Murder in the Palais Royal (31 page)

“So he tried to throw me off the balcony because he liked me? He was afraid Evry had told me the truth. He was afraid I’d found out too much: about the old couple he’d run down, and about the strangling of Evry’s woman.”

But Mésard had sowed doubt in her mind. Why would he hire a an impersonator to shoot René? Yet if he hadn’t had René shot, who had?

Edith Mésard signaled to her driver. “Melac informed me that Tracfin has assembled evidence of your firm laundering illicit funds. You’ve got big problems of your own, Mademoiselle.”

Hadn’t Saj found the wire deposits’ origin? A link, something?

“What evidence?”

“I shouldn’t even have revealed that,” Edith Mésard said. “But considering what you’ve brought to my attention, which of course I will say came from an anonymous source, maybe I owe it to you. Forewarned is forearmed, Mademoiselle Leduc.”

And with that, Mésard’s heels clicked over the stone pavers to her waiting Renault. If de la Pecheray hadn’t had René shot, or murdered Clémence, she was back at zero. All this for . . . what?

But right now she had a “big problem” to deal with. Saj hadn’t answered her call to Leduc Detective, nor could she reach him on his cell phone.

Ten minutes later, she unlocked Leduc Detective’s door. Her desk, René’s, and the shelves were bare. Only outlines in the dust showed where their computers had sat. BRIF must have impounded their computers and, no doubt, taken Saj in for questioning.

Fear licked up her spine.

How could they do that?

Never mind how. They had.

She sat at her bare desk, cradling her head in her arms. Discovering Nicolas’s notebook, confronting Gabrielle de la Pecheray, obtaining the truth from Olivier, and furnishing the proof to Edith Mésard had gotten her nowhere. Meant nothing. She was still a suspect, no closer to finding the woman who’d attacked René.

Failure. Her best friend had been shot, her business had ground to a halt. She felt her grandfather gazing down from the framed photo on the shelf. Could hear him saying once again, “A nice mess you’ve gotten yourself into, Aimée.”

She racked her brain trying to think what she could have done to have endangered René. Revenge, love, or money were the three motives for crime, he’d always say. He’d based his career in the Sûreté and later in Leduc Detective on that.

What was she missing?

She sat up and checked the answering machine. No messages. But in the dust on her desk she saw finger marks. Words. And then she made out, in Saj’s hand, LUX-SWISS-CAYMAN.

Luxembourg banks to Swiss banks, on to Cayman Islands accounts, the usual route traffickers used to launder money.

She didn’t know how it fit, but she knew who could find out. She punched in Léo Frot’s old number at the Finance Ministry. Three departments later, she found him.

“Léo? Too bad we didn’t hook up at Club Eros.”

“I lost you at the whipping post,” he said, his voice low.

She suppressed a shudder thinking of the whip, the cubicles, and the figure in leather who’d chased her to the Métro.

“I’m going there tonight,” she said, letting out a big sigh, “if I get my work done. Tracing funds to a Cayman bank is really holding me up.”

“Forget it, Aimée. No more favors.”

“Pretend you don’t owe me, Léo.” He never liked being reminded. “Call it a simple favor so I can finish up soon.” She honeyed her voice and paused to let that sink in.

“How soon?” A hopeful tone crept into his voice.

“Depends if you can help me or not,” she said. “Tracfin’s tracing an account I need.”

“Tracfin’s a different branch under the Ministry of Economy,” he said. “Not my stomping grounds.”

“But you know people, Léo.”

He knew everyone and massaged egos to get favors.

“And if I do it?”

“
Alors,
if not I’ll be here all night.”

“Before ten?”

Like hell she would.

“Count on it.”

* * *

T
EN MINUTES LATER , a knock sounded on Leduc Detective’s door. Taking her bag, she opened it, keeping her hand on her Swiss Army knife inside.

Luigi stood outside on the landing with a sheepish expression. He shifted his feet and put a finger to his lips, pointing to Viaggi Travel’s open door.

She started to speak, but he shook his head. Warily, she followed him. He closed his office door and turned off the light.

“Not so fast, Luigi.” What had she walked into?

Luigi clicked on a small desk lamp. “But it’s for you.”

A telephone receiver lay on the green blotter of his desk.

