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Authors: Cara Black

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BOOK: Murder in the Marais
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T
HURSDAY

Thursday Morning

T
HE
S
EINE FLOWED SILVER
,
chill mist hovered, and along the mossy-stoned quai Aimee walked, debating whether to call Hecht. No contact, he'd said. But as far as she was concerned, the rules had changed when she'd found Lili Stein dead.

She crossed the Pont Neuf with the still-lighted
bateaux mouches
gliding below as dawn crept over the Seine. Thick fog silhouetted Cafe Magritte under her office on rue du Louvre.

Inside, at the zinc counter, she dunked a buttery croissant in a steamy bowl of cafe au lait. The espresso machine rumbled like a jet at takeoff.

She'd accepted a simple job but the stakes had skyrocketed with this grisly murder. Morbier had treated her as a suspect and had her escorted home, whether to establish authority with his minions or—she didn't like to finish the thought. Nothing about this felt good. She shivered, remembering the look on Lili Stein's face.

Warm coffee vapors laced the windows overlooking the Louvre's western wing. She especially didn't want to lie to Morbier about some odd Nazi hunter who would deny knowing her.

Revived, she slipped twenty francs across the counter to Zazie, the owner's freckle-faced ten-year-old, who worked the cash register before school.

"Mind if I get ready for work?" she said, pulling out her battered makeup kit.

Four-foot-tall Zazie stared awestruck as Aimee applied red lipstick in the mirrorlike espresso machine, ran mascara through her lashes, and outlined her large eyes with kohl pencil. She smoothed her short brown spiky hair, pinched her pale cheeks for color, and winked at Zazie.

"Buy yourself a
goûter
after school." She wrapped Zazie's fist around her change.

"
Merci,
Aimee." Zazie grinned.

"Tell your papa l'Americaine wants to settle her tab later,
d'accord?
"

Zazie's brown eyes grew serious. "Why does Papa call you l'Americaine? You never wear cowboy boots."

Aimee struggled not to smile. "I keep them in my closet. Real snakeskin. My
maman
sent them from
le
Texas." She had the cowboy boots but she'd bought them herself at the Dallas airport.

Upstairs, lights glowed behind her frosted-glass office door.

"Soli Hecht left you a present," said her partner, Rene Friant, a handsome dwarf with green eyes and goatee. He wore a three-piece navy blue suit and tasseled loafers. Rene pumped the hydraulic lift handle of his custom orthopedic chair with his foot.

Curious, she picked up the thick manila envelope with her name scribbled on it.

Fifty thousand francs were inside along with a note.

Find her killer—tell no one. I don't trust the flics. I trust you.

Wads of franc notes tumbled out as she grabbed the desk edge to steady herself.

"He must like you!" Rene's eyes grew wide. "We'll convince the tax board to. . ."

She shook her head. "I can't. . ."

Rene pumped furiously until the seat aligned with his desk.

"Look at this." He thrust one of several threatening letters from the bank manager at her. "Our tax extension is up in the air, the bank is calling in our note. Now, the Eurocom accountant refuses to pay us the eight months of back payments we're owed, he's quibbling about a clause in the contract; it could take months." He struggled to adjust a knob on his seat. "Time you got out of the computer clouds, Aimee, and got back in the field."

"I don't do murder." She winced.

"You make it sound like there's a choice."

"I
NSPECTEUR
M
ORBIER
is expecting me," Aimee said to Madame Noiret, gritting her teeth at the Commissariat de Police reception desk. Not only did her jaws ache from the biting cold outside, she was dying for a smoke.

"
Bonjour,
Aimee,
ca va?
" Madame Noiret, the gray-haired clerk peered through reading glasses and smiled. "I'll let him know you're here."

"
Ça va bien, merci,
Madame."

She hated coming back to the Commissariat in Place Baudoyer; her father's memory stabbed her from every corner. There was the cold marble floor of his office where she'd done homework as a little girl when he worked late, later helping him clean out his desk when he joined Grandfather at Leduc Detective, then collecting his posthumous medal from the Commissaire.

