Murder in the Rue De Paradis (14 page)

Wednesday Morning

AT HER WINDOW overlooking the Seine, Aimée sipped an espresso and checked e-mail. One from Michel requesting her to check in at Microimages. The next from Laure:
No dice with the homicide report.

Too bad. She had learned nothing about Yves’s murder. But knowing Bordereau, he’d pass on the information about the possible “assassination” even if the only evidence was a sugar wrapper written on in Turkish.

She wished she understood. At least the fever and chills had gone. She tried to repress her unease at the early-morning call on Yves’s phone, knew she had to concentrate on things at hand. She looked at the clock.

Late.

She was late to pick up Miles Davis at the vet. She donned a black raw silk spaghetti-strapped agnes b
.
dress from the seconds bin at Porte de Vanves flea market, slipped into heels, and grabbed the dog carrier.

The Metro journey to the clinic involved crossing to the Left Bank and changing three times. But in her book, Dr. Rouzeyrol rated as a surgical genius after he’d stitched Miles Davis’s paw back on following a vicious pit bull attack. And Miles Davis adored him.

“CAME OUT OF it like a champ!” said Dr. Rouzeyrol, a smiling rosy-cheeked well-built man in his thirties.

Miles Davis, hair clipped short, sporting a new tartan collar, scampered into her waiting arms.

“Shots up to date, microchipped, and with pearl-white teeth; you can take him anywhere.”

“Hear that? I can take you to Fouquet’s now.”

Miles Davis responded by licking her ear.

“Speaking of Fouquet’s, they have a
sud-ouest
prix-fixe menu, Aimée,” he said. “We had a veterinary dinner there the other night. A superb seared
magret au canard
crusted with lavender and cracked pepper.”

Miles Davis’s ears shot to attention.

“I’d love to meet you and Miles Davis there,” he said. “Some evening this week?”

She liked him and wished that sparks flew. Martine would insist she go; he had a booming practice, Miles Davis loved him and he didn’t hurt the eyes. But after Yves, the thought of dinner with another man felt wrong.

She shrugged. “Dr. Rouzeyrol—”

“Antoine,” he said, moving closer. “We’ve been saying we’d do this for ages. Tomorrow?”

“I’d love to, but with work and this cold. . . .” She saw the disappointment in his blue eyes, his hands clenching in the pockets of his white coat.

“Dr. Rouzeyrol,” said his middle-aged receptionist, appraising Aimée’s outfit. “A poodle in room three and Madame de Songe’s Siamese in room five.”

“Another time.” He squeezed Aimée’s arm and disappeared into a consulting room.

She set Miles Davis down, leashed him, and pulled her checkbook from her bag. A crumpled paper fell on the tiled floor. An old fax receipt. And her mind went back to the fax from the State Department.

Outside, on Avenue Lowendahl, a light breeze dispelled the wavering heat. Instead of heading to Cambronne Metro station, she walked toward Place de Fontanoy. UNESCO headquarters lay a block away.

A fleeting chance that she’d find some link to her mother.

The hundreds of world flags surrounding UNESCO’s headquarters waved in the light wind, their ropes pinging against the metal struts. The building, a swooping white-roofed ’60s design of concrete and white blocks, could use a steam-cleaning, she thought. She crossed the yard of white flagstone to the entrance. Her mother had walked across these stones years ago every day for her job. Aimée wished for some feeling of connection. But all she felt were the ripples of hot air as men in three-piece suits, engaged in conversation, passed by.

Miles Davis was in his tartan carry bag slung over her shoulder. Inside, she paused at the reception desk and looked around. Groups of people gathered, others entered the double walnut doors to large meeting rooms. A conference sign read: UNESCO Bridging the World.

What could she hope to accomplish here? It had all happened more than twenty years ago.

“May I direct you to a conference room?” A woman wearing a beige suit with red-framed glasses smiled at her. “These large events get confusing, and we’ve had some room changes.”

Aimée frowned. “I don’t know if you can help.” She hesitated. The smart thing would be to excuse herself, turn around and leave. “My mother worked here in 1968.” She couldn’t believe she’d said . . . her mother. But it had slid out without a stammer or a missed beat. “I wondered. . . .”

“Ah, you want to know about Roberta Tash’s retirement party.” The woman nodded. “You’re the third one today. We’re getting so many queries from past employees, project members and their families. Such a great outpouring, a testament to Roberta’s more than twenty-five years of service.”

