Murder in Pigalle Read online

  “Drop me at the clinique on rue de la Grange-Batelière, René,” she said. “Zazie’s friend Mélanie should be able to shed more light on this.”

  A few blocks away at the clinic, she hefted herself up and out of the car. The downpour had stopped. Rain-freshened air layered with lime blossom greeted her. She breathed the scent deep into her lungs. Her neck unknotted.

  But the evening duty nurse at the clinic shook her head. “Discharged,” she said, checking her screen in the darkly lit reception.

  To Aimée’s further questions, she shrugged. “Patient confidentiality precludes my giving information.”

  Great. A wasted trip.

  She called the café. Virginie had left to meet with the Brigade des Mineurs, but Pierre, after a breathless search of the kitchen, tracked down Mélanie’s address.

  Aimée would question the girl at home, hoping against hope that Zazie had contacted her. Figuring it counterproductive to score a taxi in the snarled traffic on the tree-lined Grands Boulevards, she took the Métro. Changed once and exited on the platform at Liège, her favorite station, joining crowds scurrying by the blue-and-white, mosaic-tiled scenes of the old Flemish city.

  Near a teeming café terrasse, she found the bus stop. Just in time to catch the 68 uphill toward Clichy. It was chock-full of passengers, standing room only. An elder whiskered gentleman offered her a seat, and she didn’t refuse.

  Heaven. She pulled out her water and prenatal vitamin packets and popped a mouthful.

  The bus ground upward in the dark, passing limestone buildings whose pale blue shutters and iron-grille balconies glowed from the lights within. Past the evening crowds under the marquee of the bright Casino de Paris, behind which once extended the Duc de Richelieu’s pleasure gardens of Tivoli, home to the long-gone pavilion where Louis XV supped with Madame de Pompadour.

  She got off by a weathered building—a nineteenth-century debtor’s prison, now apartments with a fruit shop and tailor on the ground floor. Aimée reached her destination, the shadowed rue Ballu, where an almost palpable hush descended. It was a world apart from rue de Clichy, the bustling thoroughfare that had once been the Roman road to Rouen. Rue Ballu was upscale, she noted, and exclusive, gardens and cobbled entry passages leading to lanes with hôtels particuliers behind grilled gates.

  She’d forgotten to ask Pierre for the building code. Stupid! But she didn’t have to wait long before a dog barked. “Done your business? Bon.” Footsteps and little sniffs sounded behind her. A figure punched numbers in the digicode.

  She pretended to root in her Birkin. “Sorry to disturb you …”

  A click and the foyer lights flashed on, illuminating a grey-haired woman with a Westie on a leash.

  “Forgot the new code again?” she said, irritation in her voice. “Should write it down. It’s been three days now.”

  So right after Mélanie’s attack they’d changed the code. Smacked of locking the barn door after the horse bolted. But if everyone was as trusting as this woman, Aimée wasn’t surprised the rapist had gained entry.

  The woman held the blue metal-grille gate open, and Aimée slipped inside. “Merci, Madame.” Aimée paused, still rummaging in her bag, until the woman entered a building on the right.

  A quick scan of the mailboxes revealed Vasseur at Number 7. Scents of jasmine drifted in the darkness ahead, accompanied by the chirp of crickets. She hadn’t heard crickets since last summer in the Jardin du Luxembourg.

  Off a cobbled lane to the right stood Number 7, an eighteenth-century townhouse, its garden sloping up from the two Mercedes parked in front. Some remnant of the Tivoli, she figured. A welcome mist splashed her from the fountain, which was backed by trellised ivy and surrounded by bulbous orange and pink roses, reminding her of the countryside. Not bad for the center of Paris. A cause for envy for the other few million Parisians who slogged up narrow stairs to a closet-sized apartment with a window overlooking a wall.

  A lighted window on the upper floor faced the side garden. About to knock on the carved wooden door, Aimée heard a woman shouting. “I couldn’t leave the merger negotiations again!”

  A man’s raised voice. “That’s your answer for everything. She’s your daughter, too. But shipping her off to a Swiss clinic?”

  A door slammed shut.

  So this jewel of an eighteenth-century townhouse didn’t bring with it happiness for these high-roller parents and their suffering daughter. The front door opened before she could knock. Streams of light blinded her as a man rushed out. Stepping back, she lost her balance. Felt an arm grab hers.

