Murder in the Latin Quarter (18 page)

T
he Metro was crowded
for this time of day but Maggie was too anxious to sit anyway. Her mind was reeling as she stood by the door, waiting for her stop.

Gerard and Isla's death were connected. They had to be. Two murders within a week of each other? Both connected to Delphine? It was too much of a coincidence.

If Delphine didn't know who killed Gerard, she clearly knew someone who did.

Did Gerard and Isla know each other? What was their connection? Was Delphine the intersection point?

Does that mean
Delphine's
life is in danger?

Was this all connected to the will? Except Isla wasn't in the will.

Maggie wasn't sure what she'd find at Gerard's apartment—or even if she'd be allowed in. She just knew that the cops were wrapping this murder up with a bow: degenerate ex-con gets killed by the degenerate class of people he hung with. She could see how they'd jump to that convenient conclusion. Anyone would be tempted to.

When she'd passed his street the day before she thought the neighborhood Gerard lived in hadn't looked very safe.

And honestly most people who met Gerard ended up wanting to slit his throat.

But still… two murders within six days and both connected to Delphine?

Her Metro stop came just as she saw she was getting a phone call. She hated talking while she walked—it definitely took her attention away from what she was doing and where she was going—but she had a strict time line today so she accepted the call and hurried up the steps to the Le Marais neighborhood in the fourth arrondissement.

“Darling, you sound out of breath. Did you find a Pilates gym near you?”

“Ha, ha, very funny, Grace,” Maggie said. “But listen I'm glad you called.”

Maggie crossed the street and zagged in between slower ambulating tourists and shoppers. “You're not going to believe this. Gerard was murdered last night.”

“No! That's terrible. Or is it?”

“I'm on my way to his apartment right now to see what the police missed.”

“Oh, Maggie, is that wise?”

“They're calling his death attributal to his risky lifestyle.”

“Honestly, darling, that actually sounds pretty logical.”

“Two murders in less than a week and both connected to Laurent's aunt? I don't buy it.”

“Really, Maggie, you're overthinking it.”

“I can't believe you're saying that,” Maggie said in frustration. Was she really the only one who saw the connection?

“In any case, I'm calling, darling, because André was doing a little research on your Nazi lover. He was very impressed with your quest to try to find Camille's orphaned child.”

“Grace, I can't believe you're sharing with him the stuff I tell you. This is personal and I'll ask you not to—”

“
Allo
, Maggie?” André's voice came over the line and Maggie slowed to a stop and stood at the corner of rue du Rivoli and Gerard's street, the rue de l'Arbre Sec.

“Yes, hello, André,” Maggie said, briskly.

“How have you been,
chérie
?”

“Don't call me that. What is it you want?”

André laughed warmly. “I have found some information that I thought would be of interest to your research.”

Maggie bit her tongue to keep from telling him she had no interest in hearing what he had to say. Her anger at Grace bubbled to the top and it was all she could do to remain civil.

“Well, let's hear it,” she said tersely.

“Did your friend Herr Bauer happen to tell you his father died a few years ago,
oui
?”

“How is that important?”

“My research shows his father committed suicide.”

“Well, that's tragic but I'm not sure how helpful it is,” Maggie said sarcastically, enjoying the pleasure of dismissing his Intel.

“Yes, but his grandmother—the wife of Helmut Bauer—
also
committed suicide…did you know that? Within weeks of the war being over. Yes? More helpful?”

Maggie's stomach turned. “That's hardly surprising,” she said uncertainly. “She was married to a murdering dirt bag. After his team lost the war, he probably was an even bigger jerk to live with.”

“Ahhhh!” André said. “But now I see you have not uncovered the biggest surprise of all about your Helmut Bauer.”

Wanting very much to tell André in no uncertain terms that the man was hardly
her
Helmut Bauer and bristling over his attempt to one-up her—but also wanting to hear what he had to say, Maggie took a long, steadying breath and held her tongue.

The pedestrian traffic had picked up on this block as people headed toward the café district not far away.

“It appears that Helmut Bauer shamed his entire family,” André said, “not just because of what he did
during
the war but also after the war.”

After the war?
Maggie shut out the image of the people rushing past her and turned her attention fully back to what André was saying.

“Will you kindly spit it out?” she said in frustration. “What happened after the war?”

“He was hung at Nuremberg.”

M
aggie stared unseeing
down the street of busy people, cars and taxis moving past her.

Hanged at Nuremberg!

