Murder in the Palais Royal (25 page)

* * *

ON HER SCOOTER, Aimée headed toward the café to meet Audric. She’d confront him, insist that he take her to Olivier, who hadn’t answered her calls.

Ahead of her, theatregoers spilled from the Thèâtre du Palais Royal, blocking traffic. Impatient, she squeezed the handlebar brakes, overhearing the well-dressed theatre crowd discussing the adaptation of Feydau’s seventeenth-century farce. Others moaned about the already-full taxis.

A couple crossed in front of her. The man—salt and pepper hair, bags beneath his eyes—looked familiar. But everything else about him looked different. He wore a new suit, his hair was brushed back, and his arm embraced a woman’s shoulder. And he was laughing. Then he looked up.

She locked eyes with a surprised Morbier.

She’d never seen him nonplussed before. Or with a woman. In this case, an attractive older woman with full red lips who adjusted her gold speckled shawl as her bubbling laugh floated above the conversations and car horns.

Morbier on a hot date? Had the earth shifted on its axis and the planets spun out of orbit?

“What a surprise, Mademoiselle Leduc.”

Mademoiselle Leduc? He’d never called her that either.

But then she remembered him in a tuxedo at his office at the Brigade Criminelle.

“Aren’t you going to introduce us?” The woman’s words lingered in the air.

It seemed like she and Morbier stared at each other for a lifetime. Why had Morbier kept her secret? And why did a pang of irrational jealousy shoot through her?

“I’m his goddaughter, Aimée Leduc, Madame.”

“Aaah, of course,” she said. Warmth and the scent of gardenias emanated from her. “Those big eyes, I should have known from the way he talks about you.”

He does?

“Please call me Xavierre,” she said. “
Enchantée,
Aimée.”

Horns beeped behind her. “The pleasure’s mine, Xavierre.”

Aimée leaned forward to kiss Morbier on the cheek. “Get Melac off my back like you promised,” she whispered in his ear, “or I give Xavierre an earful.”

Then she winked at Morbier. “Enjoy the rest of your evening.”

She popped the gear into first and took off.

* * *

A
IMÉE PRESSED THE buzzer of Audric’s apartment. He hadn’t shown up at the café. No answer, but she hadn’t expected one. She tried the phone number listed on Olivier’s file once more. Again, no answer.

She rounded the corner past the Commissariat and watched the buildings that backed on to Audric’s rear courtyard. A cat slinked by in the shadows.

She wanted a cigarette so much, she could taste it. Too bad she’d run out of stop-smoking patches.

A side door opened, shooting a ray of light over the cobbles. Then a limping figure crossed the street. Audric.

He was speaking into his cell phone.

She could learn more by following him than confronting him.

She slipped off her heels and darted among the parked cars. Barefoot, she kept to the shadows, trailing him past the looming hulk of the Banque de France, pausing every so often to wait in a doorway.

Audric kept up a fast pace despite his hobbling gait. He paused mid-block, bent, and tied his shoe. Afraid he’d see her, she ducked behind a pillar and waited. And then on the busy rue des Petits Champs, she lost him. Frantic, she looked both ways. Only a couple, arm in arm, laughing.

She broke into a run. Half a block later, she saw him on the steps of the small church fronting the oval-shaped Place des Petits Pères.

She huddled in the bakery doorway.

She recognized the person next to him right away from the
Voici
photographs. Olivier. Tall, slender, blond, and with a sneer.

Their words carried over the square. “You worry too much, little boy.” And then they entered the church.

Aimée ran, shoes in hand, up the wide steps, through the quilted leather church door and into dim, candlelit Notre-Dame des Victoires. Thousands of book-cover-sized plaques commemorating answered prayers covered the vaulted stone walls.

A lone man kneeled at the main altar. She saw a few old women at the side altars. Organ music soared, filling the church. Nicolas and Olivier stood in back, near the stand of flickering votive candles.

Audric gazed up at Olivier with a kind of hero worship. Beauty and the beast, she thought.

She edged closer to hear them, pausing behind the confessional.

“It’s serious. I’m warning you, Olivier, be careful, she’s going to—”

At that moment, a black-frocked priest emerged and beckoned to her. “Mademoiselle, you’re next.”

Nervous, she stepped back. “Not tonight, Father.”

The priest swept away, but not before Audric spotted her.

Alarm crossed his face. “You followed me again!”

