Murder on the Champ de Mars (15 page)

“I’m helping a friend.”

“What do you care about something that happened twenty years ago?”

“Djanka’s murder was filed away, forgotten. The
flics
didn’t care, she was just a Gypsy,” he said. “But it matters now to Drina, her dying sister, who’s been abducted from the hospital. Drina’s life is in danger, and I believe the secret of her location is linked to Djanka’s unsolved murder.”

He’d made the last part up and hoped it worked. Sitting up on the stool, he rubbed his cold hands. Had he convinced her?

“Come back later and talk to
les vieux,”
she said.

And waste more time trying to pry open sealed lips? He needed a less vague promise of help.

“Tant pis.”
René felt in his pocket for his billfold. “So young
and full of life, only twenty-four years old, a beauty, this Djanka. See.” He slapped the photo and a hundred francs on the zinc. “This help?”

The woman pulled her glasses from around her neck.

“Wasn’t called Djanka back then.”

René’s spine straightened. His stool creaked. “So what did you call her?”

“Aurélie.”

“You knew her?”

“She sang, her husband played guitar. He died in a fire in their caravan.”

“Pascal?”

She shrugged. “I don’t remember.”

“Pascal’s not a typical
manouche
name, is it?”

She gave a sideways grin. “What’s a name to us? We have many: three, four …”

As many as a particular situation demanded, René knew. He had read the newspapers—last year a Gypsy crime king had been sentenced, but six months into his term, the
flics
discovered it was his brother serving in prison.

“So she used Aurélie as a stage name?”

“Wouldn’t surprise me. Anyway, I never saw her after her husband died,” she said.
“C’est tout ce que je sais.”

He contained his excitement. Now he had something to tell Aimée.

“Funny,” the woman continued, “you’re the second one to ask in as many days.”

Another person had come sniffing around? He was getting somewhere. Excited, he tried to keep his voice level. “A
flic
?”

“Not my business,
mon petit.”

But she’d labeled the man, René could tell.

“It matters to me if I’m not the only one asking,” said René. “Tell me what this person asked you about.”

She shrugged. “Didn’t stay long after I told him I’d never
heard of her. Not my type of person,” she said. “You, you’re different.”

He had gotten her to identify with him after all. And maybe the other
mec
hadn’t left a hundred-franc note on the counter.

“Can you describe this man?”

“Ugly mug. Chain-smoked.”

René sucked in his breath. He was getting somewhere all right. “Old, young?”

“Been around.” Her face broke into a lopsided grin.

“So any scars, tattoos?’

She had a calculating twinkle in her eye. “A man must put grain in the ground before he can cut the harvest.” She extended her palm.

He deliberated. Made to feel around in his pocket. Waited.

“Maybe in his sixties, thick eyebrows,” she said, “a smoker, as I told you.”

Could be anyone. He decided to move on and slid another hundred francs onto the counter. “I’ve heard in Romany culture, families insist on taking care of dying relatives.
C’est vrai
?”

“Selon la tradition, oui,”
she said.

He wished he could remember Nicu’s uncle’s name, the uncle Aimée had mentioned. He decided to keep on trying. “Then why would a brother abduct his sister from the hospital and lie to her son?”

“That’s not our way,” she said. “Families prepare the traveler by keeping vigil at the bedside. We fear vengeance if wrongs aren’t righted or forgiveness not granted before a person departs on their journey. Never happens.
C’est tabou.”

If what she said held true, this put the Constantin uncle in the clear.

“Then who would?”

“I could ask around but it’d cost you.”

More? No chance of help from the goodness of her heart, if she had one.

“
Les gens du voyage
move around,” she said. “Things get
compliqué.
”

And René had little time. He took out three hundred francs—the rent due on his garage—and put a hundred and fifty on the counter with his card. “Half now. Half when I meet anyone who knew her.”

His gaze caught on the Cirque Gitane poster beside the mirror. He recognized the uncle’s name now—stupid, it had been staring him in the face the whole time. René jerked his thumb at the poster for the Constantin family circus. “Radu Constantin I’ll talk to myself.”

A
IMÉE RAN INTO
her apartment building’s courtyard, her flounced wool Gaultier coat damp from the drizzle. She wished she’d thought to pack her umbrella—then immediately felt racked with guilt for even thinking of such a thing and wished instead she hadn’t sent Nicu to his death. But those thoughts would get her nowhere. The pear tree’s budding leaves dripped on the lichen-laced cobblestones.

