Murder on the Champ de Mars (36 page)

“A fool, that minister who liked little boys.” Dussollier waved his hand. “Leseur was blackmailing him for … what was it?”

She thought back to the incriminating photo. Françoise’s words: “the manipulator.”

“He wanted a ministerial post, I think,” Dussolier was saying. “Those thugs for hire were just supposed to threaten him. But it went wrong.”

“Wrong enough to kill Pascal Leseur and cover it up as a suicide?”

“Not my watch. Blauet, the fool, went along with them. Drunk, the thugs said, roaring drunk. This Pascal fell and hit his head. An accident, but the Gypsy lover walked in and,
enfin
, they couldn’t have a witness, could they?”

“So Blauet took Papa off the case to keep it quiet. To shut it down?”

“I worked the investigation with your father.” A tired smile. “We cooperated, not for the first time either.” Dussollier checked his phone again. She edged back in her chair, scrabbling in the dirt trying to reach her clutch. Her heart hammered. Waiting for Tesla? Would she be able to get away if there were two of them? “That’s the way things were done. You should understand, Aimée. Move on.”

She put it together now. “But now his brother Roland, aware of the tell-all memoir, suspected Pascal had been murdered, didn’t he? He figured out about your cover-up.” The puzzle pieces fit; she should have seen it earlier. “You’d be implicated. So you squashed the memoir. Then squashed him. Like Nicu. And Drina because you knew she’d expose the truth. Drina was the key. She saw you. Why didn’t you tell me, Dussollier?”

Stupid. All the arrows pointed in the same directions, but she hadn’t wanted to follow them—when Nicu had shown up after the baptism, Dussollier must have overheard somehow. Panicked that Drina, after all this time, had returned on the eve of his retirement to threaten his cover-up, to ruin the crowning glory of his daughter’s engagement party among his elite cronies and his relatives from Toulon. Toulon—it finally came back to her; the nurse at the clinic had told her the
monsieur
who had posed as ministry security had had a Toulon accent. Dussollier had abducted a dying Drina to keep her quiet, destroyed whatever incriminated him in her notebook, and acted helpful to distract and derail Aimée’s progress, while always staying a step ahead …

“I’m telling you now, see,” he said, a smile breaking on his face. “It’s healthy getting things out in the open, you’re right. It’s all for the best, you’ll see. I’m retiring, Chloé will have a little something … 
non
, a big something for university. Put my gift in the bank now and see how it grows. Jean-Claude would have wanted that.”

A bribe? Invoking Chloé’s future? How twisted he was, claiming to care for her daughter and threatening her in the same breath.

“Jean-Claude loved you as you love Chloé, Aimée, remember that. He had to pay a price to keep you safe. You want to raise Chloé, don’t you?” Dussollier shrugged. “
Alors
, you don’t want your baby’s ex
-flic
father gaining full custody, do you? A
court order declaring you unfit, like your crazy mother, barring you visitation until she’s eighteen?”

Her heart thumped. How the hell did he know this, if even she didn’t know what had happened to her mother? For a moment his bleary gaze settled on the guard. Her now throbbing hand scrabbled for her clutch, pulled it behind her. She tried to grip the gun’s handle. Her finger didn’t cooperate.

“Me, I keep a little insurance,” said Dussollier. “Know the weaknesses, the dirty secrets that people keep hidden. Judges’ drunken car crashes, ministers partying with young girls and boys, diplomats caught with cocaine. We keep it quiet, do our jobs.”

“Then you hold all the cards, Dussollier,” she said with a sigh. “What do you want me to do?” Could she lull him into thinking she’d cooperate—or would his reflexes have slowed enough for her to threaten him and escape? She wedged the clutch’s snap handle aside with her thumb.

Dussollier checked his phone again. His watch. Shook his head. “I can’t wait anymore.” He took a knife from his pocket. “I don’t want to do this, Aimée.”

“Then don’t,” she said, rubbing her hand. “You don’t have to. Let’s just …”

He shook his head. “I’m tired of explaining. Nothing’s gotten through to you, has it? You still think we should pay, don’t you? Me and Morbier?”

“What?”

A little laugh. “Ask him yourself.”

Tremors rippled through her legs. What could he be insinuating?

“Don’t fight me now, Aimée, we’ll make sure the baby’s taken care of,” said Dussollier, rubbing his cheek. “I wish you hadn’t made me do this.”

