The Paris Caper (16 page)

“So what
did
you
find?” Jean-Marc asked when the chief hesitated.

“Even though everything
indicates it was painted very recently, using brand new materials, I decided to
do an x-ray of the canvas. To see if there was a mark indicating a store, or
anything else underneath the paint itself.”

Jean-Marc straightened to
attention. “And?”

“And I found a ghost.”

He froze at the
unexpected word. “A...what?”

“A ghost. That’s what
experts call an image painted over by another. Like when an artist reuses an
old canvas, or makes a mistake and covers it up.”

His breath whooshed out.
“No shit?”

“Look.” Dr. Terrance
reached over to a light frame and switched it on. Two x-ray images were mounted
there, side by side. The first was the visible part of the painting, reversed in
the confusing black and white way of a typical x-ray, showing the design as it
appeared on the canvas. The second film showed the same thing, slightly out of
focus. But there was a bright blotch on the bottom right corner. The ghost.

Jean-Marc squinted, but
couldn’t make out the design. “A mistake, perhaps?” he suggested.

“Perhaps.” Terrance
clipped a third x-ray to the light frame. “This is a deeper close up, better
focused.”

Jean-Marc’s whole body
clenched in shock. There, staring him right in the face, was an
all-too-familiar image.

“I don’t believe it,” he
muttered, sinking into a chair. “I don’t fucking believe it.”

“You recognize it?”
Terrance said, puzzled.

“What?” Pierre asked
sharply. “
Mec
! What is it?”

“It’s a goddamn Hand of
Fatima,” Jean-Marc answered through gritted teeth.
To think he’d felt sorry
for the duplicitous little urchin
. “And I know exactly who painted it.”

“I say we slit his
throat.”

Ciara glanced at Hugo,
who was pacing once again. The kid was cocked tight as a trigger. Back and
forth in front of the window he strode, fists clenched and knuckles white. He
looked positively murderous. Ricardo watched nervously from the sofa next to
Davie, whose arms were around a downcast Sofie.

They had all gathered at
the apartment for dinner the day after the Beck incident to discuss what to do
about the escalating situation.

“God, don’t even think
about it, Hugo,” Ciara said, striving for a level-headedness she didn’t
actually feel. “We need to find a way to make Beck spend the rest of
his
life in jail. Not you. He’s not worth throwing away your future.”

Not now that her
beautiful, volatile boy finally had one. His job at the garage didn’t pay much,
but it was legit. And a start. More than he’d had four years ago when, at
CoCo’s pleading, Ciara had practically dragged him off the docks of Marseilles.
Cocky as hell and good-looking as sin, he’d been well on his way to a life of
violence and addiction. It had taken some fast talking by both of them—and the
graphic reminder of Etienne’s death—to convince him, but they’d finally managed
to make him see the light. But there were still times he reverted to his old
ways of dealing with trouble.

“Then what do you
suggest?” he asked, his young eyes blazing with fury. “I’m supposed to just let
him beat you? What kind of a man would I be? And Sofie, what of her, if he
takes it in his mind to—” His words cut off with a slash of his hand. “Sale
enculé,” he ground out. “Etienne would have—”

“And that’s why Etienne
is dead!” she snapped, lurching to her feet, feeling like a broken record. The
boy’s hero worship of his late older cousin was a constant battle between them.
Etienne had been cocky and good-looking, too. A man’s man who loved hard and
lived harder. In the end his over-confidence had cost him his life, taken down
by a cop’s bullet—from the gun of a man he’d been sure was his friend.

CoCo rose from the arm of
the easy chair where Ciara had been perched, went over and put her hands on
Hugo’s shoulders. “She is right,
mon cher
. We’re smarter than he is.
Let’s use our heads.” She pushed a fallen lock off his temple. “We all loved
Etienne, but he wasn’t much of a role model, eh? What will happen to us, to
Sofie, if you are put in jail for murder?”

Ciara watched the
siblings with a hitch in her heart. How she admired CoCo’s ability to tame her
tempestuous brother, to set aside her bitchy firecracker façade and unabashedly
show him the love and tenderness he so badly craved. The love and tenderness
they
all
craved, because those things had been so completely lacking in
their lives. CoCo and Hugo were lucky to have each other.

