Murder in Clichy

Wednesday Midday

AIMÉE NUDGED HER WAY through the throng of patrons at the Drouot auction house counter, to the catalogues. Around her, in the long salle hung with paintings celebrating Drouot’s history, patrons milled in the display rooms, looking at items in glass showcases or piled in corners. Her grand-père, a habitué, had frequented the auction house. More often than not, he’d spot a frayed Savonnerie carpet or a Baccarat chandelier with missing crystals in a heap to be auctioned off as part of a lot. Many of these “finds” furnished her apartment now. “I’ve got an eye for these things,” he’d say, grinning and crossing his eyes, making Aimée laugh. As a young girl, she’d loved the smell of old furniture, the blistered oil paintings, and the sound of the wooden gavel of the auctioneer.

Afterwards they’d walk to the confiserie, her hand nestled in his overcoat pocket. Inside, he’d let her choose from the old-fashioned sugared violets and candied almonds. They’d end the day at the Guignol puppet theatre in the Jardin du Luxembourg.

Now all Aimée saw were the feral gleams in dealers’ eyes and the video surveillance cameras tracking patrons. She doubted her grand-père would have been able to discover bargains or “finds” now.

She consulted November’s auction catalogue. Nothing. But in October’s issue, on page 114, she found a black and white photo that did little justice to the eleven exquisite jade pieces pictured. Yet even this photo took her breath away.

A short description read: Incomplete set of Chinese jade astrological figures, reputedly of fourth century Chinese origin. Provenance unknown.

This didn’t make sense. Who had put the jade figures up for auction, and more importantly, how had Baret ended up with them? Why sell them to Linh for fifty thousand francs when their value was estimated in the hundreds of thousands? Had he been short of money and so, motivated to make a quick sale? Or was he sincerely trying to help Linh?

“Excuse me,” she said to the smiling woman behind the counter, “I’d like to find out the result of the sale of lot #8793. What it sold for and to whom, if possible.”

The woman beamed at her, looking past people consulting glossy catalogues and smudged typed lists. “Just a moment please,” she said and consulted a binder. “According to the current auction log,” she said, “this lot was withdrawn from the auction.”

“Withdrawn?” Aimée asked in alarm. “You mean it was never auctioned?”

“Oui, taken off the list.”

Frustrated, Aimée leaned against the counter and thought. Nothing seemed to fit.

“I need to find out who put the pieces up for auction. How do you suggest I proceed?”

“I’m sorry, I can’t help you. Queries regarding previously catalogued items must be submitted to Madame Monsour in our archives division.”

“Merci,” Aimée said, and bought the catalogue. She wouldn’t give up without trying. By the time she reached Madame Monsour’s office, she knew she’d have to improvise. Again.

“What . . . no appointment, Mademoiselle?” said a harried man carrying a thick stack of files.

Aimée gave him a big smile. “Forgive me, I know she’s busy. Five minutes of her time, that’s all I ask.”

“If you’d made an appointment. . . .” he said.

“Marcel, so you finally found the Asian art estimates!” interrupted a slim young woman in a black suit, emerging from the office whose doorway bore the nameplate MADAME MONSOUR.

“But, Madame Monsour, that’s what I need to speak with you about,” Aimée said, stepping forward. “I need background information on a jade collection.”

“Do your homework. Go read some books, Mademoiselle. I suggest—”

“But I have, you see, and they raise more questions.”

Madame Monsour was attractive and well put together, with coiffed black hair that almost disguised her small ears: very small, which she hid with her thick shoulder length hair. Except when, with a the nervous motion, she tucked it behind her ears.

Aimée moved closer, toward the office door. “Please, I’m sorry, but just a few minutes.”

Madame Monsour said, “The auctioneer needs my assistance and I must prepare.”

Aimée showed her the page from the October auction catalogue.

“Please, Madame Monsour.”

Madame Monsour pursed her lips and without a word, showed her into a high-ceilinged cramped office piled high with books.

“Make it good,” she said.

Aimée gave an edited three-minute explanation to Madame Monsour, leaving out Thadée’s murder. Then she showed her PI badge.

“Is this some official inquiry? If so, here at Drouot, we make it a policy to have our lawyer present.”

“No, not at all,” Aimée said. “Nothing like that.”

Madame Monsour wavered.

