Murder in Passy (23 page)

“You’ve put on weight, Sebastian,” she said.

A good sign.

“Blame it on Regula’s fondue, and the raclette.”

His new girlfriend Regula, Swiss and steady, cooked with the
chefs collectifs,
which put on roving underground gourmet events. Exclusive and only by word of mouth.

“The framing shop business good?”

Sebastian had expanded his framing business to a third shop. She’d cosigned the loan. He owed her.

“Orders and more orders.” He grinned. “I’ve only got an hour.”

“No problem.” She squeezed his arm. “I’m happy for you.”

She helped him load her scooter into the back of his van. “Ready. You remember how to dust for prints?”

“There’s a Web site, Aimée.”

Like for everything now.

At Agustino’s she didn’t know what they’d find. But they’d find something.

He gunned his van down Avenue Mozart. Skeleton-branched chestnut trees shuddered in the wind.

“All over this
quartier
you see neo-Cubist architecture fighting the flourishes of Art Nouveau,” Sebastian said. “Neo-Cubism speaks to the Bauhaus and Gropius influence.” He pointed out his open window, respect in his voice. “Between the wars, ‘the style international’ was the hit at the Decorative Arts Exposition in 1925.”

She stared at Sebastian. “My little cousin knows Bauhaus from a
boudin
sausage?”

“Courtesy of my client on neighboring rue de l’Assomption,” Sebastian replied. “When I called Bauhaus a
très
cool DJ, he set me straight. He’s a real Mallet-Stevens buff.”

Aimée pointed to a spot in the lane. “Park it here.”

She grabbed two flashlights and handed him one. “Let’s go.”

She retraced her steps from yesterday past the almost-hidden Fondation Le Corbusier annex sign.

Sebastian’s work boots crunched on the gravel and packed dirt. Secluded darkness, a perfect place to hide. She shivered.

The damp bushes trembled in the gentle wind. A quiet breeze rippled the sparse carpet of brown leaves. The derelict
hôtel particulier
was a dark shadow in the background. Ahead, Agustino’s lit atelier was like a beacon.

She wished she’d worn wool socks and Doc Martens like Sebastian, instead of high-heeled Prada boots. Skittering noises and thumping came from the tree branches overhead.

Sebastian hissed. “Over there.”

Something darted in the glistening wet hedgerow. A shadow moved on the white stone wall separating the atelier from the garden. Startled, she felt Sebastian grab her arm, shove her down in the wet grass.

Wednesday Night

M
ARIA SHIVERED IN
the bone-chilling cold. The jacket over her torn silk chemise offered little protection from the dampness. She couldn’t distinguish night or day in the stone-vaulted cavern. She knew she was underground somewhere, her purse and phone gone. Periodic pumping sounds came from above, punctuated by the whine of a bell. Hours ago she’d heard ducks quacking, caught the odor of water, before the men herded her, with the bag over her head, down a sloping ramp.

Now she saw a line of electric lights receding down the long tunnel, shadows in cell-like caverns like the one she huddled in now, chained to the metal pipe.

Voices murmured in a mixture of Basque and French. She could pick out words, part of a phrase, but they were speaking a rural dialect.

“You worry too much” came from one with a gravelly, grating voice. “The Gestapistes used it. No one heard the screams down here.”

Her heart thumped, looking around at the blackened stone. A Gestapo torture chamber? She didn’t doubt it.

Her bare feet skittered on the loose pebbles and crumbling plaster. How could she escape? What had happened to the wounded one they called Joxi?

“Fascinating, eh, the underground.” The
mec
wearing blue trousers and work jacket stood still in his ski mask. “Historic. Like the caves in my valley.” He handed her a rag, acting solicitous. “Wipe those eyes, eh. Cooperate and you go home.”

Her chained hands reached for the rag.

He tore the duct tape off her mouth with a loud rip. Her eyes blinked, tearing with pain from her raw skin.

“You’ll let me go?”

“Behave, or it goes back on.”

It would anyway. But they needed her alive.

“What … what do you want?”

“Read this. Word for word.” He thrust the card at her.

She shivered. “Did anyone … get killed?”

“Not yet.”

Liar.

He checked the time. Pulled out a small tape recorder.

“Read just what it says.”

Garbage. Lies. She spit and it landed on his sleeve.

“Full of spirit, eh? Better speak better than you aim.”

He wiped his arm. Reached for a hunting knife with a bone handle and ran the tip along her chin. “That’s if you want to live.”

She struggled to kick her feet, but her ankles were taped.

“Read it, Princess, a simple thing. Then you’re free, back home like you never left.”

“Bombing buildings, shootings … all that violence goes nowhere,” she said, gasping for breath. “Didn’t you learn that in the eighties? That’s
passé
… the Basques I know want peace—”

“
Et alors,
you’re a patriot,” he interrupted. “Like us.” Only his dark eyes were visible behind the ski mask. “But if you don’t read, you die, others die. What will that prove?”

Her shoulders shook. Fear rippled her insides.

“So, Princess?” The cold knife tip touched her chin bone.

A steady drip, drip, drip came from the corner. She took a breath and read: “I support and advocate the autonomy of the Basque region. And ask my father to do the same.” Her throat caught. He pressed the knife tip harder against her chin. Somehow she made herself keep reading. “Not only should there be cultural centers teaching Basque history and language, but there must be the release of all Basque prisoners, and a new referendum.”

She stifled a sob.

He hit S
TOP
, rubbed his neck, impatient now. “Keep reading. Convince your father.” He moved the knife blade to the jugular vein in her bare white throat. “Talk.”

He hit R
ECORD
.

She stumbled a few times but continued to the end.

“You think I’m a bargaining chip, a means to some end?” Her lip trembled. “Kidnapping me won’t give Basques autonomy. Don’t you understand?”

