Murder in the Palais Royal (7 page)

Aimée pounded on the door. She had to confront the liar.

Playing by the rules always backfired. Big time. She’d think twice before doing her civic duty, if she ever got another chance.

Today she should be sitting in a coffee shop with her brother on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. A brother who’d be a young man now. She’d hoped to get to know him.

And then she noticed the message light flashing on her cell phone. The number of Hôtel Dieu. René? But the extension looked like his doctor’s. She hit the callback number and got the nurse.

“Dr. Soualt,
s’il vous plaît,
” Aimée said.

“He’s in surgery.”

Great. She’d missed the doctor’s call. She forked her fingers through her zig-zag-cut streaked blond hair.

This time she wouldn’t let a nurse fob her off.

“Monsieur Friant, a patient, please connect me to his room.”

“Friant? Monsieur René Friant’s been moved from intensive care.”

Good news.

“Wonderful, please connect me to his new room.”

“I am sorry, Mademoiselle. He’s been discharged.”

“I don’t understand,” she said. “He had surgery only late last night. Where is he?”

“The consulting doctor referred him to a private facility.”

That quick? He’d had a collapsed lung.

“Were there complications? Where is he now?”

“The confidentiality rules apply, Mademoiselle. I can’t divulge that information.”

Had they placed him in protective custody, in a private clinic?

She took deep breaths and had calmed down by the time a blue-uniformed
flic
unlocked the door and escorted her to Melac’s office.

“Where’s René?” she asked him.

“Safe.” His eyes were on her knuckles, reddened from pounding on the door.

“You mean René’s in protective custody and you’re not going to tell me where? I demand to know.”

“Sit down,” he said. “Regulations forbid my giving a suspect information as to the victim’s location. In all cases we must protect the victim.”

She wanted to kick the base out from under his swivel chair. “Look, Melac. . . .” She made herself take a breath, trying to control the anger welling up in her. “I don’t believe this.

Rene’s my partner!”

“But that’s not why you’re here,” Melac interrupted. “Mathieu Albret stated he was with his family Monday night. You heard. You have no alibi, Mademoiselle.”

She sat before she said something she’d regret in a big way, took another deep breath, and observed the ring on Melac’s fourth finger.

“Forget that you think I’m schizophrenic,” she said, after a moment. “Won’t wives lie for their husbands?”

Melac shrugged. “Mine didn’t.”

And she understood. Seen it before with so many
flics.
“And you’re divorced, paying child support, and still carrying the torch, right?”

Melac blinked.

“Seeing your children every other weekend,” she said. “Shared holiday time in August,
non
?”

A sad ghost of a smile flitted across his features. “Actually, the last part of July.”

“I bumped heads with Mathieu in the fast lane at the pool two days ago. It led to coffee, he invited me for dinner. Instead I offered to cook
chez moi.
”

Melac leaned forward. Listening. Like a good
flic.
Like her father. For a moment he seemed almost human. She’d give anything to know what he was thinking.

“Of course, you were attracted to his mind, not his Speedos,” Melac said.

“So he fools around on his wife,” she said, “he lied. She’s ‘conveniently’ in Milan. Maybe she was on Monday, too. Why don’t you check the airlines? My only proof lies in my garbage bins.”

“How’s that?”

“Eight Fauchon takeout cartons. I can’t cook.”

“Fauchon’s for gourmets,” he said. “I buy frozen meals at Lidl.”

The low-price supermarket. Aimée pictured his single room in police housing, crayon drawings from his children on the walls, the suitcase he lived out of. Waiting for the weekend to visit his children.

“Single men usually do.”

Melac blinked again. He pulled his notepad from his pocket and flipped it open, now in professional mode.

“Let’s get back to the point, Mademoiselle Leduc,” he said. “Mathieu Albret furnished his statement. You have no alibi.”

“Time for marriage counseling, I’d say.”

Her mind turned over the little Melac had: Luigi’s drunken description, René’s ambiguous gesture.

“Of course, you realize Luigi had been drinking all afternoon and evening, Melac?”

“We’re checking on that.”

