Murder in Passy (12 page)

“Sounds political.”

“What isn’t?” he said.

That phrase again.

“Or grist for business?”

“Like I said.… ” He trailed off.

Tuesday Early Evening

L
EAVES SCUFFLED OUTSIDE
the atelier. That detective again? Shaking, Agustino parted the maroon curtains.

Jorge, stoop-shouldered and rail-thin, in jeans and a brown hoodie, with a growth of a sparse reddish stubble on his long face, grinned, waved, and gave a thumbs-up from the brick-andgrass-tufted path.

“The color pops, Agustino.” Jorge shut the studio’s glass door, a Sennelier bag under his arm. “The painting jumps out from all the way—”

“Get out!” Agustino grabbed the Sennelier bag, the veins in his neck pulsing. “Take all this … you piece of shit!”

Jorge’s face fell. His round brown eyes took in the open trunk. “You’ve got the wrong idea.”

“Wrong idea? Think I’m blind, do you? And stupid?”

Agustino heaved out the blue sacks, knocking the easel aside, sending it crashing against the wall. “
Putano,
you betrayed my trust. Again.”

“I had no choice, Agustino.” Jorge’s eyes batted in fear; then he gave a pleading look. “I had to.”

“Had to put me at risk: my commission, the residency, the Corbusier Foundation grant … stealing again!”

“But they’ll kill me, Agustino.” Jorge’s shoulders shook. Sweat dotted his brow.

Agustino stepped back. What had his nephew gotten into now?

“Who?”

“No one knows; no one saw.” Jorge’s voice rose to a squeak. “I promise, Agustino.”

Agustino shot a glance through the atelier’s windows to the green lawn, the canopy of chestnut-tree branches wavering in the evening wind. The rear lighted windows of belle époque apartment buildings overlooked the park-like enclosure and the eighteenth-century
hôtel particulier
that somehow had escaped demolition. Fear coursed through Agustino. Who knew what eyes were lurking behind those windows?

“Don’t you realize, you fool, stealing this, it means prison?” Agustino swallowed hard, imagining national security forces swooping into the atelier.

“Just until tonight, please,” Jorge said. “The concierge’s gone, everyone’s still enjoying the long weekend at their
résidence secondaire
.” He gave a little shrug. “Rich people.”

“What do you know about that?” Agustino’s eyes narrowed. “Or do you case their apartments, steal, and then fence what you’ve stolen?”

“That got me into trouble before,” Jorge said.

At least he didn’t deny it this time.

“Not now, I swear,” Jorge said, a catch in his voice. “But that’s how they found me.”

“Liar.” Agustino didn’t believe a word. “Get out.”

“
Maman
asked you to help me.” He used that plea over and over.

Agustino’s weak sister couldn’t handle him, nor Jorge’s worthless father, Agustino’s brother-in-law. How many times had he bailed Jorge out of juvenile detention?

“You’re in the big time, Jorge, stealing official documents. I can’t help you now.”

He rubbed his sweat-stained shirt, envisioning Jorge graduated to organized crime, the atelier as a depot for stolen goods to be sold on the Eastern European black market. Good god.

“But the
mec
followed me from the café.”

“And just like that, he—”

“Stuck a gun in my ribs,” Jorge interrupted. “Shoved me in the back of a van. Drove it right up to the rear entrance. But I wasn’t going to involve you.… ”

Agustino spit in disgust. “What kind of fantasy … ?”

“He knew about you.” Jorge gulped. “If you got angry, he said to tell you
Remember ’74.
That he was just a messenger, but you’d understand.”

A cold vise clutched Agustino.

“Does he mean the time you lost your fingers in jail?” Jorge said in that trembling, innocent, lost voice of the little boy he’d once been.

Merde!
It couldn’t be. Xavierre, and now.…

Agustino’s mind went back to the dank blood-smeared cell, moisture dripping from the stone. Twenty of them sweating, crowded inside with one chipped enamel pot to piss in. The gangrene blackening his fingers. But that had happened in another lifetime.

