by Cara Black
“Would this discovery put him in danger?”
Huby blinked. ”What? This is an academic treatise. What danger could publication here pose for the professor?”
Did Huby’s ambitions extend to claiming equal credit for Benoît’s findings, Aimée wondered.
“Granted, but Professeur Benoît was murdered.”
Huby’s jaw dropped. “Murdered? But I thought, an accident. . . .”
“No accident, Monsieur. Murder.” She watched him. “Didn’t you know? Didn’t the police interview you this morning?”
“They told us. . . .” Realization dawned in his eyes. “You’re not from the school. . . .”
“Where were you this morning, Assistant Professeur Huby?”
“This morning? Why, at the dentist. I’d lost a filling.” His eyes narrowed in suspicion. “But why all these questions? Who are you?”
“Aimée Leduc, private detective,” she said. “I’m sorry. I should have told you the truth. I’m looking for a woman called Mireille.”
“Assistant Professeur Huby?” A smiling, petite woman wearing red-framed glasses stood at the lab door. “Elise Cadet, from the science department. Sorry I’m late.” She strode into the lab and glanced around the room. “Fantastic lab facilities. Mind showing me around?”
Aimée realized she could learn no more now. She leaned close to Huby. “Can you meet me later?”
“I’ve got to give an interview to a real journalist.”
“Here’s my card.” She put it in his hand. “It’s vital. Please.”
The microscope with its tiny brightly lit slide sat on the counter. But what could she do with a slide? “I’ll take this journal with me, if you don’t mind?” she told Huby. And then she felt a whoosh of air as he strode away to meet the real journalist.
Leaving by the back door, she followed the crumbling outer steps into a small rear courtyard. In front of her stood a two-story atelier, its glass roof half-covered by fallen leaves. The atelier’s tall windows revealed a spine of bones hanging from the ceiling. An elephant or dinosaur? She didn’t know. But she did recognize the crossbeams framing the structure. Aza-cca Benoît had stood here with his pig skeletons in the journal photo.
So far, according to Darquin, a secretive Benoît had left Mireille an envelope. The timing was right for Mireille to have had the envelope with her when she appeared at Aimée’s office. Huby had revealed that Benoît had made a discovery regarding pigs, and also that he’d let Mireille stay, on the quiet, in the gatehouse where Aimée had found his body.
She had to learn more.
The atelier was cool. Lab coats hung on a rack next to a box of disposble white net mouth masks. She donned a mask and took a lab coat embroidered with the word TECHNICIAN. She expected more state-of-the-art equipment, but found another nineteenth-century gallery filled with skeletal specimens on tables. Boxes, boxes everywhere. Where to begin?
She heard grunting, the sounds of cardboard sliding, and saw a cardboard box moving across the floor.
“Excusez-moi,” she said. “Someone there?”
No answer.
She edged past the skull of a rhinoceros and saw a small blonde woman heaving a large box onto a table.
“Madame?”
Still no answer. Talk about unhelpful staff! And rude.
The woman looked up, her face flushed. “Un moment.” She took a flesh-colored plug attached to a wire from her lab coat pocket.
She removed her face mask and adjusted the plug in her right ear. “May I help you?”
Hard of hearing? Or totally deaf. Not from old age: the woman was fairly young and attractive.
“Professeur Benoît worked here, non?” Aimée said, pronouncing the words with care.
“I read lips, too. Face me and you can talk at normal speed.”
Abashed, Aimée paused. She pulled the mask away from her mouth. “I’m sorry, and I can see you’re busy, Madame.”
“Wait a minute, it’s a new hearing aid. I’ll adjust the volume.”
Aimée waited while she fiddled with a knob.
“Madame, I’m looking for Professeur Benoît’s work area.” She displayed the page of the journal with Benoît’s photo.
“I’ve never seen you before.” The woman cocked her head. “Where do you work?”
Aimée thought fast. “Physical sciences division at ENS. Dr. Rady, the department head, sent me over. It’s urgent.”
“Urgent? Why?”
