by Cara Black
“I’m not sure this is a good time—” René said. But the realtor had already opened the car door.
“There’s another offer coming in this afternoon. You must see the place, Monsieur Friant. The perfect location, footage. . . .”
The last thing Aimée wanted to do was look at real estate.
“Something’s come up,” René said.
“Go ahead, René,” she told him.
The realtor sprang to the other side of the car. “Let me help you out, Mademoiselle. The puddles!”
“I don’t think—”
He handed her his oversized card with a smile, P. Boutarel—Immobilier imprinted on it. “Monsieur Friant told me he won’t make a decision without you.”
“Not right now, Monsieur.”
Exasperated, Monsieur Boutarel stepped back. “Tiens, but I canceled another appointment to squeeze you in. I might even lose a sale.”
Ready to shut the car door on the annoying real estate agent, she registered the disappointment on René’s face. Such bad timing. Yet he’d come through for her on countless occasions. She pushed her reluctance aside. “We’ll have a quick look.”
Aimée followed René up the winding stairs bordered by a chipped curlicue ironwork banister. From the first floor she heard sewing machines and voices in a Slavic dialect and she smelled cooking oil.
The third-floor double doors stood open; pewter light streamed onto a scuffed wooden plank floor. She stepped inside into a high-ceilinged series of rooms with carved woodwork, yellowed, turn-of-the-century floral wallpaper still visible in peeling tatters. Even with the period detail and grimy charm, the place looked like squatters had just vacated.
“Imagine the possibilities. . . .” Monsieur Boutarel was saying.
“I like the fiber optic lines installed next door,” René said.
Aimée’s heels clicked on the wooden floor. She wished she hadn’t agreed to enter this abandoned place with the tang of leather hides emanating from it. Yves’s murder . . . right now she should. . . .
“Aimée, are you all right?” René asked.
She nodded, swallowing hard.
“We’ll go in a minute. I’m sorry.”
“What do you think, Mademoiselle?” Boutarel asked.
“It’s large.”
Too large. And dirty, and needed tons of work, if not total gutting, and new electrical wiring and plumbing.
“Little happens in August, Monsieur Friant, as I mentioned on the phone. However, we’ve had two offers since yesterday,” he said, with a shrug. “I expect another this afternoon.”
Typical real estate pressure . . . if you don’t make an offer. . . .
“Serious offers?” René asked, his large green eyes gleaming even larger in the glow of the one hanging electric bulb. He was an astute businessman; she recalled the acumen he demonstrated dealing with clients who neglected to pay up. But she’d never seen him like this . . . displaying all the classic telltale signs of a coup de foudre, love at first sight.
“It’s hard to say. But not many places come up for sale in this passage. The quartier’s booming, I don’t need to tell you that,” Boutarel said, his words echoing off the walls. “The ‘bones’ are good.” He gestured to the flaking plaster pillars. “Steel behind, eh, you can see that, a sound structure.”
René was drinking it up. She imagined the wheels turning, calculating figures in his head.
“You must excuse me. Now I must run or I’ll be late for my next appointment. Monsieur Friant, you come recommended.” He nudged René with an insider’s smile on his face.
“Show Mademoiselle around, then leave the keys with the concierge. I know you’ve got a train to catch, but Mademoiselle Leduc . . . isn’t it?”
She nodded.
“Please revisit tomorrow, spend more time. Though I wouldn’t wait too long.”
As he put on his suit jacket she noticed that he had a withered arm. And then he’d tucked the sleeve in his pocket and taken off down the stairs.
“Just look out the back, Aimée. A quiet courtyard, room for a garden, think of the old stable for a garage,” René said.
She stepped through the rooms with peeling wallpaper, single bulbs hanging from wires in the ceiling, doors leaning from broken hinges. Below spread a vast weed-choked cobbled courtyard littered with a rusted bicycle and piles of rotted wood. A lifetime project, as far she could see. Bordering the courtyard wall stood soot-stained sculpted lions’ heads adorning the front of the adjoining hôtel particulier. A jewel in a state of exquisite decay.
