Murder on the Ile Saint-Louis (10 page)

She opened the window. In the courtyard, several uniformed
flics
stood talking to the woman from reception. The woman pointed up at the window. Nelie’s window.

Her pulse raced. She had only minutes. Forget searching, she had to get out. Her foot slipped on a rag rug and she cushioned Stella with one arm, grabbing the metal bed frame with the other hand. It was a cheap tubular frame, typical of dormitories. Hollow tubed! And the screw where the tubes joined was loose. A good place to hide something, Aimée realized. After two turns, the screw came off and she wrenched the tubes apart. Inside, her index finger found a rolled-up plastic folder. Empty. The name
Alstrom
was embossed on the cover.

Their client, Regnault, ran Alstrom’s publicity campaign. The protesters she’d seen from Regnault’s window, the blue lights that had illuminated the demonstration last night just across Pont de Sully . . . somehow they were related to the victim Orla, Nelie, and the baby.

She rerolled the folder, stuck it back in the bed frame, scrabbled to her feet, and draped her jacket over her shoulder. By the time she’d closed the door behind her, the jacket covered Stella as well. She heard footsteps and the murmur of voices from across the courtyard.

A single file of
flics
tramped up Staircase C on her right. She ducked behind a pillar. But not before she’d seen the leader point to Nelie’s door. The other officers fell back, in position. A keening cry came from her arms. Aimée wiped her finger, stuck it in Stella’s mouth, praying it would pacify the baby until she could give her a bottle.

She padded down Staircase B, keeping close to the wall of the arcade. Stella’s mouth gummed her finger. She reached in the bag, found the bottle, and shook it. Thank God, the formula line reached the top.

Head down, she threaded her way through the soccer team crowd, made it to the covered entryway, and opened the vestibule door.

“Excuse me, Madame?” said a blue-uniformed
flic
.

She froze.

He smiled, and handed her a diaper. “This fell from your bag.”

“Merci,”
she said. “Excuse me.” She edged past him, eager to get away.

Rain pattered on the warm stone buildings turning to steam in the unseasonable heat. She shielded Stella with the baby bag, quickened her step, and turned the corner onto Quai d’Anjou. Mist curled under the supports of Pont Marie. Then the spring-like drizzle turned into a downpour before she could take shelter in a vaulted doorway. Drops beaded her eyelashes. She took a few more steps, then caught her breath. An unmarked police car blocked her building entrance.

Tuesday Afternoon

René, holding a dripping umbrella, paced over the gravel by the statue in Place Bayre as he debated what to do.

He reached for his phone and the stuffed toy in his pocket squeaked. The unmarked police car parked in front of Aimée’s door indicated that she’d given in and called the authorities. Guilt racked him.

The way she looked at the baby, the way the baby turned toward her voice. All she noticed was the baby. Now it had infected him. He’d found himself noticing babies in the bank that morning, comparing stroller prices in the window of a shop in Fontainebleau. Ridiculous.

He’d insisted she call social services, demanded she do what he thought was right. Then why the queasiness in the pit of his stomach?

He pulled out his cell phone. “Aimée, do you have company or shall I come up?” He tried to keep concern out of his voice. She might be in real trouble with the authorities.

“Hurry,” she said. “Come in through the back, you know the way. I have to tell you something.”

AIMÉE PACED BY the sputtering radiator. Nothing seemed to add up. She’d sneaked back the way she’d left, via the back passage. Stella was sleeping in the hammock she’d fashioned from an Afghan throw, suspended between the eighteenth-century
recamier
and the protruding window hasp.

By the time René draped his damp Burberry raincoat by the fireplace she couldn’t wait any longer. She thrust the photo in front him. “See, René.”

René tore his gaze away from the baby.

“Notice the woman wearing a jean jacket?”

“Who is she?”

“Orla. She’s on a slab in the morgue.”

René stepped back in alarm. “What have you gotten yourself into now?”

“Her body was found in the Seine by Pont de Sully. I think either she left the baby, or it was Nelie, her friend. I don’t know which one is the mother.” She took him by the arm and led him to her laptop.

“Wait a minute,” he said. “Start from the beginning.”

“I won’t know more until I can get hold of the autopsy report. But I can’t figure out why either of them trusted me.” She rolled up the sleeves of her silk shirt. “There’s no way I’m going to contact social services until I know.”

“Know what, Aimée?” he asked. “This gets more complicated every minute.”

She showed him the newspaper article and described her visit to the morgue and Krzysztof’s reaction—despite his denial that he knew the dead woman. Then she told him that later she’d found this photo of both Krzysztof and the blonde, Orla, with some others, in his room.

“Don’t tell me he handed it to you after denying he knew her?” René tapped his stubby fingers on the chair.

“OK, I ‘visited’ his room and he happened not to be there,” she said. “He’s gone.”

“Breaking and entering, some would call it.”

Now René would know she was crazy if he didn’t already. “His roommate let me in.”

“You’re guessing there’s a connection. You have no facts to go on, Aimée.”

