Murder on the Champ de Mars (7 page)

“You all right?”

“Indigestion.”

A cry pierced the warm kitchen air, making them both jump. It was followed by a second. The baby monitor; it was right there on the counter. She could hear Chloé’s sobs, the crib springs creaking.

“We’ve woken her up, Leduc,” said Morbier. The color had drained from his face.

Alarmed, Aimée wondered if he could be having a heart attack. “Any chest pains? Shortness of breath?”

“Leave it, Leduc. I’m fine.”

“Sit down, for God’s sake.” She pushed Chloé’s high chair aside and helped him onto the kitchen step stool. Chloé’s wails rose from the counter, escalating in pitch. “Put your arms up.”

“Take care of Chloé, Leduc,” he said, catching his breath. “Your daughter needs you. Before you go: I’ll ask around on one condition.”

“What’s that?”

“You keep your nose out of it,
d’accord?
” he said. “If you want my help, then it’s on my terms, Leduc.”

As if she wouldn’t do her own nosing around. Aimée nodded.

His phone was vibrating on the counter as he waved her off.

Aimée found Chloé in a wet diaper and tangled blanket. The window was open, and the room was cold. Chloé could catch a chill.

How could Morbier leave the damn window open in April? She was spitting mad until she remembered. Disorientation was a classic heart-attack symptom.

She took off the sopping diaper, swept up her daughter and wrapped her in a fresh blanket, kissing her tears away as she hurried to the kitchen.

“Hold on, Morbier, I’m just changing Chloé and then we’ll call the doctor … Morbier?”

No answer.

With Chloé clutched to her hip, Aimée found the kitchen warm and empty. She rubbed her finger on the fogged window to clear it but saw only a spotlit cone of mist under the yellow sodium lamp on the empty, cobbled quai.

On the piece of paper with the attorney’s name on it, Morbier had written a message:
Get your priorities straight
.

N
ICU FELT SOMEONE
shaking his shoulder, pulling him from his nightmare. He blinked awake, sitting up on the hard bench in Hôpital Laennec’s chapel. Before him stood a white-coated hospital attendant and a blue-uniformed
flic
.

“Nicu Constantin?”

He nodded. Rubbed his eyes. “You found Maman?”

“We’d like you to come with us,” said the
flic
, before saying into a small microphone clipped to his collar, “Got him.”

Fear rippled through the hair on Nicu’s neck.

“What’s going on?” He grabbed his bag. “Is she all right?”

“Par ici, Monsieur.”

The
flic
took hold of his arm.

They led him down the hospital corridor. He heard footsteps and the clatter of medication trolleys. A gurney whooshed past covered in bloodstained sheets.

With mounting anxiety he realized they weren’t going toward Ward C. They’d descended a deep flight of stone steps. “You found her? Is she hurt?”

“This way,
s’il vous plaît.”
The
flic
and attendant escorted him through swinging double doors to a grey, tiled hallway. They stopped at a wide, scuffed grey door. The sign above it read
MORGUE
.

Mon Dieu
, he thought, they’d found her too late. His stomach dropped, a heaviness like stone filled him. Apart from a
curtained window, the bare room resembled a prison cell. Nicu wanted to escape.

“We’d like you to identify her and answer some questions.”

“Non, non!
It’s all my fault …” A sob caught in his throat.

The
flic
, his grip still on Nicu’s arm, looked up as the door pinged open. Instead of a doctor or a priest, a man in a leather jacket appeared, took the unlit cigarette from his mouth and stuck it behind his ear.
“Pardonnez-moi,”
he said. “Please proceed.”

The attendant nodded to Nicu. “Ready?”

“Oh, I think he’s ready,” said the man. The cigarette nestled under a brown curl wedged behind his ear. “Go ahead.”

Nicu’s hands shook. Cold, so cold in here. A priest glided in, nodded to him.

The attendant parted the curtain. Behind the glass Nicu saw a mound covered in a sheet with only the face exposed. The stark light exposed an older woman’s closed eyes, her sallow cheeks and mouth sunken in death.

Nicu blinked. “Who’s this?”

“We think you know, Nicu,” said the man, then inspected his fingernails. He rubbed his thumbnail on his pinkie’s cuticle. “I’m Captain Ponchet. The
Père
’s here if you want to make confession. To confess how you killed your mother. A mercy killing, isn’t that what you said to the doctor?”

Nicu’s mouth dropped open. “What?”

