Murder on the Ile Saint-Louis (19 page)

She grinned, reminding him of a cat who’d swallowed a mouse. Sated for the moment but ready for more.

No time to argue. He shrugged. “Let’s go.”

“Not like that, you’re not.”

She took his hand, led him to an armoire, opened the creaking door that smelled of mothballs, and displayed a hanging tuxedo.

From an old lover of hers?

“A little loose in the hips, perhaps,” she said, eyeing his waist with a smile. “But it should do.”

Wednesday, Early Evening

AIMÉE PULLED RENÉ’S raincoat tighter around her. The hem hit her at mid thigh but fit across the shoulders. She and René stood under halogen recessed lighting in front of the reception desk to the beige office suite. Vavin’s wing lay dark and deserted. She thought it unlikely that the
flics
had obtained a search warrant yet: even in high-profile murder cases it took hours. But she was afraid that Vavin’s killer might have bypassed security down below and preceded her even though she had Vavin’s keys. The sound of splashing and a muttered
“Zut”
interrupted her thoughts. She stopped in her tracks, put her hand on René’s shoulder, mouthed “Shh.”

The secretary was watering a potted palm. Why hadn’t she left for the day? Aimée racked her brain for the secretary’s name. Naomi?

“
Bonsoir
, your terminals seem to be malfunctioning again,” Aimée said. She noticed the secretary’s name on a memo pad. She had been close. “Nadia, meet René Friant, my sysadmin partner. You’re working late tonight.”

Nadia, in stylish narrow black-framed glasses, blinked. She took in René’s stature as she shook his hand. “But, Aimée,
my
computer’s working fine.”

“It’s always like that,” René said. “You won’t notice any problem until you access the server database.” He rolled his eyes. “By then, what a mess.”

Nadia set down the watering can, confused. “Go ahead.”

“We’ll start with Monsieur Vavin’s machine and tackle yours later.”

Aimée paused, as if she’d had an afterthought. “Hasn’t our tech associate called or stopped in yet?”

Nadia shook her head. “I’ve been here all day. Nobody called. Should they have?”

René said, “Don’t worry. We’ll take care of it.” They walked rapidly to Vavin’s office.

“Smooth, René,” Aimée said. “Still taking your PI courses?”

“If I had the time, I would,” he said.

“Let’s make this quick. Before whoever murdered Vavin pays his office a visit.”

Vavin’s subdued office overlooked the dark trees on the boulevard facing the Faculté des Sciences. Aimée’s damp high-tops sank into the plush carpet. Nothing appeared to be out of place.

Aimée pulled out Vavin’s key ring and studied it. Two Fichet house keys and a third, a smaller one, which might be to his desk drawer.

She inserted the key into the lock on the side drawer. The key didn’t turn. She tried all the drawers. None of them opened. She scanned the minimalist-style office. No more furniture, not even a closet. The only place she hadn’t tried was the top drawer, which opened without a key. She slid it open. Pencils, pens, stapler, and Regnault stationery. A dead end.

“Nothing, René,” she reported.

A duplicate of the photo of Vavin’s smiling daughter on the rocking horse stared at Aimée from his desk. She imagined the knock at the door, the excited little girl running to answer it, her mother’s white face, and the girl tugging her sleeve, asking, “Where’s Papa?”

Then she succumbed to thoughts of Stella and warmth filled her. At least Stella was safe.

Vavin wouldn’t have hidden the key ring if it hadn’t been vital. Think. She took out the stationery from the wide drawer and felt around the interior. Smooth plywood. Cheap for this type of high-end desk. Then in the back her fingers found a clasp. She tugged it, heard a snap, and the plywood panel loosened. She slid it out and saw another panel with a lock. The drawer had a second level.

She inserted the key; it turned and the hidden compartment opened.

“Look, René.” Inside lay a laptop PC.

René consulted his notes. “His Mac’s on the systems inventory you made but not this one Let me check something.”

He lifted it out and whistled. “Alstrom gave Vavin a new toy. See,” he said, lifting the laptop up to show the asset tag near the serial number embossed with
Alstrom
on the underside of the machine.

Aimée’s cell phone vibrated.

“Oui?
”

“Stella’s restless,” said Mathilde, the young babysitter. “I can’t get her to sleep.”

Aimée gripped the phone. A fever?

“Please take her temperature,” she said.

Stella’s cries sounded in the background.

