Murder in Passy (4 page)

In the dining room, Irati’s wedding banner still hung from the ceiling. Aimée’s heart caught. Now, instead of a marriage, it would be a funeral. The cherries had congealed on the plate of
gâteau
Basque.

She excused herself to use the bathroom in the hall. Inside, she paused until she heard retreating footsteps, then climbed on the marble bidet’s rim. She opened the tall bathroom window to the terrace. Still in conversation, the inspector was huddled with a crime-scene technician. The technician was smoking; a plume of gray smoke rose, lazed, then dissipated in the night.

“Called to a case like this last night,” the tech said. “Classic signs.”

“Coming to conclusions already?” the inspector said.

“A beautiful woman strangled with her own scarf?” He paused. “It’s a common scenario. Her man’s jealous, reason clouded by anger. They fight, it gets out of hand. An hour later, drunk, full of remorse, he confesses.” He paused. “Crime of passion. In theory, of course.”

“Says who?” said the inspector.

“The
mec
left evidence,” he said. “They always do.”

“Circumstantial,” the inspector said. “Unless you convince
le Proc
otherwise.”

“You call the item we found embedded in fresh footprints circumstantial?” A pause. “I hate to say it, but this one’s not good news.” His voice drifted away.

She tiptoed forward on the bidet, teetering on the edge. The gloved crime-scene technician moistened his thumb and forefinger, then tamped his cigarette out between his fingers, stuck the butt in his pocket, and shot a look at his team. “We found this. It must have been dislodged in the struggle.”

“Got his name on it, then?” a voice said. “Handy, eh? We can go home.”

That quick? Was it what she’d seen glinting in the dirt?

Loud knocking erupted on the bathroom door. “Mademoiselle Leduc?”

She stepped down, flushed the toilet, and looked in the mirror to tame a stray eyebrow. She tried to calm the trembling in her hands.

In the hallway, a blue-uniformed
flic
guided her to the kitchen, a remodeled state-of-the-art wall-to-wall marble affair. “We’ll contact you for further questioning if needed.”

She bit her lip, wondering about the item discovered by the crime-scene tech. “Do you know if there’s a suspect?”

No expression showed on his face.

“But the footprints outside, that would explain—”

“And I explained to you,” he interrupted, “exit through the kitchen.”

The
flics
were barking up the wrong tree. She felt it in her bones.

Family photos were pinned on the corkboard by the kitchen pantry. She paused, saddened at the snapshots of Xavierre and Irati in happy times at the beach in what looked like the Basque countryside, with sheep and snow-tipped mountains. She glanced behind her. The
flic
’s back was turned. She unpinned the best photo, one of Irati smiling and Xavierre taking a picnic basket from the trunk of a car, and slipped it into her pocket.

A bruised night sky hovered above the walled driveway. Cloud wisps obscured the moon. The cold air seared her lungs. Still shaken, she pulled her coat tighter.

“Such a tragedy,” René said outside on the gravel, shaking his head. “Let’s go. My body’s numb. You look cold.”

She surveyed the driveway, the back gate. “Did you notice a catering truck when we arrived?”

René shook his head.

“Neither did I.” She paused. “Something’s different.”

An empty space lay ahead of a dark maroon two-seater Mercedes coupe. “Another Mercedes was parked here, remember?”

René stomped his feet in the cold, nodding, interest in his eyes. “That’s right. Sedan. Nice model, too.”

She glanced at the window, pulled the photo from her pocket. She stared at it, then showed René. “Like the one in this photo?”

René nodded.

She ran over to the
flic
, who was now striding ahead to a waiting police car. He was speaking into the microphone clipped to his collar.

“Officer, may I speak with Hénard?”

“Hénard’s gone. We’ve been called to an incident, Mademoiselle.” “Another Mercedes was parked here.” She pointed to the tire tracks.

“A priority call. But we have your statement, Mademoiselle,” he said, static erupting from his collar microphone.

“But you don’t understand. I think this car—”

“The crime-scene technicians examined the area, Mademoiselle.” Blue lights flashing, siren whining, his car shot over the gravel and out the driveway.

* * *

“W
HAT A RATS
’nest, Aimée,” René said, gunning the Citroën into the narrow lane. “Poor Morbier.”

Sadness weighted her down, thinking of her godfather hearing the news via officialdom.

René hit the brakes as a cat, a charcoal shadow, streaked across the street. He downshifted into second and hit the horn, turned the corner, and sped up.

“Don’t you think it’s better if the news comes from you?”

She took a deep breath and tried Morbier’s number again.

“No answer, René.”

“Give it a few minutes. You need to explain what we saw. He’ll know what to do.”

She was prepared to do just that, but for a couple of small problems: his phone didn’t answer; he was in Lyon. And he’d enlisted her help; he’d suspected something.

She cleared her throat. “Of course, but that missing Mercedes.… ” She sucked in her lip. “I heard it pull away.”

“Me, too.” René nodded. “A diesel with a knock, right before you found Xavierre. I know what you’re thinking. But would the murderer be stupid enough to steal the car and think it wouldn’t be traced? That Irati wouldn’t notice?”

She needed to think about that.

“That is, if the murderer took it,” René said. “Doubtful.”

“No harm in finding out, René.”

“What can you do, Aimée?” René stopped at a red light. “Trace the car?”

“Not officially. The
flics
made it clear they don’t appreciate interference.” But with a little charm and luck, she could. “Take a right.” She switched on the interior light, reapplying her lipstick in the visor mirror, and dabbed Chanel No. 5 on her nearest pulse points.

René shook his head.

“Any other ideas, René?” She snapped the compact shut. “I’m playing it by the—”

“Hem of your skirt. Like usual, Aimée.”

