Murder in the Sentier

Thursday Night

SHE’D LET STEFAN GET away but she’d given him her number.

She doubted that would be the last she’d see of him. He seemed so lonely. And carried such a burden.

Idrissa Diaffa was the missing link. Aimée felt convinced of it now; Idrissa knew what Romain Figeac had been writing. And it had to do with her mother and Jutta and the Laborde cache.

Idrissa had disappeared after Aimée had asked her about it. Then Ousmane, her partner, was murdered. Had Idrissa been the intended victim or was this a warning to her?

Either way Aimée had to find Idrissa and get answers.

If Aimée barged into Club Exe again, she’d get the same shrugs and evasions. Locating Idrissa in the Sentier would be like searching for a sequin on a female impersonator’s costume.

But maybe the club could find her. Aimée punched Club Exe’s number on her office phone.

“Club Exe …” The rest of the man’s words were lost in a deep bass beat.

“Idrissa Diaffa, please!” Aimée shouted. “I must talk with her.”

“She quit,” the voice said.

She expected that.

“It’s important,” she said. “Her kora player’s been murdered.”

“Ousmane … Ousmane Sada from Dakar?”

That was his name. She wasn’t sure where he was from. “He’s her partner, plays the kora.”

She heard a mumbled conversation. Their language, Wolof sounded like upside-down words to her.

Now she had an inspiration.

“I have to reach her. Idrissa’s needed to identify his body.”

“Who are you?” Now the background was quieter; the man must have moved to another room.

“I came there earlier tonight, looking for her,” she said.

“Please, someone has to reach her.”

“How do you know?”

“Tiens, it affects me!” She let the anger show in her voice.

“They hauled me in for questioning, I found his body in place Ste-Foy. Poor mec, they’d stuffed him in a garbage bag, the truck was about to scoop him up.”

Silence.

“Someone said he worked at your place. They’re coming to your club to look for her if she doesn’t show. With the immigration squad.”

She lied but that should spur them to find Idrissa. Most of the help, she remembered from her last visit—the kitchen crew, musicians, and the deaf-mute cleaner—she figured they were sans-papiers, illegal.

“Where should she go?”

She’d guessed right.

“Place Mazas, the morgue,” she said. “Tell her to be there at ten A.M. tomorrow when it opens.”

The man hung up.

Aimée would call Serge at the morgue and be out front waiting for Idrissa.

She pondered sleeping in the office, not ready to face her apartment after the break-in. But she needed to change clothes.

She stuffed her phone in her bag, swung the laptop case over her shoulder, and headed downstairs. Tonight was her night for walking. She made her way down the quai, past lovers sitting by the Seine. And on the way she wondered if she’d always be alone.