Murder on the Champ de Mars (3 page)

“Shh … don’t make a scene here, Aimée.”

A scene? She wanted to pick up the nearest crucifix and hit him. Chloé gave a little cry.

“There’s nothing to discuss, Melac.” Anger rippled up her neck. “Until she graduates from university.”

Melac’s mouth pursed. “So you want to blow this up, make it an issue?”

“No, it’s a nonissue, Melac,” she said. “You’re not legally recognized as her father. Get over it.”

“My lawyer says otherwise, Aimée.”

Panic flooded her. Was it possible? Could he get rights to her baby? A cold shiver ran down her legs.

“You’re talking to a lawyer?” Shouting, she was shouting now. She felt a tug on her arm. She couldn’t let go. “How dare you?”

Several older women in the pews turned toward the vestibule and stared. Donatine rocked a now crying Chloé in her arms.

Aimée reached out for her daughter, but Donatine turned away. “Shh, you’ve scared her.”

Bitch. Interloper. “What right—?”

Melac stepped between her and Donatine. “Like to make scenes, don’t you, Aimée?”

“
Non
, Melac, you’re confusing me with your hysterical ex-wife.”

Père Michel’s cassock swished as he moved between them. In one swift move, he took Chloé and put her in René’s arms.

“
D’accord, mes enfants
, take this outside and go with God,” said the Père, shaking his head.

Morbier grabbed Melac’s shoulder and ushered him through the church’s leather-padded door. Martine hooked an arm in Aimée’s, shoving her forward and leaning in to say into her ear, “Let it go for now.”

“Like hell I will.”

“He’s doing this to keep his new woman happy, Aimée, and it’s her tactic to keep him. You need a good lawyer. I know some people.”

O
UTSIDE THE CHURCH
on the twilit, cobbled Île Saint-Louis street, Aimée’s hands trembled as she watched Donatine give René a wrapped gift. Without another word to Aimée, Melac put his arm around Donatine and they disappeared around the corner.

Aimée’d looked forward to this event, and now it was ruined. Melac had turned into a menace.

“No wonder you didn’t end up with that
salaud,”
said her cousin Sebastian, snapping his leather jacket closed. He hugged her, then stepped back so Regula could. “We’ve got work, can’t stay.” Sebastian pulled on his helmet while Regula hopped onto the back of his motorcycle, her helmet already on. A wave and they’d taken off into the descending shadows. After kissing Chloé, Lefèvre and Dussollier bowed out, too.

Martine held her cell phone, a pained look on her face. “Got to go, an emergency with Gilles’s daughter. Teenagers.
Désolée.”
She hugged Aimée before getting into her lime green Mini Cooper. “We’ll talk later.”

The christening party, now just Aimée, René, Morbier and
Jeanne, reached the quai d’Anjou. Chloé’s cries had turned to hiccups. Aimée settled the baby on her shoulder and patted her back. A moment later she was rewarded with a loud burp.

“Always exciting with you, Leduc,” said Morbier. “Not often I’m kicked out of church.”

“The nerve of him, appearing
sans
RSVP and talking custody. What was I supposed to do—smile and give my daughter to a man who’s nothing more than a stranger?” Aimée’s voice had risen in anger, and Chloé whimpered. Aimée stopped and kissed her whimpers away.

As she followed the others toward her townhouse, she was startled by a young man, olive-complected with curly black hair, who stepped out of the shadows by a tall green door and stopped her before she could cross the street. He wore a hoodie and jeans.

“Mademoiselle?” he said.

Her arms started doing double duty: cradling Chloé and now gripping her bag tight, too. Young Roma were notorious for purse snatching, usually working in teams. Right away, guilt washed over her for profiling him.

“Mademoiselle Leduc?” he said.

A chill rippled over her. He knew her name.

René, Jeanne and Morbier were waiting in her doorway. “Let’s go, Aimée,” Morbier called, beckoning her.

“Do you remember me, Mademoiselle? You and your father visited my mother when I was small,” the Romany boy said. “I’m Nicholás, remember? I go by Nicu now.”

A vague memory came to her now—an afternoon at the market, years ago, with a woman and a boy who could have become this young man. French Gypsies,
les manouches
.

“I think so,” she said. “A long time ago.” Aimée noted the shadows under his eyes, the intensity radiating from him. “I’m sorry, but now isn’t a good time,” she said, about to edge past him. How did he know where she lived?