“A political action years ago? That’s over. My life’s changed, Jorge,” he said. His throat caught, remembering that day: the hoarse shouts, the acrid black smoke winding through glazed silver leaves on the olive trees, the thwack of police truncheons on the demonstrators. Xavierre’s high-pitched screams. The policeman caught in the bombing. The mistake.

Jorge trembled. “He gave me no choice. I’m sorry, Agustino.”

“But that’s all over. My art celebrates peace, the cease-fire we’re working to achieve, our Basque traditions.”

“One thing never changes, Agustino. We’re Basque.”

One hell of a payback. Had Xavierre refused to cooperate and paid the price? From outside came the rustling of branches, the skitter of birds in bushes.

“If you dont …” Jorge swallowed, then looked down at his Adidas, “… he’ll slit my throat, Agustino.”

Tuesday Night

I
N THE OFFICE
of Leduc Detective, Aimée banked more juniper logs on the fire to combat the damp chill. Determined to catch up on work, she made
un express
on their office machine, then monitored the relay data feed from the suspect VP and filed a status report. All of which took her half an hour. Restless, she completed René’s two security proposals and got a jump on their accounts. Working on a Tuesday evening, and it would still take an hour before she could make much of a dent in the work piled on her desk. But it didn’t keep her mind off Xavierre’s lifeless eyes. The questions.

She wished to god none of this had ever happened. That she hadn’t failed Morbier. But wishing wouldn’t bring Xavierre back or vindicate Morbier. Or do anything about the guilty feeling that she could have prevented it.

Somehow.

She took a roll of fax paper, unwound it, and taped it like a banner across the wall. Her mind worked better when she could see in black and white what made sense and what didn’t. With a black marker, she drew a grid for a chart listing Xavierre, Irati, Robbé, Cybèle, Agustino, and Madame de Boucher, leaving blanks for guests. She sketched a rough map of Xavierre’s street, the high-walled back lane; diagrammed the town house layout, the garden.

She drew a column for evidence, under which she taped pieces of gravel from her pocket, the Euskadi Action flyer, and the photo of Xavierre and Irati by the Mercedes. Under a question mark, she wrote
Heels at Lab, Footprint, Tiepin, Lyon Driver,
and
FRAMED?
in bold letters. Under unknowns she wrote
The Murderer.

Things began to form a pattern, in a confused sort of way. The
flics
, calling this a crime of passion, hadn’t been so far off the mark. Xavierre couldn’t have been out of sight five minutes, if that. The attack reeked of desperation; she felt that too.

Something had gone very wrong.

Under
The Murderer
she wrote
Wounded? Man arguing, guests.
But she felt she’d missed something.

She raked her memory, pacing back and forth. If Irati blamed Morbier, what explained her almost palpable fear? Nothing added up.

Did Irati hold the key? But Irati wouldn’t talk to her. Unless.…

Bon,
then she’d listen. She checked her Rolodex, found a number she hadn’t called in several years. Busy.

She tapped her high-heeled boot. Impatient, she checked the time, dialed again. Busy, always busy. She shut down her laptop.

In the rear armoire, she found her stonewashed suede leggings, warmest cashmere sweater, and red high-tops. She pulled on her faux fur to combat the cold.

Down on rue de Rivoli, her breath frosted in the night air. Before she turned the corner to her parked scooter, her cell phone vibrated in her bag.

Thesset with news of the Mercedes? Anxiously she hit
ANSWER
.

“Oui?
” Her breath came out in puffs of frost. “You found it?”

“Found what? But perfect timing, Aimée.”

She knew that voice. Her spine tingled, jolting her back to that evening haze of candlelight, the empty Champagne bottle, his clothes on the floor.

“Listen, my train’s pulling into Gare Montparnasse,” said Melac, the Brigade Criminelle inspector. “I still do takeout pretty well.”

