Murder in Bel-Air

by Cara Black

  Tuesday, Early Evening

  “Back in a minute!” she yelled to Melac from the hallway, grabbing her penlight. She slid into ballet flats and ran down the flights of worn steps, across the courtyard, and out the heavy door.

  She almost ran into her downstairs neighbor, Monsieur Bonnet. He had a copy of Le Monde tucked under his arm and was clutching a white patisserie box tied with ribbon. Courtesy demanded she hold the door for this gentleman in his eighties who complained about his château’s leaking roof whenever building dues came up. Her other neighbors included a countess, an actor, a bigwig at Printemps, and assorted nobility who’d inherited their flats.

  “Merci,” Monsieur Bonnet said. “You’re in a hurry as usual.”

  The breeze off the Seine chilled her bare ankles. She scanned the quai. No one.

  The balloon bobbed in the wind. She shone her penlight on the damp wall, which was spotted with lichen—bursts of acid green, mustard yellow, and white. Behind the bench she recognized a chalked arrow. The arrow led to a postcard tied to the balloon. On the front a photo of the Ile Saint-Louis, on the back a simple drawing. Her breath caught. The figure she recognized—Emil, the mouse who lived in the Louvre, the hero of a cartoon Aimée’s mother used to draw for her when she was small. Aimée had loved those Emil stories, her mother’s pictures, and time they’d spent together.

  Emil and the balloon hadn’t been there a few hours ago.

  Aimée stared at the drawing—Emil was carrying a baby bag she recognized as Chloé’s. She noticed Emil’s wink.

  Using her sleeve, she wiped the chalk arrow into a pale white cloud. Untied the balloon and let it float away over the Seine.

  Message received.

  Tuesday, Early Evening

  Aimée picked up Chloé from across the courtyard and settled her with apple slices in the highchair where she could watch Melac cook. In her bedroom, Aimée emptied Chloé’s baby bag and spread everything over the wood floor—diaper rash creme, baby wipes, extra empty bottle, diapers, bib, teething biscuits, gummed Peter Rabbit book. The usual.

  There had to be something there.

  Next she turned the bag inside out, checking each pocket, running her fingers over the seams, the strap. No holes, false seams. Nothing.

  She went through everything again. Then again.

  Finally, she squeezed some diaper rash creme onto a wipe. Out with it came a narrow glass cylinder, the kind in which perfume samples were given out at Printemps. She wiped it off, uncapped the cylinder, and tweezered out the contents.

  With her fingertips she unrolled a grid-lined page she recognized from the to-do notepad she kept in the baby bag. On it, in Sydney’s slanted writing: Please, if you’re reading this, locate Germaine’s code and take it to GBH. Hate involving you, but you’re the only one I trust. Only you. Don’t worry; I’ll be in touch.

  Aimée took a deep breath. Sydney had signaled to make sure Aimée got the message. But why not come herself and ask?

  Relief mingled with worry.

  If her mother had gone into hiding and left Aimée with a task . . . why? Already a Foreign Legionnaire was stalking and threatening her.

  Did she have a choice? How was her mother mixed up in this? So many questions.

  A gurgle heralded a crawling Chloé at the door. She wore a food-stained bib but squealed when she saw her bottle on the floor. “It’s empty, ma puce.”

  Chloé crawled toward the diaper rash lotion tube quick as lightning. Aimée scooped her up.

  “That’s right; Grand-mère’s gone off the grid.”

  Chloé’s big grey-blue eyes widened.

  “You think I should help her?”

  Chloé squeezed Aimée’s thumb.

  “I’ll take that as a yes.”

  “Yes to what?” said Melac, taking in the disarray on the floor.

  A not-so-fragrant aroma drifted from Chloé’s diaper. “Quit the beans for now, Melac. No wonder she got a terrible diaper rash.”

  “Tell Sydney—”

  She made a decision. “Look, could you help me out? Get in touch with your intelligence contact?”

  “Why?” He’d reached for his leather jacket. Merde, she’d forgotten he was working tonight.

  “It’s complicated.”

