Murder on the Champ de Mars (11 page)

Somehow she managed to walk her scooter to the street. The whine of a siren pierced her ears. Lights flashed; an ambulance pulled up on the corner. She flipped the ignition, revved the handlebar and weaved into the traffic.

Three streets later she pulled into a square. Blood—good God, her hands were covered in blood. And then she leaned over just in time as her stomach heaved, over and over until nothing more came out.

She forced herself to clean up at the fountain, wash the blood and bile away. But washing it away wouldn’t take Nicu’s blood off her hands.

When the shaking stopped, she sat on the grass and opened the envelope, stained with bloody fingerprints. Why hadn’t he put this in his bag?

In it she found two black-and-white photos. The first was of two young women, one holding a baby. Written on the back was
Djanka, Drina, Nicu
. The next was of a young couple squinting into the sun, the man’s arms around the woman, who was holding a baby. On the back was written
Djanka, Nicholás and Pascal
. With them was a creased, much-folded birth certificate.
Nicholás Constantin, date of birth June 12, 1977
. Under “father” it was blank, and in the mother’s column were the words,
Djanka Constantin, aged 24
.

If Drina wasn’t Nicu’s mother, who the hell had he just died for?

R
OLAND
L
ESEUR HUNG
the framed iridescent butterfly on the office wall in his ministry, beside his brother Pascal’s commendation from
le président
. A
Phengaris arion
, the latest addition to his collection, the violet blue of the insect’s wings reminded him of Françoise’s eyes. He let his gaze pass over the collection. These winged creatures, suspended as if caught in flight, made his heart quiver. Little else did these days.

“Excusez-moi, Monsieur le directeur.”
Juliette, his ministerial assistant, entered through the tall door, accompanied by a whiff of something citrus. Afternoon light glinted off the Seine through the window, catching in Juliette’s short, nut-brown hair, which glowed like her smile. “Jacques from
Libération,”
she said. “He wants a quick word.”

Fresh faced, young enough to be his daughter, idealistic like he’d been. Like they’d all been once. Even Pascal.

“Put him on, Juliette.”

But Jacques—mid-forties, like Roland; balding and thick waisted, unlike Roland—stood in the doorway. “Roland, can you give me five minutes?”

Roland was inclined to refuse, but he shrugged as Jacques helped himself to a seat on Roland’s Louis Philippe office chair.

“Why not, Jacques?” He pulled out that smile he’d perfected over the course of years in the ministry, as a
haut fonctionnaire
. Jacques, a socialist, wrote for the left-leaning
Libération
—not Roland’s choice of newspaper—but he was a respected
journalist. “Hold my calls for five minutes, Juliette,” Roland said. “Ever seen my collection, Jacques?”

“
Bien sûr
, Roland,” he said. “But I’m not here for that.”

Never one for small talk, Jacques.

Jacques’s gaze drifted over the framed butterflies, but lingered on Pascal’s 1978 commendation. Pascal, the youngest
député
in the history of the Assemblée Nationale.

“Please take this as coming from a friend,” Jacques said. “I’ve known you, what, twenty years?”

Roland nodded. “Twenty-one. We met at Pascal’s funeral.”

Jacques’s hand went to his forehead, shading his eyes for a moment. Then he looked up, his thick brow furrowed. Jacques was genuinely worried.

“
Et alors
, it’s serious. Why are you here? Get to it, Jacques.”

“Off the record, you understand.” Jacques leaned forward. The Louis Philippe chair creaked. “You’re a friend, I knew your family. This concerns Pascal.”

“My brother?” Roland said. “Talking from beyond the grave?”

“Roland, I wanted to warn you,” said Jacques. “You won’t like this, but the editor’s going ahead with an exposé.”

“Another scandal?” Roland folded his arms and leaned back in his chair. “What do you ever print but scandals?”

“There’s a memoir coming out.
Libération
is going to run an accompanying article about governmental corruption, and Pascal’s mentioned. Often.”

Roland’s jaw clamped. “He died twenty-one years ago. Such old news, your editor must be desperate.”

Jacques twisted in the chair. He took his case and stood. Roland had never seen this seasoned journalist look so uncomfortable before.

“Bad idea, let’s forget I came,” said Jacques. “I’ll let you get back to work.”

