Murder Below Montparnasse - By Cara Black Page 0,23

hear it, sorry. I got wrist-deep changing the printer toner.” Charcoal smudges ringed Maxence’s fingers. “Think you need a new printer.”

And the money to pay for it.

She hit PLAY.

Aimée heard a cough, clearing of the throat. What sounded like running water. “Please pick up if you’re there. Please, Mademoiselle.” She recognized Yuri Volodya’s voice. “I should have told you the truth.”

A chill crept up her neck. She turned up the machine’s volume. Listened close.

“I lied to you last night.” She heard the catch in his throat. Fear edged his voice. “Come now.” Another pause. “Please, if you’re listening, pick up. Your mother told me things.”

Her breath caught. Go on, Yuri, tell me what things. Tell me what my mother means in this. To you.

“You look just like her, you know. Those same big eyes. Alors, we need to talk in person.”

Aimée wanted to scream. What about my mother?

“I have to trust someone,” he continued. “A person on the outside.” Still that sound of running water. “Zut, it’s complicated, but I know who stole the painting. I need you to understand.”

Understand what?

She made out a faint knocking in the background. “You should know … Merde!”

Go on, Yuri, she prayed.

The message clicked off.

“He a friend of yours?” Maxence asked, looking up.

“I wouldn’t call him that.” Frustrated, she tapped her chipped mocha-lacquered nails on the PLAY button.

Maxence nodded in a knowing way. “Your mother referred him and now you have to help the old fart, n’est-ce pas? I know what it’s like.”

She sat, stunned. A slap like a wave of cold Atlantic seawater hit her. “Say that again, Maxence.”

“Don’t I know it, Aimée.” He shrugged. “My mom volunteers me all the time to help idiots who can’t even turn a laptop on. Stupid.”

Maxence didn’t know her American mother was on the world terrorist watch list. Or that she’d gone rogue. Rogue from whom, and why, Aimée didn’t know.

Her fingers gripped the phone. She sensed in the marrow of her bones that her mother was alive. Last month she’d been convinced that figure standing on the Pont Marie was … But what did that have to do with the painting?

Aimée hit the callback button. Busy. Shivers of hot and cold rippled through her.

She heard the fear in that sad, feisty voice of Yuri’s. Serb thugs had threatened him, he’d said as much. She’d found the Serb’s jacket button, seen the blood. The Serb dead before they’d hit him. What in hell was going on and how did it involve her mother?—if it even did.

Some trap? A setup?

The phone rang.

“Leduc Detective,” she said.

“I’ve changed my mind, Mademoiselle,” Yuri Volodya’s voice came on the line. “Forget my message.”

“What? Why?” She tried to make sense of this. “Mon Dieu, you talked to my mother.” Silence on his end.

“You two have history together, don’t you? That squat in the seventies. Trotskyists, non?”

Water rushed in the background. “My damn sink’s flooding. Don’t … come. Too dangerous. Complicated. She doesn’t want you involved.”

Doesn’t want … Her mother was here? So close?

But she was involved already.

“I’ll be right over.”

“Tell me about it!” Maxence was saying. “So if he calls again, shall I tell him you’re swamped with ‘real’ work?”

From her bottom desk drawer, she took her Beretta. Checked the clip to make sure it was loaded. Maxence’s jaw dropped.

“Non, tell him I’m on the way.”

BEFORE EXITING HER building’s foyer, she pulled on a black knit cap, shapeless windbreaker, and oversize dark glasses. She’d been warned three times this morning about Serbs; she’d exercise caution. On the rue du Louvre she scanned the parked cars for a telltale tip of a cigarette, a fogged-up window indicating a watcher. Nothing.

Tension knotted her shoulders. On the side street, rue Bailleul, she unlocked her Vespa and walked it over the uneven cobbles. For a moment, she wondered if she had overreacted. Nothing seemed out of place on the busy rue du Louvre except for a lone squawking seagull on a pigeon-spattered statue. He was far from the water. As lost as she felt.

She shifted into first gear and wove the Vespa into traffic, passing the Louvre. Fine mist hit her cheekbones. She shifted into third as she crossed the Pont Neuf. A bateau-mouche glided underneath, fanning silver ripples on the Seine’s surface. Swathes of indigo sky were framed by swollen rain clouds over Saint-Michel. The season of la giboulée, the sudden showers heralding spring.

Too bad she’d forgotten her rain boots.

Cars and buses stalled as she hit road closures on the Left Bank. Bright road construction