Murder in Clichy (3 page)

René turned away but not before she saw an odd expression on his face.

“What’s the matter René? Are you afraid it spells disaster for our relationship?”

“Do you think it’s your style, Aimée?”

She rubbed her eyes. Funny, he’d encouraged her to see Guy, her one-time eye surgeon, until their relationship grew intimate.

“The truth? I always thought. . . .” His words trailed off.

“Thought what, René?”

But he’d shut his laptop case and pulled on his custom-tailored raincoat. He avoided her gaze.

“I’m late,” he said. “My Firewall Protection class at the Hacktaviste Academy starts in twenty minutes.” He supplemented Leduc Detective’s income by teaching hacking safeguards. Her guilt increased, knowing how the damp air aggravated his hip dysplasia, something he never mentioned.

“Saj will help us fine-tune the Olf project,” he said. René had raved about his student Saj, the encryption genius. With work mounting, they needed help. And Saj, according to René, was a find. “Will you be all right, Aimée?”

“Look, René,” she said, holding up the smallest jade disk, which she’d put in her pocket. Its milky-hued translucence shimmered in the light, mirroring René’s green eyes.

René shook his head again. “I don’t feel good about this.”

“There’s more, René. Linh said men were watching her and the temple.”

“Call the
flics.
”

“And say I ran away from a murder scene?” she interrupted. “That I may have been a target? And someone chased me?” She sat down, wishing her arm didn’t still sting.

He paused at her desk, his laptop in his bag. Hurt, and something else, showed in his eyes. “You have to make up your own mind. Think of your future, your health, a relationship . . .”

“You’re part of that, René.”

But she spoke to the closed office door.

Why had she blurted out her dilemma about Guy? Was René afraid she’d give up Leduc Detective? She began to wonder . . . was
he
preparing to move on, to form an alliance with his friend who had a computer shop, or to go corporate? Tears welled in her eyes.

He’d get bored in a week. He’d hate corporate life. She imagined the snide remarks he’d endure about his size, told herself he wouldn’t really do it, and buried her head in her hands.

The office, quiet for once, echoed with memories; her father’s old typewriter in the corner and Leduc’s first detective license, circa 1944, framed on the wall bearing her grandfather’s prisonlike photo, the one where he looked like he had sucked a lemon.

All of her life was here.

Tears wet the Post-its on her desk. Could she walk away from all this, consult from a home office as Guy suggested? Could she run Leduc Detective by herself?

And what about René, who’d saved her life, and fought at her side when her world had fallen apart and she couldn’t see? Taken up the slack, kept the agency running. And fed Miles Davis.

Why hadn’t she seen it coming? Made him talk about it, listened to him?

So unlike René . . . he’d hesitate to tell her but . . . she couldn’t imagine not talking with him or sharing sushi take-out when they worked late at the office.

She wiped her eyes, downed her pills. Took a deep breath and switched on the computer. She couldn’t lose René. Besides her godfather Morbier and her dog, he was all the family she had. But she had to put that aside; she’d call him later.

She booted up her computer and searched. Twenty minutes later she found one entry specific to Cao Dai temple lands. A 1958 article, posted on an obscure mining website, by a Frenchman named Gassot of the Mining Engineer Corps affiliated with the Sixth Battalion. This article, on geologic excavations in Indochina, briefly mentioned a Cao Dai Temple and nearby emperor’s tomb that had been looted of national treasures. Chinese underground forces claimed that the missing hoard, objects from the fourth century, belonged to them. But Ho Chi-Minh and the French colonials laid claim to them, too.

The Vietnamese government blamed the Cao Dai, who were safeguarding it—as Linh had said. The theft had occurred as the 1954 Battle of Dien Bien Phu, the death knell for French colonial rule in Indochina, raged. Aimée read between the lines and figured the French had wanted the treasures for the Louvre.

She found a Nicorette patch and stuck it under her clothes, near her hip. Her mind spun. Jade, and a junkie dying in her arms . . . what was it really about? Was the jade she had hidden part of the looted treasure she’d just read about?

Her hands trembled. Time to go home.

“WORKING LATE again, Aimée?” asked Nico, the balding owner of her local café.

She kissed him on both cheeks. “How else can I keep Miles Davis in dog food?”

