Murder in the Palais Royal

by Cara Black

  “What do you mean?”

  “Oh, the dark glasses, the scarf don’t fool me. You’re an amateur. Now if you don’t leave, and quietly, I’ll ask the delivery man to escort you out.”

  * * *

  ACROSS NARROW RUE d e s Capuchines, Aimée took a window table in the café-tabac: blond wood, Formica counter and a worn sixties interior, family-run by the look of children’s pictures on the mirror. A line formed before the cashier, who sold cigarettes, LOTO tickets, and Métro passes. Locals perched at the counter. She paused to think.

  A woman impersonating her had bought a helmet that looked almost like hers, entered Leduc Detective, and shot René with a Beretta.

  Forget convincing Melac that she was being framed. He’d question the woman at ToutMoto and her case would look worse.

  For a moment, her mind went back to Mathieu’s warm breath on her neck. What reaction would he have to being questioned by La Crim?

  Had the shooting made the press? The shooter could be lurking anywhere, might even be stalking René while Vichon sat on his fat behind catching up on old cases.

  Crowds thronged the pavement: delivery men, shopgirls, and couture-clad women with little dogs peeking out from their oversize Dior bags. Cars, motorcycles, trucks, bicycles ringing their bells wove through the narrow street of this commercial quartier, thrumming with activity, around the corner from Place Vendôme.

  The shooter had made one small mistake: she’d bought the newer helmet.

  The waiter, gray-haired and past retirement age, set a double espress and brioche before her. He might remember something.

  “Did you work lunch yesterday, Monsieur?”

  “Mondays, we’re closed.”

  “Merci.”

  She reached Hôtel Dieu on her cell phone and asked for the intensive-care nursing station. Busy. On her second try, a nurse answered.

  “Monsieur Friant’s condition remains stable,” the nurse responded to her query.

  Thank God!

  She had so many questions. “Can you tell me if he’s able to speak on the phone?”

  “Not now, Mademoiselle,” the nurse interrupted. “Talk to the doctor. We’re run off our feet.”

  “And his name?”

  “Dr. Soualt,” the nurse said. “Give me your number and I’ll attach it to Monsieur Friant’s chart.”

  She did and hung up, none the wiser. She dunked her brioche into her coffee. Crusty buttery flakes fell onto the worn marble tabletop.

  A blue and yellow postal van had double-parked, creating a jam in the street. Horns blared. A taxi driver got out of his car, shaking his fist.

  And then she noticed the video surveillance camera mounted above the parfumerie shop next door to ToutMoto. A parfumerie also selling gloves, evidenced by the sign Maitre Parfumeur et Gantier.

  She finished the flaky brioche, downed her espress, and slapped ten francs onto the table.

  * * *

  TH E parfumerie E X H I B I T E D crystal flacons topped by gold stoppers, exuding a heady mix of scents: cypress, vetiver, musk, a touch of fig. Glass display cases contained opera-length gloves made of lambskin, deerskin, peccary, and silk, according to the hand-lettered signs. At hefty prices, she thought.

  “Don’t tell me.” An older man in a black suit waved his hand back and forth in the air. Sniffed. “You go for the classic, Mademoiselle.”

  “Pardon, Monsieur, but your video camera—”

  “You’re wearing Chanel No. 5.”

  “How did you know?”

  “I have the nose, Mademoiselle.” He beamed. His prominent nose, red-veined cheeks, and wavy white hair gave him a distinguished look. “May I interest you in a mix, classical but light, earth tones layered by a hint of mulberry?”

  Sounded good enough to eat.

  “Another time, Monsieur,” she said. “I’m interested in your video camera’s capability.”

  “State-of-the-art model, yes,” he said. He tented his fingers, rocking forward on his heels, a look of concentration on his face. “I’m the first merchant on the street to employ the device. It’s foolish not to use modern technology these days. I’ve aired my views at our merchants association. One is already in place over at the Ritz. You’ve seen Princess Diana getting into that Mercedes via the camera at the rear. Such a sad testimony to her last minutes of life.”

  He liked to talk. And she lusted for the ostrich leather wrist-length gloves displayed on the counter. But not right now.

