by Cara Black
Her tongue thickened in her dry mouth. She fought to speak. To again say she was sorry. No words came out.
“No need to throw a tantrum or storm out, as usual.” Morbier gave another deep sigh. “I hoped just this once you’d listen.”
The overhead sculpture turned again.
“That’s all the help you’re going to be?” Aimée said. “Warning me off?”
No answer. She wouldn’t get anything more from him.
She glanced at her Tintin watch. “I’ve got a meeting.”
“There’s something you should know, Leduc. Give me five minutes.”
Something got to her—maybe guilt, sadness, the aroma of butter, or all three. Aimée nodded.
Morbier shoved two Limoges dessert plates and a filigreed silver pie server at her. “Invert the tart, and get serving.”
Go off her diet? The caramelized apple tarte oozed butter and sugar. Would add a kilo to her hips.
“Think you’ll bribe me with this?” she said.
“I can try,” he said as Aimée sliced the tart. After a moment he said, “Vauban, a flic on robbery detail, was a go-between for a gang. For ten years, I couldn’t get anything to stick on his greasy back.”
“What’s Vauban got to do with Pierre and the Hand?” she said. The first forkful tasted like heaven.
“Vauban graduated to brokering deals with big-timers,” said Morbier. “Whoever he worked for was hands off. Protected. Unseen. Files went missing.”
“Files went missing?”
She swallowed. Couldn’t eat anymore.
“Listen, Leduc. Vauban got caught and la Proc figured out how to nail him. Everything would have come out: his connections, the links, the money trail.” He paused. “Vauban fell under a bus two days ago.”
Her insides curdled. “You’re saying he was killed.”
He lifted his palm and spread his thick fingers with their nicotine-stained nails. She realized he hadn’t smoked a cigarette the whole time she’d been here.
“The Hand, Leduc.”
There it was—confirmation.
“After the can of worms you opened, they’re cleaning house,” he said. “No one’s safe or protected anymore. The notebook would nail a lot of coffins.”
“Yours, too.” A white lie here. “Éric said your name was in it. And Papa’s.”
“It’s complicated, Leduc.”
All of a sudden the kitchen seemed to close in around her—the heat, the butter smells, the prickle of the mohair blanket brushing her leg.
She wanted to tell him she felt afraid. Scared as her ten-year-old self had been when she’d gotten lost on that field trip to the Louvre.
“Eh?” Morbier set down his fork.
Had she said what she’d been thinking out loud?
She noticed he’d dug his fingernails into his palm, leaving pink half-moon crescents. Poor Morbier—after a long career, crippled and out of the action, yearning to score one last goal.
“Give me names,” she said.
“As I said, it’s complicated, Leduc. People like your father and me never knew the top level. You know, these are the people who got your father killed. One of them, I never found out who, heard your father was quitting the Hand and set up his hit. I heard the rumor, tried to warn him, got there too late. Now it’s time for you to leave it alone.”
Like hell.
His mouth hardened. “You’re not hearing me, Leduc. Let me handle it. Just cooperate; lay low. Très simple.”
She wasn’t going to get anything else out of him today or maybe ever. Frustrated, she made a show of looking at her Tintin watch again and stood to leave.
“You think I blame you for my being put out to pasture,” Morbier said suddenly. “For making me an invalid. After the havoc you wreaked exposing the corruption.”
Her entire body tensed.
“I’m an old dog, around too long,” he said, his voice low. “I know you did what you had to do.”
And those were the truest and sincerest words he had said since she arrived.
The retro-modernistic clock on the wall ticked out the time. And hers was running out.
“I understand,” said Morbier.
A petite woman with a long braid looped around her head swept into the room, hanging up her bag. “Naughty boy,” she said in a thick accent. The clomping of her chunky clogs was as menacing as her stern look. “You’re impossible.”
“Meet le dragon,” said Morbier, shutting his laptop.
“I’m Rasa, his physiotherapist,” she said. Clucked disapprovingly. “How could you let him eat this?”
