Murder on the Ile Saint-Louis (9 page)

She turned around. “Momo, have you lost any tire irons, those things you use to change a tire?”

He rubbed his chin. The moons of his fingernails were rimmed with black. “I’ve got to get back to work.”

“Would you mind checking?”

“The equipment’s kept in back,” he said. “Sorry.”

She pulled out twenty francs, put it in his hand. “Does this make it any easier?”

He nodded. She put her card in his grease-rimed pocket.

“Let me know, Momo.”

PUNGENT AROMAS WAFTED from the white-walled cheese shop on rue Saint Louis en l’Isle. Runny cheeses perched on the marble counter leaked onto their straw beds. The old orange cash register sat by the wall, as always. Bernard,
le maître de fromage
, was also
le maître de gossip
. Most people on the island passed through his shop. And if anyone knew anything about them, he did.

“Haven’t see you in a while, Aimée. Try a piece.” Bernard, compact in his white coat and apron, pared the rind off a Reblochon and offered her a taste. “Perfect for after dinner tonight.” His eyes widened when he noticed the baby. “I had no idea . . . you’ve been busy, eh?” He grinned. “
Quelle mignonne!
I can hear it now—all the old biddies on the island discussing you and your baby. Why, just the other day—”

“I’m babysitting, Bernard.” She slipped some francs over the counter to him along with the photo.

“Do you know her?”

He pulled on his glasses. “Who?”

“Either of these girls. They’re MondeFocus activists.”

Bernard shook his head.

A dead end. If Bernard didn’t recognize her, well . . . Disappointed, she picked up the ripe slice of Reblochon in its white waxed-paper wrapper, slipped it inside the baby bag, and turned to go.

“Attends,”
he said, scanning the photo more closely. “
She
seems familiar.” He pointed to Nelie, sitting next to Orla.

“Did you see her yesterday?”

“Those students sneak cigarettes at the café. Try there.”

AIMÉE NODDED TO the older woman, wearing a green sweater set and wool scarf knotted around her neck despite the heat, behind the zinc counter of her corner café. One of the handful on the island sure to stay open late in winter. A few empty tables and booths stood in the rear room, which normally catered to the lunch crowd. Now only a single couple sat there, deep in conversation over a carafe of wine. The decor, redone in the seventies when smoked-glass dividers were introduced, didn’t hide the Art Nouveau banister of the staircase leading down a flight to the phone and bathrooms.

“Bonjour,
Sabine
, un café, s’il vous plaît.”

“Right away,” Sabine said, rubbing the milk-steamer wand with a wet dishcloth. She was a typical Auvergnat—brusque, born into the business, accustomed to watching every franc.

“Nico still on vacation
?
” Aimée asked. Nico, the co-owner, took February off.

Sabine nodded, setting down a demitasse of steaming espresso with a respectable tan foam head and pushing the aluminum ball holding sugar cubes toward her. Stella was asleep, her soft breaths just audible to Aimée.

“Merci,”
Aimée said, unwrapping two sugar cubes and letting them plop into her cup. She moved the baby sling to the side, leaning toward her, as if to speak in confidence. As in Bernard’s cheese shop, not much went on in the café without Sabine’s knowledge.

“Not your usual style,” Sabine said, glancing at Stella.

“I’m helping my friend. You know how that goes!”

“Thought so,” Sabine said.

“
Et alors,
but I’ve got to work, Sabine.”

“Bit off more than you could chew this time?”

Little did she know.

“You could say that, Sabine.” She slid the photo onto the zinc countertop. “I need to find these girls to babysit for me. Bernard said he’s seen them here. You wouldn’t happen to have seen her this morning, would you?”

She pointed to Nelie.

Sabine shook her head. “Not this morning.”

“I hope they’re not out of town.” Aimée paused as if in thought. “What about last night, did you see either one last night?”

“Janou closed up as usual
,
” Sabine said, rinsing dirty cups in the sink and stacking them in the small dishwasher under the counter.

Janou, her brother, wearing a blue workman’s coat and his habitual frown, wheeled a handcart of stacked Orangina cartons past the staircase leading down to the bathrooms and phone.

“Ça va,
Janou,” Aimée called to him. “Remember seeing either of these girls last night?” She held out the photo.