  “So’s my relationship with intelligence.” Melac’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t ask favors unless . . . Alors, in my world one doesn’t bother the higher levels without good reason. Not my nature to owe those types.” He glanced at his buzzing phone. “What’s going on?”

  “Sydney’s gone.” The words burst out.

  “Typical.” His brow furrowed. “And now, of all times. She didn’t even tell you that she couldn’t babysit?” His eyes searched hers. “What?”

  Before she could give him an edited version, he answered his ringing phone. Held up his hand. Mouthed, Work.

  The front door shut behind him.

  After Chloé’s bath and good-night songs, Aimée pulled out the message she’d found in the baggie. Tried to make sense of the code in light of her mother’s message. Couldn’t.

  Hadn’t René been enthusing over a new decoding program the week before?

  She called him at home. No answer. She tried his cell. She heard Radio Classique playing in the background when he picked up. Imagined him behind his desk.

  “Don’t tell me you’re still at work, René.”

  “All your tech-conference schmoozing spiked interest,” he said, excited. “Tomorrow I’ll join you for some of your meetings before our presentation. It’s a lot for you, just back on the job. How do you feel?”

  “Fine.” Apart from the burning headache she had from worrying—about hiding a murder victim’s cache, about her missing mother, and about being threatened by a legionnaire. She popped two Doliprane.

  “That’s the good news.”

  From the way René said it, she knew there was more. She felt it in the pit of her stomach.

  “And the bad?” she asked.

  “We’ll get it under control.”

  “Tell me, René.”

  “That’s the problem, Aimée,” he said. Pause. “Don’t know if it’s related or not, but there’s been a lot of backdoor action.”

  Not good. “Knocking on our firewall?”

  She reached for her laptop. Powered it on.

  “I’m running diagnostics,” said René. “Called Saj in the meantime.”

  It had to be serious if he was calling in Saj, their permanent part-time hacker. “I’ll update you within the hour,” René said.

  She networked into their mainframe. Delved into admin maintenance. Saw the numerous attempts to breach their firewall.

  “Think I see what you’re talking about,” she said. “Good spotting.”

  If René was already running diagnostics, there was nothing to do but wait.

  “Look, what’s that program on coded encryption you were raving about?” she asked.

  “Baksheesh?” She could hear his fingers clicking over the keys. “Already ran that code from the woman’s paper through it—120gdel.” René loved puzzles. “Not so interesting.”

  “Not interesting as in . . . ?”

  “No doubt an address. You know . . . say it’s for a locker at a station: number one twenty at the Gare de Lyon. There’s a key, right?”

  Simple.

  Her thoughts went to the baggage lockers at the Gare de Lyon. She’d passed them that day. Anonymous and accessible. Yet notorious as the first place flics thought to surveil.

  She reached for her bag and took out the key. Turned the small brass head around, feeling the smooth worn edges, and noticed part of a grooved number. Key to a safe, a deposit box? Or . . . what did it remind her of? A locker key from a gym, a bain douche? Not a station locker key.

  “What if it’s from a swimming pool
locker or public bath?” she asked. “She was SDF, right? Or playing the persona, anyway.”

  “Aimée, you should return the money. Let the nuns deal with it.”

  But her mother’s message was burning in her mind—take it to GBH, whoever that was.

  First things first. To find GBH, she’d need to know about the slain Germaine Tillion. If Aimée could figure out who the woman was . . .

  “Call you later, René.”

  Time to make another call.

  Tuesday Evening

  Aimée blew on the thick, scalding soup in her bowl. The kitchen windows fogged with condensation, and the casse-croûte’s melting cheese dripped on her fingers. Miles Davis nestled by her bare feet on the warm floor.

  On her laptop screen, Germaine Tillion’s smiling face stared back at Aimée, a photo accompanying an article in the Abidjan newspaper Ivoir’soir. Crinkly hair bundled up in a knot with ringlets falling to her light cocoa shoulders, Germaine stood arm in arm with a grinning twin brother, Armand, at a party at Club Madou. The caption read Happier times for Germaine, well-known DJ, and Armand, home from Paris studies. The headline read, society family’s rebel son gunned down in bouaké ambush.

