Murder in Montmartre (5 page)

The woman glanced at her thumb, pushed the cuticle back. “The top floors have been empty for a month already.” She shrugged. Another sign of the gentrification that was invading the area. “Be sure not to disturb the old coot on the first floor. He’s furious as it is what with all the commotion,” the concierge said. Her mouth turned down and she stabbed the cigarillo out in an empty flowerpot. Then she thrust a small key ring at Aimée. “That’s the door key. I won’t wait up for you.”

“We’ll see ourselves out,” Aimée said, nodding to Sebastian, who shouldered the tool kit.

He followed her up the staircase, its worn red carpet held in place by bronze stair rods. The wrought-iron banister, an intricate pattern of acorns and leaves, spiraled up several floors. Once it had been exquisite, the latest style.

“Talk about a hike! What the hell can we find after all this time, Aimée?”

Sebastian’s words mirrored her own doubts. Yet new evidence was vital. “If one listens, the scene will speak,” she remembered her father saying. If there was any chance to prove Laure’s innocence she had to find it.

“Put on your surgical gloves,” she said, panting, wishing she hadn’t gained that kilo over the holidays. She left the key in the door. “Rooftop first.”

The snow flurries had subsided, melting onto the floor of the scaffolding. She and Sebastian pulled on woolen ski masks. Sebastian followed Aimée’s lead and dropped to his knees. With luck, they might find something the police had missed.

“What are we looking for?” Sebastian asked.

“Wood splinters, blackened metal on the scaffold, a discarded lighter, cigarette butt, scraped tile . . . anything.”

“Like in those shows on the
télé
?”

She nodded. She was doubtful but one never knew. The concierge had said the apartment had been vacant for a month. Was that why Jacques had arranged to meet his informer there?

The spires and roof of the church blocked the view of all but the adjoining roof and a dark neigboring building across the street. Witnesses, if any, would be few.

They crouched, moving silently to avoid detection from the adjoining apartments connected by the roof. One tall lighted window shone from across the courtyard. Below, from the construction site, came a pinprick glow like the tip of a lit cigarette. And then it disappeared. Into a hole in the earth? The remains of old quarries underlaid all of Montmartre. Gritting her teeth, she turned her gaze back to the roof.

For forty minutes, they crawled. They covered every centimeter of the scaffold, inspected chimney pots, stones, the windows and sills let into the mansard roof, and the small flat area of the zinc roof on top. Aimée’s hands were wet with snow, sore from abrasion by pebbles and rough stucco. Disheartened, she leaned against the chimney.

“Find anything?” she said to Sebastian, who was leaning over the edge and combing the rain gutter.

He held up a fistful of sodden brown leaves. “Toss it or . . .?”

“Wait.” She edged her way toward him, opening a plastic Baggie. “In here. What’s that?”

“Just a twig, like these,” he said indicating others clogging the gutter. “They need to clean this or . . .”

She pulled out a green stem. Smelled it. “Freshly broken, a geranium stem.”

“My cousin, the botanist!” he said.

She gave him a wry smile. “A Calvados says there’s a deck or window ledge nearby with pots of geraniums.”

“Proving what?” he asked.

A few stars glittered under the thinning clouds, just over the dark line of roofs.

“I’m guessing. What if someone leaned out their window and saw the shooting.”

“But, Aimée, people keep geraniums inside in this weather.”

He made sense. A dead end?

Right now, it was all they had to go on.

“Give me a boost, I want to check.”

Sebastian reached up the wall and tied the rope around the chimney bracer. Aimée tied the other end in a slip knot around her waist.

“Ready?” he asked, knitting his hands together and planting himself against the concrete. “On three.”

“One-two-three.”

Chill air and a dirt-encrusted skylight greeted Aimée as she reached the adjoining roof. She grabbed the roof edge, hoisted herself up further, and came face to face with a dormer window. Several pots of geraniums were visible within.

Now she knew where to start asking questions in the morning. But she’d found no evidence to indicate that anyone other than Laure had shot Jacques. Yet something . . . something had to exist.

“I’m coming down,” she said, gripping the ledge caked with pigeon droppings by one hand, the other braced against the smooth wall.

“Sebastian, can you shine your penlight over here?”

“Gifts from the pigeon gods?”

As his thin beam illuminated the chimney pot, a light went on in a courtyard window opposite and they heard someone struggling with a window. “Quick, Sebastian. Time to go.”

She felt him tug at the rope and her feet slipped on the slick ice.

“We’ve got company,” he said, pointing below. “The
flics
.”

Two cars had pulled up in the street, their blue lights casting a glow over the snow-laced courtyard. Had someone heard them and called the
flics
? She peered around the chimney, saw more rooftops and the pale moon’s reflection glinting on more skylights, a few feet away.

“Grab the bag, come join me,” Aimée said.

“You’re kidding, right?”

“Hurry up. We can jimmy open a skylight.”

She felt the rope tug.

“How many skylights do you see?” he asked.

“Three. Two side by side, then one some distance away.”