“But I need to talk to you about Morbier. Isn’t that why—”

“And I’m hungry,” Melac interrupted, his voice going low. “Dinner?”

Startled, she leaned against a peeling wine-auction poster on the damp wall. “I don’t do
flics
, Melac.”

“Then what do you call what we did at your place?”

Getting lost in his gray eyes. Weakness. The damn painkillers? “Taking advantage of me recuperating from injuries. Flat on my back, remember?”

“You on top: that’s what I remember,” Melac said, a huskiness in his voice. “Haven’t gotten it out of my head. Not that I wanted to.”

She blushed to the roots of her hair. After that night, they’d played phone tag until there was a big silence on his end. So now he assumed she’d be willing to rekindle a one-night stand? She had more important things to rekindle, like Morbier’s alibi in this half-assed investigation.

“
Ça alors,
I don’t get involved with
flics
. Never works.”

Especially now.

“So, you speak from experience?”

Fat chance. “A lead homicide inspector in
La Crim
has no life outside work. That’s if he’s a good one.”

“And you’re one to talk?” Melac said. “Does your life separate from your career, like a yolk from the white of an egg? More like an omelette, I’d say.”

These days, her life made one thin omelette. Taken aback, she tried to recover. “We’re talking life in the force, Melac. I lived it.”

Her father coming home at dawn, exhausted from all-night stakeouts. The dinners waiting for him on the stove that he never had time to eat. The paperwork, the reports piled up, waiting at the Commissariat. After school, doing her homework by the potted palm near his desk, hoping he’d finish on time. For once.

“Forget old school. Things change,” he said. “Aimée, I’m just getting in from Brittany to meet with the
notaire
and settle the custody issue in my divorce.”

Children. Commitments. Baggage she couldn’t deal with. None of it hers.

“You know, we’re not all macho misogynists incapable of a relationship,” he said.

“That’s good to hear,” she said. “So just forget the seventy-five percent of the force in a second marriage, twenty-five on their third. Reassuring.”

“Where’d you get those stats?”

“My father’s time. Have they gone up?”

Silence.

“I’m not your father.”

“And that’s not why I left you a message,” she said, regaining her composure. “Morbier’s in trouble.”

“Who isn’t, at one time or another?”

“
Boeuf-et-carottes
bad, Melac,” she said. “He’s rotting in a
garde à vue
.”

She heard an expulsion of air over the line, the clacking of train wheels.

“Gone awful quiet, Melac,” she said. “You’re going to desert him too?”

“
Tiens,
I had no idea. I’ve been on leave.” Melac cleared his throat. “Put this in context, Aimée. If an investigation goes to Internal Affairs …
tant pis,
no one else touches it. Procedure.”

“How convenient.”

“Like you don’t know the regulations? Don’t even ask me.… ”

“To listen to the trumped-up charges against Morbier?” she said. “Someone’s framing him.”

A sigh came over the line.

Frustrated, she wanted to kick something. “
Bon,
I won’t waste your time. Or mine.”

“
Et alors
, let’s talk over dinner.”

“What’s the point, Melac?” she said. “I’m helping Morbier. No one else will.”

Pause. Leaves swirled in the overflowing gutter. Behind her came the groan of a garbage truck in the narrow street.

“What’s the evidence?” Melac asked.

She gave him a brief account.

“From what you say, it sounds circumstantial. But I didn’t say that,” he said. “Anyway, what can I do?”

“A lot,” she said. “Request the police dossier, find out who’s been questioned, obtain copies of the lab results, the daughter Irati’s statement, the statement of Morbier’s driver who took him to Lyon.… ”

“Aimée, all that’s routed to Internal Affairs.”

“As if you can’t call in favors from the responding Police Judiciaire, suggest it links to a case you investigated. There’s a million ways, Melac. Morbier says you’re the best. Prove it.”