Cara Black: Murder at the Lanterne Rouge

He winked. “I hope the next one will sparkle more.”

Meizi blushed.

Madame Wu pulled the reading glasses down from her short, very black hair—dyed, Aimée could see—and shook her head. Round-faced Monsieur Wu, who was much older, averted his gaze.

Were they criticizing René’s gift or objecting to the relationship? Perhaps they didn’t want their daughter involved with a dwarf? Despite her own reservations, Aimée felt a pang for René.

“Lovely, non? ” Aimée said, trying to ease the almost palpable tension.

“Try it on, Meizi,” René urged.

Aimée noticed the look René and Meizi shared. Lost in each other. She nudged René. He ignored her.

Madame Wu spoke sharply, and Meizi translated. “My parents say you’re too kind, René.”

Aimée doubted that. Meizi slipped the ring on her fourth finger. “ Parfait .” Aimée noticed the bitten nails, the worn calluses on Meizi’s fingertips. Meizi set the ring back in the box and passed out the steaming soup bowls. A large serving for René.

Meizi’s phone vibrated on the table. She glanced at the number and pushed her chair back. “I’ll be right back.”

René’s hand paused on his soup spoon. “Can’t you talk later, Meizi?”

“Won’t take a moment,” she said. As Meizi went to the door, Aimée noticed her backward glance, her beetled brow, before she stepped outside.

The Wus, not ones for conversation, tucked into the soup. Poor René. Aimée imagined the dinners he’d shared with the humorless Madame and Monsieur Wu. Had she read Meizi, a dutiful daughter, all wrong? A young waitress cleared their bowls, leaving Meizi’s, and brought a platter of fragrant roasted duck with shaved scallions. At least five more minutes passed.

“Where’s Meizi?” René asked, holding off from serving himself.

“Meizi, oui .” Madame Wu nodded, her chopsticks working at morsels of duck.

Aimée wished Meizi hadn’t left them in this awkward situation. She shot René a look. He flipped his phone open, hit Meizi’s number on his speed dial.

A stooped older woman wearing a stained apron entered the resto . Madame Wu exchanged an uneasy look with Monsieur Wu as the old woman made her way to their table.

“Who’s this, another relative?” Aimée asked.

“The busybody who sells tofu and groceries next to her uncle’s place.” René frowned. “Meizi’s not answering her phone.”

Suddenly, the old woman shouted in Chinese. Madame Wu dropped her glasses on the table.

The old woman continued, bellowing, frantic. Loud murmurs and the clattering of chopsticks filled the resto . Surprised, Aimée saw diners throw money on their tables, heard chairs screeching back in haste over the linoleum. As if at some mysterious signal, people reached for their coats and fled in a mass exodus.

Madame and Monsieur Wu stood in unison. Without a word they left the table and were out the door of the resto without their coats. Not only rude, but unnerving.

The ring in the red velvet box sat by the teapot, forgotten. Like Meizi’s coat on the back of her chair.

“But what’s happening?” René said, bewilderment on his face.

Aimée rubbed her sleeve on the fogged-up window to see outside. A red glow reflected in the ice veining the cobble cracks. Firemen, an ambulance, the police?

The young waitress by the door turned down the pop music.

“What’s the matter?” Aimée asked her.

“Trouble.”

“Trouble as in a robbery?” Jewelry stores abounded in the quartier, which had once been the diamond-cutting district.

“The old lady said murder.”

“Murder? But who?”

The waitress shrugged. Her fingers worried a tattered menu. “Behind the luggage shop.”

Aimée sat up. “The luggage shop around the corner?”

The waitress nodded.

Meizi’s parents’ shop. A terrible feeling hit her. Meizi?

René had pulled on his coat and was already halfway to the door. Aimée scooped the jewelry box into her pocket, left a wad of francs on the table, and took off behind him.

• • •

FILLED WITH DREAD, Aimée hurried down the street, following René past the dimly lit Le Tango, a dance club emitting a reverberating drumbeat. No one stood outside. It was too cold for the usual drunken brawls. A horn blared streets away.

A flash of red disappeared around the corner. Madame Wu.

Aimée glimpsed a few Chinese people crowding the short walkway behind the luggage shop. The dark walkway between the buildings was crowded with garbage bins, wood palettes, old cart wheels, the view ending in a dim red lantern shining on back stairs. Not a hundred yards from the resto . Her shoulders tightened.

“Meizi lives here above the shop.” René panted, his breath frosting in the cold. The windows he pointed to were dark. Where were the Wus?

Aimée fought a rising panic, picking her way through Chinese people of all ages, mumbling and scraping their feet on the ice.

“Has someone been …?” Aimée’s question was interrupted by a woman’s piercing scream. People jostled her shoulder as they ran away, their footsteps thudding on the snow. Shivering in the cold and full of misgivings, Aimée crossed the now deserted walkway.

Not Meizi, non … don’t let it be Meizi.

A rat, fat and brown, its tail the length of its long, wet, furred body, scurried down the steps over the new-fallen snow. It left a trail of red in its wake.

At the foot of the crumbling stone stairs by Meizi’s door, a man’s snow-dusted trouser-clad leg sprawled from a wooden palette. She gasped. Bits of gnawed, bloody flesh, orange peels, and black wool threads trailed in the snow. Good God. Her stomach lurched. The rat.

Aimée couldn’t peel her horrified gaze from the corpse, which was half wrapped in clear plastic, the kind used to secure merchandise to palettes. The man’s matted red hair, prominent nose, and cheekbones all melded, smooth and tight, under the clear plastic. Her gaze traveled to his wide, terrified eyes, then to his mouth, frozen open in a snowflake-dusted scream.

She stumbled and caught herself on the ice-glazed wall. Who was he? He hadn’t been here long, judging by the light coating of snow. Where was Meizi?

“ Mon Dieu ,” René said, stepping back. He took a few steps and pounded on Meizi’s back door.

No answer.

Aimée gathered up her long leopard-print coat and stepped with care around the dirtied snow, avoiding the overturned garbage bin’s contents.

Her insides churned. She shouldn’t have looked at the eyes.

A pair of black-framed glasses lay in the snow beside his gnawed calf. Crinkled papers, a half-open wallet. Using a dirty plastic bag to cover her hands, she picked the wallet up. No cash or credit cards. Cleaned out.

“Come on, Aimée,” René said. “The flics will handle this. We have to find Meizi.”

Wedged deep in the wallet’s fold she found a creased Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers library card with an address and the name Pascal Samour. The photo showed a younger version of the pale face in plastic before her.

She turned the card over.

“Put that down, Aimée,” René said.

Stuck to the other side of the library card by gummy adhesive was a smudged photo of a Chinese girl with a glossy ponytail. Meizi. “But look, René.”

He gasped, and his face fell. He stepped back, shaking his head. “I don’t understand.”

She caught her breath. “He knew Meizi, René. What if she …”

“You think she’s involved?” he sputtered. “Impossible.”

He punched numbers on his cell phone. “She’s still not answering. She’s in trouble.”

At that moment, wide flashlight beams blinded Aimée. She stumbled, dropped the wallet. Static and voices barked from a walkie-talkie: “First responders, truck thirteen. Alert medical backup we’re in the walkway.”