Murder on the Ile Saint-Louis (8 page)

Tuesday Afternoon

AIMÉE STARED AT the small bundle that was keeping her hostage in her own apartment. Her laptop had cleaned up well and apple vinegar had dispelled the odor. Wonder of wonders, it still functioned. But there were still deposits of baby spit-up dotting her father’s old flannel bathrobe, the sagging bunny ears of the cap, all over. Should she feed the baby again? Or maybe it had gas? Aimée needed a step-by-step manual.

The baby flexed her pearl pink toes and unfurled her small fists. Her hiccups reverberated against Aimée’s chest. Then a big burp and a sensation of warmth filling the diaper. Again.

“So that’s the problem. Warn me next time, eh?”

A gurgling stream of bubbles trailed from the side of the little mouth. “That’s your answer then?”

More bubbles.

Aimée changed her, becoming increasingly efficient with the help of the aloe-scented baby wipes and Michou’s detailed diaper diagram.

The group picture was burning a hole in her pocket. She needed to show this photo around, figure out the mother’s movements, and why she’d left the baby. And, of course, who she was.

But Aimée was loath to take the baby outside and possibly endanger her. This tiny thing with feathery lashes, whose chest rose and fell softly against her, who smiled in her sleep. “Gas,” Michou had informed her. ‘”It’s gas. They don’t smile until three months.” She disagreed.

She couldn’t keep calling her “it” or “the baby.” She thought of the stars patterning the night sky when she’d found her. Stella meant star; she’d learned that on a holiday in Italy.

“Stella,” she breathed. “I’ll call you Stella because you glow like a star.”

René was working in Fontainebleau, Michou had gone to Deauville. She needed to get to the dry cleaner’s and to give Miles Davis another walk. Most of all, she needed a nanny.

Errands would have to wait. Other things couldn’t. She’d change her style, cover up Stella, and hope to blend in with the stroller crowd. From the collection in her drawer she chose large dark sunglasses, Jackie O style; a cap with STADE DE MARSEILLES printed on it; a black corduroy miniskirt; and metallic red Puma trainers.

She left her cell phone number on her answering machine. That done, she found the newly purchased baby sling, a striped affair of blue ticking, nestled Stella into it, and grabbed the dog leash.

DOWNSTAIRS IN THE courtyard, she paused before the concierge’s loge. A warm breeze ruffled the potted geraniums on the steps leading to the concierge’s door with its lace curtain panel.

“
Bonjour,
Madame Cachou,” she said, peeking inside, where a woman with steel gray hair was punching in figures on an adding machine.

“May I ask a favor, Madame? I’ve got to take Miles Davis out. Would you mind watching the baby, just for an hour?”

Madame Cachou’s lips pursed. “Mademoiselle Leduc, did you get the notice? The second notice, to move the items from your space in the
cave
? I put it in with your mail.”

Aimée groaned internally. Clearing her storage area was a task Madame Cachou deemed of highest importance due to the plumber’s whining that he needed more space to refit pipes under their building. On her return from a several months’ absence helping her sister, ill in Strasbourg, Madame Cachou had resumed her responsibilites with vigor. Aimée hoped the broken front door digicode would make her priority list.

“This weekend, Madame. My cousin Sebastian will help me.”

Madame Cachou, a widow, pushed her glasses up on her nose, then folded her arms over her ample chest. In her light blue smock, flesh-toned support stockings, and clogs, she personified the traditional concierge captured by Brassaï in old photographs. She was a rumormonger who delivered the mail twice a day. But Madame Cachou was one of the handful of concierges still working on the island and one of the fewer still who weren’t Portuguese. The new immigrant Portuguese women not only managed multiple buildings, they also juggled cleaning jobs and raised families, but rarely spoke much French.

“
Tiens!
Today,
s’il vous plaît
. Tomorrow they’re off and then . . .”Madame Cachou shrugged, as if to ask who knew when they would return. “The plumbers union is strike prone; it could be next month, next year.”

Aimée had to stall the concierge and convince her to watch the baby. “As I said . . .”