  “Who are you?”

  “Monsieur Vasseur?” she said, pulling her heel out of the gravel. Her eyes adjusted to the light, and she kept talking. Bad mood or not, she needed his information. “I’m Aimée Leduc. Excusez-moi, but …”

  “What are you doing here?” The man scowled. Tall, with thinning, blond, side-combed hair and narrow eyes, he wore a rumpled suit.

  “Zazie’s parents, the Duclos, gave me your address,” she said. “Forgive me for showing up like this, but Zazie’s disappeared.”

  “Who?”

  “Your daughter Mélanie’s friend.”

  “I’m sorry, but I don’t know all of Mélanie’s friends. Afraid I can’t help you.” His voice assumed a gloss. He jingled the car keys in his palm, impatient to leave.

  “I wouldn’t trouble you, but it’s crucial,” she said. “I need to speak to Mélanie. Zazie might have called her.”

  “Impossible.” A brittle finality sounded in his voice.

  “Another girl was raped tonight. She died en route to the hospital. And Zazie’s missing …”

  “Claude … Claude, who’s that?” came a woman’s voice from the foyer.

  “Talk to my wife.”

  With that, he got into a Mercedes, started the ignition. The window rolled down. “I’m sorry, truly sorry, but …” he said. Then pulled out, spitting gravel.

  Great.

  The tall woman in a designer suit stood silhouetted against the lit doorframe. Mascara streaks trailed down her cheeks.

  “Madame Vasseur, I know it’s a bad time, but please, we need to talk.”

  “I’m not in a sociable mood right now,” she said, about to close the door.

  “I wouldn’t describe this as a social call. Mélanie’s friend Zazie is missing. Please let me speak with Mélanie. Just five minutes.”

  “We can’t help you,” she said. “Mélanie’s not here.”

  Sent to the Swiss clinic already?

  “Can you tell me what happened?”

  “Like I want to go over the whole thing again? My daughter is traumatized.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “But Zazie decided to trail the rapist after what happened to Mélanie. He attacked again tonight, and now Zazie is missing. There’s a connection. If Mélanie’s rapist took Zazie …”

  “How do you know it’s the same man?” Madame Vasseur interrupted.

  “That’s what I need to find out. Any information, anything Mélanie told you or anything you saw will help.”

  Madame Vasseur shook her head. “He violated my daughter, our home … I won’t relive that.”

  “But he has raped another girl, and this one didn’t make it. She died in the ambulance several hours ago.”

  Madame Vasseur gasped. She grabbed the doorframe. “You mean …?”

  “Do you understand?” Aimée gripped the woman’s arm. “Zazie’s parents are desperate to find her.” Aimée stepped inside. “Please, it’s vital you help me.”

  Madame Vasseur led her into a salon with carved moldings, a chandelier and large abstract paintings on the paneled walls. Taken from the pages of an architectural magazine—a showpiece without a lived-in feeling.

  Madame Vasseur poured herself a glass of Burgundy. “Wine?”

  Tempted, Aimée shook her head. “Non, merci.”

  She sat down on a maroon-suede couch, gestured for Aimée to do the same. Took out a pack of cigar
ettes, lit one and offered the pack to Aimée.

  “Much as I’d like to …”

  “Ah, d’accord.” She eyed the bulge in Aimée’s middle. “Pregnancy’s a bitch, I remember. Then joy of joys, potty training.”

  A real candidate for mother of the year, Madame Vasseur. She sat back, blew a plume of smoke and kicked off her heels. Talk about rubbing it in. Aimée wanted to tear that cigarette out of her mouth and that wine out of her hand.

  A tan pigskin Hermès briefcase lay open on the couch, revealing files and legal documents. The woman tapped her cigarette ash into a blue bowl, distracted.

  “Mélanie was attacked three days ago, as I understand?” Aimée said to prompt her.

  “My husband, Claude, found Mélanie,” she said, her voice hollow. “When he returned from work.”

  “Any sign of forced entry, anything stolen?”

  Madame Vasseur shook her head. “Nothing was touched but my daughter. But Claude blames me because I worked late. I’m prosecuting a huge case. Three years of litigation, and they threatened to bow out. I had to hold their hands.”

