Murder on the Champ de Mars (28 page)

She cringed inside.

“But I’m Gabrielle’s uncle.”

“Uncle?” So then maybe … available?

“Pardon?”
he said.

Good God, had she said that aloud? It was then she noticed the runs in her black stockinged feet, her undone blouse buttons and Babette beckoning her to the WC.

She was leaking.

A
FTER BENOÎT HAD
departed and Aimée had given Chloé a goodnight kiss, she returned to the WC. She cleaned up and applied concealer and mascara, then outlined her lips with a brown pencil and filled them in with Chanel red. Took
a moment thumbing through the booklet Babette had pressed into her hands as she left—
The Ten-Minute Power Nap Will Change Your Life
—before hunting in her back office armoire for the right outfit. Found it and changed into black fishnets and a classic little black Chanel number paired with the beaded vintage fuchsia Schiaparelli bolero. She finished up with a few dabs of Chanel No. 5 on her pulse points. Tonight’s surveillance was at the place the
comte
had called a “clubhouse for polytechnicians.” But everyone referred to polytechnicians, the elite egghead graduates of the École Polytechnique, by their nickname, “les X.”

She glanced at the power-nap bullet points. Ten minutes and ten minutes only of deep-cycle REM sleep made one fresh and alert. Powerful people and celebrities existed on power naps: CEOs who worked 120 hours a week, models jetting to runway shows around the world—even John Lennon swore by them when he was writing music.

Le Beatle? Maxence would eat this up.

Alert and refreshed after her nap—however long it had been—she now felt ready for battle with Melac. She shot an email to Maître Benosh, detailing Melac’s lawyer’s demand. Next she prepared for the night’s surveillance by reading the dossier on the target, the
comte
’s cousin, an engineer. With all that accomplished, and for once already
macquillée
, dressed, spritzed and ready, she still had half an hour to spare.

A little time to try to make some headway on Drina, Djanka and Nicu. She turned back to the timeline on the butcher paper.

She kept coming back to the same question: Why had her father been pulled off Djanka Constantin’s murder investigation?

It felt like something was staring her in the face.
She had to go back to the beginning, go over each detail
. Then she’d see what she was missing.

She opened her red Moleskine, scanned her notes. Thinking about Roland Leseur, she tried to make sense of his anger. What did he know about what had happened to his brother twenty years ago?

She cut out the 1978
Paris Match
pages on Pascal’s funeral and taped them next to Roland Leseur’s name. A scenario spun in her mind: Had Roland murdered Djanka years ago out of rage with her for bringing down the family? Had Pascal threatened to legitimize Nicu? Could Roland have killed his own brother and made it look like a suicide?

A long shot.

What secret was so big it was worth killing over twenty years later? And what did it have to do with her father? Then Drina’s words came back to her
—You know
.

“Don’t you have surveillance with Maxence, Aimée?” René walked in and draped his tailored Burberry raincoat over his chair.

“Ready and waiting.”

René studied the butcher paper. “Playing pin the tail on the suspect?” He shook his head.

“What’s wrong, René?”

“You missed the lawyer’s appointment,
n’est-ce pas?”

“And I rescheduled it for the day after tomorrow. Sit down. Let me explain.”

René rubbed his forehead. “Not this again.”

“Five minutes, René, please.”

He sat, pumped up his ergonomic chair and spun around to face her. “Five minutes, Aimée. Then I’ve got to work on de Brosselet’s project. A paying project, if I need to remind you?”

“D’accord.”
Pointing to the timeline, she told him about all the information she’d gathered that day, including Roland Leseur’s reaction to her questions, her meeting with Rose and the frame-up at l’Hôtel Matignon.

“The prime minister’s security had you on CCTV?” His brow furrowed. “I don’t like it, Aimée.”

“Think I do?”

“And I haven’t helped you much,” said René. “All I got from Madame Rana was expensive fright. She wouldn’t translate.”

While René told her about his visit, she reapplied her mascara. Nothing they’d learned seemed to have gotten them anywhere.

“Why not go with the simple scenario?” René said. “A jealous Pascal murders his lover, Djanka, dumps her in the moat—it’s not far from the quai d’Orsay. Then, guilt stricken, he commits suicide. The family pays hush money to close the investigation. End of story.”

