Murder at the Lanterne Rouge

Sunday, 10:00 A.M.

“OFFICER PRÉVOST, s’il vous plaît,” Aimée said to the blue-uniformed flic on duty. The commissariat on rue Louis Blanc had been designed by Gustave Eiffel, and its corners needed dusting.

“Mademoiselle Leduc?” said the fresh-faced recruit who’d missed a spot shaving his chin. He opened a file and slid a typed procès-verbal form across the high counter. “Routine, please sign and date your statement, s’il vous plaît.”

“But we had an appointment,” she said. She’d counted on worming the surveillance info out of Prévost. He’d promised her.

“You’re late. He left for a meeting.”

Merde!

Aimée scanned the typed up statement, noting the case number and file with a pen on her palm. Reading her statement, her mind went back to the snow dusting the plastic on Pascal’s unseeing eyes, the chunks of his flesh gnawed by rats. Her attack last night.

“Prévost?” an officer was saying on the phone from the other end of the reception counter. Her ears perked up. “He’s on call today. Out to early lunch.”

Meeting, my foot, she thought. He’d avoided her.

She scribbled her name. Pushed the statement back to the officer. Smiled.

“I’m starving.” She rubbed her stomach. “Know a good place around here?”

The flic paused in thought. A challenge for him, she could tell, a new graduate from the police academy who’d been transferred to Paris and no doubt ate in the police canteen in the basement.

He shrugged.

“But flics know the best places to eat,” she said, pushing it.

“Some of the older ones talk about a cassoulet place on Quai de Valmy. But I don’t know.”

She winked. “Merci.”

Several blocks down rue Louis Blanc she saw the red awning of a bistro, Chez Pépé, cuisine de Bourgogne. Definitely a place for cassoulet. She hoped to God that Prévost ate here. Not a moment later she recognized his sparse hair, that raincoat ducking out the door. She revved into second gear and, her luck still holding, found a narrow space to wedge her scooter into, next to the zebra crosswalk.

To find Prévost and a parking place—the gods were smiling on her. She set her helmet in the carrier, edged sideways between the cars to the sidewalk, and stepped into melted slush up to her ankle. Another pair of boots, vintage Fendis, ruined.

Prévost stood in Chez Pépé’s doorway, speaking on his cell phone and gesturing with his free hand. Before she reached him, he clicked his phone shut and went back inside.

A moment later Prévost shot out the doorway again, keys in hand. He unlocked the door of an unmarked Peugeot, started the engine.

The gods had stopped smiling.

She ran back to her scooter, wedged it out, and prayed Prévost hadn’t made the traffic light. She gunned the scooter down the quai until she saw the Peugeot ahead. A bus cut in front of her. By the time she reached the next intersection, the Peugeot had pulled ahead. She punched the handlebars in frustration. As the light turned green, she popped into first gear and caught up with Prévost.

The threatening clouds chose this moment to open up. Rain pelted the canal’s surface. Blinking rain away, she followed Prévost for fifteen wet minutes until he parked on narrow rue du Pont au Choux.

Next to the maroon storefront of Tartaix Métaux Outillage, the commercial metal shop, Prévost pushed open a wormholed faded-green door. She parked her scooter on the pavement, propped it up on the kickstand. Rain dripped from her shoulders. She shivered and ran across the street.

But the door shut behind him. Did he live here?

Instead of waiting in the deserted street for Prévost to emerge, she entered Tartaix Métaux’s glass-paned doors. The shop’s interior appeared unchanged from how she remembered it from childhood visits with her grandfather: the floor-to-ceiling drawers, long wooden counters reminding her of a bistro, a sales wicket resembling the old Métro ticket booths piled with catalogs.

“We’re closed, Mademoiselle.”

She noted the blue-coated assistants stocking items from stepladders. “But I didn’t see a sign, Monsieur.”

“We’re doing inventory,” said a man, wiping his hands on a rag. “Come back tomorrow.”

A side door opened, bringing with it a wet rush of air. Prévost stood under the dripping eaves, huddled with an Asian man.

Her grandfather had known the owner; they’d been old drinking buddies. She could use that.

“Does Monsieur Colles still work in the back?” She flashed a smile and her card.

“Some problem, Mademoiselle?” The stooped, graying man eyed her.

“Not at all, Monsieur,” she said, peering over the workman’s shoulder. From Prévost’s gestures, rigid body stance, and raised voice, she figured they were arguing. The Asian man stepped back, shaking his head. He wore a rain-spattered blue workcoat, and round, silver-framed glasses that gave him an academic air.

