Murder in the Latin Quarter (30 page)

M
aggie ran into the hallway
, careful not to step in the blood. She pulled her phone out. She knew she should report Michelle's death to the police but first she had to warn Beatrice. The phone screen showed
no service
.

Had Beatrice responded to the text Maggie had sent from the train?

No. No messages except a text from Laurent. She glanced at the time. It was sent over ten minutes ago.

With mounting panic and without thinking what she was doing, Maggie stepped into the elevator. As she pushed the lobby button, her mind whirled with horror.

Who did this? André? Noel? Amelie? Dieter?

Who wants that painting? Who even knows about it?

Amelie couldn't possibly have worked in Delphine's apartment for nine months and known a stolen Degas was in the same apartment with her and not acted on it. Could she?

It has to be André.
He owns an art gallery
. But how would a famous stolen painting benefit him? And how would he even know it existed?

Noel had gone straight to the storage room the night Delphine died. He said it was because he saw a light but what if it was because he wanted to get the painting he knew was there?

Dieter could easily have known about the painting. All it would take was one comment from his infamous grandpa to reveal he'd given an original Degas to his French girlfriend.

Maggie ran a hand over her face.

But isn't the painting worthless to anyone?

Not if they were an art connoisseur like André…Or someone who felt he was owed big time by the person who stole it. Maybe Noel thought a Degas was recompense for the life of lies he believed Delphine had consigned him?

The elevator moved slowly. Maggie cursed herself for not taking the stairs. She looked at Laurent's text. It was lengthy. Unusual for him.

<
Cops traced the last call made to Delphine. A burner phone. 685-888
.>

Maggie reached for the grab bar as the elevator jerkily descended. Something niggled in the back of her brain.
Why does that number sound familiar?

There was more.

<
They said the burner phone made several calls to a known Algerian hit man. Not sure what connection is w/Delphine
>

Maggie felt her skin crawl. The man who chased her into the catacombs—the words he'd shouted at her sounded like Arabic.

They speak Arabic in Algeria
.

A chill started in Maggie's stomach and the hand holding her phone began to shake.

As the elevator car lurched to the lobby floor, Maggie fell against the door, grappling with the bar to stay on her feet. She wrenched the grill back and bolted into the lobby. Her screen still showed
no service
but she didn't need an Internet connection for what she needed to do. She stepped into the interior courtyard. It was already late afternoon and the sky had darkened with impending bad weather. She felt the first drops of rain on her shoulders.

She'd seen that number somewhere. Her stomach soured and then roiled as she realized she had just tried to
call
that number. She held her breath and scrolled down her list of received calls.

There it was. 685-888.

She stared at the numerals, stunned. The world seemed to whirl around her in a cyclone of malevolence.

It was the call she'd received five days ago from Victor Rousseau.

I
n six long strides
, Laurent was at the table but the girl was already on top of Grace, slapping and pulling her hair. Both women were screaming and knocking cutlery and glassware to the floor. Two waiters stood congenially watching the brawl, their arms crossed in front of them. The man at the table had stood up but was regarding the women with obvious bemusement.

Laurent pulled the young woman off Grace and shoved her into the man's arms.

“Control her!” he snarled at him.

Grace was on her feet now, a shallow scratch across one cheek, her lipstick smeared down her chin, her eyes wild. She turned to her male companion who stood with one arm draped loosely around the angry young woman.

“You bastard!” she said. “You lied to me.”

“Is this your husband?” the man said, indicating Laurent with a nod of his head. “I thought you said he was out of the picture?”

Laurent turned to the man and saw his laughing eyes, his taunting look at Grace. Laurent grabbed the arm of the young woman and pulled her from the man.

“Hey!” she squawked. “What do you think—”

Then Laurent drew back a fist and slammed it into the man's face, watching him crumple to his knees, his laugh replaced by a stunned look. Blood gushed from his broken nose. The girl screamed again and looked around as if someone might be enlisted to come to her aid.

“I am not her husband,” Laurent said to him before turning to Grace. “But he's a friend of mine.”

Grace looked at the moaning man on his knees, now being comforted by the young woman, and then at Laurent with blazing eyes.

“How dare you!” Grace gasped. “You can't come in here and—”

“Get your bag,” Laurent said, his voice hardening. “We're leaving.”

“No, I am not leaving!” Grace said looking again at the man struggling to get to his feet. She made a move to go to him and Laurent grabbed her arm.

“
Oui
, you are,” he said. “On your own feet or over my shoulder. Your choice.”

“You…you…” Grace snatched up a glass of wine from the table and splashed it into Laurent's face.

