Murder on the Champ de Mars (34 page)

Right where Chloé had been sitting in her stroller. Panic hit her. She broke into a run before she could think, before she could scream a warning to Melac, who was headed toward the garbage can with a diaper. The barricade collapsed against the hard hat, knocking him forward with the chain saw.
Mon Dieu
, the saw, Chloé’s stroller! Screaming, she was screaming now. “Chloé! Watch out! Chloé, my baby!”

Donatine, who was sitting on the bench opening a juice carton, looked up when she heard Aimée’s screams. In a split second, registering the danger, she shoved Chloé’s stroller. But the brakes locked, frozen in place. Time slowed as Aimée saw
the chain saw flying through the air toward Chloé’s yellow bunny cap. Nothing to stop it. Aimée’s heart pounded in her chest.
“Non, non!”
How could this happen?

Donatine bounded off the bench, batting her arms at the saw blade and knocking the stroller over.

A sickening whine. A scream. Chloé’s cries. Melac was running and shouting, “Oh,
mon Dieu!”
It all happened so fast: Melac grabbed and switched off the grinding saw, pulled Donatine off Chloé’s upset stroller. She heard Chloé’s cries and it tore her heart.

Blood dripped from Donatine’s sweater, the torn flesh of her arm. Melac whipped Chloé from the stroller.

“Is Chloé all right?” Donatine gasped.

In Melac’s arms, Chloé’s tear-stained face broke out into a smile.

L
ATER, AFTER DONATINE
was loaded into the ambulance, Aimée persuaded the attendant to let her in for a moment. Bandaged and connected to an IV, a pale-faced Donatine sat propped on the stretcher. “Chloé’s safe, thank God. I’m so sorry. We pressured Babette … I crossed the line.”

Aimée nodded. “Still, if you hadn’t done what you did, Donatine—thrown yourself in the way …” said Aimée, taking her hand. Her throat caught.

“This was our fault. How terrible it would have been if …” Donatine erupted in tears. “We put Chloé in danger. I didn’t have the maternal instincts to protect her. Destroyed any trust we wanted to build, any hope for custody.
Alors
. Please forgive us. Me.”

“
Mais non
, what are you saying, Donatine?” Aimée shook her head. “All right, you made a mistake. But your quick reaction saved Chloé. Accidents happen. Freak ones.”

Melac, holding Chloé in his arms, joined them. Chloé drooled and fussed. “I think she needs her
maman,”
said a
shaken Melac, a lost look on his face. Chloé mewled, gumming his finger. “Oww.” Melac winced and pulled out his finger.

That’s my girl
.

Aimée managed a grin. “I think your daughter just bit you with her first tooth.”

Once Chloé was back in her arms, safe and warm, she nuzzled her ear. “I can see Chloé would be safe with you.”

Melac looked at Donatine and then back at Aimée. “I’ll go with whatever you want, Aimée. But please, it’s important I recognize her, put my name on her birth certificate. She’s my daughter. Legally it’ll give her protection, benefits if something happens to me. The rest, you decide.”

Aimée thought back to Nicu’s birth certificate, wondering whether having Pascal Leseur’s name on there would have changed Nicu’s life.

“Then let’s forget the lawyers, Melac,” she said. “Work things out ourselves.”

Aimée reached out for Donatine. She couldn’t quite hug her yet, but she squeezed her bruised hand.

I
N HER APARTMENT
, Aimée settled a freshly changed Chloé on the duvet and kicked off her heels, about to join her for a nap. Miles Davis’s ears perked up.

“What’s up, Miles Davis?”

He scampered off the bed and beelined it to her desk. Yelped. A low beeping came from her answering machine, which she’d turned down so as not to wake Chloé at night.

The red light blinked. A message. She hit
PLAY
.

“If you want to keep Chloé safe and unhurt,” said a robotic voice, “forget Gerard Delavigne. Burn everything. We’ll know.” Click. Left fifteen minutes ago, according to the time stamp.

Her heart hammered. She ran barefoot to the kitchen and parted the curtains. Below, a man leaned on the quai wall, smoking and watching her door. A blue van sat parked. The
blue van she’d seen before Nicu was knifed at the Métro. It hadn’t been there half an hour ago, when they’d returned from the park. Or had it? Her hands shook.

Priorities
. She had ignored the warnings, the risks, the bodies piling up. And now they were threatening Chloé. She had to think for this little person with the bunny-ear cap.