“All I know is that instead of cancelling Professeur Benoît’s seminar, Dr. Rady contacted a substitute,” Aimée said. “But Dr. Rady needs the notes of the professor’s lab findings. I guess he figures this will help the person who’s taking over the seminar.”
“No one told me.”
She’d keep the story vague. There was no way she could come up with details if this woman persisted. She had to hurry before the woman got more suspicious and checked.
Aimée shrugged. “They just recruited me. It’s not my job, I assist in the lab.” She shook her head. “Kind of strange. And it’s so abrupt, but Dr. Rady stressed its urgency.” She paused looking at the woman, questioning her with her eyes. “Has something happened?”
“You don’t know?” The name tag on her lab coat read “DR. SEVERAT.”
“Dr. Severat, I’m just a gofer. If you could help me, I need to get the files to Dr. Rady as soon as possible.”
“But the professor’s dead.”
Aimée could have sworn the women’s eyes welled with tears. For a moment, she sensed her relationship with Benoît had been more personal than collegial.
“I’m so sorry, I had no idea.”
“The police poked around and took his things.”
Merde . . . the flics had beaten her to it.
Dr. Severat wiped the corner of her eye. “The professor assembled specimens here. Like that one.” She dusted her hands on her lab coat and pointed to a pig skeleton. “He examined bones, as well as tissue and organ specimens.”
“Did you work with him?”
“Me? I’m in paleontology research; ‘in the next barn,’ as we say.”
“But I can’t go back empty-handed,” Aimée pleaded. “I don’t know what to do.”
Dr. Severat looked at her watch. “Zut! The university van’s arriving any minute to pick this up. I wish I could help you, but I’ve got to move this box next door.” She expelled a breath of air.
“Two can do more than one,” Aimée said. “Let me help.”
“You’re sure?”
She’d get more information if she stuck with this woman. “Glad to.”
By the time they’d lugged the box across the gravel path, a sheen of perspiration dampened her brow. “This feels like it contains rocks.”
“Actually, it’s paleolithic-era volcanic stone embedded with shells and early marine fossils,” said Dr. Severat.
Aimée felt new respect for scientific staff who had to lug their own prehistoric samples.
“I know your work’s important,” Aimée said, wondering how to turn the conversation back to Benoît.
“All scientists regard their work as important, as vital to society.” A look of amusement flitted across her features. “Here we investigate fossils, bones, to find out what happened thousands, millions of years ago,” she said. “This helps us discover things like how continents were formed and why the Ice Age ended, and shows prehistoric links to contemporary species. But Professeur Benoît’s work was different. It was directly related to the present day. He lived for his work. It was all that mattered to him. It consumed him.” She gave a shrug. “But in the grand scheme of life, well, I don’t know.”
How did pigs matter, Aimée wanted to ask. How could research into pig anatomy “consume” a scientist?
“You know, he came from Haiti, a poor country,” Dr. Severat said.
The poorest, Aimée thought. And she remembered Edouard saying the same thing.
“He tried to make a difference.” Dr. Severat’s
face clouded. “And now. . . .”
The waiting van backed up with a beeping sound.
Dr. Severat paused in the shade, took the clipboard from the truck driver, and signed.
“Dr. Severat, one more thing, if you don’t mind?” Aimée said.
Dr. Severat adjusted the small knob behind her ear. “Sorry. That’s better.”
”I have a name. Mireille. Does that sound familiar? His assistant, perhaps? Anything you know would help me.”
Dr. Severat gave a brittle laugh. “That one, an assistant?”
Aimée’s ears perked up. “I’m not sure, but. . . .”
“A hanger-on.”
Aimée detected jealousy in her voice.
“He felt responsible for people from his country; he was sorry for them. She had no papers and, like so many, she took advantage of him.”
“In what way?”
“I don’t know exactly. Any way she could.”
“Since Dr. Rady wrote her name down, I should try and find her.” Aimée hoped that sounded plausible.
“Good luck. She disappeared after the fight.”
“Fight?” Aimée hoped the shock didn’t show in her voice.
