Murder on the Champ de Mars (30 page)

“She treated Leseur like a spurned lover,” said Aimée. “There’s more to this. Some connection to Pascal Leseur.” Otherwise why would he have flashed the
Paris Match
featuring his brother’s funeral in her face?

“Hmmm. Gerard Delavigne, her dead husband, graduated from École Nationale d’Administration, previously served in the ministry at quai d’Orsay,” said René.

Think. How could that be connected?

“I taped the
Paris Match
spread to the timeline. Can you check the funeral photos for Gerard Delavigne?”

“Hold on, Aimée.” A pause as she heard René crank down his chair. The scrape as he pulled the step stool to the wall. Why did she always forget that things that were simple for her were difficult for him? “I’m looking at the
Paris Match
funeral photos … 
Et voilà
, a G. Delavigne is listed as a pallbearer. Her husband?”

“I’d better ask her,” she said, backing out of the bushes to the path. “Keep monitoring Leseur’s tracker in case he leaves.
Merci
, René.”

She clicked off, took out her earphones. Hurrying, she kept her head down and reached the next tree-canopied
allée
. On the winding path toward the dark outline of the marionette theater, the Westie sniffed and watered the bushes. How should she play this?

“
Excusez-moi
, Madame Delavigne.”

The woman gave a sharp turn on the gravel. Her scraped-back bright white hair revealed a makeup-free, tear-streaked face. Her cheekbones were sharp, her skin completely unlined
except for some faint traces of smile lines. A classic beauty. Her lips quivered.

“Who are you?
Non
, I know. You’re from
sécurité
. Never give up, do you?”

“Did my windbreaker give me away?” Aimée said the first thing that came into her head. There was an orange
Sécurité
logo on the collar; she’d appropriated the windbreaker from a security job she’d done several years ago. At least it gave her an intro.

“You’ve probably been listening to everything we’ve said,” Françoise said. “After all these years, can’t you just leave me in peace?”

“
Désolée
, Madame Delavigne, but—”

“You’re all the same,” she interrupted. “Whatever branch or unit. Can’t you just stop hounding Roland? We deserve some privacy.”

So there was history here. An intimacy. The woman already resented her, so she might as well jump right in. Test her hunch that this was somehow connected to the tell-all memoir Martine had told her about.

“The blackmail threat’s real, Madame Delavigne.”

“Blackmail?” Her voice carried under the branches. “Roland’s naïve, a fool sometimes. Leave him alone. His brother was the manipulator, not him. Why bring this all up again, so many years later?”

Françoise Delavigne pulled a tissue from her pocket, blew her nose. Wiped her eyes. The excitable unattended Westie rooted in the bushes.

“Not for me to say, Madame.” Aimée racked her brain for how to steer the woman toward Pascal Leseur’s death. “But his brother …?”

“Pascal? Pah. Just like your bosses on the quai d’Orsay.” Françoise Delavigne had assumed Aimée worked for the ministry’s internal surveillance team. Not the first time she’d encountered
a member of that team, judging by her reaction. “Clutching at power, backstabbing, manipulating.” She’d warmed up, breathing fire now. “Roland’s brother excelled at that. That’s what did him in. Not our—”

“Affair?” Aimée interrupted. “Or was it Djanka Constantin’s murder?” Held her breath—she’d either hit the truth or gone off in left field.

“Our affair, of which you’ve evidently been informed, ended long ago.”

But she hadn’t denied the link to Djanka’s murder.

“Pascal Leseur fathered Djanka Constantin’s child.”

“Et alors?”

“Pascal’s and Djanka’s bodies were discovered within hours of each other.” Now she tried her hunch. “So at Roland’s insistence, the
flics
were pulled off the investigation, and now twenty years later he’s being blackmailed over the cover-up.”

“Cover-up? I don’t doubt it,” she said, matter-of-fact. “But not on Roland’s end. Roland can’t admit Pascal kept secrets, dirt on his colleagues at the ministry. Suicide, murder?” Shook her head. “I don’t know. A tragedy. That’s what my husband always said.”

