Murder in the Marais (Aimee Leduc Investigations, No. 1)

by Cara Black

  He wondered if she was telling the truth or was the truth too painful to tell? It sounded like the explosions in the Siberian oil field where he'd been a POW. Working at the camp in the frozen tundra, men had been burnt by eruptions of fire on ice into charred cinders before his eyes. He wore gloves to cover the skin grafts crisscrossing the old burns on his hands.

  He sat up in a cold sweat. Loyal and steadfast Grete, she hadn't deserved his gift of an empty heart. But he couldn't very well go back to France then—he, an ex-Nazi just out of a POW camp, to search for a Jewish girl, a collaborator.

  Postwar Germany had no services, no food. Grete cooked the roots and tubers he found by clawing under the snow. Scavenging in the forest, he dreamed of Sarah, seeing her face in the catacombs as they shared tins of black-market pâte.

  But all around him, people boiled and ate their shoe leather if they had any. He sold his mother's pearls for a sack of half-rotten potatoes that kept their hunger at bay. Gangs of children ran after the few running trains, fighting over burned pieces of coal that fell onto the tracks, hoping to find some only half-burned. They weren't allowed back into the basements under the rubble until they brought something to eat or burn.

  Hollow and numb most of the time, he survived by his wits and by scavenging. At night, spooned between Grete and Katia for warmth, he'd see Sarah's curved white thighs, feel her velvety skin, and imagine her blue eyes.

  Grete knew right away he didn't love her, that he loved someone else. But they married with no regrets. No one had time for regrets in postwar Germany, and he and Grete worked well together. They were a team of two dragging Katia along. Her eyes never seemed to heal. One eye stayed closed and continually dripped. There was no penicillin to be had and no money for the black market.

  Grete appeared one day with tubes and packets stuffed in the pockets of her too-small winter coat. She pulled out a fat tube of metallic-smelling ointment.

  "Helmut, hold her, please. This will help her eyes," Grete said. Firmly she rubbed it around and inside Katia's lids as much as she could, while he held his squirming child. Then Grete pulled some huge yellow-and-black pellets out of a paper packet. "Good girl, Katia, now just swallow these. Here's some cold tea to help them go down," Grete said soothingly.

  Katia made a face and spit them out. Grete stuffed them back in her mouth.

  "Grete, Grete, what are you doing?" He thought Grete had gone crazy and was giving Katia dead bees to eat because she was so hungry.

  Her eyes flashed angrily, "It's medicine! She has to take them or she'll be blind, Gott im Himmel, help me!"

  And he did. He never forgot what those huge penicillin tablets looked like and how Grete's face had looked as they got them down Katia. Only the GIs had them. Katia's eyes got better and he never asked Grete how she had got the penicillin.

  SATURDAY

  Saturday Morning

  AIMÉE, IN BROWN wool jacket and pants, strode through the narrow passage behind the rue des Rosiers. She rested her gloved hand in her lined pocket, keeping it warm. Fog crept through the Marais, almost to Place des Vosges. Centuries-old stone, worn smooth by countless footsteps, lined the alley. Above her, red geraniums spilled from window boxes.

  A broken street lamp buzzed and blinked randomly. Nearby, on rue Pavee, stood a fancy charcuterie selling imported meats, Javel's cobbler shop, and a small dry cleaner's. She held the partial receipt copy she'd made at Homicide and hoped she'd find the other half.

  First she checked the charcuterie. The owner busily informed her that all his customer receipts were yellow copies, unlike the scrap of paper in her hand. Try next door, he suggested.

  Aimee opened the spotlessly clean door of Madame Tallard's dry cleaning establishment. Warm air redolent of laundry starch drifted from behind the chipped formica counter.

  "Bonjour," said a white-haired woman from behind a steamy laundry press.

  "Bonjour, Madame." Aimee held up her copy of the paper. "Would you recognize this?"

  The woman emerged from behind the press, feeling her way along the counter. She grinned sightlessly. "Put it in my hand. There's a lot I can tell from touch."

  The woman was blind. Aimee couldn't believe her bad luck. "I wondered if this was a cleaning receipt from your shop," she said.

