Cara Black: Murder at the Lanterne Rouge

“René’s upset, I’m calling him,” she said, sitting up in bed.

“You agreed with me, remember?” He traced his finger over her lips. “Our first weekend in a month.”

“But René’s important. And it’s still our weekend,” she said, rolling over.

Melac messaged her neck. “Leave it, Aimée.”

She hesitated, pulled in two directions. But leave René stranded? “He sounds frantic.” The cell phone ringing in her hand interrupted her. A number she didn’t know. She showed him the screen.

Melac bolted upright and took his phone from her hand.

“ Zut! Some double standard going on here, Melac?”

“ Oui? ” he said into the phone.

His soon-to-be-ex, Nathalie? She stifled a groan. Or his eleven-year-old daughter, Sandrine? Melac, a devoted part-time father, spent every other weekend in Brittany. This could take forever.

Melac leaned forward, his warm arm slipping away. A chill settled on her skin where it had been. He cleared his throat. “A car in ten minutes?”

Aimée felt a sinking in her stomach. Unfair.

Springing into action, he rose from the bed, grabbed his jeans, and disappeared into her bathroom, all in one motion. She heard running water, his voice on the phone with the taxi company.

Running out. Just like her papa used to do whenever he was called.

He returned a moment later, dressed, looking for his shoes. “Let me guess, you’re going to the boulangerie .” She kept her voice even.

“Sorry.” He sat down on the bed, stroked her cheek with his damp, warm hand.

“No croissants?” Her glow gone, she fluffed the feather pillow.

“I’d like to crawl under the duvet and continue where we left off, but I’m reassigned. I meant to tell you.” His gray-blue eyes were full of his urgency to leave and worry about other things. Things she didn’t know about.

She pulled the sheets around her shoulders. “Don’t tell me. A new posting?”

“A promotion, a new six-month assignment,” he said. “One I can’t talk about.”

“Or you’d have to kill me?”

He smiled. “I signed a confidentiality agreement. Took an oath.” He stood. “ Désolé . Don’t count on me this weekend.”

The call, his sudden departure … it all happened too fast. She put on her father’s old wool robe, tied the belt. Fear clutched her stomach.

“Were you going to tell me, or just wait until—?”

“Tonight, over dinner and that bottle of Veuve Clicquot in your fridge,” he interrupted. “It’s a step up for me. Think of the bright side.”

Hard to, with an empty weekend ahead.

“Trust me, Aimée.”

Trust a flic? Never, she wanted to scream. She’d lived this while growing up with her father, the long years he was a policeman, and even after he left the force to be a private investigator—all the nights he never came home, the stakeouts, the toll showing on his face. The terrible not knowing if he’d turn the key in the front door again. Then the bomb explosion in Place Vendôme. His charred body parts …

“Trust you?” The words caught in her throat. She’d gone against her code to never get involved with a flic . It never worked out. “Two minutes ago my partner called for help, but that didn’t matter. Now your job rang and you’re leaving. Phfft , like that. At least I know where I stand.”

“ Zut! It’s an opportunity I can’t pass up, Aimée. Takes care of my alimony. We’ll carve out next weekend.”

She looked away.

“Didn’t we agree,” he said, cupping her chin in his hand, “at your suggestion— non , at your insistence—that our work took priority? No recriminations if work called. I respect that.” His eyes clouded. “Of all people, I thought you understood the demands of my job.”

His ex, Nathalie, hadn’t.

Part of her wanted to lock the door, barricade him in. Tell him she wouldn’t live like this. Break it off. The other part itched to help René.

“Nice to use my own words against me, Melac.” She reached for her cell phone.

Melac sat back down on the bed. “I’m not your father.” He took her face in his warm hands again. “I always come back. You won’t be able to get rid of me.”

Melac put on his down jacket in the hallway. She hesitated. But Melac knew everyone.

“Ever had dealings with Prévost?” she asked. “A flic in the troisième arrondissement?”

Melac’s grip tightened on his scarf, emblazoned with hearts—his daughter Sandrine had knitted it. “Middle-aged, thin lips, married to a Chinese woman?”

She nodded, shivering. She turned the sputtering radiator’s knob to high.

“Why?”

“He questioned us last night.”

Melac shrugged. “A fixture in that area. Speaks some dialect. A plodder. I worked with him once. There were rumors.”

She was instantly alert. “Rumors like what?”

“That he’s a frustrated Ming dynasty classical scholar, a disillusioned Orientalist.” Melac shrugged. “He liked the horses. And cards.”

That gave her food for thought. “Liked? Past tense?”

Melac shrugged again. “Disciplinary action years ago.”

“So you’re saying he’s bent, on the take?”

“I’m saying that’s old news. Ancient history.”

“Any idea who’s assigned to this case at la Crim? ”

“Not me.” He buttoned his leather jacket.

“Smelled like the RG’s involved.”

“A task force?” He shook his head.

She’d have to ask Morbier, her godfather, a commissaire . But he was in Lyon, and hadn’t returned her calls.

The taxi’s horn sounded from below.

“Go.”

He gave her a long, searching kiss. A moment later the hall door slammed shut behind him.

At the window, she watched him leave, but he never looked up. A pang hit her. Like her father. Her mind went back to her last day of école primaire . The playground, the swings, landing on concrete. Her skull fracture.

So vivid in her mind, like yesterday.

Her father’s worried face drifting in and out. Overhearing the doctor—“The operation’s touch and go.”

Beside her father at the hospital bed was white-faced Morbier, a man who didn’t pray, with a priest. The smell of incense, the cold holy water, administering the last sacrament. The huddling nurse. “The operating room’s ready, mon curé .”

Then the sun-filled room, her stuffed bear on the pillow, the tubes in her arm.

She remembered her father’s smile: “ Ma princesse , you’ll need to quit the acrobatics for a while.” The nurse saying, “She needs to take lessons and learn to fall correctly.”

Aimée shook her head. She’d made it.

She said a silent prayer Melac would too.

RENÉ’S HORN TOOTED from the quai below her kitchen window. She opened the window to the smell of wet foliage and flashed René five fingers. The sluggish gray-green Seine slapped white crests against the stone banks.

Miles Davis licked the last of the horsemeat from his new Sèvres bowl. In her bedroom Aimée pulled on a cashmere sweater over her black lace top, hitched up her stovepipe, stonewashed suede leggings, and stepped into her friend Martine’s high-heeled Prada ankle boots. At the door she grabbed her vintage Chanel jacket. Miles Davis wagged his tail expectantly and sniffed his leash. “ On y va , furball. Madame Cachou will do the honors.”

Miles Davis scampered down the wide marble staircase, his leash trailing on the worn steps grooved in the middle, to the concierge’s loge in the courtyard. Madame Cachou’s early morning yoga on the télé had finished. Perfect timing.