Morbier grinned. “Maybe I’ll have a smoke, too . . .”
“Not if you want to live, chéri.”
In a fluid move, the muscular therapist whisked the laptop away and released the wheelchair brake.
Morbier sighed. “Torture time.”
With a snort, Rasa wheeled him into a back part of the house. “Think about it,” Morbier threw over his shoulder. “We’ll talk when you bring Chloé by.”
Like Aimée would hold off until then? She shouldered her bag, waited until she heard a door close, then opened Morbier’s laptop.
He was still logged in. Her lucky day. She’d have to work quick. She pulled up his emails. A quick glance showed one email from an encrypted police judiciaire account. Wasn’t that still intranet, accessible to only the OPJ on-site? Had Morbier somehow kept his access to his old account? Whatever the source, it didn’t matter. She forwarded the email to her proxy account and checked his browsing history. Took a screenshot and emailed that to herself, too.
The clunk of clogs was coming down the hall. The therapist. She hit several keys, erasing her last actions, closed the laptop, and thirty seconds later was out the door.
Aimée waited in traffic on rue de Tolbiac, trying not to breathe the tepid air drifting from the Métro on her right. Riding her scooter, she’d make it to the Bibliothèque François-Mitterrand meeting in time. Just.
René called.
“I’m en route,” she said. “On time.” For once.
“No need,” said René. “The fonctionnaire postponed the meeting to later this afternoon. A good thing. Means I’ll have more of a report ready, and he’ll see progress.”
A stroke of luck. That gave her time. Time she could use to investigate Léo Solomon before meeting her nanny at the pool.
Her father always said, never assume; find out. Take it step by step—legwork paid off.
She’d start with Gobelins, the tapestry factory where Léo had worked. She had caught mention of the place during her hurried look at Morbier’s emails.
The light changed. “Got to go,” she told René.
The night before, she’d tried reading Maxence’s file on Léo Solomon. So far, mostly background. Her ankle had throbbed, and when she had fallen asleep, it had seemed like only minutes before Chloé woke her up at dawn.
Léo Solomon, a young accountant, had married Marie, an apprentice weaver, after the war. They’d worked and lived on the Gobelins premises until just a few years ago. According to Besson, all that time Léo had been amassing entries in his notebook.
She made a quick call to Maxence as she was gunning up broad Avenue d’Italie. The September weather, unpredictable like the strikes and demonstrations, made her glad she’d stuck her warm wool scarf in her bag. Thank God it hadn’t rained yet. Clouds blotted out the sun, and a rising wind whipped her ankles.
Maxence answered on the second ring, but with the street bustle and horns, she couldn’t catch everything he said.
“Léo Solomon’s will . . .” he was saying. “. . . latest news.” The rest was lost in the blare of a car horn.
She pulled over. Caught whiffs of garlic from a pho noodle hole-in-the-wall. Her phone in one hand, she used the other to pull her l
eather jacket on. Her sore shoulder protested as she extended her arm.
“Léo Solomon’s will what? Tell me that again, Maxence.”
“I checked the legal notices, given that his will would have gone to probate or be in process by now.”
“If you say so.”
Smart. The kid had thought big picture. Why hadn’t she?
“His estate left bequests to a range of charities,” Maxence said. “Including a nice sum to Gobelins in his wife Marie’s name.”
Overhead the leafy chestnut tree branches rustled; a bicycle bell tingled. She thumbed open her red Moleskine to an empty page, found a kohl eye pencil, the first thing at hand to write with. Maybe it was time to upgrade to a PDA.
“How long ago did Marie pass away?” Aimée asked. “Any more details?”
After scribbling notes, she thanked him and hung up. Revved her scooter and took off.
Ten minutes later, she’d parked her scooter, knotted her scarf, applied Chanel red in the reflection of a storefront window, and come up with a story.
La Manufacture des Gobelins’s brick and stone façade, fronted by an ornate gold-tipped gate, evoked royal grandeur. But it had originally been a dye works, founded by a fifteenth-century dyer where la Bièvre, the river, used to run. Gobelins’s name stuck even after the factory became renowned for making tapestries for the king, then later for Napoleon, and now for the république.