She thought again. A staged suicide as René had suggested? She thought of René’s theory. That would have been a convenient way to dispose of a backstabber like Pascal, as Françoise seemed to think of him. And Drina knew too much, so her father …

“In case you think any of this has anything to do with me or Roland, you’re way off course,” Françoise was saying. “Leave him alone. My husband never gave a fig that Roland I were lovers. Gerard’s mistresses were numerous … 
enfin
, until the Parkinson’s really took hold.” Françoise shook her head. “Not news to your bosses. Postings in foreign countries were a good cover for his indiscretions, and for a slow-developing disease.
Your people were always so good about getting us out of the way. Which was what this has been really about, hasn’t it?”

Aimée didn’t know what to say. Just nodded.

“Your bosses would have done anything to keep my husband quiet.” She jerked at the leash. “Well, it’s all over now. Gerard’s dead and whatever he knew went with him. Tell your boss I don’t care, let the papers and publishers print what they want. It’s twenty years ago. I’m just a forty-seven-year-old grandmother who’s living in London to help my daugher get treatment.”

“But Madame, you and I know the powers that be—then and now—have a lot to lose. Especially whoever was involved in the cover-up.”

“
Exactement
, Mademoiselle. You came here to give me a warning,
n’est-ce pas?
Tell them it’s received loud and clear, and not to count on me giving a damn.”

No wonder this savvy Françoise spoke with such candor. She’d been navigating these waters for a long time. She gave Aimée a sideways look. “You look intelligent. But I’m a terrible judge of character. I picked the wrong man to leave.” She paused. “Think about where you work. Your paycheck comes from men afraid to lose power, driven by fear. Like Versailles—nothing has changed in two hundred years. They’re all vengeful backbiters.”

“You mean appointed officials,” Aimée said, angling for names. “Like who?”

“Men afraid of a Gypsy taboo,” Françoise said. “Would you believe, grown men terrified by hocus-pocus?”

The Westie barked. Before Aimée could ask more, it had dragged Françoise around the hedgerow and into the path of a jogger. Françoise stumbled and swerved, just avoiding a collision.

Barking louder now, the Westie pawed the dirt by a clump of bushes. “What’s the matter, Filou?”

Aimée took out her penlight. Shone it on the undergrowth.

The dog yelped and pawed in the bushes behind the reach of her beam. “Filou, if that’s a squirrel …”

Aimée saw a lanyard hanging from the dog’s mouth.

“
Mon Dieu!”
Françoise pulled Filou’s leash. “Leave it alone, Filou. There’s homeless people sleeping here.”

Her phone vibrated. René.

“I have to take this call, Madame,” she said, taking a few steps away on the path. “Where’s Roland Leseur gone?” she asked René, lowering her voice.

“You tell me, Aimée. I think he discovered the tracker.”

Her neck tingled. “Why?”

“No movement.”

“Tell me the last tracker location, René.”

“Champ de Mars. Hasn’t moved for at least seven, maybe nine minutes. Leseur must have wised up, found the tracker and ditched it. There’s another expensive piece of tech down the drain …”

She’d have hell to pay if she didn’t recover René’s pricey toy. Up ahead by the bushes near the bench where Françoise had argued with Leseur, Filou was barking nonstop, dragging Françoise on the leash behind him.

“Filou’s gone crazy,” Françoise said as Aimée caught up, the phone still to her ear. “I don’t know what’s the matter.” She pulled the dog’s leash hard, commanded him to heel.

But there was Roland Leseur, sitting on the bench just where Françoise had left him. Determined to get what more she could out of him, she hurried ahead.

“Monsieur Leseur?”

No answer. Then she noticed the way his head slumped on his neck.

“Can you hear me, Monsieur?” In the rising mist tinged by the yellow-orange glow of the Tour Eiffel, she shone her penlight. Blood pooled on the gravel by his shoe. She gasped.
Stepped back. Then she stepped closer again and felt for a pulse. None. Her throat caught. His wrist was still warm.

“Deactivate the tracker, René. Now.”

“Doing it as we speak. That was an expensive move, Aimée.”

“Go call SAMU from the pay phone down in the café,” she said. “Tell them to respond to an incident on the fifth bench up from the corner of rue Marinoni.”

“What kind of incident?”

“Roland Leseur’s not on the move after all, and he never will be again.”

“What?”

“He’s dead.” She looked down at his chest. The dripping red slit blossoming on his shirt. “A shiv in the ribs.”

Like Nicu. A scream behind her, then a frantic voice shouting. “Roland?”

“Call me a taxi for the corner of rue Marinoni and Avenue de la Bourdonnais.” She thought again. “No, make it corner of rue Saint-Dominique and Avenue de la Bourdonnais. Quick, René.” She clicked off. “Don’t look, Françoise. We need to get out of here.”