A brief glimpse before the courtyard door slammed shut.

“Routine, Monsieur,” Aimée said, emitting a bored sigh. “An insurance scam hit several firms on the street. My firm’s making inquiries.”

He nodded. “Second door to the left.”

She stepped to the rear amid rows of aluminum tubing, copper wire, and chrome and bronze strips on shelves reaching to the slanted glass ceiling. The reek of soldering metal and the whining grate of an electric saw assaulted her senses. Familiar, so familiar. She thought of her grandfather’s watchmaker friend, who would come to scour these shelves for bronze.

Inside the open office door she saw a thirtyish man, shiny bald head, black turtleneck, and readers perched on his nose. He looked like a film director. She remembered the massive walnut desk he stood at.

“But I’m looking for Monsieur Colles?”

He gave her the once-over. “My father.” Glanced at her card. “Leduc Detective. But I knew old Leduc …”

“My grandfather. I’m Aimée Leduc.” She smiled. “Forgive me, I came here on false pretenses.”

“Followed in his footsteps, eh?” He grinned. “Sit down.”

“Non, merci.” She pointed out the window to the courtyard. “That man the flic’s talking to, he’s your employee?”

Colles Junior’s eyebrows shot up in his forehead.

“Cho? Three years now.” His eyes narrowed in suspicion. “What’s this about?”

“He’s not in trouble. Please understand. But I’d like to talk with him.”

“Why?”

She looked around the office. Little had changed. “My client doesn’t trust the flics. In this case, I don’t trust the one who’s talking to your employee.”

He sat down in the heavy wooden chair. “Big eyes. Yes, I remember you visiting with old Leduc and the watchmaker from rue Chapon. My father, like Riboux the watchmaker, is long gone.”

She nodded. “My grandfather, too.” It took her back to her childhood, visiting here one afternoon during a sudden hailstorm in May. “Aimée, we call it les saints de glace if it hails in May,” her grandfather had said. “That means the farmers harvest crops later.”

Colles sat down, indicated she do the same.

“But you’ve followed in your family’s footsteps, too,” she said, hoping to warm him up. Enlist his aid.

“At the end of the nineteenth century, seven hundred and fifty thousand artisans and craftsmen lived and worked in Paris,” he said. “Many lived in ateliers, like my great-grandfather did upstairs. Raised families. Now it’s diminished to ninety thousand, and fewer each year.” He shrugged. “But my father loved his friends and a good excuse to open one of his bottles of Montrachet.”

The soft wooden floor creaked under her feet as she remembered. She noticed the bronze coils and intricate inner springs of the blond-wood clock that Riboux had touched with his work-worn hands. “But I can still see the watchmaker repairing this.” She gestured to the tall seventeenth-century longcase clock. “I sat crosslegged on this floor, fascinated, just watching him with his old repair diagrams.”

Diagrams.

Samour’s chalk diagrams jumped out at her. She caught herself, looked out the window. Prévost was nowhere in sight. “Look, forgive me for barging in and being abrupt about this, but what do you know about Cho?”

“Determined, too. Like your old grandfather.” Colles Junior leaned back in the chair. “Cho was a metallurgist back in China. Highly educated. A shame we can only offer him technical work beneath his skills. He’s legal. I sponsored him.”

She paused. “Then why …?”

Colles Junior snorted. “He hawked faux designer bags on the quai. Had a brush with the law. How he got here from China, I don’t know. He was living with ten in a room, they took turns sleeping.”

She nodded. No doubt Cho owed the snakeheads. And Prévost used Cho’s brush with the law to turn him into his indicateur. An informer.

That’s how it worked.

Now she knew she needed to speak with him, to get on the playing field with Prévost. Find out his investigative path in Samour’s murder.

“You owe me nothing, but seeing as we have a past,” she said, and grinned, trying on the charm, “would you mind asking Cho into the office so I could talk to him without others around?”

“Why don’t we have a drink first?”

Aimée groaned inside. Not too hard on the eyes, but not her bad-boy type. And she needed to find out Cho’s connection.

She edged closer to the desk. “Desolée, but I’m investigating my client’s murder. If Cho knows anything, it’s imperative we talk. And that he trust me.” She glanced at her watch. “I’m already late for the autopsy.” A little lie she figured didn’t matter. She counted on that to put him off for now.