  “Beautiful, non?” He’d noticed her gazing at the pale citron-scented gloves. “Just a tinge of green apple mingling with the color of Normandy butter, and as soft.”

  Exquisite.

  “Quite a history to them. Henri IV’s mother was poisoned with a similar pair. But Catherine de Médicis didn’t just poison rivals, she turned perfuming gloves into a high art.”

  Aimée had had no idea. “Fascinating, monsieur, but—”

  “We work in close collaboration with the most famous glovemaking houses. Our perfume mixes with the natural scent of leather, producing a new olfactory combination as it mingles with the scent of one’s own skin.”

  To forestall a further sales pitch, she showed him her PI license with its unflattering photo, her mouth pursed as if tasting a lemon. “May I review your video surveillance footage from yesterday noon?”

  She took out her checkbook. “Of course, I’m prepared to pay.”

  “It’s important, Mademoiselle?”

  “Four hundred francs,” she said without skipping a beat.

  A minor dent in the price of the gloves she admired. “That would, of course, include the tape itself, Monsieur.”

  * * *

  HILAIRE , THE NOSE , led her beyond packing cases to a dark back room. Corked glass bottles containing floral essences, a glass beaker, and crushed gardenia petals in a mortar and pestle stood on a work table.

  “Of course our scents come from Grasse, but I like to experiment,” Hilaire said.

  Mounted in a niche in the wall were two screens. One viewed the shop interior, the other rue Capuchines. The latter had a clear shot of ToutMoto’s entrance.

  “You’re looking for something or someone, Mademoiselle?”

  Wasn’t she always looking? She suppressed a sigh. The elusive bad boy, always out of reach.

  “Aah . . . I see.” He gave a knowing smile and adjusted his cravat. “Aren’t we all?”

  “A woman, my height, dark glasses, scarf,” she said. “Let’s try from 11:30 A.M. onward.”

  He hit a button. She heard a click and the whirr of rewind. The crushed gardenia petal scent hung in the small room. Hilaire stopped the tape, then hit PLAY. The time counter in the right corner read 11:00. Passersby moved in slow motion.

  “Fascinating, non?” Then he sped it up.

  Aimée concentrated on each woman entering ToutMoto. None wore dark glasses. The time counter showed noon, then 12:10, 12:20; still no one. Had the woman at ToutMoto lied to get rid of her?

  “I’ll need to change the tape at 12:30,” Hilaire said. “That one?” he asked. Hilaire was pointing to a figure. “Her?”

  He hit PAUSE. On the screen she saw a figure in a raincoat like the one she’d worn yesterday. Tall, thin, with a scarf over her head, wearing large sunglasses.

  “She looks like you,” he said.

  From a distance, she did. Maybe she was a tad shorter. Aimée’s hands trembled.

  “Can you fast-forward?”

  A whirr. Now the door opened and the woman emerged from the shop, her back to the camera, clutching a large shopping bag. The helmet, Aimée figured. The woman stepped off the pavement into a taxi. A matter of seconds, and she was gone.

  “Monsieur, can you replay that in slow motion?”

  Aimée studied the woman and the taxi. After the seventh replay, she’d made out the taxi company logo and the taxi number, 1712 or 1713. With this information, she had a lead.

  * * *

  OUT ON RUE Capuchines, heading to the Mé
tro, she called the taxi dispatch office. “I’m enquiring about the destination of the passenger picked up at 5 rue des Capuchines at 12:20 yesterday, by either taxi number 1712 or 1713.”

  “We don’t give out that information to the public.”

  “Bien sûr.” She reached in her bag for her worn Vuitton wallet and read off her father’s police badge number. “But I’m a policier involved in an investigation. Could you hurry, please?”

  “We comply of course, but regulations require that this request be made in person.”

  Some new regulation? Or a ploy by the taxi service to discourage any follow-up?

  “I’m on surveillance,” she said. “Can’t you help me out this once?”

  She heard an expulsion of breath over the line.

  “En fait, we don’t like it either, but the dispatch log is kept in my supervisor’s office.”

  “Your address?” she asked.

  Waves of passersby darted around her as she scribbled the address inside the cover of her checkbook.