  Details were few, ongoing reports to follow. But no other reports had followed this month-old article.

  On her phone Aimée reached Pablo, her graveyard contact at Le Monde archives. “This all you could find?” she asked.

  “Like I’ve got nothing else to do, Aimée?”

  She rubbed her eyes, tiredness catching up with her.

  “Do they have you writing obituaries again?” Pablo, a Catalan poet, published beautiful slim tomes that René called genius. “You’re too good for that, Pablo.”

  “If I want to survive a round of layoffs, it’s better to act useful.” Pause. “Manuela’s pregnant.”

  “Congratulations.” Aimée left out the I guess.

  “I’ve scanned what’s in our archived database,” he said. “Just sent you one more.”

  She opened a second email, which contained a funeral notice for Edouard Tillion, French businessman, and his Ivoirian wife, Cécile. The notice had been posted five years earlier. Private services were to be held at the family cacao plantation; survivors, their children, Germaine and Armand.

  The parents dead, and now both children—it struck Aimée as more than bad luck.

  “Why couldn’t you find anything else on such a prominent family?” she asked.

  “Simple. The government controls the press.”

  “Don’t you have contacts at reporting desks in Africa for AFP’s wire service?”

  “Liberia’s hot now . . . an arms embargo, civil war. That’s where the news is, not in the so-called stable Côte d’Ivoire.”

  Pablo promised to keep digging. As she hung up, she got thinking. She remembered seeing an Ivoirian resto somewhere . . . Where had it been? She could picture it—dark wood storefront, tribal carvings in the window, a yellow and green sign down a narrow passage. Then she remembered: she’d seen it while she’d been taking her “shortcut” toward the convent before she’d been threatened by the Foreign Legionnaire. Somewhere off rue du Faubourg Saint-Antoine.

  By the time she located the address and number, it was after business hours. She took a chance and dialed.

  “Allô?” she said.

  “We’re closed. Come tomorrow,” said a tired, accented voice.

  “Bien sûr, I will, but here’s a crazy question,” she said. “In Abidjan I went to Club Madou and loved the music. The DJ was a woman, and I’m dying to buy her mixes.”

  “That’s another language to me. Ask my son,” the man said.

  The phone got passed. In the background she heard the scraping of chairs.

  “You want to know about what?” said a young man’s voice.

  It was late; they were closing up. She’d be direct.

  “Sorry, but I want to find mixes by the female DJ who plays at Club Madou in Abidjan. I think her name’s Germaine . . .”

  “GT’s the only one I’ve heard of . . . no clue where you’d find mixtapes.”

  DJ GT—was that Germaine Tillion? “You wouldn’t know if she’s got a website or email, would you?”

  “There’s not much on the Internet. It’s hit and miss. With all the power outages and blackouts in Côte d’Ivoire, few people rely on the web. But you could try joining those LISTSERVs.”

  “Which LISTSERVs?”

  “My friends follow an Ivoirian LISTSERV via Dakar in Senegal. Look under zouglou music.”

  Zouglou?

  “Merci,” she said.

  Ten minutes searching on a Parisian DJ site revealed zouglou’s popularity. Lyrics were written in Ivoirian dialects and French street slang, paralleling the evolution of Western rap. From what she gathered, zouglou coupled political satire with an infectious beat. A few zouglou performers had lived in exile to avoid government censorship since the Mapouka, a traditional woman’s dance from Dabou, had been banned the year before.

  Music a threat?

  Tired, she crawled under the duvet, propped the laptop on a down pillow. Miles Davis curled in a white fluff ball beside her. Heaven. If only Chloé would sleep through the night.

  A blue glow from the bateaux-mouches flickered on her high ceiling. Not a minute after she’d joined the LISTSERV Zouglou, posted her introduction and DJ question, the LISTSERV went down. There went that idea.

  Bon, nothing to do until it came back online. No update from René. Her father’s words replayed in her head: Peel back the onion, layer by layer. Know the victim, and you’ll know the scenario.

