Murder at the Lanterne Rouge (2 page)

Madame Wu spoke sharply, and Meizi translated. “My parents say you’re too kind, René.”

Aimée doubted that. Meizi slipped the ring on her fourth finger. “
Parfait
.” Aimée noticed the bitten nails, the worn calluses on Meizi’s fingertips. Meizi set the ring back in the box and passed out the steaming soup bowls. A large serving for René.

Meizi’s phone vibrated on the table. She glanced at the number and pushed her chair back. “I’ll be right back.”

René’s hand paused on his soup spoon. “Can’t you talk later, Meizi?”

“Won’t take a moment,” she said. As Meizi went to the door, Aimée noticed her backward glance, her beetled brow, before she stepped outside.

The Wus, not ones for conversation, tucked into the soup. Poor René. Aimée imagined the dinners he’d shared with the humorless Madame and Monsieur Wu. Had she read Meizi, a dutiful daughter, all wrong? A young waitress cleared their bowls, leaving Meizi’s, and brought a platter of fragrant roasted duck with shaved scallions. At least five more minutes passed.

“Where’s Meizi?” René asked, holding off from serving himself.

“Meizi,
oui
.” Madame Wu nodded, her chopsticks working at morsels of duck.

Aimée wished Meizi hadn’t left them in this awkward situation. She shot René a look. He flipped his phone open, hit Meizi’s number on his speed dial.

A stooped older woman wearing a stained apron entered the
resto
. Madame Wu exchanged an uneasy look with Monsieur Wu as the old woman made her way to their table.

“Who’s this, another relative?” Aimée asked.

“The busybody who sells tofu and groceries next to her
uncle’s place.” René frowned. “Meizi’s not answering her phone.”

Suddenly, the old woman shouted in Chinese. Madame Wu dropped her glasses on the table.

The old woman continued, bellowing, frantic. Loud murmurs and the clattering of chopsticks filled the
resto
. Surprised, Aimée saw diners throw money on their tables, heard chairs screeching back in haste over the linoleum. As if at some mysterious signal, people reached for their coats and fled in a mass exodus.

Madame and Monsieur Wu stood in unison. Without a word they left the table and were out the door of the
resto
without their coats. Not only rude, but unnerving.

The ring in the red velvet box sat by the teapot, forgotten. Like Meizi’s coat on the back of her chair.

“But what’s happening?” René said, bewilderment on his face.

Aimée rubbed her sleeve on the fogged-up window to see outside. A red glow reflected in the ice veining the cobble cracks. Firemen, an ambulance, the police?

The young waitress by the door turned down the pop music.

“What’s the matter?” Aimée asked her.

“Trouble.”

“Trouble as in a robbery?” Jewelry stores abounded in the quartier, which had once been the diamond-cutting district.

“The old lady said murder.”

“Murder? But who?”

The waitress shrugged. Her fingers worried a tattered menu. “Behind the luggage shop.”

Aimée sat up. “The luggage shop around the corner?”

The waitress nodded.

Meizi’s parents’ shop. A terrible feeling hit her. Meizi?

René had pulled on his coat and was already halfway to the door. Aimée scooped the jewelry box into her pocket, left a wad of francs on the table, and took off behind him.

• • •

F
ILLED WITH DREAD
, Aimée hurried down the street, following René past the dimly lit Le Tango, a dance club emitting a reverberating drumbeat. No one stood outside. It was too cold for the usual drunken brawls. A horn blared streets away.

A flash of red disappeared around the corner. Madame Wu.

Aimée glimpsed a few Chinese people crowding the short walkway behind the luggage shop. The dark walkway between the buildings was crowded with garbage bins, wood palettes, old cart wheels, the view ending in a dim red lantern shining on back stairs. Not a hundred yards from the
resto
. Her shoulders tightened.

“Meizi lives here above the shop.” René panted, his breath frosting in the cold. The windows he pointed to were dark. Where were the Wus?

Aimée fought a rising panic, picking her way through Chinese people of all ages, mumbling and scraping their feet on the ice.

“Has someone been …?” Aimée’s question was interrupted by a woman’s piercing scream. People jostled her shoulder as they ran away, their footsteps thudding on the snow. Shivering in the cold and full of misgivings, Aimée crossed the now deserted walkway.

Not Meizi,
non
 … don’t let it be Meizi.

