Cara Black: AL05 - Murder in Clichy

“Then when you deliver this backpack to the nun, you’re finished?” Guy asked.

“I better be,” she said.

His gray eyes softened. She felt his tapered fingers on her neck, his wonderful long fingers.

“If I promise to be good . . .” she said.

“ Ah oui? If you promise to be bad, that’s another matter,” he said, kissing her neck.

“Guy . . . no lectures, promise?”

“Lectures? That’s all I’ve had for two weeks,” he said. “I have other ideas in mind.”

“Now that,” she said, pulling him close, “won’t be a problem.”

“You know I missed you. Couldn’t stop thinking about you.”

“You told me. You’re not on call this time , are you Guy?”

“At least not for another two hours,” he said. “Even if there were a nuclear attack.”

At least that’s what she thought he said before his lips found hers. And then his fingers were massaging her spine, his breath in her ear. His scent in her hair.

“Now that we’re together,” he said, “I don’t want to let go.”

The paper crinkled under her. She ran her hands through his hair.

The phone rang and Guy kicked the examining room door shut with his left foot.

“Shouldn’t you get that?”

“That’s why I have an answering service.”

“You do this often, doctor?”

“You’re the first,” he said, nibbling her ear.

Her skin tingled and warmth spread all over. She didn’t want his hands to stop exploring.

“I’ve always loved your tattoo,” he said, his breath on her back.

“The Marquesan lizard, the symbol of change, with the sacred tortoise inside?”

He grinned. “Why haven’t we ever done it like this before?”

“Your old office was too small,” she said and she nibbled at the nape of his neck.

He took off his white coat. “Is this better?”

“We’ll have to find out, doctor,” she said, pulling him on top of her.

GUY’S WATCH beeped in her ear. Her eyes opened to the examining room, bathed in the moon’s dim reflection on the stainless steel. His arm shifted under her head and she remembered what they’d been doing. And how wonderful it had been.

“I have to hurry. I have hospital rounds in thirty minutes,” he said, kissing her, then dressing hastily. “Sorry, I hate to leave you. Let me find you more medication before I go.”

She sat up, found her shirt, and stretched.

Her cell phone rang.

“ Allô? ”

She heard a crackle and then Linh’s voice. “Aimée, don’t you have something for me?”

The nun’s words brought it all back. The bullets ricocheting, Baret’s lifeless body.

“ Oui , but Linh,” she said, “Thadée Baret’s dead. Shot . . . there’s more to this than. . . .”

She heard Linh gasp. “I can’t talk now. There are men outside. Watching me.”

“You mean . . . Linh, I’m surprised you entrusted me with . . .”

“Keep it safe,” Linh said, her voice agitated. “I can’t come now. We’ll meet tomorrow.”

“Wait a minute—”

But she’d hung up. Aimée hit the call back number. Only a buzz. Probably Linh had called from a public phone.

If people were watching Linh, and they had shot Baret . . . soon they’d be after her. If they weren’t already.

She reached into the backpack to see what else was inside. What someone had tried to grab, what Thadée had been killed for. She loosened the buckles and lifted out several burnished silk-enfolded objects. She carefully unwrapped them and gasped. Jade animal figures. She took them out, one by one, and set them down on the stainless steel examining table. They looked like the animals of the zodiac she’d seen on the poster at the Cao Dai temple. The jade was intricately carved, and its opaque green milkiness radiated in the light. Exquisite. Eleven figurines, each no bigger than her palm.

Guy’s office phone rang again. “Hold on, Aimée,” he said from the hallway. “Let me take this call.”

Aimée stared at the jade pieces. Even to her untrained eye, they seemed to belong in a museum. Small, slender jade disks crowned each figure, except for two which showed old breaks.

She fingered the smaller of the two loose jade disks. Worn lines, just visible, were carved into the jade. A kind of hexagram? She peered closer, realized the lines formed a primitive dragon.

She re-counted. Eleven zodiac figures: the Rat, Ox, Tiger, Rabbit, Snake, Horse, Goat, Monkey, Rooster, Dog, and Pig. Weren’t there twelve zodiac signs? One was missing. The Dragon.

There was no way she was going to carry these treasures on the Métro to her office. She had to stow them somewhere safe, until tomorrow. Somewhere no one would think to look.

The moonlight suffused and softened the hard lines of the examining room. Surely they’d be safe here overnight. She could nip into the office early and tell Marie she’d forgotten something. Meet Linh outside, and deliver the backpack, with its contents, to her.

She opened the doors of white office cabinets filled with boxes of gloves, disposable syringes, and Steri-strips. Guy’s office staff must stock them regularly. She opened the cabinet under the small sink. Flush with its side was a piece of white particle board, perhaps intended to be installed as a shelf. She removed the containers of bacterial soap, stuck the backpack inside, fitted the particle board in front, rearranged the soap and closed the cabinet door.

Guy walked in and handed her some pills. “Antibiotics to prevent infection and a stronger anti-inflammatory medication for your optic nerve. And go to the police. Doctor’s orders.”

He pulled on his raincoat. “Sorry, I have to rush to hospital rounds,” he said, helping her into her coat. “You know, my apartment lease is ending and I’m looking for a new place. Bigger, in the suburbs.” He touched her face, cupped her chin in his hands. “Wouldn’t you like a modern place . . . somewhere near the Neuilly park for Miles Davis to run about in and bury bones?”

Where had this come from? Give up her seventeenth-century apartment on Ile St-Louis, with its pear tree in the courtyard, temperamental electricity and sparse hot water? For the suburbs and a commute to work?

Guy traced his fingers down her neck. “You could work from home. Do consulting.”

Surprised, she pulled back. He was going too fast. “Guy, I’m a Paris rat, born and bred. I need to keep close to the sewers.”

She still hadn’t told him that she was half-American, afraid it would raise questions: questions she didn’t know the answers to, about her American mother who had disappeared when Aimée was eight. Who had been linked to radicals and German terrorists in the 1970s.

“I like riding my bike to Leduc Detective,” she said, neglecting to mention that her bike had been stolen the previous week. Again.

“My colleagues want to meet you,” he said. He stared into her eyes, feathered her brow with kisses. His tone had turned serious. “Their wives keep busy in the suburbs and they wouldn’t dream of moving back . . . the crime, pollution, the traffic and noise.”

“Then I wouldn’t have the Métro strikes to complain about,” she said, keeping her tone light. Or the grisaille image of a Paris winter, light reflected off the roof tiles with a bluish hue, to enjoy outside her window.

The way this conversation was going disturbed her. Was he hinting at domestic duties ?

He looked at his watch, then back at her and grinned. “To be continued later. Remember where we left off.”

AIMÉE TOOK the Métro, changed twice, and waited by the Louvre-Rivoli kiosk until she felt sure no one had followed her. She took a deep breath, walked the well-lit half block to Leduc Detective, and found René at work on his computer. She hung up her coat and made espresso.