Cara Black: Murder in the Marais

Fifty thousand francs were inside along with a note.

Find her killer-tell no one. I don't trust the flics. I trust you.

Wads of franc notes tumbled out as she grabbed the desk edge to steady herself.

"He must like you!" Rene's eyes grew wide. "We'll convince the tax board to…"

She shook her head. "I can't…"

Rene pumped furiously until the seat aligned with his desk.

"Look at this." He thrust one of several threatening letters from the bank manager at her. "Our tax extension is up in the air, the bank is calling in our note. Now, the Eurocom accountant refuses to pay us the eight months of back payments we're owed, he's quibbling about a clause in the contract; it could take months." He struggled to adjust a knob on his seat. "Time you got out of the computer clouds, Aimee, and got back in the field."

"I don't do murder." She winced.

"You make it sound like there's a choice."

"I NSPECTEURM ORBIERis expecting me," Aimee said to Madame Noiret, gritting her teeth at the Commissariat de Police reception desk. Not only did her jaws ache from the biting cold outside, she was dying for a smoke.

" Bonjour, Aimee, ca va? " Madame Noiret, the gray-haired clerk peered through reading glasses and smiled. "I'll let him know you're here."

"Ça va bien, merci, Madame."

She hated coming back to the Commissariat in Place Baudoyer; her father's memory stabbed her from every corner. There was the cold marble floor of his office where she'd done homework as a little girl when he worked late, later helping him clean out his desk when he joined Grandfather at Leduc Detective, then collecting his posthumous medal from the Commissaire.

Aimee's American mother had disappeared from her life one evening in 1968. She'd never returned from the Herald Tribune, where she worked as a stringer on the news desk. Her father had sent Aimee to boarding school during the week and on weekends he took her to the Luxembourg Gardens. On a bench under the row of plane trees by the puppet theater, she once asked him about her mother. His normally sympathetic eyes hardened. "We don't talk about her anymore." And they never had.

Three weeks without a cigarette and Aimee's tailored jeans pinched, so she paced instead of sitting. She'd always thought the crimes investigated by the Commissariat of Police in the Marais rarely matched the division's elegant accommodations. High-tech weapon sensors hid nestled in brass wall sconces of this Second Empire style nineteenth century mansion. Rose lead-paned windows funneled pink patterns across the marble walls. But the dead cigarettes in overflowing ashtrays, greasy crumbs, and stale sweaty fear made it smell like every other police station she'd been in.

This palatial building neighbored Napoleon's former barracks and the 4th arrondissement's Tresor public, the tax office on rue de la Verrerie. But Parisians called it flics et taxes, la double morte-cops and taxes, the double death.

She drifted over the scuffed parquet floor to read the bulletin board in the waiting area. A torn notice, dated eight months earlier, announced that Petanque leagues were forming and serious bowlers were encouraged to sign up early. Next to that, an Interpol poster of wanted criminals still included Carlos the Jackal's photo. Below that, a sign advertised a sublet in Montsouris, a "studio economique" for five thousand francs a month, cheap for the 14th arrondissement. She figured that meant a sixth-floor walk-up closet with a pull-chain squat toilet down the hall.

Aimee stood in front of the board, reknotting her silk scarf, knowing she'd got it right the first time. She hated lying to flics, especially Morbier.

Maybe she should convince Morbier she was thinking of converting to Judaism instead of telling him the truth about an old Nazi hunter who had made her fifty thousand francs richer, hiring her to deliver half a photo to a dead woman. Then hiring her to find her killer.

Madame Noiret pushed sliding glasses up her nose and pointed inside.

"Go ahead, Aimee, Inspecteur Morbier will see you."

She walked into the seventeen-foot-high-ceilinged room of the homicide division. Few desks were occupied. Morbier's was littered with a stack of well-thumbed files. A demitasse of espresso sat next to his flashing computer screen. His pudgy fifty-nine-year-old body leaned back in a dangerously tilted chair. He cradled the phone against his shoulder while one hand scratched his salt-and-pepper head and the other held a cigarette conspiratorially between his thumb and forefinger. As he hung up, she watched his nicotine-stained fingers with their short splayed nails, rifling in the cellophane-crumpled pack of Gauloises for another cigarette. High above the desks, a TV tuned to France 2 displayed continuous car wrecks, tanker accidents on the high seas, and train fatalities.

He lit the cigarette, cupping it as if there were a gale wind blowing through Homicide. He'd known her father since they'd been on the force together-but after the accident he'd kept his distance.

He gazed at her meaningfully as he gestured towards a chipped metal chair. "You know I had to put on a show, especially for the Brigade."

She figured that was probably the closest to an apology she'd get for his behavior at Lili Stein's apartment.

"I'm happy to furnish a statement, Morbier." She tried to keep the frost out of her voice. "The Temple E'manuel has retained my services."

"So the Temple hired you before she was killed?" Morbier nodded. "Just in case she got butchered?"

She shook her head, then sat on the edge of the metal chair.

"Humor me and explain."

Morbier could pass for an academic until he opened his mouth. Pure gutter French was what her father used to call it, but then most flics didn't have graduate degrees from the Sorbonne.

"It's not delicate to incriminate the dead, Morbier." She crossed her legs, hoping her tight jeans wouldn't cut off her circulation.

Now he looked interested. "You found her, Leduc. You are my première suspecte . Talk to me."

She hesitated.

"Trust me. I never prosecute dead people." He winked. "Nothing goes further than this desk."

And cows can fly. Mentally, she asked Lili Stein's forgiveness. "Please don't tell her son."

"I'll keep that under consideration."

"Do better than that, Morbier," she said. "The Temple doesn't want the family hurt. There were rumors about shoplifting."

Morbier snorted. "What's this?"

"You know how old people conveniently forget items in their pockets," she said. "The rabbi asked me to talk with her, convince her to bring the items back. On the quiet."

"What kinds of things?"

"Scarves from Monoprix, flashlights from Samaritaine. Nothing valuable." She tried not to squirm in the hard-backed chair.

Morbier consulted a file on his desk. "We found brass candlesticks, religious type."

Aimee shook her head. "She hid things. Like a child, then she forgot where." She stood up, stuck her hand in her pocket.

On her way to the Commissariat she'd come up with a logical reason for being in the area. The radio had reported large right-wing demonstrations all over the Marais protesting the European Summit.

"I'd followed her from Les Halles but I lost her at that demonstration. Neo-Nazis were all over. I figured she returned to her apartment so this evening I went there and then…"

At least the part she told him about how she found the body was true.

"Let me be sure I understand." Morbier inhaled deeply from a newly lit cigarette then blew smoke rings over Aimee's head. "You followed her in case she shoplifted, lost her in Les Halles at a fascist demonstration, then went to her apartment and found her carved Nazi-style?" His eyes narrowed. "Why were your fingerprints on the radio dials?"