  Aimée’s blood ran cold. What about holding her daughter’s hand?

  “I know it’s painful, but can you give me any details of Mélanie’s attack?” she said.

  “The maid didn’t work that afternoon. Claude thinks Mélanie returned at nine P.M. Like usual.”

  Usual? “Isn’t that late for a twelve-year-old to come home?”

  “She was coming from her violin lesson,” Madame Vasseur said. Aimée thought of Sylvaine’s scattered music, the stickered calendar. “Her teacher’s not a day person. She takes pupils after school and in the evening. We gave Mélanie taxi money like always. At ten thirty P.M. he found her in the conservatory … her music room.”

  More than an hour alone after the attack before her father found her? Horrible. But it fit the pattern.

  “Mélanie couldn’t reach the phone? Was she bound or taped?”

  “Traumatized, I told you,” she said, downing the wine and pouring herself another glass. “Mais tied up and her mouth taped, oui.”

  Like the other girls.

  “After the medical examination, Claude brought her to the clinic. She wouldn’t talk. They told us not to push her or insist.”

  “But she described the rapist to the composite artist. He looks like this.” Aimée showed the FotoFit to her. “Seen him? Maybe a gardener or delivery man at a shop, someone in the quartier?”

  Madame Vasseur shrugged. “No one I recognize. Could be anyone.”

  “What did Mélanie tell you?”

  “Wouldn’t talk about it.”

  “But she talked to Zazie.”

  “Red-haired girl, intense?” she asked, with a raise of her eyebrow.

  Aimée nodded.

  “I know her mother, Virginie. She runs a café, nice. We’ve met at the lycée,” said Madame Vasseur, the wine she drank thawing her out. “Claude and I are both lawyers. We work a lot. When Mélanie bonded with Zazie, I was happy. You know, Claude’s more le snob. But I let Mélanie come home by herself after school. Mélanie said she was too old for the maid to babysit her. I trust her. She’s always been a responsible, focused girl. Well, mostly. She’s brilliant. A musical prodigy.”

  Madame Vasseur gestured to a framed photo. In it a young blonde girl wearing an expensive-looking silk dress and grinning to reveal braces posed with a violin beside an older man and a smiling young couple arm-in-arm. “That’s Mélanie at her last recital, at a student exhibition sponsored by the Lavignes. Monsieur Lavigne, the elder, with his son Renaud and new daughter-in-law. They’re old family friends and supporters of the Conservatoire de Musique. Mélanie is eligible to try out for the Conservatoire this year, and I insisted. No negotiation on that.”

  Aimée heard a catch in Madame Vasseur’s voice.

  “Insisted? Do you mean Mélanie seemed reluctant to try out for the Conservatoire, Madame?”

  “Think back to when you were twelve,” she said, exhaling a plume of smoke. “You rebel against your parents. Everything matters, the way a boy looks at you, or doesn’t look at you. Life’s heightened, magnified. The world turns on what someone says, on being accepted by your peers—or not.”

  Mélanie sounded sensitive. But hadn’t Aimée felt the same at that age, too?

  A few more sips of wine and Madame Vasseur revealed she’d missed seeing Zazie at the clinic last night. She’d found Mélanie asleep and, after conferring with the doctor, sent her to Lausanne this afternoon.

  “But what about school?”

  “She’ll retake the exams in September. And the violin lessons, well … we’ll see.”

  At least Aimée had an idea about where to go next. “What’s Mélanie’s violin teacher’s name and address?” she asked.

  “Madame de Langlet, a former professor at the Conservatoire. She’s very selective. Her studio’s in Square d’Orléans.”

  Aimée made a note. Not far away. “That’s important, Madame. Tonight’s victim was also assaulted after a violin lesson.”

  “N’importe quoi,” she replied. “As I told you, Madame’s quite selective. She only takes pupils of Mélanie’s caliber.”

  “Selective or not, there could be a link, Madame.”

  “Then you’d need to speak with her.” Madame Vasseur sighed. She opened her mouth as if to say something but took a sip of wine instead. “But I’ll fight those battles over lessons when I come to them.”

  “Battles?”

  “Mélanie’s so gifted. I want her to continue with the violin.”

  Sounded like Mélanie didn’t.