She had used exactly the
right words with her brother. No one could miss the gentleness with which he
always treated shy Sofie, nor the way he looked at her when he thought no one
was watching. Even if he’d made no outward claims on her affections, there was
no doubt Hugo considered himself Sofie’s protector.

Ciara tamped down her
anxiety, and sat down again.

She had loved Etienne
with the fierceness—and utter blindness—of an abandoned, forgotten
seventeen-year-old girl for the man who had rescued her and showered her with
love. She had married him without hesitation and followed him across the sea,
taken up his life of crime without looking back. After all, what had she to lose?
She’d shared her body and her dreams, and he’d shared his skills at
pick-pocketing and second-story work. A match made in heaven, she’d thought.

His strength had turned
her on. His intensity had excited her. His recklessness she’d mistaken for
joie
de vivre
, his brutality had been well-hidden and never directed against
her. She’d conveniently denied its existence. Until the violence of his life
had caught up with him and her eyes were forced open.

Etienne had taught her a
difficult lesson. One she was working hard not to forget.

“Valois is helping to
find a job that will pay enough to keep Beck away for now,” she said, pushing
aside the chaotic memories. “Meanwhile, we need ideas. How can we catch Beck in
his own trap? Without implicating or endangering any of us?”

Suddenly, there was a
loud knock. Ciara glanced at the mantle clock as everyone else turned to the
door. Seven-ten p.m..

“Anyone expecting
company?” she asked, already knowing the answer by the uneasy looks on
everyone’s faces. Her pulse leapt.

“Beck?” Ricardo
whispered, cautiously rising.

The fist banged again. “
Police
Nationale
!”

She gasped. Jean-Marc’s
voice!

“
Merde
.” Davie
leaped up from the couch. “What do we do?”

What the hell was
Jean-Marc doing here
? She met Sofie’s panicked eyes and silently questioned
her. The girl shook her head, a little desperately, as the pounding continued.
No, she hadn’t given him the address.

Now everyone was on their
feet. Jean-Marc yelled out again, angrily, like he would bash the door in if
someone didn’t come soon.

“Answer it,” Ciara told
CoCo in a low murmur. “They’ve got nothing on us.” She turned to Sofie.
“Whatever he says, deny any involvement. If he gets specific, you were here,
with all the others as witnesses. Right?” She glanced around the circle of worried
faces and they all nodded in solidarity. “Hugo, keep your hands in your
pockets,
no matter what
,” she ordered as she started for the back
bedroom. “I’ll go out through the attic as we planned.”

They’d practiced this a
dozen times over the past years, but she’d prayed they’d never have to use
their emergency plan. So much for prayers
and
fantasies.

Swiftly, she ran down the
hall and into the bedroom, reaching the closet as she heard CoCo open the front
door. Her heart quailed at the sound of Jean-Marc’s harsh demand to speak with
Sofie.

God
damn
it. Why
hadn’t she delivered the Picasso to him a day earlier? The investigation into
its theft surely would have been halted by now.

Gritting her teeth
against the pain that still twanged in her side from Beck’s beating, she
hoisted herself up through the trap door in the closet ceiling and into the
attic.

Despair flooded through
her. She’d
known
something like this would happen. As soon as she’d seen
Jean-Marc in the café talking to Sofie she’d had a terrible premonition, that
somehow he’d figure it all out. That Sofie was the artist who had painted the
fake Ciara planted at the Michaud’s. That Sofie could tell him where she was
hiding.

Fuck.

Silently, she slid the
square wooden trapdoor back into place behind her. The attic was steaming hot,
bisected with shafts of sunlight poking through the roof vents and the dirty
round dormer portholes. Dust motes danced around her as she teetered quickly
along the thick wooden beams which traversed the length of the entire attic
that served all four contiguous apartment buildings on the block. Stopping at
one of the back dormers overlooking the inner courtyard, she unlatched the
window, whisked off her pumps, and gingerly climbed through it, clinging to the
sill as her bare feet gained purchase on a narrow decorative ledge. Hunching
down, she grabbed the ledge and lowered herself to an iron balcony attached to
the story below.