“Get if off your chest, Nicu. You’ll feel better.” Ponchet took a step toward him.

“But this isn’t my mother.”

“You just said, ‘It’s all my fault.’ I heard you. Now that’d be a good place to start.”

“There’s been a mistake.” Nicu’s stomach churned. “I meant it was my fault I didn’t make her visit the doctor sooner. But I had no idea how ill and weak she’d become.”

“So you helped her on her last journey,” Ponchet said.
“You’re one of those
gens du voyage
, travelers,
non?
Gypsy culture has no room for the sick, the aged. No room in the caravan.”

One more
flic
who, just like the rest, subscribed to the stereotype that
manouches
all belonged to organized crime clans.
Flics
hated Gypsies—the ones they dealt with stole, begged, pickpocketed and ran cons. People like Nicu’s Uncle Radu. It was like that old joke: How do you bake a Gypsy cake? First you steal twelve eggs.

“I don’t know who this poor woman is. Quit wasting my time.” He read in their faces that they didn’t believe him. He was just another Gypsy, another criminal to be contained by whatever means necessary.

“I’m afraid, Nicu, that this medical chart we found with her says this is your mother.”

“Then there’s a mistake!” He was yelling now. His shoulders were shaking, heat spreading up his neck. “Someone stole my mother’s chart and planted it on this woman. Don’t you understand? It’s some kind of setup. The DNA will tell you. My mother’s dying somewhere. She needs hemodialysis.”

“She died by strangulation.” Ponchet’s eyes were like hard, brown stone. “Even in a terminally ill victim, we call that murder.”

Fear collected in the pit of his stomach.

“My mother’s forty-three. This poor woman looks eighty.” Nicu clenched his fists. “Where’s my Uncle Radu?”

“I’ve seen your police record, Nicu,” said Ponchet. “This will go better for you if you help us.” Ponchet nodded to the uniformed
flic
. Handcuffs were clamped around Nicu’s wrists. “You can tell us more at the
commissariat.
”

Jail. Not again. They’d beat him up, let him rot in the cell. Uncontrollable shaking overcame him.

The door opened on his Uncle Radu, escorted by a
flic
.

Radu took in the scene, his eyes brimming as he walked to
the viewing window. He took off his fedora, then shook his head.

“I thought you found my sister,” he said. “Who’s this? Why the handcuffs on Nicu?”

Nicu turned to the priest. “Father, you’re a man of God. Is this right?”

The priest, a young man, shrugged. “Captain Ponchet, two members of Drina Constantin’s family can’t identify this woman as Drina Constantin. It’s not my place, but under the circumstances, I’d suggest you release this young man.”

Ponchet’s mouth tightened. He pulled the cigarette from behind his ear, rolled it between his thick fingers, nodded to the other
flic
. “Good point, Father. Release him. For now.”

Nicu heard the click and felt the metal handcuffs tug, then loosen. He rubbed his wrists.

“Do your job,” Nicu said to Ponchet. “Find her.”

But Ponchet had his phone to his ear.

His uncle put on his fedora. “When did the
flics
ever do anything for us?” he spat. “We’ll take care of it our way.”

P
RIORITIES
. A
IMÉE HAD
priorities. Right now they boiled down to loading Chloé’s baby bag for shared care, finding a project proposal she’d misplaced and getting dressed. All in ten minutes. Her cell beeped.

Merde!
Where had she left it? Chloé, lying in the middle of the duvet on Aimée’s bed, laughed with delight as Miles Davis licked her toes. They played this game all the time. Over the birds chirping outside the open window and Chloé’s dulcet burbling, Aimée traced her phone to her leather motorcycle jacket pocket.

She saw a voice message received last night after she’d fallen asleep.
Merde
again! She hit play. Nicu’s voice trembled. “The police tried to frame me.” Panting. “…  done nothing and she’s still missing.” His voice was low. “When we were followed …” Shouts and banging in the background drowned out his words. “Please meet me—”

The message cut off. Where was he?

She hit callback. But a France Telecom recording came on, telling her, “This number does not accept calls.”

Her fingers tightened on her cell phone. She was worried. She wished to God she’d spoken with him last night. Had he been followed and framed by whoever took his mother?

Morbier didn’t answer.
Merde, merde, merde
again. She left him a message.