“We could carve out several work areas, there’s so much room.”
True. To the right was a wing with more dilapidated rooms holding the scent of mold. She had to choose her words with care. Extreme care. Living in a one-room studio, René dreamed of space. But she lived in a cavernous 17th-century hôtel parti-culier and faced the daily headache of ancient plumbing.
“Full of charm and possiblities, I agree,” she said.
He rocked on the heels of his handmade Italian loafers. “You don’t like it.”
“Liking it doesn’t matter, René,” she said. “It’s my bank balance that counts. I still owe my own contractor.”
When last heard from, her contractor was on vacation in St. Bart’s.
“How can I commit to another contractor?”
“That’s the reason for my trip,” he said. “My mother’s sold property, she wants to help me buy something in Paris.”
Another bill, another commitment she couldn’t deal with. Or did René envision going off on his own? Someday, with his talent and skill, she feared he would. Yet she couldn’t face throwing obstacles in his way.
“Think about it. I did a little groundwork.” He handed her a sheaf of papers with calculations and contractors,’ plumbers,’ and electricians’ estimates.
Aimée shrugged.
In the narrow passage below, puddled with rain, bright sun rays parted the clouds.
René took a large step to avoid a puddle. He almost made it. A chocolate-gray spray splashed his cream-colored linen-clad calf. “Merde! Just had them dry-cleaned.”
A late model Jaguar pulled up, the strain of Senegalese hip-hop vibrating from its open window. A woman climbed out of the car, her head shaved except for the strip of rainbow dreadlocks arranged in a mohawk descending to her shoulders. She flicked a thin brown cigarillo onto the pavement, ground it out with the heel of her red platform boot, and gave them a sidelong glance before clomping through the doorway.
“Interesting neighbors, René.”
“ I’ LL CHANGE MY tickets, Aimée, and go later. . . .” René said. “You need some support.”
“And miss your trip?” She managed a smile. René had planned this for months. “Non, René, I won’t let you do that.”
René idled the Citroën in front of the Gare du Nord’s columned front near the taxi rank. In the era of split vacations, half in July, half in August, those Parisians who’d left were returning and those who hadn’t were now leaving. In the crosswalk, couples pulled roller suitcases and dragged protesting small toddlers.
“Hurry, René, or you’ll miss your train,” she said. Somehow she’d manage.
He hesitated. “Will you talk to the Brigade?”
She nodded. “Something’s way off, wrong.”
“I’m sorry, Aimée . . . you’re in shock. Promise me you’ll go home and rest.”
As if she could. Yet after the disbelief, the shock, a drifting numbness was taking over. Maybe René was right.
“How well did you know him?” René said.
“I slept with him last night, René, for God’s sake,” she said. “He asked me to marry him.”
René blinked.
“I mean really know him, Aimée.”
She knew his scent, the tan birthmark behind his knee, the way his lopsided smile erupted into a grin.
“He’d been in Cairo more than a year . . . I don’t know how to say this any way but the wrong wa
y.” René averted his eyes, tongue tied. “What if Yves had another life?”
“And went both ways?” Her voice rose.
“Did I say that?” René’s eyes clouded.
“You don’t have to,” she said, and hit the steering wheel. ”You sound like Maillol, implying—”
“I’m saying if Yves was working undercover, there’s more to this than we know. It’s dangerous,” Rene interrupted, wiping his brow, then glancing at his watch. “Think of that cryptic message he left.”
That stopped her in her tracks.
“You’re right. But the suspect would know.”
“Aimée, that’s the Brigade Criminelle’s job. Go home, change, and take a rest.”
“Hurry, or you’ll miss your train.”
René paused, his hand on the handle of the rain-beaded door.
“Promise me, Aimée, take care of yourself. I’ll call you tonight.”
She nodded, reprogrammed the Citroën’s seat adjustment, and extended the pedal for her five-foot-eight height, instead of René’s four-foot reach. As she pulled away, she glanced in the rear-view mirror and saw René’s troubled look as he hailed a porter.