Her imagination filled
with awful pictures of what was happening back in the apartment as she made her
escape. Was she being a coward? Should she have stayed and faced the music
instead of bailing and leaving the Orphans at the mercy of...

Don’t be ridiculous
,
she told herself. Jean-Marc may be her own personal nemesis, but he wouldn’t
mess with her kids. Not without any kind of evidence against them.

Would he?

You could tell a lot
about a man by the way he made love. Jean-Marc had been domineering, sometimes
even rough. But he’d always made sure she got hers first. And she knew his
reputation on the street, from Valois and others who’d dealt with him.
Commissaire
Lacroix was tough but fair, had been the verdict all the way around.

On the other hand... She
recalled the case Valois had told her about. The one where the thief had
disappeared, leaving Lacroix holding the bag. It had nearly ruined his career.
Jean-Marc had himself admitted that it
had
ended his marriage.
Le
Commissaire
hadn’t been the same since, it was said.

Lacroix was definitely
tough. But was he still fair?

Maybe. But maybe not.
Especially when it concerned a thief who betrayed him personally.... If
Jean-Marc ever learned who she really was, she had a sinking feeling the word
mercy would not be in his vocabulary.

Which was why she’d
better get the hell out of here. The Orphans could take care of each other.
They had a plan to follow. But she was in no state to be looking into
Jean-Marc’s eyes, answering lies to his questions.

Tossing her shoes, she
swung from balcony to balcony, making her way to the other end of the block.
There she found the fire escape ladder, grasped it, and climbed down the rest
of the five stories to the postage stamp inner courtyard below. She hurried
through the covered entrance passageway and cracked open the outer door to the
sidewalk.

Catching her breath, she
peered through it and down the street. Half a block away, two
Police
Nationale
radio cars were still parked at angles to the entrance of the
Orphans’ apartment building, yellow lights flashing.

Was that really
necessary? And what was taking them so long, anyway? Surely, they weren’t
searching the apartment, or—

Suddenly, the building’s
wooden entry door banged open and a uniformed officer held it open for
Jean-Marc’s partner, Pierre, who strode through, followed by—

Sofie!

No
!

Sofie had her hands
behind her back and Jean-Marc walked close behind her, his fingers gripping her
shoulder, guiding her toward one of the cars.

“What are you doing?”
Ciara cried without thinking, launching herself out of her hiding place at a
run. “You can’t arrest her! Let her go!”

The officer spun and took
up a defensive stance. “
Arrêtez
!” he shouted, putting his hand on the
butt of his gun.

Pierre glanced at her but
kept walking around the car. Jean-Marc ignored her completely, opening the rear
door for Sofie and handing her into the back. But he must have said something
to the officer, because he also relaxed and went to the car.

“Hey!” Ciara’s feet ate
up the pavement despite the burgeoning pain in her side and the heels she’d
slipped back on. “Why are you arresting her? She’s done nothing!”

Jean-Marc continued to
disregard her until he slammed the car door closed, locking Sofie inside. Ciara
appealed to Pierre, who had leaned against the car roof on folded arms. His
shoulders and brows lifted. The uniformed officer got into the driver’s seat at
Jean-Marc’s signal.

“I demand—!” she began,
but the words choked off when Jean-Marc finally turned to her.

His eyes were flinty.
Merciless
.

“You are in no position
to demand anything,
Madamoiselle
Alexander,” he said coolly, then jerked
his chin at Pierre, who nodded and got into the car, too. The engine came to
life and the tires squealed as it took off down the street.

Instinctively, she took a
step to go after it, but was yanked to a stop by Jean-Marc’s steely grip.
“Where do you think you’re going?”

“Where are they taking
her?” she demanded, attempting to shake her arm free.

“
36 Quai
des Orfèvres
. Would you like to come along?” His tone was not
amiable. It was more of a dare. His grip was relentless.

Jesus. Straight into
the lion’s den.