He shifted into first. She saw the set of René’s jaw. His white-knuckled hands on the steering wheel. “What’s wrong?”

“Xavierre’s Basque,
non?
” He checked the rearview mirror. “Last week in Biarritz a Basque was murdered after church, right in front of his family. Some ten-year-old vendetta.”

Another angle to consider? “Nothing points to politics here, unless I’m missing something.”

“
Everything
’
s
political with the Basques. Murdering tourists on the Costa Brava is their specialty.” René pounded his fist on the steering wheel. “Like my cousin. He was fifteen, on a school holiday on the Costa Brava, when a bomb ripped his bus apart.”

She’d had no idea. “I’m so sorry.”

“‘Sorry’ doesn’t bring him back,” René said.

“You never told me. But that’s ETA, the Basque terrorists,” she said. “Pull over there.”

She pointed to the small, storefront-like Commissariat de Police across from the darkened Marché de Passy, the indoor market. The Commissariat, a vestige of the old neighborhood, had a blue, white, and red flag whipping in the wind in front of it and a plaque on the light blue door. This remnant of the former village faced the market, not the designer shops and haunts of the wealthy.

René exhaled. “I don’t get it. Didn’t you already give a statement to the
flics
?”

She nodded, combing her fingers through the blond streaks wisping behind her ear.

“Yet we’re parked in front of the Commissariat and nothing else looks open.” René pulled on the parking brake.

Outside the car window, a figure walked by on the pavement. Alert, she watched. Only an older man, his cap low on his head, wearing a long wool coat, walking his dog, pausing every so often by the gutter. Otherwise, the street lay deserted.

“Time’s crucial,” she said. “Investigational red tape bogs everything down. Filing crime-scene reports can take up to twelve hours. I need to know whether the missing car’s important or not.”

She hoped she sounded more confident than she felt, that he didn’t notice the trembling in her knees.

The Mercedes. She had to find the Mercedes. An hour and a half head start, and the
flic
hadn’t even listened to her or noted it down. Irati wouldn’t notice that the car was missing until too late.

“Irati’s under sedation,” she said. “When she wakes, she’ll be desperate. Frantic.”

“Exactement,”
René said. “Who wouldn’t be? A daughter losing her mother.… ”

She felt the buried pain in her heart. That little pain that never went away. Aimée’s American mother had abandoned her when she was eight years old.

René averted his gaze. “My turn for sorry.” His mouth tightened.

She smiled and touched his hand. “It’s all in the timing.”

“Timing? How?”

She shouldered her bag. “I don’t know yet.” She reached for the door handle. “But I’ll find out.”

She paused and caught his hangdog look. His pale face.

“Your hip bothering you, again? What’s wrong?”

“What’s
right,
Aimée?”

The windows fogged, and he hit the defroster.

“This murder. Morbier,” he went on. “But I worry about you,” he said, “that you’ll get involved just as you’re recovering your health.” René turned on the defroster full-blast. “Not that worrying does any good.”

She shuddered. This was the last thing she wanted, with a business to run, ongoing projects, clients, and pending proposals. She’d just spent a month on her back, and she needed to catch up. “Did I go looking for this?”

“Xavierre’s murder’s not your fault, or your responsibility,” René said.

“But I owe Morbier,” she said, biting her lip. “I failed.”

“Failed? She kicked us out, remember?” René said. “It’s more important for you to support Morbier in his grief.”

She nodded. But if she didn’t track down this car, do something, she’d get no sleep.

“‘In the river of life,’ as Saj says, ‘all things merge,’” René said.

“And that makes it easy?” she said. “Have you heard from him yet?”

Saj, their part-time hacker, had gone on a well-earned vacation: a meditation retreat in southern India.

“He’s at the ashram in Pondicherry, as far as I know. He won’t respond to e-mail during meditation courses.” René’s clenched fists gripped the steering wheel. A faint sheen of perspiration showed on his face.

Best to keep his mind off what had happened. She remembered him in the hospital, how she’d almost lost him. Never again. “With Saj away, you need to check the data sniffer feed, René.”

“For once, you’re being practical?”

She twisted the leather strap of her bag. “Don’t you need to prepare?” She squeezed his hand. “I know you, René.”

“You do?”

The atmosphere became grave. For a moment she couldn’t read his expression. But she couldn’t think about that now. She had things to do. She opened the car door. “Places to go, René.”

And miles before I sleep, she thought, keeping her trembling hands in her pockets as she traversed the zebra-striped crosswalk.

* * *

“36 85 RS 75.”
Aimée read the Mercedes license plate number from the photo in her hand. A smiling Xavierre and Irati posed with a red-and-white picnic basket and rolling hills in the background. “A maroon Mercedes sedan, say two years old. Diesel.”

“You don’t ask much, do you, Mademoiselle Aimée?” Thesset cleared his throat. “Me, here in the Commissariat with two men, two others out responding to calls. Do you think I’ve got nothing to do?”

Thesset was approaching his mid-fifties. A career
flic
who’d graduated from the Police Academy with her father and Morbier, now edging toward retirement in the Commissariat, mostly preoccupied with disturbances of the peace or robbery by a disgruntled servant.

“Looks quiet to me, Thesset.”

“Heated up tonight,” he said. “Murder of some
haute bourgeoise
matron. They’re calling it a crime of passion. Shows you never can tell what’s going on behind the gilded doors.”

Her shoulders tensed. Not good. It sounded like the crime-scene techs wanted to go home early, shelve the investigation to low priority, and discount other motives.

But she’d worry about that later. The timing between the car pulling away and Xavierre’s murder wasn’t a coincidence. She needed Thesset to trace the car before he or the investigators finally connected the dots tomorrow.