Worried, Roland shook his head. “Please tell me what you feel I need to know. I’m sorry, I see this isn’t easy for you.”

Instead of sitting back down, Jacques walked to Pascal’s framed presidential commendation, then to the window overlooking the Seine. His bald crown shone in the sun. Perspiration glimmered on his neck.

“Minister Chalond’s former teenage boy lover wrote a memoir—not even that scandal-worthy, given that Chalond’s long dead and the remaining family all senile. This now mature man has cirrhosis of the liver.” Jacques paused.

“Pascal? Gay?” Sunlight slanted onto the Aubusson rug and warmed Roland’s arms. “
Au contraire
.”

“The issue being that he serviced others in the ministry as well. Others who are very much alive.” Jacques paused. “It has other implications. This boyfriend heard pillow talk and gossip, attended dinners. He overheard deals being made—promised ministerial posts, do-this-and-the-ambassadorship’s-yours favors, bribes disguised as foreign-delegation junkets.”

Roland folded his arms tighter against his chest. “So? Why would the public believe a boy prostitute with twenty-year-old stories?”

“The issue, Roland, is that the exposé was thoroughly researched, all allegations verified. Pascal led two of those foreign delegations.”

Roland shrugged. “That’s all part of the public record, Jacques.”

“Cover-ups can still do damage twenty years later. They’re a threat to certain officials. I know Pascal was your older brother and you—”

“Idolized him? Say it, my father always did.”

Jacques averted his gaze. He pulled several stapled sheets from his case, set them on Roland’s desk. “I never gave you this, Roland.”

Roland didn’t want to look. Wouldn’t. Then his eye caught on “…  honeypot sting … police hush money … homicide of Pascal’s Gypsy lover … reputed ‘suicide.’ ”

Good God. The fear he’d smothered all these years made him break out in a cold sweat. His arms tingled and blood rushed to his head. Dizzy, he gripped his desk, knocking the papers to the floor. Could it be true? Had Pascal’s suicide been a murder?

“I just didn’t want you blindsided,” said Jacques. “I’m sorry. It goes to print next week. I heard rumors of an investigation.”

Roland bent to pick up some papers, trying to recover. “I’m having my attorney read this.”

“Wouldn’t matter,” he said. “He’s got media lined up. Matter of fact, he is the media.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“Charles Frenet, aka the teenage lover, is the former announcer on RTL. He’s been paid off to keep this quiet all these years, I imagine. Now he’s broke, wants a new liver. The interviews go live day after tomorrow.”

“I’ll stop him.”

“Good luck with that.” Jacques shot him a meaningful look. “Françoise’s husband’s name came up. There are implications …” Jacques sighed. “What you
can
do is warn Françoise.”

A
IMÉE
’
S EMPTY STOMACH
was knotted in fear. Her raw throat hurt and she was trembling. She tried to piece the implications together as she sat on a bench under a canopy of linden trees. Her mind spun.

She had sent Nicu to his death.

Focus. She had to focus. Drina was still out there. Whoever she was.

Put it together, her father had always said, piece together the puzzle. If you fail, try again. And again.

Half a notebook. Drina now fourteen hours gone and counting; her limbs would be ceasing to function.

Loose ends—she only had loose ends. Names and a few family photographs. And without the notebook, which she’d never had a chance to see, it led nowhere. She had zero.

Nothing to follow up on.

Chloé depended on her. What kind of fool was she, putting herself in danger like that? And she’d found nothing but a trail of smoke and names.

Part of her wanted to run away from the whole damn thing. Erase what had happened. As if she could. If she stopped now, whatever Drina knew about her father’s killer would go with her.

Her father’s words came back to her from an afternoon at the park long ago when she’d fallen off the swing. “No pity party, Aimée. If kisses don’t make the tears go away, be a big
girl, put on the Band-Aid.” Her ten-year-old self that afternoon needed to put on a brave face and get back on the swing.

If she gave up now, Nicu’s death would mean nothing. Any chance of finding her father’s killer would disappear.

She hitched her bag over her shoulder. Time to put on the Band-Aid, get back on the swing and fit the pieces of the puzzle together. If she didn’t, she could be next.