“Give me a request in writing,” said Madame Monsour, “stating the full background and reasons for your inquiry.”

Typical bureaucrat. But she didn’t have time for that. “Forgive me, but would the consignor’s name be in your archives?”

“It’s impossible to furnish information about the piece.”

“What about online?”

Madame Monsour shook her head. Little of the old fashioned Drouot system had entered the Internet era.

“How long will the data be kept?”

“Not my field, I’m sorry.”

And where was it kept?

“You must realize, I can’t help you,” Madame Monsour said. “Consignors sign a contract with us. Their identity is confidential. By law, we can’t reveal their names.” She paused and looked at the page. “Such incredible pieces, too. More than their historical interest, it’s their mystical quality which make them so highly prized.”

Aimée heard a wistfulness in her tone.

“What do you know about these jade astrological pieces?”

Madame Monsour shook her head. “I only came on board this month, sorry,” she said. “And old Monsieur Valdeck’s passed on. A pity, he would have known a lot.”

“The research I did also mentions the mystical quality of jade,” Aimée said, venturing to articulate a hunch. “Could these pieces be even older than the catalogue says?”

Madame Monsour seemed to be considering. “Sometimes descriptions are conservative,” she said.

What did she mean by that? “Why would someone put these pieces up for sale and then withdraw them?” Aimée asked.

“Pick a reason,” she said. “Change of heart, a private collector approaches the seller, or as is often the case, the early bids don’t match the consignor’s expectations.”

“May I ask a favor?” Aimée asked. “Could you contact the owner and ask if he, or she, would speak with me?”

“Only if I want to lose my job,” she said. “We’ve had so much trouble with scandals concerning provenance and authenticity, I’m afraid there’s little I could do, even if I wanted to help. The archives are kept on the outskirts of Paris. I’ve never even been there.”

If she could find out where, Aimée thought quickly, could she bribe a guard? “Where’s that?”

“On the île de la Jatte, but don’t get any ideas,” Madame Monsour said. “Even I’m not allowed inside. It’s a secured facility.”

“Then how can I find out more concerning the mystical attributes of the jade?”

“Where you should have looked in the first place, Mademoiselle,” Madame Monsour said, handing the catalogue back to Aimée. “At the Musée Cernuschi. They have a marvelous Chinese art collection. And a well-respected Asian art curator, Professor Dinard.”

Madame Monsour’s phone rang. “If you’ll excuse me.”

Aimée thanked her and left the drafty wet-wool smelling rooms of the Drouot. She pulled out her cell phone and made an appointment to meet the curator of the musée Cernuschi.

AIMÉE STOOD outside the Second Empire–style Musée Cernuschi located on the border of the seventeenth. The museum had a mansard roof, and its façade, veneered with white stone, was topped by a frieze of mosaic faces encircled by gold and overlooked chic Parc Monceau. Puddles flooded the street lined with nineteenth-century mansions on which it stood. She hoped Dinard would elucidate the jade’s provenance and know who might have put them up for auction.

On the museum’s ground floor, a calligraphy exhibition, delicate, wisplike black brush strokes like trailing smoke on thick rice paper, caught her eye. Ethereal and beautiful.

“Everyone calls it ‘rice paper,’ ” a docent was saying to a small group of visitors by the display. “Yet this paper, made from kozo, a plant prized in China and renowned for its strength, is also used by the Japanese for currency. Its appearance of delicacy is misleading.”

Monsieur Dinard’s assistant, whose name was Tessier according to the nameplate on his desk in the front office, was a tall thirtyish man with small close-set eyes and a prominent nose. He gestured toward a suite of office rooms.

“He’s got an appointment soon,” Tessier said. “But he’ll see you for a few minutes. Go ahead.”

Aimée knocked on Professor Dinard’s door. A stout middle-aged man, with a flushed complexion, round glasses, black hair— too black to be natural—and sporting a bow tie with his tweed suit, opened the door. The high-ceilinged room beyond displayed a blue silk Chinese rug on the floor. Carved details in the woodwork, picked out in gold and ivory, framed the walls.

“Professor Dinard?” she asked. “I’m Aimée Leduc. Thank you for seeing me.”

“Désolé, I regret that I can only spare you a few minutes,” he said, smiling and glancing at his watch. “But I’m happy to help if I can.”

“I’m fascinated by the mystical qualities of jade,” she said.