“I’ve told you what I know.” Dr. Severat stuck her pen back in her lab coat pocket.
“I know it’s not your problem, but my job’s on the line. I’m only on probation. I mean, after. . . .” She searched for what to say, how to engage this woman woman’s sympathy and enlist her aid. “My boyfriend kicked me out. But I stopped drinking, got in a program. Started a new life. I need to prove to Dr. Rady that I can do the job. I’ll do menial things, any-thing he asks me.”
The chirp of birds came from the bushes.
“He sent me here for Dr. Benoît’s notes. Dr. Severat, I’m just running to try and stay in place.”
And those were the truest words she’d spoken so far.
No answer. She didn’t know what else to do.
“I’m sorry,” Aimée said. “You’re busy.”
Aimée turned to leave.
“That Mireille can’t help you,” Dr. Severat said. She stepped forward. “The flics questioned me. I’ll tell you what I told them.” Her eyes flashed now. “She’s a little schemer. They had a heated discussion. Right there.” She pointed back to the lab they’d come from. “But they spoke . . . some patois, Kreyòl, I think. I didn’t understand, I couldn’t read their lips. But they were arguing, I could tell that much from their body language.”
So Mireille had argued with the professor. And later, Aimée had discovered his body in the storeroom where, according to Huby, he’d let Mireille stay. It didn’t look good.
“That’s not much use to you, I know. But you helped me. And well, we should help each other when we can, right?” For a moment, humanity shone in her eyes. “Professeur Benoît’s locker’s in that lab where we met. The flics left after they questioned me. Far as I know, his papers will still be there.”
Guilt flooded Aimée at having misled this kind woman.
“Merci,” she said. “I am very grateful to you.”
She made her way over the gravel and back to the anatomy building. After searching, she found a small room containing wooden lockers and a file cabinet. She looked around.
Each locker bore a name. The third said PROF AB. At last! But it was locked.
She took the Swiss Army knife from her bag, inserted the tip, and jiggled it. On the second try, it opened. She heard footsteps crunching the gravel. There was no time to go through the contents, so she scooped everything into her bag. Including a lab coat.
Voices came from the courtyard. Her heart sank.
She closed the locker and waited behind the door. The foot-steps came closer. Two people were in conversation. She heard them enter the laboratory. They were right outside the door.
“Professeur Benoît worked in here, Mademoiselle Cadet. . . .” Huby’s voice droned.
Frantic, she looked around the small room. No other door. No way out.
A high oval window emitted slants of light. Too high to reach, unless. . . .
She stepped on the chair next to the lockers, hitched up her dress, reached her arms and elbows over the locker’s top edge, and hoisted herself up. Her knee banged against it as she struggled to lift her body. Once on top, she half-crouched, lifted the old brass latch, and edged through the cobwebbed window opening. Her second window egress in two days.
“Pardonnez-moi,” Huby said. “I heard something fall in the back room. Let me check.”
Aimée dove through the window, praying no rocks were below. Airborne, she stuck out her hands and let herself fall. She toppled onto thorny branches and came up with a mouthful of dirt, cobwebs streaking her hair. Her bag strap was skewed around her shoulders. Birds scattered, fluttering in alarm.
A shout came from the window.
She staggered to her feet and ran like hell.
Tuesday Noon
LÉONIE OBIN STRUGGLED against her dream, fighting the rhythm of beating drums despite the sticky spilled cane-sugar liquor coating her hands. She tried to turn away from the beads hanging from the skeletal neck of Baron Samedi, his black top hat bobbing in the dance of death. Inviting her, non, insisting that she join him. So easy, yes, now to follow him. Succumb, and take the black-beaded necklace he offered her. Like wisps of smoke, the dream faded. A white light spread inside her throbbing head. Léonie shuddered. Bone-numbing tiredness weighed her down.
She opened her eyes and found her feet tucked under a blanket as she lay on the brocaded divan. She’d collapsed again. Someone had taken pity on her and. . . . Then last night came back to her.