  In her red Moleskine, she wrote out tomorrow’s to-do list—LISTSERV, Gare de Lyon lockers, gym at Piscine Reuilly. She unrolled her mother’s message again, releasing a scent of Chanel No. 5 and diaper cream.

  Her mother had known Aimée would search for her. Had counted on Aimée finding the money and this code, getting them to the right person.

  Was it because her mother couldn’t? The note from Chloé’s baby bag was a day old. Was Sydney even still alive?

  Yet the message and balloon were recent.

  A knock sounded on her door.

  Could it be her? she wondered. Even though she knew her mother would never have knocked.

  Midnight

  Benoît, the Sorbonne academic who lived with his sister across the courtyard, stood beside a suitcase on her landing with ruffled hair and a sleepy-eyed half grin.

  “So, stranger, locked out?” she asked.

  He nodded. “And I’ve missed you.”

  A month had passed without a word from him.

  “More like any port in a storm,” she said.

  “I just came in from Phnom Penh. We need to talk.”

  “Not a good time.” She wasn’t about to listen to him rationalize whatever life he’d hidden from her. Another woman? A family? “No explanations needed. Use my phone, and call your sister.”

  “I just heard about your injury. I’m sorry.”

  She felt his arms enfolding her. His breath hot in her hair. That fragrance of his, muskiness scented by wool and a long flight.

  “Are you all right?”

  If only she didn’t want to stay in the warm cocoon of him. If only her fingers hadn’t reached up to search the soft velvet skin behind his ears. “I’m okay.”

  “Liar.”

  He’d lifted her up and carried her to the duvet.

  Swept aside her laptop and notebook, nuzzled her neck.

  Why didn’t she want him to stop? It had been more than a month since he’d cooked for her and spent the night. Then her legs wrapped around his hips, and she didn’t care.

  Wednesday Morning

  Pale sunlight filtered through the windows. She felt the cold empty space beside her. No Benoît.

  Why di
dn’t she ever learn?

  Next time the academic came back from Cambodia stranded, he could find a hotel room. Still, her skin tingled, and her head felt clearer than it had in days.

  From the kitchen she could hear Babette’s voice, Chloé’s squeals, and the sound of Miles Davis’s Limoges bowl scraping the floor. Time to jump in the shower, wash off Benoît’s musky smell, and dress for work.

  Toweling her hair dry, she heard a beeping from her computer. A new-message alert she’d set for the LISTSERV. No time to read the message. René would pick her up in five minutes for the last day of the tech conference.

  Her depot-vents consignment-shop finds were standing ready: a Yves Saint Laurent silk blouse, an Armani jacket, and a black pencil skirt that paired nicely with ankle boots. She tousled her hair, smudged her eyes with kohl, and ran mascara through her lashes. Stuck the paper with the code in her bag’s secret liner pocket and slid the key into her Agent Provocateur bra. Dashing through her apartment to say goodbye to Chloé, Aimée skidded to a halt at the door to the crowded kitchen, facing an interesting scene.

  Benoît, wearing a T-shirt with an Angkor Beer logo, was eyeing Melac, who crouched by Chloé’s high chair. A red bruise was swelling on Benoît’s arm. Babette stood frozen with a wooden spoon clutched in her hand like a weapon. Miles Davis growled. Palpable tension sparked in the air like oil dancing on a white-hot pan.

  “What are you doing here, Melac?” Aimée asked.

  “We’ve already been introduced,” said Benoît, his eyes narrowed.

  “I can see that,” she said, flustered. “What happened?”

  An awkward silence filled the kitchen.

  Melac wiped Chloé’s mouth with her bib. Stood. “Next time, inform me you’ve got someone here before I—”

  “Take things into your own hands?” she interrupted.

  Was he jealous? As if he had the right.

  She wouldn’t apologize. This was her home, her space, her rules. She wouldn’t fight with Melac in front of her baby and nanny.

  “I’m late.” Aimée bent down, kissed Chloé, and winked at Babette. “Open the windows. It’s a little hot in here.”