  One of Madame Tallard's eyes was milky white, veiled by a cataract, the other crossed. "I'm minding the shop for my daughter. The baby's sick." She reached for something on the counter. "Here, check yourself." She thrust a receipt book in Aimee's direction.

  "Thank you." Aimee flipped through a standard receipt book with smudged carbon copies.

  No numbers matched, but the forms did.

  "Hmm, don't see it," she said. "But the receipt looks like one of yours.

  "I help my daughter if the items don't have spots or touch-up areas." Madame Tallard cleared her throat. "My good eye gets tired easily. We do a very careful job and pay attention to detail. Nothing's too important, I always tell my daughter, for a customer with couture wear."

  Aimee tried being hopeful. Madame Tallard might recall something. "A Chanel! Maybe you remember it?"

  "My daughter mentioned one. . .hot pink?"

  "Why, yes," Aimee said. "With big knobby buttons."

  "Like these?" She pulled a box of buttons from a drawer under the counter. Her fingers moved over them until she handed Aimee a pearl button with raised interlocking C's. "I keep buttons in case a customer needs one."

  "Exactly. Only pink," Aimee said, recognizing the type of Chanel button from Morbier's evidence bag.

  "The suit was picked up Wednesday night." Madame Tallard slapped her palm on the counter. "But it's not yours. . ."

  "I apologize." Aimee automatically took out her ID. "I'm a private investigator with Leduc Detective. Who picked up the hot pink Chanel suit?"

  Madame Tallard bristled. "My clientele is private. This is intrusion!"

  "Murder is more intrusive, Madame Tallard," said Aimee. "Especially when it's around the corner. Your corner."

  "You mean the woman with the swastika?" Old Madame Tallard's hands trembled.

  "I'd like your cooperation, Madame."

  Madame Tallard shook her head. "My daughter told me about it."

  "And what did she say?"

  "That being old in the Marais is getting dangerous these days." She felt her way and perched on a three-legged stool. Aimee leaned over the counter.

  "I'm working on behalf of the victim," she said.

  "Did any of those imbeciles see you enter?"

  Aimee paused. "Who exactly do you mean?"

  "Imbeciles who paint swastikas on my windows!"

  Madame Tallard was afraid, she realized.

  "The street was deserted when I came in." Aimee peered out the window. Nobody. "Still deserted."

  Madame sighed. "The suit belongs to Albertine Clouzot. She lives on Impasse de la Poissonnerie."

  Aimee nodded. Impasse de la Poissonnerie, a passage with a neo-classical fountain of the kind noted by Voltaire, led to private cobbled courtyards. Very exclusive.

  "Madame Clouzot always sends her dry cleaning here," Madame Tallard said. "Tells me we're the only ones who clean the pockets. That's true. What would it have to do with her?"

  Aimee felt excited. Maybe Madame Clouzot had been an eyewitness. "What time did she pick up the suit on Wednesday?"

  "Not Madame. Her housekeeper," Madame Tallard said primly. "I have nothing to hide."

  "The housekeeper?"

  "She came just before I closed. Said that Madame Clouzot needed her suit for a late supper party. And that's all I know."

  "When you closed up the shop did you hear a radio playing loudly?"

  Madame Tallard rubbed her lined forehead. "I didn't linger, I went home."

  She asked more questions but Madame Tallard assured her that she hadn't heard anything unusual. Aimee's heart raced excitedly. Now she could question the owner of the Chanel suit and her housekeeper.

  But how would a neo-Nazi from
Les Blancs Nationaux following Lili Stein fit with the Chanel suit picked up by the housekeeper? She filed that in her memory and continued down the narrow street.

  Her goal, the cobbler shop Chaussures Javel, stood several doors down from the dry cleaner's. She'd been wanting to talk with Javel ever since Rachel Blum mentioned the long-ago concierge's murder the night they met at Lili Stein's.

  Bells jingled on the door as she entered. The purr of a cat, industrial strength, came from the window ledge under dingy lace curtains.

  "Bonjour. Monsieur Javel?"

  "Oui." He pronounced it "Wae" as Parisians did. A shriveled brown walnut of a man with thick white hair, he was working on a pair of black lizard pumps. His once blue apron, smudged by shoe polish, was tied behind his back.

