Murder in Montmartre

Thursday Night

AIMÉE SWERVED ON THE icy steps in time to avoid the old woman and her pet schnauzer. She hiked up the cascading series of stairways and stuck her nail file in her cell phone again. One message. Why hadn’t it rung? Bad reception on the butte? Or her missing antenna? If René had deposited Varnet’s money in the bank, she’d buy another cell phone.

She listened to her message.

Static, then René’s voice. “Aimée.” Short gasps came over the phone. “The building site off rue André . . . .”

The line fuzzed and the message ended. Had René tried to investigate without her and gotten into trouble?

She looped the long wool scarf twice around her neck and knotted it as she ran into the cold night. Forget the infrequent late night Metro, she’d make it there faster on foot.

Worried, Aimée ran up the steep rue des Saules, past the pearly dome of Sacré Coeur looming over the dark rooftops. She sprinted down winding rue Lepic with its shuttered windows. Music and a crowd spilled out of Le Jungle, the Senegalese club on rue Gabrielle. “What’s your hurry? We’ve got a table. Join us,” a man called to her.

“Non, merci,” she said, swerving away from his laughing figure, her footsteps pounding on the uneven cobbles.

In Place Émile-Goudeau, she slipped on the water overflowing from the gutter and almost lost her footing. She passed the squat Bateau-Lavoir washhouse, Picasso and Modigliani’s for- mer studio, now an art gallery. Out of breath, she paused by the green metal Wallace fountain, wishing her feet didn’t hurt and that sweat hadn’t drenched her shirt. Then she ran down the steps. Not far now, a few streets more, if she could just keep running.

Her lungs heaving, she crossed windswept Place des Abbesses and kept left. Down the staircase, clutching the double railing, past Cloclo’s station in the doorway of a building adorned with stone medallions. No Cloclo, just darkness.

Rue André Antoine was deserted except for the whipping wind. Then she saw two figures, short figures, just visible in a doorway.

“René!”

As she got closer, she saw his companion was a little boy with defiant eyes, who was shivering. She pulled off her coat.

“You must be Paul,” she said, draping the coat around him.

“Where’s your computer?”

Catching her breath, she grinned. “At the office.”

“About time, Aimée,” René said.

“I found Nathalie Gagnard, overdosed on pills,” she said. “Poor thing’s getting her stomach pumped but I found Jacques’s bank statements and something else that makes for interesting reading.”

He inhaled. “Sorry, maybe I overreacted. Varnet coughed up, that’s the good news. We’re solvent.” He paused.

Should she read between the lines to try and figure out what he couldn’t say in front of Paul?

Paul shoved her coat back at her and ran into the apartment building without a word, slamming the door.

“What was that about, René?” she asked. “Didn’t you convince Paul’s mother to let him give evidence?”

“His mother’s our witness. She saw three flashes.”

“Three? But she drinks, doesn’t she? I thought Paul—”

“I’ll explain on the way back,” René said.