Only enough time to grab her laptop for tonight’s surveillance and zip back to the office in the waiting taxi. Not even a moment to kiss Chloé, who was napping across the courtyard.

Someone stepped out from the shadows under the eaves near the mailboxes. Startled, Aimée almost dropped her bag in a puddle.

It was Donatine. The last person she wanted to meet. Melac’s squeeze … 
non
, his damned wife.

How the hell does she have the gall?

“Aimée, it’s been bothering me since last night. There’s been a terrible misunderstanding,” said Donatine, her face concerned. Her long red braid snaked over her belted wool jacket. Shielded by an umbrella, she was dry from her rouged cheeks to her ankle boots. A perfect provincial. She was clutching a package with the brand-name Bonpoint, the chichi baby store, under her arm—“We got off on the wrong foot; please let me explain.”

Aimée could feel words bubbling up in her mouth. Words like
Why did Melac choose you over me and his child?

“My lawyer doesn’t want us in contact,” she said instead, determined to keep her hands in the pockets of her coat. Otherwise she’d swat this woman out of the way.

Donatine stepped aside. “
Bien sûr
. This package …”

“I don’t want anything from you,” she said. “No conversations, no gift, no trouble.”

“Hear me out for two seconds, please,” Donatine said.

“I’m sorry.” She struggled to keep her tone businesslike. “My lawyer instructed me not to talk to anyone concerned.”

“Melac thought that with your job you’d welcome our help. I’m a nurse.”

She was smart, this woman, inserting herself into the equation like this. Persistent.

“I’m sorry he never RSVP’d and that he’s ignored the baby—your beautiful Chloé,” said Donatine. “In your place I’d feel threatened, too.”

Threatened. That about summed it up. And maybe a little jealous, too, though she’d deny it. The best defense was a good offense, her father had always said.

Aimée attempted to hold her tone even. “You’re a stranger to me.
Désolée
. As I’ve said twice now, we can’t be in contact.”

And if you keep pushing me, I’ll kick your kneecaps and ruin those ugly boots
.

Donatine’s pink-glossed mouth quivered. “It would mean so much to me if we were friends.”

“What do you want, Donatine?”

Besides my baby
.

“Melac’s determined to reach a custody arrangement. Instead of tearing Chloé’s life apart, let’s discuss this together.”

Together? A stranger, a desperate woman unable to have a child and glomming onto Aimée’s? She’d neatly inserted herself into the equation again.

“Isn’t it up to Melac to try to make things right with me?”

Why are you here instead of him?

“This doesn’t have to go the legal route, Aimée. I tried to persuade him that you’d listen to reason, want the best for Chloé.”

Fear flared up her spine. This Donatine spelled more than trouble. Determined, intent, single-minded—Aimée could relate.

Be smart for once
.

Think, think. In less than six months, the woman had met and married Melac, who had been on the rebound and gutted after his daughter’s death.

Yesterday, life had been good apart from puréed carrot spit-up on her shoulder; then Melac had barged in with a barren wife, claiming rights to Chloé. No leg to stand on, she’d thought, but now she wasn’t so sure. Then Nicu and her father’s murder resurfaced … all at once.

“Aimée? Aimée?”

She came back to her damp courtyard and this grasping woman as she felt a package shoved into her hand.

“I don’t want your gifts,” she said. “Or for you to contact me again, Donatine.”

“Then I’m sorry, Aimée. I wanted you to understand. I was hoping we could avoid the difficult route,” she said. As she left, she added, “It’s not my gift, but one from a Monsieur Dussolier. I found it under your mailbox.”

R
ENÉ LOCKED THE
Citroën’s door and trudged up the cobbled passage, cursing the humidity under his breath. He winced at every step on the uneven, rain-slicked cobbles. Damn dysplasia flared up every wet spring. This season was the worst yet.

A baby’s cry pierced his thoughts. Chloé? Brought back to earth, he turned around and saw a man soothing a little bundle in a stroller, tucking in a blanket.

