Murder at the Lanterne Rouge (34 page)

“That shouldn’t have happened.” His bittersweet tone surprised her. “We’re trained engineers, not killers.”

“But Pascal was brilliant,” she said. “He discovered the ancient stained-glass formula and applied the concept to the principles of fiber optics.” She was perspiring in the coat.

“So simple, when you think about it. The greatest discoveries are. The rest, so unnecessary.” Jean-Luc’s voice dropped, almost sad now. “I listened to Pascal, I was the only one.”

“Wrong again. The DST listened,” she said. “He worked for them.”

“The DST? Too late to the party.” His voice hardened. “The Chinese military offered me a contract. It’s the Year of the Tiger, auspicious.”

“Chinese? Was Meizi involved?”

He snorted. “A sweatshop girl? But convenient for me. Who’d care about an illegal immigrant like her but Pascal? The bleeding-heart Communist.”

Anger filled her. The pompous ass. Meizi had been an unknowing pawn in his game. It made her sick. He’d planned it to the last detail.

“With your technical know-how, you worked the plastic wrap machine like a snap,” she said, her high heel working the dirt. “Yet you made a mistake. You were surprised when Clodo appeared. You dropped your cell phone.”

“Who?”

“Don’t tell me you forgot the homeless man you pushed onto the Métro tracks?”

“Vermin,” Jean-Luc spat. “He stank.”

“But Clodo sold your phone. Now the
flics
have it.”

He didn’t have to know Clodo replaced the SIM card.

Close humid air mixed with the wet fur smells from Hippolyte’s coat. She heard the patter of crumbling dirt.

“Now you’ll put down the laptop,” he said.

She crouched with the laptop bag. One hand behind it,
fingers scrabbling for clumps of dirt. The dense air in this narrow tunnel and the ragged, stinking fur nauseated her.

“Closer,” he said.

Still blinded by the beam, she pushed the laptop bag forward.

“Unzip the case.”

Shaking, she took the laptop out. Prayed Saj had received the file she sent.

The flashlight beam focused on the laptop, revealing Jean-Luc’s leaning silhouette. She flung the handful of dirt in his face. Catching him off guard, she lunged and shoved him against the wall.

“Bitch!” His arm lashed out, whacking her ribs and throwing her off balance. Struggling, she shook him off, stumbled and ran, pushing herself off the wall. Her adrenalin kicking in.

Darkness except for her thin penlight beam. Perspiration, the hot fur coat, the thick air. She saw the ramp. Ran up it, pushed the door open. Back in the refectory, a few candles sputtering, the odor of melted wax.

She slipped behind the first thing she saw, a bookcase, eyed the stone steps leading to the pulpit. Her adrenalin ebbing, she grabbed her side. This pain.

“We’re playing
cache-cache
now? Hide-and-seek?”

She couldn’t see him in the shadows. Her mouth felt like cotton, bile rose in her stomach. Her legs wobbled.

“Don’t you understand?” Jean-Luc said. “Pascal lied. That’s how he repaid me. No gratitude after I helped him learn to weld, mold, machine-design, to calculate, to construct machines.”

Keep focused. Keep him talking. Find his inner geek. “You mean like the guilds?”

“Our heritage comes from the guilds,” he said, his voice impassioned. “Even the classic freshman problem of how to drill a hole at a ninety-degree angle in a piece of metal. An old guild secret.” A short bark of laughter echoed. “But I tried to guide him, be a
parrain
, a godfather to him at school.”

“So you caged him?”

Weakness sapped her. Pain knifed through her side.

“Pascal wanted to give this formula away free!” Jean-Luc shouted. “To the world! Can you imagine?”

The glass globe and a leather scientific tome the size of Miles Davis lay within reach on the table. Either one could …

Jean-Luc shoved the bookcase back and smiled. He wore glasses now. Thick lenses. For the first time, she saw his face up close, saw the violent anger contorting his eyes. His dilated pupils. Why had she ever considered him handsome, vulnerable? She’d even felt sorry for him.

“Scream as loud as you like,” he said. “No power. We shorted the power grid.”

Smart ass. She maneuvered the lock pick from her sleeve. “You brainwashed your disciples. Pitiful. You attacked me.”

His knife blade glinted in the candlelight. “Too bad things didn’t work out more smoothly. I wish I had taken care of you then.”

Pascal, Meizi, now her. She felt blood rush to her face. She tried again to stall him. “You ran over Meizi …”

He snorted. “Like she matters. Or you, for that matter. All you did was complicate the means to the end. But nothing I can’t handle.”