A rat, fat and brown, its tail the length of its long, wet, furred body, scurried down the steps over the new-fallen snow. It left a trail of red in its wake.

At the foot of the crumbling stone stairs by Meizi’s door, a man’s snow-dusted trouser-clad leg sprawled from a wooden palette. She gasped. Bits of gnawed, bloody flesh, orange peels, and black wool threads trailed in the snow. Good God. Her stomach lurched. The rat.

Aimée couldn’t peel her horrified gaze from the corpse,
which was half wrapped in clear plastic, the kind used to secure merchandise to palettes. The man’s matted red hair, prominent nose, and cheekbones all melded, smooth and tight, under the clear plastic. Her gaze traveled to his wide, terrified eyes, then to his mouth, frozen open in a snowflake-dusted scream.

She stumbled and caught herself on the ice-glazed wall. Who was he? He hadn’t been here long, judging by the light coating of snow. Where was Meizi?

“
Mon Dieu
,” René said, stepping back. He took a few steps and pounded on Meizi’s back door.

No answer.

Aimée gathered up her long leopard-print coat and stepped with care around the dirtied snow, avoiding the overturned garbage bin’s contents.

Her insides churned. She shouldn’t have looked at the eyes.

A pair of black-framed glasses lay in the snow beside his gnawed calf. Crinkled papers, a half-open wallet. Using a dirty plastic bag to cover her hands, she picked the wallet up. No cash or credit cards. Cleaned out.

“Come on, Aimée,” René said. “The
flics
will handle this. We have to find Meizi.”

Wedged deep in the wallet’s fold she found a creased Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers library card with an address and the name Pascal Samour. The photo showed a younger version of the pale face in plastic before her.

She turned the card over.

“Put that down, Aimée,” René said.

Stuck to the other side of the library card by gummy adhesive was a smudged photo of a Chinese girl with a glossy ponytail. Meizi. “But look, René.”

He gasped, and his face fell. He stepped back, shaking his head. “I don’t understand.”

She caught her breath. “He knew Meizi, René. What if she …”

“You think she’s involved?” he sputtered. “Impossible.”

He punched numbers on his cell phone. “She’s still not answering. She’s in trouble.”

At that moment, wide flashlight beams blinded Aimée. She stumbled, dropped the wallet. Static and voices barked from a walkie-talkie: “First responders, truck thirteen. Alert medical backup we’re in the walkway.”

“Someone reported this incident,” the
pompier
medic shouted, his blue anorak crunching with snow. “Was that you?”

Aimée shook her head.

His colleague brushed past her with his resuscitator equipment. He pulled on latex gloves, took out clippers and snipped the plastic away, revealing that the man’s wrists were bound behind him. The medic felt the man’s carotid artery. A formality. He shook his head.

A shout erupted. A bedraggled figure came down a side staircase shaking his fist. He wore a matted fur coat, a sleep mask on his forehead, and orange slippers. “I’m trying to sleep.”

Aimée hadn’t noticed the crumbling stairs, the bricked-up windows. Or the
Permis de Demolir
sign on the building. Condemned.

“How many times have we told you to stay in the shelter, Clodo?” said the second medic.

“They took my wine,” the homeless man said in a rasping voice.

She wondered why the rats hadn’t chewed him, too. “Did you hear anything? Or see this man attacked, Clodo?”

“Every night I hear the angels sing. Then the devils come. Like you.” A loud burp.

“
Clochards
.” The medic shrugged. “Guess this is one for the
flics
.” His partner packed away the resuscitator.

“You’re going to leave him like that?” René shivered beside her in the footprinted snow. Aimée scanned the ground, but the wallet with Meizi’s picture had disappeared.

“
Alors
, it’s not like he’s going to spoil in the heat.” The words came from an arriving blue-uniformed
flic
with a roll of crime-scene tape. “What’s this kid doing here?”

René blinked. His snowflaked eyelashes quivered. He hated being mistaken for a child.

“Need your eyes checked?” Aimée glared at the
flic
.

The
flic
gestured to his partner, who was approaching from the street. Behind him she saw the blue van. The crime-scene unit piled out.

“You two,” said the
flic
, “in the van for questioning.”

A
T THE REAR
counter in nearby Café des Arts et Métiers, Aimée squeezed René’s arm. On edge, she tapped her stiletto boot heel on the mosaic tile. She wanted to discover where the hell Meizi had disappeared to. And get René home.