“Who the hell are you?” Olivier demanded.

Nothing for it now but to confront Olivier and get answers.

“Sounds like you’re afraid I’m going to rake up your involvement with Nicolas,” Aimée said, stepping between them. “Count on it. Remember November third, 1993? The Marais synagogue was burned, an old couple was run over?”

Audric’s mouth dropped open.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Olivier. But he didn’t meet her eyes.

She shifted her bare feet on the cold uneven stone, feeling vulnerable and at risk even in this church.

“But a witness remembers you, Olivier. Drunk, making a scene at a shop outside of which an old Jewish couple was found run over, in the gutter, their great-grandson crying, with blood on his teddy bear. You drove off drunk, right? To escape. But not before Nicolas took this.”

She held up the siddur. “His insurance policy.”

“And that proves what?”

“He went to prison for torching the synagogue. You made an arrangement with him, no doubt. I assume you paid him. But if news of the couple’s killing ever hit the fan, he wouldn’t go down for you. Not for vehicular manslaughter, hit and run, fleeing the scene. That’s three counts.”

Olivier looked her up and down. “You look normal, even chic, but you sound like you escaped from the mental hospital.”

A few voices raised in song joined the organ music near the altar. No one paid the three of them any attention.

“Nicolas couldn’t afford Cours Carnot,” she said. “A shame, considering the promise he showed. Audric, you told me how he hung around your group. How he thought of you as his friends.”

Audric backed away.

Olivier caught his arm. “Little boy with a big mouth.”

“H—how was I to know what she was after?” Audric stumbled against the confessional.

“Enamored of neo-Nazis or seeking thrills, I don’t know which, you joined
Les Blancs Nationaux
. For Nicolas’s initiation, he boasted on video about torching the synagogue.”

“I knew him: a loser,” Olivier said. “So what? What’s all this to you?”

His insolence marked him as dangerous. She became wary. But she’d gone this far. Now she had to get him to open up.

“It was my testimony that put Nicolas behind bars,” she said.

“Eh?” Shock painted their faces.

“And I’ll do the same for you. Before Nicolas was murdered in prison, he told me things. It’s time the blame shifts to where it belongs.”

She’d kept talking, all theory, but neither of them denied any of it.

“He was in prison; what else would he say? Where’s your proof?” Olivier demanded.

“The
flics
are going to re-open the investigation.” She was lying, but they didn’t know that. “Clémence, his ex, was murdered last night, and that triggered renewed interest.” She watched their faces for a reaction.

“I didn’t go with them.” Audric’s lips trembled. “My father wouldn’t let me.”

“Shut up,” said Olivier.

“Don’t get me in trouble, please. Nicolas couldn’t drive. He didn’t have a car. There’s been a mistake.”

“I said shut up, Audric.”

“But you drive, Olivier,” Aimée said.

“So do millions of other people.”

“You had Nicolas murdered in prison. Then you had to shut Clémence up, to get Nicolas’s notebook from her and destroy it.”

“You’re crazy.” Olivier’s voice wavered.

“I’m sure you didn’t plan to strangle her in the Palais Royal. But if she taunted you, demanding money to keep quiet . . . ? She wasn’t easy to manipulate, like Nicolas. She’d blackmail you forever.”

Olivier’s eyes widened. She’d gotten to him.

“That’s right.” Aimée pulled out the
Voici
. “You go for models. Nicolas kept these in his cell, and it burned him. Ate at him that while you partied, he got a crowded cell, rats, cockroaches.” She paused. “He was covered with bites. Lice crawled over his clothes.”

The votive candles guttered in their red glass holders. The smell of burning wax hovered. Barefoot, Aimée shivered in the chill emanating from the cold stone.

“Why are you hounding me and making such crazy accusations?”

“Prison will make an interesting change for you, Olivier. Those inmates like blonds.”

Olivier’s mouth hardened. His gaze was defiant. “Big talk. But you’re spinning fantasies. Lies. Nicolas committed suicide, and you can’t prove a thing.” He snorted. “I hate bleeding hearts who think they’re out for justice.”

She’d struck a nerve.

But he backed away. Covered his chest with his arms as if protecting himself. Then a look of bewilderment crossed his face.

Shadows danced on the walls. Fabric shushed on the stone. The smell from the holy water font, incense drifted from the altar.