And it did. He’d averted his eyes. “But how can you think Cho knows anything about that?”

She shrugged. “The flics do.” At least she hoped Prévost did.

She noticed the wedding ring on his finger before he covered his hand. But he caught her look, and she saw a slump of defeat in his shoulders.

“Alors, just five minutes,” she said. “Please.”

He buzzed the intercom.

“Ask Monsieur Cho to step into my office.”

Not a moment later, Cho walked inside smiling. She noticed scarred flesh on his wrist that his work coat didn’t cover. “Monsieur Colles, we’re still working on the custom order …”

Colles Junior rose and waved his hand. “Pas de problème. Talk to the mademoiselle here.”

Cho’s eyes widened.

Colles stopped at the door. “Not my business, you understand. But her family knew mine, and, well … I took the liberty of saying you’d cooperate.” At a loss for more to say, he left and closed the door.

Aimée smiled. “Nothing you say will leave this room, Monsieur Cho.”

Cho stared at her. Light glinted off his silver-rimmed glasses.

“Monsieur Cho, I’m a private detective investigating the murder of Pascal Samour. On rue au Maire on Friday night, I think you’ve heard.”

Cho stood as still as a cat watching a mouse. As silent, too. Well, she could play along.

“It’s not my business if you’re Prévost’s informer in Chinatown,” she said, taking a hunch.

“Why should I talk to you?” he said.

“Didn’t your patron, your sponsor, request you to assist me? I’m not with the flics. But I can give you more reasons.” She returned his stare. “I want to find who murdered Samour. I don’t think he gambled, or was jealous over a woman, but no one will talk to me.” She shrugged. “Prévost holds something over your head, non?”

“You’re threatening me?” Cho said at last.

“Not me. Prévost’s pointing the finger to Chinatown. Even if you help him, there’s no guarantee against immigration crackdowns.” She let that sink in. “Or raids in the quartier.”

“I’m legal,” Cho said.

“But what about the others? The ones who helped you when you hawked bags on the quai, the ones who fed you?”

Cho blinked. He averted his eyes. Then came to a decision.

“You think I have a choice?” Cho’s low voice was laced with inflections, a singsong French. “Here, like in China, even when you play the game, tiptoe in the political minefields, they hold something over you and pull you in every time.”

Recruiting him as an informer, Cho meant. She edged around the desk. Lines creased the bridge of his nose, radiated from the corners of his eyes. Older than she had first thought. Tired.

“I’m sorry, Monsieur Cho.”

“My laboratory, our chemistry department at the university in Wenzhou …” He shrugged. “The deals I made to keep operating our laboratory sickened me.”

“So what have you heard?” she asked.

Cho stared at her. “We never bring attention to Chinatown. Too dangerous. If French people kill French people, it’s not our business.”

“Why do you say that?”

He shook his head. “No one is who they seem.”

“I know about the false identities, the unmarked graves at Ivry, the shops fronting money-laundering operations, the protection racket.” She tapped her heel. “I need more, Monsieur Cho.”

“Look deeper,” he said.

She didn’t have the time for a philosophical exploration. “Deeper?”

Cho backed up toward the door. “My room’s on rue des Vertus. If a Chinese murdered this man, I would have heard, as I told Prévost. I need to get back to work.”

She believed him. “What’s behind the surveillance?”

“The sting operation?” he said. “The usual roundup of little fish. Why do you care? Your neck’s not on the line.”

Cho needed convincing.

“Call this a love bite, do you?” She pulled her scarf down, showed him her bruises. “Whoever murdered Samour thinks otherwise. I was attacked last night. And Meizi, who worked in the luggage store, is in danger.”

“Don’t tell me you want to warn her?”

“Protect her if I can. But I need your help.”

Cho hesitated. “The owners of the handbag, luggage, and costume jewelry shops hide their profits.” His voice lowered. “Never pay into the fisc for illegal workers. You’re right, most of it’s a front for laundering money from China.”

Meizi had told her the same thing.

“But what about Tso, the snakehead? Ching Wao?”

“Both would provide a goldmine of back taxes and penalties,” Cho said. “If the tax men find proof, they’ll freeze their network’s bank accounts. That’s all I know.”

And then he’d gone out the door.

She caught up with him in the wet, footprinted hallway. Slid her card with a hundred-franc note in his hand. “I’d appreciate a call if you hear anything.”

He shook her hand off, a flash of pride in his eyes. “I cooperated for Monsieur Colles.”

