by Black, Cara
Lili’s string bag was gone. A puffy white cat slinked around her ankles like a feather boa and meowed.
“Poor thing, who’ll take care of you?” Aimee said, rubbing its head. She staggered through the blue beaded curtain to fetch milk for the cat, then she stopped. What had Lili carried in her string bag beside her knitting? Javel would have hidden anything else he’d found.
She started searching, pulling drawers and cupboards apart to find out. Might as well make it look like the crime she figured it was. Poor old Javel, he had little and threw little away. His one armoire held unworn starched white shirts and two musty suits. A pair of lambskin handcrafted shoes, the kind few people could afford to wear anymore, sat unworn on the lowest shelf. His hall cupboard held an unused bed linen set, yellowed by age and probably embroidered by Arlette.
She searched every grime-infested nook in his apartment. Nothing but the remnants of a lonely old man.
Maybe Lili didn’t have anything else in her bag…or the killer had known what to look for and found it. Frustrated by another dead end, she slumped against the cupboard. The circumstances of Javel’s murder puzzled her.
He’d probably spent most of his time in his shop so she decided to search that next. The sharp tang of leather assaulted her as she entered. Under the display of arch supports, she found his cluttered work tray. Tightly wedged against the wall, it took her several tries before the tray came loose. Under leather scraps lay a small book, beat-up and well thumbed. Black spiders crawled over Lili’s handwriting. With trembling hands Aimee lifted the journal as skeins of multicolored wool trailed to the wood floor. She brushed the spiders off and stuffed the journal under her designer jacket.
In Javel’s room, she poured cat food into the bowl. As she left, she made the sign of the cross, then whispered to Javel, who gazed sightlessly at the ceiling. “You were right. I’ll get him this time.”
BACK AT Leah’s, Aimee read from a torn page of Lili’s journal:
I know it’s him. Laurent, the greedy-eyed wonder who sat by me and copied my answers on math tests. The one who sniggered at Papa working behind the counter, who called us Yid bloodsuckers to my face then dared me to do something about it. The one whose family owned a building but acted like he owned the block. WORSE than the Nazis, he made sure that everyone in school who’d ever rubbed him wrong paid. Power, pure and simple. Sarah’s parents were the first, he even boasted about it. Earned one hundred francs for each denunciation. But me, I killed my parents the day I took a stand and refused to let him cheat. My big moral standing sent them to the ovens. Jewish or not, he informed on anyone. Arlette, greedy and stupid, laughed at him, her big mistake. And he’s going to do it again.
Sarah’s hand shook as Aimee passed her the torn fragment.
“Would you recognize him after all these years?”
“If Lili could…” She rubbed at the tears in her eyes. “He had a birthmark on his neck, like a brown butterfly.”
“Of course he could have hidden it, done something surgically,” Aimee said.
“I always wondered who denounced my parents. Laurent was older, in Lili’s class. I never said much, tried to avoid him. Something about him I didn’t like.”
“There has to be proof in black and white,” Aimee said. “That’s why Lili contacted Soli Hecht. But I need documentation to prove it. Can you recall where he lived, this building Lili mentioned?”
“On rue du Plâtre around the corner from school,” Sarah answered right away. “His parents were slumlords; it’s the prettiest tree-lined street in the Jewish ghetto.”
“Stay here, Sarah. You’re not safe on the street.”
Frightened, Sarah crossed her arms. “But I can’t do that. I have a job. Albertine needs my help, she counts on me.”
“Call her,” Aimee said. “She’ll find someone else for now.”
“But there’s an important supper party this evening—,” Sarah started to say.
“It’s not safe for you or anyone with you. You’ll put them in danger. Stay here, off the street. Albertine will manage.” Aimee could tell Sarah hesitated, still not convinced. “If Lili recognized Laurent and got killed for it”—Aimee paused and spoke slowly—”don’t you realize you’re next?”