  She shouldn’t impersonate a flic, or do the Brigade Crim-inelle’s work, she told herself. But she hated to deal with Vichon. She chewed her lip. On the other hand, she would relish seeing the look on Vichon’s face when the woman was traced and her identity established. Not only would they get the shooter and her motive, but Aimée would be off the hook.

  But would René? Running down the Métro steps, she pulled out her cell phone, punched in the Brigade’s number, and reached for her lipstick.

  * * *

  SHE FOUND THE taxi dispatch office in the crumbling, stone-blackened Passage de la Reine de Hongrie—Passage of the Queen of Hungary—near the sixteenth-century Saint-Eustache, in the midst of Les Halles on the fringes of the professional kitchenware district. But she wasn’t here for sauce pans or Le Creuset enamelware; she was here to find out where the taxi had dropped the woman who’d shot René.

  “Alors, not a place one finds in the guidebooks. But atmospheric,” a voice said. “The old Paris, eh?”

  She knew that voice.

  Melac.

  Wasn’t he off duty?

  “But I’m not here for a tour.” Melac stepped around garbage and discarded newspapers blowing over the stones. A more rested freshly shaved Melac in a black turtleneck sweater and tapered black jeans. He cleaned up well. At least she’d applied fresh lipstick in the Métro.

  “I need to talk with you, Mademoiselle.”

  “After you view this evidence,” she said. “I hope they passed on my message. Did you bring the camera?”

  He pulled a compact video camcorder from his pocket. “Going to give me an explanation?”

  “Better that you see this first.” She inserted the tape that she’d bought from Hilaire at the parfumerie and played it.

  “That’s you,” Melac said. “So?”

  “It’s someone disguised as me, buying a helmet.”

  “It looks like you.”

  “From a distance maybe, Melac. Wrong shoes.”

  “Wrong?”

  A gust of wind wrapped a newspaper around her leg. She kicked it off.

  “You wouldn’t catch me dead in beige crocodile loafers,” she said. “And I already own a helmet. This one.” She showed him the helmet she was carrying in her bag. “Why would I buy another one? Luigi saw a woman wearing a helmet very like mine. Of the seven stores in Paris selling this Blue Fever model, only ToutMoto sold one in the last eight months. Yesterday. To her. We have to hurry.”

  Melac took out a small notepad. “Who videotaped this?”

  “Monsieur Hilaire, who owns a parfumerie next to Tout-Moto. He has a video surveillance camera outside his shop.”

  Impatient, she strode toward the ground-floor taxi office fronting the passage. “The dispatcher will give you the address the taxi took this woman to. You’ll need backup, a stakeout team . . . who knows how many—”

  “Telling me my job?” But he reached for his phone.

  In the taxi dispatch office, a man sat at a phone console, chewing a pencil.

  “Mais, Madame. I don’t speak Hungarian,” the man said into the phone. “Understand? It’s just our dispatch office address. Where do you want to go?”

  He rolled his eyes, gestured for them to wait. A two-year-old Marie Claire magazine and a thick, much-thumbed Le Redoute mail order catalogue from last Christmas took up the only seat. She preferred to stand. Melac edged into the corner, deep in conversation on his cell phone.

  “No Hungarians here,” the dispatcher said. “But my drivers will take you anywhere. Quoi? Non, that’s just the name, Madame!”

  Like every schoolchild, Aimée knew the ironic history behind the passage’s name. Julie Bécheur, a vegetable seller who had lived in this passage, petitioned Marie Antoinette to better market women’s conditions. Taken with Julie’s likeness to her own mother, Marie-Thérèse, Queen of Hungary, Marie awarded Julie’s audacity by naming her passage for the Queen of Hungary. Conditions improved for a while. During the Terror, Julie’s royalist sentiments brought her to the guillotine.

  Melac flashed his badge. “Show me the taxi dispatch log, Monsieur.”

  By the time the dispatcher returned from a back office with the taxi log, Aimée was almost jumping out of her skin.

  Melac crowded the counter, blocking her view. After a moment, he flipped the pages of his notepad.

  “But you live on Ile Saint-Louis at Quai d’Anjou.”

  “And the Métro runs till midnight. So?”

  She elbowed Melac aside and read the log entry: At 12:21 P.M., 5, rue des Capuchines, Pickup.

  She stared at the taxi destination listed, and her mouth went dry: 17, quai d’Anjou.

