Murder in Bel-Air

by Cara Black

  She told him about everything: the playgroup, the waiter in the café, seeing the homeless woman’s perfectly pedicured foot, no word from her mother, overhearing the suit from foreign intelligence, her conversation with the nun.

  “Tant pis,” René said. “How do you know this belongs to the dead woman?”

  She didn’t. Yet a feeling in her bones told her it did.

  “Why not give it to the police?”

  “There was a message inside.”

  “Telling you to take it?” René shook his head. “What is this, some kind of setup?”

  “Too complicated, René. I was going to give it to Sister Agnès, but a man showed up and started arguing with her. She motioned for me to get out of there.”

  “So she knows you have it.”

  Aimée nodded, although she wasn’t actually sure. “But if a woman was killed for this . . .”

  “How much is there?”

  Her shoulders sagged. She curled up on the recamier. “Three hundred thousand US dollars. And a key.”

  René spilled his drink. “So you think the homeless woman might have acted as a courier, stolen this money instead of delivering it, then hidden out in the convent?”

  “I didn’t say any of that!” But it made her think. “This key means something.”

  “How’s your mother involved?”

  “Like I’d know. But what if she’s in danger from the same people who killed this Genelle?”

  Where was her mother? The litany of her childhood. Some things never changed.

  “Don’t get mixed up in this.” René sat next to her on the recamier, his short legs dangling. His brows knit in worry. “Look at you; you’re exhausted. Go see the neurologist tomorrow.”

  Did she look that bad? The dull thud of a headache, which she’d tried to ignore, intensified. Right then, all she wanted to do was take a Doliprane and sleep.

  “Didn’t the neurologist insist you take it slow, ease back in? Après tout, you’re just back in the office,” said René. “Return the money. Let them deal with it.”

  “Mais bien sûr,” she said. “I can’t keep it. I don’t want one franc. But I need to do the right thing. Figure it out, give it to the right people. And then there’s this.”

  She handed him the envelope.

  “Grand Hôtel d’Abidjan,” he said, reading. “What is this, a code?”

  She thought of the stacks of bills, banded neatly. It felt like a pro job. She recalled how quickly DGSE had uncovered the victim’s identity. “What if she wasn’t killed for the money, but for something else?”

  Tuesday, Early Morning

  “You’re up early, Leduc.” On the other end of the phone, Morbier, her godfather, cleared his throat.

  “Early’s relative when you have a bébé.” She leaned over the crib, phone between cheek and shoulder, and picked up Chloé, who was sopping wet after a major diaper leak.

  “Is Chloé all right?” Morbier called himself Chloé’s great-godfather, as if that were a real thing.

  “Fine.” Aimée tickled her daughter’s toes amidst wiping her down and changing her diaper. A squeal of laughter. “Hear that? If only she didn’t wake up every day at dawn.”

  Aimée had hardly slept. Nightmares about her mother and that money had kept waking her. What did the key open?

  She stifled a yawn. “We need to talk.”

  “I’m listening, Leduc.”

  “Not on the phone,” she said. “Where do you live now?”

  He gave her his new address. From the hallway, she heard Babette’s cheery ‘bonjour.’

  “Twenty minutes,” Aimée said. “Please have a coffee waiting for me.”

  She pulled the previous day’s little black Chanel from the armoire and reworked it—the beauty of a classic—adding pearls and a vintage pink-and-charcoal-nubbed wool jacket. Threw tights, makeup, and extra heels in her bag, grabbed her laptop and tech conference materials.

  Minutes later, after kissing Chloé, ruffling her bichon frise Miles Davis’s ears, and issuing Babette last-minute instructions for zoo tickets, Aimée was gunning her scooter over the Pont Sully, just making the traffic light.

  “Is she back to her old tricks, Morbier?”

  She searched her godfather’s sharp gaze, those dark, droopy eyes that reminded her of a basset hound’s. A retired police commissaire, Morbier never missed a thing.