“Don’t you want to get out in front of this, Olivier?” she said. “Tell the truth. Youth’s on your side. You were eighteen years old, drunk, mixed up with neo-Nazis. It can be explained.”

Audric’s lips trembled. He took Olivier’s arm. Audric said, “Nicolas agreed and got paid off. None of the rest happened. Tell her.”

Olivier pushed Audric away so hard that he hit the wooden prayer kneeler in the darkness. “Not me. I didn’t do it.” His voice came out in a strangled cry.

But he knew who
had
done it.

Aimée leaned down to help Audric up. The church door swung shut. Olivier had bolted.

She ran outside to hear a roar and see gray puffs of exhaust as Olivier took off on his motorcycle. No way she could catch him barefoot. She’d parked her scooter at Audric’s.

But she’d rattled Olivier’s cage. Big-time. Now she had to find out what he was hiding. She counted on Audric.

She slipped on her peep-toe heels. And noticed a ladder-work of runs in her black stockings. “I’m walking you home, Audric. And you’re going to tell me what happened.”

“I can’t. Olivier will. . . .” He chewed his thumb.

“Hurt you?”

“It’s not that way. He’s like my friend.”

“But not really your friend.”

Too cool to let Audric call him a friend.

“You scared him away. He didn’t go home.” Audric pointed to dark windows in the Place des Petit Péres. “We’re in the same economics class, and if I . . . no way.”

Audric had changed his tune. Afraid. Now she’d have to convince him.

“Up to you. I’m sure your father will be pleased to hear about this.”

“Please, don’t get me in trouble,” Audric interrupted.

“I want to show you something.”

Aimée led Audric across the Place des Petits Péres, a small oval, its corners lopped off by some royal architect. Past the building of Louis XIV’s wigmaker, now a wineshop to the Pal-ais Royal residents.

Into the Palais Royal, quiet except for the gushing of the fountain and the echo of her heels clicking over the flower-like mosaic patterns. No other sound met them. Eerie in the moonlight, deserted, it seemed as though she could hear a slight gasp, almost a collective tremor, as ghosts retreated.

Sixty pavilions in three colonnades surrounded the garden, which was soot-stained and shadowed by globed lights. The air felt warmer tonight, due to the vagaries of the October weather; yet she shivered, thinking of Clémence.

She stopped in front of the medal shop and checked her watch. “I timed it. It took us less than five minutes to walk here from Olivier’s.”

Audric stared at the one remnant of crime-scene tape on the barricade. “What do you mean?”

“Clémence worked at that café. Easy for Olivier to follow her.”

Audric swallowed. “He was at my place last night.”

“Why lie for him?”

“Lie? But he brought his entourage. I didn’t invite those models. Or their mess. Or the way he pissed off my cousin’s dealer.”

Audric clapped his hand over his mouth.

So Olivier hung with a fast crowd and did drugs.

“Drugs don’t interest me,” she said. “Tell me what happened.”

“His model girlfriend drank all my father’s champagne. Olivier partied. We were supposed to be working on our class project.”

She understood. Audric was bookish, a brain, thus useful to Olivier.

“My father returned from the theatre excited.” Audric pointed to the Theatre du Palais Royal. “His new play, a Fey-deau adaptation, just opened. He and Olivier talked for hours. Ask my father. I fell asleep.”

Aimée leaned against the wrought-iron fence tipped by gold spikes. Damp ivy trailed in the distance, glistening in the moonlight, a scent of night-flowering jasmine from the garden mingled with the smell of old stone. But she couldn’t put the image of Clémence out of her mind.

“Did you know Clémence was pregnant with Nicolas’s baby?” she asked. “Instead of her giving me his notebook, the ‘proof,’ I found her strangled behind the barricade. The police will question Olivier. And you. Better for you to tell it all now, show you want to cooperate.”

Audric turned away, but not before she saw his stricken look.

“I told you.” He took a breath. Exhaled. “Most of it. The rest I don’t know; it’s just a feeling. About Nicolas at Cours Carnot.”

“Go on.”

“Olivier dared Nicolas to join
Les Blancs Nationaux,
to undergo the initiation. I think Olivier wanted to himself, but his father’s in the ministry—and his mother, too.”

“So instead of joining, he torched the synagogue with Nicolas?”

He shrugged. “I wanted to go. But my father made me stay home that night. Then, when Nicolas had money all of a sudden,
alors,
I thought Olivier had helped him.”