He wiped the zinc counter as he set a glass down in front of her. Worn stools and warmth from a working heater accompanied by the pings of an old pinball machine in the corner gave the café a comfortable feeling.

“The usual?”

She nodded and he poured a glass of red wine. The dense garnet-red wine left a sediment in the bottom of the ballon-like glass. Nico was the kind of
mec
who listened to her stories when no one waited for her in her cold apartment under the sheets. A
mec
who would stifle a yawn and share a bottle at the zinc counter.

Aimée . . . how are your eyes?”
“

“
Pas mal.
Haven’t stopped me yet, Nico,” she said.

“Not even the TGV can stop you when you get going, eh? As your papa used to say.” He wiped his wet hands on his none-too-clean apron and untied it. “Share a
verre
with me, my treat?”

“Next time, Nico,” she said.

He jerked his thumb toward an entwined couple nestled in the corner.

“They can’t decide between a rough little Sangria or a smooth Veuve Clicquot.” He winked. “Two ends of the spectrum. Do they want to dance on the table? Or feel it tomorrow, behind their eyeballs?”

The man in the far corner pointed to the champagne.

“
Excuse-moi
, a decision.” He reached for the champagne flutes and a tray. “Back in a minute.”

Aimée sipped her wine.

How could doing a simple favor for Linh have gone so wrong? And what should she do now? But the full-bodied wine with a smoky aftertaste had no answers.

She tried René’s cell phone. No reply.

She set five francs down, bid Nico
à bientôt
and turned the corner to her apartment on quai d’Anjou. Fingers of fog curled under the Pont Marie and spilled over the wet, cobbled quai.

A figure walked a dog along the riverbank below. Two men in wool overcoats stood by her door. Another joined them as she approached.

She gripped the pepper spray in her pocket.

“Mademoiselle Leduc?” said the one smoking a cigarette. Pale-faced and with dark, darting eyes, he emitted a bristling energy. The stubble on his head could have used a trim, or maybe he was growing out the shaved-head look.

“Hasn’t your mother taught you manners? How to introduce yourself, and apologize for accosting a young woman alone?”

“Guess she forgot,” he said, with a narrow-lipped smile. “In my job, it’s not required.”

“And what would that be?” She scanned the quai, saw one man behind the trunk of a plane tree, another against the stone wall, the barge lights silhouetting his cap. Not exactly a subtle show of force.

“I can’t speak officially. Let’s say I’m employed by someone who guards the common good. . . .”

“Someone with nasty methods?”

“It doesn’t have to be that way,” he said. “Now, show me what’s in your bag.”

He’d seen too many old movies. And the way he watched her, his eyes intent on her mouth, bothered her.

“What common good?”

“We work in the national interest.”

Typical RG talk. Straight out of the Renseignements Généraux manual. One of the men shifted, the gravel crunching under his feet by the wall.

“You’ll have to show me some ID. I’d feel stupid if I were to be robbed on my own doorstep.”

The two men moved closer and she backed up, pulling out her pepper spray.

“Back off or I start screaming and you get this in the face.”

She wished she had her Beretta. But those days were over. No more climbing over rooftops or hanging from rusted pipes. She’d promised.

“
Du calme,
” he said, and flashed his card.

“I can’t read it,” she said pulling out a flashlight. At least she could smack one of them in the face with it and get the talker with the spray.

“Fabien Regnier, Renseignements Généraux,” she read. “Guess you think that impresses people.”

“Not you, I’m sure,” he said. “But you’ve dealt with us before, on contract. In a ministry surveillance context, remember?”

She bit her lip. The ministry surveillance on which her father had been killed in an explosion. It had been five years ago, but was as vivid to her as if it were yesterday. She’d never known the RG were involved.

“So for old time’s sake, hand over the bag,” he said.

“Just like that, out here on the cobblestones? You’ve got more balls than you were born with, expecting me to . . .”

“We want what’s ours,” he said, lowering his voice.

“You have no authority,” she said. “What do you mean,
yours
?”

“I think you know.”