“A lot of students come here.” He straightened up, paused, pulled his chin. “A blonde, a young
fille
, with a baby thing like yours. Could have been her last night.”

“Was she wearing a jean jacket with blue beads embroidered on the pocket?”

He shrugged. “I didn’t pay much attention. The
mecs
were watching the motocross rally replays on the
télé
. You know how loud they get.”

That meant a bunch of beer-swilling motorcycle enthusiasts and a crowded, steamy café if Janou hadn’t noticed much. But she wouldn’t give up. A sharp-eyed Auvergnat, Janou reminded her of a crow, a nice crow with his close-set black eyes, who’d spot the shine of a franc lying in the gutter a street away.

Sabine, now with her glasses on, stared at the photo. “That blonde one. I remember now. She wiped her denim jacket sleeve on the fogged-up window. Her jacket was trimmed with funny blue beads in the pattern of a whale.” Sabine’s finger stabbed Orla’s face in the photo. “That I noticed before I left.”

At last!

“She left streak marks all over.” Sabine pointed to the window. “Like those.” Outside, a group of students stood in line at Bertillon’s to choose from more than forty flavors of ice cream, blocking the café door. This was a sore point for Sabine. “Gave me the job of cleaning the whole window this morning, inside and out.”

She’d washed away any fingerprint evidence then.

“Sabine, do you think she was looking for someone?”

Sabine shrugged. “Hard to say. Tell her to leave the window alone next time, eh?”

Aimée stroked the fuzz on Stella’s head.

“Did she meet anyone?”

Janou leaned down and hefted a crate. “I served the
mecs,
and when I had finished, she’d gone. When I stacked the café chairs outside, she was just leaving the ATM across the way.”

“Alone?”

“Some girls were running. She could have been one.” Janou pointed to the dark-haired girl in the photo, then opened the cabinet door, which concealed a dumbwaiter to the cellar, and slid a carton of Orangina onto it. “But I’m not sure.”

“Running?”

Janou scratched his cheek. “One of them kept looking back over her shoulder.”

“In what way?”

“Like everyone does after they take cash from the machine,
alors!”

Or had she been scared and running for her life?

“She limped. Stopped every so often.”

“The blonde?”

“The dark-haired one.”

Nelie.

“Does she live around here?”

“You’re curious this morning.” Janou paused, his head cocked, watching her.

She had to think fast. “Count on me to lose her number and I have a meeting. I wish I hadn’t told my friend I’d watch her baby.”

Janou shook his head. “Try the women’s hostel! You’d think they might order a sandwich to eat, just once, eh, since they make this place their living room.”

“The woman’s hostel on rue Poulletier?”

He nodded.

Aimée knew the place around the corner from her apartment that sheltered students and troubled young women.

Aimée set some francs on the counter.
“Merci.”

SHE LEFT THE café and walked down the narrow street thinking. Unease filled her.

Had she looked at this all wrong? She stared at the photo, concentrating on the dark-haired girl, Nelie. Momo had let her use the phone in the garage. Bernard, Sabine, and Janou had recognized her.

Had Nelie, though limping and injured, met Orla after the demonstration at the café? But then why hadn’t she used the telephone downstairs in the café rather than the one at the garage? On top of that, why hadn’t Nelie explained the situation calmly and clearly to her over the phone? Instead, she’d spoken frantically, almost incoherently. She had seemed desperate, sure that someone was after her. And now Orla was dead.

There was still no clue as to why Nelie had chosen to telephone Aimée. Nor any explanation of the writing on Stella’s skin. Questions swirled in Aimée’s mind as she tried to fathom a frightened woman’s thought processes. But now at least she knew whom she was looking for. She had to find Nelie, get answers, and resolve the baby issue without involving the authorities. She turned into rue Poulletier, feeling a frisson in her bones as she passed the words carved in worn limestone—SAINT-VINCENT DE PAUL ÉTABLIT LES FILLES DE LA CHARITÉ 1652. A reminder of the time when priests found babies abandoned on church steps and the parish provided social services that the king didn’t. A newer sign, hanging near the ancient metal S-shaped hinge, which compressed the inner beams and held the floors together, read WATCH OUT.

In a few minutes, she imagined, she might be handing Stella over to Nelie. Stella stirred and Aimée felt a pang of regret.