Again, she’d put her foot in it. Offended him. “Desolée, Monsieur Cho, I meant no disrespect.” Why had the few interviewing skills she had deserted her?

“Now if you’ll excuse me,” he said, taking out a notepad with measurements from his jacket pocket.

One last effort. She pulled out the photo scan of the chalk diagrams. “Can you tell me anything about this?”

“This? A diagram.”

“Recognize anything?” Aimée asked.

He pulled off his glasses and peered closer. Shrugged.

“What about this?” She pulled out one of René’s photo scans of the chalk diagrams.

He pointed his smudged forefinger to the border. “Formulas.”

“These?” She stared closer at what could be elongated symbols. Why did they seem so familiar? “The ones that look like old French?”

“Partially, and engineer shorthand.” Cho gave a little smile. The first time he’d thawed. “Electrical engineering’s not my field.” Interested now, he studied the diagram. “But we metallurgists sometimes worked with similar equations.”

“So what can you tell me?”

“It’s hard to say.” He shook his head.

Take a guess, she wanted to yell. Instead, she managed a smile. “But with what you know, your expertise …”

“Clearly these symbols represent an alloy. But this … maybe glass?”

She stared at the diagram, wishing she could see what he saw.

“If I enlarge these, could you tell me more?”

“The diagram looks like a map. But this? Your best bet, Mademoiselle?” Cho put his glasses back on. “Find an electrical engineer.”

AIMÉE DOUBLE-KNOTTED THE cashmere scarf around her sore neck, donned her leather gloves, and wove her scooter through traffic on chilly Boulevard de Sébastopol. Thoughts of sunny Martinique and Melac spun in her mind.

Her cell phone rang. With one hand she answered it.

“Saj cracked the encryption, Aimée,” René said.

Finally.

“See you in five minutes.” She clicked off and veered around a bus and gunned her scooter.

AROMAS OF CILANTRO and curry drifted from the Indian takeout cartons on René’s desk. Saj stepped on a Louis XV chair, spread a damask tablecloth over the gilt-framed mirror hanging above the fireplace. He then angled his laptop on Aimée’s desk. “I cracked a portion. A part’s missing. I figure if he’d encrypted this a week, two weeks ago—”

“Then found the other part yesterday,” she interrupted, taking off her leather gloves, “it wouldn’t be in there. I’ll get going on that at the museum.”

“What’s wrong with your wrists?” René asked, looking at her bruises.

It all came back to her—the panic, struggling to breathe, her bound hands, biting at the plastic, rubbing her face against the sharp glass shards, crawling in the wet walkway. She knew if the couple hailing the taxi hadn’t frightened the killer off she wouldn’t be here now. She stilled her shaking hands and told him.

“Samour’s murderer attacked you?” René’s eyes widened.

The memory of the thread from his coat stuck in her fingernail came back to her. “I’m close, René.”

“Too close,” he said. “Have you told Prévost?”

“Not yet,” she rubbed her wrist, “but I will, and I’ll discover when the raid’s planned.” She had to move on. “But how’s Meizi?”

A little smile painted René’s face. “Safe.” Then it disappeared. “For now, Aimée.”

Right now Saj’s discovery of Pascal’s encryption was more important.

“Ready, Saj?” she asked.

He hit a key on his laptop, projecting an image of a bordered manuscript. Her mouth dropped open. Tight lines of black-ink script, ancient-looking and illegible to her, marched across the page, reminding her of the tiny, sharp curls of a monk’s illuminated manuscript. Accompanying the script was a drawing that looked like a primitive blueprint, for what she didn’t know.

“But that looks like Latin.” Not her strong point.

Saj bit into a potato pakora. “Latin’s the standard, the lingua franca. Samour encrypted a recipe.”

“Like a medieval Paul Bocuse?” René stared at Pascal’s encrypted attachment under the chandelier, enlarged on the damask tablecloth. “Cookbooks in the fourteenth century? That looks like an oven.”

Aimée peered closer. “But what is it?”

“I’d say an alchemical formula,” Saj said.

“Alchemy?” Aimée sat up. “You mean wizards, Merlin, eye of newt and mad monks?”

“Why not?” Saj’s eyes gleamed.

René frowned. “It could as easily be a poison. Or a machine.”

“Saj, let’s forget the woo-woo.” Aimée pulled Samour’s book on medieval guilds from her bag and opened to the chapter he had marked. Glassmaking—a coincidence? “To me it’s more concrete.” Her gaze caught on a subchapter heading. “Listen.”

