Murder in Saint Germain Page 5

  Aimée’s milk had dried up on that cold, damp night she’d watched Morbier go into surgery. Two months ago.

  Again, all the sadness and anger washed over her. It was Morbier’s fault she couldn’t nurse Chloé. The doctor had waved her guilt away with, “Sooner or later women stop nursing. Milk dries up for various reasons—big shock, emotional upheaval. Or it’s just time.” Guilt still invaded her at Chloé’s anxious tears when nothing came out.

  After gentle coaxing, Chloé took the bottle, sucked hungrily, her little eyelids at half-mast. Aimée grabbed the pediatrician-psychoanalyst Dr. Dolto’s tome, her bedside bible. She read the section on baby fevers, a worn, bookmarked chapter, and mentally checked off everything Dr. Dolto recommended.

  Chloé’s little whistling, sleeping breaths lulled Aimée into dozing herself. The beeping of her phone woke her. She tucked Chloé into her crib, grabbed a cold sparkling Badoit from the tiny fridge, helped herself to leftover carrots rapé au citron, a chunk of Gruyère, and a nub of baguette from the counter. Then, arms loaded with the food, the baby monitor, her bag, her notebook, and Suzanne’s envelopes, she sat down on her balcony, Miles Davis beside her.

  Below, the quayside lights cast gleaming copper shivers on the Seine’s black-gloss surface. The plane trees rustled; the car horns sounded distant.

  She checked her muted phone. A missed call. René, ticked off about his nanny cam, no doubt. But there was still a beeping coming from her bag . . . Mon Dieu. The burner phone Suzanne had given her.

  In all the brouhaha when she’d gotten home that night, she’d forgotten about it.

  Damn Melac. And her postpartum anxiety. About to call back on the burner phone, she wondered if she had actually gotten a lead on a ghost.

  Tuesday Evening

  The line was busy. As she chewed the baguette, she added to her to-do list in her red Moleskine:

  Banks video footage

  But would a fugitive wanted for war crimes buy cigarettes at Suzanne’s local café tabac? And, if he had, would he let Suzanne get away?

  Doubtful.

  In the personal column, she drew a calendar and mapped out the days she’d have to bring Chloé to the office. She wrote babysitter? on days she was supposed to do IT surveillance on-site at École des Beaux-Arts. Under TO BUY, she wrote lipstick and champagne.

  She tried the number again. Still busy.

  On the balcony, with her bare feet propped on the filigree grill, she read the investigative file Suzanne had given her. The little she could decipher was the stuff of nightmares. One page was stamped secret, and much of it was blacked out, redacted.

  No doubt Mirko Vladić was dead. But then death looked too good for him. She wondered what was in the stuff Suzanne didn’t have security clearance for—the horrors in black and white. Mirko Vladić was referred to in the same paragraph with Milošević, the butcher of the Balkans.

  There were a few more mentions of Mirko in a Red Cross report, each mention flagged with a cross-reference to an ICTY file. The ICTY file itself was sealed, but Aimée’s imagination could fill in the details.

  The river slapped rhythmically against the bank in the wake of a passing bateau-mouche. From one of the courtyards in Ile Saint-Louis’s warren of hidden gardens and old carriage houses drifted piano music, laughter. Her next-door neighbors, who happened to be related to the Rothschilds, were entertaining. The day’s dense heat lingered.

  Meanwhile, faces flashed in front of her eyes, mental images of mustached men spraying Kalashnikov fire into a pit of human victims, a parrot fluttering its wings, trying to escape a bolted birdcage. Melac’s mother’s face.

  She woke up to Miles Davis’s barking.

  Disoriented, she tried to grasp what the nightmare had meant, but it slipped away like a greased spoon.

  “Psst!” Benoît waved from below the balcony where he was standing on the quai. “Sleepyhead. Your door’s locked.”

  The file spilled from her lap, and papers slid across the balcony. Awake now, she swooped them back into the file, tiptoed inside on her cold, damp feet, and set the file by her laptop.