Only the worst of the worst were executed for war crimes at Nuremberg. In fact, only twelve in total. And it looked like one of them was Camille's lover.

No wonder Dieter didn't want her to contact him again. No wonder he didn't want to talk to her.

What a travesty his grandfather was—not just to hundreds of innocent French people—and one poor love-starved French girl—but to his own family for generations to come.

What did this mean?
Did it matter in Maggie's search for Camille's daughter? Or did it only matter that certain people knew how devastatingly shameful it was to be connected to Bauer?

Did Delphine know about this?

If she did, why hadn't she led with that when she told Camille's story?

She must not know.

And Maggie wasn't going to tell her. The war was too painful to Delphine as it was. The last thing Maggie wanted to do was remind her of it all over again.

But one thing that this information did was give Maggie more to go on when she was doing her own Internet research. She opened up a browser on her phone and typed in:
Bauer Nuremberg
.

Immediately a photo came up of Oberleutnant Helmut Bauer. It was the first photo Maggie had seen of him. There didn't seem to be a lot more information than she already had but when she had time later tonight she'd follow the assorted hyperlinks to read about the crimes for which he was executed.

She studied the photo of Bauer. It was slightly out of focus and he had his Gestapo service cap pulled down low over his face. She could see his mouth and part of his nose but the rest was in shadow.

Be great if I could see his eyes,
she thought and then shivered.
Or maybe not.

Remembering her time constraint, she slid her phone into her jacket pocket and turned down the rue de l'Arbre Sec toward Gerard's apartment building. She expected to see, if not cop cars out front then at least yellow crime scene tape marking the area. But there was nothing. She had the address and went straight to the building. It was old—and not classic Haussmann kind of old, but ratty ready to be ripped down kind of old.

And that's saying something in Paris.

She went to the front door. There was no security keypads, no concierge, no foyer. Just a filthy landing inside the front door with dog feces piled in one corner and a metal plaque of mailboxes on one wall. The elevator had a
hors service
sign on it—which was just as well. She would seriously have considered scaling the outer wall of the building with a hook before she'd take a chance on the elevator. She headed up the steps.

She wasn't at all sure what she was looking for and she was entirely open to believing that this trip was a total waste of time. On the other hand, if someone else dropped dead within the next few days, she might be glad she bothered.

At the landing on the third floor, she saw some evidence that a crime had been committed. Yellow crime scene tape crisscrossed the doorjamb of Gerard's apartment which was one of four apartments on the floor. Maggie went to the door and tried the door but it was locked.

Oh, well. It was worth a try.

She stood outside for a moment thinking and then went to the next door on the floor and knocked. She waited for two minutes but heard no sound inside. She went to the next door and knocked.

A young woman dressed in sweatpants and a ripped t-shirt answered the door. She held a cigarette between her lips. Her eyes went first to Maggie's clothes, then to her face.

“
Bonjour, Mademoiselle
,” Maggie said. “I was wondering if you knew anything about what happened last night with Monsieur Dernier.” She pointed in the direction of Gerard's apartment.

The girl's eyes followed Maggie's gesture and she shrugged.

“He is dead,” she said in guttural French. Her accent was a patois, but that was hardly a surprise. There were a lot of refugees and immigrants in this impoverished area. Still, her dialect didn't sound like a foreign accent to Maggie's ear. She was native French, just not Parisian.

“I know,” Maggie said. “I was wondering if you knew Monsieur Dernier.”

“He was a pig.”

Oh, so you did know him.

“But his name was not Dernier,” the girl said. “It was Dubois.”

Maggie nodded. Gerard had used that alias when she first met him. It was the reason why years ago she hadn't realized he was Laurent's brother until very late in the game.

“Is there an onsite landlord I could talk to?” Maggie asked as the girl began to close her door.

“Downstairs,” the girl said as she shut the door.

Maggie went downstairs. There were three apartments on the ground floor and one with a handwritten plaque on the door that read
gardien
. Maggie knocked on the door and a man answered. He reeked of garlic and he too had a cigarette sticking out of his mouth.

“
Oui
?” he said, looking Maggie up and down.

“I need to get into Monsieur Dubois's apartment,” Maggie said.

He made a snorting sound and blew out a puff of smoke. “Impossible. The police have sealed it.”

Maggie was almost positive the police
sealing
involved putting tape on the door and walking away. She opened her wallet and took out the only bill in it and held it in front of him.

“Fifty euros,” she said. “It's all I have. Is it enough?”