The woman patted Miles Davis’s head, took Aimée’s elbow, and edged her toward a reception area. “The party’s at Hotel le Bristol. More invitations are being printed up, but here . . . take this.”

Aimée stared at the embossed card in her hand.

“Don’t forget to call that number and RSVP.”

“RSVP?”

“Everyone’s invited who’s worked here during the past thirty years. Roberta’s touched every part of our work at UNESCO, and it’s our way of celebrating her accomplishments. Of course your mother . . . what did you say her name is?”

“Sydney . . . Sydney Leduc.”

The woman gave a brief shake of her head. “Before my time, but we’re a big family here. I’m sure you’ve heard this from your mother, but it’s like we say, ‘No one really leaves.’” The woman grinned. “We’ve got people flying in from Africa, the Middle East, you name it, Roberta’s influenced generations of us at UNESCO.”

Aimée cleared her throat.

“What’s your name?”

“Aimée, but. . . .”

“I’ll just write your name down and I’ll tell Roberta later.”

“Pardon?”

“Well, Roberta likes to prepare for her guests. A stickler for detail. Will you be attending with your mother?”

Struck dumb one of the few times in her life, Aimée just blinked. A group of women in saris crowded the reception. Distracted, the woman smiled again.

“Wonderful. Here, I’ll RSVP for you, the caterers need to know today . . . Roberta will be delighted.”

AIMÉE SAT ON the bus, Miles Davis on her lap, reading the thick cream-colored engraved invitation. “UNESCO requests your presence to celebrate Roberta Tash’s retirement from our ‘family.’ No gifts, please, your presence is enough, donations accepted in Roberta’s name to Save the Children, Roberta’s pet project.”

Roberta must have known her mother, maybe worked with her. Again she felt a fleeting hope that her mother would appear at the party. Impossible. A woman on the world security watch list wouldn’t risk that. Even if she was alive. But perhaps Aimée could get this Roberta’s attention for five minutes and pick her brain.

At her local café-tabac on Ile St. Louis, she picked up a copy of
Le Monde
. Then around the corner from her apartment, she stopped at the butchers’. Jules, in a blood-stained white apron, greeted her with a knowing smile.

“A visit to the vet, eh?” Jules said. “The usual?”

She nodded.

Jules wrapped a kilo of horsemeat in waxed white paper, threw in some bones for Miles Davis. “Just in time, Aimée. I’m closing for
vacances
.”

“St. Malo?”

“Where else?”

Every year, Jules and his family decamped to his mother’s at the seaside.

“And you?”

“Work. No rest for the wicked.”

“Everyone needs a break.” Jules winked. “Even sinners.”

She set the franc notes on the counter. Her gaze fell on the row of sharpened knives in holders on his wall. Bone-handled, individually crafted by Laguiole, the premium knife maker.

Jules noticed her gaze. “Perfect for lamb. Slices the cartilage with a clean line.”

She winced. But couldn’t help wondering what kind of knife had been used to slit Yves’s throat.

“Jules, would you need a special knife, say one that curved, to carve a curl in flesh?”

“Been reading Agatha Christie, eh?”

He applied a goat-horn-handled knife from the marble-topped cutting board to a glistening slab of white fat suet and flicked his wrist. “Like this?”

A curl like a c resulted.

Her hand trembled. Any sharp blade could have made the swirl under Yves’s neck. But from the way Jules carved, she learned an important thing: There was no way someone could have
faced
Yves and done it. They would have had to come on him from behind.

A coward. And afraid of recognition.

The bells jingled on the butcher-shop door as she shut it. She rounded the corner to quai d’Anjou, pressed the digicode to her building, followed a scampering Miles Davis up the worn grooved steps of the marble staircase to her apartment. And faced a pile of mail, bills and more bills at her door.

Inside the kitchen, she unwrapped the butcher’s package.

Miles Davis’s paws clicked over the wood floor as he made a beeline for his bowl.

Her mind couldn’t rest. Did the Brigade have more suspects? Or did they still link the murder to Romeo? Morbier, her godfather, a Commissaire, worked at the Brigade part-time but she hesitated to call him. She doubted he’d do her yet another favor; but with no other leads in Yves’s murder. . . . She crooked the phone between her neck and shoulder and punched in his number.

Miles Davis hunched over, eating from his chipped Limoges bowl.

“Paulet,” answered a clipped voice.

