by Cara Black
“You want to thank me?”
For what? she almost said, before she remembered he’d gotten her released from the Commissariat. She paused, looking down at the oily rainbow-slicked swirls reflecting the sky in a pewter puddle. A January sky.
“Or make it up to me for your atrocious manners, ruining Ouvrier’s party and landing me in hot water with La Proc,” he was saying.
“She’s got it in for you, anyway,” Aimée said. “But how—?
A diesel bus rumbled past her, drowning Morbier’s response. Aimée felt for her gloves in her pocket.
“Le Rendez-vous des Chauffeurs in half an hour?” Morbier asked.
A taxi-driver haunt, with good food. That should sweeten the questions she had to ask.
* * *
MIRRORS LINED the walls, yellow-and-white-checked cloths covered the twelve tables in the resto, an aluminum meat slicer rested on the counter. The last diners finished a late lunch with a cheese course. Morbier sat on the camel-colored leather banquette, split and taped in places, worn by the repose of generations of taxi drivers. He was reading a newspaper.
“Nice choice, Morbier,” she said, sitting down and hanging her bag on the back of her wooden chair. The hot, close air felt welcome after the brisk chill outside. Framed posters of the Montmartre vineyard vendanges hung above the mirrors. Background jazz played low on a radio as the owner wiped down the aging red formica counter through which patches of the original zinc were visible.
“Combines all facets of the Montmartre spirit: rustic, bohemian, and bon vivant,” he said, setting down his paper. “But you’re buying me lunch. What’s your real reason?”
“René said you were a romantic,” she said, pouring from the pichet of rosé, already on the table, into his wineglass. “And to thank you.”
“If I didn’t know you better,” he said, his eyebrows knitting together, “I’d believe it, Leduc.”
“Believe that Laure’s in the Hôtel Dieu in intensive care,” she said, spreading the napkin on her lap.
Morbier shook his head.
Should she tell him the rest?
“Laure heard men’s voices from the roof,” she said. “Speaking another language.”
“You interrogated her, Leduc?”
“There’s so little to go on, I had to ask questions,” she said. “But I made her worse.”
“Blaming yourself won’t make her better. Look, we do it all the time.”
“After I saw the police dossier at her lawyer’s, nothing else looks good either.”
She poured herself a glass of rosé.
Morbier touched the rim of his glass to hers. “À la santé. Clearing her is the lawyer’s job, Leduc. Not yours.”
He caught the owner’s attention and pointed to the blackboard with the prix fixe menu chalked on it. “Two of those, s’il vous plaît.”
“Of course, Commissaire,” the man said, heading to the kitchen behind the small Dutch door, whose top half was open. From inside Aimée could hear chopping noises and the hiss of frying oil.
“You’re a regular here, I see.”
He gave a small smile, the jowly cheeks and bags under his eyes making him look more tired than ever.
“There’s nothing more you can do, Leduc,” he said, taking the rolled paper napkin and tucking the corner into his collar.
Aimée leaned forward. “Morbier, she didn’t kill her partner. The techs made a mistake with respect to the gunshot residue. The lab report’s not even prepared yet!”
“That’s for the police to investigate.”
“See what you can find out,” she said. “When the report’s filed, tell me.”
“You know I don’t have access to those investigations.”
Didn’t he?
She looked down, summoning her courage.
“At the hospital, Laure rambled a bit, obsessing about the past. She mentioned a report about Papa, hinting at some cover-up.”
Morbier choked on his wine. Wiped his mouth with the napkin.
“Do you know anything about it, Morbier?”
“Live in the present, Leduc.”
But in the brief unguarded look she’d seen on Morbier’s face, she sensed he knew something.
“Does it have to do with when Papa and Georges were partners?”
“Laure’s father?”
She nodded, took a piece of bread from the basket, tore off the crust, and chewed it.
“You were Papa’s first partner, weren’t you? What can you tell me about Georges?”
“Beats me.”
“Your memory going, Morbier?” She leaned forward and brushed the crumbs aside.
“That and everything else. My retirement’s around the corner.”