Gritting her teeth, she flexed her broken finger inside her clutch. Closed her hand around the pistol. “Talk to someone
who cares, Dussollier. No one takes my baby. No one smears my papa. Maybe I was a selfish teenager, but I listened to Papa. And the last thing he said to Drina, before you murdered him in the explosion—”

“Don’t blame it all on me,” said Dussollier, brandishing the knife at her. “I wasn’t the only one.”

She pulled out the pistol. Aimed it, her hands shaking.

“Can’t do it, eh?” Quicker than she could think, Dussollier knocked her hand away and threw her down against the wall.

Her chest clamped; she couldn’t breathe. His black tie and tuxedo pressed into her face. Her stinging fingers scrambled on the ground, scratching the beaten earth, trying to feel for the pistol.

“I’ll make your excuses upstairs.” He knelt on her chest, his knife glinting in the dim light.

“Knifing me at your daughter’s engagement reception? How the hell will you hush that up?”

“Easy. The knife shows up in the guard’s hands. He was supposed to duct tape you. Hired help, I should have known.” His stale breath in her face. “Everyone upstairs is in my pocket, Aimée. They always have been. If they want to hush things up, roadblock or stall an investigation, they come to me.”

Sickening.

“You planned this all out, didn’t you? Never really meant to give me a choice.”

“Details, Aimée—don’t they say the devil’s in the details?”

Her working finger found the metal of the handle, her fingers inched to the trigger. Breathe, she had to breathe. Get air.

His left hand circled her neck. Squeezed.

She tried to whisper, but no sound came out.

“What’s that, Aimée?” he leaned forward, his breath in her face. “You play, you pay, like your papa. But I need to get back to my guests.”

“I don’t think so, Fifi.” She leveled the Glock. Fought through the pain and squeezed.

The crack of her shots reverberated off the stone. Two. Three. The stink of cordite filled the air. Her ears rang with the explosions. She shoved a wide-eyed Dussollier off her, surprise still on his face.

She had minutes to get out of here. On her hands and knees, she gasped for breath. She checked the security guard and found no pulse.

Awkwardly using her left hand, she wiped her prints off the pistol with her shawl. Put the pistol in the guard’s hand and fired again twice into Dussollier. She grabbed her clutch from behind the broken chair. Pulled herself up the wall and slipped her wobbling foot into the Louboutin.

She couldn’t count on the thick stone walls or the music to have muffled the shots—not with the caterers so nearby, or the waiters sneaking a smoke. Again with her shawl, she turned the handle, opened the door. Looked both ways. Clear.

A phone was ringing behind her. Dussollier’s. His partner Tesla checking to see how things had gone? She backed up, hating to do it, to touch him, but she reached into his tuxedo pocket, nonetheless. It was silent now—the call had gone to voice mail.

She stuck the phone in her clutch. Remembered, luckily, to pick up the smashed carcass of her own and stick it besides Dussollier’s. She scanned the stone hallway—still clear—then hurried up the ramp into the brisk evening air. She heard a catering truck’s engine starting up. The shaking had subsided, but her hand was throbbing.
Focus
, she had to focus and get the hell out of here.

She rounded the corner to see the catering truck’s red brake lights: it had paused by the cypress trees while a security guard moved the barricades for it to pull out. She leaped toward it, opened the back door, pulled herself in and crouched down
among giant salad bowls and trays. Forced herself to breathe evenly. Keep focused. And prayed the truck would move.

Moments later it did, rumbling forward with the radio turned up high and the driver talking on his cell phone. Then she noticed blood on Martine’s dress—Dussollier’s blood.
Merde
.

She spit on the bloodstain, then again and again, remembering from an old forensic manual that saliva enzymes and rubbing took care of the worst. Then she draped her shawl over the damp spot.

She counted to one hundred as the truck turned right onto rue de Varenne, then to two hundred as the driver argued on his cell phone. When the truck stopped at a traffic light, she gritted her teeth at the pain, turned the rear door’s handle and slid out. Back on rue du Bac where she’d started. A green neon cross shone at her from across the street: a
pharmacie
.

She stopped for painkillers. Asked the pharmacist to open the pill bottle for her and downed them dry. Anything to stop the pain in her now swelling fingers.

She checked Dussollier’s phone with her good hand and guessed his password on the second try—his daughter’s name. His contacts were impressive. She hit his voice-mail button. His earlier messages came up and she listened to them one by one. More than impressive—incriminating.