He rushed at her with his knife. She threw up her arms to ward off the blow. His glasses went flying.

But his knife blade pinned Hippolyte’s ragged coat sleeve to the bookcase. An odd look spread on his shadowed face. His mouth twitched, contorted. “What did … you do?” he gasped.

She twisted and turned, but she couldn’t move. Stuck.

And she realized the lock pick in her other hand had gone into his eye. All fifteen centimeters of it, up to the handle. His eye was a mashed purple globe.

“Call it luck,” she said. “Auspicious.”

Horror sticken, she shoved his body away. Jean-Luc sagged
in a little pirouette, then crumpled against the bookcase, lifeless. A thin line of vitreous and blood trailed onto the stone.

The red light shone on her laptop’s reserve battery, one bar of power remaining. She grabbed her cell phone. Shook it, and lifted it as high as she could for reception. Pecked Saj’s number. Fuzz. Her vision fading, she hit René’s speed dial. It rang and rang. Finally, she heard a buzzing. “Refectory,” was all she could manage.

Light-headedness filled her, the bookcases spun. Her fingers came back sticky, and she saw the keyboard was smeared red with blood. Her blood. Jean-Luc had sliced his knife through the coat into her side. And her dress. Her vintage Chanel.

How would she get the blood out? Her thoughts drifted, swirled with bits of code, Latin, the picture of the woman on the Pont Marie. Then the rushing cold, such bone-chilling cold in her legs, her arms. The howling wind in the nave filled her ears until blackness took over.

“Y
OU LIKE US
, do you? Second time tonight,” the white-uniformed nurse consulted her chart. “As if we needed another emergency intake, with the ward this full.”

The gold glow of dawn crept in from under the hospital window shade. “Technically, it’s morning, nurse.” Aimée groaned at the smarting stitches. “But you should have seen the other
mec
.”

“I’d call you trouble, Mademoiselle.” The nurse gave her a little smile. “And that’s the morphine talking.”

“That’s what I like to hear,” said Saj, “after all our meditation work. Drugs.”

“Mademoiselle, you’re lucky no vital organs were punctured.”

Aimée felt like she’d been run over by a truck.

“The X-rays indicate the knife hit your vertebra,” the nurse continued, reading her chart. “Bone and muscle tissue protected your spinal column. A nice
umph
but no lasting damage.”

She became aware of Sacault, all in brown, standing next to Saj. “As long as you’re talking, let’s continue the conversation. We’re ambulancing you to Val de Grâce.”

“The military hospital?” she said, wincing in pain. “No way.”

René was holding her hand, his green eyes wide. “You called me?”

“Sorry for the bad reception, René,” she said. “But I took care of him. Sorry it was too late.”

René looked down. “Morbier’s out in the waiting room.”

Hurt pinched her heart. She couldn’t deal with Morbier now. If ever.

“Mademoiselle Leduc, you’ll debrief with our team,” Sacault said. “Go over the files recovered from Jean-Luc Narzac’s office at Bouygues. Furnish us with Samour’s work.”

She shook her head, and everything swam.

“Tell him, René,” she said. “Fill it in for the DST. Then consider me done. All done.”

Saj nodded, pulled his madras scarf around his shoulders. “First I suggest we center …”

Sacault blinked.

“Pascal Samour applied lost medieval stained-glassmaking principles to fiber optics,” René said. “But you know that.” René handed Sacault a disc. “It’s all here. But he wanted to give the fiber-optic formula away free. A gift from the fourteenth century. And we have.” René smiled. “However, since only seventy-eight scientific engineers in the world will understand it, no great alarm.” He smiled again. “Saj designed an obscure website. Not even the Chinese will find it for six months, Monsieur.”

R
ENÉ TRIED
A
IMÉE’S
number again. Busy. No doubt conferring with Melac on their Martinique trip. Dejected, he buttoned his Burberry raincoat in the dusk outside the shuttered luggage shop on rue au Maire. Next door, red banners proclaiming the Year of the Tiger ruffled in the wind outside the tofu shop. He remembered Meizi speaking of the festivities and how they would—

A loud pop startled him, made him jump and duck for cover by the bin of husked lychees. Sharp pain shot up his hip.

A shot? But he smelled the acrid smoke, heard a continuous pop and crackle, then laughing children. Fireworks.

