Murder in the Sentier

Friday Afternoon

“OUI.” AIMÉE ANSWERED her cell phone, turning away from Teynard. She winked, signaling the café owner for two more espressos.

Silence. Was it Etienne?

“Allô?”

“Have some time to talk?” asked Stefan.

“Tell me where and when.” She stood and walked to the counter, away from Teynard.

A pause.

She repeated it; maybe he hadn’t heard her.

“My therapist said I should talk it out.”

Aimée bit back her surprise. “Please do, Stefan, I’m listening.”

“For years I’ve wanted to talk with someone,” he said. “I have to share the burden.”

He sounded broken, older than he was. It dawned on her that she’d have to protect him.

“People are chasing me.”

“Who?” She wondered who else besides Europol and the DST. Teynard?

“Talk to me, Stefan,” she said. “Have you seen my mother?”

“Jules came back. Sooner or later he’ll show at Action-Réaction,” he said. “Chances are she’s with him.”

Aimée’s heart sank. Didn’t her mother want to see her? Or had she been watching Aimée, following her, even as Aimée was seeking her? But purposely not making contact as René had warned.

“Where are you? I’ll help.”

His voice sagged. “Help me? I doubt it once you hear what I’ve done.”

“Weren’t you a little fish caught swimming with the sharks?” she said. “Or did you become a shark, too?”

“The old hunter,” he said, his voice jagged with regret. “I buried his things under a tree. His family should know what happened to him.”

She nodded. “Making some amends will help you.” She held back the questions about her mother, realizing Stefan had to unburden himself in his own way.

Then what sounded like a glass shattering.

“Ça va?”

“Later,” he said and she heard the dial tone.

He’d wanted to talk but something had happened. She slapped the counter … so close, yet again out of her reach!

She hit the call-back key.

The phone rang and rang. She was worried. The steaming espressos were on the counter and she reached for them.

But Teynard had opened the door and was walking down the passage. Rude again.

She grabbed the first bill in her pocket, threw down a hundred-franc note, and rushed after him. Pedestrians crowded the busy corner of rue de Turbigo. She ran to catch up with him. He stood at the curb facing the zebra crossing stripes, his back to her, white hair glinting in the late afternoon sun.

“Look, Monsieur Teynard, you’ve got to stop … ,” she called out.

He turned and the rest of her phrase was lost in the revving of a motor scooter.

She raised her hand to shield her eyes from the sun. “We didn’t finish talking.” They were still several feet apart.

“Quit following me,” he said.

Teynard’s annoyed look turned to surprise. His shoulders jerked. Then jerked and jerked again.

And she knew something was wrong.

He clutched his side, grimacing as if in pain.

Aimée pushed through the crowd of hot, tired Parisians. Several exclaimed in irritation. Teynard staggered toward her, then slumped to his knees, as the crowd parted around him. A woman screamed as he reached for the handle of her baby stroller. Three gaping red-black holes showed in his linen jacket. Teynard staggered and fell face down onto the hot pavement.

Startled, Aimée looked up to see the scooter with a black-helmeted driver pull away. A battered green scooter. The rest of her view was cut off as a bus pulled up and the pedestrian throng crossed the street.

Everything had happened in seconds.

“Call a doctor!” someone shouted.

And then it hit her. The green scooter was the one René had loaned her. Her spine tingled. Someone had stolen it. Teynard had been shot by someone riding her scooter. And if she wasn’t mistaken, that someone was Jules Bourdon.

So he was watching her. Or Gisela was. Or her mother? Waiting for her to lead them to the diamonds?

Scared, she backed away. She heard murmurs in the crowd … “raised her arm” … “following him.” Were they talking about her? The eyes of the couple standing next to her narrowed in suspicion.

An ambulance siren bleated, coming closer. She tried to melt into the crowd. Disappear. She had no wish to explain and no time to spend at the Commissariat. She was being hunted, too.

She’d almost made it to the passage when the woman with the stroller looked over and pointed at her. “Her … her … it was her … she shot him!”

As Aimée turned her heel broke.

She took off both shoes and ran.

“Stop … don’t let her get away!” the woman yelled.