She gunned the engine and headed to the Canal Saint-Martin. All she could do was hope Maillol hadn’t transferred the suspect to the Brigade yet.
BACK IN THE Commissariat for the second time, Aimée’s eyes swept the front reception counter. No one sat behind the desk. As she leaned over the counter, her damp skirt molded to her thighs. Forms and binders marked proces verbal were slotted in dividers by the phone console. She saw no files on the desk or in the box labeled “in transit.”
“He’s not responding!”
She turned to see a cluster of uniformed flics and white-coated medics near the wire cage of the holding cells. She walked toward the group. No one was paying her any attention; their focus was on the last cell. Peering over a blue-uniformed shoulder, Aimée saw a stretcher with a clear plastic portable drip and tubes hanging from hooks attached to a pole.
“Second junkie this week,” said a flic with a knowing look. “Bad stuff going around.”
The medic, a woman with a blond ponytail, pulled the stethoscope from her neck. “An asthma attack,” she said, straightening up. “Romeo needed air in his lungs, not stuff in his veins.”
Aimée stared at the chalk-white–faced figure curled in a fetal position on the stretcher. Platinum spiked hair, tight red Levis and turquoise earrings.
He didn’t look like a killer—but then, he was dead. He looked more like one of the surplus store mannequins tossed out on the street after the January sales. Concave chest, chiseled defined cheeks and pale open lips . . . almost pouting, but then he’d been desperate to get air to his constricted lungs. Yves, and now this mec . . . she tried to still her shaking hands. Gave up and stuck them in her skirt pockets.
“The homicide suspect . . . ?”
“Oui, and now he won’t talk. I’ll have to inform the Brigade. . . .” The flic frowned before he could finish. “Et alors,” he said, “no public allowed.” He herded her to the reception area. “What are you doing here? That area’s off limits.”
She saw that it said Sergeant Theroux on the name tag above his pocket.
“Commander Maillol questioned me this morning concerning Yves Robert’s . . .” she paused, then forced herself to go on. “. . . murder. Was this man the suspect?“
“Are you family?”
She reached in her bag for her card. Her fingers touched a worn, smooth rounded coin. The coin from the betrothal amulet Yves had given her.
“I identified Yves’s body at the morgue,” she said.
“I’m sorry.” He read her card and stroked his chin. “We responded to the call concerning an attack and discovered a homicide. It took time for the Police Judiciare to arrive. The Brigade instructed us to send the victim’s body over to the morgue, and the suspect to the Brigade. But now, well, the case looks open and shut.”
“Open and shut?” That was the easy way, but she bit her remark back, determined to hold herself in check. If she flew off the handle, demanded . . . well, by the look of Theroux she’d get more out of him with tact.
“That’s the Brigade Criminelle’s call,” she said. “Did this man confess?”
“I’m the one to ask questions, Mademoiselle,” he said, glancing at the wall clock.
“But of course, Sergeant,” she said. “Such a shock, everything’s happened so fast. Why would this man . . . ?”
He shrugged. “Look, we see it all the time. I shouldn’t say this, but we figure it’s a lover’s quarrel or pimp payback time.”
“But—”
“Even the decent ones sell their bodies when their veins need it. It’s a disease.”
She gritted her teeth. He assumed too much.
“How does that explain slitting Yves’s throat?”
“The victim’s cell phone and wallet were in this mec’s possession.”
Circumstantial evidence at best, she thought. “Did he admit it?”
“I’m not privy to the report, Mademoiselle,” he said, closing down. “As I said, it’s the Brigade Criminelle’s domain. Talk to them.”
Prying information from them was hard. Despite the sergeant’s simple take on Yves’s murder, she counted on the Brigade to perform a thorough investigation. Yet the sergeant indicated that there had been a time lapse before they realized it was homicide and the Police Judiciare responded. Evidence might have fallen between the cracks. She was determined not to leave without discovering something.
“May I claim Yves’s belongings?”
“Not my department.”
She tapped her foot. “Officer. . . .”