“
Bon
.” Laurent bent and tossed Grace over his shoulder. He turned to the waiters and nodded to indicate he'd be back to pay for any damages. Then he turned with Grace kicking and pounding on his back and exited the restaurant. As soon as they were on the street, Laurent dropped Grace to her feet. He was fully prepared for her to try to slap him but she didn't. Instead, she covered her face with both hands and burst into tears.

“What is the matter with me?” she said through her tears. “I am so sorry, Laurent. I have lost my damn mind.”

“
Ça ne fait rien
,” Laurent said, leading her away from the restaurant and the curious stares of people sitting at the outdoor tables.

“I have made such a terrible mess of everything,” Grace said. “Oh! My handbag—”

“I'll pick it up later. The wait staff will keep it safe.”

Grace looked at him and then back at the restaurant, her eyes suddenly narrowing.

“Wait. You weren't following me, were you? Is that why you are here?”

Laurent sighed and wondered if he was going to have the patience to deal with Grace when she was like this. He wasn't entirely sure she was completely sober.

“Is that what you think?” he asked.

Her shoulders sagged. “Please, Laurent. I can't go home yet. Every time I look at Beatrice I feel I'm letting everyone down.”

Laurent couldn't help but wonder why it was looking at
Beatrice
that made Grace that way and not little Zouzou.

“Please, Laurent?”

“
Bon
,” he said, taking her elbow and steering her back down the sidewalk. “There is a place I know near here that makes a very good omelet. We will eat first and then return home, yes?”

His phone began to vibrate and he saw it was an incoming call from Maggie.

“Thank you, Laurent,” Grace said. “I don't deserve your friendship. But thank you.” She began to sob quietly. Laurent patted her hand and continued down the sidewalk with her, his unanswered phone back in his pocket.

If it's important, she will leave a message…

V
ictor
was the killer
?

That's impossible. He loved Delphine. It has to be a mistake. Victor has no reason to hurt Gerard or Isla…or Michelle. It doesn't make sense.

Maggie called Beatrice and listened to the call go to voicemail. She pinched her lips together. Suddenly, the memory of Victor at the restaurant signing the menu came swooping back to her. He'd pulled out his pen and signed it with a laugh and a flourish.

Turquoise blue ink
.

The same color of ink on the note she'd found in the alley behind Gerard's apartment.

The note dropped by Gerard's killer.

She jumped into the waiting taxi and gave the driver Grace's address. As he turned the vehicle around, Maggie called Beatrice again. No answer. A sick icy dread formed in her stomach.

She called the police. After endless ringing, it was finally answered by a bored dispatcher whose accent Maggie couldn't understand and who hung up on her. Seething with frustration, she called them back. She knew she needed to be careful what she said. If she sounded crazy they wouldn't come at all. As she waited for the police to answer, she stared out the taxi window at the Seine, dark and omnipresent, on her left.

Maggie couldn't believe it had only been a week since she'd walked down this street with Mila, not a care in the world. The taxi sped past the dark structures of Ponte des Arts and then Ponte Neuf.

Victor killed them all. And he was the last person to talk to Delphine. Whatever he'd said to her had prompted her heart failure.

Why? Why was he doing this?
Think! Think!

Victor hired someone to kill three people. Was that who was following her? Had Victor sent his killer after Maggie too?

It had to be the painting. Whoever killed Michelle had ripped the storage room apart looking for it.

What would he do now? Now that he knew the painting was gone?

He probably knew it was Maggie who'd moved the painting so he knew it had to be where Maggie was staying with Grace off the Quai Saint-Michel.

The police dispatcher came back on the line and Maggie spoke in painstakingly slow French. The dispatcher took Grace's address and hung up.

Maggie put a second call into Laurent and listened to it go to voicemail again. She cursed in frustration. Was his phone even on?

They stopped at a traffic light and a hoard of tourists moved sluggishly across the street. Maggie wondered if it wouldn't be faster to jump out and run the rest of the way.

Would she be in time? How far ahead of her was Victor? Would it be Victor there or his Algerian thug?

Gripping her phone tightly, she called Beatrice a third time. Even if Beatrice was giving one of the kids a bath Maggie knew she never went anywhere without her cellphone—or turned it off.

All three of Maggie's calls had gone straight to voice mail. A cold splinter of fear invaded Maggie's breast.

Beatrice
always
picked up.

The drive to Grace's apartment seemed to take forever. Maggie was so intent on getting to the apartment and seeing with her own eyes that everything was fine that she had the door to the taxi open before it had fully stopped. She threw a twenty euro bill at him—twice what the meter said—and raced into Grace's apartment building.

Surely Laurent was back by now.
But why wasn't he answering his phone? Or Beatrice? It hadn't even occurred to Maggie to try calling Grace. Not stopping to deal with the elevator, Maggie immediately ran up the stairwell.