“
Bon.
One of them must be over a hall. I’m right behind you.”

She tucked the Baggie in her jumpsuit pocket, climbed, then gripped the chimney edge and let herself down on the other side.

Her feet scrabbled and she landed on all fours. And then she was sliding down the slick wet roof surface. Panic gripped her. Only the gutter ledge was between her and a drop of several stories. She grabbed and her hand caught the metal. She pulled herself up toward a rectangular flat area.

Sebastian landed behind her. By the time they reached the furthest skylight she was panting. The cold air hurt her lungs.

“Here,” he said, handing her the pliers. “Work the skylight lock open.”

She was startled to find that it was already broken. Sawtooth-edged shards of glass, knife sharp, jutted from the frame. Deftly, she eased her hand past them and grasped the lock from inside. Within seconds, with Sebastian’s help, she’d lifted the skylight. She held onto the metal rim and let herself down, hoping her feet would find the ladder usually attached to the wall of a communal hallway, that she wasn’t about to land in someone’s bedroom.

Her toes hit ladder rungs, and she climbed down to a level surface, a musty carpet, wet with footprints. Odd.

“Quick, take the bag,” said Sebastian, handing it down to her. He made a perfect tiptoe landing and they found themselves in what appeared to be the entry of a sixth-floor
chambre de bonne
, a maid’s room converted into an apartment.

“Look at the footprints.”

“My feet aren’t that big,” he said, about to rub them out with his boot.

“Leave it, let’s go,” she told him.

They crept down the flights of creaking wooden stairs, past a glass entry door and into a covered courtyard area. Several doors fronted the coved stone alcove. Large green trash containers stood by a concierge’s loge. Sebastian thumbed a button on the side wall and within the huge vaulted door a small door clicked open.

They found themselves outside on the street opposite their parking place. Lucky!

Back in the van, Sebastian switched on the ignition and turned on the heater.

“All that for a geranium twig! Satisfied?”

“In more ways than one,” she said. “Think back to the broken glass, the open skylight.”

He nodded, taking a curve, then gunning his engine as they climbed the steep street.

“We might have discovered an escape route.”

Hot air shot from the floor vents, warming her frozen legs.

“Escape route?”

“The killer’s escape route.”

Later Monday Night

LUCIEN CLOSED HIS EYES. His mind flooded with childhood memories: his
grand-mère’s
high-pitched funeral chant as his uncle’s body lay stiff and waxen on the dining-room table. The women, all in black like a row of crows, wailing and the men pounding their rifle butts on the floor. The terrible rhythm had echoed off the stone walls. Sadness, borne on the dry wind, scented by the lavender and myrtle
,
had chilled him to the bone.

As long as he could remember, funerals had been
the
social gatherings in the village. Beyond it, the rutted road rimmed a turquoise sea whose waves beat upon the granite of abandoned Roman quarries. The stones were gouged as if the Romans had departed yesterday, not centuries ago.

That day, he and Marie-Dominique had taken to the mountain path, unseen, to escape the malaise clinging to the village, home of the old and infirm, like so many villages decimated by vendettas. They found the cave by a half-ruined shepherd’s hut nestled in the crag of a sheer granite face where graphite and mica crystals caught the copper sun. Every moment was still imprinted in his mind. Marie-Dominique’s long tanned legs ending in faded blue espadrilles. The fight her cousin Giano picked with him later in the bar, accusing him. . . .

“If you don’t mind asking your guests to form a line, Monsieur Conari?” the commissaire was saying. “Each must show us a
carte d’identité
, and answer a few questions. Just a formality, of course.”

With a start, Lucien opened his eyes. He was in Félix’s salon and Marie-Dominique stood somewhere in the crowd, not nestled warmly beside him in the cave. He felt for his wallet, looked inside, and panicked. It held only his Carte Orange pass and a dirty cough drop. He’d forgotten his ID. By law, anyone without ID was subject to arrest. That law was rarely enforced. But for Corsicans like him, the
flics
exacted revenge for the Separatist threats and applied the rules strictly. In his village, men evaporated into the mountains when a police car rolled into view. That was what he wished he could do now.

And the contract Conari had spoken of? Later. Now he had to take cover someplace in this flat and think what to do. Lucien tugged at the waiter’s sleeve as he passed. He had looked familiar. . . . “Compadre, where’s the restroom?” Lucien asked.

The waiter gestured across the long room in the same direction as the
flics
.

“Any place closer?”

Understanding showed in the waiter’s eyes. “Follow me.”

He showed Lucien to a water closet by the kitchen.

By the time Lucien emerged from the bathroom, he’d decided to ask Félix to vouch for him. He was already late for his DJ gig.

But in the hall, Marie-Dominique blocked his way. “Something wrong, Lucien?”

Wrong? That she was married, that he couldn’t take her warm brown shoulders in his arms? But he didn’t say that. He searched for words.

“Marie-Dominique, seeing you again after all this time . . . there’s so much to say.” For four years he’d dreamed of her but his words came out flat and inadequate.