René looked up, concerned.

“Loosen her shirt and the blankets, Mathilde,” Aimée said, thinking of what she’d read in the baby-care manual. “Try a cold compress on her forehead. And give her a bottle with sterilized water. I’ll wait.”

“I only have two hands,” Mathilde said, sounding flustered.

“Bien sûr
, I’ll call you back. If nothing helps, I’ll take her to the doctor,” Aimée said and hung up.

Her mind jumped ahead. According to the manual, fever in a newborn could mean meningitis.
Nom de Dieu
. . . she couldn’t stay here and work if Stella’s life hung in the balance.

“Aimée . . . you with me?”

René was staring at her.

“Wait five minutes, eh? You gave Mathilde the right instructions,” he said, pulling out his car keys. “Wait a bit, but if Stella has a fever, take my car.”

She nodded. René was right. She had to focus. She had to get a grip; nothing else would make it up to Vavin.

“Vavin had access to Alstrom’s internal system via this PC,” she said. “Can you get into their system on his machine, René?”

“More important, can I access it in time?”

She’d given René a quick overview in the hallway.

“Whoever murdered Vavin did a sloppy job. But I bet it was for this—something on his computer involving his colleague’s e-mail.”

“Aren’t you jumping to conclusions?”

She didn’t have anything else to go on.

“Well, it’s a place to start, René,” she said. “But I’d feel better working in another office.”

BY THE TIME NADIA had opened the conference room, crowded with a suite of modern walnut furniture, René was right behind her, rolling in both computers on a wheeled trolley. Nadia paused at the door, a worried look on her face. “A
flic
just called. He wanted to visit concerning some incident having to do with one of our employees.”

Aimée’s shoulders tensed. Not standard procedure and they couldn’t have obtained a warrant so soon. “Did he identify himself?”

“I didn’t catch the name.”

René looked up and met Aimée’s eyes.

“I told him it’s impossible,” Nadia said. “He’ll have to visit during business hours with Monsieur Vavin in attendance.”

Aimée willed her hand to remain steady.
“Bon
, we’ll work on the system, nail the glitches.” She paused as if she’d just had an afterthought. “Did he mention any details? Or refer to a search warrant?”

Nadia’s thin eyebrows shot up and she shook her head. “I told him no one’s here; I was on the way out. Monsieur Vavin drops his daughter at her school on his way in, in the mornings, and arrives a bit late.” She shrugged. “The
flic
can wait.”

Aimée looked away. She couldn’t face Nadia. Or lie anymore.

“Thanks for letting us know,” René said, glancing at Aimée. “Have a good evening.”

Nadia shut the door behind her.

Either Nadia’s words had bought them time or whoever had called would arrive soon.

Aimée’s fingers ran over the smooth conference-table surface, planks in shades of light to dark walnut. Disparate yet fitting together in one piece. Like Vavin with Nelie? She’d seen MondeFocus pamphlets here, found an empty Alstrom folder in Nelie’s room, and the antiques dealer had seen them together. But she didn’t know how these pieces fit together.

“I failed Vavin, René. If only I’d talked to him . . .”

“Right now, do you know what’s the best thing you can do?” he said. “Help me find the password for this PC. Otherwise, I’ll have to use a brute force attack,” he said. “We can’t count on dumb luck; he may not have used the same password on this laptop. And what we’d need is back at the office.”

“Let me scout around.”

On Vavin’s Mac she accessed his user account with her sysadmin password. She scrolled through his activities and the functions he used on the computer. Why hadn’t she thought of this before? But then Vavin had been the boss. Why would she?

René tugged his goatee. “As I thought, he used another password. Found it?”

Appointments, meetings were noted on his calendar. All routine. Business lunches. No breakfast meetings, apart from one with de Laumain. No cache of passwords.

She shook her head. A big stumbling block and one they didn’t have time to chip away at. “If it’s buried in here, it could take hours to find.”

Her mind kept going back to his early morning call, claiming to be concerned about the firewall protection, as a pretext for accessing de Laumain’s e-mail. It all tied together.

She looked at her watch. Six minutes had passed. She hit the call-back button on her cell phone.

“Mathilde?”

“Stella’s a thirsty girl,” Mathilde said. “She drank a whole bottle.”

“No fever?”

“Her temperature’s normal,” Mathilde said.

“You’re sure?”

“Of course, I took it twice, Aimée,” Mathilde said.