Edouard, those men, and then it all grew dim. The weakness took over. Her thoughts clouded . . . the image she sought kept slipping away.
Each day, her illness worsened. The clinic doctor said her memory would be the last to go, once her brain was involved. Agitated, she stared at the painting. The frame was askew. The safe . . . more came back to her . . . she remembered. Fear clutched her as she recalled those black-hooded men and Edouard ransacking the safe. Stealing the bank account records.
Maria Madonna and Ogoun help me.
She must have spoken aloud. Someone stood by her side; a vague outline of a head came into view. She tried to focus.
“Madame Léonie, you work too much.”
A clucking sound. “Second morning this week I find you sleeping here. Are you all right?” Now there was concern in the voice. Marie’s voice. Marie was the cleaning lady. Her short brown hair and wrinkled face became clear as well as the scarred furrows of flesh that descended from under her ear down her neck. She was a burn victim. Marie’s scars put others off. But Léonie had felt the energy, the purity in her heart. Ogoun felt it too.
A wave of lucidity washed over her. Familiar things appeared; her desk, her jacket draped over a chair. It was as if she’d returned to the land of the living. And for a purpose.
By the time Marie brought a tray with lemon tea, the haziness in her brain had subsided. Léonie held the Sèvres cup handle, and not a drop spilled into the saucer.
“Madame Léonie, I came early to clean up from last night,” said Marie. “But you’re so pale, let me help you.”
The Madonna, St. George on his rearing horse, spear in hand, and Ogoun, the warrior, had let her come back. The warrior. Let her come back for a reason. Now it grew clear. Even if Edouard knew the system, legal roadblocks would stall his bank ac-count search. She’d make sure of that.
But in her clumsiness she’d alerted Edouard to the existence of Benoît’s research file. Her fault. She had to reach Benoît before Edouard did.
“Marie, my medicaments, in the drawer, please.”
Her strength ebbed and flowed like a sluggish river. She’d take her time . . . time she didn’t have, as her body rebelled. She injected the anti-viral cocktail, swallowed the black paste pellets from the healer, leaned back and tried to take deep breaths. Let her body absorb them, let these things battle
inside her and hope they won. The effects of the potent mix lasted a day, two days at most.
She slept. This time restfully, without dreams or visitations.
By mid-afternoon, she’d managed to change into the dress she kept in the closet and apply rouge to hide her pallor. She folded the one bank statement they hadn’t discovered, next to her will, in her handbag.
She reached for the hated cane. Another sign of weakness. The knob was a carved goat bone, in the shape of a leering mouth. It was her only remnant of Edouard’s uncle, besides the illness he’d given her.
Fatigue hit her again. But she couldn’t succumb. Wouldn’t. As a young woman in Port-au-Prince, she’d started down this trail of lies and now it had grown out of proportion. She had nothing to lose, but Edouard did.
“Call a taxi for me, Marie, if you’d be so kind.”
She’d take care of this; she should have done it years ago. Her legs buckled and she gripped the cane.
Her juju . . . she felt for it around her neck. Gone. Edouard had taken it.
“Madame?” Marie smiled, her work-worn hands folding her apron. “I’m glad you feel better; it’s good you go out. And how nice you look.”
She needed her juju. What if Edouard had tossed it away?
“Marie, I think I dropped something on the floor.”
Marie bent down, embarrassing Léonie for a moment . . . a French woman on her hands and knees for her. “You mean your earring?”
“It’s like a sachet, Marie. A small pouch.”
“Non, Madame, nothing. I don’t see it.”
“Désolée, Marie. . . .”
“For what, Madame Léonie?” Marie stood. “You gave me this job. No one else would hire me. The staff don’t treat you right, Madame. Of course, that’s not for me to say.”
“We promised not to go through this again, Marie.”
She nodded, her face now a mask. “Nothing on the floor, Madame.”
The taxi waited. But she couldn’t go without her juju.
She looked at the clock. She had to go now before the place closed.
“Madame, I hear something; there’s a call on your cell phone.”
Léonie took the phone from Marie and hit the button.