  “Who, Leduc? You need to spell it out for an old invalid like me.”

  Morbier sat under a wool blanket in his wheelchair. The wheelchair she’d put him in when she’d gotten him shot. But she couldn’t think about that.

  “My mother, who else?” she said. “She promised me she’d walked away from her old life.”

  Morbier snorted. “I can’t keep up with my rehab appointments, much less Sydney Leduc.”

  Like she believed that. “You were always in ‘discreet’ contact with her. Why wouldn’t you be now?”

  “Why would we be in discreet contact when we can just talk in the open? No more need for secrecy.”

  Right.

  The morning light settled over the twelfth-century courtyard, penetrating the crooks and corners of old stone. Morbier’s new digs in an old metalsmith’s atelier had a lot going for them: it was an easy-access rez-de-chaussée on the ground floor with good lighting and a glass ceiling and lively artisan neighbors in the three-courtyard-deep cour d’industrie. Ideal, considering the working-class roots he boasted about.

  “I needed that,” she said, after downing the steaming espresso from the demitasse he’d handed her. She looked around. A tousled duvet over a daybed, a galley-style kitchen. On a desk, thick files that looked suspiciously like old cases.

  “How about another?” she said, handing him back the demitasse. “So my head can function properly. You know, I’d call this place très charmant.”

  “Vraiment? You like it, Leduc?”

  What did it matter what she liked?

  It mattered that he was finally able to function on his own in his wheelchair.

  “Parfait for you, Morbier,” she said. “A café around the corner, the market a few blocks away, and your rehab at Hôpital Saint-Antoine practically across the rue.” She paused, guilt washing over her. “What’s wrong, Morbier?”

  He shook his head. His hair was stone white, his thick brows salt and pepper. “Call yourself a detective, Leduc?” Morbier sipped his coffee, noticed her look. His sagging jowls stretched in a grin. “Tout va bien. The carpenter next door’s installing a walkway for me. But that’s not why you came.”

  She took a breath. “Sydney’s missing, Morbier.”

  Those basset-hound eyes studied her. “Since when?”

  “She left Chloé at playgroup yesterday. Disappeared. They called me out of the conference; I thought there’d been an accident.”

  Morbier’s white-stubbled jaw clenched. “Very unlike her. She’d never leave Chloé.”

  Like she left me?

  She opened her mouth but knew she would sound like a child and bit her tongue. Hated feeling that way again, as she always did with Morbier. Always reverting to tantrums.

  All the feelings of abandonment she’d wrestled with for years resurfaced, with that familiar shame of not being enough. She’d almost put it behind her, until her mother walked back into her life. Only to leave again.

  As if he’d read her mind, Morbier said, “C’est différent, Leduc. All those years ago, she left to protect you.” He hit the button on the coffee grinder.

  When the machine was off again, she said, “I don’t know about that, Morbier.”

  She gave him an edited version of what had happened the day before, leaving out the baggie and what she’d done with it.

  “Sydney, volunteering at a convent?” he said. “She never struck me as the Christian type.”
/>   “I need to find her, Morbier.” And he could help. He was retired but had maintained his contacts and remained very plugged into the police force, as was hinted by those files piled on his desk.

  “You think she tells me her agenda? She could be anywhere. Got more lives than a cat.”

  He had that right.

  “Something’s wrong, Morbier,” she said. “Help me find out who this Germaine Tillion is and how foreign intelligence identified her within two hours.”

  His eyes were unreadable. “That’s persimmons and onions.”

  Thinking about the combination made her wince. “What does that mean? Two things that have nothing to do with each other?”

  “Exactement. I served with the police, not with spooks.”

  She tried to put it together. “My mother’s ex-CIA.”

  “Wouldn’t surprise me,” he said.

  Of course he knew. He would never talk about it.

  “You still know people who know people,” she said.

  “A long shot, Leduc.”

