Murder Below Montparnasse

by Cara Black

  “I was only a boy during the war, but my father helped the Resistance,” he said.

  “But you said your papa worked on the trains.”

  “So he did. But in secret he brought Colonel Rol-Tanguy the rail plans to sabotage the Wehrmacht freight in the Gare de Lyon yards.”

  “Did they hide here?” she asked, wondering why anyone would.

  Morbier ground his foot in the packed dirt. “You could hide here forever.”

  “Weren’t they scared?”

  “Scared?” He shook his head. Then his thick eyebrows knit. He opened his mouth to say something. Didn’t.

  She watched him, surprised, her fear forgotten now. “Why are you sad, Parrain?”

  “It happened a long time ago now. People forget.”

  “So we’re in this smelly cave piled with bones to remember?”

  “Something like that.” He paused, his eyes faraway. “They say if you don’t remember the past, you’re condemned to repeat it, mon petit chou.”

  She’d taken his big hand with her small one and squeezed it.

  Aimée shook off the memories. On rue Daguerre, a lighted pedestrian shopping street, the evening air carried pungent aromas from the cheese shop. Below a whipping awning stood the butcher Alois in his bloodstained apron. He waved at her. She stocked up here on Miles Davis’s horse meat.

  This evening, Café Daguerre’s outdoor café tables bustled on the terrace. She picked her way past the crowded tables to the interior, scanning the patrons: locals, middle-aged women, old men with baguettes and chives poking from their shopping bags—drinking an aperitif before heading home for dinner.

  For a brief moment, she thought about how she’d intended to cook more—but since boiling water presented a challenge to her culinary skills, she discarded the thought.

  “Un express,” she said, sitting at the counter and catching the scurrying white-aproned waiter. Next to her a young woman cut into a scallion-fringed croque-madame, on a thick-crusted slice of Poilâne bread. Tempting.

  Instead she opened her agenda to the to-do list she’d begun after reading that Marie Claire article. Plan, set goals, and prioritize. She ticked off “proposals filed,” “security checks run”—thanks to Maxence—and “butcher’s for Miles Davis.” Under the pending column, she crossed off “René’s tuxedo” and added “autopsy findings,” “fitting for the Dior bridesmaid dress,” “pick up software encrypter.” She also added “Yuri,” “Serb,” and “car repair,” and considered whether telling off Melac warranted inclusion on the list.

  No doubt she’d get his voice mail if she tried calling again. She put “Melac” in the future column; she’d deal with him later. Now to Oleg. She’d escaped before the police questioning—he’d be ignorant of the fact that she’d discovered Yuri murdered or that she had Piotr’s letters. Two up on him. Always a good thing when facing a suspect.

  “Aimée Leduc?”

  She turned to see Oleg, tousled brown hair, corduroy pants and denim jacket—an academic air.

  “The flic told me you were in the car that smashed Yuri’s Merc,” he said. “Ran over and killed a man in front of his house.”

  Belligerent and breathless. Not even a bonsoir.

  “We had an accident. I’ve filed the insurance claim, everything will be handled. But your stepfather wasn’t hurt.” What’s that to you, she wanted to say, moving away from his crowding elbow.

  “Maybe you had something to do with my father’s murder this morning.”

  He’d turned the tables. Accused her.

  The waiter slid Aimée’s express in front of her. “Monsieur, something to drink?” he asked, poker-faced.

  Oleg pointed to Aimée’s cup. “The same.” The waiter nodded and moved down the counter.

  “Yuri told me you’re the son of his wife,” she said, unwrapping a sugar cube and plopping it in her espresso. “So you have no legal grounds in any of this. I’ll deal with his lawyer about the car.”

  “I’m the only family Yuri had.” Oleg drummed his nail-bitten fingers on the counter. “We’ve kept him company since my mother passed. He was lonely, had bad health.”

  And you’d been sniffing around for an inheritance, according to his neighbor and Natasha at the nursing home. Oleg might qualify as extended family, but everything told her to keep Piotr Volodya’s letters in her bag.