She continued, “In robbery and cases of assault with a deadly weapon, you need more than circumstantial evidence, which you don’t even have. There was no gunshot residue on my hands, for one thing. No motive, for another.”

“We find that motive boils down to revenge, love, or, the most common, money.” His mouth narrowed. “Call it my gut feeling. Your partner’s afraid of you.”

Her mouth went dry.

“Maybe you threatened him in the ICU.”

“You call that trusting your instinct?” she said. She crossed her legs so she wouldn’t kick him. “I think you just don’t like me.”

His ears reddened.

“I do my job,” he said. “And I’m aware of your father’s history
.
But here at
La Crim,
you get no special treatment.”

She grabbed her bag and stood. “Are you going to arrest me?”

“That’s up to
La Proc,
” he said. “She’s looking at the assembled evidence.”

“Part of which I furnished, proving that someone set me up. Given Mathieu’s statement, as yet uncorroborated by his wife, you’ve got nothing, Melac.” She leaned forward, her palms on his desk. “
La Proc
can’t take this to the
juge d’instruction
. As she’s explained to me on previous occasions, her job consists of assembling admissible evidence. You know that.”

“And you have no alibi, Mademoiselle,” he repeated.

“Say that after you’ve checked the Monday Milan flight manifests for Madame Albret, Inspector.”

“Dealing with you, as Commissaire Morbier told me, makes herding feral cats look easy,” Melac said.

Great help, Morbier! But she bit her tongue. Things were stacked against her.

“Going to nail my shoes to the floor, Melac?” she asked. “Or may I go?”

Melac tented his fingers. His expression was shuttered. Then he gestured to the office door. “For now.”

She stuck her hands in her pockets, so Melac wouldn’t see them shaking, and strode out of his office.

R
ENÉ HAD NO enemies. Who would shoot him? Or implicate her?

She had to start at the office. Go through their clients’ files, their work calendar, René’s daily agenda, his address book.

This woman dressed like her, knew where she lived, as well as the address of her office. She’d shot René and framed her. Calculated, and chilling.

Leaves crackled under her feet as she headed toward Pont Neuf. Sirens whined. The smell of oil from a barge, chugging below on the Seine, floated on the wind.

She squared her shoulders and noticed the kiosk headlines: TRANSPORT UNION NEGOTIATIONS REACH IMPASSE. STRIKE THREATENED.

Another strike, a typical autumn.

But not for her.

She’d pick up her scooter from the garage repairing it. No use battling for taxis this week, with an impending Métro strike.

An hour later, she parked her faded pink Vespa in an alley off rue du Louvre. Diffuse, vanilla light filtered down from the mansard rooftops, but it did not dispel the chill emanating from the worn limestone. She snapped her denim jacket closed, knotting her scarf, wishing she’d worn her high boots instead of the pointed mid-calf vintage Valentinos.

Time to face the office, an office without René, and a daunting search through their files. Then she had to figure a way to force Mathieu to rescind his statement.

She headed to her building, an eighteenth-century soot-stained edifice with scrolled wrought-iron balconies and the thirties’ neon sign: Leduc Detective.

Maurice, the one-armed Algerian war veteran who manned the newspaper kiosk, handed her the evening’s
Le Soir.

“Controversy over inquest—was Princess Diana pregnant?” Maurice read. Shook his head. “The stuff that sells papers!”

More than a month had passed since Diana’s crash in the Pont de l’Alma tunnel, but the press hadn’t quit.

“They put this on the back page!” Maurice pointed to a six-line article reporting grave desecration in the Jewish section of Père Lachaise cemetery. “Skinheads defaced the star on my mother’s grave. Again.”

“
Désolée,
Maurice.” She’d had no idea.

“There’ve been vicious attacks in the Métro, outside the Orthodox school in Belleville,” he said. “These crimes go unpunished. You’d think, after Bergen-Belsen, they’d done enough. But it never stops.”

She set a franc on the counter.

“Weren’t you going to New York?” Maurice asked.

Would she ever get there? “My plans changed.”

A line formed behind her. She walked the few steps to her building.