She read out loud, “ ‘Glassmaking guilds guarded secret alchemical formulas and techniques used in the prized leaded-glass-paned windows of cathedrals.’ ”

René’s eyes widened. “He lived in a tower, didn’t he?” René lifted up the diagrams he’d scanned from her digital camera. “Drew these. We just don’t know the connection.”

Aimée grabbed a pakora. “And we need to connect the dots.” Cho’s words came back to her: alloy, glass, formulas. “Look at the elongated swirls, René. They’re symbols, part of an equation or formula. For an alloy, or glass …”

“A machine or a concept,” René interrupted, his voice rising. “Lost in the past, misfiled in the archives. Why didn’t we see it before?”

She nodded. Saj clicked the brown beads around his wrist. A sign his chakras were aligned, or were out of alignment, she could never remember. “But the formula’s incomplete,” Saj said, moving the cursor down. The page ended in what was obviously the middle of the text. “I found corresponding alchemical symbols and phrases,” Saj said, “in Nicolas de Locques’s Les rudimens de la philosophie naturelle.” He patted a thick leather-bound volume under the curry takeout container. “Published in 1655.”

“That tail of newt, eye of toad nonsense again?”

Saj expelled air. “This explanation of the symbols cut my work in half, let me tell you. Samour used de Locques’s book as a guide. The same Latin words appear here in Samour’s incomplete segment.”

Her excitement mounted. “Pascal searched for the missing part of the formula. He knew there was more, and where better to find it than in the museum’s archives.”

“Formula to what? Alchemical stained glass?”

“Why not? This connects somehow,” she said. “I’ll comb the museum holdings, Saj. I’ll find it.”

“Et alors, so we know everything Pascal knew?”

She paused in thought. “But not the formula’s significance,” she said. “Something so important that Pascal was murdered for it.”

This added up. But how?

“A nerd who grew up in the museum’s shadows,” Saj said, “an engineer who’s obsessed about a lost alchemical formula?” He shook his head. “It doesn’t add up.”

“As René pointed out, he lived in a tower,” Aimée said. “His former classmate spoke of his obsession with the fourteenth century.” At her desk, she downloaded Saj’s enhanced encryption, then powered off her laptop. But Saj’s words raised more questions.

“Picture Samour, tech-savvy, skilled at encrypting, spending time and energy on a lost formula.” She shook her head. “What would it get him, Saj?”

Saj stretched. “Bon, in academia he’d publish a paper, write a treatise. Or a book,” he said. “What about Becquerel?”

His last professor. “Dead in a nursing home at ninety last week.”

“So another blind alley,” Saj said, looking at the remembrance pages Aimée had copied.

“Or the usual academic battle,” René said. “Say Pascal tried to garner department funding after discovering a lost medieval stained-glass formula.”

People killed for less. But that held less water than their poorly functioning radiator.

“It’s more than just that if the DST wants me to monitor Samour’s activity at the museum.”

Saj whistled. “So any ideas?”

“Besides checking my horoscope?” She rubbed her bandaged wrist. “Keep monitoring Coulade’s computer.”

So far all that they’d discovered put her back in the dark.

“The conservator mentioned that the Archives Nationales used the museum’s storage during the war,” she said, racking her brain. “They don’t know half of what’s in it, either.”

“Pascal programmed a dead man’s switch to e-mail this encryption,” Saj said. “He insisted Becquerel be contacted. Becquerel’s role was pivotal to Pascal, yet …”

“Well, everyone talks about Becquerel’s innovation.” René pointed to the copies from the remembrance book. “ ‘A pioneer who knew no boundaries in the field of optics and technology.’ ” He looked up. “Thinking what I’m thinking?”

Aimée nodded. “Fiber optics?”

“It’s an avenue to explore,” he said.

Saj grabbed his laptop. “Let me see what I find.”

BEFORE GOING TO the museum, Aimée hoped to find answers in the stained-glass atelier in her cousin Sebastien’s damp courtyard. Disappointed, she stared into the darkened windows. Knocked. No answer, nor at Sebastien’s atelier either.

Great.

She pulled her coat tighter and in the porte cochère scanned the mailboxes. Listed under Atelier J, Stained Glass was an alternate delivery address at a Galerie Juno on rue des Archives. A place to start.