Aimee's American mother had disappeared from her life one evening in 1968. She'd never returned from the
Herald Tribune
, where she worked as a stringer on the news desk. Her father had sent Aimee to boarding school during the week and on weekends he took her to the Luxembourg Gardens. On a bench under the row of plane trees by the puppet theater, she once asked him about her mother. His normally sympathetic eyes hardened. "We don't talk about her anymore." And they never had.

Three weeks without a cigarette and Aimee's tailored jeans pinched, so she paced instead of sitting. She'd always thought the crimes investigated by the Commissariat of Police in the Marais rarely matched the division's elegant accommodations. High-tech weapon sensors hid nestled in brass wall sconces of this Second Empire style nineteenth century mansion. Rose lead-paned windows funneled pink patterns across the marble walls. But the dead cigarettes in overflowing ashtrays, greasy crumbs, and stale sweaty fear made it smell like every other police station she'd been in.

This palatial building neighbored Napoleon's former barracks and the 4th arrondissement's Tresor public, the tax office on rue de la Verrerie. But Parisians called it
flics et taxes, la double morte
—cops and taxes, the double death.

She drifted over the scuffed parquet floor to read the bulletin board in the waiting area. A torn notice, dated eight months earlier, announced that Petanque leagues were forming and serious bowlers were encouraged to sign up early. Next to that, an Interpol poster of wanted criminals still included Carlos the Jackal's photo. Below that, a sign advertised a sublet in Montsouris, a
"studio economique"
for five thousand francs a month, cheap for the 14th arrondissement. She figured that meant a sixth-floor walk-up closet with a pull-chain squat toilet down the hall.

Aimee stood in front of the board, reknotting her silk scarf, knowing she'd got it right the first time. She hated lying to
flics
, especially Morbier.

Maybe she should convince Morbier she was thinking of converting to Judaism instead of telling him the truth about an old Nazi hunter who had made her fifty thousand francs richer, hiring her to deliver half a photo to a dead woman. Then hiring her to find her killer.

Madame Noiret pushed sliding glasses up her nose and pointed inside.

"Go ahead, Aimee, Inspecteur Morbier will see you."

She walked into the seventeen-foot-high-ceilinged room of the homicide division. Few desks were occupied. Morbier's was littered with a stack of well-thumbed files. A demitasse of espresso sat next to his flashing computer screen. His pudgy fifty-nine-year-old body leaned back in a dangerously tilted chair. He cradled the phone against his shoulder while one hand scratched his salt-and-pepper head and the other held a cigarette conspiratorially between his thumb and forefinger. As he hung up, she watched his nicotine-stained fingers with their short splayed nails, rifling in the cellophane-crumpled pack of Gauloises for another cigarette. High above the desks, a TV tuned to France 2 displayed continuous car wrecks, tanker accidents on the high seas, and train fatalities.

He lit the cigarette, cupping it as if there were a gale wind blowing through Homicide. He'd known her father since they'd been on the force together—but after the accident he'd kept his distance.

He gazed at her meaningfully as he gestured towards a chipped metal chair. "You know I had to put on a show, especially for the Brigade."

She figured that was probably the closest to an apology she'd get for his behavior at Lili Stein's apartment.

"I'm happy to furnish a statement, Morbier." She tried to keep the frost out of her voice. "The Temple E'manuel has retained my services."

"So the Temple hired you before she was killed?" Morbier nodded. "Just in case she got butchered?"

She shook her head, then sat on the edge of the metal chair.

"Humor me and explain."

Morbier could pass for an academic until he opened his mouth. Pure gutter French was what her father used to call it, but then most
flics
didn't have graduate degrees from the Sorbonne.

"It's not delicate to incriminate the dead, Morbier." She crossed her legs, hoping her tight jeans wouldn't cut off her circulation.

Now he looked interested. "You found her, Leduc. You are my
première suspecte
. Talk to me."

She hesitated.

"Trust me. I never prosecute dead people." He winked. "Nothing goes further than this desk."

And cows can fly. Mentally, she asked Lili Stein's forgiveness. "Please don't tell her son."

"I'll keep that under consideration."