“Roland … 
Non, non.
” Françoise burst into sobs.

“Don’t touch him.” Aimée pulled Françoise away, grabbed the leash and pulled the frantic dog away from the corpse. “Let’s go. Quickly, move.”

“But we can’t leave him like that.”

“The ambulance and the
flics
are en route.”

Françoise struggled and broke away.

Aimée caught up with her and wrapped her arms around the flailing woman. “They’re here somewhere. I don’t know how many or who. But we have to get away. Get to safety. Do you understand?”

“But my house is right here, my daughter’s waiting at home. The dog.”

Didn’t the woman understand the danger?

“You’re all going to a hotel. With the dog. Just do what I say.”

Aimée dragged her by the arm and across the entry to the marionette theater.

Françoise let herself be led, finally. She was breathless and weeping, but she was no longer hysterical. “It was true,” she said as Aimée guided her, one arm tight around her shoulders. “Someone’s been trying to kill him.”

Aimée’s gut clenched. This sobbing woman shaking under her arm, the barking dog and a siren screeching closer didn’t help.

“Please, can you make it to the corner? There’s a taxi waiting.”

“I want to go home.”

“You can’t. We’ll call your daughter. They’re watching.”

“My daughter’s deaf.” Françoise wiped her tear-stained face. “They won’t be watching the servants’ entrance. It’s round the back.”

Françoise fumbled in her trench coat pocket and pulled out a key ring. Tried repeatedly to insert the large old-fashioned key in a metal door of the back gate. The jangling keys were frying Aimée’s nerves.

“Here, let me.”

On the second try, the key turned. Aimée pushed and the door scraped open. Wet leaves lined the garden’s rear service path. Once inside the house’s service entrance, she followed Françoise up a musty wooden staircase. Françoise opened the door to a dark pantry, and Aimée wiped her boots and stepped inside behind her. Filou ran to a water bowl and slurped.

They passed through the kitchen and entered a tapestry-lined dining room. Wooden crates and half-filled cardboard boxes gave the room a forlorn feel.

“I’m packing up the house. In the midst of moving everything—”

“Keep the lights off,” Aimée interrupted. She immediately
wished she’d phrased it more gently. The woman was in shock. “
Désolée
, but you don’t have much time. Do you have your passport?”

“But my daughter—”

“Does she have one?”

“Why should I involve my daughter?”

“Diplomatic passports would be even better. Do you both carry them?”

“Of course, but … what kind of security are you? I’m through with being a pawn passed between the services. Who do you work for?”

“Explanations later. You and your daughter could be next.”

Françoise’s mouth tightened. Strands of hair loosened from her ponytail as she shook her head. “I don’t believe you.”

“So you’d prefer to wait and find out, like Roland did?”

She didn’t know if Françoise was actually next. She didn’t know what the hell was going on. But she’d made too many mistakes already. Everything in her vibrated with fear and told her to get them out of here.

“What if you were the target?” said Aimée. “But no one counted on you arguing with Roland and taking off, or on me entering the picture. Maybe that saved you—Roland was collateral damage because he suspected or knew too much.”

“Mademoiselle, who are you?” her voice rasped. “Security officers don’t wear Chanel.”

Aimée looked down to see that her windbreaker had come undone to reveal her little black dress. If she didn’t come clean, the woman wouldn’t cooperate. “A
détective privé
, hired by Nicu Constantin, the son of Pascal Leseur and Djanka Constantin.” She flashed her detective license with the post-pregnancy photo—slim and smiling for once. “On Sunday, the woman who raised him after his mother was murdered was abducted from her deathbed because she knew secrets.”

Françoise fiddled with the belt on her trench coat. “Secrets … what secrets?”

“A cover-up, but it’s not exactly clear what’s being covered up. And whatever it is these people want to hide, they’re ticked off about it. Nicu was murdered yesterday. Knifed in public, quick and dirty, just like Roland.”

Françoise gasped.

Aimée moved to the dining room’s window, peered from behind the half-drawn damask curtain. The
flics
had arrived. She pulled the curtain closed. “Get your daughter, your diplomatic passports and what you can throw in that Hermès carryall.” Aimée pointed to the bag on a chair.

“But our things,
mon Dieu
, I’ve got so much left to pack and box.”