“A call for me here? Why?”

His eyes flickered over the knife. Then he pointed to his ears, then to her office.

Before she could say anything, he took his jacket from the chair, turned, and left. She picked up the receiver.

“
Allô?
”

“Aimée, they bugged the office, your phone, your apartment,” René said. “There’s a
flic
outside my door.”

Her heart thumped.

“René, are you all right? Where are you?” Her words raced. “Melac refuses to tell me anything.”

“Just listen.”

“But your surgery. How are you feeling?”

“Aimée, I’ve got one minute. Can you listen for once?”

She swallowed. “Of course.”

“Write this down.”

She scrabbled for a pen on Luigi’s desk. Found one with green ink. “Go ahead.”

“2-0122-7389. The wire deposit originated in Luxembourg, then was routed to Switzerland—”

“Then to the Caymans,” she interrupted.

“How do you know?”

“Saj wrote that in the dust.”

“Keeping the office clean, as usual.” René snorted. “Tracfin’s investigation stopped at the Caymans. Follow the money. Write this down: a Lichtenstein account, number 7894-8334.”

“Meaning?”

“Guess who?”

“I thought you were in a hurry, René?”

“You can blame it on our friend Nadillac,” René said.

Amazed, she fell back in the chair. “You mean he put up a hundred and fifty thousand francs just to discredit me?”

“By linking you to money-launderers, he’d invalidate your testimony and save millions for his firm,” René said. “After receiving our report of his sabotage, the last thing his firm wanted was to let it be known. It would have shown the leaks in their system. So they ‘encouraged’ him to route company money via a wire transfer to you from hot spots on Tracfin’s blacklist. Then, big surprise. The money’s all back in his firm now, like it never left. He covered his tracks. Who’d check a brief discrepancy in his firm’s accounts, he figured. Who was to know, eh? The firm never lost the money, but now we’re involved in a money-laundering investigation.”

A master of his metier, René astounded her sometimes.

“Expose Nadillac, Aimée.”

“With my teeth? How can I? They took our computers, René. My money says Tracfin’s analyzing them now.”

“And it’s impossible for me to break into their internal system unless I’m on site.”

But, courtesy of Léo, she could.

“No problem, partner. I can.”

“How?” It was René’s turn to be surprised. “Never mind.

Get to it. Now, Aimée!”

Then the peal of a church bell rang in the background.

“Watch out, Aimée. Be careful.”

She heard laughter, “. . . fresh forest mushrooms folded in the omelet. Next time dinner’s my treat. . . .” Was René standing outside? A door shut, she heard footsteps; the church bell was muffled now. She heard more footsteps.

“Monsieur René! You’re late again for pool exercise therapy.”

“I miss you, partner,” she said, but René had clicked off.

She ran to the window, opening it to the sound of the pealing church bells of Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois, the former parish church of kings, at the nearby Louvre. A Romanesque, Renaissance, and Gothic mixture, painted by Monet. She heard those bells every evening, the same infamous ringing that had signaled the sixteenth-century Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre of the Huguenots.

And not three blocks away.

René had given her a clue to his location. Close to the church, a clinic or hospital big enough to have a pool, near a café or resto. She pulled open the drawers in Luigi’s desk, pulled out the Yellow Pages. She found only one clinic in the first arrondissement, Clinique du Louvre on rue des Prêtres Saint-Germain l’Auxerrois. Samaritaine, the art deco department store, stood at the end of the block. An advertisement listed the clinic’s special services as orthopedic therapy and hydrotherapy.

He’d been almost a cobblestone’s throw away the whole time.

On Luigi’s phone, a high-end digital console affair, she dialed the contact number she had obtained from Léo Frot.

The phone was picked up on the first ring.

“Monsieur Ritoux, please,” she said.

“Who’s calling?”

“It concerns a confidential matter,” she said. “I need to speak with him right away.”

“Please identify yourself and the matter this concerns.”

And have him file it away?

The phone’s digital display flashed the number she’d called.

She trusted no one. She would only speak with Ritoux.

“It’s vital, Monsieur,” she said. “He’s unaware of important documentation. I want to deliver it.”

“This office isn’t open to the public. We have no contact with individuals.”