“But Mademoiselle, you don’t have to stand here. Come in, please,” he said, his smile wider. “Come inside, please sit down.” He showed her to a straight-backed provincial cherrywood chair. His round, smiling face was welcoming.

“Professor, you’re pressed for time so I’ll get to the point. Can you tell me about these pieces?”

She passed the Drouot catalogue across his matching cher-rywood desk, bare except for a single white orchid in a Ming vase. He nodded, then looked up at her, his eyes magnified by his glasses.

“What do you want to know? And why?”

He seemed suspicious but she she had to take a chance. “Someone showed me this jade collection, Professor,” she said, leaning forward. “If these pieces were looted during the battle of Dien Bien Phu in 1954, why would they turn up now? Who might have consigned them for auction?”

Professor Dinard stared at her. “What magazine do you write for, Mademoiselle?”

“None. I’m a detective,” she said. “Here’s my card.”

He studied it. She saw a slight tremor in his hand.

“Forgive my inquisitiveness, but where did you see this collection?”

So far he’d posed questions and answered none. “I’m not at liberty to say right now.”

His fixed stare behind his round glasses disconcerted her.

“Why play cat and mouse, Professor?” she asked. “You’re the jade expert. Madame Monsour from Drouot recommended I speak with you. What can you tell me about this jade.”

He shook his head.

Didn’t her taxes go to pay for this City of Paris supported museum? And his salary? But she didn’t say that.

“Fascinating. But I’d have to study these pieces more carefully,” he said. “Do research. Say two days. Give me the pieces, and I’ll do a thorough investigation.”

Before she could reply, she noticed a black Renault pulling up outside. Several men in suits emerged. One was Pleyet. What was he doing here? Was the RG still on the scent of the jade?

Dinard stared at the open catalogue in his hand. “You haven’t told me how you obtained these jade pieces.”

So he thought she had them. She’d never said that. Had she implied it? No, she was sure she had not. Yet he seemed to know the pieces had been stolen by someone. And he thought it was her.

“Plundering destroys archeological sites,” Professor Dinard said, sadly. “Whatever value looted objects possess diminishes to almost nothing without a provenance, a documented history attached. A terrible shame, of course.”

Did he think she was here to unload the jade? “Professor, I need your expertise.”

Professor Dinard opened his drawer and pulled out something, a small crocodile-leather glasses case. He took off his glasses and put them inside.

Before he could speak, a woman’s voice came over the intercom, “Your appointment’s arrived.”

“You’re in the art world, Professor. Don’t you have any idea as to who might have put the jade figures up for auction?”

“I’m a museum director,” he said. “Show me the pieces and I can give you my opinion. Otherwise there’s no way I can help you.”

“Do you think I want to sell them?” she said. “You don’t seem to understand—”

“I’ll see you out,” he said, motioning her to the door.

Confront the RG again? No reason for Pleyet to know her investigations had brought her here.

She scanned the room. Only the window. “Please, isn’t there another way out?”

“Why Mademoiselle? Please use the door.”

Didn’t these old hôtels particuliers have water closets cleverly concealed in panels flush with the wood?

Something behind his glasses had changed. Compassion or—

The office door opened. “Your appointment’s here, Professor.”

She had to find a way to leave without Pleyet seeing her. Maybe Dinard would make a deal.

“Bon, Professor, I’ll show you,” she said, playing for time. “I only carried this piece with me.” She put the small jade disk in his hand.

For a moment he held it, his eyes half-closed, and rubbed it. It was almost like a caress. Then holding it between his thumb and forefinger, he lifted it to the light. A luminescent river-green hued orb held their gazes. Amazingly it seemed to change, the color varying each time she looked at it.

Exquisite.

“Mademoiselle, the tiny dragon etched in the jade is a motif. . . . It is part of a larger pattern. Some of the images common to the period would be clouds, or a phoenix. But unless you have all the pieces together, you cannot see the pattern. This is part of a set, but only a part. The whole. . . .”

Now she’d hooked him.

“Do we have a deal, Professor?”

He nodded and pressed a button under a window ledge. A door opened. “This leads to the old kitchen. And the back stairs.”

She put her hand out for the disk, sensed his reluctance to give it up, but he handed it over. She slid into the passage and the door clicked shut behind her. Darkness, dust, and the odor of old wood. She heard voices, indistinct, absorbed by the carpet, and what she took for a cell phone conversation near the door about the chauffeur’s return instructions. Her phone vibrated, and she answered, moving away from the panel so she couldn’t be heard.

