Cara Black: Murder at the Lanterne Rouge

“What’s the noise?”

“Sewing machines,” René said, his voice low.

Sweatshops.

On the first-floor landing, René pointed to an unpainted door. “This one’s above the shop.”

He knocked. Footsteps sounded behind the door, then muffled Chinese.

“Meizi, it’s René.”

Aimée’s fingers clenched. Now they’d get an explanation, maybe not the one René wanted.

The door opened halfway. A young Chinese man in an undershirt peered from behind. Smells of sleep, of too many bodies and kerosene from a heater wafted out. Behind him she caught a glimpse of a room lined by rough wooden platforms where ten or so men slept. A bared slit of a window, flaking stucco walls. Like a narrow cell. Alarm bells went off in her head.

“I’m looking for the Wus and Meizi,” René said.

The young Chinese man shook his head. With an abrupt movement, he waved his hands as if shooing them away. “ Cuò wù! ”

Shaken, René stepped back.

“We mean from the shop downstairs,” Aimée said, pointing below. “The Wu family?”

He shook his head again. Fear in his eyes. “Wu, non .” He shut the door. She heard the bolt slip from inside.

Aimée’s stomach sank. She realized this was the only room above the shop. “I don’t like this, René.”

Heads peered over the banister, figures above them watching.

“ Excusez-moi ,” she said, looking up, trying one more time, “we’re looking for Monsieur and Madame Wu. Meizi Wu.”

Suspicion and fear emanated from the darting shadows; the figures began stepping back and closing doors. She sensed quiet despair in the lives crammed on each floor. Door latches bolted.

An eerie quiet filled the hallway. The Wus didn’t live here. She doubted they ever had. “Let’s go.”

Out in the icy street, René put his gloved hands in his pockets. They walked the block toward René’s car. His mouth was tight, holding something back.

“Talk to me, René.”

“Those men do the jobs no one else will, work like slaves.”

Another side of René, whom she thought she knew so well. The fighter for the underdog. But wasn’t he one himself?

He shook his head. “Meizi’s in danger.”

“What if she’s staying with a friend from the dojo?” Aimée said.

René’s eyes pooled in anguish. “Already left messages. No one’s returned my calls.” Suddenly he snorted in disgust. “Look at that!”

His snow-dusted Citroën DS sat wedged, bumper to bumper, between a Renault and a dented blue camionette. A too common occurrence these days, with tight parking in medieval streets.

After a twelve-hour day, all she wanted was to get warm and sleep. “Skin tight,” she said. “Start the engine. I’ll push.”

She put on her leather gloves, hitched up her coat in the cold. René started the engine and hit the windshield wipers, sending sprays of snow. Aimée tried to push the parked camionette so René could pull out.

No luck.

Standing in the street, she guided René centimeter by centimeter as he edged forward, then reversed.

This would take hours. Cold, her legs numb, she spied a jogger coming down the pavement, his breath puffing.

In this weather?

“Monsieur, mind helping a moment?”

Together, they shoved the camionette’s bumper back a tad. Then again. Every shove gave a centimeter. Aimée caught her breath, perspiring under her coat. She noticed two figures huddled on the corner. She was about to enlist their aid when she did a double take. She recognized that pink wool cap. Her cap. The one René borrowed for Meizi last week.

The darkness shrouded the pair of faces, but she could see the man shove the woman and then shake her. Clinking metal echoed off the stone. He’d thrust a bag into her arms.

Meizi?

Aimée’s heart thumped.

Had René noticed?

But now they’d gone. Aimée took off, wishing to God her heeled boots would gain traction on the ice. Snow fell faster now, little flurries whipping off the stone walls. She skidded, threw out her arms to break her fall. A sickening feeling seized her in the long moment before she hit the wall.

Jolted, she took a moment to stand up. At the corner she looked both ways. No one. Had she imagined it? But in the yellow streetlight she made out mashed footprints in the piling snow.

It had all happened so fast, she thought, hurrying back to René’s car. Did Meizi have another boyfriend? Or was she in trouble?

“Running off, Aimée? But you need to push again,” René said, twisting the wheels. Ice chunks spit and frosted her calves.

Two more shoves of the camionette’s bumper and René’s Citroën broke free of the logjam.

“ Merci , monsieur,” she called after the jogger, who had already headed off into the shadows.

In the passenger seat, Aimée pushed a wet blonde lock from her mouth and hit the heater. She longed for the leather seats to warm up. “Take a right at the corner.”

He paused mid-shift, stepped on the clutch. “Did you see something?”

She hesitated. Should she tell René? Reveal that Meizi had been two-timing him and stringing him along? But she didn’t know that. Didn’t even know if that was Meizi. Yet.

“My wool hat you lent Meizi—I think I saw a woman wearing it. Up there.”

René ground into first and shot down the street.

For forty minutes they cruised the narrow, winding streets, back and forth, up one end of the quartier, down the other. No woman with Aimée’s cap, no answer from Meizi’s phone.

René pulled up on Quai d’Anjou in front of Aimée’s seventeenth-century apartment on Île Saint-Louis.

Before she opened her door, she asked, “Why would she lie to you about where she lives?”

“I know what you’re thinking, Aimée,” René said, his voice tight. “You’re thinking she’s involved. But she’s not. She’s a country girl, innocent. I need to find and protect her.”

Not before Aimée found her. She wondered who needed to be protected from whom.

“But we don’t know what happened, René.”

“Caring for a person means trusting her.” René turned on the ignition. “You should try it sometime.”

Saturday, 6 A.M.

DAWN, LIKE A silver pencil, outlined Aimée’s mansard bedroom window frame. Light slanted over Melac’s crumpled jeans on the wood floor and glittered off the Manurhin revolver poking from his back pocket.

Aimée felt his warm breath in her ear. His tongue on her neck. His musk scent on her skin.

Delicious. The white feather duvet bunched around her shoulders as she ran her toe along his warm ankle. She grinned to see his eyes were half hooded with sleep.

Trilling came from the phone console on her escritoire. “Room service?” She nibbled his ear. “How thoughtful.”

He shook his head and flicked his tongue over her neck. “Remind me to dump that in the river.”

The phone clicked and went to the answering machine.

“Aimée?” René’s voice, as tense as a taut bowstring. “Meizi’s phone’s disconnected. I’ve been out looking for her all night.” Pause. “Call me.”

The red light blinked on her answering machine. Her throat caught. She imagined René driving in the ice, the cold. Alone. While here she lay, entwined with Melac in her warm bed.

She reached for Melac’s cell phone on the Louis Quinze bedstand. Melac’s hand shot out to stop her. “Let René handle this. It’s our weekend, remember?”

As a Brigade Criminelle inspector in the elite homicide squad, his hours varied according to his cases. He’d come over after his shift the previous night. Tired, she’d hesitated before giving him a brief account over a glass of wine. She figured le Proc would have referred the investigation to the Brigade Criminelle. When she’d asked him why he hadn’t been assigned the case, he shook his head. “Work’s over, we’ll talk later.” He’d pulled her sleeve and they’d ended up under the duvet.