Murder Below Montparnasse

by Cara Black

René pumped his legs, clutching the duty-free bag to his chest and ignoring the pain in his straining thighs. “Courtesy alert to passenger René Friant, last call to Paris.…”

  Panting, he ran into the deserted waiting area as the attendant was about to close the gate.

  “Please hold that plane,” René yelled, waving his boarding pass.

  “Thirty more seconds and you’d have been out of luck, Monsieur Friant.” She swiped his pass and reached for the interphone all in one movement.

  “Ground crew, keep the door open,” she said, her voice terse, “the last passenger’s boarding in the jetway now.”

  Exhausted, his legs trembling, René stumbled in the jetway. His hip seized up and he collapsed in pain. Alarm crossed the flight attendant’s face at the plane door. “I’ll alert the medical crew, have you taken to the airport clinic.”

  “Not while I can crawl,” he said.

  “Monsieur? But you’re ill and aviation regulations.…”

  With the last ounce of his strength, every muscle cramping, René pulled himself up the jetway wall. Sweat streamed down his face. He gritted his teeth.

  “Just an old sports injury. Flares up once in a while.” He made a rictus of a smile. Limped forward and took her arm. “Champagne, the extended leg room, adaptors for laptops and Bose headsets,” he said. “First class in Air France never disappoints, am I correct?”

  Wednesday Morning, Paris

  BELLS CHIMED. SOMETHING soft and wet pressed Aimée’s cheek. She cracked open her eyes and squinted at the sunlight streaming in her office. Morning. It was morning.

  Nearby rang the bells of Saint-Germain l’Auxerrois. She’d slept on Leduc Detective’s recamier and drooled on the silk duvet.

  Groggy, she sat up and rubbed her sore wrists. Beside her lay the concierge’s blue wash bucket, half full of water. A grim reminder. But the rest of the office looked untouched.

  Last night floated back to her—that voice, those large hands ripping her hair, plunging her head in the bucket. Her roots tingled. She remembered the deadline, passing out, then coming to, alone, her hands untied, wet and shivering on the floor. The office in darkness. Her head throbbing, knees weak. Remembered phoning her concierge to keep Miles Davis for the night. What else? Beside her, on the silk duvet, a page of notes she’d jotted down last night before she’d passed out again.

  She heard footsteps on the landing outside. They were coming back. Controlling her panic, she crawled across the office floor to her desk.

  A stab of nausea hit her as she grabbed the desk drawer. Her hand slipped. Tried again, yanked it open and felt her Beretta.

  Leduc Detective’s frosted-pane door opened, bringing a gust of lemon-polish-tinged air. Saj entered wearing a neck brace, dreads twisted in a ponytail, army jacket over his stained muslin shirt. His habitual grin faded when he saw her.

  “I’m all in one piece, Aimée,” he said, “but it doesn’t look like you are. Mind putting the gun down?”

  She wanted to run to Saj and hug him. Instead she laid the Beretta in the drawer by her mascara. “You’re all right, Saj?”

  “Apart from a strained tendon. I’ll live,” Saj nodded. Winced. “Zut! Whatever magic happened at the Serb’s autopsy made my day.”

  Serge had come through.

  “Ready for more good news?” she said through a wave of dizziness.

  “To prepare me for the bad?”

  “Something like that,” she managed before everything slipped away and went dark.

  SHE’D COME TO later, then fortified herself with a double espresso and a fresh brioche from Saj’s foray to the boulangerie. Halfway through a second double espresso, queasiness rose in her stomach again, and a bitter taste filled her mouth. She pushed the demitasse away.

  “You’re still reacting to the drugs,” Saj said. “You’ll have to take it easy today, Aimée.”

  Then a wardrobe change in the back armoire: black leather leggings, ballet flats, retro Pucci silk tunic topped by a flounced jacket. Feeling slightly better, she finished filling Saj in.

  “At least I know I didn’t kill the Serb,” Saj said, sipping green tea next to her on the recamier. “This Feliks.”

  “The autopsy proves the Serb’s heart stopped before he fell on the windshield,” she said. “Hence your release.”