“Mademoiselle, Monsieur Verlet wonders when you can discuss the project,” said the secretary from Olf.

She looked down at her jeans. She had to change.

“Say two p.m., would that work for him?” she asked.

“See you then,” the secretary said.

Once outside on boulevard Malesherbes she caught a taxi to Leduc Detective.

Inside the office, René’s desk sat undisturbed since last night. She opened the armoire, pushed aside a streetcleaner’s jumpsuit, Agent Provocateur silk underwear, Italian jeans, and retro boots. In the back she found the black suit, vintage Dior, discovered in a dépôt-vente consignment shop without a tear or slipped seam in it. A classic even to the skirt’s knee-length hem.

She stepped into black sling back heels threaded with bubblegum pink ribbon. Clattering down the stairs, she wondered where René was.

She’d try him later. She ran for the bus.

In the Olf foyer, she signed in at the security post and caught her breath.

Upstairs, Aimée smiled at the secretary, a middle-aged woman with a swollen cheek.

“Root canal,” the secretary explained. “Monsieur Verlet’s in conference but can spare a brief word.”

Or at least that’s what Aimée thought she said.

“But we had an appointment.”

“Some bigwigs appeared—you know how that goes!” she said. “Please, go into the conference room.”

A word? The man was vociferous. He hailed from Perigord and liked to talk.

“Monsieur Verlet . . .” she said, peeking in to the room. “Your secretary said to come in.”

Several men, sitting around a long walnut table, looked up.

“Aaah, Mademoiselle Leduc, glad you dropped by,” he said.

Dropped by? They had an appointment, she wanted to get his signature on a revised contract. And a check.

“Let me introduce you to the board, Mademoiselle Leduc.”

Thank God she’d worn the Dior.

Talk about a power enclave. Most of the men wore the uniform: pinstriped suits, blue shirts, red ties. They emitted a Grandes Ecoles air. Government and corporate types. Graphs and charts lined the wall and someone was giving a presentation. She looked closer: Holdings of PetroVietnam.

PetroVietnam? Might that connect to the Cao Dai?

“Tell us about your work,” Verlet said, “if you don’t mind. Just a quick summary of how your computer security could work for us. I was impressed with your new ideas for the project.”

Why hadn’t he prepared her?

“Mademoiselle Leduc, we’re ready when you are.”

She hesitated, wishing she could have planned a presentation in advance.

“I don’t mind telling you,” Verlet said, grinning, “I had to nudge our board’s thinking toward this new security project but as I told the gentlemen, safeguards and state-of-the art security are demanded today.”

He needed her to dazzle them. Sell them. Convince them they’d make a good choice picking Leduc Detective on his recommendation. When she’d spoken with him last week, he’d been cordial and reasonable. Maybe this had happened too fast for Verlet to warn her.

“Of course, Monsieur Verlet, delighted.” She smiled, figuring she’d throw technical jargon at them, get Verlet’s signature and then beg off on the ground of another appointment. “We’re always thrilled when clients want to understand how our system enhances and builds on their own security.”

She pulled out the proposal, noted the key points. She began, “Gentleman, the web offers unique advantages and security challenges—”

“Would you be so kind as to cut to the heart of why we need your firm, Mademoiselle?” said a white-haired man looking up through reading glasses perched on his nose. “Specifically regarding computer hackers who could explore our data and create a channel to download it?”

Great. One of the elite with a computer attitude, and a bit of knowledge. The type who took a course and knew it all.

“How technical do you want it, Monsieur . . .”

“Monsieur le Ministre Langan,” he said. “When our eyes glaze over might be a good place to stop.”

Nice. Couldn’t Verlet have warned her?

“You posed an excellent question, Monsieur, but if I may backtrack and give some historical perspective, you might understand more of why we do what we do and its impact.”

A few looks of interest came from the men at the table. Langan sat back in his leather chair and crossed his arms.

“If someone tells you they can put an extra security guard on the server, well, they can’t,” she said, walking toward him and pouring herself a glass of water from the carafe. “I assume you’re referring to that when you mentioned exploring data?”

“Something like that,” he said.