  She took the second demitasse he proffered to her. Dropped in brown sugar cubes. He never had white ones—too bourgeois.

  Aimée downed the espresso. “Please, Morbier, she’s in danger. There’s an intelligence agent, Daniel Lacenaire”—she hoped she’d read the name right on the card he’d given Sister Agnès—“sniffing around. I can’t track her down without . . .” She paused. Her mother was still a suspected spy, a former terrorist. “Without bringing attention to her.”

  A shake of his white-haired head. “Better you don’t look, Leduc. She’d tell you if she wanted you to know where she was.”

  Had her mother known about the money? It wasn’t chump change. But Aimée didn’t trust Morbier enough to tell him about the cash.

  “What if she can’t?” she asked.

  “You’re between a rock and a hard spot, eh?” He reached for a shopping bag. Released the handbrake on his wheelchair. “Push me over the cobbles, Leduc,” he said, “and hand me my jacket.”

  It wasn’t like him to acknowledge his limitations.

  As she complied, she asked, “You’ll help me, ask around? Get details on Daniel Lacenaire?”

  “With the DGSE?”

  So he did know him.

  She nodded.

  “Only on the condition you prioritize your child and stay out of your mother’s business. Oh, and bring my great-goddaughter over for madeleines. Keep to that bargain, and stay out of it.”

  That was his price? Like she could keep that promise. But she nodded. She hefted her bag onto her shoulder.

  “You’re just back at work and look like hell, Leduc.”

  Complimentary, as always. But that was the second time she’d heard that in so many days. Noticed something in his eyes.

  “You know more than you’re letting on, Morbier.”

  His return gaze read, So do you.

  Stay out of it? Not Aimée. She was wired differently.

  All the way to her scooter, her mind spun. Sydney Leduc had given up all her old work. Hadn’t she?

  Tuesday, Early Morning

  On the second day of the tech conference, the theme was “Tech in the New Millennium.” The first event was coffee-and-brioche schmoozing at nine. She still had plenty of time. She would stop by Square Courteline to revisit the playgroup. Question the waiter who knew her mother.

  Already fortified by caffeine, she made it to the café in five minutes. Yellow leaves fluttered over the bandstand, gauze clouds drifted in the sky, and the sun warmed the brisk air. The last gasp of mild autumn before the November chill.

  The day before, she hadn’t paid any attention to the café’s vintage movie posters or the fifties pinball machine that blinked as it lit up. On the gleaming zinc counter were a basket of croissants, a wire holder full of hard-boiled eggs, and a saltshaker.

  The young waitress who had been so distraught the previous day was slapping orange halves into a juicer. The trickle of pulpy juice gave off a tangy citrus aroma, reminding Aimée of visiting her grandmother down south, the orange groves and raspberry bushes of her childhood.

  “Bonjour,” Aimée said. “I’ll have a jus d’orange, s’il vous plaît.”

  No recognition flickered in the waitress’s eyes. Aimée had heard her name the previous afternoon—what was it?

  “That’s five francs,” the waitress said listlessly, setting down the tall glass of juice in a mechanical motion.

  This woman had seen the victim’s body. If Aimée could warm her up, she might be able to get some information.

  “Merci.” Aimée set down a ten-franc note that glimmered in the sunlight. Finally the name came to her. “Keep the change, Louise. Have one for yourself. Feeling better today?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “That was quite a shock yesterday,” said Aimée, desperate to draw her out. “I mean seeing that poor woman. I’m surprised you’re at work.”

  “I open for Jacques,” said Louise. “He attends daily mass.”

  One of the devout. Louise swiped the counter with a damp blue-checked cloth. Arcs of moisture trailed on the counter.

  “You told me you remembered serving my mother and Genelle,” Aimée said.

  “Did I?” Louise thought. “Genelle’s the one who . . . ?” Her voice trailed off. “Now I remember.” She looked away.

  “Tragic,” said Aimée, deciding to plunge in. “What did they talk about?”