For a man approaching retirement, he kept a tight schedule, working at the Commissariat and part-time at Brigade Criminelle as well. He’d never confided in her about his assignments.
“You know how Laure put her father on a pedestal. Help me understand what she meant by a report, some cover-up involving my father. There is some secret that’s worrying her.”
The owner set down two plates of fisherman’s salad—potato and white fish and a sliced saucisson sec that she’d seen him unhook from its hanging place above the counter.
“That’s in the past,” he said. “Leave it alone.”
There was something.
He cut the sausage into small pieces with his knife.
“Aaah, the owner’s mother cures these herself,” he said.
“Tell me, Morbier.”
He sighed. “There’s no secret. We all graduated from the academy together. You know that.” He took a bite, then washed it down with rosé. “Then, like now, we worked in fours, two pairs. Beat the cobblestones together—”
“You, Georges, Papa, and who?” she interrupted.
Morbier set down his knife, rubbed his finger over his thumb, and looked at Aimée, an unreadable expression on his face.
She pulled out the old card. “Was it this man, Ludovic Jubert? A few months ago, an Interpol agent told me Jubert knew about the surveillance we did in Place Vendôme. If so, I want to talk to him.”
He scratched a wooden kitchen match on the table leg and lit a Montecristo cigarillo. He took several deep puffs and leaned back, silent.
“Where is Jubert?” she asked.
“How do I know?”
“But you can find out.”
The owner stood by the table and asked. “The sausage, it’s not good?”
“Lost my appetite, Philippe,” Morbier said. “Bring us an espresso and the check, please.”
She wouldn’t let Morbier off so easily. Plumes of acrid smoke rose from his cigarillo. She tried not to inhale them. Yesterday she’d thrown away the pack of Gauloises she’d hidden from Guy.
“Would you find him for me?” She took another sip of wine, thinking. “When you and Papa worked in the Marais together, where was Georges?”
“Kicked upstairs. Driven, he was.”
“And Jubert?”
Pause. “Retired now, most likely.”
“Retired? Then what did Laure mean?” She took a deep breath.
“She’s injured, isn’t she? Making no sense. Listen, I’ll say it again, I live in the here and now. So should you.” He ground out his cigarillo. “And some more words of advice.”
Morbier was good at that.
“Let Laure’s lawyer handle the matter. Don’t step on the investigators’ toes. They don’t like it.”
“How can I find Ludovic Jubert?” Aimée repeated.
Morbier stood and took his scarf and overcoat from the rack. He picked up the espresso cup, drank from it, and threw some francs on the tablecloth. “Tried the phone book?”
He took a step toward the door.
She reached for Morbier’s hand and gripped his thick fingers with their nicotine-stained, ridged nails. He tried to pull his hand away but she held tight.
“Morbier, there’s a saying ‘To continue a journey on
e must put the ghosts to rest.’”
A faraway look came into Morbier’s eyes. “That’s a hard order to fill, Leduc,” he said, in a voice so low she almost didn’t catch it. “One can spend a lifetime trying.”
He wrapped his muffler around his neck and was gone. A cold draft of air hit her as the door slammed. His newspaper had fallen to the floor. She picked it up, glancing at it while pulling out her wallet. Morbier’s distinctive slanted handwriting caught her eye. “The Corsican arms investigation report six years ago that traced links to the Paris Préfecture, which caused furor in the Ministry of Interior, has resurfaced. Spokesmen for the Ministry decline comment,” she read. He’d written the letters JC beside the article, in the margin, heavily underlined.
“He’s like that these days,” the owner said, bringing her change and retying the apron around his waist. He shot Aimée a knowing look. “You should try to make him happy, Mademoiselle.”
J C . . . JEAN-CLAUDE . . . Jean-Claude Leduc, her father? Or was she reading too much into Morbier’s doodles? Six years ago he’d run Leduc Detective while she was in her first year of medical school, helping him out occasionally. Then, on a weekend surveillance at the Place Vendôme, there had been an explo- sion and her father had been killed. She still didn’t know who to blame but she had to keep trying to find out who as responsible, even if putting the ghosts to rest, as Morbier said, was hard to do. She folded the newspaper and put it in her bag.