“Go through the proper channels, Mademoiselle,” he said. “Fill out the proper forms.”
One of the medics covered up the junkie with a sheet. The other snapped the medic kit closed with a sigh.
René’s question circled in her head, “How well did you really know Yves?”
“Ne quittez pas, hold on,” the uniformed receptionist said, putting her hand over the phone receiver and staring at Aimée. “Oui?”
Several perspiring flics burst through the station doors holding a wild-eyed man, his tie undone and suit jacket falling off his shoulders, shouting “I’d do it again; the mec stole my wife.”
“Intake!” one of the flics said. “We need a free cell. Now.”
“I’m requesting a victim’s belongings,” Aimée said, hoping to grab the receptionist’s attention long enough to get the proper paperwork. It had taken a year and a half to obtain the charred contents of her father’s pockets and his melted eyeglasses.
“Fill out Form 405, back and front.” The receptionist slid a stapled sheaf of papers over the counter, then gestured with a thumb behind her at the flics. “Escort monsieur to intake room one. Our first cell, the premier accommodation, will free up in a moment.”
By the time Aimée came to the end of the form under “relation to the deceased,” she stopped. Her chest tightened and she wrote fiancée. Confronted by a blank under “next of kin,” she realized she didn’t even know if Yves had family.
“Takes ten to fifteen working days,” said the receptionist, stamping a time-date on the application.
“But—”
“That’s for family members,” she said, not looking up. “Otherwise it’s up to the commander.” She paused. “Non, I’m wrong, the Brigade will handle this.”
Aimée nodded, knowing it useless to argue. Meanwhile, the blond medic who seemed to have been acquainted with the junkie might prove more helpful.
Outside the station at the end of the street, a black barge floated in the canal’s dark green water, waiting to enter the next lock. Leaves on the plane trees lining the canal glittered with raindrops in the now-bright sun. Muggy dense heat filled the air and sunbeams danced on the puddles between cobblestones. A bucolic scene except for the panier à salad, the “dead van,” pulling up behind the ambulance
.
“Renaud V-o-r-n-e-r aka Romeo Void, spell it right, Jean,” said the medic to her partner who was filling out a form on his clipboard.
Aimée paused by the ambulance as the two medics shut the back door.
“You’re more acquainted with his medical history than he is . . . was, Giséle.”
As Giséle, the blond medic, pulled off her latex gloves and headed to the driver’s door, Aimée reached for her damp sleeve. She had to seize her chance before they drove away, no matter how awkward it felt.
“Excusez-moi, I overheard that you knew Renaud Vorner. You’re leaving now?”
“I wish,” Giséle said. “They have to catalogue his belongings. Who knows how long that will take?”
“Do you have a moment for a coffee?” Aimée said, pointing to the café awning behind them.
Giséle’s eyes swept over Aimée: the black pencil skirt, sandals, damp tank top sticking to her chest, and laptop bag slung over her arm. “Nice offer, but we’re on call, we never know when we’ll get—”
“How about the counter?” Aimée interrupted. “I’ve only got a few minutes myself.”
Giséle hesitated, checking her pager.
Aimée motioned to the other medic. “Bet you both could use one.”
Giséle stifled a yawn and nodded. “Two more hours on shift; caffeine’s a good idea.”
They passed the rattan café chairs bunched behind small circular marble tables on the terrace. Inside the café, the whooshing from the milk steamer and the clatter of saucers being stacked greeted them. A ceiling fan, circa 1930, sputtered overhead suspended from a ceiling patinaed yellow by years of cigarette smoke.
“Three expressos, s’il vous plait.”
“Serre for me,” said Giséle. Half the water.
“Me, too.” Aimée said to the man behind the counter. Any other time, she’d relish a seat in a café overlooking the canal, imagining Yves joining her. Not now, she needed answers.
“How well did you know Renaud Vorner?” Aimée said.
“You’re a reporter?” Gisèle asked.
Aimée handed her the card reading detective privé she kept for moments like this. “Aimée Leduc.”