She cleaned up Chloé’s apricot-smeared chin, spooned horse
meat from the butcher’s white-paper packet into Miles Davis’s bowl. By the time that was done, she knew she couldn’t wait until Morbier responded. With no other lead to Nicu, she’d go to the hospital before starting her first official day back in the office.

Ten minutes later, clad in black leather pants, a silk YSL blouse (a flea-market find) and a flounced three-quarter-length wool coat by Jean Paul Gaultier, she locked the front door. Thank God the coat fit her again. Chloé, slung in the carrier on her back, drooled on her collar. “Babette’s taking care of you today,
ma puce
. You remember, we talked about this.”

She’d worked out an arrangement with Babette, her concierge’s twenty-something niece, who also took care of Gabrielle, the six-month-old daughter of the new family across the courtyard. Now that Aimée was going back to work full-time, they would share care in a
garde à domicile
arrangement, alternating apartments. This week, Babette would watch the babies at Gabrielle’s apartment, and her aunt, Madame Cachou, would take Miles Davis on his walks. On Babette’s Wednesday afternoons off, Aimée and René would take turns, or bring Chloé to the office. Between Babette and Madame Cachou, Aimée would have backup coverage if she needed to work late. Like tonight for surveillance, Babette would take her after-hours at Aimée’s place.

The carved door in the flat above the carriage house opened for them. Butter smells wafted out. A cat slinked a velvet tail across her ankles.

Chloé smiled in delight as they passed a colorful, dancing mobile. Babette, her hair up in a ponytail and an apron over her jeans, beckoned them inside with a breathy
bonjour
, followed by “Hungry?” In the light-filled, stainless-steel state-of-the art kitchen sat a bowl of ripe strawberries—small, fragrant
gariguettes
, just in season.

Aimée put Chloé in the high chair adjoining Gabrielle’s. Two peas in a pod—one with light brown hair, one blonde.

“ ‘Don’t sugar the strawberries,’ my mother used to say,” Babette said as Aimée set down Chloé’s baby bag—biscuits, diapers, clothes and milk she’d pumped for tonight.

“My grandmother did too,” said Aimée, catching the meaning behind the saying. “Is there a problem?” Already? It was only the first day of their arrangement. Babette had babysat for Aimée before and Chloé had loved her. Aimée dreaded a search for a new caregiver; this would have been so convenient and reasonable.

“Can you pick Chloé up by five on Fridays?” Babette said. “I’m taking a class. Just until June.”

Aimée breathed a silent sigh of relief. That was all.
“Bien sûr.”
She’d have to write that down. “Hope you brought extra bottles for tonight, just in case,” said Babette.

Aimée nodded. “If surveillance runs late, I’ll call.”

She nuzzled Chloé, inhaling her freshly powdered baby smell. “I’d like to stay and play with you,
ma puce.”

“Maman’s off to work,” said Babette, lifting Chloé’s fist to wave. Aimée kissed her once more and left, riding out a powerful stab of regret.

In the courtyard she replayed Nicu’s voice mail. Chilling. Could he have been calling from the hospital? She tried the number for the hospital’s reception, and they put her on hold, then requested she call back after rounds. Great.

Her scooter was still in the shop, and wouldn’t be ready for another fifteen minutes, so she stopped at the corner café.

“Un express double,”
she said to Fantine, the Normandaise wife of the owner’s son, who helped out from time to time.

Fantine knocked the coffee grounds into the bin with several loud thumps and switched on the espresso machine. “Need an extra jolt? Powder not enough for you this morning?”

The street term for cocaine. Where did that come from?

Fantine pointed to her nose. Aimée rubbed the tip and her finger came back white. Babette had forgotten to tell her.

“Baby powder, Fantine.” She smelled her fingers: Chloé’s sweet baby smell. A pang hit her.

“
Alors
, you’ve lost weight. Look tired these days.”

“It’s called having a six-month-old,” she said.

Aimée pulled out her LeClerc compact to touch up her face. Her dark-circle disaster needed more than quick first aid. At this rate she’d need to buy concealer wholesale and spackle it on.

“So Chloé’s with a babysitter today? That Babette?”

Why did she always forget what a village it was here? And Fantine was nosey for a Normandaise—unlike the majority of those phlegmatic apple growers, notorious for their closed lips.

Fantine slid the steaming demitasse over the counter. “
C’est dur
, by yourself and all,” she said as Aimée stirred sugar lumps into the espresso. “Your ex—the ex
-flic
, that one—he was going on about it last night. Said you kicked him out of the christening.”