  After being surprised by Madame Tallard, Aimee decided to be up-front with Javel. That didn't mean she couldn't get her boots reheeled at the same time.

  "Can you fix this heel?" she asked.

  Javel's face matched the leather he worked on. "Un moment, sit down." He indicated a gouged wooden stool with his hand.

  The water-stained walls were lined with a yellowish dado border. The dark veneer wooden floor sagged as she stepped on some loose slats near a modest showcase of arch supports and heels. In the corner, a heater emitted dribbles of heat with kerosene fumes. A sense of neglect pervaded his shop.

  As Javel stood, reaching for a tool above him, she saw his legs. They were so extremely bowed, they resembled parentheses. He hobbled as he took a step and it was almost painful to watch.

  He motioned to her to take off her boot. "I'll try." He began to root through his work tray. "Safer to reheel them before they wear down this far," he said.

  "Did you know Lili Stein?" she said, watching for his reaction.

  He didn't look up and kept on working. "One who had the shop on rue des Rosiers?"

  Aimee nodded.

  "People told me about it." His eyes remained neutral as he attached a new heel to her boot. "Brutal. What's the world coming to?"

  Too neutral, she thought. "Didn't you know her a long time ago?" she said.

  "Are you a flic?" He still didn't look up.

  "I'm a private detective," she said. "Rachel Blum told me you would know about the concierge bludgeoned in Lili's building."

  He handed the boot back to her. She reached in her bag as he pointed to the sign that said 15 FRANCS NEW HEEL.

  He looked stonily at her. "What's it to you?"

  "Lili Stein boarded up her window so she wouldn't have to be reminded of the scene," she said. "Did you know her then?"

  He snorted. "Expect me to remember what some Yid schoolgirl did fifty years ago?"

  She knew he was hiding something. Only someone who'd known Lili as a schoolgirl would reply like that.

  "What do you remember?" she said calmly.

  "Cooking up some crazy theory, aren't you?" He shook his head. "About Arlette and that swastika carving. Then listen up, Arlette wasn't Jewish or with the Nazis. Go bother those skin-heads who kick in my window for fun!"

  "Tell me about Arlette," she said. "Was she the concierge?"

  He slammed down his hammer, spattering nails and metal grommets that pinged off the walls. "She was my fiancee, Arlette Mazenc. Why the sudden interest? The flics beat me up. Never investigated. . .why now? Just because some old Jew is killed by punks, someone pays attention, eh?"

  She felt sorry for this angry little man.

  "Monsieur Javel, I feel a connection. Something threading these murders. If I could be more concrete, I would," she said.

  "When you do find something, look me up. Not before."

  "GUESS WHO?" said Aimee, her hands clapped over the eyes of an older woman who stood in front of rows of aluminum spindles, sorting buttons. The scent of rosemary and roasted garlic wafted through the factory air.

  Small and wiry, Leah stood in wool socks and clogs, wearing a sweater buttoned over her work smock. She grabbed Aimee's hands with her rough ones. "Don't be such a stranger, Aimee," she said, twisting herself around and grinning. "You think you can surprise me?"

  "I try, Leah." Aimee laughed and gave her a hug. "Something smells wonderful."

  Leah, an old friend of her mother's, lived with her family above their button factory, Mon Bouton. She cooked the midday meal for her workers in a kitchen by the melting presses and button die forms.

  "You don't have to be domestic to cook, Aimee," Leah said, referring to their ongoing argument about Aimee's lack of culinary skills. "I only see you when you're hungry. Cooking is a creative expression, let me teach you."

  "Right now, teach me about Chanel buttons. I want to learn from an expert," she said.

  "A case?" Leah's eyes lit up. She read a new spy thriller every week and loved to hear about Aimee's work.

  "Leah, you know I can't talk about ongoing cases." Aimee pulled out a rough sketch of the Chanel button she'd made after seeing it. "Just give me an idea about this button."

  "Color and material?" Leah said, wiping her hands on the worn smock.

  "Hot pink, and the interlocking C's were kind of brassy, shiny metal."

  Leah, shortsighted, pushed her glasses onto her forehead and peered intently. "I'd say the button came from a suit in the spring collection. A mohair suit. We made a prototype but the head honcho shipped it out to Malaysia for production. Couture used to mean couture made in France—thread, ribbon, zippers, lining, and buttons. Not anymore."