  She combed her spiky hair back with her fingers, ran to check on Chloé, brushed her teeth, and spritzed Chanel No. 5 on the pulse point below her earlobe. Where was her lipstick?

  Benoît filled her doorway, lean hipped and grinning, his longish brown hair curling over his collar. Both hands were concealed behind his back.

  “What have you got there?” She sniffed.

  He pulled one hand from behind his back. “Night-flowering jasmine,” he said, presenting her with a bunch he must have picked himself. Then he pulled out the other hand. “No champagne, désolé. Just an amuse-bouche.”

  Cupped in his palm were several bite-sized buckwheat crepes topped with swirls of smoked salmon peppered with dill.

  Delicious. Benoît loved to cook.

  “I’ll still supply the chaos.” She snapped her Agent Provocateur bra strap. “Call me a cheap date.”

  “I figured.” He picked her up, and they made it only as far as her recamier by the window.

  Wednesday Morning

  At dawn, Benoît crept back home across the courtyard. His scent lingered on the sheets. Once she had a now fever-free Chloé eating breakfast with Babette, Aimée rummaged in her armoire for something she could wear to beat the heat. Pulled out a last-season Versace linen miniskirt from the soldes—sales—her blue and white striped Breton marinière top—for a Left Bank garçonne look—and platform espadrilles. She packed yesterday’s disguise in her bag.

  She scootered to work. The Seine flowed a murky khaki below the Pont Marie. Her mind spun with the scads of things she had to accomplish before Babette left for vacances.

  Alone in Leduc Detective, she ran ongoing security scans, savoring the stillness and quiet. René was teaching at the Hackaviste Academy; Maxence, their intern from Quebec, was on vacation. The morning light caught a gossamer cobweb from the high ceiling’s carved Empire moldings.

  Time to get their cleaner on task. About to write a note for the concierge, Aimée stopped and stared at the intricate spun threads. The web appeared so tenuous and fragile, yet it would be sticky and cling if she tried to dust. Like her relationship with Melac.

  She’d moved on, hadn’t she? Pushed that aside for now.

  She wondered what her father would do with Suzanne’s case. She wished he were there so she could ask his advice.

  The sadness never went away—she had seen with her own eyes the explosion that had killed him in Place Vendôme. And now she knew how Morbier had betrayed him and lied to her for years. Tears welled in her eyes. A man her father had trusted. Whom she’d trusted.

  She put that aside, too.

  She flipped through the surveillance cases in her father’s old files. Picked out one she remembered from the late eighties. Read it.

  Voilà. She knew what her father would do. Simple is best, he always said.

  Call in a favor.

  She left a message on the voice mail of Monsieur Guérin, her Paribas bank manager. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d helped the Leducs.

  Then she changed, packed her Hermès and the information for Dechard, and left a Post-it with the note Call me on René’s desktop screen.

  Was he giving her the silent treatment over some imagined slight? These days anything set him off in a fit of sulking. More and more she noticed it. He’d fumed when she confided her romance with Benoît—told her it wasn’t “proper” for Chloé and Gabrielle.

  René needed a girlfriend.

  Parked by the café near Saint-Sulpice, she pulled the key out of the scooter’s ignition and tugged her wig into place. Given the not-so-legal nature of her “surveillance” and this particular fugitive’s history, it felt better to don another persona. Keep professional and private life separate. She didn’t want anyone to recognize her
as the mother who pushed Chloé’s stroller to bébé swim at the nearby Saint-Germain Pool.

  If she didn’t see the émigré the young man from the tabac had mentioned, she’d cross him off her to-do list and move on to her next plan.

  The café buzzed. Aimée noted the brisk trade in cigarettes, Loto tickets, PMU horse racing forms. Among the cluster of regulars at the zinc counter were some already having a marc liqueur with their coffee.

  She ordered a double espresso from the woman she’d spoken with the night before. As the woman put the espresso down, Aimée smiled to engage her in conversation.

  “Suzanne’s friend, right?” the woman said.

  “Good memory.”

  “She’s a regular. From the quartier.”

  A quartier charmingly open yet harboring all manner of secrets. The woman knew Suzanne—time to press.