  “But the robbery and now the old man’s murder complicates everything, Aimée. Not a fait accompli,” Saj said. “I’m still on the hook.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The flics questioned me again and again last night—did I know this Yuri, asked about a painting, implying the accident was a screen for a getaway.”

  As usual, they gravitated toward the first person they met with any connection to the crime as a suspect. Sloppy police work.

  “You kept mum, right?”

  “Not difficult on painkillers,” he said. “But the last thing I want is to be a suspect in a robbery when they’ve dropped the manslaughter charge.”

  “That’s the least of your worries,” Aimée said. “Another Serb’s entered the equation and knows your identity.”

  “Your friend the nurse warned me,” Saj said.

  Nora had come through.

  But now what? The Serb asking after Saj didn’t know Saj hadn’t killed Feliks—and if everyone who’d warned Aimée to stay away from Serbs was right, that could be a deadly misunderstanding. Meanwhile, she still had a dead man’s money. Yuri had hired her to track down that painting, and so many other people were after it, she knew she had to move fast.

  She was tied up in this thing, past the point of just walking away. Someone had broken into her office to torture her for information about the painting. For her own safety, she needed to find the thing, or at least figure out who was behind the theft. Decide whether she wanted to turn the whole thing over to the authorities, whether they could even protect her or would only get in her way. Whether she’d be putting them on the trail of her missing mother, a wanted woman.

  Aimée needed advice. She reached for her cell phone, hit speed dial. Then realized René wouldn’t answer. Stupid. She clicked off. Get a grip. Helm the ship, step up—all those trite phrases, but she better follow one. Focus on helping Saj deal with this.

  “I need more green tea.”

  On the espresso machine he pressed the steamer button, held a cup under as the vapor whooshed out. Pensive, he sat back down next to her on the recamier.

  “So the Serb’s brother, or partner or whoever, didn’t find the painting that night, came back and tortured the old man to find it?”

  Her hands shook. “I thought the same.” Sadness filled her. “Yesterday Yuri asked for my help. Then changed his mind. I wish I knew why.”

  Saj took off his neck brace. Did a cautious neck roll. “Something tells me there’s more,” he said.

  “Luebet the art dealer ‘falls’ on the Métro tracks, but that doesn’t explain what he’d left behind at the musée.”

  She showed Saj the photo, the envelope with the note, M—Find it this time.

  “I’d say there are more crooks in the pot, Aimée. Bad ones.”

  Made sense.

  “There’s something I’m not seeing,” she said.

  “What about Oleg? You think he could have held his stepfather under the water to make him reveal the location?”

  She thought. Shook her head. “Oleg didn’t tell me everything. But a murderer? Besides, he claims he told Yuri to hide the painting until it was appraised.”

  “Didn’t Yuri tell the world? Must have been lots of interested people. You’re talking a Modigliani, Aimée.”

  “Of the four who I know saw it, two have been murdered. Oleg has a buyer and he thought I had the painting. Or so he said.”

  Saj moved to his tatami mat, set down his tea, and opened his laptop.

  Aimée related more of what happened—about seeing the Serb’s Levi’s jacket button on Yuri’s floor, the blood smear on the pantry wall, Serge pointing out the telltale br
uises on the Serb’s corpse.

  “Sounds like a fight.” Saj sipped his tea. “Perfect timing, with the old man out.”

  “But it bothers me why, if he worried over the security, he left me cash and an urgent note, but accepted a dinner invitation and left a Modigliani in the broom closet.”

  Saj shrugged. “Put that aside for now. Go back to the Serb. He comes in to get the painting, but someone else beat him to it. They fight, the painting snatcher escapes. Let’s go on the assumption the Serb wasn’t the only one searching for the Modigliani,” Saj said. “Luebet for starters. Do you think Luebet could have been the one to hire the Serb?”

  Aimée shook her head. “It’s possible, but then who is ‘M’? The Serb’s name was Feliks, and besides, he was already dead. So who was Luebet’s note to?”

  Saj pondered for a moment, then began to tick off fingers. “Oleg and Damien both knew about the painting, and might have tried to steal it. Piotr Volodya’s concierge knew there was a painting, maybe a valuable one, although probably not where Yuri would have kept it, and you don’t suspect her. Perhaps Madame Natasha, although you think she’s too paranoid to tell anyone. And the neighbor, Madame Figuer, she knew Yuri had come into something, but you don’t think she knew it was a painting. Do we know of anyone else who might be involved?”

