Murder Below Montparnasse - By Cara Black Page 0,108
found a wonderful man,” she said, her voice shaking. “You had a baby.” No way would Aimée have babies. Sometimes she’d wake up at night terrified that she’d do what her mother had done. Couldn’t face the responsibility. “So why would you reappear now? Don’t tell me you feel guilty.”
“I wanted to see you once. Selfish, you’re right.” Her eyes darted around, checking to be sure they were alone. Then bored into Aimée’s. “Everything you’ve said is true.”
“Mais non, you wanted the Modigliani—a painting people have been killed for. You planned on it to finance more dirty deals.”
A small shrug. Her mother’s thin shoulder bones stuck out in the white coat. “You have no reason to believe me. But maybe you’ll take my advice. Learn to cook, quit criminal work,” she said. “There’s an account set up so you won’t need to worry for a while. Travel, live life, find a man, do something else.…”
Cold wind sliced through this hospital enclave, a web of pavilions and old boiler buildings. Aimée felt anger well up.
“Throw away Leduc Detective? After everything Grand-père and Papa worked to build?” she said. “What right do you have?” Aimée trembled with deep, raw hurt. “You’re just a stranger who’s walked back in the door. Not part of my life. You’ll leave again.” She bit her lip. “But for once I’m doing the leaving. You don’t know me—how I feel, what I want, what drives me.”
Her mother receded in the shadows. Sighed. “Amy, you’re like me. Please don’t make my mistakes.”
She said her name the American way, “Amy.” Just as she had when Aimée was a child.
And then Aimée saw Dombasle in conversation with a nurse at the far end of the allée. The nurse pointed in the pavilion’s direction. Another man joined Dombasle.
Merde! It had been only twenty minutes since she’d left rue de Châtillon. Dombasle, in cahoots with the BRB, must have had her followed. Probably all along.
He wanted the Modigliani and the fixer.
“The flics? You turned me in?” Her mother’s conflicted expression, the look in her eyes seared Aimée. Turn her in, a wanted terrorist on the world security watch list who’d been expelled from France years ago—that’s what Aimée should do. This woman who abandoned her, now full of regret. Should she? Could she?
Footsteps pounded, echoing under the archway by the war memorial to the fallen hospital staff.
“Non, you’re my mother. Get the hell out of here. You’re good at that.”
Her mother hugged her. For a moment, that scent of muguet brought her whole childhood back to her. “I love you. Stay safe, little mouse.”
Aimée heard the creaking of a steel door and they both looked toward it. “Vite, Sydney!” The old drunk waved his arm to hurry her along.
Aimée choked back a sob and thrust the tube under her mother’s arm.
“Go.”
Saturday
EVERY PEW IN the Marais’s Armenian church was filled. White floral sprays covered the altar and Serge’s twin boys, for once, stood still in their short pants. Each held a lace pillow, transfixed by the wedding rings tied to them.
“Melac won’t show up, will he?” René asked, adjusting his silk cravat in the church vestibule. When Melac never returned her calls, René stepped in as an escort. “You’re sure he’s not coming?”
Staying at the hospital in Brittany, from what Paul at the Brigade Criminelle had told her last night: after twelve hours for the emergency crew to extricate Melac’s daughter from the bus, she remained in a coma. Critical. His ex-wife complicated events with a nervous breakdown and attempted suicide.
“Melac’s on leave from the force,” Morbier said.
Aimée’s knuckles whitened on the bouquet. And his friend Paul hadn’t told her? “How do you know, Morbier?”
“Watch the télé,” he said. “He’s a little busy. No promotion.”
“The télé? You know I don’t have one,” she said, realizing Melac wouldn’t be coming back.
The other bridesmaids filed in with their escorts. The soft tones of a flute echoed under the Gothic struts. As maid of honor, she had the distinction of having two escorts, Morbier and René.
“Ruining his career,” Morbier muttered.
“So that he can be with his family?” Aimée whispered sharply. “Maybe he doesn’t see it like that, Morbier. That’s why he has a family.” Unlike you. But she kept that back. For the first time, she became aware that her family was standing right here.
“You didn’t fall for Dombasle, Leduc, did you?”
The rat who used her as bait for the Modigliani … for her mother? And to think she almost did. She shook her head.