Aimée ran by the two sculptures of Commerce and Industry flanking the white stone of Passage du Bourg-l’Abbe.

The café owner came out, waving a fifty-franc bill at her. “Keep the change!” she yelled. Footsteps sounded behind her. There was a loud ouff as he knocked whoever was chasing her to the ground. She turned around to see the café owner wave and give a big grin.

She ran out of the passage and turned right onto rue Saint Denis. Sex shops and wholesale clothing stores lined the street. She entered the first one and plunked five hundred francs on the smudged glass counter, careful to avoid touching it.

“That one,” she said, panting and pointing to the pink pageboy wig. “And this.” The man handed her the leather choker-type bondage necklace. She looked around. Most of the outfits had too many holes to wear on the street. She chose the one that provided the most covering. “This one, too.” He pushed the items over the counter. She heard the siren wail in the distance. She had to hurry.

“I need to change.”

He jerked his head toward a back booth. She went straight there, not looking to either side, or at what was going on outside.

She tried to hold her breath for as long as it took her to shimmy out of Michel’s miniskirt and into the tight black vinyl PVC cat suit. But she couldn’t. She tied the choker, adjusted the wig, and pulled a snub-nosed pair of Manolo Blahnik’s sexy version of Minnie Mouse heels onto her feet, then stuffed her clothes into her bag.

Now if she didn’t have to run, she’d be okay. Black PVC in this humidity could become a steambath.

By the time she’d gone a few blocks, a middle-aged man had offered her five hundred francs, which she’d declined; she hadn’t really planned on recouping the investment in her outfit. A police car cruised by but she blended in with street life. Perfectly. Prostitution was legal, though solicitation was not and since the Middle Ages, rue Saint Denis had been the working girls’ beat.

She stopped at the corner of rue Blondel and rue Saint Denis.

Twilight descended over the street, the first rays of neon casting their glittering reflections on the rain-spattered car windshields. There was a bite to the wind on rue Blondel. An infamous bordello had flourished here before and during the war, referred to affectionately by some as le trente deux, the thirty-two.

Even Picasso and Brassai had talked about “the flowers of rue Blondel.”

“Chérie, you working or you buying?” asked a woman, her black shiny boots and straining halter top just visible from the dark passage entrance ahead of her. “You want to check with me first, eh? You’re on my corner.”

Oops. Bad move. She didn’t want to get in trouble with this woman or her pimp. Where could she go? Jules probably knew all her friends’ houses … even René’s. But Etienne Mabry’s apartment was near, in the back courtyard, or so his card said.

Aimée grinned. “Pardon, I’m looking for someone upstairs. My partner forgot to tell me which floor.”

“Those computer crétins?” The woman’s booted foot tapped on the cobbles, echoing in the passage.

Another working girl sauntered by, saw the boots, and kept walking.

“They like to play with themselves on the Internet. What kind of a world is this, eh, when a mec gets off on a computer?”

Business must be tough for these working women … especially if they were of a certain age.

Aimée nodded. “I remember coming here after school. My friend’s mother had a zipper factory near here, but it’s all different now.”

Aimée could see the woman’s highly made-up face now, and the sagging skin on her arms, goose-pimpled in the chill passage.

A shadow covered the woman’s gloved hand, edged in red lace net. A client. And she led him upstairs.

Aimée stared through the quadruple courtyards to the shiny lights of traffic on Boulevard de Sébastopol. Dirty grime-encrusted limestone balustrades didn’t hide the charm of the historic Hôtel Saint Chaumond, the ornately carved sculptural details or delicate sloping mansard roof and dormer windows. Once elegant, the classical facade was neglected and now nearly hidden under plastic shop signs. Clothing carts were parked in the adjoining cobbled courtyard, piggybacked against the wall like so many tired toys.

Aimée paused, catching her breath. These pitted cobblestones were murder on heels. Before her, a mahogany-faced man, perched against a cart, spoke Hindi into a cell phone as he consulted an order sheet. She wanted to join him and take a break but she had to make some plans. And needed a safe place in which to do so.