Madame Cachou expelled air from her mouth. “
Bon.
Then you must sign the release to absolve the building of liability. No guarantee of responsiblity, you know, but at least then they’ll move things aside and finish the work. It’s covered in your agreement, Mademoiselle. The leaks affect the water pressure in the whole building. We’ve had complaints.”

Aimée hadn’t been down there in years and had forgotten what her grandfather had stored in his underground compartment. She’d sign. That would give her one less thing to deal with.

She stepped inside the neat and narrow concierge’s loge, one wall lined with calendars stretching back to 1954, the other with romance novels. A large-screen television took up the back wall. Madame Cachou pointed to a release form next to a state-of-the-art laptop.

It occurred to Aimée that Madame Cachou might have seen the baby’s mother.

“Monday night, Madame,” she said. “Were you here around 11:00 P.M.?”

“What’s this question and answer?” Madame Cachou shook her head. “Monday’s my night off. It’s in my contract, eh? I go to my writers’ group.”

Aimée had lived here for years and had no idea.

“I earn a little money, you know,” she confided. “On the side.”

More than a little, Aimée thought.

“I see.” But she didn’t, surprised that a concierge who minded the building and mopped the floors also attended a writers’ group.

Madame Cachou ignored Stella.

“Never interferes with my duties here, if that’s what you’re implying, Mademoiselle. At 8:00 A.M., I’m here on Tuesday morning. Mop the stairs, wax the foyer. Before that, I’m where I want to be on my own time.”

There was a stack of Xeras, a line of “liberated” women’s romance novels, by the side of the laptop. Those novels were really soft porn, Aimée thought.

“Sign, please.”

“Do you study these . . . kinds of books in your writers’ group?” Aimée asked.

Madame Cachou’s chin jutted forward. “I write these books, Mademoiselle.”

Aimée wondered if she was in the wrong line of work. No wonder Madame Cachou could afford the laptop and a high-end
télé
.

Before she could ask more, a plumber in blue overalls appeared. “If we’re not going to measure for the pipe fittings, I might as well go home.”

“I’m coming.”

Aimée’s idea of begging the concierge to babysit evaporated.

Madame Cachou turned toward Aimée. “You young women have babies and expect the world to take care of them. But it’s your responsibility.”

“Madame Cachou, it’s an imposition, of course, but just for—”

“Et alors
, leave my friend Miles Davis,” Madame Cachou interrupted. Her expression softened as she petted him. “We’ll go to the park later.”

Miles Davis wagged his tail and sniffed the treat bag she kept hanging from the door.

Now she’d have to take Stella with her. Put Plan B into action. She’d use her disguise, cover Stella with the blanket. The baby should be safe so long as they remained anonymous. She put on the dark glasses and cap, draped the blanket over Stella, and opened the ivy-covered back door, then wended her way through the dark rear courtyard.

She pushed open a small door cut into a larger wooden portal that filled the archway and stepped over the sill to stand on bright and busy rue Saint Louis en l’Isle. This narrow commercial artery, the principal one on the island, lay full of trucks unloading and of scurrying passersby. It was sheltered from the Seine breeze. She emerged onto the pavement in the midst of several women with strollers blocked by a moving van unloading furniture.

“
Bonjour,
” a woman greeted her. She bent down, smiling, to look at the baby, then shook her head. “Impossible.”

“What do you mean?” Aimée asked, nonplussed. Was it obvious that Stella wasn’t hers?

“A newborn and you with such a flat stomach. How do you do it? That grapefruit diet?”

Relief flooded her and she nodded. She was eager to get away and question the garage owner, but she couldn’t move quickly. The narrow pavement was blocked, as usual at this time of day. Overhead were wrought-iron balconies accessed via open doors with fluttering curtains behind them. The tall doors open to catch any breeze in the unusual heat, through which the murmur of conversations reached her.

At least, she could blend in. Nothing for it but to smile, join them, and eavesdrop on the discussions around her concerning playgroups, mother and baby yoga, errant nannies who took more than one day off. These were the conversations of women engulfed in a world ruled by little people who couldn’t even talk. And for a moment, with the sun hitting her back with a slow delicious warmth, she wondered what it would be like to have the biggest crisis of the day be deciding which park to go to.