  “Not that it’s my business,” she said, taking a sip, “but Yuri intimated otherwise last night. Nine times out of ten, it’s the family the flics find guilty of crime. I’d keep that in mind before you accuse me, a stranger.”

  Oleg stared as the waiter set down a salade niçoise in front of a young woman wearing slim, black cigarette pants. Aimée recognized them from the latest agnès b. collection. Eating salad—no wonder she could wear size two.

  But Oleg looked hungry. Why didn’t he order one? Cheap.

  “Robbery. Murder.” She took another sip. “Your supposed inheritance, I’d imagine, would be their line of inquiry. It comes down to motive.”

  “But he was at our house for dinner just last night. My wife cooked his favorite dish.”

  “Yuri’s place was trashed,” she said. “He told me a valuable painting had been stolen.”

  Oleg stared at her. “So you’re the detective he asked to help.”

  He’d put things together fast.

  “Quite a coincidence, eh? Running someone over, hitting Yuri’s car.” Oleg leaned closer. “Maybe you set him up, robbed him, and appeared to offer your services with a nice cash reward.”

  This man was geting on her nerves. His affected academic air, his insinuations. His incessant drumming on the counter with his nail-bitten fingers. Ignoring café etiquette.

  “Funny, that never crossed my mind,” she said, clenching the demitasse spoon. She wanted to slam it on his drumming fingers. “My colleague’s up for possible manslaughter, Yuri’s murdered, and you’re accusing me? Turn it around—say you hired someone to rob Yuri and it backfired?” She paused. “You don’t seem upset over his murder.”

  Oleg’s mouth parted in surprise. Deflated, he stared at the water rings on the zinc countertop.

  “What happened?” She needed to know his take.

  “You won’t understand.” He shook his head.

  “Try me.”

  “Yuri abandoned me,” Oleg said, “like his father had done to him. Some role model. My mother sent me to boarding school when I was six. It broke her heart.” He shrugged. “Still, we’re the only family each other has … had, now. Alors, he liked to complain about Tatyana’s cooking but he ate it.”

  Hurt showed in Oleg’s eyes. She believed him. The only thing he’d said that rang true.

  “Mon Dieu, such a big mouth, he told everyone about that painting. Damien, the art dealer.…”

  Just what Damien had said. Poor Yuri, his big mouth had gotten him killed. And yet, she hadn’t been able to get the story out of him. Sad and frustrating.

  “You took him to Luebet, the art dealer, when?”

  “Sunday. We warned him to put the painting away. Hide it. At least until this morning.”

  Part of her wanted to believe him. The other part figured he was telling a version of the truth.

  “He called me after the accident last night,” Oleg said. “Told me he’d spoken with you. Hired you.”

  She chose her words. “Hired me?”

  “To recover the Modigliani.”

  “A Modigliani?”

  “Don’t play dumb. He called you, didn’t he?”

  “Not dumb, cautious.” She decided to trust him. A little bit.

  “But why would someone torture him for a painting that was already stolen?” Oleg said, his brow creased.

  Aimée wondered the same thing. She pulled out Luebet’s Polaroid. “Of the four people who’ve seen the painting, only you and Damien are still alive.” She left out his wife. “Did you take this?”

  Oleg stared at the photo.

  “Doesn’t do the painting j
ustice,” he said. “Even in the humidity, that dim light, the shadows, the painting … it spoke.” Oleg’s eyes glowed.

  “Go on.” Oleg seemed more than acquainted with the art world, from the way he spoke. “You’re an artist?”

  “When I was at boarding school, every Sunday I was the only boarder who never went home.” Self-pity stained his voice. “The art teacher used to take me to the musées in Bordeaux.”

  “Now you’re an art teacher, that it?”

  “You’re a detective, all right,” he said with sarcasm that could have sliced stale bread.

  The mirror behind the counter reflected the gauzy, fleecelike light from rue Daguerre’s street lamps.

  Oleg reached for his espresso. “This glimpse into Lenin moved me.” He turned and his eyes pierced her. “Where is it?”

  She almost choked on her espresso. “Like I know?”

