Murder on the Champ de Mars (19 page)

Looking around, Rose realized her friends from Sciences Po had scattered and gone. The shouting was escalating. She felt a hand close around her ankle, then she was tumbling to the ground and into a whirl of arms and legs. Afraid, she yanked
her leg free and crawled, panting, to a peeling boat hull. She pulled herself up. The entrance doors were open, three steps away. If she could just reach them, she could get out of here.

Then her foot caught on something, and the next thing she knew she was landing on her knees and elbows on the damp concrete and staring at the trailing black laces of a pair of military boots.

T
HE WHITE TRAILER
by the exit to the Ségur Métro stop looked out of place, René thought, with its sign reading M
ADAME
R
ANA:
Chiromancie; Tarologie; Médium; Voyante du Passé, Présent et Avenir; Spécialiste des Photos et de l’Écriture
. Quite a varied clientele she must get here, René figured; she was right on the border of the chichi 7th arrondissement and the more proletariat 15th.

From Gypsy café to circus to a damn fortune-teller. Madame Bercou, or whatever name she went by, from La Bouteille aux Puces, had called him and given him this fortune-teller’s address. He’d paid enough for it. Now he wanted answers. But what could a fortune-teller, who lied for a living, tell him about the Constantins?

The well-lit street lay deserted. He knocked on the clean, white trailer door. “Madame Rana?”

“Un moment, s’il vous plaît,”
came a voice.

A few minutes later a woman, in what René recognized as a cobalt-blue Givenchy wool coat like one Aimée had in graphite, descended the trailer’s steps. A Maltese peeked out from her matching leather tote. She disappeared around the trailer in a mist of Guerlain.

“Entrez,”
came the voice.

Inside the caravan, the decor favored purple and red; the walls were padded, cushion-like. A young woman stood before a purple-draped table. She wore a long skirt with small mirrors
woven into the fabric, an embroidered peasant blouse, gold hoop earrings and plenty of eyeliner. A little too much for René’s taste.

The young woman sat down before a brass tray, shuffled a deck of tarot cards. To her right was a display of quilled feathers and satiny, polished hematite stones that invited one to touch. For a moment he visualized Chloé, who put everything in her mouth these days, choking on one. A chandelier of black glass hung from the ceiling, and a clump of sage smoldered in an abalone shell. He fought the urge to cough and run out of this bordello-like herbal cocoon.

“A tarot reading, or your palm?” She looked up with a rehearsed smile. “Or for you I’d suggest throwing the stones. The stones respond to magnetism, your will and courage.”

Choices, choices, choices.

She looked to be in her midtwenties. Too young, from what Madame Bercou had told him. “You’re not Madame Rana.”

“It’s prepay.” She gestured to the sign indicating the type of credit card taken—Carte Bleue—and the manual credit-card imprinter, the kind known as a “knuckle duster.”

René sat down, sinking into the purple fabric. “I’ve prepaid via Madame Bercou at La Bouteille.
Comprenez-vous?
”

The words turned her red-lipsticked mouth into a moue of disappointment. “It’s my mother you want. She’s out.”

“D’accord.”
René met her gaze. “I’ll wait.”

“Could take all evening,” she said, peering out of the curtained window resembling a ship’s porthole. “And I’ve got standing appointments, clients booked until late.
Désolée.
”

He’d been kicked out of better places than this trailer, with its polyester curtains and IKEA candles.

“You do report your earnings
au fisc
, I suppose?” he said. “Display your business license somewhere? I assume you pay the three percent surcharge for bank cards?”

“We have an arrangement, the
flics
know we’re here. So you
can’t scare me by threatening to tell them. Not that it’s any of your business.”

Payoffs and protection. René would have to use something else for leverage.

“But I’ll tell you this for free,” she said. “I see bad things in your aura.”

“Yours, Mademoiselle, doesn’t look that good either.”

She grabbed his hand, splayed out his pudgy palm. “Hmm, a split love line.” She looked up, her thick eyeliner creasing at the edges of her lids. “Must hurt, loving a woman who thinks of you as only a friend.”

René blinked. How did she know? He pulled back his hand and tried to recover, sitting back on the purple cushions and crossing his legs. He thought of a comeback. “Too bad Drina Constantin’s death will make her brother Radu get nasty. Especially when he hears you refused to help.”