The man looked around the foyer as if worried he was being set up and then snatched the note from her fingers.

“I will get the key,” he said.

Five minutes later, Maggie stood in Gerard's living room. If she had ever thought it would be impossible to feel sorry for the man she credited with turning her sister into a drug addict and losing her little niece, she was proved wrong today.

The apartment was bare. A mattress was on the floor—stained with Gerard's blood. There was no furniture, no books, no clothes, no dishes, nothing to show that someone had used this place as his home.

Maggie had no tools, no way to check for fingerprints—and no access to any kind of database even if she had. She wasn't even sure what it was she'd been hoping to see. It was just a sad little apartment in a bad section of town where a sad little man bled out his last with no one to care.

An image of the little boy standing next to Laurent flashed into Maggie's head. The little boy with his hand on the arm of his big brother, leaning into the arms of his beautiful mother. The little boy who looked so much like Jemmy that it broke Maggie's heart to think of it.

Maggie pushed thoughts of Gerard away—thoughts of him as Nicole's father, as the man Elise had fallen in love with, as the little brother who Laurent had once tried to protect. Her eyes burned with unshed tears.

The
gardien
stood outside in the hallway. “Quickly,” he said, jingling the keys.

There was nothing here. Maggie could see that. Gerard had left nothing of himself behind except the bloodstain. There was no answer to anything here. No clues that painted a picture of what had happened.

Gerard was obviously killed on the bed. Perhaps as he slept? So, maybe by someone he knew?

“Madame…” the
gardien
said impatiently.

Fifty euros sure doesn't buy much time
, Maggie thought as she left the apartment. The landlord locked and retaped the door and then disappeared down the stairs. Maggie began to follow him when she saw that the young girl's apartment door was ajar. As Maggie passed, the girl opened the door wider.

“He is a relative?” the girl asked.

“He was,” Maggie said, finally claiming Gerard and feeling better for having done so.

“He had a visitor yesterday,” the girl said.

Maggie turned to face her. She didn't speak but gave the girl time to continue without prompting.

“A woman. They screamed at each other. She said she'd make him pay.”

“Did you tell the cops this?”

The girl gave Maggie a look of disdain for such a stupid question.

“Did you get a look at her?”

The girl shrugged. “
Peut-être
,” she said.

Maggie dug out the hidden ten euro note in her wallet and handed it over.

“Fat. Ugly. Brown hair. Dressed like a beggar.”

Could that have been Michelle?

“Did she have a big jaw and short brown hair?” Maggie asked, trying to tamp down her excitement.

“
Oui
, and bad teeth. She said
I will hurt your whole family
.”

M
aggie walked
outside the apartment building and glanced at her phone. The threat of rain had darkened the sky and it was getting late. Delphine hadn't called so either Mila hadn't awakened from her nap yet—
I'm so going to be up all night with her
—or she was awake and all was well. Maggie stood in front of the building and watched a few people pass down the street in front of her. Many pushed bikes or walked but all watched her distrustfully.

She'd found out exactly nothing in looking through Gerard's apartment except that he'd been killed where he slept. She'd looked at the lock on the door but it hadn't shown evidence of being forced.

Had Gerard let his killer in? And was that killer Michelle?

Why?

Maggie ran a tired hand over her face. So many questions and absolutely nothing that even hinted at a possible answer. She turned in the direction of rue du Rivoli and then on impulse turned around the other way. While it wasn't the most direct way back to the Metro, if she were someone who'd just killed a man, she might not choose the most direct and
visible
way out. The landlord and the girl upstairs had seen nobody on the night of Gerard's killing. But then, an apartment building like this wasn't exactly your best bet for block parties and get-togethers. Maggie was pretty sure most people kept their doors closed and minded their own business.

If it hadn't been for Michelle screaming as she left Gerard's apartment yesterday, nobody would even have known about her visit. Maggie walked the length of the apartment building and was surprised to see a narrow alleyway between the end of Gerard's building and the start of the next one.

Maggie looked at the walls but there were no windows on the side of either building. But she could see it was a thoroughfare the length of one full city block. She opened up her phone and pulled up a map. The street a block south of rue de l'Arbre Sec was rue du Louvre. Although it didn't show on her map, this alley connected with it.

If the killer had taken this alley to rue du Louvre, he'd be able to slip easily back onto rue du Rivoli well away from the scene of the crime with no one the wiser.

Without realizing she was doing it, Maggie stepped into the alley.