  His cell phone vibrated on the polished wood counter, but he ignored it. Oleg patted his jacket pocket, turned his back to her. In the mirror behind the counter, she saw him checking something from his pocket—what looked like a glossy hotel brochure with a logo she couldn’t make out.

  She averted her eyes as he turned back.

  “Your stepfather wouldn’t make a robbery report,” she said, switching to another tack. “That only makes sense if he feared something.”

  Oleg ground his teeth. “Do you speak Russian?”

  She shook her head. “Do you?”

  “My wife, Tatyana, is from Ukraine.”

  “Meaning you don’t and she does.”

  He didn’t deny it. She had no idea why he had asked her in the first place.

  “I don’t know why, but he trusted you.” Oleg hung his head. “More than me.”

  And then she understood. “He knew my … mother.” The word caught in her throat. Sounded strange coming out of her mouth.

  “How?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Come on, you just said—”

  “We never got that far, Oleg.”

  Her mother—words never spoken by her father, never used while she grew up. This phantom spirit in the house no one ever talked about. Like the elephant in the salon everyone pretended not to see.

  She came back to the conversations in the café, the hiss of the milk steamer, what Oleg was saying. “Yuri asked me to find a buyer.”

  Should she believe him?

  “I’ve got someone who’s interested.”

  His cell phone vibrated non-stop.

  “What do I do?” Oleg looked lost.

  He was asking her?

  “Besides ignore that call?” She leaned closer. “If you didn’t steal the painting, who do you think did? Your stepfather hired me before he discovered it was missing—why? Threats, extortion?”

  “He told me he owed someone.”

  Yuri’s words about owing her mother thudded through her mind.

  “Like who? Any specifics?”

  “A woman—oui, that’s right.”

  “Did he let on why? Their connection?”

  “I thought you were the detective,” Oleg said, standing up abruptly. “Fat lot of help you’ve been to me.”

  A swish of air and he’d gone. Left half his espresso and her with the bill. Her gaze followed him to an idling late-model Peugeot, a blonde at the wheel. She glimpsed a flash of something red as he opened the door. Then the car roared away down Avenue du Général Leclerc.

  Aimée’s mind spun. Was Oleg playing an elaborate game? Had the painting been stolen while Yuri dined at his house? Was he pretending he didn’t have it to force her hand, find out what she knew, what Yuri might have confided in her? But that was all conjecture.

  When you hit a wall, think of the opposite scenario, her father always said.

  What if Oleg figured she knew the painting’s whereabouts? And he clutched at her connection because of what Yuri had led him to believe?

  Had her mother stolen the painting? Aimée’s stomach clenched. In Yuri’s last message, he had been adamant that she leave it alone. Too dangerous.

  Crazy. She had to stop these crazy thoughts.

  But she’d learned that he had a buyer. A buyer and, she was guessing, no painting. That’s why he’d met her.

  In his shoes, she’d be off to stall the buyer. Hold him or her in the wings until the painting surfaced. Or, if he was the one who stole it, until attention died down and it was safe to sell it.

  Oleg hadn’t even hounded her for money for Yuri’s damaged Mercedes.

  A race to recover the Modigliani and she’d gotten ensnared in it. She downed her espresso, caught the waiter’s attention, and slid some francs over the counter.

  “Your friend uses our café as a meeting place,” the waiter said as he made change. “But he doesn’t pay for his drink?”

  She pushed the coins back at him. Waiters knew the clientele in the quartier. “But I bet his father Yuri did.”

  A shrug. “Old Russian, gray hair?”

  “The bookbinder,” she said.

  “That’s right.” He nodded and smiled. “All that Russian winter of the soul.”

  A waiter quoting literature? She tried to remember if that had been a question on the baccalaureate exam. Or had René, a voracious reader, quoted that from a crime novel?

  He noticed her quizzical look. “Tolstoy.”

  RIDING THE MÉTRO back, she took out her to-do list, wrote down:

  Damien

  Oleg—nervous

  Letters

  Off rue de Rivoli, she stood in line for takeout salade niçoise, thinking of those black agnès b. cigarette pants. She needed to lose a kilo before she’d be back to her normal size. Awful. She’d never let this happen before. Time to swim laps.