“Lucien, you still make music and that makes me happy.” Her words hung in the air, full of the unspoken emotion.

A gardenia floated in a bowl of water on a table, a thin strand of diamonds around her wrist caught the light. Candles flickered, casting shadows on the moiré silk-patterned wallpaper above them. He longed to have time to watch her, to inhale the rose scent that surrounded her. The old thirties Tino Rossi song, “O! Corse, Ile d’Amour,” looped in his mind; it was the tune that had been on the radio that afternoon.

“It had to happen this way,” she said, as if reading his thoughts.

Startled, he clenched his hands into fists. “How can you say that? You know what we had, what I felt.”

“My family was opposed.” She looked away, her low voice almost a whisper. “My father knows the Armata Corsa for what it is. Terrorism.”

“When we all joined we were ignorant. But I never participated in any actions.”

Fool! He’d been a fool to join with his drunken friends, hoping to free Corsica from French rule. Free? Not with middle-ofthe-night bombings and the kidnappings for ransom, which the Armata Corsa used to buy guns. He shook his head, frustrated. He had to make her understand. “It’s true. I never realized.”

Marie-Dominique’s eyes blazed. “Didn’t realize the Armata Corsa was outlawed? After you left our island, the Armata Corsa plastered the walls with posters protesting the atrocities and with pictures of
you
.”

“But I had nothing to do with it. I only went to one meeting.”

“Your picture was on the posters,” she said.

So that had been the reason his mother had put a ticket for the overnight ferry to Marseilles in his hands and insisted he leave that very night. “I won’t lose another son,” she’d said. Meaning neither to the vendetta, the gendarmes, or the evil eye cast by the
mazzera
, the sorceress crone who dwelled high up on the mountain. No one disputed the
mazzera
, least of all his longsuffering widowed mother, who was convinced the evil eye had marked him. Sardinian by birth, his mother was still referred to by his
grand-mère
as “the foreigner” after thirty-five years on the island. She had ignored his reluctance, overridden his arguments that fleeing would be taken as an admission of guilt.

He’d waited tables in the Marseilles
vieux
port, deejayed using a friend’s cheap equipment, scraped by, and survived. A year later he’d moved to Paris. He’d bought turntables; it was a bare living.

“I wrote you letters explaining that I had to leave,” he told Marie-Dominique. “But they all came back, unopened.”

She looked away.

A
flic
in a blue uniform brushed by him, stopped, and took in Lucien’s black denims and worn boots. “Follow me, we’re questioning the staff in the kitchen,” he said.

“But, Officer, he’s our guest,” Marie-Dominique told him.

The
flic
raised his eyebrows and shot a pointed look at Lucien. “Of course, Madame. Please, join us in the salon.” He continued into the kitchen.

Lucien braced himself. Corsicans enjoyed “special treatment” during questioning at the Commissariat. Like his friend Bruno, who’d returned with a broken arm. The recent Separatist attacks had put the
flics
on edge. If they discovered he had no ID and lived on illegal, unreported wages from his DJ gigs, they’d take him in.

But if he left without signing the contract Conari had offered . . .

“I forgot my
carte d’identité
, Marie-Dominique.” He glanced toward the salon. Félix stood with Yann in a knot of men, speaking with the commissaire. A loose line of guests had formed by the drinks table.

He edged closer to her, whispering. “Marie-Dominique, I can’t talk to them right now.”

Her eyes widened. “So you’re still on the wanted list?”

“Show me a way to leave, please,” he said. “Speak with Félix, tell him I’ll sign the contract tomorrow.”

“But what if—”

“No time to explain. Help me.”

“Consistent, if nothing else. You’re running away, Lucien. Again.”

“It’s not like that. Please, help me.”

Marie-Dominique shook her head.

A door flush with the paneling was opened by one of the catering staff who was sweating as he carried a huge copper saucepan.

It must lead to the back stairs.

“Don’t get Félix in trouble.”

“Why would I do that?”

“You’re still involved with the Separatists, aren’t you? Still yearning to ‘liberate’ Corsica.”

As far as he was concerned, if it hadn’t happened in two thousand years, why now? She had him all wrong. Two hundred years ago, Pascal Paoli had taken power and, instead of making himself king as others had done, outlawed slavery, organized elections, and gave women the vote. Novel ideas for his time, for any time. Corsica had been a democracy briefly until Paoli was overthrown and its army destroyed. In 1768, Corsica was sold to the French for a million francs.

True, once he’d believed in a free Corsica and had joined the Armata Corsa. But when he saw the Mafia tactics of the faction-ridden group, he’d wanted nothing more to do with them.

“What you really mean is I don’t belong here,” Lucien said. “Not in your life, not in this chic milieu,” he said, his hurt flaming into anger. He pounded his fist on the door. “But neither do you, Marie-Dominique. You’ve changed but I know you’re still the same inside. I’m going. Tell Félix I’ll contact him later.”

He opened the concealed door, and shut it with a bang.