If it were that simple, why had Drina been abducted? “Not end of story, René.”

“
D’accord
, say the younger brother pays a hit man to kill his brother, reasons unknown, and his lover Djanka, too,” said René. “Drina takes Nicu, her sister’s son, to protect him. They melt into the countryside—”

“Hold on, René. From what Nicu told Rose, my father gave Drina the all clear and she and Papa struck up an ‘arrangement’ for her to inform. Then Nicu was murdered for her notebook containing proof.”

“All these years later? All these years after
your
father’s death? Didn’t Nicu tell you she lived in Avignon now?” René leaned back in his chair. “Tonight’s edition of
France Soir
details the police investigation into Nicu Constantin’s ‘hate’ murder by right-wing youths who targeted Gypsies at the Métro.”

She shook her head. “Too convenient. Whoever murdered him stole the notebook, too.”

“So what, then? Roland Leseur’s so desperate to keep the secret of his brother’s affair that he hired a minion to kill the son after all these years?” said René. “
Non
, he’d call up a pal at the Ministry of Defense and request a black op to handle it.” René stretched his arms over his head. “That scenario work for you?”

“You read too many thrillers, René. Yet you’re right, there’s a black-op flavor to it.” Hadn’t Thiely at the École Militaire intimated the same thing?

“How many years has he had to tie up a loose end? This is dangerous, Aimée—for you and Chloé. Let it go. Your five minutes are up,” said René as Maxence entered with his equipment. He hooked up the remote and plugged it into René’s bank of receivers.

“All systems go, Maxence.” René scanned the screen, looking at a moving green dot. “Wait, why has this been activated already?”

Aimée pulled out her scooter keys and winked. “Roland Leseur. I put a tracker in his wallet. Now we’ll see if he goes and visits the Ministry of Defense.”

A
IMÉE STOOD IN
the small round salon upstairs at the Maison des Polytechniciens, the magnificient early eighteenth-century building where the reception was being held. This land had once belonged to Queen Margot, and the building had later been owned by Louis de Béchameil, after whom the sauce was named. De Béchameil had persuaded Jean-Antoine Watteau to decorate his
hôtel particulier
, and Watteau’s painted ceiling remained—a whimsical panoply of frock-coated monkeys on swings. During the Revolution it was the seat of power for the
quartier
: later in its history it was the headquarters of the national medical academy, a museum and a center of a movement for the French Renaissance. Finally École Polytechnique acquired it, “for their alumni,” as the hostess informed her, “and also available to hire for weddings and DJ parties in the vaulted subterranean cavern.”

Maxence had reprised his role as car valet, and was standing downstairs in the entrance hall, beside the
escalier d’honneur
, a winding staircase with smooth dark-wood banisters and filigree swirls. The conservative crowd—not one of them under
fifty—drank and mingled. After a half hour of surveillance, sipping
jus de pamplemousse
and nibbling crudités, she’d begun to suspect the
comte
’s imagination at work. While his extended family talked behind his back, nobody seemed to have it in for him and his company. The
comte
’s cousin, the engineer, was short and mouse-like, with weak blue eyes behind thick-lensed glasses and a prominent nose—the only prominent thing about him. He seemed even less of a threat than the other members of the
comte
’s family. After all this surveillance, it appeared simply that the
comte
exhibited a paranoid streak.

But not her call—the
comte
was paying her for surveillance, and she’d deliver. She took careful notes in her head as she scrutinized each of the engineer’s conversational partners. So far there had been a middle-aged man with a protruding chin and an elderly dame. Judging by the advance guest list, a
monsieur
from a Geneva-based pharmaceutical company and the engineer’s mother.

She sighed. She’d forgotten how tedious surveillance was. She walked over to the staircase and shot a glance down to Maxence at his post in the foyer full of black and white marble. Murmured into the stamp-sized microphone clipped inside her beaded bolero. “All quiet on the western front?”

In her earwig she heard Maxence clear his throat.

A signal. Alert now, she readied her palm-sized camera. The
comte
’s cousin must have called ahead for his car. A moment later she followed him as he headed downstairs with his mother, still deep in conversation with the Swiss man.