She caught the bus on Boulevard Magenta, trying the Hôtel Dieu twice on her cell phone to inquire as to Laure’s condition. Both times a message machine answered. Frustrated, she could only leave her number.
From the bus window, she saw the St. Vincent de Paul’s vans parked where they were setting up the soup kitchen near Gare de l’Est. A line of men was already forming for the evening handout.
She’d been lucky that food had always been on the table. It had not been easy for her father, she imagined. She remembered her excitement and the wonder in Laure’s eyes as their fathers cooked crêpes for them for La Chandeleur, the feast of Candlemas on February second. This coming weekend. They’d observed the tradition of flipping crêpes with a coin in hand to make one’s wish come true. She’d wished for her mother to come back. Georges had been the only one to flip without breaking the crêpe.
On the bus sat an old man with his dog in a basket; a teenager wearing headphones and nodding to his own beat; a silk-scarfed woman reading Balzac, rubbing shoulders with a cornrowed mother, her coat covering a bright, flowing African boubou, a stroller at her side. Faces of Montmartre from the other side of the hill, away from the tourists and Sacré Coeur, where affordable apartments adjoined the African Goutte d’Or quartier.
Her thoughts turned to Jacques’s ex-wife, Nathalie. She dreaded an interview with the woman who’d already filed a lawsuit against Laure. But it was all she had left to go on.
* * *
AIMÉE STOOD in front of Nathalie Gagnard’s work address, 22 rue de Douai, a Second Empire mansion. The building stood on the corner of the rue Duperré, a street of white stone buildings with shuttered windows and balconies bordered by black iron grilles. A one-way street, lined with parked motor scooters and a car with an AUTO-ÉCOLE sign on top. Across from her in a nearby café’s window, a leftover lumpy St. Nicolas figure still lugged presents. A mobile phone store and several immobiliers, real estate agents, indicated this was an upscale slice of the quartier below Place Pigalle.
Aimée skirted an open hole in the pavement, blocked off by plastic orange webbing, revealing the sediment and rock below. It brought back her geology teacher’s rhapsodies describing the nuanced aroma of schist, the gypsum and stone layered under the streets. To Aimée, limestone or shale, it all smelled the same. This quartier had been built over an ancient lepers’ cemetery, he’d told them. She doubted the residents would be happy to know what lay moldering underneath their feet.
Fluttering cloth banners across the front of the building advertised espace, space available for events. She entered the foyer, reached by a marble staircase beneath a hexagonal wooden fretwork of inlaid lights. Somehow she’d have to get Nathalie Gagnard to talk.
Gilt chairs were turned upside down on tables in the high-ceilinged salon. Aimée almost tripped over a waiter sitting on the parquet floor, his eyes closed, rubbing his stockinged feet. As she neared the reception desk, she saw a gaunt-faced woman in her midthirties, with black wispy hair and gold hoop earrings, wearing a white shirt, black skirt, and sensible low heels, stacking brochures on the zinc bar.
“Bonjour, we do private receptions, wedding parties.” The woman smiled, coughed, and covered her mouth. Her voice was low and grating, a smoker’s voice. “Here’s a brochure. Perhaps you’re interested in having an event?”
Aimée returned the smile and pulled out her card.
“I’d like to speak with Nathalie Gagnard,” she said before the woman could launch further into her sales pitch.
The woman’s eyes narrowed, taking in Aimée’s navy pinstriped trouser suit, pointed boots, and leather backpack.
“Regarding?” Her charm evaporated.
“A police matter. Does she work . . . ?”
“You’re investigating my ex-husband’s murder?” The woman’s grip on Aimée’s card tightened.
Aimée inhaled, determined to try a tactful approach, a skill René often told her she needed to practice.
“So you’re Madame Gagnard?” Aimée said. “Please spare me a few moments to clear up some points in the investigation.”
“About time.” Nathalie Gagnard looked at her watch. She straightened the brochures. “I’m done. Take a seat over there,” she said, her voice clipped as she pointed to a smaller room lined with carved wood boiserie.