Viaggi Travel’s door was dark. The crime-scene tape had been removed from Leduc Detective’s door. Inside, the rooms lay deserted and silent, without René. And to carve out time for her trip, she’d finished her work, for once.

Past the office partition, she viewed René’s desk. His laptop, files, his empty workspace. The stain left on the floor by his blood.

She felt adrift on a rough sea of lies. But she had to concentrate. The answer must lie here. Somewhere.

René’s laptop held sensitive data, clients’ files, operating systems, the works. Had a competitor broken in and shot René? Or was it an attempt to taint their firm and the computer security of the companies they monitored?

At her desk, she booted up her computer and checked network sharing and hardware, and looked for a break in the firewall. Nothing. Relieved, she accessed René’s e-mail for threats or ambiguous messages. Apart from a confirmation of the upcoming Nadillac hearing, there was nothing.

Nadillac, a short, overweight, twenty-something whiz nerd, had turned to his hobby—black-hat hacking—for revenue. He did what a growing number of hackers did: he’d employed “0days” or “zero days,” information and code enabling the penetration of the software run by governments, private citizens, and, in his case, the corporation Nadillac worked for. He’d deployed 0days, resulting in minor disruption of his company’s Web site, and then he’d paralyzed it. But she and René caught him before he’d taken total control of the company’s network. They’d submitted the incriminating findings of their investigation to his firm. Next week, she was slated to testify against him in court.

René’s four color-coded files were on his desk: IN PROGRESS, FUTURE PROJECTS, PROPOSALS SUBMITTED, and PROPOSALS ACCEPTED. For twenty minutes she checked each file but found nothing missing. The phone rang, startling her.

“Good afternoon, Mademoiselle Leduc.” A honeyed voice, indicative of a sales pitch or request for donation. “Paribas bank here. I’m inquiring about the recent deposits to your business account.”

She sat up, alert, remembering René’s accusation from the previous night.

“Can you tell me which deposits you’re referring to?”

“This is a courtesy call, Mademoiselle,” the honeyed voice continued. “For such large sums, we suggest a higher interest yield account.”

“
Excusez-moi,
but which deposits?”

With all that had happened, she hadn’t checked their account for the sums René had mentioned.

“I’m in the sales branch. Sorry, I don’t have that information.”

“Why not?”

“Your business’s banker keeps that. Think about moving funds to a higher yield account and increasing your portfolio’s value, Mademoiselle. We offer competitive rates.” The honeyed voice turned to vinegar. “I’ll call you later this week for your reply.” The phone went dead.

She should have checked this sooner! She accessed it online and scrolled through the bank statements, and gasped. A one-hundred-thousand-franc deposit, just as René had said.

No one owed them so much money.

No doubt there had been an electronic error, perhaps an account number mistyped by data entry. All too easy a mistake for a late-night data entry shift. But surely it would be simple to take care of; her bank would find the error and correct it.

After punching in their banker’s extension, she was put on hold.

With the phone crooked between her neck and shoulder, she went through René’s top drawer. It took five minutes to sort through the account files.

“Monsieur Guérin, at your service,” the banker’s recorded voice answered. “I’m in meetings today but will check my messages and get back to you before the close of business hours. Please leave your number.”

She left a message. She found nothing else new in René’s file drawers. But in his bottom desk drawer, she found his brown moleskin office diary.

No appointments yesterday. On Monday, she saw a conference call with Cybermatrice penciled in for the morning. There were notes to himself in the margins: train at Dojo; call Félice, EXPLAIN!; order chocolate
Maman’s
birthday; and a red line through the following week, Aimée NY.

Think. She had to think. Who might have had it in for René?

He’d broken up with Félice, a fellow student at the Dojo. Didn’t she have a new boyfriend? She remembered René saying he was a biker, a jealous type who’d done time in prison, not someone René thought worthy of Félice. And he had a motorcycle. For a moment she wondered if it came down to a jealous boyfriend. A stretch, but worth checking out.

But she recalled René’s grumblings last week over the tactics of Cybermatrice, their rival, his complaints over their underhanded tactics. She called Cybermatrice, but only got a recording. Frustrated, she left a message.