AIMÉE ENTERED the schoolyard off busy rue des Blancs Manteaux to see lines of children filing up the lycee steps. Probably just as they had done fifty years ago. This time there were no yellow stars, only clumps of adolescent dark-skinned children with big eyes walking past taunts and insults.
As she approached, a teacher noticed her and quickly admonished, “Arrête.” The jeers subsided.
“Are you a parent?”
“I have business in the office.”
“May I see your identification? We take bomb threats seriously.” The puffy-faced teacher looked like she needed another night’s sleep. “Ministry of education’s edict.”
“Of course.” Aimee showed her.
“Over there and to the right.” Behind the teacher a fight had broken out and she left to break it up.
Inside the school office a rotund ebony-faced woman squinted as she checked the computer. “Records are in the basement if we’ve kept them and the silverfish haven’t eaten them,” she said.
“Thanks, can you check?”
“Last name?”
“First name is Laurent and the family lived on rue du Plâtre,” Aimee said.
The secretary raised her eyebrow. “Years of attendance?”
“Between 1941 and 1945, during the war.”
The secretary looked up immediately and shook her head. “After ten years, everything is sent to the ministry of education.” She shrugged. “Check back in a couple of weeks.”
“But I need it now!”
“Everybody needs it now. Do you know how many children attended the school at the time?” She looked at Aimee. “Frankly, I’d say don’t waste your time, nothing got put on microfiche until the sixties.”
“Any teacher or custodian who might have gone to school here?” Aimee said.
“Before my time,” the secretary paused, “but Renata, a woman in the cafeteria, has worked here as long as I remember. That’s all I can suggest.”
In the yellow-tiled cafeteria, Renata, a woman with a thick gray braid wound across the nape of her neck, narrowed her eyes in suspicion.
“Who did you say you were?” she asked.
Aimee told her.
Renata just shook her head.
One of the servers, a prune-faced woman, walked over to Aimee and nudged her. “She forgets to turn on her hearing aid.”
Aimee thanked her and pointed to Renata’s ear. Renata only scowled.
“She’s quite vain about it. Thinks none of us know,” the woman, whose name tag said Sylvie Redonnet, confided. “As if we cared. Half the time we go around yelling at her since she can’t hear.”
Renata stirred the ladle of a steaming pot of lentils.
Aimee turned to Sylvie, who grinned. “Maybe you can help me?”
After Aimee explained, the woman nodded her head. “Believe it or not, I’m too young to have been here in the forties,” she chuckled. “Now my sister, Odile, a few years older than me, was. Go ask her—she loves to talk.”
“That would help me, thank you.”
“You’ll be a treat for Odile, she can hear.” Sylvie glanced in Renata’s direction. “But she’s wheelchair-bound. Around the corner, number 19 rue du Plâtre.”
Aimee felt a glimmer of hope when she heard the address.
ODILE CACKLED from five floors above as Aimee huffed up the steep metal-grilled staircase. “One thing I don’t have to worry about.”
Aimee reached the landing at last. “Odile Redonnet?” she said. Looks certainly did not bless this family, Aimee thought, looking at the shriveled crone in the black steel wheelchair.
“Pleased to meet you, Aimee Leduc, my sister phoned about your visit. Come in.” Odile Redonnet wheeled herself ahead of Aimee into the apartment. �
�Please shut the door behind you.”
After two potfuls of strong Darjeeling tea and exquisite freshly baked madeleines, Odile Redonnet let Aimee get to her point.
“I’m looking for someone,” she began.
“Aren’t we all?”
“A boy named Laurent, his family owned a building on this street. He’d have been about fifteen or sixteen in 1943.”
In answer, Odile wheeled over to an oak chest and slid open a creaking drawer. She pulled out a musty album. Several loose black-and-white photos danced to the floor. Aimee bent down to pick them up. In one she saw a radiant Odile standing upright with her arms around an RAF-uniformed man.
Aimee looked at her and smiled. “You’re beautiful.”
“And in love. That always enhances one’s looks,” Odile said. “This should help my memory.” She laid the heavy album on her dining table and motioned to Aimee. “A ride down memory lane. Can you slip the phonograph on?”