The girl became very still, her hands frozen in the act of picking up the deck of tarot cards. On top was the skeleton holding a scythe.

“
Maman
, wake up.” The girl stood and pulled back the curtains behind her to reveal an alcove with a berth like you’d find in a train sleeper compartment. A middle-aged woman with a hairnet over a black bun sat up and yawned.

“
C’est le petit
. You deal with it. I need a manicure.”

With that, the girl pulled on ankle boots and a short fur jacket and flounced out.

René knew these two charlatans couldn’t see the future, didn’t have second sight. He hadn’t come for a palm reading. Still, he stole a glance at the lines on his palm as the elder fortune-teller made her way to the chair across the table from him.

“Madame Rana, if we could cut the social niceties and get to the point.”

She scratched her neck. Stretched her legs. Yawned again. “So,
mon petit
, a love potion to make her fall in love with you?”

If it were that simple, he’d have tried long ago.

“That’s not why I’m here, Madame.”

As you well know
, he thought, but instead he set one of the black-and-white photos on the brass tray. “Djanka Constantin, aka Aurélie; her son, Nicu; and her sister, Drina. Tell me about them. And if it’s something I haven’t already heard, I’ll make it worth your while.”

Professional now, Madame Rana consulted a thick book labeled A
PPOINTMENTS
. Waddled over to the trailer’s door, flipped the sign to
FERMÉ
and sat down.

She glanced at her watch, a faux, rhinestone-encrusted affair with a Chanel logo. On second thought, René reflected, given the bright sparkle and her clientele, it might be authentic.

“You get ten minutes,” she said. “My second cousin married a Constantin. There’s been bad blood between our families since the war. One of those things.” She jutted out her chin, pursing her mouth as if to say
go figure. “Alors
, my second cousin lives in Montpellier, down south. No friends of ours, this branch of the Constantin family. Djanka didn’t exist to the family anymore, according to my cousin’s wife—”

“Didn’t exist? How’s that?”

“Shunned. At least that’s what I’ve heard.”

He knew that. “Did that happen after she had her baby?”

“I’m telling you what I know, not what I don’t.”

René backtracked. “What about the boy’s father?”

“In prison. Never came out.”

Caught her in a lie. According to Madame Bercou, he’d died in a fire.

She noticed his look. “They came up with a story about burning in a caravan to protect the boy.”

“So that would explain why her sister Drina, presuming they’re sisters, raised Nicu as her son. To protect him?”

“Our people take care of our own.”

“This bad blood … who else did the Constantins feud with?”

“Feud?”

“Besides your family, I mean …”

Her tone got defensive. “You shouldn’t speak about things you don’t understand. These disputes are generations old.”

René knew the woman had something on her tongue. “But was it a feud that caused the family to shun Djanka? Or her baby?”

“All I heard is that the sister, this one, she informed to the
gadjo.”

René gave a little sigh. “Tell me something I don’t know, Madame Rana.”

“My cousin’s wife said they found her in a ditch outside les Invalides.”

“She went by Aurélie, didn’t she?”

“Her stage name, and she had a lover while her husband sat in prison.”

Who must have been Nicu’s father. It fit with what the
mec
who’d married into the family had intimated.

“A lover?” He showed her the other photo. “This man, Pascal?”

Her glance grazed it. “I don’t know names.”

“How did she know Pascal?”

“Before my cousin’s time.”

Sitting atop his deep cushion, René struggled to reach his bag and pulled out the birth certificate.

“Yet on this birth certificate there’s no father listed. Shouldn’t the husband in prison be listed as the father?”

She shrugged.

“You’re saying this lover Pascal, a non-Gypsy, is the father?”

She shifted in her seat. Rubbed the instep of her bare foot. “I’m saying nothing.”

“
Bien sûr
, but it’s possible …”

“Possible. But I didn’t say that.”

“So in your culture it’s better for a child to be illegitimate than a
gadjo
?” René’s thoughts sped, jumped ahead. “A way to
protect family honor while the husband’s in prison. That it? Then the family take it into their hands to kill her—an honor killing?”