  “Have you noticed anything about her lately?” Aimée asked. “Has she changed at all since she’s been back?”

  The woman raised an eyebrow.

  “To be honest, I’m concerned about Suzanne.”

  The woman looked both ways, leaned over the counter. “Jittery, tired, oui. But that describes a lot of my clients after work. They come to déstresser, chat and have an apéro with friends before going home.”

  That got her nowhere.

  And then she noticed a man setting down a cane at a table by the window, his dog at his heels. “Bonjour, ma belle,” he said to the woman behind the counter with a wave. A Slavic accent. “The usual.”

  The woman hit the red button on the espresso machine. Arranged a tray with an espresso and packet of Auras. He must be the one. The café-clope émigré with his cigarette and espresso.

  “Let me save you a trip, madame.” After sliding a fifty-franc note across the counter, Aimée took the tray.

  “Bonjour.” She set down his tray, pushed a Ricard ashtray toward him and sat.

  He tore the cellophane off the cigarette packet, tapped one out, lit up and exhaled a plume of smoke. “Since when did the waitresses get so pretty? And sit and chat?”

  “My treat, Monsieur . . . ?”

  “Olgan.” He had sharp hazel eyes, a long face, and a grizzled white beard. Stocky and Eastern European looking, with an accent to match. His dog, a grey-whiskered German shepherd, snored below the table.

  “Karine Viardot.” She pushed a fake card across the table. The phone number on it connected to her answering service. Then she pulled out the photo of Mirko. “I hear you’d know this man if anyone does.”

  “My reputation precedes me, eh? But why would I know him?”

  Two questions and no answer.

  “It’s a discreet inquiry.”

  “I read Raymond Chandler, but you don’t strike me as that kind of detective.”

  He’d picked up on her ruse right away. Sharp. “We come in all shapes and sizes these days.” She tapped her finger on the photo. “Look, forgive me for bothering you. There’s a small chance this man, Mirko Vladić, came into this café the other night. My client wants to contact him.”

  “Regarding?”

  She pretended to hesitate. Glanced over her shoulder. “It’s personal,” she lied, “but I’m not supposed to say that.”

  He waved away smoke. “Why are you asking me?”

  The truth was she didn’t really have a reason. “I’m reaching out to anyone connected to the Eastern European community here,” she said lamely.

  “Eastern European community?” He eyed her. “There’s an Eastern European bookstore nearby, off Saint-Sulpice. That’s what I know.”

  “This man is a Serb. He was last seen in Bosnia. That help?”

  Olgan set down his demitasse so hard it rattled the saucer. His dog sat up.

  “We’re not all thugs, mademoiselle.”

  She’d said the wrong thing. Tried to recover. “I don’t get your meaning, monsieur.”

  “Serbs, Bosnians, Croats, we all look alike to you, don’t we?”

  Stupid. It was true—she didn’t know the difference. And she’d hit a nerve.

  “Forgive me, that’s not what I meant, monsieur.”

  “I was a university professor. Serb criminals destroyed my family village, massacred everyone in the Vukovar countryside. Ripped Croatia apart.” He reached for his cane. “I came here to Paris to teach at the Institut D’études Slavs because I had no family left.”

  She’d blown it. “I’m sorry. Can you take my card? If there’s anything—”

  “You think I’d help a Serb?”

  “It’s more complicated than that,” she blurted. “My client thought this man was dead. I need to know if she’s seeing phantoms.”

  She didn’t know what else she could say.

  His hazel eyes gazed somewhere in the distance. Somewhere far from the café, the bustle of regulars, the grinding of the orange juicer.

  “I want to help her move on with her life,” said Aimée. “Put the past aside. That’s all.”

  He stared at her, hearing truth in her voice. “Phantoms. That I understand,” he said, his voice low. “They roam the countryside, inhabit nightmares.”

  She’d reached him. Now to play on his loathing for the Serbs. “I’m talking about a rape victim who’s afraid the father of her child survived.”

  She hated that it felt so easy to lie. But she also had only thirty minutes before she needed to be at work.