If she hadn’t had her camera ready, she’d have missed it. On the staircase the engineer whipped something from his pocket. When they got to the marble foyer, he reached to shake the man’s hand. Hiding the camera as best she could behind her hand, lens aimed through her parted fingers, she snapped as many pictures as possible. After the handshake the engineer’s hands were empty. Caught that, too.

“Target’s handed off to protruding chin,” she said softly into the mic. “Monitor and stall the protruding chin until I reach his car.”

“
Oui, Monsieur
, the light blue Peugeot?” Maxence was saying for her benefit. “That’s parked at the far end. If you’ll take a seat on the recamier,
s’il vous plaît.”

She brushed past Maxence, heard the car keys drop into her open beaded clutch. Two minutes later she’d installed a tracker in the rear left wheel well, clipped a mini microphone to the car’s interior clutch stick base and passed the keys, wrapped in a fifty-franc note, to the waiting
voiturier
.

Maxence arrived at her scooter, which was parked under the eaves of the concierge’s loge, still in his valet attire. “Activation complete?”

She heard a double click as the blue Peugeot started up. “I wouldn’t have picked
le vieux,
” said Maxence. “The one with the rheumy blue eyes and bad breath.”

Just in case the
comte
had any other suspicious encounters, they stayed through the end of the party, which turned out to be a short affair. An hour later they were done.

“It’s never the ones you expect, Maxence.” She turned the key in the scooter’s ignition and revved the engine, and they shot into the night. “Never.” And it made her think.

After dropping Maxence at the Métro, she paused at the curb by a café, took her phone off mute and checked for messages. Nothing from Morbier or Dussollier. Should she call Dussollier, check in?

Her phone rang. René.

“I’ve got the feed recording,” said René. “Interesting. This engineer’s the
comte
’s cousin?”

“Exactement,”
she said. “The engineer cousin handed off something to a Geneva-based pharmaceutical company.”

“
Voilà
, the Swiss man’s conversation is coming in loud and clear,” said René. “He’s listening to classical music and he’s
talking percentages and shares he’s about to acquire from the
comte
’s cousin in the company. Sounds like he’ll get enough for a majority holding.”

“Proof
parfaite
. Back up the recording, make a copy. I’ll write up my notes and download the digital photos. We’ll deliver a nice package to the
comte
tomorrow.” She reached for her helmet. “What about Leseur’s tracker? Any activity?”

“Only typical evening activity for a middle-aged
homme politique
. From the Assemblée Nationale, Leseur walked to his local Picard, for a gourmet frozen dinner, I imagine, then to his apartment off Boulevard Saint-Germain.”

She almost dropped her helmet on the cobbled street.

“You followed him, René?”

“No need. This tracker does it and works more smoothly than a melting brie,” said René. “I followed him visually on my computer.”

“How? Does this involve some new geekoid program, René?”

“You should see it, Aimée.” His voice rose with excitement. “It’s a prototype in development. It overlays a visual onto a street map—it shows everything, monuments, landmarks,
restos
, shops.”

“Sounds amazing.” A streetlight cast a furred yellow glow through the trees. Outside the Métro entrance, people sat at the café terrace under a spreading awning.

“My friend invited me to alpha-test it for his new company,” said René. “It even pulls his location from the Internet and plugs it into its programming. I’ve got Leseur’s address, Aimée, which I cross-checked after hacking into the ministry’s site.”

Seemed René favored Leseur for the murderer. And René had more, she could tell by the energy in his voice. He loved new toys.

“So what else does your wonder program tell you?”

“Most
hauts fonctionnaires
live in state-furnished apartments, you know, at the taxpayer’s—our—expense. But not
Leseur. This program pulls up property records and owners. His family owns two apartments in the same building off Boulevard Saint-Germain.”

“Where are you going with this, René?”

“His brother Pascal Leseur committed suicide in one of them.”

Shocked for a moment, she wondered what that could signify. If anything. “I’m surprised they didn’t sell it.”

“Sell in the Faubourg Saint-Germain, the most desirable part of the seventh? Where all their neighbors are aristocrats?”