Aimée let out a slow breath of relief. “
Merci,
Mathilde. She likes to be held and rocked, try that. I’ll stay in touch.”

She hung up.

René had plugged into an outlet, powered up the PC, and was clicking over the keyboard. “Here’s some good news,” he said. “The
flics
use one tech for several units. They’re overwhelmed, so my friend tells me.”

A feeling she could relate to right now.

“So unless they suspect right away that the murder was connected to his work, they won’t come for his Mac hard drive until tomorrow.” He stared at her. “Whoever called Nadia wasn’t a
flic
. They’d ask for the system administrators first to avoid shutting down the system. That’s us. In the meantime, Alstrom could cancel his access. And if I do find the password and log on, they’ll know; there will be a record.”

More complicated with every step.

“If Alstrom denies access, wouldn’t that mean they know he’s dead?” René asked.

“We won’t know until you try,” she said. “Your pager’s on, René?”

He nodded.

She pulled up the e-mail she’d forwarded to Vavin and opened it:

Regarding understanding reached in yesterday’s meeting with the vice minister of Interior and Alstrom’s bureau chief, you have the go-ahead to draft a public statement to that effect for Alstrom’s review. We’re sending statements describing the draft terms and expect you to set up a campaign enlisting public and industry support for the North Sea Oil Platform Agreement.

“This makes sense if Alstrom . . . wait a minute, sounds like they’ve already got the green light from the Ministry.”

She pulled up Vavin’s next e-mail:
Regarding investigative reports you requested, unnecessary until after agreement is ratified.No further action on your part deemed necessary.

“Or, in other words, quit poking around,” she said. “They plan on inking the agreement before the investigation reports come in.”

“Maybe Vavin had grown a conscience,” René said.

His words hung in the air.

She stared at him and thought of Vavin’s daughter’s photo, his words—“ . . . like every parent, I want my child to grow up in a clean world.”

“Or he had a weight on his conscience and was about to blow the whistle,” she said.

“Speculation, Aimée,” René said. His fingers raced over the keys. “It’s impossible to prove his biggest client had him killed over these e-mails.”

True.

“Companies hire ex-military or former intelligence officers to do their dirty work,” she said. “What if Vavin had found incriminating reports in the computer files at Alstrom?”

“Even harder to prove.”

René had a point. He shook his head. “Alstrom wouldn’t leave the minutes of these meetings in their system.”

Her pulse quickened. “But what if they were in a rush and had a lot more on their minds than worrying about someone snooping in their secure internal system, René?”

De Laumain . . . Vavin’s desire to read his e-mail had caused him to call her. And gotten him killed?

“The proof is on either his Mac or this PC . . . I have a hunch.”

“Makes it like finding a grain of sand at the beach,” René said.

Shadows slanted across the conference table. Outside the window, she saw the distant dark waters of the Seine. Cars crawled over the Pont de Sully, their red brake lights like a string of jewels.

They needed help, she realized.

“Isn’t Saj back from his meditation retreat?”

“Good idea,” René said. “Two of us will work faster for sure.”

She rang Saj, heard the tinkling strain of sitar music on his voice-mail greeting, and left him a message.

“Looks like an all-nighter, René. Let’s copy Vavin’s hard drive and take the laptop PC with us.”

“Take the PC?”

“Should we leave it for the killer?”

“How many laws have you broken so far?” He flicked a piece of lint from his vest.

Running away from the scene of a crime, she thought, would be one. “We have the perfect cover. After all, we’re Regnault’s sysadmin and can plead ignorance concerning the PC.”

René rolled his eyes.

She reached in her purse and her hand brushed a cotton ball that smelled like Stella’s baby lotion. She felt a jolt in her rib cage. Somewhere there was a connection. She had to think.

How had Vavin known Nelie . . . how?

She ran out into the hallway to Nadia’s empty desk. The hall was dark. She heard the elevator approaching.

“Nadia?”

She ran to the elevator.

“Nadia?”

And then the bathroom door opened to the sound of water flushing and there was Nadia, wiping her hands on a towel, having just changed into black yoga pants and a sweatshirt.

“I just wondered,” Aimée said, choosing her words. “Nelie, this girl in the photo”—she pointed to Nelie’s face—“she’s with MondeFocus. Did she visit Monsieur Vavin this week?”

Nadia shook her head. “I’ve no idea. Sorry, I have to hurry to my yoga class.”