Three blocks away she found Galerie Juno, with a sign in the door that said Open by Appointment Only.

Merde. Before she met Prévost she needed answers. And a game plan.

She punched in Galerie Juno’s number on her cell phone, and heard a recording of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons and a voice saying, “Leave a message, s’il vous plaît.”

“Bonjour, I’m interested in the stained-glass artist who has an atelier on rue de Saintonge,” she said, hoping that the gallery would answer. That she wasn’t speaking to the wind. “I’m at your gallery and want to make an appointment.”

The message clicked off. Full.

Lace curtains moved in the window next door.

Smiling, she put her face to the window.

The lace curtains parted to reveal a young woman with blue braids wound shell-like above her ears, and matching lipstick. A punkette wearing a dirndl, no less.

The window frame cracked open. “Juno’s working in back.” She jerked her thumb. The window slammed shut, and there was the sound of a lock tumbling.

Aimée pushed open the door, stepped over the frame into a courtyard lined with potted plants. Miniature bonsai trees in animal shapes—a rabbit, a bird. Whimsical.

Keeping her heeled boots out of the cracks between the worn pavers, she reached the atelier in the rear. On the wall were framed certificates from the Artisan Glassmaker Association, a notice of completed apprenticeship to a master glass-maker. Both with the names Juno Braud.

She’d come to the right man.

Hot molten-metal smells filled the atelier. Bundled lead rods stood upright like a forest against the glass walls. A man in overalls worked copper foil along the edges of a piece of blue glass using a soldering iron.

“Monsieur Juno?”

A wayward brown hair hung over a work mask that covered half his face. He looked young. “Attends,” came the muffled reply.

He set the soldering iron down on a brick, switched off the generator box. “Oui?” He’d pulled his mask off. A slash for a mouth, a cleft palate. Sad, it could have easily been treated by surgery in childhood.

“Sorry to bother you,” she said, focusing on his eyes. “My cousin Sebastien’s in the atelier next to yours.”

He tapped his thick fingers. “So?”

Impatient. She’d make this quick. “He suggested you could help me. Those for sale?” She gestured to a shelf of shimmering indigo-blue glass boxes.

“Rejects.”

“But they’re beautiful.”

“Imperfections, the glass bubbled …” He paused, a nervous swipe of his hand over his mouth. “But that’s not why you’re bothering me.”

She gave what she hoped he took for an enthralled gaze. “I need your expertise for five minutes. And I’ll buy those.” She pulled out the copy she’d made of the Latin alchemical formula. The black-and-white encrypted copy. “Could you tell me about this, besides the fact that it’s incomplete?”

“Where did you get this?”

She could go two ways here: offer some version of the truth, or coax him and see how far she got.

“Does it matter?” she leaned forward. “Is it valuable?”

“Would you ask me if it weren’t?” He stared at it. “It’s medieval symbols, an archaic formula, I’d have to guess.”

“Meaning it’s a formula for a stained-glass window in a cathedral?”

“Did I say that?” For a moment she thought she’d lost him.

But he sat down on a battered stool, ran his fingers over the paper. Nodded. “The Revolution disbanded guilds in 1791. The guild emblem’s unique.”

“Meaning?”

“This guild, deTheodric, was one of the oldest, going back to the thirteenth, fourteenth century. They were known for working with the Templars. Not much survives of their work now, though,” he said sadly.

What did the Templars have to do with anything, she wondered. But Samour lived in what had been the Knights’ old enclave.

“But why the Templars?”

“Stained glass was for cathedrals and monasteries.” He ran his fingers over a warm metal frame. “Apart from the aristocracy, tell me who else financed cathedral building? Promoted and used the artisans, the trades and the guilds?”

She figured it was a rhetorical question.

“The Templars ran it all. That’s until the Pope outlawed the Templars and took over their coffers.” He paused. “Like I said, little’s left of deTheodric’s work. They went the way of the Templars in 1311. Disbanded or executed, some accounts say.”

But a connection had to exist. “It’s your métier, what do you think?”

“There were stories,” he said, his words slow. A shrug. “But all glass artisans hear them.”

“Like what?”

He let out a puff of air. “Well, all trades and guilds were regulated at the time. Statutes and regulations in force until the Revolution. The powerful guilds paid the most tax and kept their craft secrets. Think of the windows at Chartres, no one’s replicated their technique.” He shook his head in rueful respect. “Or Abbé Suger, who developed that resonant blue ‘sapphire glass’ used at Saint-Denis.”