The thumping of a drum.
Dum
 … 
da da dum
 … 
dum
 … 
da da dum
. Crashing cymbals, growing louder and echoing in the narrow street. Then the bright head of the lion, his twisting silk body supported by a trail of people. The New Year parade.

René straightened up, feeling foolish and more alone than ever. He limped over the glistening cobbles, inhaling the cooking smells from Chez Chun. Past excited children running toward the parade to catch the candy thrown from the lion’s mouth, the red lanterns shaking in the wind. At the corner, the stained-glass windows glinted from the walls of the museum.

He turned left on rue Beaubourg toward his Citroën. Crowds, shadows, charcoal clouds promising more rain. Where had he parked his car?

His eye caught on the travel agency window: a poster with
a blazing sun, palm trees, and a white beach advertising specials to California. He stood for a long time in the cold February evening, staring at the poster. He recalled the latest e-mail from the start-up in Silicon Valley offering him a job. And then he opened the travel agency door.

T
HE LAST RAYS
of winter light shone on rue du Louvre as Aimée left the office. She passed the arcaded rue de Rivoli, took her time over the Pont Marie, thinking. Along the Quai d’Anjou, she felt that familiar frisson. As if someone were watching her. She turned around. Only a hovering mist.

Miles Davis scampered out of Madame Cachou’s loge in the courtyard and barked a greeting. She walked upstairs and, after turning her key, paused in the doorway. Her heart hesitated, wondering if Melac would understand.

She couldn’t leave René like this. Martine would call her crazy, giving up Martinique, the sun and Melac. She unsnapped Miles Davis’s tartan sweater, wiped his paws clean, and took courage from his wagging tail. “You and me, furball, no matter what.”

Miles Davis licked her face.

She took off her wet heels, pulled on wool socks, and set her shoulders. Time to return Melac’s message and cancel Martinique. And if this meant he’d end up finding someone else … maybe that was the way it was meant to be.

But first she needed a drink.

Something sweet drifted from the salon. Frangipani?

She parted the half-open door. A large tropical beach umbrella opened over the Aubusson carpet, which sat on a straw beach mat, surrounded by mini potted palm trees. Beside it sat a wine decanter filled with something pink and floating lemon rounds, along with two tall glasses and paper drink umbrellas. Sounds of breaking waves and surf came from the CD player.

“This is what you meant by Martinique, Melac?”

Melac shrugged, gave a little grin. “No boarding pass needed.” He lifted up her YSL beaded turquoise bikini from the sales. “Why don’t you put this on?”

“Matches my socks, eh?”

“Island rum, hibiscus, our own umbrella, even tropical fish.” He gestured to a fish tank, beside which she noticed Miles Davis’s bowl appeared to be filled with filet mignon strips. He’d gone all out.

“So you’re on a case.” She shook her head, hands on her hips.

He ducked his head. “It’s not always going to be like this.
Desolé
, I had to cancel the tickets.” When he looked up, there was sadness in his gray eyes. “Can you understand?”

She wanted to tell him. Maybe she would. Someday.

Instead she unbuttoned her black cashmere sweater, unzipped her pencil skirt, and stepped out of it. “I knew I needed that bikini.”

Melac stared at her. Blinked. “Are those stitches?”

“Two rules
en vacances
. I don’t talk about work,” she said. “And I get a pink umbrella in my drink.” She grinned. “Later you can rub oil on my back.”

“First things first,” Melac said.

S
HADOWS LENGTHENED OUTSIDE
the window. Yellow light from the quai glowed in the mist. The empty decanter sat between them on the beach mat under the umbrella.

She ran her fingers through Melac’s hair and stuck an orange umbrella behind his ear.

“There are things I can’t tell you, too, Melac.”

He propped himself up on his elbows. “You mean
you
joined MI6 or Israeli intelligence? I’d have to arrest an enemy agent?”

She averted her eyes. “Someday I’ll need to make a choice.”

Worry creased Melac’s brow. “About us? So you’re really married? Or have a lover in Rouen?”

Startled, she laughed. “Not that simple.” Shook her head, stood and looked out into the dusk. “Choosing sides, that’s all. We could end up on opposite ones.”

A long silence broken only by the rain drizzling on the wrought-iron balcony outside, the toot of a barge on the Seine. And she found herself in Melac’s arms. Understanding shone in his gray-blue eyes. “Blood ties?”

“Life’s not black and white.” Her gaze went beyond his shoulder, past the bare plane-tree branches, to the rain-swollen Seine.