  Aimée hesitated, knowing the more Saj knew, the more dangerous it was for him. But then the Serb had already found his name.

  So she told him about her mother. The deadline.

  The color drained from Saj’s face.

  “We’re installing an alarm system. Now.” Saj picked up the phone. “My friend wires security systems.” He paused. Fingered his beads.

  “Did your mother torture Yuri?”

  And for a moment she couldn’t answer.

  Her own mother, a supposed terrorist gone rogue. Aimée kept coming back to her mother’s scent, muguet, which she had recognized at Yuri’s. That scent that clung to the wool sweater her mother forgot in a drawer. The sweater Aimée slept with until she was ten, when her father discovered and burned it.

  Conflicting emotions swirled. Love and pain.

  Saj punched in some numbers on his phone. He organized an appointment quickly and turned back to her.

  “You ready to answer, Aimée?” he said. “Do you know if it was your mother who tortured Yuri?”

  “We’re not exactly close, Saj.” Her hands shook.

  “According to Yuri, he ‘owed your mother,’ non?”

  “If she brokered Yuri a deal, why murder him?” she said. “The goons see me as the link to her. Bait. But they’re wrong. The Modigliani is the bait.”

  “What do you mean?”

  The stakes had risen—this threat, the deadline. “We’re all ensnared. I need the Modigliani.”

  “Et alors? By what logic?”

  “The painting’s my only shot to find her.”

  “Does she want you involved? Non, think about why.” Saj blew air from his mouth. “Have you any idea what she’s like now?”

  If she’d ever known. Aimée felt a shiver run down her spine.

  “And our work, the business?”

  “Maxence and I have survived so far,” she said. “The kid scored two contracts yesterday.”

  That stopped him. Saj shook his head, his dreads coming loose.

  “Good idea to alarm the office, Saj,” she said.

  “So Maxence stays as intern?” He pointed to the neat piles of proposals, invoices, the color-coded files.

  “René’s star pupil. A go-getter. Brilliant.” Almost too brilliant. “Why not? One thing less for us to worry about.”

  Saj sipped. “But there’s one thing I don’t get.”

  “Only one?” Right now she was bobbing like a cork in a flooded gutter.

  “Old Piotr’s living on charity for twenty years in the Russian nursing home. Why? When he stored a priceless painting in the cellar?”

  She’d wondered the same thing. “Piotr’s letter shows it carried a sentimental meaning. He counted both men, Lenin and Modigliani, as friends. He wanted Yuri, his son, to have it. But …” She chewed her pencil. “Could he have sold off other art over the years, then forgotten this one?”

  “Forget a Modigliani?”

  “Alzheimer’s, or dementia. I don’t know.”

  “Who would let him ‘forget’ this if they knew it existed?”

  Good point. She doubted Natasha would have understood the painting’s value, with that silly red rock on her finger—wait. What if the ring was real, after all?

  She had to put herself back on track. “Say he’d kept this for the son he abandoned. He’s guilt-ridden in his later years, like he writes in the journal.…”

  “But would guilt have been enough of a reason to hang onto a valuable painting while he was living in poverty?” Saj interjected. “My grandfather sold his Rembrandt before he gave up his race horses, Aimée. Off-loaded his Picassos to repair the roof. Kept the Rodin to pay for my sister’s debutante cotillon.”

  Open-mouthed, she stared at Saj. “I had no idea.”

  “And they wonder why I visit only once a year,” he said with a little smile. “Moldy tapestries and crumbling châteaux aren’t my thing. Or those living in the past who expect me to recoup their lost fortune and carry on the family name.”

  Saj never talked about his aristo background.

  Aimée’s phone vibrated in her pocket. The men who had threatened her last night? Her fingers shook as she hit answer.

  “You left a message for Lieutenant Michel Olivant,” said a man’s voice. “He’s en vacances.”

  Michel, her contact in the art squad.

  “You’re handling Michel’s cases?”

  Pause. “I assume you have info on the Cézanne?”

  Cézanne?