A museum and studios thrived in this centuries-old complex where tapestries were still loom-woven by hand in the traditional style. Pieces took years to make. Who’d have that patience? Aimée wondered, eyeing a château-sized piece through a window.
No time for culture. On her left a crow perched on the statue of Le Brun, painter to Louis XIV, in the center of the courtyard. The painter’s bronze shoulders were splattered with cream pigeon droppings.
Instead of entering the museum’s door, she unhooked the red velvet barrier rope and hurried across the cobbles to the gardien loge by the gate.
From inside the loge came the faint sound of a woman’s sobbing. Hesitant, Aimée stepped forward.
“He came again. Demanding to see me at work. But he’ll never leave his wife. Why can’t he understand it’s over?”
A lovelorn concierge spilling her heart out on the phone.
Aimée hated to intrude. She knocked on the half-open door, the glass warm against her knuckles.
“Excusez-moi,” she said. “I’m looking for le patron.”
Sunlight streamed in through the mullioned window, splashing across a desk strewn with a crossword magazine, some mail, and a demitasse with coffee dregs in the bottom. Security procedures were taped to the stone walls. A young woman looked up, holding a cell phone, and wiped her swollen eyes, leaving blue and green smudges on her hands. Her hair was piled in a bun, her frame muscular.
“Madame Livarot?” She sniffled, getting businesslike. “You have an appointment?”
Aimée would soft-pedal. “I assume so. I’m delivering her documents.”
Aimée set down a card from her business file. For a fake legal firm, convenient for such occasions. The young woman’s red eyes didn’t blink. Uninterested, she blew her nose. Aimée saw a badge on the desk with the name Olivia visible under a wad of wet tissues.
“Leave the documents here,” the woman said.
“Only in person, my boss said.” Aimée checked her Tintin watch.
An expulsion of air. A shrug. “I’m not supposed to let anyone in. The concierge took a break.”
Looked like a long one.
“You take security seriously, I understand, but I’m pressed for time.” Aimée’s gaze had caught on the directory on the wall: atelier haute lisse, chapelle, atelier de teinture, cantine, salles de cours dessin et historique de l’art formation, maisons. She’d had no idea this place was so huge, a functioning artisanal haven. “Madame Livarot’s in the atelier haute lisse section?”
Olivia, Aimée assumed from the badge, hesitated, then nodded. “Don’t say I let you in. She’s particular. Second courtyard, behind the garden on the left. You can’t miss it. It’s the oldest building here.”
“Merci.”
Oldest? How could she tell in this centuries-old enclave? Aimée felt as if she’d stepped into the past or found herself suddenly in a country hamlet. Butterflies stopped among the beds of orange peonies. Several young men in blue work coats walked past a medieval covered well; they were carrying wooden poles, and Aimée heard the tap-tapping of a hammer. The past come alive.
She picked her way over the worn cobbles, battling the dull ache in her ankle. Beyond the garden, she spotted the mustard-colored atelier haute lisse tapestry studio, rectangular and vaulted. It reminded her of a village washhouse. In the entrée, glass cases displayed polished wooden bobbins, ivory tamping combs, old scissors, vials of madder root and indigo leaves for dyes. She caught a faint aroma of fresh linen, which reminded her of the old laundry that had been on Ile Saint-Louis when she was a little girl. That scent was undercut by a deeper note—what did it remind her of? The dark scarlet tannin dregs left in a glass of Burgundy?
A tour group clustered around a guide sporting a Ministry of Culture badge, blocking her way.
“Please, no talking to the hautes lissiers, the weavers,” the guide said. “Concentration is required, and on this tour, we respect their craft.”
Great.