“Guessing? Janou at the corner café recognized Nelie from the photo.” She pointed to the dark-haired one. “The two women were seen together last night with the baby.”

“Let the
flics
handle this.”

“Not only that, Nelie lives around the corner—literally—in the student hostel. But she wasn’t there when I went there just now. Somehow she looks familiar, but I can’t place her. She must know me, otherwise . . .”

Apprehension filled her. This felt all wrong. “If the dead girl is Stella’s mother, why hasn’t Nelie come back or tried to reach me?”

Pedestrians scurried below on Quai d’Anjou. Every other woman seemed to be pushing a stroller or holding a toddler’s hand. Had there been a baby explosion that she hadn’t noticed before? Wind chased the silver puffs of cloud across the sky, leaving pewter puddles on the pavement. Aimée felt more confused than ever and weighed down by responsibility. She couldn’t call social services and abandon the baby, like her own mother had abandoned her. At least not until she knew who Stella’s mother was and why the baby had been entrusted to her.

René tugged his goatee. “Why must you be involved? What’s it got to do with you?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “But for some reason Nelie didn’t trust the
flics
.”

“The baby’s not your responsibility. Under the circumstances, you’ve done more than enough.”

“If only it were that simple! Say Orla was murdered, René, as she was trying to hide something . . . and Stella . . .”

“Stella?” René looked at her quizzically.

“Well . . .” She searched for the words. “She’s not an inanimate object. I can’t keep calling her ‘it.’”

“None of this is your job. Turn the baby—Stella—over to people who can take care of her. Let the
flics
find the mother.”

Aimée’s gaze rested on the pink bundle swaying in the hammock.

René slumped and put his head in his hands. “
Tant pis!
Don’t tell me you want to run the office with a crib in the corner? Be realistic, Aimée.”

“Realistic?” She realized that she did possess some facts. Maybe when she laid them out, they would lead to a conclusion. “Nelie, the dark-haired one, had information on Alstrom, the oil company,” she began.

“Did I miss something here?”

His words jarred her. Miss . . . missing . . . what if Nelie couldn’t contact her?

If Nelie knew that Orla was dead . . . again Aimée came back to Krzysztof.

A vital piece was missing from the puzzle.

She started over. “Nelie hid an Alstrom file in her room at the women’s hostel around the corner. I found the cover of the file. The contents were gone.”

René stood openmouthed. “How? Breaking and entering again?”

“The
flics
will have found it by now. They were right behind me.” She pulled out her checkbook. “Look, René.” She showed him the marks she’d copied from the baby’s body. “Doesn’t it look like an equation?”

He turned away.

“It doesn’t hurt to look; it won’t bite you.”

“It’s bitten you already.” He rolled his green eyes. “I don’t know. Where did you find this?” He pulled out his handkerchief, monogrammed RF, and wiped his forehead.

“This was written under Stella’s arm, René,” Aimée said. “The mother’s protecting not only her baby but this, too. Whatever it may mean. Stella’s the key.”

He shook his head. “I don’t want to have anything more to do with this. Neither should you.”

She reported Krzysztof’s look of recognition when he’d scanned the papers in the Regnault file.

“Why didn’t he identify his girflfriend in the morgue?” René asked.

Good question.

“There is a reason, René.” She sat down at the laptop. “I have to find out what it is.”

“Wait, you’re not suggesting—Aimée, we work for Regnault, Alstrom’s publicity firm. So, in the first place, delving into Alstrom’s affairs is unethical,” René said.

“Did I say I was going to do that?”

“You don’t have to,” René said. “Second, if Alstrom suspects you are checking on internal procedures in their company . . .” He cleared his throat. “We’ll never land another computer security contract, Aimée.”

She stared out at the arms of the Seine, then back at her laptop screen, trying to figure out where Orla would have entered the water. “The Net’s an open door if you know how to navigate, right? We do it all the time, René. How do you think
Libération
scooped the bribes camouflaged as campaign contributions to the Socialists? Some geek on the inside fed them the information.”

He shrugged. “We’re in the computer security business, we’re not muckrackers, Aimée. We have enough trouble of our own. The tax refund due since last year still sits on a bureaucrat’s desk, not to mention the fact that we have to eat and pay rent. Our security contracts pay our bills. Focus on our problems. Leave the rest to the activists.”

Right. Of course he was right. “Good point. But it’s the tip of some iceberg, René. An iceberg of scandal.”

“And Regnault? The company that pays us? I’ll ask you again, do you think what you intend to do is ethical?”

“Vavin begged me this morning to sign a new contract.”

René opened his briefcase. “And that would consist of?”

“Patching their firewalls, which were hacked right before we came on board. Continued system administration. See. Boring, routine and . . .”

“With a nice check in payment for our work,” René interrupted, scanning the contract. His eyes brightened. “We need it right now.”

“Vavin’s desperate, his sysadmin’s in the hospital. He tripled our fee.”

“Glad you took the initiative. I’ve handled the firewall, for now” René said.