Mustering her energy, she entered the old converted building. The wire-cage lift’s door was padlocked shut, a stroller propped against the curved handrail. The sawing of the scales played on a violin reached her ears. By the time she arrived at the third étage her bag felt heavier than granite.

The cool expanse of hallway gave way to a series of double doors. Beyond them she saw a pair of carved wooden doors reaching from the tiled floor to the high ceiling.

She knocked. But the doors were so thick her knuckles made no sound. Then she saw a buzzer.

Etienne Mabry opened the door. His eyes widened. “Entrez.”

“Dinner ready yet?”

“Only if you’re the dessert,” he smiled, taking in her unusual outfit.

“I like to dress up.”

Aiming for a casual entrance, she stepped inside and promptly skidded on the waxed wooden floor.

He caught her elbow and grinned. “Talk about elusive. I thought you wouldn’t come and …”

“… now I’m early.”

He kissed her on both cheeks. His warm gaze lingered. He looked delicious in worn jeans and a faded Rolling Stones World Tour T-shirt.

Hooking his arm around her shoulder, he led her to a loft-like white room with high ceilings, sparse and clean. Antique black-and-gold lacquered Japonaise screens provided the only color. She pulled off the pink wig and fluffed up her hair. Her scalp felt damp.

“You look like you could use a drink. Kir royal?”

She nodded.“Merci.”

Silver-framed photos of small children and an elegant blond woman lined the white marble fireplace.

Of course, his wife was away. Or, worse yet, she’d be returning soon and he’d beg off dinner.

He followed her gaze. “My ex-wife and children. They live in Rouen. I see them on weekends.”

He handed her a flute of pinkish froth and sat beside her on the all-white couch.

“Salut.” They clinked glasses.

“How about you?”

Did she want to tell him how scared she felt, how at sea she was after Teynard’s murder, not to mention clueless about the alleged diamonds and her mother, who remained truly elusive?

“Me?” She felt nervous. Yet there was something so nice about him. Why couldn’t she relax? She took another sip of the kir.

What was wrong with her?

Here she was, in a tight vinyl PVC cat suit, throwing herself at him. Yet she was as afraid of intimacy as of Teynard’s killer.

“Involved with anyone?”

“Too busy.” Why did he have to sit so close? “You know me, work, sleep, and ride the Metro. I work too much. Like everybody else.”

Of course, right now she didn’t look like everybody else in her black vinyl and dog collar.

“How can I help you?” He touched her hair, ran his fingers down to her shoulder. “You’re full of contradictions, but that’s interesting. And I like you.”

“Feels like a relationship minefield to me,” she said. “At least right now.”

Etienne removed his hand from her shoulder, leaving a warm remaining patch.

“You’re like an alternating current,” he said. “Switching from hot to cold.”

So what if it was true … his words stung.

“What about your children and ex-wife? That’s more emotional baggage than I can handle.”

“Afraid of taking chances?” he asked. “Afraid of the work?” He shrugged, tracing his thumb down her cheekbone. His brownish red hair tumbled around his ears. A soft citrus smell came from his shirt. “What can I do? I’d like to try … but I guess you don’t want to.”

René and Martine would shoot her. Why wouldn’t she let herself go? Merde! Why did it have to be so difficult?

Her head swam. All she knew was that she felt she was in way over her head.

“Look, Etienne, I’m a disaster with relationships. Like Latin in the lycée, those ancient intricate verb tenses elude me. So do relationships. It’s some complicated thing I can watch but not duplicate.” She shook her head. What a loser she was. “Sorry for whining.”

“Making excuses is more like it,” he said. His citrus scent had transferred itself to her skin. Bad. But she didn’t want to rub it off.

And then she wondered if it mattered how she’d screw up this time … he certainly was walking in with his eyes open. Tiens, he was of age, a consenting adult.

“You’re a funny woman … wild and innocent all at once!”

Georges had described her mother like that.

She pushed his hair behind his ears and knew she was headed for trouble.

“Tempus fugit,” he mumbled in her ear.

“What does that mean?”

“Time flies … your first Latin lesson,” he breathed on her hair, pulling her close. “Not difficult, is it?”