  “A monster,” he said.

  “Something like that.” Alert, she nodded. “Serbs ruined your homeland. Help me. This man might have escaped arrest by the war crimes tribunal.”

  “What’s that to me?”

  “If he’s in the community here, couldn’t you find out?”

  “Here? Does he speak French? Why don’t you try Croatia or Bosnia? Or little Montenegro, where the Serbs are making all the trouble now? Read the newspapers.”

  A wanted Serbian war criminal could evaporate better in his own region than here.

  “You’re right, monsieur. That makes sense. I just need to prove to her he’s dead.”

  He took her card, finished his espresso, and with a whistle to his dog, limped away into the sunshine.

  In the Paribas branch halfway down the block from the café, Aimée stood in the manager’s office and flashed her faux police ID.

  “Bonjour, I’m Karine Viardot with fraud investigations,” said Aimée. “A few minutes of your time, please, to facilitate our investigation.”

  The manager, a middle-aged woman with steel-frame designer eyeglasses, cocked an eyebrow in surprise. “But I met with François from your office this morning.”

  Merde. If Aimée didn’t move fast, this would blow up in her face. She shook her head. “I don’t know anything about that, madame. My team works out of Bercy in the counterterrorism branch. Your bank’s video camera looks out onto an area we’ve put under surveillance. I need to see your Monday night video footage taken between seven-twenty and nine-twenty p.m.”

  “On whose authority, exactly?” Suspicion clouded the woman’s eyes behind her designer frames. She clicked her pen, sizing Aimée up.

  “Level three, madame. You do know what that means?” The office smelled like printer toner.

  The bank manager reached for a file on her desk. “I’ll need to check with—”

  “A terrorist sighting,” Aimée interrupted. “Please cooperate and furnish the footage. Terrorists funnel money through banks like the rest of us, I don’t need to remind you. But we’re not looking at accounts right now, only video footage.” Aimée opened the file showing the header international criminal tribunal for the former yugoslavia. “We’re looking for this man. He’s a wanted international terrorist who has been spotted in this area. On the street, maybe in your bank. It’s time sensitive. I’m sure you’d like to cooperate, non?”

 
“No one has alerted us,” the woman said, still suspicious.

  A tough nut to crack, this manager.

  “I’ll need to go through the proper channels,” she continued.

  But Aimée knew banks furnished flics video footage all the time.

  “We’re working with Monsieur Guérin, the manager at the main Paribas branch at l’Opera,” said Aimée, tapping her ballet heel. “It’s a routine request, Madame Karon,” she said pointedly, looking at the name inscribed on the woman’s pen case. “Don’t tell me you haven’t done this before.”

  The woman hesitated.

  “I can get Monsieur Guérin on my cell phone if—”

  In answer, the woman made a call, avoiding Aimée’s gaze.

  A terse conversation ensued, during which Aimée hoped Monsieur Guérin had listened to the voice mail she’d left and would recognize the fake name she’d warned him she might use.

  “D’accord,” Madame Karon said, “he says to assist and provide you with the footage.”

  Phew, he’d come through.

  The woman hung up, hit a few buttons on her phone to place another call. “Tell David from operations to come to my office and to bring a blank VHS tape.”

  Join the looming twenty-first century, Aimée almost said. She bit her tongue. She’d convert the footage back at the office.

  The bank stop had taken longer than she’d expected. She jumped on her scooter and headed for the École des Beaux-Arts. Her face was a sweaty mess in the heat, her mascara smeared. A total wreck.

  Time to get waterproof mascara.

  In the model’s changing room by the figure-drawing studio, Aimée hurriedly stuffed the wig into her bag, donned her casual IT look. Pastel chalk dust settled in the soles of her espadrilles.

  She made a few quick swipes at her face with a cotton pad soaked in Bluet, a blue cornflower astringent she carried; dabbed concealer under her eyes; and popped a Les Anis de Flavigny rose-flavored breath mint. The dash upstairs took her to the inner sanctum—the library of the architecture department. According to an early-morning email, this was where she’d be working today. A humdrum database scan.