“But wouldn’t the techniques be passed down by word of mouth?”

“Or they died with the alchemists,” he said. “Like so many things, secrets lost, shrouded in time. Who knows?”

Something tugged in her mind.

“Art can happen by mistake,” he continued, a distant look in his eye.” In the thirteenth century, for example, a monk dropped his silver button into the glass and created indigo for the first time. We only found this out two hundred years ago. This discovery gave us a chance to make the indigo the hue guilds used before the Revolution in 1791.”

She heard other things in his voice now. A quiet excitement, almost awe. Any self-consciousness about his cleft palate had disappeared.

“For me it’s expression, glass gives form to beauty,” he said. “A painting with light. Not like the one-dimensional painting, where light shines on it. With glass, the light shines through.”

A purist, she thought, immersed in his trade.

He gestured to the diagram and its rows of Latin. “Of course, as journeymen we visited this guild’s masterpiece, a church window, the only one left of their work.”

Her pulse raced. “But you said this guild collapsed with the Templars.”

“Rumors handed down through time hint at conspiracies, plots …”

She straightened up. “Secret lost formulas?”

“So you think you’ve got one here, eh?”

“You tell me.”

He grinned. “But even so, it’s incomplete. Worthless.”

She pulled several hundred-franc bills from her wallet. “Say the other part of the formula were discovered. How valuable would it be?”

“More than a historical treasure.” His eyes gleamed. “Think of modern stained-glass windows made from an original ancient formula. The enhancement of cathedral restoration techniques.”

Ancient techniques for new windows in old cathedrals—interesting—but not sexy enough. Or worth murder. There was more, she knew it in her bones.

“Hasn’t anyone analyzed the components of this guild’s masterpiece?”

“A hundred feet up in the nave? Any exploration would damage the glass. It’s protected under historic preservation.”

Her mind went back to the Templars, the end of the guild. An angle to explain the questions swirling in her mind. “What if this powerful guild owed the Templars for some reason? The Templars demanded their secret formulas as payment. After their downfall the formula was lost and with it the guild’s influence?”

“Everything’s possible.”

“This window’s far away?” She imagined a long trip to Chartres or to a countryside cathedral hours away.

“You call Saint Nicholas des Champs far?”

Six blocks away and across from the Musée des Arts et Métiers. A block from where Pascal spent his youth.

“Mais non, it’s on my way to work.”

WITH THE WRAPPED indigo boxes in her bag, a perfect wedding present for Sebastien, she caught a taxi.

Her cell phone rang in her pocket. René’s number showed on her caller ID.

“Has Saj found Pascal’s file on Coulade’s computer, René?”

He sighed. “Not yet.”

Too bad. Impatient, she rolled and unrolled the encrypted page in her hands.

“Meizi keeps asking when you’ll help her,” he said, worry in his voice.

“As soon as I reach Prévost and find out the timing of the police raid. Tell Meizi to trust me, René.”

“You’re popular,” he said, sounding anxious now.

Her throat constricted. The men she’d lost in Zazie’s café?

“Two men?”

“I got rid of them.”

But for how long?

“Hold on, there’s another call,” René said.

She checked from the taxi window. If they were following her by car, they were stuck in traffic. But it bothered her.

“Pull over, Monsieur,” she told the driver.

“Ici?”

She paid, took her bag, and slammed the taxi door. Horns blared.

“Where are you, Aimée?” René asked.

“A block from the museum.”

She was around the corner from the church. But she didn’t have time.

“Right now you need to go to church,” she lowered her voice into her cell phone. Huddled in a doorway from the wind.

“Church?”

“Saint Nicholas des Champs. In the ninth chapel transept you’ll see a star-shaped stained-glass window,” she said. “Crafted by the same guild in Pascal’s encryption.”

“But what does that mean?”

“The glass guild disbanded with the Templars, but the formula connects somehow. The star, remember, in the formula?” She heard the rapid keystrokes over the line. It sounded like René was running searches. She tried to put this together. “If Pascal discovered properties in this alchemical recipe that could be used in something significant now …”

“Like you said, that would explain the DST’s interest.”

“Let me know as soon as you find it, René.”

She knew it existed. She was certain.

Pause. “Zazie called from the café,” René said. “Told me to tell you two men are sitting watching our door.”

Damned irritating. Aimée sucked in her breath. She needed a cigarette.

“You know what to do, René,” she said. “Go out the back.”