The sounds of her shoes hitting the stone steps echoed in her ears. Because the other apartments were all being renovated, there was nobody in the building but workmen.

And tonight there were no workmen.

Her breath came in agonizing pants from her sprint up the stairs. When she finally reached the third floor, the first thing she saw was the door to Grace's apartment.

It was open. Maggie froze, her heart in her throat.

The next thing she saw was Victor. He was standing between the open apartment door and the elevator.

And he was holding Mila.

V
ictor stepped
out of the shadows. Maggie saw that Mila was asleep in his arms. He cupped her chin as if he might snap her neck at any moment.

“Victor, don't do this,” Maggie said, her eyes on her baby. She started toward him.

“No, Madame,” he said. “Come no closer.”

Maggie's mouth went dry and she felt a throbbing sensation in her throat. She wanted to touch her baby so bad it was all she could do not to run over and snatch her from him. Victor looked like he was standing straighter than she'd seen him do before. There was no cane, there was no stoop to his shoulders.

“I notice you keep looking toward the apartment,” he said. “The other children are fine. The sitter I'm afraid I had to kill.”

Maggie sucked in a harsh breath.
Dear God. Beatrice.

“The police are on their way,” she said.

“Then we'd best hurry.” He walked to the elevator and wrenched the metal grill door aside. The sound woke Mila and her face puckered into the beginnings of an unhappy wail. Maggie ran to him and he clutched Mila with both hands and swung her over the empty shaft.

“Not another step or I drop her!”

Maggie sucked in a gasp of pure hysteria. Mila struggled, flailing her arms, her cries echoing in the stone stairwell as she hung from his hands over the void.

“What do you want?” she said, her arms outstretched toward Mila as if she could will the baby to leap into them.

“You know what I want,” Victor said, bringing Mila away from the shaft. He wiped his face with a free hand. “I want the treasure!” Sweat was dribbling down his forehead. “I know you found it. Delphine said as much last night on the phone.”

Maggie couldn't take her eyes off Mila. She was squirming and Victor was not a young man.

“Delphine trusted you,” Maggie said, feeling the panic crawling up her throat. She prayed the police were coming although she had no reason to really believe it. But surely
somebody
would be coming! She needed to stall him.

“She used me,” Victor said. “She was well aware of the crime committed against me by her sister's husband. She never apologized for it. She never even acknowledged it.”

“Are you talking about Marc Dernier? What did he do?”

Surely, the longer I keep him talking, the greater chance the police will show up? Or Laurent? Or somebody?

“I'm not surprised you don't know. The great Marc Dernier blew up a German truck depot outside of Paris. He was decorated for it.”

Maggie realized she didn't know the specifics of why Marc Dernier was considered a Resistance hero. She had a feeling she was about to.

“De Gaulle called it
pivotal
in the turning point of the war. Ridiculous, of course. It was the Allies who turned the war. All Dernier did—and zealots like him—was to aggravate the Germans who held France in a death grip.”

“You're talking about the massacre that killed your family? But the Nazis did that.” Maggie tried not to look at Mila.

“Let me ask you, Madame—have you ever jabbed a stick at a rabid dog? Or attempted to poke a venomous viper? No? Probably because you can imagine the outcome if you had. Marc Dernier knew exactly what the outcome of his actions would be.”

Maggie listened helplessly. Was her only option really just to wait for someone to come?

“The reprisal for what Dernier did,” Victor continued, “was the murder of twenty-five people including my parents and two sisters.”

Maggie prayed that Zouzou or Jemmy didn't come out of the apartment. Why didn't they? Were they really okay or had Victor hurt them?

“It was unspeakable,” Maggie said, her voice shaking. “But it was over seventy years ago. And Marc Dernier has been dead for more than thirty years. Why now?”

Victor's color darkened. He shifted Mila in his arms as if she was growing heavy for him.

“What was I to do before now? Kill a national war hero? So I could live the rest of my life in prison?”

Maggie couldn't take her eyes off her baby. Mila was starting to settle down and for that Maggie felt a spasm of relief.

“So, I lived with it,” Victor said. “But it was irony, don't you see? That in order to get Delphine to release the Nazi treasure she'd stolen I was to get justice on the man who wiped out my family. Finally.”

“Nazi treasure?”

“Do not attempt to appear guileless, Madame Dernier,” he said. “I know about the gold.”

Does he mean the Degas? Does he not know it's a painting?

“She told me one evening after too much wine at dinner. She said she had a treasure in her possession worth more than all of her wealth. I thought long and hard about what to do about it. Finally I hired someone to find and steal it while Delphine was at lunch—with me as it happens—but it went bad and her nurse was killed.”