The last one she listened to made her stomach churn.

“I’m waiting. Champ de Mars. Usual place.”

She hailed a taxi. En route, she made a call.

T
HE FIGURE SAT
on the bench in the darkness, smoking. The cigarette tip glowed gold-orange and the acrid tang of unfiltered Gauloise hovered in the air. Startled pigeons fluttered from the hydrangea bushes as she approached.

“Dussollier couldn’t make it,” she said, sitting down.

Morbier turned to look at her. Those basset-hound eyes, the bags under them more pronounced. The thick dark brows.

“I hope he served decent champagne at the reception, Leduc.”

“Veuve Clicquot.”

“Your favorite.” Morbier tossed the cigarette and ground it into the gravel path with his toe. “He told you, didn’t he? Cleared the past up.”

She waited, her heart thumping, while Morbier took another cigarette from the wrinkled pack in his pocket. Scratched a wooden match against the bench. It lit with a
thupt
and a yellow flare.

“Now everyone involved in what happened to your father is gone,” said Morbier. “It’s over, Leduc.”

“You’ve lied to me for years, Morbier.” She shook her head, saddened. “Why not just tell me the truth?”

“I think I just did.” He glanced at his watch. “Go home and take care of what’s important. Chloé.”

Zinc rooftops glowed in the light reflected from the Tour Eiffel, just visible through the trees. From the next tree-lined
allée
came the crunch of gravel, the swish of bicycle tires.

“I found proof, Morbier.”

“Proof, Leduc? Not this again. Give it up.”

“Ten years ago, you met Papa before the explosion.”

A snort. “This comes from the Gypsy,
non?
They lie for a living.”

“Drina was Papa’s lookout under the colonnade at Place Vendôme.” Her words caught in her throat. The emotions fought in her chest. “You and Dussollier set Papa up.”

Pause.

“It’s not like that,” Morbier said, shaking his head.

“Look me in the face for once and tell the truth. You’re Tesla.”

His voice grew cold. “If I tell you what really happened, you’re dead, Leduc.”

Fear shot through her. “You’d kill me just like that.”

“This thing’s bigger than you and me,” he said. “You’ll never know how big. We’re just tiny cogs in the big machine.”

Cogs in the machine
—Dussollier’s words.

“Don’t try shifting the blame. You can’t just claim conspiracy.”

“We were all in it, Leduc. All of us.”

Her papa … 
non, non
. She couldn’t hear this from Morbier too. “Liar.”

“Your insistence on finding your mother.” Morbier shook his head. “Good God, do you know how that hurt him? He’d sacrificed his career to get her out of the country. Have you ever thought about the deal he had to make to protect you and her?”

Her cheeks felt wet. She rubbed her face. She couldn’t stop the shaking in her legs.

“What do you mean?”

“He cooperated. Otherwise your crazy mother would have ended up in an unmarked grave. He couldn’t face that. Or face you.”

Realization seared her. The timing—it added up. Her mother vanishing, then Papa helping cover up the Leseur affair? Had he cooperated because he’d struck a deal?

“Your Papa had had enough. Wanted out. So many times I tried to tell you,” said Morbier. A sigh. “But I knew you couldn’t hear it—would refuse to understand.”

“That you killed Papa?”

“That I didn’t get to Place Vendôme in time,” he said. “Couldn’t warn him.”

Was that true? “And you expect me to believe that?”

“You’re like a daughter to me.” Morbier’s voice choked with emotion. “Don’t you think I wanted to stop lying? I’ve tried to do right, to make it up. When I did they trumped up charges against me, threw me in jail. Remember? You got me out.”

“That’s history now.” Then it hit her. She’d been so stupid. The scene outside her door on the quai after the baptism—she’d
been crazed with anger because of Melac’s threat at the church. Dussollier had already left—he couldn’t have overheard Nicu’s plea. She wanted to kick herself. “You overheard Nicu at my door after the baptism, and then you disappeared. It was you who told Dussollier I was on my way.
You
abducted Drina.” She grabbed the bench, trying to still her shaking hands. “Then had the gall to come back with cold hands, drink tisane in my kitchen. And when I thought you were having a heart attack you … made me promise …” Her throat caught.

Morbier’s brows knit. “I warned Dussollier, tried to reason with him, but the crazy fool—”