Two additional men drifted from the shadows, a stocky red-haired man and a lean one with a stringy ponytail down his back. They enclosed her in a tight ring. The red-haired one spread a much-thumbed
France-Soir
newspaper over the wet cobbles. Fabien Regnier, if that was his real name, gripped her bag. She winced as he emptied it, shining
her
flashlight on the contents as he picked through her Nicorette patches, ultra black mascara, a broken turquoise earring, her worn Vuitton wallet, cell phone, Chanel No.5 purse-sized atomizer, well-thumbed cryptography manual, Swiss Army knife, the holy card from her father’s funeral, an Egyptian coin, and a letter containing Guy’s poem.

“C’est de la poésie, ça
?” asked one of the men reading the poem with a furrowed brow. “Calling you a wild orchid, your rose complexion’s rough beauty . . .”

“That’s personal,” she interrupted.

“But it’s very well written, Mademoiselle.” Fabien Regnier grinned, passing it around. It infuriated her. They were looking through a window into Guy’s soul and using it for a cheap laugh.

“Where did you put it?” he asked. His eyes were hard. He leaned close to her face. “The
jade
.”

She had to think fast. “Since you know so much, how come you don’t know it’s gone?” she said, making it up as she went along. “
Pfft,
stolen from my office while someone barricaded me in the supply room.”

“How convenient!”

“Not really, but it didn’t belong to me. And I don’t think it belongs to you.”

“Stolen property must go back to where it came from.”

Had Baret stolen the jade to sell to Linh?

“What do you mean? How does the jade connect to you at the RG?”

“That’s not your concern.” Fabien Regnier snapped his fingers.

As Aimée looked up she caught the eye of the hawk-nosed man who approached. Lean and in his late fities, his cap brim low over his hooded eyes: she knew him. Recognized him from the unit that had contracted for Leduc’s services for the Place Vendôme surveillance. He’d been the one holding her back as she screamed, seeing her father’s charred limbs on the cobblestones.

Tension knotted her shoulders.

“We don’t want to have to mess up your apartment but—”

“Go ahead, it’s a mess already. The contractor makes sure of that.”

“Actually, we already have,” he said. “You need a new contractor.”

“What? Where’s your search warrant?”

Fabien Regnier picked up his cell phone; it must have vibrated on his hip. And then she noticed the butterscotch colored plug in his ear. An audio amplifier?

“Oui
,” he said, turning to answer it. A moment later, he clicked off, nodding to the others who fell back. He whispered in her ear, “If, as you say, you don’t have it, we want you to find it. That’s your priority now. Your career here, in Europe, anywhere in the world, depends on it. Your agency, your apartment, even your dog’s yearly rabies shots, depend on it.”

She stiffened.

“Good evening,” he said, giving her his card. “See, mother did teach me some manners.” And got into a waiting car.

SHE FELT so weak she had to force herself to climb the worn marble stairs to her dark apartment. This stank worse than overripe Camembert. The RG’s tentacles extended everywhere: their calling cards were intimidation, blackmail, and wiretaps. She never understood how people could refer to them as the good guys, likening them to the FBI or MI5. Then again, maybe it was apt after all.

Miles Davis, her bichon frisée puppy, greeted her with a wet nose and wagging tail. At least he was fine. She hit the switch of her hall chandelier and fiddled with the radiator. The only response was a dribble of heat and a sputtering, angry knock in the pipes.

She gasped at the mess they’d made, though the RG had a method to their ransacking. Neat piles of papers and her clothing sat in the middle of the rooms. Her computer lay untouched, thank God, but her armoires hung open. Drawers in several old chests were pulled out, too. Did they think she’d stash the jade in her apartment and leave it?

Thinking of Fabien Regnier going through her things made her sick. They’d dirtied everything by their presence.

Who was the black-leather-clad figure on the motorcycle? Was he, too, with the RG? And where did the hawk-nosed man from the Place Vendôme, who’d witnessed her father’s death, fit in? What did this imply?

She forked the last of the horsemeat into Miles Davis’s chipped Limoges bowl. These days, a
boucherie chevaline
with the gold horse head above it, the sign of a horsemeat butcher, was harder to find in the
quartier
than a child without Nintendo.

She kicked off her boots, hung up her damp coat, reached in the pocket for a cigarette and remembered she’d quit.
Merde!
Papers crinkled. Her hand held something; the envelope she’d meant to give Baret. She remembered how he’d clutched her coat . . . what had he said . . . Nadège, Sophie? She slit open the envelope Linh had given her. Inside lay a cashier’s check for fifty thousand francs.