Cara Black - AL05 - Murder in Clichy

She knocked several times. Tapped her feet on the wet cobbles. At last the door opened. The person standing there had his face hidden in shadow.

“We’re closed,” said a man in a low voice.

Closed? It didn’t look like they’d ever been opened.

“I’m looking for Mado,” she said.

From inside came the acrid smell of kerosene lamps and low flickers of light.

“Who are you?”

Aimée realized the sari still hung, bedraggled, from her shoulders and she still wore dark glasses. If she told the truth, she doubted if he would let her in.

“Mado’s sister, Sophie,” she said.

“Liar.” He shut the door before she could stick her foot inside.

Bad choice. She should have said something else.

She huddled close to the stone wall. A cat slunk by her feet. Moments later, the blue lights of a police car were reflected in the puddles veining avenue de Clichy, as it flashed past. She pounded on the door.

Several minutes later the door opened a crack to reveal Mado’s silhouette framed by her rhinestone tank top dress.

“I have something of yours,” Aimée said, “let me in.”

Mado opened the door a crack wider.

Aimée edged in beside her, unwound the sari, and put it in Mado’s arms. “Your band’s upset you didn’t show up, but I helped them out.”

“ Quoi? ” Mado’s mouth opened in a violet circle of surprise.

“We have to talk,” she said. “People are chasing me and I must reach Sophie. I have to contact her in London.”

Mado’s eyes widened. “But she’s here. How did you find this place?”

Aimée bit back her surprise. “Show me.”

Mado gestured toward a room with a wooden counter. Shelves, left from an old pharmacie, labeled with Latin pharmacological names, reached the ceiling. Mado’s rhinestone- trimmed dress glittered in the dim light, the floor creaked, and dank smells came from the corners. Sophie sat crosslegged on the counter, an army-green blanket over her shoulders, murmuring into a phone.

If she was surprised to see Aimée, she didn’t show it. There were dark circles under her smudged, mascaraed eyes. Her blunt-cut brown hair hit the edge of the army blanket.

“The gallery’s line of credit’s used up,” Sophie said, snapping her phone shut. “The bank’s recording says we’ve borrowed beyond our means. Why didn’t Thadée tell me?” She shook her head. “I can’t even pay the customs duty we owe in England. The show’s gone bust!”

“Thadée needed money, Sophie. That’s why he tried to sell the jade to the nun,” Aimée said. She pulled out the fifty thousand franc check . “This belongs to you.”

“Me?”

“For the gallery, or whatever you need it for,” she said. “But I have to find the jade.”

“As I told you, I’ve never heard of this jade. And I can’t take this check.”

Aimée pressed it into her hand.

“He meant it for you.”

For the first time Aimée saw a lost look in Sophie’s face.

“Good for nothing,” Mado said, her voice low. “Thadée never changed.”

“Don’t talk like that,” Sophie snapped.

Aimée saw the jawline the two sisters shared and sensed their rivalry, stemming from childhood, almost palpable in the chill air of the old pharmacie .

“Sophie, I think he stole the jade; he needed money. At least, it makes sense. But what doesn’t make sense is where he got it and who has it now.”

“A mess. I didn’t go back to London,” Sophie said. “I’m trying to work out a deal with the British gallery. If only he had told me! But he had heart. He tried to help people; he never wanted me to worry.”

“Didn’t he talk about some big deal?”

“For the past two months I’ve been flying back and forth, letting him run the show here. In London, the lorry drivers went on strike; we couldn’t even get the wood for shipping crates.” Sophie buried her face in her hands. Sobbed. “I can’t believe he’s gone.”

Aimée stroked Sophie’s hand, comfortingly. Waited until she calmed down. “What about his connections with old families, old collectors?” Aimée prodded. Couldn’t Sophie remember some connection?

Sophie shook her head.

Aimée wished she had a drink, and one to give to Sophie. She pulled on her jacket but it was made for the runway, not a frigid, unheated turn-of-the-century pharmacie.

“But he was murdered and it has to do with the jade,” she said. “What about Asian art collectors or the Musée Cernuschi?”

Sophie shrugged.

She hated to keep prodding Sophie but if she didn’t, her chance of finding a link to the jade disappeared.

“Sophie, how would he have had access to a jade collection looted years ago from Indochina?”

“I don’t know. We’d grown apart; we only spoke about business the last two months.”

“Did Thadée let old veterans stay in that back building?”

“How do I know?” she said. “I never went there.”

Aimée had to take another tack.

“Think, please. What did Blondel want from him?”

Tears welled in Sophie’s eyes again. “Not dope. He quit cold turkey. Went through hell, did it himself. I was proud of him.”

“You make him sound like a saint, Sophie,” Mado said, disgust in her voice. “ He owed everyone. Past bills in Clichy don’t go away until they’re paid.” Mado paused. “ Non, you talk like he was a martyr to dope!”

“What do you know? The craving, it’s a sickness,” Sophie said.

Aimée heard the sadness and something more in Sophie’s tone. An echo of real experience. She sensed a subtle change in the two sisters. As if they’d exchanged roles, Sophie with her conservative exterior, more forgiving than Mado with her wild outfit and narrow mind.

“He promised everything would work out.”

Frustrated, Aimée leaned close to Sophie, putting an arm around her shoulder. She tried not to wince as the stitches in that arm smarted. “Don’t you want to find the killers, bring them to justice? I do.”

“But you were the target, non ?”

“I thought so too, but we both could have been set up.” That thought had kept Aimée up at night. “And then you were attacked. It could make some kind of sense if Thadée owed money.” She thought of what Pleyet said about owing “big sharks.” “He gave me the jade to give to a Cao Dai nun, but it was stolen from me. Stolen by someone who knew he’d had it. How will we know who unless you think hard? Tell me whom he dealt with.”

“Thadée had pretensions. Ever since his second wife, the one from the chic family,” Mado said. “You didn’t mention Pascale, the rich one who wised up and moved to Bordeaux.”

“I don’t want to talk about—” Sophie said.

“Of course not,” Mado said, “But at one time, Pascale de Lussigny was your best friend!”

Aimée knew Sophie swung a good punch from experience and shoved Mado to one side, just in case. But the name registered. So Thadée had had a connection to the de Lussigny’s. Was it the branch related to Julien de Lussigny, who wanted her to spy on PetroVietnam?

“What’s their address?”

“That big mansion overlooking Parc Monceau.”

That narrowed it some.

“There’s a lot of those. Which one?”

“Gold filigreed gates, by the museum.”

“Musée Cernuschi?”

Mado nodded.

“We’ll find it.” Aimée punched in the taxi request number on her speed dial. “First we’re taking you to a safe place. You can stay with my friend.”

“Not that old flic. . . .”

“In the 16th near the Bois de Boulogne,” she said. “More your style. This time you’ll remain there for your own good.” Even if she had to chain her up.