“With your usual threat to hackers, I suppose.”

René nodded. “If you read this, you’re dead,” was his signature threat.

Stella stirred, her eyes blinking open. Time for another bottle. Aimée opened the baby bag, then glanced at the mail on the table she’d picked up from downstairs.

In the pile of bills lay a smudged, unstamped manila envelope bearing her name: Aimée. Hand delivered. Visions of the tire iron filled her mind, of the figure who had chased her on the quai. Her arm shook so much she dropped the envelope.

René asked, “What’s the matter?”

Her face paled. “Everything or nothing.” She took latex gloves from a drawer, slit the envelope, and shook it. A page torn from a magazine fell onto the table. It displayed a crossword puzzle filled in with smeared ink. The capital letters ran off the page.

Aimée recognized it as the back page of
Mots Croisés
, the weekly crossword magazine sold at street kiosks. Underneath the puzzle were words printed in the same scrawling block letters:
WAIT ONE MORE DAY. HER MOTHER BEGS YOU TO TELL NO ONE, OR THEY’LL KILL HER, ME, TOO. HER LIFE AND THE BABY’S ARE IN DANGER, DON’T CONTACT THE FLICS, OR TELL ANYONE.

Aimée’s hands trembled.

Kill her, me, too.
The shaky letters recalled old penmanship books from the thirties. She wondered what she should do . . . could do.

“You believe this?” René asked. But she saw fear in René’s eyes, too.

“Do I have a choice?”

Her buzzer sounded. Nelie? She ran to the open window to gaze below. Morbier, her godfather, who was a commissaire, stood on the cobblestones. Alone.

“Leduc, thought I’d stop by for a cup of coffee,” he shouted up. A cloud passed over and briefly shadowed his corduroy jacket with its leather patches on the sleeves, his salt-and-pepper hair, his basset-hound drooping eyes.

He hadn’t “stopped by” in five years.

“What’s the occasion?”

”Invite me up. As I was in the
quartier
. . .”

In the
quartier
. . . an interesting way to put it. No doubt he had been called in to investigate Orla’s death.

The last thing she needed, Morbier up here with the baby. “
Un moment,
Morbier. There’s plaster and stucco all over. I’ll come down, we’ll go to lunch. My treat.”

She ducked back inside. “Can you give Stella a bottle, René . . . please. Watch her for a little bit.”

“Again?”

“She’s so good. Never a peep from her.”

And then Stella contradicted her by crying. Aimée picked her up, patted her back. The cries subsided.

“She likes to be held, René, that’s all.”

“But Regnault’s firewalls need more protection . . .” She heard the doubt in his voice.

“Program the new safeguards while she drinks the bottle. When I get back I’ll handle the rest.” She had to get his mind off her predicament and on to work. “Vavin assured me he’d propose our new package to his boss. Count on his support.”

René looked undecided.

“You saw the note. Morbier’s fishing. But I have to find out what he knows. Please, René!”

She thrust Stella into his hands.

“Do I have a choice?” he asked.

She grabbed her bag.

AIMÉE WILLED HER shaking hands under the red-and-white-checked oilcloth to be still. She’d steered Morbier to the bistro around the corner. It had a dark seventeenth-century timbered ceiling and a stone fireplace big enough to walk into. Now the fireplace held a gas heater piled with menus.

“Still remodeling your apartment, Leduc? Business must be good.”

Morbier stored information, compartmentalized it in a way that put a database to shame. Old style and with the human touch, better than any profiler could do with a computer.

“Good? The ancient gas lines in the ceiling are still live; that was our latest setback.” She had to divert him and get him off the track. Then maybe she could discover what he knew. “Every time they drill a hole I end up in the bank manager’s office. Asking for credit.”

She reached for the bread basket at the same time he did. Their hands touched. Age spots she’d never noticed showed near his knuckles.

And not for the first time she wished that their relationship had been different. Or that she could share things with him as she had with her father. But five years ago that had changed.

“So, Morbier, you’re hobnobbing here with the nobility and just dropped in to visit me?”

“That’s me all over.” Morbier grinned. A dyed-in-the wool Socialist, Morbier had lived until the year before in the working-class slice of Bastille he’d grown up in, in the same fourth-floor walk-up apartment over the old metal foundry he’d been born in.

“The special looks good.” He gestured in the direction of the blackboard and raised two fingers at the man behind the counter.

“Oui,
Commissaire, two specials.”

Morbier tucked the napkin into his collar. Sniffed and cocked his eyebrow. “New perfume?”

Eau de baby, instead of her usual Chanel No. 5. “I’m trying new fragrances,” she said. She looked down, noticed a clump of clotted formula on her blouse, and flicked it off. “Last time you ‘stopped by’ was for Papa’s funeral.”

The pitiful affair she’d organized with his colleagues and neighbors in attendance.
Flics,
the baker, the priest recounting Pernod-fueled stories until dawn smeared the sky. Reminiscences hadn’t brought him back. The wake remained hazy but the hangover had hardened her resolve. She’d quit criminal work.