Something Morbier had told her long ago came back to her—that her mother hadn’t abandoned Aimée as a child; she had left to protect her. Maybe it was true. Could Aimée do the same? Was that a choice she had forced herself to make?

This threat galvanized her into action, her adrenaline coursing. She had to end this. Even if she burned the documents like they asked, even if she and Chloé were safe for today, there’d still be tomorrow or next week. Good God, they’d parked outside her door.

She knew what she had to do. Within five minutes, she’d made two calls and packed up her laptop and essentials for Chloé. Time to travel light.

“Let’s go, Miles Davis.”

He cocked his ears.

“Chloé and I are taking a vacation. You too, with your favorite concierge.” She donned her leather jacket and put a sleeping Chloé in the sling looped over her shoulder.

At Madame Cachou’s, she handed over Miles Davis’s leash. For once the busybody nodded, no questions asked. “Why, it’s just like this spy thriller I’m reading. Espionage, double agents—I’ll keep a look out.”

“You do that, Madame Cachou. But first go talk to that man smoking over there. Keep him occupied. And keep Miles Davis safe.”

Across the courtyard, at Gabrielle’s house, Benoît answered the door. He was wearing an apron over jeans and nothing else. Impressive abs.

Flustered, she looked away. Wonderful smells drifted from
the kitchen—cilantro, mint, citrus, coconut. She wanted to lick the wooden spoon in his hand.

“More
pot-au-feu
? It was delicious, by the way.”

Lame. She sounded like a schoolgirl. But there was no time to worry about that now.

“Lemongrass soup,” he said. “I heard what happened at the park,” he said. “Babette’s so sorry over what happened. She’s gutted.”

“I know.” Aimée cut him off, cradling Chloé in the sling. “I need a favor. It’s vital, or I wouldn’t ask.”

He nodded, giving her his full attention.

“If anyone, I mean
anyone
, asks, you don’t know where we’ve gone. When we’re coming back. Can you do that?”

“So it’s true, what I’ve noticed.”

He probably figured her for a paranoid neurotic, based on each of their encounters. “Look, if you could—”

“Say that you’ve probably taken your baby out of the country,
non
?” He handed her a set of keys. His warm fingers rested on hers, then gripped them. The heat of his hand spread up her wrist like fire.

Down, girl.

“Use my sister’s back carriage door downstairs,” he said. “Leave them on the ledge.”

M
ICHOU
, R
ENÉ’S TRANSVESTITE
neighbor, opened the door and grinned, still in his show makeup. “You brought my sweet pea!” Michou waved them inside. “An emergency, you said, always an emergency with you,
ma chérie. Zut
, I came straight from rehearsal at the club.”

While Michou removed his makeup, Aimée put a yawning Chloé down for a nap. Later, over a
cafetière
full of coffee, Aimée explained in detail.

“Chloé won’t be out of my sight, Aimée.” Michou, a former merchant seaman, held his own and more in a fight. “Or Viard’s,
when I have a show. He’s earned his black belt.” Michou gave a big smile. “I’m so proud.”

“You two still in the honeymoon stage?”

Michou’s lover, Viard, who directed a crime lab, had moved in after they’d been together for three years. Aimée had introduced them.

Michou rubbed the stubble on his cheek and sighed. “Now we’ve got a
bébé
to take care of. Wonderful.” He paused, arching a plucked eyebrow. “Does René know?”

She shook her head. “Not yet.” She needed to keep him out of danger. “I owe you, Michou.” Aimée downed the last of her coffee. “Got to go.” She hoped Michou hadn’t noticed how much her hands were shaking.

“Be careful,
ma chérie.
” His big hands, with purple lacquered nails, closed around hers. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

“R
EMINDS ME OF
when we used to do our homework here after school, Aimée, remember?”

Martine made a face at Aimée over her aunt’s desk, which was tucked in a closet-sized office in back of the nineteenth-century linen shop on rue du Bac.

“Only we’ve got laptops instead of pencils, Martine,” she said. On her screen was a Leduc proposal she was preparing to return to Maxence. Open beside her was Gerard Delavigne’s blue folder, containing the list of names. She’d spent several hours researching them, hoping to trace all the names on the list. But so far her digital search of an outdated police database had only revealed that several on the list were deceased, several others in the police nursing home outside of Paris—in gagaland.

