Murder in the Latin Quarter (21 page)

F
rom her position
in an iron chair by the Tuileries fountain, Maggie could see the obelisk of the Place de la Concorde like a Saturn V rocket about to launch into orbit.

As usual, Grace was late.

Maggie shivered in her thin jacket and double-checked that Mila was warm in her boiled wool jacket and knit hat. The baby sat happily kicking her feet from Maggie's lap.

Maggie wasn't sure what to think. Her mind was swirling with possibilities and conjectures.

Laurent was mad at her and wanted her to come home and she'd still learned almost nothing about his early years. Grace was barely speaking to her—or to her own daughters it appeared.

Delphine was an unhappy woman tortured by something that happened more than seventy years ago and was an even bigger enigma than her nephew.

Was she involved with stolen Nazi treasure? Had she been an unwed mother? Was she Noel's mother?

And then there were the murders.

From what Maggie had heard, Isla was a sweet, hardworking girl who'd known no one in Paris and who'd started working for Delphine only a month before she was killed.

Gerard was a degenerate lowlife killed in the apartment paid for by Delphine.

Michelle was a crazy person with daddy issues intent on blackmailing her stepmother for money—and who might very possibly have killed both Gerard and Isla.

Maggie reran the memory tape in her mind of the figure jumping over Isla's body.
Could it have been Michelle?
Was she tall enough to have been the mystery figure? Honestly, if Maggie's memory could be trusted, the figure seemed taller, more masculine. Was that just Maggie's assumption playing tricks on her memory?

Maggie ran a tired hand across her face.

Which of it was connected? None of it? Some of it?

Milo suddenly squealed and raised her hands. Maggie turned to the shadow that materialized into Grace over her shoulder.

“Hello, darling Mila!” Grace said, holding her arms out for the baby. Maggie lifted her up and watched as Grace nuzzled Mila and then turned to André who stood behind her. Maggie looked beyond him but it was just the two of them.

“You didn't bring Zouzou?” she asked.

“Isn't she precious?” Grace said to André and he instantly clucked Mila under her chin and made a kissing noise.

Maggie felt a flush of annoyance. First, because Grace hadn't brought Zouzou and second because she
had
brought André.

“
Bonjour
, Maggie,” André said, leaning in to kiss her on the cheek. “
Ça va
?”

“Yes, thank you,” Maggie said stiffly.

“Sorry we're late, darling,” Grace said, shifting Mila to her hip. “Give her the package,
chéri
.”

André pulled a thick letter out of his leather carryall and handed it to Maggie. It was still wrapped in its postal paper but one corner of it had been ripped free.

“It's the diary,” Grace said. “Or at least we assume it is. It's from Heidelberg and you can see it's a diary through the tear.”

Maggie took the package and hesitated. The last thing she wanted to do was open it in front of André. She wasn't sure precisely why but she didn't trust him. And the parcel looked like someone had already started opening it.

“Sorry for the rip,” Grace said with a laugh. “André was so excited when it arrived, it was everything I could do to stop him from opening it.”

I'll bet
, Maggie thought, fingering the ripped section. Grace was right though. It was definitely the diary and her excitement about that threatened to overpower her annoyance. She pulled the rest of the wrapping off. A letter from Dieter rested on top of a small leather volume. In the letter, Dieter apologized for being rude when they met.
“My grandfather, as you can imagine, was a source of endless humiliation
.” He wrote that if Maggie would simply dispose of the diary when she was finished that would be fine.

“What does he say?” Grace asked as she handed Mila back to Maggie.

“Says he's sorry for being an ass the other day and here's his grandfather's diary.”

“Do you read German?” André asked as Maggie flipped through the handwritten book.

“No.” She looked up at him. “Do you?”

He shook his head and she could see he was very interested in getting a look at the diary himself. For that reason alone she decided he wouldn't. On the other hand, she really needed to ask him some leading questions about Gerard to see if he acted guilty. She glanced at Grace who lit a cigarette and was frowning in the direction of the Place de la Concorde. There was no way Maggie could ask André questions without Grace catching on and ending up furious about it.

She glanced back at the diary and picked out the phrase “
meine Schaetzle C”
and in another place “
Liebling C
.”

“Well, it definitely looks like he's talking about Camille,” Maggie says.

“Except I didn't think that part was the mystery,” Grace said.

“You're right.” Maggie shut the diary and slid it into the pouch on the side of Mila's carrier. “I'll just have to track down someone who reads German.”

“You know,” André said, “it occurred to me that any one of the nursing homes in the Latin Quarter should be teeming with people who lived in Paris during the war.”

“That's a brilliant suggestion, André. Isn't it, Maggie?”

“Sure. Brilliant.” Maggie hoped she didn't sound too sarcastic. Especially since, actually, it wasn't a half-bad idea.

Grace turned to André and put her hand on his arm.

“Darling
chéri
,” she said. “Would you be
une ange
and get us a couple of ice creams? I'm dying for something sweet.” She gave him a kiss and he hurried off to a nearby ice cream vendor.

Maggie wasn't fooled. Grace didn't fit into her perfect size four slacks by
ever
dying for something sweet.

Grace turned to Maggie. “What is your problem?” she said coldly.

“Where is Zouzou?”

“Are you serious?
That's
what this is about? Why take it out on André?”

“I didn't think I was.”

“He only wants to help. You've made up your mind that you don't like him.”

“And you've decided to share with him everything I tell you!”