  "Care to generalize about the owner of the suit?"

  "Twenties or thirties. Rich and bored. With good legs."

  "Why good legs?"

  "All the mohair suits were minis."

  Saturday Noon

  "MADAME IS WORKING IN her office. May I say who's calling?" The smiling housekeeper dusted the white flour off her hands. Tall and thin, her liquid eyes contrasted with her starched maid's uniform.

  "Aimee Leduc. I'm a private investigator. This should take only a few moments." Aimee fished a card out of her bag.

  Curiosity flickered in the housekeeper's gaze. "Un moment," she said. Her scuffed mules clicked down the marble hallway.

  Aimee had changed into a pleated dark blue wool skirt and blazer, her generic security-type uniform. Sometimes she stuck badges on the lapel from her extensive collection. For this interview she'd slicked her hair under a blue wedge-type hat, similar to that of a female gendarme, and wore a touch of mascara with no lipstick.

  This drafty marble-floored hallway of Albertine Clouzot's apartment on the exclusive Impasse de la Poissonerie could have fit two trucks comfortably. Littered among a child's bicycle and roller blades were Roman bronze statues and busts resting on pillars.

  Almost immediately, the housekeeper emerged and beckoned Aimee down the echoing hallway. Aimee entered a drawing room—for that was the only thing to call it—that could have come from the eighteenth century. And it probably did. Aimee thought it hadn't been heated since then either as she saw her own breath turn to frost in the air. She kept her angora-lined gloves on.

  Tapestries with pastoral scenes hung on the twenty-foot-high walls. In the corner, framed by a window with a private courtyard behind it, sat a woman in her late thirties, working on a huge dollhouse, a Southern mansion styled with pillars and "Mint Julep" chiseled above the miniature door. A small portable heater stood by a tray of white wicker doll furniture.

  "Thank you for sparing me the time, Madame Clouzot," Aimee said.

  "I'm intrigued. Why would a private investigator wish to talk with me?" said Albertine Clouzot. She put a miniature chest down and stood; she wore fishnet stockings, a black leather miniskirt, and maroon lipstick. Her perfectly cut straight blond hair grazed her shoulders. She tottered on faux leopard platform heels. "What's this about? Florence, you may go."

  "It might be better if she stayed." Aimee smiled broadly, turning to the housekeeper. She certainly didn't want Florence to leave. "I'd like to talk with both of you."

  She reached in her bag and pu
lled out a note pad that she pretended to consult.

  "Madame, do you own a pink Chanel suit?"

  "Why, yes."

  "Did you receive it from the dry cleaner's with a button missing?"

  "That's right. I had to wear something else." Florence stood woodenly as Albertine preened in front of a floor-length gilded mirror. "First time I've ever had trouble at Madame Tallard's."

  "I see. You didn't go to the dry cleaner's, am I correct?" Aimee kept a matter-of-fact tone.

  "No." Albertine Clouzot's face looked incredulous. "Why would I?"

  Albertine belonged to the world that hired other people to do their mundane chores.

  "Florence, your housekeeper, did, am I correct?"

  Albertine Clouzot nodded absently. She'd lost interest and was pulling open the little doll chest's drawers.

  "What time did Florence leave your house on Wednesday evening?"

  "Is this an inquisition? I won't tell you any more until you tell me what this is about."

  I'm losing her, Aimee thought. "Madame, please bear with me." Aimee smiled broadly again. She stuck the pencil behind her ear and shook her head. "Detecting isn't like the movies. Tedious checking of details makes up most of it. All we know is that a pink Chanel button was found near the body of a murdered woman, not two blocks from your apartment."

  "It must have come off. . .my God, you're not trying to suggest that I killed that woman! That woman with the. . ."

  Out of the corner of her eye, Aimee saw Florence's arm jerk. Either this housekeeper was the nervous type or Aimee had struck a nerve.

  "Madame," she spoke reassuringly, "I'm checking out pieces of evidence and constructing a timetable of the murder."

  She looked straight at Florence. "What time did you pick up Madame's suit?"

  Florence covered her mouth with her hands. Little feathery spots of white flour were left on her cheeks. "Just before the shop closed," she stammered.