“Commissaire Morbier, please.”

“
En vacances.
”

Morbier hadn’t taken a vacation in six years.
Incroyable!
The city under terrorist attacks, and this is the year Morbier decides to take his vacation! By now, Yves’s homicide report would have been filed at the Brigade, his dossier swelled with investigative notes, interviews, lists of possible suspects.

“Who’s calling?” Paulet said.

Desperate, she realized she had to somehow enlist this Paulet’s help.

“Leduc,” she rooted in her bag, read off her father’s old police identification number. “I’m en route to question a homicide suspect. The name’s. . . .” She thumbed her checkbook. “
Merde!
Found it, it’s in the last page of paperwork they gave me. Renaud Vorner, aka Romeo Void. I need to finish this before my vacation. Commissaire Morbier’s an old friend, my mentor from Brigade Criminelle. Save me some time, eh?” She spoke fast before she lost courage. “Vorner’s the suspect in a homicide on rue de Paradis. Don’t even have the Brigade case number, can you believe it?”

Miles Davis, now sated, and exhausted from his overnight stay at the vets, lay on the floor. His nose twitched in the sun.

“Rouffillac heads this investigation. . . .”

“That’s just it; I can’t reach him.”

Pause. “What division did you say you’re with?”

She thought fast. “Vigie Gare de Nord. It’s a crossover crime.”

She heard what sounded like metal file cabinets shut.

Pause. “Your name again?”

“Leduc.”

“Renaud Vorner, aka Romeo Void?”

“That’s right.”

“You’ll find him in the morgue. Lacerations on his upper body . . . the report indicates he’s . . . was the main suspect in homicide Case 319.”

She wrote the case number down.

“Any others? Just don’t want to call you back if the Brigade’s got other irons in the fire, you know, and they’re in process of clearing him.”

“That’s the only suspect report in the dossier.”

No other suspects.

“Merci.
“ She hung up. And faced a blank wall. She racked her brain. She sat and re-read Yves’s article. She found what she had missed earlier, several paragraphs down. ‘The iKK Kurdish workers party.’ Time to question these radicals using terrorist tactics. She’d seen the posters for their protests. In the phone book she found them listed on rue d’Enghien. And now she had a plan.

“YOU’RE TOO LAT E , ” said a woman, locking the door.

Aimée paused on the landing outside the iKK party office. Plaster had fallen from the walls, and the wood floor hadn’t seen a broom in days. On her right were iKK posters, taped to the wall like those plastered on rue de Paradis. Horrific! There was a blurred, much-copied photograph of a heap of bodies wearing Kurdish
pejersh
and grinning Turkish soldiers pointing guns. If Turks hated a group more than the Armenians, it was the Kurds. They’d taken care of the Armenians in massacres before World War I. In the corner of the posters was the iKK symbol, a red circle—the red taken from the blood of the Paris Commune—a star, and a crescent.

“The office is closed,” said the woman, putting the key in her pocket.

“But it says 10:00–18:00,” Aimée said, pointing to the sign.

The woman, in a blue smock and clogs, shook her head. Not what Aimée would have expected a member of the so-called “terrorist radical Kurd worker party” to look like.

“My nephew runs the office, but he rushed off unexpectedly. The Tribunal,” she said as if Aimée would understand.

Aimée didn’t.

“The lawyer called him to be a witness at court. I promised to lock up for him.”

“Aaah,” she said. “But you’re a member, can you help me, Madame?”

The woman shook her head. “Not me.” A bottle of Persil liquid soap and a brush stuck out of her smock pocket.

Aimée caught a flash of fear in the woman’s dark eyes.

“I work nearby. Excuse me. I must go.”

“When will the office open?”

“Come back tomorrow.”

A wasted trip.

“But I came all this way.” Aimée sighed, hoping the woman would relent.

The woman, anxious to leave, started down the steps. By the look of the exterior, Aimée figured the office operated on a shoestring.

Aimée picked the first thing that struck her. Money. “My appointment concerns our donation to the iKK party’s legal defense fund. It would help so much if you could direct me to the person who accepts donations.”

The woman stopped and looked back up at Aimée.

A look Aimée couldn’t fathom.

She thought quickly. “I represent a human rights organization concerned over the atrocities in Anatolia. Our donation’s confidential,” she said, lowering her voice. “A large sum, our name not associated with . . . well, we ask for discretion.”