming from the gutter, beating a rhythm on the metal well cover.

  “So thoughtful, Jean!” Hélène said, reaching a thin blue-veined hand out to help herself. Her nearly transparent paper-white skin barely covered her protruding bones.

  He’d been sweet on her then, he was sweet on her now. Hélène had sat in the wooden school desk in front of him and he’d dipped the tip of her ribbon-tied braid in his inkwell. He still saw traces of that feisty young girl although the long braids were now white and tied together at the back of her head with string.

  “Haven’t seen you for a few days,” he said, combing back his thick white hair with his fingers. He’d worried with all the rain . . . where was she living now? He pressed a wad of francs into her h
and.

  “Jean, non! This kind of money I can’t take from you.”

  “I sold the armoire—you know the seventeenth-century one the baron gave me on consignment, eh? And you never let me take you for a meal.”

  “Merci.” She rolled her dark blue eyes, violet ringing the irises. There wasn’t a wrinkle on her smooth face; her skin was that of a young woman, only her jaw was more pronounced than it had once been. She was clean and neatly dressed . . . only, if one looked closely enough, the shopping bags gave her away as a street person. Yet for periods of time she’d stay in a city-run pension, hold a job, and blend in with the anonymous older generation.

  “The baron? Up to his tricks again. Tell me more.”

  Someone had to show her kindness, Caplan thought. She’d been traumatized during the Occupation. Out of sync, out of step, after the war. But then, deep down, who wasn’t?

  Her family had owned this store on Ile Saint-Louis until Libération. Now he did. The Wehrmacht’s fault. Their boots had strutted over the bridge, back and forth, between the town house they’d requisitioned—now the Polish Center—and the shops on rue Saint Paul in the nearby Marais. Those were all gone. The bordello, whose attic his family had hidden in after the 1942 raid, was gone, too. The whole block of stores had been torn down and it was a manicured garden now.

  “Well, our playboy baron keeps asking me to sell his lower-end furnishings, if you call seventeenth century low end, piece by piece to finance his rent boys.” He leaned back on the marquise chair, his weight straining the curved legs. “He needs more money to attract them the older he gets.”

  “You remember the parties . . . the Polish diplomatic receptions and how we’d peek at the guests over the hedge?” she asked.

  Jean grinned. A memory they shared from before the time of the marching jackboots. She loved talking about the island as it had once been, long ago.

  “If those walls could talk! Remember the masked costumed party, the servants dressed as Nubian slaves?”

  She was mixing the eras up. This party had taken place in the seventies; it was still a legend but a legend for a set that was dying out. None of the very rich lived like that anymore. Today socialites mixed Cartier diamond watches and designer jeans. It was another world now, déclassé, common.

  Jean looked down at the worn soles of his brown shoes. A decade ago Hélène had turned up and walked into the shop only to ask with a vacant smile if he had her schoolbooks.

  “‘Hélène . . . where were you?’” he’d asked.

  “Down south,” she’d said.

  He’d recognized the burns on her temples. She’d had shock treatments. The part of her brain they hadn’t burned out was living in the past. Guilt had racked him.

  “Mustn’t be sad, Jean,” she said now. He came back to the present as she took his chin in her hand, searching his face. There was a puzzled, warm look in those violet-tinged eyes.

  “Stay here,” he offered.

  “I can’t. The bad one might catch us.” She leaned closer, whispering, “We have to hide.”

  “Who are you afraid of? Did someone threaten you or call you names again? I told you I’d take care of—”

  “The bad one,” she repeated. “You know, the one who threw the girl in the river. Paulette’s ever so afraid the bad one will toss her in.”

  Paulette? Her sister Paulette had been taken in 1942.

  “She’s afraid that he’ll kill her, too.”

  “What do you mean, Hélène?” Jean had overheard talk at the café-tabac counter that morning and read the newspaper article: a young woman’s body had been found in the Seine. “You witnessed this?”

  She nodded mutely.

  In her own way she never lied. But he couldn’t credit this.

  “So I took care of the bad one, Jean,” she said, her mouth set in a thin line.

  Jean controlled his shudder. He gripped the chair’s threadbare armrest. “Took care . . . how?”

  “I couldn’t let the bad one do it again,” she said, shaking her head. “Now I’ve made it safe.”

  He wanted to shake information out of her. As he learned toward her, his foot hit the shopping bag at her feet and he looked down. Inside one of the bags he noticed the black handle and ornamental bee of a Laguiole knife.

  “Did you use that knife . . . to protect yourself?” he asked her.

  She stood, gathered her bags and broken umbrella, and went to the door.

  He followed her, putting his arm around her shoulders. “Wait, Hélène. What did you see?”

  “Merci, Jean.” Her eyes clouded. “There’s a break in the rain. I have to go.”

  He stared after her as she padded down the rain-soaked street, mumbling to herself. She’d gone over the edge, he concluded. Next it would be UFOs.