“That is not true.” But Maggie could tell she'd hit a nerve.

“And come to think of it, I'm not sure how it is André just
happened
to know Laurent's aunt,” Maggie said. As soon as the words were out of her mouth, Maggie regretted them.

“Have you lost your mind? You
suspect
him of something?” Grace stared at her, her eyes narrowing. Maggie tried to remember another time in their friendship when they'd ever looked at each other like this.

“No,” Maggie said unconvincingly. “Of course not.”

Except his gallery is right next door to where Gerard's killer hangs out. So there's that.

“This is what I get for trying to help you.” Grace turned and marched over to where André had finished buying three ice cream cones. “Sorry, darling,” she called to him. “Maggie can't stay so let's just go on.”

André looked at Grace with surprise and then turned to follow her out of the gardens. He handed Grace one of the ice cream cones which she promptly dropped in a nearby trash receptacle.

Maggie watched her go, her fury and guilt mingling in a vortex of discouragement.

So I guess this isn't a good time to mention your boyfriend planted a juicy one on me last week?

M
aggie bought
an ice cream and shared it with Mila. She put a call in to Delphine but there was no answer. That didn't worry her since she knew Delphine was trying to rest. She tried to remember if this was Amelie's day off. It occurred to her that she hadn't seen Amelie since the day after Gerard died.

That is another strange one
, she thought. She still didn't know how Amelie fit into all this. Maybe she should just bring home a bottle of wine and ask Delphine flat out why she was giving a fourth of her estate to her housekeeper and why she had a stolen Degas in her broom closet.

Maggie wiped Mila's cheeks and realized she wasn't ready to go back just yet. It was a beautiful spring day in Paris. And she was determined not to let Grace spoil it for her. She glanced at her phone to see if she'd received any messages.

She hadn't.

With her phone out, she decided to take André up on his idea and check the area for nursing homes. It was probably a long shot but she had no other leads to follow up on. Within minutes she'd found a facility right in the heart of the Latin Quarter. In fact, it wasn't six blocks from Delphine's childhood home.

“Up for a nice walk Mila?” she said to the baby who giggled in reply. Maggie resettled the baby in her backpack and checked her GPS for walking directions for the nursing home. She had no idea how French old folks homes worked but one thing she was fairly sure of—a baby was almost always a welcome distraction.

Because she was coming at the neighborhood from the opposite side of the Latin Quarter from where Delphine now lived, Maggie paid careful attention to her GPS and was grateful that the route looked to be fairly populated, the streets busy with lunch time office workers and tourists. And her phone was fully charged. It took her an hour of walking with periodic rests to reach the street with the facility.

Maggie wasn't surprised to see massive stone archways off the narrow roadway heralding the home. Like most of the other apartments on the street, once she pushed past the twelve-foot high double wooden doors, she entered into a courtyard area. All of Paris, she mused, was like this massive frontispiece on the outside with the inside a mystery. Sometimes a manicured courtyard like this one, sometimes a foul-smelling back alley for the apartment dwellers to dump their garbage, and sometimes just a car park.

Across the courtyard was another set of doors with the plaque
Entrée
positioned across the top.

Maggie went inside and walked up to the reception desk.

“
Bonjour
,” she said.

The woman behind the desk wasn't young but not ready for residence status either. She surprised Maggie by looking up, glimpsing Mila in her backpack, and clapping her hands with delight.

“
Bonjour
. You are coming to entertain the guests?” The woman spoke in English.

How do they always know I'm not French? From just one word?

“Yes,” Maggie said. She pulled Mila out of the carrier. “And this is Mademoiselle Mila.”

“Our guests will be eager to meet Mademoiselle,” the woman said. “Have you come before?”

“Uh, no, this is our first visit.”

“You do not have a relative here, Madame?”

“I don't, no. Will that be a problem?”

The woman shrugged. “
Pas pour moi
,” she said, gesturing for Maggie to follow her down the long hall.

A
n hour later
, Maggie sat with a group of women—none younger than eighty years old. Mila sat happily on the lap of one of the younger women—she was eighty-two—and proceeded to sufficiently enchant everyone in the room. Maggie had been to nursing homes before when her grandfather had become too weak to be cared for at home. He hadn't lasted long and Maggie always wondered if he would have lived longer if he hadn't had to leave his own home. Even in one of the more expensive facilities in Atlanta, Maggie remembered the smell of urine underneath disinfectant most of all.

After some small talk where Maggie discovered that two of the women spoke English well enough to translate for her, she asked the group in French:

“Has this building always been a home for the elderly?” She was hoping to get some idea of who knew the neighborhood.

“It was a hospital many years ago,” said Madame Remey, an old woman with white hair and lively blue eyes. Maggie tried to imagine what life was like in here for someone whose mind was still so quick.

“Are you all from this area?”

Most of them nodded.

“I'm related to the Fouquets,” Maggie said. “Three sisters who lived on rue du Canivet? Do you know them?”

Madame Remey pointed to a severely humped-back woman who had a perennially worried look on her face.

“Madame Belgert lived in the same building as the Fouquet sisters, didn't you Marguerite?”

Madame Remey asked Maggie's question louder and directly at Madame Belgert as if the woman was hard of hearing.

“My husband is Delphine's grand nephew,” Maggie said. “Little Mila is her great grand niece.”

Madame Remey turned to Maggie. “I did not know them personally. But of course the whole street knew of them.”

Maggie laughed. “Were they famous or something? How did you know
of
them?”