"Do better than that, Morbier," she said. "The Temple doesn't want the family hurt. There were rumors about shoplifting."

Morbier snorted. "What's this?"

"You know how old people conveniently forget items in their pockets," she said. "The rabbi asked me to talk with her, convince her to bring the items back. On the quiet."

"What kinds of things?"

"Scarves from Monoprix, flashlights from Samaritaine. Nothing valuable." She tried not to squirm in the hard-backed chair.

Morbier consulted a file on his desk. "We found brass candlesticks, religious type."

Aimee shook her head. "She hid things. Like a child, then she forgot where." She stood up, stuck her hand in her pocket.

On her way to the Commissariat she'd come up with a logical reason for being in the area. The radio had reported large right-wing demonstrations all over the Marais protesting the European Summit.

"I'd followed her from Les Halles but I lost her at that demonstration. Neo-Nazis were all over. I figured she returned to her apartment so this evening I went there and then. . ."

At least the part she told him about how she found the body was true.

"Let me be sure I understand." Morbier inhaled deeply from a newly lit cigarette then blew smoke rings over Aimee's head. "You followed her in case she shoplifted, lost her in Les Halles at a fascist demonstration, then went to her apartment and found her carved Nazi-style?" His eyes narrowed. "Why were your fingerprints on the radio dials?"

She did her best to ignore his look.

"
Mais bien sûr!
Because I had to lower the volume. The killer turned the radio up to hide Lili's screams, then dropped used tissues on the floor after wiping off his or her fingerprints." Eagerly she pointed to the crime-scene photos covering his desk. "But that's an interesting point, Morbier!"

"What's that?"

"The perpetrator might be used to someone cleaning up after him-or herself."

"Or might be a slob."

She studied the swastika carved into Lili Stein's forehead in the photograph. It was then she noticed how this particular swastika slanted differently from the graffiti in the Metro. She grabbed a paper clip from his desk, rubbed it on her silk shirt, and then stuck it in her mouth. Chewing and moving it with her tongue helped her think.

In the photograph reddish discoloration under Lili Stein's ears continued along her neck. The thin line of congealed blood showed the ligature that had strangled her. Nothing explained her half–clenched fists except fear. Or anger.

"I'll corroborate your alibi after I check with your dwarf." Morbier plopped himself back into his chair, rubbing his jowl with one hand. "We make a deal, you and me. . ."

"Leave Rene out of it."

"Why should I?"

"You want to use me. No one in the Marais will talk to your
flics
."

She knew that ever since uniformed French police had rounded up Jews for the Nazis during the Occupation, no Jew trusted them. Morbier must have figured that if the Temple employed her they trusted her, even though she wasn't Jewish.

"Leduc, trust me."

She paused. Maybe she could trust him, maybe not. But didn't they say if you knew your enemy you were at least one step ahead?

"I'll agree to share information. Deal?"

He nodded.
"D'accord."

"Give me the forensics?"

He snorted. "You did notice the ligature mark under her ears?"

"Of course. I am my father's daughter." She wanted to add, "And more."

Morbier winced at the mention of her father.

"That wasn't all I noticed, Morbier," she said grimly. "What about the lack of blood?"

"You wouldn't be suggesting that the homicide took place elsewhere and the victim was dragged?" he said.

"Since the swastika was carved after strangulation, not to mention her stockings were rolled down, her fingernails broken and her palm full of splinters, it would follow."

"That thought had occurred to me." He flicked his cigarette into the espresso cup. It sizzled and went
thupt
. Typical Gallic response, she thought. She noticed his mismatched socks: one blue, the other gray.

"The technicians have been combing the courtyard," he said. "If there's something there, they will find it."

"Time of death?" She riffled her hair, creating more spiky tufts.

He ignored her scarred hand as he usually did. "Say between three and seven last night. The autopsy may pinpoint the time closer."

She stood.

"Beyond sharing information, I'd appreciate your help in my investigation."

Now Morbier sounded like her father. He had actually asked for her help. Nicely. She almost sat back down.

"In other words if I don't, I'd be hindering it?"

BOOK: Murder in the Marais
2.66Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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