Murder in the Latin Quarter (10 page)

Nonplussed, Aimée shook her head. Whatever she said seemed wrong. And then she brightened. “We’ll get to know each other.”

Bonding, wasn’t that the word? It might take time, but they’d find things in common. She tried to think what those could be. Her parched throat cried out for water, but she didn’t want to go get it, not just now. She hesitated, afraid to believe, desperately wanting to.

She hunted in the rack under the ebony-inlaid mother-of-pearl end table. She found a bottle of St. Emilion, blew the dust off, found a corkscrew in the drawer and two mismatched Baccarat wine glasses.

“Here.” She filled a glass and handed it to Mireille, who clenched her fist around the stem.

Aimée swirled the dense St. Emilion, sipped, then set her half-empty glass down. She had to ask. “You don’t really think its the traffickers, do you? You think you’re being chased for Professeur Benoît’s file.”

Mireille nodded. “I did what Professeur Benoît asked me to do.”

“What’s inside the envelope?”

“I do not know.” She crossed herself, then opened her bag. “You’ll know what to do with it.”

“First, you must explain to the
flics
how you came by the envelope
.
They’re looking for you. Talk to them and clear things up.”

Mireille shook her head, twisting the hemp bag’s strap in her fingers. “You don’t understand.”

“Understand?” Aimée took Mireille’s other hand. “Try me. Mireille, I’ll help you get the file to the right person. But you’re a murder suspect. You need to speak with the
flics.
”

“I never meant . . . but to understand. . . .” Mireille hesitated. “Growing up like this, you can’t imagine. . . .”

A flicker of doubt crossed Aimée’s mind. She leaned for-ward. “Did Benoît threaten you, Mireille?”

“What?”

“Did he hold the promise of a job over your head, demanding that you sleep with him?”

Mireille would not meet her eyes.

“Or did he attack you? You defended yourself, of course, you never meant to hurt him, but you hit him too hard.”

“Me?”

“If this was self-defense and you were scared and ran away, explain it to the
flics
—”

Loud knocking on the front door interrupted her.

Mireille bolted from the chair, terror in her eyes. “He’s here . . . he found me.”

“Who?”

Mireille backed up against the wall. “The killer’s here . . . he’s found me . . . don’t you understand?”

The knocking continued, loud and insistent.

“I didn’t kill the professor. He helped me. They want the file . . . you have to believe me, Aimée.”

Aimée couldn’t take the chance of handing over her own sister . . . or any woman . . . to a killer.

The knocking had become pounding. And somehow, Aimée realized she believed Mireille.

“Help me,
mon Dieu.
Look at my hands. I didn’t cut his ear off. How could I? My left arm is almost useless. The tendons were severed in the sugarcane factory. I still can write, but I have no strength in it.”

No wonder she’d held the glass that way.

Panicked, Aimée looked around the room. She remembered a small niche in the wall, the hidey-hole used to conceal priests during the Revolution. As a little girl, she’d hidden there playing hide-and-seek. Maybe Mireille would fit.

She ran her fingers over the wood panels. Felt the smooth wood, the ridges. Then her index finger caught the well-worn wooden knob. She grabbed it and turned. The small panel half-opened to a space built in the paneling. A crawlspace, dark and smelling of dust.

“Hide in here, Mireille.”

“In there? But it’s too—”

“Quick, there’s no time. Trust me.” Aimée brushed the cob-webs away, gestured, and helped Mireille inside. “Just until I get rid of him.”

She closed the panel, heard it click, and prayed Mireille had enough air to breathe. Aimée’s cell phone vibrated in her pocket.

Who would be calling at this time of night?

She took her unlicensed Beretta from the hall
secretaire
drawer. On her tiptoes she stared out the door peephole. Darkness.

She stepped back, hit ANSWER on her cell phone.

“Open the door, Leduc,” Morbier’s voice said. “I’m waiting.”

What was Morbier, her godfather, a Commissaire, doing here? Shocked, she almost dropped the phone.

“I didn’t see you through the peephole.”

“Try again.”

On her tiptoes, she looked again and saw Morbier’s face shadowed in the dim light. Alone.

She unbolted the door, a bad feeling in her bones.

“Kind of late for a visit, Morbier,” she said, letting him in.

“Do you always greet guests with that, Leduc?” He gestured to the Beretta. “Mind putting it down?”