  “Your mother takes the bébé to the playgroup, right? Ask her yourself.”

  “I would, Louise. But she hasn’t returned my calls; no one’s seen or heard from her since yesterday.”

  There, she’d blurted it out.

  Louise froze.

  “Louise, what if my mother . . . saw something, or the killer’s after her? I just don’t know.”

  “You think I do?” Louise shook her head. Her cheek muscles twitched. “Bon sang, had enough nightmares last night.”

  Poor Louise seemed traumatized by what she’d seen. She’d probably been trying to put it out of her mind.

  But Aimée couldn’t give up.

  “Me, too, Louise. I’m worried. Can you remember anything at all about their meetings here? What did they drink?”

  “Café crème, and warm milk for la bébé.” She said it by rote. “They always sat at station three.”

  “See, you remember,” said Aimée. “What would they talk about?”

  “I don’t listen in on customers. It’s unprofessional.”

  Too bad.

  “Bien sûr,” Aimée said. “Did anything strike you as unusual?”

  “For a homeless woman, she smelled okay. A lot of them don’t.”

  Aimée thought about the woman’s pedicure and sipped the juice. Thick, the way she liked it. The pulp stuck in her teeth. “The nun at the convent said my mother was trying to help Genelle find a job. Did you see them here yesterday?”

  Louise stacked demitasse cups. Shrugged. “Don’t think so.”

  But something in Louise’s tone told Aimée to probe further. “You remember something, don’t you?”

  “I thought I saw her outside . . . there, waiting on the pavement; I can’t remember when . . . but I’m not sure. If she came in, I didn’t see.”

  Had Genelle come to meet her mother and Sydney not shown up?

  “Anything else?” Aimée asked.

  Louise thought. “Nice tan—that’s what I thought at first. Not the spray-on kind. But then I realized she was a noisette . . .”

  The term for an espresso with a dollop of foamed milk. “What do you mean?”

  “You know, half-and-half.” Louise shrugged. “Part africaine.”

  Aimée thought back to the envelope with the Grand Hôtel d’Abidjan address. “Remember anything about her outfit?”
/>
  “What she wore?” Louise thought for a moment. “Old blue tracksuit, too big for her. Scruffy hair.” She turned back to the counter. “I don’t want to remember, okay?”

  Great.

  “Desolée, I know it’s hard, but one last question,” Aimée said. “Has anyone else been asking about her?”

  “Talk to Jacques.”

  Louise turned away to serve another client.

  Aimée left her card on the counter.

  Tuesday Morning

  Next door at the playgroup, the teacher frowned at Aimée while toddlers clamored and smeared finger paint on easels. A smell of spilled apple juice pervaded the space.

  “If this is about your daughter returning—”

  “Non, madame,” said Aimée. “I’ll make it quick. One question—what did my mother say to you before she left?”

  The teacher gave a disgusted shrug. “That’s just it, mademoiselle. Nothing. We found a note with the phone number to call for you. That’s unacceptable.”

  Aimée needed to placate this woman and try to get some useful information. “I understand. You have rules. I’m sorry to keep asking, but I’m desperate. Did you see her leave?”

  “My job is to work with the children, not babysit the adults. One of the mothers found the note on the bench and handed it to me.”

  “Is that mother here today?”

  “I’m busy, mademoiselle.”

  “Just one last question. What time was this?”

  “Before clay time.”

  “Which is?”

  The teacher threw her a look as if she were slow. “A little before three.”

  Aimée caught the gaze of a mother sitting on the bench between two toddlers hammering wooden nails. Was she the right woman? Only one way to find out.

  Aimée sat down on the bench. The woman had a swanlike neck and a noticeable drooping shoulder. “If I could take just one moment—did you see my mother, Chloé’s grandmother, yesterday?”

  The teacher shot them a dark look.

  “Briefly.” The woman shifted on the bench, looked uncomfortable. “Regardez, I’m here with my son; this isn’t a good time.”