  But he couldn’t get her voice out of his head. What if someone had attacked her and in self-defense she’d retaliated? She might have hurt someone. Worse—someone might be attacking women and the homeless on the island. He thumbed through the the phone directory, found the listing he sought, and, with shaking fingers, dialed the Commissariat.

  Tuesday Late Afternoon

  MARTINE’S RED-SOLED, black-heeled Louboutins clicked across the creaking floor of the Musée des Hôpitaux de Paris. She was wearing an orangey peach wool suit and matching blossomlike hat. Breathless, she still managed to kiss Aimée on both cheeks.

  “Nice place to meet! These old operating theaters look like torture chambers.” Martine pointed to an exhibit—a gray, tubular iron lung. “Trying to tell me something, Aimée?”

  Martine smoked a pack a day.

  “You? Never.”

  Martine, her best friend since the lycée, did investigative reporting now after her stint at a defunct fashion magazine. She was tamer than she’d been in her student days. Martine shared a huge high-ceilinged flat with her boyfriend, Gilles, and his assorted children, overlooking the Bois de Boulogne in the sixteenth arrondissement. Haute bourgeois, too staid for Aimée.

  “Charming.” Martine stared at the enlarged sepia turn-ofthe century photos of barefoot children in line at a milk bar. She grinned. “Gilles’s kids only stand in line at FNAC for the latest CD.”

  “What did you find out?” Aimée asked.

  Martine opened her pink alligator bag and thrust a batch of printouts at Aimée. “Not much. Last week, certain allegations surfaced. There was enough there for the Army to put Orla Thiers and Nelie Landrou on their wanted-for-questioning list.”

  “What kind of allegations?”

  Martine consulted a printout. “Sexy stuff,” she said, with a moue of distaste. “Apparently, they acquired knowledge of truck schedules—arrivals and deliveries.”

  A far cry from nuclear secrets.

  “That’s all?”

  “Looks like it,” Martine said. “It’s a favorite tactic of MondeFocus to set up a roadblock to stop a fleet of semis, tanker trucks carrying hazardous materials.”

  “The Army steps in if there’s any activity threatening radioactive materials, Martine,” Aimée said.

  Martine shrugged.

  Aimée stuck the printouts in her bag to study later. If Krzysztof Linski was implicated as well and on the run, too, it would explain his behavior.

  “I’ve got to rush.” Martine took Aimée’s arm and they walked through the hall under the painted ceiling showing eighteenth-century surgeons in panels encircled by trompe l’oeil pillars. “The oil conference . . .”

  “Wearing that?”

  “First, my niece’s baptism. You know Liliane, my youngest sister.”

  “You’re a godmother how many times over?”

  “Three, or is this one the fourth? Can’t keep track of all of them.” Martine had three married sisters, all with children. “She’s hired another babysitter. To supplement her other nannies.”

  Aimée suddenly perked up. “Liliane’s got a babysitter, too?”

  Martine nodded.

  “I need one. Think she’d
share?”

  Martine stared at Aimée. “Don’t tell me! You’re pregnant?”

  Aimée’s gaze rested on an exhibit with an explanatory placard: Circa 1870. Often the desperate parent left a bracelet, beads, or some other token with the infant being abandoned, hoping to reclaim the child in the future.

  “The color’s drained from your face,” Martine said, steering her to a bench. “You’re paler than usual. Sit down. Morning sickness?”

  Aimée was stuck on the phrase “or some other token . . . hoping to reclaim the child.” Had those marks on the baby’s chest been meant as identification?

  Aimée shook her head.

  “Tell me, Aimée.”

  “It’s not that, Martine, it’s worse.” Then she told Martine everything: the phone call, finding the baby, the body in the morgue, the matching blue beads, Morbier’s demand, and finding René wearing an apron, buying a stuffed animal without admitting it.

  “René’s nesting,” Martine said.

  “What do you mean?”

  But she knew.

  Martine dug into her bag and uncapped a small brown bottle with red Oriental characters on the label, took a swig, and passed it to Aimée.

  “Drink this. Oronamin-C, a Japanese energy drink full of electrolytes. You need it.”

  It was dense, viscous, and tangy, with an aftertaste like a children’s liquid vitamin drink. Her cheeks puckered.

  “René’s exhibiting the classic signs: cleaning, cooking, feathering the nest for the new baby, Aimée,” Martine said, outlining her lips with a brown pencil. “Instead of you. He’s a gem.”

  “My best friend next to you, Martine.”

  “A lasting relationship can be built on friendship, but it is rare in life.”

  What was Martine getting at?

  “Knowing what they look for in adoption court, I’d say you’ve got a good start. René could help—”

  “What?” Aimée caught the bottle before she dropped it.

  “Don’t tell me adopting this baby hasn’t crossed your mind.”

  “What’s crossing my mind is what Nelie may have found in the Alstrom file, how MondeFocus is involved, and where she might be.”