She set the safety and stuck the gun in the drawer. “No of-fense, Morbier. Just a precaution.”

Morbier was more than usually rumpled: his brown tie hung loose, his shirtsleeves were rolled up, and his corduroy jacket with patched sleeves hung over one shoulder. His thick hair was now more salt than pepper at the temples, the circles under his drooping eyes more pronounced. He bent and petted Miles Davis, whose tail wagged nonstop.

“Miles has gained a little weight,” Morbier said. “He needs exercise.”

“You dropped in to tell me that?”

She figured Morbier’s men had trailed Mireille. Either he knew she was here and was playing ignorant, or he’d dropped in to sniff around.

“Didn’t you call me today, Leduc?”

“Me?” Just her luck that she hadn’t managed to hang up before the system traced her call. “My phone’s acting funny, the call list—”

“Going to offer me a drink, Leduc?” he interrupted.

He wanted to visit. But with Mireille in the cramped airless hidey-hole, she knew she had to get rid of him.

“Why didn’t you call earlier, Morbier? I’ve got an early meeting in the morning,” she said.

“Me too.” He stood, feet planted, unmoving. His shoulders drooped; his complexion had an unhealthy sallow tone. “A Brigade Criminelle meeting concerning you.”

“I don’t understand.” She kept her tone casual.

“I’m thirsty, Leduc.”

She wasn’t going to be able to get rid of him.

“Meet me in the kitchen,” she said.

Miles Davis trailed Morbier down the hall, sniffing his trouser cuffs. She ducked into the salon. Now, if she could reassure Mireille that Morbier’s visit was the perfect opportunity to relate what had happened, to shed some light on Benoît’s murder . . . that circle of salt . . . Aimée turned the knob.

The hidey-hole was dark.

“Mireille?”

Empty, except for the dead, stale air inside. She felt in the worn dust-filled grooves, groping within. Her hands encountered nothing but cobwebs.

“Need help, Leduc?” She heard Morbier’s footsteps in the hallway.

“No. I’m coming.”

She grabbed another bottle of wine and glasses, began to run, then stopped and returned for the corkscrew. She felt a current of warm air now and noticed the window, open to the courtyard. The night breeze made the candle flame flicker. The only remnant of Mireille was her wooden comb, left behind on the chair where she’d sat.

Her heart sank. Mireille had fled, too afraid Aimée would betray her. By airing her suspicions and accusations, she’d scared her off. The opportunity to learn who was following Mireille or what Benoît’s “file” signified was gone.

In the kitchen, Morbier stood silhouetted before the window, the light from a passing
bateau mouche
framing his hair like a halo. A long, low toot and the barge disappeared under Pont de Sully, leaving white wavelets in its wake.

“What’s the occasion, Morbier?” Aimée asked.

“Besides the moon in Scorpio?” He gestured to the web of clouds obscuring the tip of a sliver of a moon.

She set the bottle down and dusted it off. She worked the corkscrew, wondering what the Brigade Criminelle wanted with her.

“Aaah, St. Emilion. Nineteen sixty-eight, an excellent year even though Sorbonne protestors shut down the
quartier,
” Morbier said without skipping a beat. “But to hear those Sixty-eighters talk now, it was the highlight of their lives. Everything’s gone downhill ever since.”

He stared at the label. “I should come more often, Leduc, if you’ve got this lying around.”

“That would make a change,” she said. “The last time you were here was for Papa’s wake.”

He stared at the sediment in his glass. “So it was. I’m sorry, Leduc.”

He’d never apologized to her in his life. Or spoken of the past. What had come over him?

“Confession time, Morbier?” The words came out in that accusing petulant little-girl tone before she could stop them. Part of her wanted to open up, to confide in him. But the time had passed when she could rely on him as she had years ago.

“Not me. Your turn, Leduc.”

Morbier set a Polaroid photo by his glass. In lurid color, it showed Azacca Benoît with matted hair, the skin at his hair-line flayed. This time his eyes had been closed.

Her stomach churned.

“Do you recognize him, Leduc?”

“Should I?” She kept her voice calm with effort.

“They ran your Vespa registration through the system. It was parked in front of the place where he was murdered, on rue Buffon. And don’t tell me your scooter was stolen.”