  “Do you think I could talk with Mélanie at the clinic?” Aimée paused. “With your permission, of course.”

  Madame Vasseur stared at Aimée, almost as if she was seeing her for the first time. “Mélanie’s withdrawn into a shell, the doctor said. She won’t speak to anyone. Look, on Friday, when I visit, I’ll ask her, as long as there’s a way to avoid more stress.”

  Friday … too late.

  “Does your husband know more about the attack? Would he know what Mélanie told Zazie?”

  Madame Vasseur shook her head. “He blames me. He’s good at that.” She rolled her eyes, which had reddened. “For six months after Mélanie was born, I stayed home, cared for her, put my whole career on hold and devoted myself to her.” Madame Vasseur took a long sip of wine. “It sliced me in two to go back to work. I cried for days, wondering if I had made the right decision. Financially I didn’t have to, but—you’ll face this too—work fulfills in ways motherhood doesn’t. And you’ll have to choose. No one ever tells you a double standard exists. Women work hard at the job and harder at home.”

  She let out a sigh. Globed lights outside the tall windows illuminated the garden hedge with a golden sheen. “You’re always supposed to be a mother first, no matter what. That’s a man’s attitude. You’re up all night with their colic, then it’s bronchitis, the teacher meetings, the clean clothes, the lost homework … that’s your life. Six A.M. you’re up to do it again.”

  Madame Vasseur, chic in her Dior suit, did not appear to have gotten up at six this morning. Aimée doubted she’d ever made the school run. She wondered about the woman’s relationship with her husband.

  Fueled by the Burgundy, she grew more maudlin with every sip. “Think I sound like a cold bitch, n’est-ce pas? I just wish someone had told me.” She gave a little shake of her head. “Another piece of advice. Peach-pit oil works magic on stretch marks.”

  An angry, driven, unhappy woman. A townhouse in an exclusive enclave, an attorney’s power and salary; she was a woman with almost everything. Aimée reflected—could this be her in the future, determined to run Leduc Detective at the cost of her child?

  “May I read your police statement, Madame?”

  “Claude handled everything at the Commissariat.” She waved her cigarette in a dismissive gesture. “My daughter’s safe now. Away, nothing to do with this or you.”


  Au contraire, she almost said. “Just this afternoon Zazie told me Mélanie had shared disturbing things with her. She attempted to surveil this rapist Mélanie described. Asked for my help. Now she’s missing, after Sylvaine was raped and murdered. Don’t you see? If there’s anything, anything at all …”

  A phone trilled. Madame Vasseur rifled in her matching tan pigskin Hermès bag and pulled two out, glanced at the display of the one that was vibrating. “A client. I need to take this. I’ve helped you enough.”

  She called that help? Time was running out.

  “Bonsoir, Monsieur Haldane,” Madame Vasseur said, “no disturbance at all. Quoi? The requisition? It’s on my home computer. One moment.” She stood in her stocking feet. “You know the way out.”

  Gracious, too.

  But she needed to pee. “May I use your bathroom?”

  The woman waved as she walked none too steadily down the hall.

  Madame Vasseur’s second cell phone peeped out of the bag. Her personal phone. Aimée slid it out and scrolled down the numbers dialed. The third one showed a Swiss country code. The fourth was labeled “M.” With her kohl eye pencil, she wrote both numbers on her palm, then nicked one of Madame Vasseur’s business cards.

  This house gave off an antiseptic aura. Expensive art on the walls, Philippe Starck furniture, period detail—but it felt lifeless. For show. In the state-of-the-art kitchen, she searched for photos and found one attached to the stainless-steel refrigerator by a red magnet: a blonde girl barefoot in the garden wearing pink Levi’s and matching pink sunglasses—the same smiling girl from the photo Madame had showed her. The only other evidence of Mélanie.

  AS SHE CLOSED the front door, her mind reeled through what she’d discovered, trying to piece together connections—cheese-shop owners and high-ticket lawyers, both with daughters who attended lycées in the ninth arrondissement. So far she’d learned Mélanie’s music teacher’s name and that both girls studied the violin, were blonde and wore pink.

  Zazie attended school in the quartier, she was a redhead, and she played video games, not the violin. If the rapist had a type, which it seemed he did, Zazie wasn’t it.

  But could she be a hostage, taken because she knew too much? Murdered?