“My mother is in the hospital. She’s dying.” His lip quivered. “Her spirit’s agitated. She can’t go beyond without talking to you.”

The damp quai-side pavers shone a dull graphite. She shifted on her heels. “I don’t understand.”

“Maman needs to let go and depart on her journey,” he said. “She kept in contact with your father.”

“My father?” Aimée’s arms tingled.

“Her name is Drina. Don’t you remember her? Don’t you remember bringing us Christmas gifts?”

Then memories flooded back—chill Christmas Eves with her father, skidding on ice-kissed cobbles, her scratchy wool scarf, fingers sticky from the gift-wrapping tape. They played Papa Noël, then stopped for a
chocolat chaud
at a café with fogged-up windows. Selfish and self-absorbed, her young self thought only of the
chocolat chaud
she would get at the end of those visits.

René was walking back toward them. “Any problem here, Aimée?”

The Romany boy’s face closed down, completely blank.

“
Non, c’est bon
. Mind taking Chloé upstairs?” she said. “I’ll join you in a minute.”

With Chloé in his arms, René headed into the courtyard.

Aimée glanced at Morbier, still in her doorway with his phone to his ear. “Look, let’s talk later.”

Nicu pulled out a dog-eared business card—her late father’s, with the old Leduc Detective logo. Aimée still had some of those left in her desk. On the back, in her father’s writing, were the words,
Always come to us for help. Anytime. Anyplace
.

“You believe me now, don’t you?”

Unsettled, she nodded. She felt overwhelmed thinking of the obligations she could face thanks to her father’s old promises. But if her father had given his word, Aimée was honor-bound to see it through.

“Nicu, I’ll visit her tomorrow in the hospital. Promise.”

A seagull cried over the river, and the sound echoed off the stone walls and cobbles.

“Can’t you come with me now to Hôpital Laennec, in the seventh?” Nicu’s mouth trembled. “She doesn’t have much time left. Wouldn’t your father want you to do the right thing?”

Do the right thing? Chilly gusts of wind, algae-scented from the Seine, whipped her shoulders.

“S’il vous plaît.”

Over on the Left Bank, in the 7th arrondissement? “I can’t just leave my baby.”

Nicu’s shoulders slumped as if the fight had gone out of him. His gaze rested somewhere in the land of grief and fear.

“Maman’s suffering. She can’t let go until …” Nicu paused. “In our culture we repair disagreements before someone passes or it will haunt us. She’s insisting she must see you.”

She glanced at the spot where Morbier had stood speaking into his cell phone. She didn’t see him.

Torn, she clenched her fists. Decided.

“Let me take care of things upstairs,” she said. “See what I can do.”

She ran inside her courtyard to find Madame Cachou’s concierge loge darkened. No chance of wangling her to babysit again. She’d see if Morbier and Jeanne would stay with Chloé for a little while.

But upstairs she found her salon deserted. All but one of the champagne flutes stood unused on the table, like a row of soldiers. Silver bowls of
dragées
—those pastel-colored sugared almonds, de rigueur for a baptism, as René had insisted—sat untouched between bouquets of white roses.

She dropped her bag on the escritoire. “Where is everyone?”

“They weren’t going to wait for you forever,” René said. “Morbier and Jeanne begged off, and Chloé fell asleep.” He
loosened his cravat, put his silk-stockinged feet up on her recamier and sipped a fizzing flute of champagne. “Shame to let the Dom Pérignon go to waste.” René sipped again. “Why the hell did you invite Melac?”

“How could I have known that his daughter died, or that he’d have a new woman? He would have surfaced eventually anyway. But he scared me, René. Talking about custody …”

“Don’t you always say the best defense is a good offense?” said René. “Strike first. Hire the best lawyer.”

She kicked off her heels in the sparkly-clean hallway. Her apartment was spotless for the christening party that had never happened.

Alors
, she couldn’t go to the hospital in Courrèges. From the armoire in her room, she picked out her black stovepipe denims, which she could finally fit into again, and an oversized cashmere sweater, and pulled them on.

Rushing back to the salon to grab her leather jacket, she said to René, “Mind babysitting for an hour? The champagne will keep you company.”

“Wait a minute—you’re going out?” René’s eyes landed on the card in her hand. “Does this involve that Gypsy waiting out front?” Before she could reply, he’d reached for the card and read her father’s message on the back. “
Et alors?
This card proves what? Don’t be a sucker, Aimée. This is a trick to reel you in—they want something, and you’ll end up getting ripped off. Cons like this are their stock-in-trade.”