“Gobelins was first established in the fifteenth century. In 1662, the crown purchased the tapestry workshops. The first royal director was Le Brun, Louis XIV’s court painter, who, with the king’s confidence, directed an array of craftsmen—tapestry weavers, bronze workers, gold- and silversmiths who supplied objects for the royal residences and produced diplomatic gifts.” The guide’s drone almost put Aimée to sleep. “After 1699, it produced only tapestries. In 1826, Gobelins switched from the low- to the high-warp technique, unlike the Aubusson tapestry factory. Yet now, as in the past, the techniques follow guild statutes that originated in the Middle Ages.”
Aimée tried to make her way forward. However, there was no way through this group of provincial seniors with bad sun hats, who hung on the guide’s every word.
“As you’ll see, the weaver sits behind the loom and works on the back of the tapestry with the daylight coming in on the other side so she can follow the design,” said the guide. “You’ll see some of the fifteen looms used by thirty weavers. The factory produces six or seven tapestries a year.”
Heads shook in awe at the fact that so much time was spent on a single tapestry. And Aimée was spending too much time with this tour group. She edged forward past a senior with a cane.
The guide gave her a sharp look. “The office shouldn’t have allowed latecomers. We’re on a schedule.”
Aimée had no intention of going on a tour. Or dealing with this uptight woman. Aimée excused herself, shoving her way through the group. “I’m not on the tour. I’m expected at Madame Livarot’s office.”
Aimée could tell the guide was itching to exert her authority. “Office? You’re in her office.” The guide opened the atelier doors and spread her arms to take in the tall, cavernous studio, light filled and bursting with color. A row of almost ceiling-high looms stretched down the room. The incandescent, multihued spools of shimmering silk thread blurred Aimée’s vision.
The guide’s group had moved on.
But the hushed whoosh and click of the looms took Aimée’s breath away. She was riveted. The rhythmic, smooth sliding; the nimble knotting motions—they were hypnotic to watch. The weavers were working on a piece that stretched all the way to the ceiling. She watched bits of color appearing as the weavers wove and threaded, how the design emerged from a pattern in front of her eyes.
“Madame Livarot’s by the window.” A middle-aged woman with a chopstick holding up her hair spoke to Aimée. She jutted her chin toward a corn
er, her hands busy, never stopping their work on her loom.
Aimée made her feet move, approached the older woman hunched at what appeared to be a slanted architect’s desk. Pastel chalks, rulers, and scissors filled a workbox. “C’est magique.”
Aimée hadn’t meant to say that.
“You’re here why, mademoiselle?” The woman hadn’t looked up from the pastel drawing with attached colored thread swatches in front of her. The no-nonsense tone brought Aimée back to earth.
“Madame Livarot,” she said, “it has to do with the Solomons.”
The wrinkled face looked up at her. Expressionless. Deep, hollowed eyes, long chin—the woman could have been fifty, but she could also have been seventy years old.
“The walls have ears.” Madame Livarot’s calloused finger pointed outside. “Beyond Cour Colbert at the chapelle.”
Aimée took care as she crossed the cobbles, avoiding the deep grooves between them. The last thing she needed was to aggravate her sprained ankle.
At the chapelle’s worm-eaten doors, Madame Livarot directed her past a sign that said atelier de teinture. Aimée winced as she mounted the steep, winding stone steps. They followed a hallway to what appeared to be a medieval add-on—a jumble of odd corners, hairpin turns, and wood-beamed ceilings.
Aimée caught her breath as they stopped in an airy mullion-windowed room overlooking a courtyard. Large round vats and boilers the size of washing machines were set into stucco counters. The acidic odors reminded her of the old teinturerie, the fabric dyer’s, near her lycée, long gone now.
“The dyers are on strike. Typical,” said Madame Livarot, closing a shutter. “No ears here.”
Dyers went on strike? Aimée had had no idea. But it was September.
Skeins of drying silk and yarn hung from wooden bars over the dye vats, vibrant from pigments—now synthetic, formerly made of ground minerals, plants, and insects. The studio reminded her of that premakeover château kitchen she’d seen in Elle Decor. This was definitely a “before” medieval. Hadn’t changed much in five hundred years, she figured, except for the gas lines.
Madame Livarot turned to face her. “Who are you, mademoiselle?”