Murder in Pigalle (15 page)

“What time, can you remember?”

A bell rang in the shop. “Tante Tonette, a customer for you.”

“I’ll come right back,” said Tonette, rising.

Aimée reached and put her hand on Tonette’s thin arm. “Time’s important. When did you last see Zazie?”

“Yesterday afternoon. Now if you’ll let me help my customer?”

“Her classmate was raped and murdered, and now Zazie’s missing. You might have been the last to see her,” said Aimée. “Isn’t that more important?”

Tonette gasped. Her hand flew to her mouth. After a moment she pointed to rue Notre-Dame de Lorette on the map. “Here, at my place. After lunch we met for tea. To go over her report, but … she didn’t bring it. And she was in a hurry.”

“Around two thirty?”

Tonette nodded. “She left maybe three
P
.
M
.”

“No one’s seen her since.”

“Le Weasel, she talked about le Weasel, their suspect, she called him.”

So Zazie had tracked le Weasel, the man she took for the rapist. The real man in the FotoFit?

“Who’s ‘they’?”

“I’m not sure of her friend’s name.”

“Didn’t she mention Sylvaine?”

“A Marie-Jo, maybe. Yes, that’s who she talked about.”

“Did Marie-Jo, this friend, live on rue Chaptal?”

“Close by, that’s all I know,” said Tonette. “Somehow I thought the man they were tracking was her friend’s mother’s boyfriend.”

“Why?” Aimée leaned forward.

“That’s who they chose to surveil for the project.” Tonette shrugged. “Although I know they didn’t like him. I got the idea they were hoping to catch him at something.” Suddenly her eyes widened. “You think he’s this rapist? I read about the attack. Horrible.”

“Please, Tonette, it’s vital … why did they pick him?”

“I don’t know.”

The pieces clicked together in Aimée’s head. If Marie-Jo was the friend on rue Chaptal Zazie’s parents forbade her to see, the girls must have used a Resistance-style system,
sans
phone, to communicate.

“How did you help Zazie track le Weasel and communicate with her friend?” Aimée said.

The younger woman called again. “Tante Tonette?”

Aimée pushed Tonette’s fuchsia bag toward her on the desk. “Better yet, you’ll show me. Tell your niece you’re taking the afternoon off.”

T
HE POLICE SCANNER
crackled in René’s Citroën as a garbage truck cut in front of him.
Merde
! He braked and pulled into the first place he could, the open gate of Cité Malesherbes, an elegant lane of townhouses. Listening carefully to the scanner, René took his pen and noted the latest victim’s father’s name and details in the margin of the true-crime book.

Thank God he’d caffeinated and scored another meeting tonight with the waitress. Now to buttonhole this father, who’d finished his police interview and returned to work. But right now René had to cool his heels, stuck until the garbage truck moved. Sun beat down on his streaked windshield. A crow, its body glinting like shiny black satin, cawed from the roof tiles.

After spending all night in the car, his calves ached and his spine felt out of alignment, like his heart. He had to start a new
ardoise
—a clean slate, get over his feelings for Aimée. Melac could reappear, want to support Aimée and be a father to the new baby. Who knew?

Yet he couldn’t help—in secret—graphing costs of cloth diaper services versus the price of disposable. Enrolling in Lamaze as her partner. Studying the benefits of breastfeeding on infant growth charts.

His phone bleeped. Aimée.

“Any luck, René?” she said, breathless.

“What’s wrong? You’re out of breath.”

“Walking up a hill with a sixty-eight-year-old and I can’t keep up with her,” she said. “Good exercise. And you?”

“The father of the latest victim has finished up with his police interview.” The garbage truck’s loader whined. Pungent aromas drifted through his window. Forget this. He turned the key in the ignition. “I’m off to question him.”

“Where’s that, René?”

“I’m going to l’Opéra.”

R
ENÉ WALKED OUT
of
le parking
at Place Edouard VII into an impasse of steam-cleaned limestone buildings festooned with carved nymphs and a naked woman or two—the alabaster almost glowed. Wrought-iron balconies overflowed with pink and red geraniums. Picture
parfait.