“His mother’s dying. She knew my father, and she has something to tell me.”

“They always do. Then they read your palm and charge for it.”

René was so riled he dropped his glass. He caught it, but not before pale yellow drops sprinkled on the marble-topped table, glimmering in the light from the chandelier.

“This Gypsy kid pops up outside the door, and you believe
him, just like that?” René shook his head. “I call it naïve. Do you really know these people?”

“I’m trying to remember. It’s hazy, years ago. But we’d bring them presents at Christmas.”

“
Mon Dieu
, Aimée! It’s a scam.”

Aimée couldn’t help wondering whether he was right.

“Scam or not, I have to hear this woman out, René. Papa promised.” She snapped her jacket closed, wrapped her scarf around her neck and knotted it.

“Still so desperate to jump on anything to do with your father?” René shook his head. “You’ve got Chloé, Aimée. Think of her …”

“Like I don’t already?” But she was too distracted to argue for long: she’d had a brainwave about her father’s connection to this woman, Drina. She snapped her fingers. “I’ve got it, René. I think this Gypsy woman was my father’s informer.”

Doubts cycled through Aimée’s mind in time with the clicking of the escalator as she rode up to the exit of the Sèvres-Babylone Métro station. Nicu had insisted that his mother’s spirit couldn’t leave on its last journey unless Aimée spoke to her—but why? A guilty conscience? It was anyone’s guess, since she knew nothing of Gypsy culture.

Brisk April-evening air blew around her in gusts as she emerged onto the 7th-arrondissement pavement under the red-and-white lit Métro sign. A disruption on the line had shut the closer station at Vaneau so she had to walk. Her head cleared when she caught a whiff of a woman’s floral perfume on Boulevard Raspail. Across the intersection hulked the spotlit Art Nouveau façade of Hôtel Lutetia, the former Abwehr headquarters. In its famous lobby bar congregated literati who found it convenient to ignore the ghosts.

The lit rooftop letters of Le Bon Marché, the department store, shone overlooking the gated square Boucicaut. Aimée pulled up the collar of her leather jacket against the chill.
Here, deep in the Left Bank, quiet reigned. She passed darkened boutiques on rue de Sèvres, emblematic of the restrained elegance of this exclusive arrondissement where the shutters rolled down early.

Boring, and lifeless on a Sunday, when hunting down an open café was nearly impossible. Not her haunt, much less that of Gypsies. Everyone who lived here had family money, a
de la
in their name, or a job at a ministry or embassy—sometimes all three. These streets sheltered enormous wealth, secret gardens and courtyards, the prime minister’s residence, seats of government and a few ancient convents, now home to aging nuns.

She made her way toward the seventeenth-century Hôpital Laennec. A late-model brown Mercedes had pulled up at the curb, half blocking the crosswalk. Voices raised in argument faded in the echo of an evening bus whooshing by on the damp street.

Coming closer, Aimée recognized Nicu, his hood up. He was gesturing to a stocky man wearing a fedora. Climbing out of the car was an older woman in a long skirt, with grey braids emerging from under a paisley scarf. She was clutching the hand of a little girl in jeans. In her free hand, the woman held a covered cooking pot.

In the jumble of French and Romany, she overheard Drina’s name. A problem? Was she too late? Her heart sank.

“
Excusez-moi
, Nicu, I came as fast as I could,” she said, feeling awkward breaking into their argument. “How’s your mother?”

“Who’s this woman?” said the man, gesturing with a lit cigarette, the tip glowing orange in the dark.

“My Uncle Radu’s upset,” said Nicu. His eyes were uneasy. “He thinks your visit’s not a good idea.”

“Didn’t you say it was urgent?” said Aimée. “That she needed to tell me something?”

“Another one of your Christian do-gooders, eh, Nicu?” said
the uncle. He expelled a plume of smoke, ignoring her, but he was speaking in French so that she could understand him. “Or one of your
ethnologues
wanting to document some
gens du voyage
culture? Maybe she wants to hear you recite some poetry?”

Hostile, obstructive and protective. Nicu’s uncle was threatened by her somehow. Too bad.

“
Alors
, did I take the trouble of finding a babysitter just to make a wasted trip?”

Nicu shook his head and turned toward his uncle, beseeching.

“How dare you bring this
gadji
here?” Uncle Radu said.