Reluctantly, Aimee went and stood over an old record player that played 78s. She cranked it several times, then laid the needle on the scratched black vinyl. Strains of Glenn Miller and his forties big band filled the room. Odile Redonnet’s eyes glazed and she smiled.
“I left the lycee in ‘44 to work in a glass factory,” she said, turning the floppy pages.
“Are there any class photos?”
“Can’t say we were so sophisticated then,” Odile said, searching the tired pages. She hummed along with the scratchy clarinet solo. “This is the closest thing to a class picture,” she said, pulling some gummed photos apart.
Aimee almost spilled her hot tea. It was the same photo she’d deciphered from the encrypted disk Soli Hecht had given her. “Which one is Laurent?”
Odile Redonnet’s gnarled finger pointed to a tall boy standing by Lili in the Square Georges-Cain. “Laurent de Saux, if that’s who you mean. Lived at number 23, two doors down.”
This black-and-white photo showed the cafe with strolling Nazis and the park with students.
“How did you get this?
“Madame Pagnol, our history teacher, took it to illustrate the statue of Caesar Augustus. See.” She pointed out the marble statue in the background. “We were studying the Roman Empire.”
Of course, Aimee realized now. What had appeared as a random street scene worked as an illustration of the magnificent Caesar Augustus statue. That’s why it had been taken.
“Did she give one to each student?”
“Oh, no,” Odile said. “Only to those who could afford it. After this I left school. Never finished.”
She struggled to contain her excitement—Here was the proof…but proof of what?
“Laurent informed on students during the Occupation.”
Odile closed her eyes.
“Or was it you?” Aimee said.
Anger flashed in Odile’s eyes. “Never.” She pushed the album away.
“Nostalgia isn’t what it used to be.” Aimee had had enough. “That good-old-days stuff doesn’t work.”
Odile stared out the window. “Nothing disappears, eh?”
“Bald and ugly truth doesn’t.”
Finally Odile spoke. “Laurent asked me to inform. Anonymous tips got one hundred francs. The Gestapo offered several hundred francs for outright denunciations. But I wouldn’t. I saw the hate and fear in classmates’ faces after Laurent walked by. He assumed the Nazis would win the war and protect him.”
“How about you?”
“Wrong person, wrong time. I sheltered that RAF pilot during the Occupation. So they taught me a lesson.” She pointed to her withered legs.
“Who?”
“The Gestapo doctors doing research on spinal nerve endings. They chose me to experiment on. Took me to Berlin, then exhibited me as a freak.”
“Please forgive me.” Aimee shook her head. “I’m sorry.”
“I was, too.” Odile smiled. “But I still try to remember the few good old times.”
“What happened to Laurent?”
“Didn’t see him towards the end. Disappeared with a lot of people. Who knows?”
“What about his family?” Aimee said.
“Shot.” She pointed out the window. “Against that wall. His stepmother and father in 1943. Rumor had it that he informed on them.”
Aimee almost choked on her tea.
“Who took over the building?” she finally managed.
“Some cousin from his mother’s side. You see, he took his mother’s name, she had the money. After she died and his father remarried, he kept her name.”
“Which name?” Aimee said.
“Always called himself de Saux. Hated his father for marrying again.”
Odile Redonnet paused, looking at Aimee for a long moment.
“It’s all about him, isn’t it?”
Aimee nodded.
“Evil incarnate, but I can’t even say that because he was amoral. No conscience. He’d do anything to hold power over someone. But Laurent disappeared, like so many collaborators after the war. He was seventeen or eighteen at Liberation. Who’d recognize him now in his sixties?”
Aimee paused, recalling the torn page from Lili’s journal. “I know it’s him. Laurent.” Lili’s phrase that Abraham had repeated to her—”Never forget.” Lili had recognized Laurent because he’d sent her family to the ovens. She’d never forgiven him.
“He’s back, isn’t he?”
“May I have this?” Aimee stood up. “I have to find out who he is and this should help.”