But that was not her life. A body lay in the morgue and the baby breathing warmly against her chest was in danger. She thought back to the marks under Stella’s arm, the mother’s frantic plea—“
no flics
”
—
and she knew the mother was depending on her.

Two blocks later, having passed leaning soot-stained buildings with paved courtyards big enough to hold carriages and horses—now relegated to storing green garbage containers and the occasional truck—she entered the dimly lit garage across from Place Bayre.

“Monsieur, Monsieur?” A generator thrummed and she jumped, hearing shots. She ran behind a Renault on a lift and clutched Stella tightly. She felt foolish when she saw that the noise had come from a mechanic in an oil-stained jumpsuit who was shooting lug nuts onto a tire rim with an air-powered wrench.

A man wiping his hands on a rag appeared from behind a small cage in which two yellow parakeets trilled.

“We’re full up,” he said. “No more appointments until Thursday, Madame.”

“It’s Mademoiselle. And I don’t own a car.”

She walked, biked, or Metroed everywhere. She would never understand anyone having a car in Paris. Yet she knew René couldn’t envision life without his customized Citroën.

“A woman made a call from your garage last night. Late, around ten . . .”

He shook his head. “Impossible. We close at 8:00 P.M.”

How could she explain that she’d had the call traced?

The other mechanic handed him a power wrench. “Stas, I forgot to tell you. The baron called. He wanted special treatment. As usual. He’d punctured a tire.”

“Again, eh?” Stas rubbed his cheek, leaving an oil smear. “You keeping other things from me, too, Momo?”

Looked like she’d opened a can of worms.

“You know those aristos.” Momo shrugged. “I tried to say no but—”

The phone rang in the small office and Stas ran to answer it.

“Do you mean you opened the garage last night after hours?” Aimée asked.

Momo rolled his eyes. “Just for him. He knows I live upstairs. Can’t seem to get away from doing him favors.”

More than one baron lived on the island. “The baron lives near here?”

Momo jerked his oil-encrusted thumbnail toward Hôtel Lambert’s high stone wall. “Rents his wing out most of the time. Stays with the owners in the country.”

Aimée took the photo from her bag, pointed to Orla’s face. “Did you see her last night?”

Momo shook his head. “Why should I have?”

If Orla had sneaked in while he was busy working, she was no further than before. Perplexed, she pulled her cap lower. Unless he was keeping his knowledge close to his chest. She pointed to the pay phone that stood under an oil-stained Michelin map of Burgundy.

“Come on, Momo. I’m sure she called me from here last night.”

Momo looked down, reaching for his tools. If she pushed him a little more she thought he’d admit it.

“We’ll keep it just between you and me,” Aimée said, coaxing him.

He glanced at Stas, who was still speaking on the office phone, then turned toward her.

“He’s a tightwad. He makes the customers use the pay phone. And I’m not supposed to let people in.” Momo lowered his voice. “But”—he pointed to the dark-haired girl seated next to Orla in the group photo—“she said her cell phone battery had run out.”

Surprised, Aimée looked again at the names on the back. Nelie. She guessed Momo liked a pretty face and leaned closer. Birdseed from the parakeets cage crackled under her feet.

“So you let her in. What did she say?”

“She was walking funny. Her face was white as a sheet,” he said. “She seemed nervous. That’s all.”

“Was she by herself?”

“I didn’t see anyone else. I changed the tire and when I looked up, she’d gone,” he said.

Stas had returned. “Hey, Momo . . . you’re on the clock.”

“How old’s your baby?” Momo asked.

Aimée gulped. “Close to two weeks.”

She walked past an air pump, her mind spinning. The dark-haired Nelie, not Orla—who was now lying in the morgue—had called her. She stared at the face in the photo and felt a fleeting sense of familiarity. Had they passed in the street, stood in line at a shop? But if it was Nelie who had called her, why had Stella been wrapped in Orla’s jean jacket?