N
UMBER 39
B
OULEVARD
des Invalides, the address from Drina’s hospital record, stood three stories high opposite the nineteenth-century Saint-François-Xavier Church, amid the green stretches of Place du Président Mithouard. This was the stomping ground of France’s titled families, and it oozed privilege.
Pas mal
, she thought.

Drina Constantin had given this as her address. A friend’s place, maybe? Where she received mail? Worth a try. And if she came up with zero, she’d figure the next thing out from there.

One of the tall, dark-green double doors yielded to her touch. She found herself in a covered
porte cochère
with a directory listing the names of priests and one monsignor. No listing of Constantin.

She strode over the moss-veined cobbled courtyard to look for the concierge. There was only an office of the nearby Lycée Victor Duruy Christian youth association with a F
ERMÉ
sign in the window. Frustrated, she turned to leave. Just then, she heard a scraping noise from behind what she had assumed was a wall covered in thick wisteria. Looking more closely, she realized it was a fence, and from behind it was coming the scratching of dirt accompanied by a grunt.

“Il y a quelqu’un?”
She entered a gate and followed the gravel path into a garden the likes of which were not often seen in Paris. Stone walls splotched with white and yellow lichen enclosed a profusion of budding plants, red-button flowers, a weeping willow, trellised vines.

“Dump that in the compost pile.” A man’s voice.

A man with a white-collared black shirt that looked like a priest’s, tucked into Levi’s, poked his head up from a bed of large, yellow-petalled daisies. Perspiration beaded his flushed face.

“
Excusez-moi
, Monsieur le curé, but a woman named Drina Constantin listed this as her address.”

He shook his head. “Just us black frocks here at the rectory.”

Rectory? Drina had given a false address. A dead end.

An enticing minty floral scent filled her nose. She’d love to have a garden like this for Chloé to play in.
Dream on
. But there still might be a clue here, something to point her toward the next place. “Perhaps she worked for you. Does that name ring a bell?”

“Constantin? No one here by that name.”

No need to complicate the story she told to the priest. “It’s vital that I find someone who might know her—and she did give this address, after all. Can I talk to your concierge, the staff?”

“Madame Olivera’s in Portugal. She does everything; we’re a bit lost without her.”

Bees buzzed in the hedge; a butterfly alighted on a budding jasmine vine.

She racked her brains for anything that could link Drina to a rectory. With so few leads, she couldn’t afford to miss a single thing. Then Nicu’s uncle’s words came to her: “ ‘Another one of your Christian do-gooders, eh Nicu?’ ”

“Does Saint-François-Xavier do charity work?” she asked, clutching at a straw. “Sponsor programs for the needy? Maybe that’s the connection.”

“Hmm, our Christian society volunteers with upkeep of the church,” he said. “They started this garden—quite something, all plants with the theme of our Lord.” He put down the hoe and pointed with pride. “Those silver seedpods under
the flowering purple look like coins, which is why the plant is called ‘the pope’s money,’
monnaie du pape.”
He grinned. “Those red cascade spindle trees over there we call
bonnets de prêtre
, ‘priest’s caps’—the branches provide charcoal for drawing. And of course there are the bonnet daisies, these
pâquerettes
, for our Easter altar.”

Fascinating, but she didn’t have time for the religious meanings of flowers. This
Père
had tried to be helpful, but he hadn’t given her anything yet, and she could tell he wanted to get back to the garden.

“How about any outreach to Gypsies,
les manouches
?”

He picked up his hoe. “
Mais oui
, we work with the Christian Helping Hands program. Through them, we hire
les manouches
to re-cane our
prie-Dieu
prayer kneelers, repair the rattan chairs. We’ve got a church full of old things, you know. Even a mural of the Tintoretto school.”

Finally. Her persistence had paid off.

“How can I contact these
manouches
, Father?”

He grinned, wiped his perspiring face. “I’m just the gardener today.” He lifted a pile of weeds into the wheelbarrow. “Madame Uzes runs that Christian Helping Hands program. She’ll know.” The priest fished a card from his wallet. “Here’s her number. She handles
manouche
programs. Talk to her.”

Walking back toward her scooter, she dialed the number for Madame Uzes, only to hear it ring and ring. Didn’t the woman have voice mail? As she was about to hang up, a recording came on and she left a message.