Get on with it! she told herself. Resolutely, she pressed the digicode at the entrance to the soot stained stone building. The door buzzed open. Now she’d find out why Nelie had entrusted Stella to her.

“NO BABIES ALLOWED, MADAME.” A honeyed voice belied the sharp expression of the stout woman at the window of the reception area.

In the crowded alcove behind the woman, faxes hummed and a phone console lit up with red lights.

“I’m meeting Nelie,” Aimée smiled, determined not to let this dragon of a sentry put her off. “Can you ring her room?”

“We’re a busy office. You’ll have to call her yourself.”

“Her room number, please?”

“We don’t give out that information,” the receptionist said warily. “You should know that.”

Had the
flics
sniffed her out and come for Nelie already? She doubted that.

“I’d appreciate your help, Madame.”

“You’ll have to excuse me, it’s our busiest time. If you’re meeting her, she’ll come down,” said the woman. A red light was blinking on the switchboard. Several young women entered the vestibule, crowding around the window asking for mail.

A brunette with a long braid down her back leaned down and cooed at the baby. “What’s her name?”

“Her name . . . Stella.” Aimée seized the opportunity. “You don’t know Nelie, do you? We’re supposed to meet and I forgot her cell phone number.”

“I’m sorry.” The brunette shook her head.

Aimée showed her the photo. “Maybe you’re on the same floor.”

The girl shook her head. “I’m in the exchange section, just here short term.” She smiled, a milk-fed provincial girl. “Sorbonne students occupy the second floor, that’s all I know.”

Aimée found a seat near a table bearing old magazines. Another group of girls in tracksuits carrying soccer balls in a net assembled by the desk. On the back wall Aimée saw room numbers next to linen assignments on a blackboard. She stood and scanned the numbers until she came to one for Nelie Landrou on Staircase C. Finally! That had to be her.

She edged through the glass doors to the courtyard while the receptionist was busy. Charcoal gray tiles formed the slanted rooftop overlooking the grass-covered rectangular courtyard. There were no blue zinc roofs on this island; that would have been too modern.

Stella nestled closer in her arms, radiating warmth. “Such a good girl,” Aimée whispered. If only she’d stay that way.

Staircase C lay at the back. Aimée mounted a flight of covered stone steps. She faced a line of planked doors. There was a name holder outside each room, next to the door.

Nelie’s resembled the others. At least no police crime-scene tape was visible. She took a breath before she knocked. “Nelie, it’s Aimée Leduc. I can help you.” There was no answer even after she knocked repeatedly.

She’d never picked a medieval lock before. Certainly never picked a lock of any sort with a baby in her arms. She didn’t think her credit card would work so she inserted her miniscrewdriver into the lock, swiveled it around, and then heard the tip snap. Great! Propping a gurgling Stella on her hip, she reached in her bag for her key ring, found the long old-fashioned keys to her
cave
, and used one as a lever to prise out the broken screwdriver shank. That done, she slid in the narrow lock-picking tool with a quick twist and upward shove.

She heard laughter from down the hall; she had to hurry. She jiggled the lock-picking tool, heard scraping metal and a click. She pushed the door open.

“Allô?
”

No Nelie. Empty and like a monastic cell, spartan; narrow, white-washed stone walls, a small coved window filled with old blue bubbled glass with bars across it. She saw a poster of a munitions site with the legend:
One nuclear bomb can ruin your whole day
on the wall, a textbook on the floor, and an Indian cotton print bedspread on the single bed, which gave the room a student feeling. But it was an unlived-in feeling.

Her hopes dashed, she debated what to do. She picked up some notices left on a chair. The one on top was for a mandatory house meeting dated a month ago. A brief message in an opened envelope read:
Madame needs to meet with you regarding the balance owing on end-of-term rent
. It was dated three weeks before
.

She’d been here, opened this envelope. Or someone had. Aimée wondered if she’d left when she couldn’t hide her pregnancy anymore.

Aimée didn’t have much time. Clutching Stella in the baby sling, she searched under the bed. Nothing. She examined the sheets, the pillow, and the gray sweater tossed down on an orange crate. This girl had left little more than a textbook and that sweater.

She hadn’t just moved out, she had fled. Aimée felt it in the pit of her stomach.