Little Chloé took his breath away. The first time she’d clutched his thumb with her tiny fist, she stole his heart. All he wanted to do was protect this tiny thing, hold her and hear her gurgles. When she spat up banana on his new suit, he’d worn it like a badge of fatherhood. At the dry cleaner’s, pride filled him when the owner smiled knowingly. “Ah, babysitting your goddaughter, Monsieur Friant? Nothing to fear—we’re used to this kind of thing. I’ll have your jacket looking like new tomorrow.”

So many recollections of his childhood had surfaced in his mind—normal, according to the American parenting book: your new baby brings up primordial instincts and memories that you relive to relate to your growing infant. He kept a baby book for Chloé, as the American book suggested—even gave one to Aimée for Chloé’s milestones: her first real smile that didn’t come from gas, when she took a bottle instead of the breast, her first solid food.

A car horn blared in his ear. He almost jumped out of his skin. Stupid, he’d been daydreaming in the middle of the street.

He should forget these feelings, move on with his own life instead of helping Aimée live hers. But much as he tried, he couldn’t get past them. Like his feelings for Aimée, which she’d never reciprocate. He was nothing but a best friend to her. And now the godfather of her child. Her child with damned Melac.

By the time he found Cirque Gitane in the large lot up the hill behind Place de Clichy, his hip was throbbing. The large blue circus tent took up more than half of the empty lot. Caravans were parked, surrounded by wall remnants from a Paris long past, lines of washing flapping between them in the breeze. The odor from a steaming pile of fresh horse manure made it feel, for a moment, like a countryside fair. The long, unsmiling look he got from a middle-aged
manouche
, who stood smoking and polishing the fender of a Mercedes, didn’t make him feel welcome.

Why had he agreed to Aimée’s plea to search out the Gypsies? But he knew why—between her guilt over Nicu’s murder and this loyalty to her father’s old promise, she’d risk getting herself into even more dangerous situations. Not if he could help it. And he relished the challenge of this Drina puzzle—if he could solve it, maybe Aimée would stop being so distracted and get back on track.

René made his way through the caravans. The smells of cheap oil and frying onions emanated from one of the small caravans gathered around the Cirque Gitane tent. Two young boys with curly black hair ran around yelling, playing tag. A young woman wearing a pink jogging suit and a red scarf barked something at them. The boys, ragged pant cuffs trailing on the wet dirt, laughed. She filled a pail with water from the outdoor water tap, a green metal
robinet
by a wall.

“Excusez-moi,”
he said. “I’m looking for Radu Constantin.”

The two boys smiled at him and he was sure he saw them eyeing his cuff links.
Little thieves
. He pulled up his arms before they could get at them.

“Shouldn’t you be helping your mother?” he growled and shook them off.

The woman barked at them again. In a flash they ran away, laughing, and she disappeared inside the open flap of the circus tent with her heavy pail. René followed.

Sawdust, the wheeze from an accordion—he felt immediately sucked in by the intimate draw of the big top. He remembered Saturday afternoons from his childhood, the first time he’d ever seen a grown-up man like him. The man had had a red nose and frizzy yellow hair, and he kept tripping over his big shoes, to the audience’s delight. Terrified, René had hidden behind his mother. Would he end up a clown?

Now, he shivered in fascination. Colored lights masked the seediness, disguised the ratty curtains. He watched a rehearsal in full swing: candelabra-lit ringside violins and accordion players, trapeze artists, acrobats twisting like snakes, fire jugglers, tightrope walkers glistening with sweat, the clacking hooves of the dancing goat—it felt all so familiar, and it took him back to those small-tent Gypsy circuses in the countryside.

“You’re looking for me?” A man in his shirtsleeves, wearing a fedora, rings on every finger, took René’s arm and steered him outside onto the jagged cobbles.

“Radu Constantin?”

He nodded, his dark, unsmiling eyes taking the measure of René. “Auditions ended last week. Who told you to come here?”

Dwarves and circuses again. René’s anger mounted. What did Drina and the old murder of Djanka have to do with Aimée’s father’s death?—that was the real question. Spitting mad now, he’d had enough. He pulled out his Leduc Detective card.

“Let me get to the point, Monsieur Constantin,” he said. “How does your sister Djanka’s murder twenty years ago connect to Drina’s abduction?” He lifted the photo and shoved it
in the man’s face. “Nicu dragged my partner, Aimée, into this. Now I want answers.”