Murder Below Montparnasse - By Cara Black Page 0,24

lights illumined crews excavating the sewer lines. Street after narrow street.

Frustrated, she detoured uphill, winding through the Latin Quarter, then zigzagging across to the south of Paris, former countryside squeezed between wall fortifications now demolished; past the old Observatoire, two-story houses, remnants of prewar factories leaving an urban patchwork.

Clouds scudded over the slanted rooftops, the chimney pots like pepper shakers over the grilled balconies. Avenues led to tree-lined lanes in this neighborhood, fronting hidden village-like pockets of what her grandfather called “the Parisians’ Paris.”

Her shoulders knotted in irritation. She didn’t have time for this scenic detour. Down wide Avenue du Général Leclerc, through the nodding shadows cast by trees and clouds of chestnut pollen, past the Métro signs and the steps of l’Eglise Saint Pierre de Montrouge. Into a logjam. Horns blared. Protesters chanting “Stop the developers!” and wearing La Coalition armbands blocked part of rue d’Alésia, a street known to fashionistas for designer markdowns. Of course, a demonstration!

Great. No way she’d get through this banner-waving crowd on her Vespa. She downshifted and wove through protesters, desperate for a parking place. It took a good five minutes, then another five until on foot she turned into cobbled Villa d’Alésia. She paused where the narrow lane twisted to the right, past the two-story ateliers. Quiet. A world away from the street protest. Clouds above fretted the cobblestones with a patchwork of light.

Further on, she saw a woman rattling Yuri’s front gate. What was going on? Her stomach churned.

The older woman, in a mink coat over a purple jogging suit, gripped the grilled gate with one hand, beckoned her with the other. “Viens, Mademoiselle.”

“Something wrong? Is Monsieur Volodya all right?”

The woman, her dark penciled eyebrows at odds with her thinning brown hair, stared at Aimée, her mouth pursed. “All that yelling! Disturbed you too, non?”

Nonplussed, Aimée nodded.

“It’s overcast and you wear dark glasses?”

“The optometrist dilated my eyes this morning,” Aimée improvised, removing them and sticking them in her pocket. “But Yuri …?”

“Worried me, too,” the woman interrupted. “His water pipe’s flooding my wall and balcony again. A mess. Not the first time. But I’ve called.…”

The screech of a police car’s brakes coming to a halt in front of them drowned her out.

“You reported this, Madame?” asked the arriving flic, motioning to his partner. Aimée wondered how they’d gotten through the congested demonstration.

“The commotion disturbed her too.” The woman gestured to Aimée. “All this yelling in the middle of the morning.”

The woman took Aimée for a neighbor. She kept talking, but the flic and his partner ignored her. With a sense of foreboding, Aimée followed them inside, her ankle boots sloshing in water. A flood all right.

“Monsieur?”

Over the blue-uniformed officer’s shoulders, Aimée saw Yuri bent over the gushing kitchen sink. His bloody arms were tied with a necktie to the faucet. She gasped. Rivulets of red-tinged water streamed onto the floor, eddying around her boots.

The first flic rushed to turn off the gushing taps. It took him several attempts to unknot the tie and hoist the old man down. Yuri’s blackened eyes were swollen shut, his face cut and bruised, his distended tongue thick and blue. His hair, plastered to his head, dripped water.

“Mon Dieu.” Aimée’s hand flew to her mouth. “I’m too late.”

“What’s that, Mademoiselle?”

She shook her head. Instinct told her to keep her mouth shut. She wondered who’d tortured the old man in broad daylight.

Trying to piece it together didn’t stop her knees from knocking or the shivers from running up her spine. A familiar floral note—like muguet, lily of the valley—floated in the damp atelier. Her mother’s scent. Then a piercing scream—Aimée jumped as the woman in the mink coat appeared in the hallway, pointing, her face crinkled in horror. The policier called for backup, speaking into the microphone on his collar.

“Take your neighbor outside, will you?” he said. “We’ll talk to you both when backup arrives.”

Her unlicensed Beretta felt heavy in her bag. A good time to make herself scarce. Guiding the sobbing woman, Aimée sloshed through the ebbing water. Just last night she’d sat here with Yuri. The vodka bottle and glasses were still on the table. But the card she’d left was gone.

Good God, what if the killer had taken it?

A broken chair, waterlogged books, and the armoire on its side showed evidence of a struggle. Had the thieves come back for the painting they hadn’t found last night? Or had her mother? And if her mother was involved in this, who was she involved with—Yuri, or