Murder Below Montparnasse - By Cara Black Page 0,25

whoever killed him?

Chilled, she pushed that thought away.

Only forty or fifty minutes had passed since she’d spoken with him. It made no sense. Last night his shock over his stolen painting had seemed genuine. Why torture him for a painting already stolen? Why had he called her and changed his mind? Saddened, she thought of her last image of Yuri Volodya, holding her card in his hands. Now she’d never get to ask him any of her questions.

“Just like in the war,” the woman said, her shoulders heaving.

Tense, Aimée put her arm around her. “What do you mean?”

“Standard torture by les Boches,” the woman said. “That’s how they got information from my brother. They tortured him in a bathtub on rue de Saussaies. Left him on our doorstep.”

Aimée only had a few minutes before backup arrived. She and her Beretta needed to be as far from here as possible. “Let me take you home, they’ll want to question us.”

She escorted the woman up her stairs. “You heard Yuri yelling?”

“But you heard it too,” she said.

“Bien sûr.” Aimée needed to keep the woman talking. “It bothered my dog, but I couldn’t understand what they were saying.”

“Who could, unless you speak Russian.”

How did this add up? “You speak Russian, Madame?”

“Les Russes filled the quartier once,” she said. “A generation or two ago, I don’t remember.”

Lining the walls of the stairwell were faded amateurish watercolors of pastoral countryside and villages with canals. Painted long ago on holidays, she imagined.

“My brother painted those,” the woman said, noticing Aimée’s gaze.

Aimée nodded. “So talented, your brother.”

“Then, in 1943, that afternoon, gone.…” Her words trailed off.

Outside, Aimée heard car engines.

Both the woman’s brother and Yuri had been tortured in the same way. A link? Or maybe someone wanted it to appear that way? She’d think about that later. In the few minutes before the flics arrived she needed to pry information out of this woman. “Poor Yuri. He had so little.…”

“ ‘Sitting in sweet butter,’ Yuri said to me,” the woman interrupted, reaching the first-floor landing. She opened her door and hung up her mink coat. Warmth and the smell of apples drifted from inside this atelier, which was similar to Yuri’s. Aimée guided her toward a chair as the woman dabbed at her eyes with a tissue. “Bien sûr, his wife’s son, he’s been sniffing around. The type who wants the butter and the money to buy it.”

An old saying of her grand-mère’s. Aimée hadn’t heard it in years. She remembered Yuri’s comment on his daughter-in-law’s cement blinis.

“Mark my words, look to family,” the woman said. “That’s what those crime shows say.”

“What sweet butter?” Aimée fingered her bag’s leather strap. “Yuri won the lotto?”

The woman dabbed her eyes again. Shrugged.

A painting so valuable Yuri had been tortured for it. Did that make sense? Aimée needed to press. This woman might have more information, a crucial detail.

“Mais following his father’s funeral, he acted differently,” the woman said. “Didn’t you notice? After he visited the old Russian nursing home?”

A knock sounded on the door. The flics. Flustered, Aimée took a stab in the dark. “Ah, you mean that painting he inherited from his father, non? Seemed to worry him?”

“Not too much. Talked big after that, don’t you remember?” Her eyes narrowed. “Where do you live, eh? I haven’t seen you around.”

“Juste à côté,” Aimée said. Time to get the hell out of here. “May I use the ladies’ before we talk to the flics, Madame?”

More knocking.

“End of the hall.”

Aimée found no window in the bathroom. Cursed under her breath. She peeked out the door. Saw the woman’s back. Tiptoed to the small kitchen and the back door, opened it to the dripping-wet balcony.

One floor down. She grabbed the metal balcony bars, let her legs dangle in the late morning air. Next door she saw Yuri’s lighted atelier through a tall window. She took a deep breath and dropped, landing in wet grass. Mud and grass caked her boot heels.

Great.

A walkway led through the small courtyard. She scanned the back building windows for neighbors. Lace panels covered many of the closed windows. Too cold and wet for hanging laundry. Satisfied no one was looking out, she passed through an old gate and scaled a cracked stone wall to land on mud. Again.

A damp, trampled rosemary bush lay in her path. The fragrance enveloped her.

Her view at the garden’s rear gave onto Yuri’s kitchen. She could crouch down undetected—but for how long? Arriving blue uniforms filled the atelier. At any