She put the photo in her bag, then took her teacup to the kitchen and put it in the sink. Odile’s kitchen window looked on to a series of dilapidated courtyards. Number 23 was probably one of them.
At the door, Aimee turned. “Thank you,” she said. “But I disagree, Odile.”
“How’s that?” Odile asked from her wheelchair near the table.
“I’m beginning to believe he never left,” Aimee said.
THE FIRST bell she rang was answered by a fortyish woman in a zebra leotard, with flushed cheeks and a light beading of sweat. Aimee could hear the pounding beats of heavy drums in the background.
“The owner? Don’t know. Send my checks to a property management,” she said, out of breath.
“How about the concierge?”
“Isn’t one.” Her phone started ringing. “Sorry,” she said and she closed the door.
None of the other doors she rang answered. She wandered to the back of the building where the garbage cans were kept, hunting for the gas meter. At last she found it behind a rotted wood half door. She wrote down the serial number of the meter. Easy to trace if she accessed EDF—Électricite de France, otherwise a tedious search at the tax office for ownership. Of course, she still might end up going there. Now she needed computer access and pondered breaking back into the Victor Hugo Museum to hit the keys on their state-of-the-art computer.
Friday Afternoon
SHE CALLED ABRAHAM STEIN from a public phone in the Metro station at Concorde since her cell-phone batteries had died. Sinta answered.
“Abraham’s talking with some big-nosed flic.”
“A chain-smoker, with suspenders?” Aimee asked.
“You got it.”
“Please get Abraham, but don’t tell him it’s me.” Aimee waited while Sinta fetched him. She heard the radio news broadcast blaring in the background, with a reporter’s terse comments. “Riot police have been called to clear away demonstrators from the Élysee Palace where the European Union Summit Tariff will be signed. Sporadic confrontations between neo-Nazi groups and the Green Party are happening here and in parts of the 4th arrondissement, notably around Bastille.”
The phone scraped something as Abraham picked it up. “Yes?”
“It’s Aimee. Don’t say anything, just listen, then answer with yes or no if you can.”
He grunted, then she heard him say, “Sinta, offer the detective some tea.”
“Is his name Morbier?”
“Yes.”
“Has he mentioned me? Asked when you’ve last seen me?”
“Yes, doubly so.”
“To do with Lili’s murder?”
“Yes.”
All of a sudden she heard Abraham clear his throat and Morbier’s gravelly voice came on the line.
“Leduc! Where the hell are—?”
“Why are you setting me up, Morbier?” she said.
“Wait a big minute. You didn’t meet me or return my calls and now your partner got shot up,” he said.
“Cut the crap,” she said. “Who’s behind this? I’m clicking off before your three-minute tracer locates me. I’ve got some questions.”
“By the way, your partner is cranky as hell,” he said. “Pissed you left him. Seems he might not want to be your partner anymore.”
“Why are you asking Abraham questions when you’ve been taken off Lili’s case?” she said, checking her watch.
“Just curious if he’s heard from you,” he said.
“Why the hell ambush me?” she said.
“You’re paranoid, what’s gotten into you? Listen, Leduc, take a reality pill. No one’s after you.”
“The only other explanation is that my phone was tapped, they heard where we were meeting. Javel…”
He interrupted her. “Why are your prints all over his place anyway?”
Her fingerprints were all over the rooms of a supposed suicide. Two minutes and fifty seconds showed on her watch as she hung up the pay phone.
Aimee heard the whine of metal grinding metal and whish of air brakes as the train pulled in. She slid through the door of the train bound for Porte de Vanves, full of Parisians going home from work. She clutched the overhead rail as her head spun and she felt sick to her stomach. Who was telling the truth? Could Rene, her partner and friend since the Sorbonne, have turned on her? Had he really been protecting her when he told her to run? Of course he was. His protective behavior ran consistent with how he always treated her. Usually to her annoyance.
Then there was Morbier. He’d lied about investigating Lili and had certainly been acting out of character.