A hard sell, this minister in the tailored double-breasted custom made jacket. The others sat and watched.

She smiled and prayed the run on her thigh hadn’t traveled further down her black pantyhose.

“Cyberthreats are really the vulnerabilities, potential open doors in software, that hackers trawl for. All a hacker needs in order to shut down your system is a single Web-connected computer without proper security software; a fourteen-year-old’s desktop Mac, a university’s e-mail server, or a government ministry’s laptop. We see it all the time. Using e-mail software or other applications on an unprotected computer, hackers can bog down your Internet operations with ‘distributed denial of service’ attacks that generate more traffic than the network can handle. Meanwhile, they hack into a vulnerable system undetected in the mass confusion.”

She paused, took a sip of water. Wondering if she’d scored any points yet. But she was telling the truth. And if they didn’t like it, they’d let her know.

Her eyes rested on the PetroVietnam graph of profit and earnings. The connection with the Cao Dai was probably a coincidence; she must be paranoid. Just because there was a Vietnamese connection didn’t mean. . . .

“We watch, warn and share information. Not to mention continual updating and monitoring. And your system has not only firewall protection in place but a backup in the event of a Web attack.”

“And if the firewall is breached, and the back-up?” Langan interrupted.

“Automatic alarms inform us of any attack, monsieur,” she said. “I doubt they’d breach our firewall before we discovered and patched or disarmed the attack.”

“Bon, your firm guarantees this?”

“Of course, that’s what we do 24/7, Monsieur.”

Verlet stood and smiled. Was that relief on his face?

“Mademoiselle Leduc, we appreciate this and don’t want to inconvenience you any more,” he said. “Merci. ”

She took her cue and left. Considering her sweaty palms, it was a good thing she didn’t have to shake anyone’s hand. She leaned against the wall in the video surveillance room and waited for her heart to slow to a normal beat.

A knock sounded on the door. Verlet with the verdict? So quick? She took a deep breath and opened it.

“Oui?”

One of the men from the conference room, all six feet plus of him, stood before her with a copy of Le Monde tucked under his arm. Early forties, brushed back black hair; his pinstriped suit didn’t disguise his muscular frame.

“Good job for being put on the spot, Mademoiselle.” He winked, smiling. A nice smile. “I felt it necessary to go along but forgive me. I mean, for not rising to your defense. You see, we’re part of the consortium insuring this firm and so . . . You handled yourself quite well. Impressive.”

“So my firm passed?”

He nodded.

“We like to establish a relationship of confidence with our clients,” she said, relief flooding her.

“Exactly.” He said, “I’ve already apologized to Verlet, didn’t want him to have an attack of apoplexy in view of his crise de foie and high blood pressure.”

Crise de foie. Why did every Frenchman connect bad health to a mysterious ailment of the liver?

“I’m curious as to why the minister attended this meeting,” she said. She was aware of the rumors that Olf, a state-owned firm, had dealt in backdoor diplomacy since de Gaulle’s era. But she wanted to hear his explanation.

“Why, it’s common practice for the minister to keep informed about investments in unsettled countries. Here, if you need to contact me,” he said, handing her an oversized vellum card engraved with the name Julien de Lussigny.

She handed him hers. “I thought you said you were with the insurance consortium. . . .”

“But I am,” he said. “There are a few things for us to discuss.

Why don’t we have lunch?”

“With pleasure,” she said.

Eager to seal the deal, she tried to ignore the pangs of wariness she felt.

“Say tomorrow?” With people like this one had to smile and nod a lot.

“Bon, I’ll call you to confirm the restaurant tomorrow,” he said.

De Lussigny was distinguished and a tad conservative for her but power oozed from him. His footsteps clicked on the marble floor as he joined the others from the conference room who were spilling into the corridor. By the time they reached the reception area, she’d slipped back into the room and was scanning the PetroVietnam charts. There were lots of arrows on the graph, all pointing upward, indicating profit, staggering profit, in the Gulf of Tonkin. Blue, black, and green triangles indicated British, Chinese, and French drilling areas. Her wariness increased.

“Here you are,” said the nice receptionist who had entered the room silently. “Monsieur Verlet’s engaged now but he asked me to tell you that he’ll sign the addendum and we’ll messenger it over with a check.”

Aimée turned away to hide her relief and the warm flush that now suffused her cheeks. She couldn’t wait to tell René.