Maggie's mind was swimming. Even an innocent move on Maggie's part might prompt him to drop Mila into the empty shaft.

“I decided to take the direct approach after that,” Victor said. “I began calling her. Without revealing my identity.”

“Threatening her,” Maggie said.

“I told her, ‘give me the treasure or your loved ones will die one by one.'”

“So you killed Gerard too? And attacked me in the catacombs?”

“Not me personally but yes. I needed Delphine to see I was serious. I thought if she could see how easily her worthless nephew could be taken from her, she would see how easy it would be for you to be killed or this little one.” Obscenely, he patted Mila's back like a fond uncle.

Tears pricked Maggie's eyes and her hands ached to touch her baby.

“But you don't know what the treasure is?” she asked, still trying to keep him talking. She knew the minute he discovered the treasure was a painting he could neither sell nor display in his home, he would likely become even more unhinged.

“Do not attempt to distract me. Whatever it is, it's priceless,” Victor said with annoyance. “The Nazis weren't known for stealing shit.”

Maggie heard a police siren in the distance. She held her breath but the sound began to fade as it went further and further away.

“I was with her at the end, you know,” she said.

“We all die,” he said shrugging. “Stop stalling.”

“She knew it was you,” Maggie said. “That's what killed her.”

He shifted uncomfortably. “I disguised my voice. She couldn't have known.”

“But in the end she did.”

“You're lying.” He licked his lips and looked around nervously as if expecting Delphine to appear and confront him.

“Am I lying about what happened to Michelle? When you went to Delphine's apartment tonight, she was there first, wasn't she?”

“Enough!” Victor said. “I see what you're doing! You have thirty seconds to bring me the gold from inside the apartment where I know you hid it before I kill this child. And trust me, I don't care what happens to me after that.”

“If you…if you—” Maggie's stomach lurched with helpless terror at the sight of her baby in his arms. She couldn't walk away. She couldn't leave her…

“I will not kill her unless I see you returning with empty hands, Madame.
Now, go
.”

Maggie edged toward the open door, her eyes on Mila. The baby reached for her as she passed and it was all Maggie could do not to touch her but Victor turned his body toward the open elevator shaft. All he needed to do was let go and Mila would plunge to her death. With one last look at her child in a madman's hands, Maggie turned and ran into the apartment.

She forced herself not to think of what might happen if the police or Laurent were to come back now
.
The only thing that stood between life and death for her baby was whatever panicked, mad plan Maggie could come up with before somebody showed up and forced Victor's hand.

She ran into the apartment and straight to the children's bedroom—she couldn't not. She heard snoring coming from both Jemmy and Zouzou and saw them in their beds. Had they been drugged? It didn't seem possible that they were really asleep. She saw the stiff form of a body lying between the beds and she forced herself not to look closer.

If Beatrice were still alive, Maggie could do nothing at the moment to help her.

Maggie turned, a prayer on her lips, and hurried to her bedroom. She pulled her valise off the shelf in the closet and, looking wildly around, tried to think what to do.

Should I get a knife from the kitchen?
But he said he'd drop her if she came back empty-handed!

A shout from Victor sent an ice pick of fear up her spine until it exploded in her brain.

Stop thinking! Just do it!

She flung open the suitcase and scraped the tabletop contents of her dresser—books, perfume, a marble-based alarm clock—into the bag, latched it shut and ran back to the stairwell.

Victor still stood by the elevator shaft. He held Mila outstretched in his arms over the dark empty shaft.

Maggie's voice trembled. “If you drop her, you won't get the…treasure. Take the bag and
go
. The police are coming.”

Except of course Victor couldn't take the bag and leave Maggie alive. And they both knew that.

“A little closer, if you please, Madame,” Victor said, his eyes on the satchel in her arms.

“It's very heavy,” Maggie said.

He now clutched Mila to his chest. “Then push it to me. Closer.”

“First give me my baby.”

“Not quite yet, Madame.”

She didn't know how he would do it—how he thought he could kill her and still escape—but she could see in his eyes that he had a plan.

Even if she could somehow grab Mila away from him, she knew she couldn't escape. She couldn't leave Jem and Zouzou—and she couldn't lock herself in the apartment either. Victor stood between her and the door.

Maggie set the heavy suitcase down. She shoved it slowly to where he stood. His eyes were on the suitcase, clearly trying to imagine what wonders it might hold.

And then she kicked it hard and watched it skid into the open shaft.

Victor turned and watched it fall, a shriek of horror bursting from his lips.

At the same time Maggie lunged at him. She wrapped her arms around him. She felt Mila's soft body in her hands.

Her momentum took them all down the gaping shaft.