Aimée heard Nathalie give instructions to the waiter concerning wineglasses. Sculpted cherubs and a frieze beneath a ceiling mural surrounded her in an eclectic mixture. Stone sculptured caryatids of women held up the ceiling; gold and painted glass panels framed the outer salon. It was a nineteenth-century potpourri.
The thick expensive brochure proclaimed that here Bizet composed his opera Carmen, and his wife held salons attended by Proust and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, a neighbor across the street. Later, Aimée read, the mansion had become a working-class bouillon canteen; later still, a bordello, until they were outlawed; and most recently, a post office.
“Cornered the bitch, have you?” Nathalie said, sitting down, pulling out a gold-filter-tipped cigarette, and flicking the flame of a plastic lighter.
More than hostile, she was vindictive.
Nathalie took a deep drag, then exhaled a plume of smoke and leaned forward in her chair. “I swear, she went after Jacques like a cat in heat the minute he was nice to her. Can you imagine? Jacques would give the shirt off his back to help someone.”
Even if the shirt belonged to someone else, Aimée wondered? From what she’d gathered, Jacques could make an omelet without eggs, a real débrouillard—what some people called a wheeler-dealer.
“I’m not sure I understand.”
“That harelip, the whiner,” Nathalie said, tapping her ash into a white porcelain ashtray.
Cruel, too. But much as she’d like to slap the woman, it wouldn’t help her.
“You’re referring to Laure Rousseau?” she said, determined to keep her emotions in check and probe deeper into Jacques’s life.
“The murderer. So jealous . . .”
Rolling a boulder uphill would be easier than talking to Nathalie.
“Help me to understand this,” Aimée said, curious about the Gagnard woman’s delusions. “According to the file, their professional relationship worked well. Why do you suspect her?”
“Who else? Despite her, Jacques and I were getting back together.” Nathalie’s shoulders heaved and she covered her eyes, sobbing. The smoke spiraled into Aimée’s face.
Surprised, Aimée ground out the cigarette, pulled out a tissue, and passed it to Nathalie.
&n
bsp; “She’ll pay, the bitch,” Nathalie interrupted, blotting the tears on her cheeks.
“From what I gather,” Aimée said, reining herself in with effort, “your divorce was finalized a few months ago.”
“Where’s justice, that’s what I want to know.”
“Justice. That’s what we want,” Aimée agreed. “But we have to dig, find the evidence, put the pieces together, and nail the perpetrator. Procedure dictates questioning and investigating every aspect to get a complete picture. Going to the newspaper doesn’t further your cause, Nathalie, does it?”
“At least it gets attention.” Nathalie reblotted her eyes, careful not to smudge her mascara. Suspicious now, she asked, “Who do you work for?”
“Nathalie, what if there’s an accomplice? Others may be involved.”
Nathalie stuffed the tissue into her purse. “I asked who you worked for.”
“I’m investigating on Maître Delambre’s behalf,” Aimée said. She figured Nathalie wouldn’t know which side he represented. At least not yet. She pulled out her cryptography notebook. Pretended to consult it, flipped through some pages, then stared at Nathalie’s face, disappointed at the firm set of her mouth.
“The report indicates your former husband saw other women,” Aimée said, thinking of Laure’s comment about a girlfriend. A new tactic might loosen her lips. “We believe he was meeting an informer that night. A woman.”
“You don’t understand. Jacques respected women,” Nathalie said, as though stating a simple fact. “He treated them well. But she took it the other way.”
“I’m curious, looking at the logic of that evening,” Aimée said, hoping her voice sounded reasonable. “From the suspect’s viewpoint, it wouldn’t make much sense to murder Jacques since everyone saw them leave the café together!”
Nathalie’s eyes hardened into slits. “Do your job. Nail her.”
“Was Jacques under pressure? Bills? The job? Did he mention people he owed money to?”
Nathalie stood. “I have an appointment.”
“Nathalie, La Proc demands proof. Facts. When did you last see Jacques?”
“I set a place for him at dinner on the eve of Noël but at the last minute he had to work.” Her brow creased as she combed her memory.