  Her address.

  Tuesday

  BLACKMAIL NEEDN’T GET fancy, Clémence Touvier thought, as she cut words from the newspaper with her manicure scissors. She’d seen this done in an old black-and-white film and figured the technique would still work. Besides, given the stakes, she felt certain that no detective or crime lab would ever examine her cut-and-paste job.

  Clémence hunched over the upturned cask in the arched stone wine cellar below the Palais Royal bistro. Dust-covered wine bottles lined the racks in the naturally cool cavern with a temperature of a perfect 18 degrees Celsius. Only two more words to cut out.

  “Clémence?” Someone pounded on the locked wine-cellar door. “You there?”

  Merde! Carco, the chef and her sometime boyfriend, had arrived in the adjoining kitchen to prepare the evening sauces early. How had he known to look here? There were only ten minutes left before her wait shift, and she had to finish this.

  Despite her queasiness from the sharp tannin smell of red wine, she made herself keep absolutely still. She heard voices, then shuffling footsteps, from the tunnel. He’d given up. She clipped her blond hair back, tiptoed to reach the glue she’d hidden behind a bottle of Saint Emilion, and got back to work.

  The last word applied, the glue drying, she stared at her work. Simple and to the point. Fifty thousand francs would buy her silence.

  She’d never be caught. She wore plastic dishwashing gloves from Monoprix. No fingerprints.

  Nicolas, her ex, had never talked about his money source. But his payments had ceased and she was broke. Last night, desperate, she rummaged through Nicolas’s belongings stored in her basement. She discovered a newspaper article and realized it held a link to Nicolas’s aristo friend.

  What the connection was, she didn’t know yet, but the article gave her enough to allow her to bluff and suggest she did. She figured the threat of leaking a scandal to the press would suffice. That money would buy her ticket out of Paris.

  Aimée Leduc had put Nicolas behind bars. She would worm the information out of him. Clémence had taken care of that too.

  A slap on the stone, a muffled grunt, and then voices came from the tunnel outside the wine-cellar door. Again she heard Carco’s voice. “That’s the last delivery. Anyone seen Clémence?”

  She held he
r breath. Pots clanged in the kitchen. She had to hurry.

  Tried and true worked best, non? As her uncle, the salaud, would say. Her uncle had raped her in the woods the summer she was ten. It all came back to her: the dense heat of those afternoons; pine needles scratching her back; the resin scent mingling with his wine breath. How he’d put his tobacco-stained fingers over her mouth.

  The fear that everyone would know.

  Much later, her uncle had been imprisoned for killing a bank guard. At sixteen, she’d left Toulouse but found Paris, like other provincials before her, as gray at heart as its gray-cobbled streets. No sunflowers nodding in the fields, only rare splashes of color, no life embracing Provençal humor, only Parisian irony: that half-smile, the brittle shrug.

  Now at twenty, Clémence refused to struggle with dead-end jobs. Her attitude had ended work cleaning offices and flats in the prestigious 16th arrondissement where even the maids wore pearls. But a job in the high-end Palais Royal bistro run by a fellow Toulousian where she could joke with clients made life bearable.

  Clémence unlocked the cellar door, closed it without a sound, and padded through the tunnel. She’d reached the staircase to the bistro when she felt a hand on her shoulder.

  A shiver went through her. Then she recognized Carco’s stocky frame and flushed face, topped by his chef’s hat. Along with crated zucchini and net bags of onions, he blocked her way in the tunnel.

  “What’s with the gloves?” he asked.

  Her shoulders tensed. She had to find a way past Carco and deliver the letter before her shift began. “Last pair, too!” she said. “I need to polish the copper pots.”

  “I waited for you last night, Clémence.”

  He could wait forever, as far as she was concerned.

  “I’m sorry. You know how tired I get after my shift, Carco.”

  “Why don’t I come to your place tonight after work, Clémence?”

  The last thing she wanted, in her condition. Not only that: her roommate despised him. And his temper.

  But his cousin was a flic. She’d better watch her step and keep Carco happy, for now.

  “My place?” She grinned, leaning against his white, side-buttoned chef’s jacket. “Why?”

  “We’ll watch that video you have, you know. . . .”