Cara Black - AL05 - Murder in Clichy

MARTINE, AIMÉE’S best friend since the lycée , answered the tall apartment door wearing a Tintin costume, a cigarette dangling from her mouth. Her orange wig was askew.

“We’re having a party for Gilles’s children,” she said, her voice husky as she looked them over. “I’ve got an extra costume.”

“Don’t worry,” Aimée said, “we’ll set her up in a back room and lock the door.”

“Don’t tell me.” Martine raised her hands. “I don’t want to know.”

In the gilt-edged white hallway, Aimée heard murmurs of conversation and laughter. Several dinosaur-costumed children ran into the dining room.

“ Nom de Dieu, we haven’t eaten yet and it’s midnight . . . lots of hungry natives,” Martine said, ushering them to the back of the long apartment. “Great dress,” she told Mado. She opened the door to a suite of rooms with Louis XV furniture.

“Things going smoothly with Guy, Aimée?” Martine asked.

Aimée shook her head. She avoided Martine’s gaze.

“What did you do now?” Martine asked, lifting Aimée’s chin and looking in her eyes.

“Something stupid. Now he’s with a blonde.”

“And he seemed to be such a good catch! But I guess he’s not your bad boy type.” Martine exhaled a puff of smoke. “ Bon , this will work, I’ve done it myself. Set off the fire alarm and you’ll meet big, strong men who can cook.”

Aimée grinned. “You seem happy now.”

“All men come with baggage.” Martine shrugged. “I like Gilles despite the nagging ex-wife and his kids every other week. I’m getting used to living in the eye of the storm.”

Aimée noticed the tired happiness in Martine’s eyes. And her pointed look at Aimée’s torn fishnet stockings. “How about another pair? I’ve got purple.”

“ Merci, Martine.”

AIMÉE SAT Sophie down. Pinpricks of car lights snaked through the Bois de Boulogne outside the window.

“Please stay here. It’s not safe for you anywhere else right now.”

“Look, Aimée, forgive me for the way I’ve acted,” Sophie said, “but I can’t keep this check.”

“Thadée meant it for you.”

“I can’t help you much,” Sophie said, hesitating, “but maybe there’s something in the computer records.” She sank deeper on the low ottoman. “Instead of hindering you, I should try to help. My computer password’s 2297jil,” she said. “The safe’s behind a Jean Basquiat charcoal in the office.”

Of course. And the first place anyone would look.

“I’ll have to bury Thadée. Someone has to.”

Sophie still loved him, that much was obvious.

“Let me find out about the arrangements. But don’t move from here,” Aimée said, not wanting to add that she’d join him if the men who were after her found her this time.

Late Friday Evening

AIMÉE AND MADO PULLED up in the taxi outside Avenue Velasquez. The gilt-edged gates surrounding Parc Monceau’s exclusive enclave confronted them as the taxi stopped.

“You’re sure it’s this house, Mado?”

Mado nodded. “Nice to see how the other half lives,” she said.

Couples walked down the wide front stairs to waiting cars. Several security men spoke into headphones on the driveway. White catering vans lined the back drive.

”Looks like the party’s over.”

“It’s just beginning,” Aimée said, hiking her bag onto her shoulder. “I’ll call you later; go back to Timbuktu.”

Instead of using the main entrance, Aimée wound her way past the catering vans. In the third van she found what she needed. Black-and-white-checked chef’s trousers, clogs, a white shirt with side buttons, and a long white apron. She tucked her hair under a white cap, left her bag in the rhododendron bushes outside the service entrance, and joined the chaos in the hot, steaming kitchen.

She kept her head down and made a beeline for the pantry.

An army of caterers loaded huge roasting pans on trolleys, piled hot trays, scrubbed dishes in the stainless steel sink, and loaded glassware in cardboard cartons.

“The LÉGUMES! The LÉGUMES !” a florid, flushed man was shouting at her, pointing to the carved rosettes of zucchini. “How many times do I have to say it?”

Aimée nodded, picked up the heavy tray, and aimed for the dining room.

“NON ! In the van!”

She turned and headed out the kitchen door. When his head was turned, she backed up right into the pantry lined with Sèvres dishes and linens. She pulled the sliding pantry door shut, latched it, set the tray down, covered it with a tablecloth, then slipped off the shirt, trousers and apron, putting them into a drawer, and exited the other side of the pantry.

A few couples huddled under the chandeliers, standing on the Aubusson carpet, saying goodbye to the hostess, a young blonde woman.

“ Bonsoir , Madame de Lussigny,” Aimée said.

The woman frowned.

Had she made a faux pas?

“I see you’ve met Lena, Mademoiselle Leduc,” said Julien de Lussigny, wearing a tuxedo and looking ready to step onto a Vogue Homme cover. In fact, many of the guests were faces prominent in the pages of Elle.

“So, you feel better?”

Thank you for asking. Monsieur de Lussigny, I’m sorry to “ come uninvited,” she said, “but spare me a few moments.”

She gave him a huge smile. And he returned it, eyeing her outfit, muttering “Too bad, you would have made this more interesting.”

Aimée wasn’t sure how to take that. When she looked around, Lena had disappeared.

“Let’s talk out there,” he said.

He escorted her to a glass-covered walkway looking over an interior garden. Small white lights and candles flickering in bubbled-glass holders lit the way.

“I was worried about you,” he said. “But you look much better. Have you come to tell me you’ve spoken with your partner and Verlet?”

“Right now what I’d like to know is how you’re related to Thadée Baret.”

Her heels echoed on the stone and a white moth beat its wings imprisoned in a candle-holder.

“Did you know Thadée?” de Lussigny asked.

“I asked first,” Aimée said.

“Thadée was my brother-in-law,” he said, folding his arms, “but he and my sister Pascale divorced.”

Aimée stared at de Lussigny in the dim light.

“Your family were prominent colonials in Indochina,”

Aimée said, “so I presume you know about the looted jade astrological figures.”

De Lussigny took a deep breath. “You’ve done your homework.”

She and Mado had stopped en route at the art gallery, where she’d sent Thadée’s documents via e-mail to herself and René. Too bad she hadn’t enough time to research further. But half an hour on Sophie’s computer had been enough to give her some background. Why hadn’t she done this before?

“And you haven’t answered my question.”

“My father knew stories,” de Lussigny said. “Stories he’d heard from the workers on the rubber plantation.”

“Stories about jade looted from the emperor’s tomb? Or the one where the last Vietnamese emperor entrusted the collection to the Cao Dai, to keep it safe?”

“You continue to impress me, Aimée. Persistent as well,” he said, smiling. “I’m not a collector. It’s not in my nature. My father had more than enough acquisitive genes in his body for all of us.”

So his father was the one?

“So you’re saying your father acquired this collection?”

“He dreamed of it, I know,” he said. “But no one has seen it since the fall of Dien Bien Phu.”

Disappointed, Aimée wondered how this could be true.

“But the jade was put up for auction at Drouot last month,” she said. “Then withdrawn. Wouldn’t your father have known about this?”