Beyond the zebra-striped crosswalk, René glimpsed the Palais Garnier, Napoleon III’s gold-cuppola’d, rococo and Empire-style opera house. His detractors derided it as over-the-top, as had the ice-cart deliverymen, who complained that the time it took to circumvent the “monstrosity” to reach Café de la Paix melted their ice slabs.

Artistic furor died down over the years, but not so the grumbling over traffic jams, first from the horse-drawn trolley drivers, then later from motorists and bus drivers. Haussmann had discouraged revolutionaries by demolishing alleys and twisting lanes that were fertile ground for street fighters, with no thought of practical traffic navigation.

Yet in indigo summer twilight,
la vieille dame
, no stranger to controversy over the centuries, was bewitching.

René loved it.

Now the orchestra had decamped to l’Opéra Bastille, but ballet performances thrived. Les Rats, the corps of young ballerinas, rehearsed in the attic, and a beekeeper attended the beehives on the roof. There was a whole world here: costumers,
make-up artists, lighting technicians and stage-set designers, stage crew and in-house firemen.

Courtesy of Saj’s connections, René had obtained an
entrée
backstage, where the latest victim’s father worked.

“I’m looking for Monsieur Imbert?” asked René

A rail-thin arty type wearing a
bleu de travail
and the typical loose work jacket, appeared under hanging chandeliers. He was carrying antlers and chewing the pencil hanging from his mouth.

“That you?” asked René.

A shake of his head.

René tried again. The antlers looked heavy. “They told me Monsieur Imbert works here in props.”

The arty type renegotiated the antlers to rest on his hip and stuck the pencil behind his ear. “Imbert’s gone fishing.”

Fishing?

Maybe his daughter’s attack was grounds for taking time off. Of course, how upset the whole family must be. Not a parent, René hadn’t thought of that. He’d need to work on developing his paternal instinct. Especially since Aimée had hinted she’d chosen him for godfather.

“I understand he gave a statement at the Commissariat this morning after his daughter was attacked.”

“His daughter’s at her grandmother’s.” He gave a knowing nod. “Whole thing stressed him out. He goes fishing when he needs to think.”

“You mean along the quai of the Seine?” The only other fishing spot René knew of was along the Marne outside Paris. He hoped that wasn’t where Monsieur Imbert had gone, or tracking him down would involve bumper traffic on the
périphérique
—meaning this could take all day.

“It’s important?”

“Otherwise I wouldn’t be taking your time,” said René, impatient. “I’m investigating a missing girl.”

“Behind makeup,” the man said. “Twelve floors down.
Salle A
, then the stairs. You’ll find it.”

“Find what?”

“Our cistern.” He grinned. “You know, the supposed Phantom of the Opera’s lake. The firemen dive train down there. We drain it every ten years.”

“Like they’ll let me down there?”

“Tap in the code ‘Fantome 1900.’ ”

Twelve floors of stairs. René groaned inside. All night in the car and now this.

The cistern under the Opéra was a dark and vaulted channel. Not the fabled lake—Gaston Leroux had made that up. René inhaled the algae and water smells while feeling for footholds on the slippery, wet stone. He grasped the wall and looked for a ledge. How did people get around beside swimming or a boat?

Then everything plunged into darkness. Damned timed light had gone off.

René’s foot slipped. Those expensive handmade leather soles weren’t famous for their traction. He grabbed out and heard splashing.

“Monsieur Imbert?”

A yellow beam of light illuminated the semi-transparent, greenish water. René noted white catfish, their whiskers lazy swirls in the water. There stood a man in hip-high waders attached by suspenders and a bicycle helmet mounted with a flashlight.

“Who wants to know?”

“Hit the lights and I’ll tell you,” said René.

Imbert’s chuckle echoed off the damp stone vaults. “No lights down here. Just the fish. They’re blind.”

René edged back a few centimeters at a time until he reached more solid footing.

“You accompanied your daughter this morning when she gave a statement at the Commissariat,” said René. “I’m
investigating the disappearance of another girl, Zazie Duclos. I’d appreciate your help, Monsieur.”

“Why didn’t you say so?” He pointed to a niche with a carved stone ledge. René hoisted himself until he’d maneuvered inside, perspiration beading his upper lip.

“A detective, eh?” said Imbert, reading René’s card in the beam of the flashlight. “I guess you come in all sizes these days.”

Imbert told him his daughter, Nelié, had sensed the attacker’s presence and known to run. She heard him following her home from her violin lesson but never saw his face.