She put the bottle down before she dropped it. “Sarcasm’s not becoming, Morbier.”

“Want to tell me about it, Leduc?”

“You suspect
me?
”

“If I did, Leduc, we’d be having this conversation at the Prefecture. We found a witness, but I can always use. . . .”

“
Bon,
then you wasted a trip here.”

“Did I say witness?” He shook his head. “Wishful thinking.”

She paused in her twisting of the corkscrew.

“Now I see I’ve caught your attention, Leduc. The
flics
dis-covered a married couple—married to other people, that is— in the bushes, as well as a doddering caretaker. Their evidence amounts to zip.”

“You’re a Divisional Commissaire now, Morbier,” she said. “A big promotion. Too important to pursue an investigation in person, I would have thought.”

She poured the wine into his glass.

“Right.” Morbier sniffed and took a sip. “I shuffle more papers now. The piles get bigger.”

“Why are you working this investigation, then?”

“I’m not,” he said. A vein pulsed in his temple. “Leduc, the responding
flic
knew your father.” Morbier shrugged. “He recognized your name and alerted me. You know, it’s like a family. On the Force, we do favors for each other when one of us gets involved.”

Us. Once a
flic,
always a
flic.
One never got away from it. The ranks closed. They protected their own from outsiders. Even after the false accusations against her father, she was still included.

“Should I regard this as a favor, Morbier?”

“Take it any way you want, Leduc. The other suspects are chatting with a hardass at the Brigade Criminelle,” Morbier told her. “The one who investigated your father’s case.”

“Papa was acquitted, you know that, Morbier.” That verdict had come much later. But the stink of corruption surrounding her father’s career had driven him to leave the Force.

Morbier set his wine glass down so hard that red droplets sprayed the counter. “I asked why your scooter was parked on rue Buffon, then disappeared after the discovery of this man’s body!”

She detected more than anger in Morbier, a veteran who kept his emotions in check. Frustration, fatigue, or something else. She could see no way out but to talk.

She reached for a towel, wiped the counter, and set down the napkin from the café on its surface.

“That’s why.”

He turned it over with nicotine-stained fingers. “So? I’m waiting, Leduc.”

“A woman called on me at the office yesterday. She said she was my sister.”

“Oh? Her name?”

“Mireille Leduc.” She took a deep breath. How could she quickly construct an edited version of Mireille’s tale? “I went to meet her in the corner café as we agreed, but she’d left. The owner said she’d run out; someone was chasing her. She’d left this address and two photos for me. I rode to the address, but after I saw the
flics
on rue Buffon, I left. That’s all I know.”

Morbier watched her, saying nothing.

“Did you know I might have a sister, Morbier?”

“Leduc, nothing your mother did would surprise me.”

Her mother? Shocked, she’d never thought of that.

“No, she says she’s Papa’s daughter,” she told him. “She was born in Haiti.”

“In Haiti?” He shook his head. “There’s a lot of water be-tween here and Haiti. An ocean.”

Aimée hesitated. A pigeon strutting on the balcony ledge outside her window cooed. She twisted her fingers. “Did Papa ever speak of her mother, a woman named Edwige . . . a baby?”

“You’re the only one he talked about, Leduc. His
princesse.
”

Aimée bit her lip. Was he trying to protect her?

“Look at these.” She showed Morbier the photos. The half-smile of the woman glinted in the sun, her wrist raised against the light. Her other arm held the baby. Aimée set the much-thumbed black-and-white photo of her father and the woman at the café on the counter. “Do you recognize her?”

He sipped the wine. “It’s torn. But that’s Brasserie Balzar.” He turned it over. “Must be 1958. We were walking a beat together then, up in Montmartre.”

“How can you tell, Morbier?”

“Miss France. See?” He pointed to the placard in the Balzar window. “Auger . . . you can see that part. Claudine Auger was Miss France in 1958. Amazing, eh, the things you remember.” He shrugged, his thoughts somewhere else, in another time. “We pinned up her photo at the Commissariat. Your father had friends at the Sorbonne and hung out there.”

She stared at her father’s face. The warmth in his eyes made her heart ache. It ached for his loss.

“So this woman says she’s your sister,” Morbier summarized, “doesn’t show at the café, leaves the photos and an address for you. And you fall for it?”

She added, “Her mother had Leduc Detective’s address.”