Still, if they had to be questioned, the café beat the frigid police van. They’d allowed her to clean up in the café’s WC. Two blocks from the scene of the murder, in the warm café by the Métro station, felt like another world.

Several
flics
and plainclothes hunched over espresso at the counter. Their wet coats dripped on the floor. Little pools formed at their feet among scattered sugar wrappers and cigarette butts. Odd, so many
flics
here at this hour.

A clearing throat interrupted her thoughts. “Mademoiselle Leduc, you were saying …”

“My partner’s in shock.” Aimée turned to Prévost, the
chef de groupe
of the Police Judiciaire. Late thirties, stocky and sallow-faced, a permanent downturn to his thin lips. He stood ramrod straight, his close-set eyes not unlike those of the rat that had gnawed the corpse.

“This is a formality, you said,” she reminded him. “My partner’s got nothing to hide.”

Prévost tilted his head and leaned in. She could feel his hot breath on her face. “Do you?”

She slammed her hand on the counter, and Prévost flew back. “Just the run in my stocking,” she said.

“Witnesses need to cooperate, Mademoiselle.”

Her taxes paid his salary and she didn’t care for his attitude. “Witnesses? Talk to whoever called this in. There was a whole crowd in the walkway before we got there.”

“Like usual in Chinatown, everyone’s disappeared.”

Disappeared?

Aimée had an uneasy feeling Prévost had defaulted to them as suspects. Meizi’s photo in Samour’s wallet didn’t make her feel any better. Best to go to the head honcho. “I want to speak with le Proc.” She straightened, crossing her arms.

Le Proc, Procureur de la République
, the investigating magistrate, attended crime scenes and referred the investigations either to the local Police Judiciaire or Brigade Criminelle, the elite homicide branch. Murder usually went to
la Crim
. But before it got shoved on someone’s desk tomorrow, Aimée would prefer to explain her presence at the scene of the crime to
le Proc
.

“We go by chain of command,” Prévost said, managing to look bored and tired at the same time.

“I know,” she said. “My father was a
flic
. He worked at the
commissariat
at Place Baudoyer.”

“
Et voilà
, you know procedure. And I know your relationship with Commissaire Morbier. I wrote it all down,” he said with a little yawn, a hooded look behind his eyes. “Le Proc’s come and gone.”

Great. Time to get René home. Chilled and pale, he slumped on a high stool.

She reached for her bag.

“I’m afraid there’s a few more things to clear up.” Prévost consulted his notebook. “Convenient,
non
, Monsieur Friant, parking your car near where the body was found? How do you explain that?”

Aimée leaned forward. “
Alors
, ever tried to park here at night?”

“Where’s the receipt for your meal at Chez Chun?”

She’d paid cash and run like everyone else. But she felt in her damp coat pocket. The jewelry box.

Prévost’s mouth turned down. “You do have a receipt, don’t you?”

“
Phfft
. I paid cash.”

René averted his eyes.

Prévost balled a sugar wrapper and downed his espresso.

Aimée shoved her empty demitasse across the counter. “Why are you treating us like suspects? Like we told you—”

“Dining with Madame and Monsieur Wu, a nice meal, Monsieur Friant,” Prévost interrupted. “Know them well, do you?”

Egging René on, Aimée thought. Pursuing the wrong link, while he should be trying to find the murderer. Typical.

René shook his head.

Prévost jerked his chin toward Aimée. “And you, Mademoiselle?”

“I met them once. Tonight.”

“But I’m disappointed.” Prévost’s brows furrowed. “Weren’t you going to tell me about this birthday celebration for Meizi Wu?”

Aimée stiffened. They’d questioned the waitress in the
resto
. How much did Prévost know?

“We’d like to talk with her,” Prévost said.

Did he regard Meizi as a suspect? She squeezed René’s thigh under the counter. René caught her look.

“So would I,” René said, his lips compressed. “
Alors
, during the soup course Meizi took a phone call and left.”

“So you know this man, the victim?” Prévost was quick.

René’s large green eyes widened. “But I never saw that poor man before.”

“Didn’t Meizi talk about him? His mistress, lover?”

Aimée’s hands trembled. The
flics
had found the wallet and alerted Prévost. Or he was fishing for information.