“Did she see anything at all? His clothing, shoes? Or hear his voice?” asked René.

Nothing. In the dark and the rain, she’d concentrated on getting away. Zazie? He’d never heard his daughter mention her.

Despite the dank cistern and his wet socks, René was determined to prolong the conversation. He knew there had to be something. He just wasn’t asking the right questions.

“Smells? Did he wear cologne or give off the smell of alcohol?”

The rapist hadn’t gotten that close, thank God, Imbert said. “Nelié feels the world differently. It’s lucky she noticed the attacker because she can’t always process other people’s presences like we do. She said he gave off a color, like anthracite—cold, hard. You see, my Nelié, she’s got this synesthesia.” He paused, searching for the words. “Her music teacher says it’s a gift. She sees colors for letters, numbers and musical notes. People give off a color to her. The doctor calls it a neurological condition.”

René nodded. He knew many artists experienced synesthesia—Berlioz, Billy Joel, some argued Vuillard.

“She could play the violin before she could read. Played by ear. Won every scholarship they have. Such a gifted girl, my Nelié. Her teacher’s suggested her for the Conservatoire de Musique.”

“Madame de Langlet?”

“The old dame herself.”

René needed to speak to this woman.

“But the attacker knew our place on Cité de Trévise.”

“Eh, how’s that?” asked René, recalling this secluded, narrow, passage-like enclave with a fountain festooned with nymphs. A chic address. “Do you mean he’d watched your daughter and knew her schedule?”

Like the other victims?

“No doubt, especially as the concierge found paper wedged in the gate to prevent it from closing.”

Another example of methodical planning.

“
Le
salaud
!” Imbert’s tone hardened. “L’Opéra offers workers’ housing so we union members can live nearby, on call, you know. For our sake I insisted Nelié make a police report. We need to dot the ‘i’s and show the bureau, or they won’t change the codes and locks. Heighten security. I hate that Nelié goes home alone, but what else should I do? I can’t deny her these free lessons with Madame, even if they are late at night, after her paying pupils are done. It would break her heart.”

René heard the man’s anguish. Not a choice a father would want to make. Impending godfatherhood, René realized, came with responsibilities.

A slapping sound, and in the yellow beam René noticed Imbert’s net with a wriggling catfish.

“Edible?” he asked.

“Served with a light hollandaise sauce and a sprig of tarragon,
parfait
.” Imbert put his fingers to his mouth and smacked his lips.

After making Monsieur Imbert promise to ask his daughter if she knew Zazie, René started to make his way up the dripping, slick stairs.

“I remembered one thing, Monsieur Friant,” Imbert called after him.

René turned, careful not to slip.

“Someone clapped after her playing.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Nelié says it wasn’t the first time she heard someone, a man she thinks, clap outside the window at her violin lesson.”

A stalker? The rapist.

“Does Nelié think he’s the one who followed her?”

“It was the humming. My Nelié said he hummed.”

“Any tune she recognized?”

“The Paganini piece she’s practicing for the Conservatoire de Musique tryout. The piece she’d just played.”

René shivered, and the chill that ran down his spine didn’t come from the damp, sweating walls.

A
IMÉE
,
DRENCHED AND
winded by the time they reached the wedge of park behind Place Saint-Georges, noticed Tonette hadn’t broken a sweat. In the shade of green-leafed branches, blue delphiniums and hollyhocks framed pink, trellised roses. A true breath of paradise, Aimée thought, this secluded oasis between the nineteenth-century limestone buildings.

“Zazie wanted to hear the old stories,” said Tonette.

Aimée hoped this went somewhere. “You mean for her report?”

“All of it.” Tonette’s gaze locked on a hovering blue-purple dragonfly. “How we
lycée
students marched under the Germans’ noses to the Arc de Triomphe on Armistice Day in 1940. A small protest no one talks about.” She shook her white head. “We took to the Grands Boulevards, just near here, forty-one of us singing
La Marseillaise
and flying the tricolor until the police appeared. Can you imagine? But that’s what you do when you’re young and foolish. We started a clandestine one-page newspaper, printed in secret in our school’s cellar. Even distributed copies using special signs, signals and drop boxes until our principal caught us. My story fascinated Zazie.”