  “I didn’t get your name,” she said, trying to stall. Come up with something.

  “Raphael Dombasle.”

  Her mind went back to meeting with Michel last year, the photos of him and his unit lining his office. “Of course, Michel’s partner.”

  “We work on a team.” His tone was brusque.

  “Monsieur Dombasle, we need to talk.”

  “Concerning the Cézanne?”

  Pause. The clink of silverware, the blare of a horn.

  “No Cézanne, eh? Make a report, Mademoiselle,” he said, bored. “I’ve got fifty cases on my desk right now.”

  “But this involves a homicide.”

  “That’s Brigade Criminelle turf,” he said, businesslike. In a rush. Like all of them. “We’re overloaded with cases, desolé. I’m due at Thirty-Six in fifteen minutes.”

  “Thirty-Six,” as they all referred to it, was 36 quai des Orfèvres. But across the street from 3 rue de Lutèce, where the art theft division of the BRB, Brigade de Répression du Banditisme, shared the building with the RG, Renseignements Généraux, the domestic intelligence. Not her favorite people.

  Before she could say Modigliani, Dombasle had rung off.

  Saj sat on his tatami mat, scrolling through files on his laptop. “The kid’s good, Aimée.” He nodded in appreciation at the neatly stacked work on her desk. “Got us up to speed. Gives me time to work on the new project.”

  “René trained him,” she said. “We couldn’t hope for better.”

  Saj turned his neck, stretched. “The Serb bothers me, Aimée. I feel disturbed auras.”

  “More than disturbed auras, Saj,” she said. “Yet I don’t know what.”

  “Then find out.”

  Yes, she could do this. She wasn’t lost at sea without René anymore; the office wheels were now running with irritating efficiency thanks to Maxence. And Saj was back on board. Thank God. Now she had to get to the bottom of this so he no longer had to fear vengeance from the Serbian mafia, and so she could clear her guilty conscience about Yuri, who had needed her help and ended up dead—possibly at her mother’s hands.

  In her bones she knew that, like a bloodstain, the traces of
this tragedy wouldn’t disappear.

  DOWN ON RUE du Louvre, she stopped at the newspaper kiosk. “Anything earth-shattering, Marcel?” Aimée handed Marcel, the one-armed Algerian vet, two francs. In return he handed her a morning copy of Le Parisien.

  “Et voilà, in the seventh month of the Princess Diana inquiry, the lead investigator reveals … the investigation continues.” Marcel shrugged. “Rumors of the Russians reneging on aerospace contracts at the trade show.” He gestured to the line of limos parked on rue de Rivoli. “At least the oligarchs’ wives don’t renege on their shopping sprees.”

  The scent of the budding plane trees mingled with diesel exhaust from the Number 75 bus on rue du Louvre.

  “No strikes today, Marcel?”

  “Only one, the TGV.”

  Good thing she hadn’t planned a railroad trip. “Mind taking Miles Davis to the groomer’s and dog sitting tonight?”

  A flicker crossed Marcel’s face. “Hot date?”

  She wished. “The glam life, Marcel. Work.”

  Ten minutes later, she reached the corner café on Île de la Cité frequented by flics and administrators. A few doors down stood 3 rue de Lutèce. An anonymous door, no sign. Nothing to indicate the nest of vipers working here.

  Notre Dame’s bell chimed. Right on time, a tall man in his late twenties rose from the café table, grabbed a briefcase, and took a few steps. She recognized him from the photo Michel kept on his desk.

  “Raphael Dombasle?” she said. “I’m Aimée Leduc, Michel’s friend.”

  “How did you know that …?”

  “Forgive me, you’re in a hurry,” she said. “Let’s talk while we walk.”

  “Try taking no for answer, Mademoiselle,” he said. “I need to brief them on the dossier for tomorrow’s hearing. The lawyer’s got thirty minutes.…”

  “A Modigliani’s worth more than a Cézanne. I checked. Especially one that’s been hidden for seventy years.”

  Dombasle’s shoulders jerked. “What’s your name again?”

  “Aimée Leduc, détective privé.”

  He glanced at his sports watch. “Give me thirty-five minutes. But it better be worth it.”

  She nodded. “Back here.” She pointed to the café table he’d risen from.