Martine’s
Le Monde
contact’s archives had turned up Blauet, the former police
commissaire
, who’d retired to Martinique in 1985 and ran a fishing-boat business. Her phone call reached the canned, impersonal recording on Blauet’s answering machine. She’d come up with what she hoped was a plausible story for a police reunion and left him a message with her inquiry. It was a risk, but she decided to leave him the fax number for Martine’s aunt’s shop. All she could do was keep trying.

The bell on the shop door rang as it opened.

Martine’s aunt, all in black YSL and as chic as ever, poked her head into the office. “
Mes filles
, watch the shop for me like good girls, yes?”

“
Oui
, Tante Cybile.” Martine stood and kissed her aunt’s cheeks. After she left, Martine burst into laughter. “Her
cinq-à-sept amant;
they get younger and younger.”

Aimée wished she had Cybile’s luck. A vision of Benoît’s abs floated in front of her eyes, the warm touch of his hand. She shoved it aside.

“How’s your article going, Martine?” she said, passing the plate of pistachio macarons she’d bought across the street at the rue-du-Bac
boulangerie
.

“Making progress.” Martine’s fingers clicked over the keys. “Got a quote from the Ministry of Health. If I can just get the
clinique
to comment on this Doctor Estienne’s violation of the medical-ethics code …” She lifted her blouse’s neckline and plastered a Nicorette patch on her shoulder. Once a pack-a-day smoker, Martine had quit and gained a kilo, and looked healthy for it.

Aimée scanned Delavigne’s list. Two more to locate. The key to all this lay in the police cover-up.

“Gianni’s cousin’s suggesting dinner Friday,” Martine said. “So consider that evening booked—and maybe the rest of the night.”

Aimée groaned. “If I make it to Friday.”

Her phone rang. An unknown number.

“Aimée, weren’t you coming to
la soirée des fiançailles
?” said Thomas Dussollier.

Merde!
She’d forgotten his daughter’s engagement party. He’d sent the invitation with Chloé’s gift.

“
Bien sûr
. Something just came up at work, but …”

“We need to talk. I found what you’re looking for,
tu comprends?
”

Her blood raced.

“The reception’s at the Rodin, right?”

“Get here for the champagne toast,” said Dussollier.

“I’m en route,” she said, hanging up.

“Invited to
la soirée des fiançailles
?” Martine said. “Impressive. Usually engagement parties are about the parents meeting each other, the man presenting the ring. He must regard you as family. Not to mention at the Musée Rodin.
Pas mal.”

“I don’t have a gift, or anything to wear.”

“My
tante
’s got a shop full of gifts.” Martine headed to the register. “I’ll be a good girl and ring up a sale for … 
quoi?
Say, toile de Jouy pillowcases?”

Wasn’t that a wedding gift? But if Martine thought it would do, that was good enough for her.
“Parfait.”

“Keep writing, Martine,” she said. “Finish the macarons.”

Aimée ran up the narrow spiral stairs leading to the living quarters. “I’m borrowing your Versace.”

T
HE FASTEST WAY
to reach the Rodin museum, which was around the corner and up three blocks, was by foot. Even in Martine’s red-soled Louboutins. She hurried through the Faubourg Saint-Germain, for once dressed for the occasion. She passed the entrance to the imposing limestone Hôtel Matignon. Noted the guards and security and the old dames who stopped to chat with them. A village all right—for a certain
classe
who kept to themselves.

“Invitation, Mademoiselle?” asked an ex-military security type with a shaved head, one of three at the gate, as he gave her the once-over.

She’d forgotten it. Great.

“Aimée Leduc; please check the guest list.”

A moment later he looked up. Smiled.

“Of course, Madame and Monsieur Dussollier’s guest. Welcome. The reception’s out through the door and in the party tents.”

Some big boys and big names here, if this level of security was anything to go by.

Her heels clicked over the cobblestoned courtyard lit by
white paper lanterns. A hundred or so friends mingled among Rodin’s bronze sculptures and the sentinel-like cypress trees, and crowded into several large, white, candle-lit canvas tents. Not exactly an intimate family affair. Laughter and clinking of glasses accompanied the melodies of a string quartet. Another world.

Wouldn’t Morbier be there? But she caught no glimpse of him in the designer-clad crowd. And where was the father of the soon-to-be bride?

She set her gift among the others on a table covered with a white cloth. Quite a haul—the boxes were all wrapped in Bon Marché or Hermès paper with matching ribbons.