  For the second time she called Morbier to check if he’d pulled strings for Saj. Only voice mail. She left a message for him to call her back. Frustrated, she tried the criminal ward at Hôtel-Dieu. A new nurse who refused to give her any information.

  Tired of voice mail and people who gave her the runaround, she headed to her office. She had reports to finish up, a security scan to run. And Maxence’s printouts on Yuri Volodya to go through. But when she punched in the entry code on the keypad, no answering click opened the door. Merde. On the blink again.

  She searched in her bag, dropped the boxed salad, and found the old key after a minute. Picking up the salad, she inserted the key, turned it twice, and finally the tumbler turned. She’d complain to the concierge. First the lift didn’t work, then the door. Always something. And a long, empty evening of work ahead.

  She hit the timed light. Nothing happened.

  Then she heard scuffling, felt a whoosh of cold air.

  “What the …?”

  Before she could turn in the darkness, something was pulled over her head. And then everything went black.

  Tuesday, Silicon Valley

  RENÉ’S HANDS SHOOK in his jacket pockets. He faced Andy and Susie, who towered over him on strappy sandals and tanned legs. Only one door out of the back supply room, and that was blocked by the rent-a-guard.

  “Reconsider, René. Two new investors fly in tomorrow. The pot’s growing. With the three we’ve got so far, that IPO gives you twenty million, give or take. Put that against two hundred thou’ a year, René.” Andy shook his head. “Why would you say no to a two hundred percent profit increase? Doesn’t make sense.”

  “Andy, it’s wrong.”

  “Sounds right to me. Do the math.”

  “You can’t think—”

  “Think all you like,” Andy said. “You’ve set the relay and delay mode. It’s all your work.”

  “While you monitored me, and never even provided me access to the whole system. It says ‘Chief Technology Officer’ on my door, yet you used my work and froze me out.” He glared at Susie. Her cool hazel eyes met his for a moment, but she had the grace to look down. “You had me do the dirty work.”

  “Check this out, René,” Andy said, handing him the bu
siness page of the San Jose Mercury. “Detained corporate French spy awaiting trial. Just last month. Caught at the airport. Terrible. Looks like San Quentin for him.”

  San Quentin, the prison?

  “You’ve set me up.”

  “More like we took out insurance, René,” Susie said, her voice thin. “We bought you, now finish delivering. Make nice.”

  He had to figure out how to blow the whistle on them. And get out alive. “Give me some time,” he said. “I’ve got to think.”

  “What’s to think about?” Susie said, edging forward.

  “You engineered the back door, René,” Andy said. “If you talk, we deny all allegations. Report you to immigration. They’ll be watching for you at the airport. Detain you.”

  “What?” Fear flooded him.

  “Just another foreign corporate spy detained for questioning at immigration.”

  Andy lifted his phone and checked a message. “Hurry up, René. The meeting’s starting.”

  “Front running’s illegal,” he said, hating how weak he sounded.

  “Don’t want to play? Think you’ll blow the whistle on us?” Susie said. “But no one understands all the technical jargon, René. Of course, if you try we’ll tell them it was you, some idea you wanted to show us on our platform. How we had no clue you tried to sabotage us.”

  Andy flicked off his phone. Jerked his thumb at the guard, who put a cardboard box on the floor. Inside was René’s coffee cup, the brass plate with his name, a blank memo pad, and his own laptop. The motherboard open and exposed.

  “You’re out of here, René.”

  René realized that was Andy’s plan all along.

  Susie opened the supply room door, glanced down the corridor. “All clear. The guard will escort you out.”

  In shock, René picked up the box. Threatened and now fired—what could he do? They’d covered their tail. Shut him up for good.

  But he had an idea. They’d be preoccupied with the looming investor meeting—if he hurried he could do it.

  “Dude, I’m so sorry. I wanted us to work together. You know, be friends,” Andy said, that rocket-bright smile back on his face. At the door he paused, turned to the guard. “One more thing, empty his pockets.”