We’ll see about that, she thought, reading an address which had popped up in the digital display. Tracfin showed up as being in the ninth arrondissement. Nice feature! She’d have to get one of these phones.

“Funny. I thought in the government you
served
the public.”

She hung up and ran back to her office. There was no time to search it for bugs. With her penlight, she grabbed an outfit from her disguises in the back armoire, stuffed it in her bag, away from any prying camera. Five minutes later, in the hall bathroom, she’d changed into an express delivery uniform. She checked her Tintin watch. She had to hurry.

* * *

T
HE TAXI LET her off in the mist on narrow rue de la Tour des Dames.

She buzzed the intercom near the gate. “Express for a Monsieur Ritoux, from Bercy.”

“Eh? This time of night?” She heard the clearing of a throat.

Maybe she’d woken the guard up.

“I just do what I’m told,” she said, “and it’s cold out here.”

Getting inside depended on speed, on not giving the guard time to think about following procedures.

The gate buzzed open. The guard, in his forties, a bear-like man, stretched his arms over his head. “Bercy always informs me if they’re sending a delivery.”

Before he called and checked, she had to get inside Ritoux’s office.

“It’s urgent,” she said, walking fast. “Which floor?”

“
Alors, Mademoiselle
, since when do they use female messengers?” He blocked her way.

Merde!
Now she’d have to distract his attention She stopped. “Do you have a problem with that?”

“Show me ID and the envoy slip,” he said, alert now, a grin spreading over his face.

Envoy slip?

“So you think we should still be barefoot, in the kitchen with babies, eh?”

“Hold on.” He extended his pawlike hands in mock surprise. “Just following procedure. Where’s Philippe?”

The usual messenger, or a trick question?

“Like I know?” For the second time today, she flashed her retouched father’s police ID with her photo pasted on it. “A last-minute directive from the minister’s office, requiring Monsieur Ritoux’s response.”

“Still, I need the envoy slip to sign you in.”

She shrugged, glanced at her watch, then his name tag. “It’s your neck, Boulet, not mine. Don’t you get it? Classified documents, covert operation, that’s why they use us, not the regular messenger. Safer.”

“What?” Boulet looked uneasy now.

She said, “You’d better hurry, since the minister’s waiting for Ritoux’s response.”

“Second floor,” he said. “Third office door.”

She ran, perspiration dampening her collar. Her bluff would last only so long.

In a doorway on the second floor, she shimmied out of the jumpsuit she’d worn, putting it in her bag. Then she smoothed down her pencil skirt, buttoned her blouse up to the collar, smoothed back her hair, and put on tortoise-shell-framed glasses again.

She knocked, opened the door, and strode through an office reception area. Deserted.

“Monsieur Ritoux?”

A man poked his head out of an office. “Didn’t we request those files half an hour ago? What’s with you people?”

She shrugged.

“Junior clerks! Glad I don’t work downstairs any more.” He glared. “What are you waiting for? Ritoux’s steaming.”

She backed up. “I’m new.”

“That’s the problem downstairs, you’re all green and know nothing. End of the hall,” he said. “The
big
door. Even you can’t miss it. Tell him I’m coming too.”

A big door, all right. Massive and wood-paneled. She paused to take stock of the building. Tracfin was housed in an old mansion, and Ritoux, by the look of it, had the master suite.

She squared her shoulders. Knocked and stepped inside.

Another reception area with a desk. Empty, but an open office door loomed on the right. She opened a drawer, took out some Tracfin correspondence, and put the letters on top of the notes she’d made of René’s information.

Gritting her teeth, she walked inside the inner office.

“Sorry to take so long,” she said, smiling. “We had issues with filing procedures.”

A few heads looked up.

“Monsieur Ritoux,
excusez-moi,
but we think you should see this.”

A man with oversized seventies-style frame glasses, wearing suspenders, cocked his head.

“But who are you?”

“I’m new, from downstairs, a junior clerk. Our team found this data. It came from a confidential informant relating to a case . . . well, it doesn’t give the case number.”

He hit SAVE on his desktop computer. “Where’s Despaille?”

“En route, Monsieur.” She hoped Despaille was the impatient man who’d directed her this way. “Here, Monsieur Ritoux.”

She set the file down, opened it, and pulled her numerical notations out.