He stuck the duct tape back on her sore, bleeding mouth.

Wednesday Night

“J
UST SQUIRRELS, SEBASTIAN.”
Aimée pulled herself up from the wet ground, brushed herself off. A run in her stocking, now a mud-coated sleeve, grass clinging to her mascara. Picture-perfect.

In Sebastian’s flashlight beam, a quartet of arched squirrel tails disappeared up the linden tree trunk. “Quit scaring the marrow from my bones.”

She heard strains of baroque music drift from Agustino’s atelier. “Ready?”

Not waiting for his answer, she knocked on the glass door.

A split second passed before Agustino opened the door.

“You stood me up, Agustino—”

He clapped his thick paint-spattered hand over her mouth. Shoved her outside, down the path.

“Go away. Now.” His words didn’t hide the fear vibrating in his voice. “Forget what I said. Leave.”

Had the terrorists coerced him?

“Not until you tell me who murdered Xavierre. How you knew the referendum—”

“Who’s he?” His grip tightened on her arm. She saw a nervous shift in his thick shoulders.

Sebastian shifted from leg to leg behind the bushes. A telltale sign. “My cousin. He needs to pee. The cold does that to him. Can he use your—”

“With a night sky like this and all the bushes you could want?” Agustino shook his head. “Over there.”

She jerked her chin toward his atelier and mouthed, “The princess?”

Agustino stood dead still. A long moment passed. Then came a little shake of his head. Then he pointed to her watch, showed ten fingers.

“Ten o’clock?” she whispered.

He shook his head. Sebastian returned from watering the bushes and shot Aimée a look.

“Here? They’ll bring the princess here?”

“I don’t know, I swear,” he whispered. The volume of the melancholy string music rose. Agustino’s shoulders twitched. “I have to go.”

“Did Xavierre’s murderer kidnap the princess?”

“Give me time to get away,” Agustino said, “ten minutes.”

“Why? What’s going on?”

“Please, do this for me. Wait before you alert the
flics
.”

A cell phone trilled from his pocket. He answered, muttered a brief “
Oui,
” then hung up.

“They’re almost here. Just ten minutes.”

He backed up, but not before she caught his arm. “Not until you tell me—”

“They call him Txili.”

“I want his real name, Agustino.”

“His
nom de guerre
, that’s all I know.” Agustino shot a nervous look at the atelier, held up ten fingers, and then was gone.

* * *

S
EBASTIAN TOOK OUT
an Indonesian cigarette. Lit it. The pungent clove-spiced smoke caught in her nose.

“Saw something while you were watering the bushes, Sebastian?”

He shook his head. “But I heard noises over the music.” He pursed his lips. “Like scraping, pulling something heavy over the floor.”

She took a drag from his cigarette. The smoke seared her windpipe and she choked. Cloves were for pork roasts, not inhaling.

Light glimmered above the atelier drapery, rimming the canvases blocking the view inside.

“You believe him?” Sebastian asked.

Did she? Did she owe him time to get away? But get away from what?

“He didn’t know about the princess,” she said. “I believe that.”

And it bothered her. Besides Sebastian with his tool kit, she had no other backup. Why hadn’t she brought her Beretta? Stupid.

A yell pierced the night air. The lights went out in the atelier. Her shoulders stiffened. “Front door, Sebastian,” she said. “Hurry.”

From his tool kit, Sebastian pulled out his lock-picking set. She shone her penlight at the door.
“Merde,”
he said, “three dead bolts.”

By the time he picked the last dead bolt, five minutes later, she could forget the element of surprise.

Once inside, she parted the floor-length velvet drapery. The atelier was dark except for the moonlight filtering through the glass roof, tracing the outlines of stacked canvases and paintbrushes littering the floor.

Her foot hit a can, knocking it over: splashing sounds, and she caught the whiff of turpentine.

Sebastian hit the switch. Light flooded the atelier, illuminating a canvas with bold, dusky orange and burnt umber strokes on an easel. Behind stacks of canvases, Agustino sat straddling a chair, his head slumped, facing away.

“Agustino?”

No answer.

Running around the canvases, she noted his half-open vacant eyes. Had he suffered a stroke? Her heels skidded on the slippery floor. She grabbed at the easel, catching herself before she landed in the dark puddle on the floor. That smell … copper mixed with dry paint. Righting herself, it took a moment before she registered the wide red slash across his neck, his severed carotid artery. And the slow dripping from his blood-soaked shirt to the puddle.

She stepped back in horror.

“Mon Dieu!”
Sebastian’s screwdriver clanged on the floor. He pointed to a pair of blood-spattered Adidas poking from an oilcloth.

The princess? She gasped in horror. Forcing herself to move her shaking hands, she parted the oilcloth to reveal a slumped figure against the wall. Blood clotted the matted hair, protruding bone, and pinkish gristle of what had once been a young man’s jawbone.

“But who … ?” The copper-tinged smell of blood overpowered her. The bile rose up in her stomach.

Sebastian’s booted toe pushed the papers scattered from a wallet on the floor. “Jorge Gustati. Nineteen, I’d say, according to these juvenile parole papers. Agustino’s nephew.”

Of course. Agustino had tried to protect him. Failed. She looked around, willing her nausea down. Fought the sadness, the fear. Canvases, paints, and boards filled every corner of the atelier. No cupboards, no closets. No sign of duct tape or rope to hold the princess. Let alone space.

And then she saw an open antique chest. But it contained a scatter of paintbrushes. Nothing else.

She kicked it, frustrated, jarring the chest to the side, turned around, and noticed Agustino’s paint-spattered palette. The slight bulge underneath it. She shoved it aside. Underneath lay a navy blue passport of the République française embossed with gold on the cover, inside blank. A blank
carte d’identité
.