She growled. “There haven’t been honor killings for centuries,
mon petit
. We’re not primitive. Time’s up.”

“I’m paid up for one more minute, Madame Rana.”

She sighed. “What does all this matter now?”

Aimée thought it mattered.

“Let’s just say this twenty-year-old crime might be linked to Drina’s disappearance last night. Tell me more.”

Madame Rana checked her watch. “My cousin’s wife wants a rice cooker, one of those Japanese ones—you flip a switch
et voilà
, perfect rice.”

“So you’re saying that’s extra?”

“You’re a mind reader,
mon petit.
”

René pulled out his checkbook, hoping it was worth it. They settled on a price. He took out his pen.

“What happened later?”

“The lover’s long dead,” she said.

Easy to say. “I need more than that. You mean Pascal?”

“My second cousin’s mother-in-law, passed on now, told my cousin that after Djanka’s murder the sister and the boy hit the road. Went out of reach.”

“Djanka’s murder sent them into hiding? Why?”

Madame Rana shrugged. “Facing a bad wind makes a wise one turn back,
mon petit.
”

More Gypsy sayings.

“You’re sure the child’s father—the lover, Pascal—is dead?”

“Long departed. That’s all I know.” All of a sudden her eyes fluttered then rolled up into her head so he could see the whites. A feather fell off the wall and floated in the air. Like a sign, René thought, not that he bought the woman’s act.

“
Mon petit
, your business looks bright tomorrow. Good fortune. And I see a baby in danger.”

“Chloé?” René tensed, then remembered that this was all fake. He seethed at this woman trying to take advantage of him.

“The
gadjo
tries to tie up a loose end.”

He leaned forward in spite of himself. “What loose end?” When she didn’t reply, he said, “Drina Constantin? Is she the loose end?”

“Drina’s impatient for her journey. To join her boy.”

Tingles ran up René’s neck.

A knock sounded on the door.

“Time’s up.”

R
OSE
U
ZES
’
S VOICE
mail recording instructed Aimée to leave a callback number. Frustrated, she did. As she checked her own phone for messages afterward, she heard the receptionist call the doctor by name. There he was. Dr. Estienne. She reached for the clipboard to go back in and try to catch him.

“Has that hemodialysis adapter arrived?” she heard Dr. Estienne ask as he passed through reception.

Her antenna up, she paused in the doorway.

“Check on why the delay … the patient needs …”

Aimée couldn’t hear the rest.

Doctor Estienne was hurrying toward the next corridor. “I’m late.”

The receptionist called out, “You’ve got an eight forty-five
P.M.
walk-in after your meeting, Doctor.”

But Dr. Estienne had disappeared through the swing doors.

If it itches, scratch it
, her father used to say. Madame Uzes’s phrase “it doesn’t make sense” rang in her head. If he was doing hemodialysis work here, why wouldn’t Dr. Estienne treat Drina at this private clinic, especially since the foundation would pay the supplemental fees? Drina hated hospitals, she’d said.

In the darkness she headed over the gravel path bordering the lawn that faced Dr. Estienne’s clinic. She paused before she reached the flower beds and peered through the lit windows. Four of the patient rooms she surveyed contained older men in wheelchairs eating their dinners from trays.

Halfway down the garden stood an old stone
pigeonnier
fashioned into a shrine with a statue of Saint Jean. Beside the last window she found the loosely replanted peonies where the corporal had dug his trench. Her eye caught on a glint in the clumps of dirt. A coin?

She took out her penlight, shone it. Something that looked like a small disk with a metal band around it caught the light. Did the corporal keep treasures, like a child, in his trenches?

Her curiosity piqued, she picked it up: a tiny wheel carved in wood. She felt her heart contract. She dug through the fresh clumps, getting dirt under her fingernails. And then she felt it, pulled it out with a slow, careful motion.

A small wooden wagon, one wheel broken off. One of the wooden Gypsy wagons Nicu had carved for Drina.

Drina had been here. Maybe she still was. That meant Doctor Estienne had been lying. Who else? Doctor Estienne’s colleagues from Hôpital Laennec? Madame Uzes?

Her phone rang—Morbier. He could wait. She silenced the call. Time to scratch that itch. Aimée had to follow her gut. And not get caught by the staff.