Murder Below Montparnasse - By Cara Black Page 0,27
his chest didn’t go away.
Courtesy of the Pepsi crate, he cleaned up at the sink. He mulled over what he’d just heard while scrubbing out the stain. Wished he understood English better, and that his other Charvet handmade shirt wasn’t in the motel on the street of fleas.
He cleaned his cuff as well as he could and returned the crate. Waiting for him in his office stood a Nordic-looking blonde. He did a double take. She held a steaming café au lait in a Styrofoam cup.
“We knew you’d prefer this, René.” She grinned. Handed it to him and squeezed his arm. Wide hazel eyes, legs to forever. “We’re here for you. I’m Susie, head programmer. My personal mission is to make sure you’re happy.”
He fell in love right there. His dream of California in the flesh. A coup de foudre standing in that car dealership garage-cum-office still emanating oil fumes. “I’ll drop by your office later, okay?”
Back at his desk his mind spun in love. Or lust. He didn’t know. He sipped the café au lait. It tasted perfect, like he imagined she would. Her hair would smell of sunshine.
Why couldn’t his English be better? His mind went back to the storeroom. Of course he’d misunderstood.
He finished writing the algorithm. Tested it. But he couldn’t get the phrase he’d overheard out of his mind—The dwarf’s got no idea.
Tuesday Midday, Paris
HEAD DOWN, AIMÉE hurried down rue d’Alésia, merging with the chanting protesters. Her midnight-blue phone rang. Maxence.
The security reports, the systems monitoring … good God, she’d entrusted it all to a kid. Worried, she pressed TALK. “Anything wrong, Maxence?”
“No, but the funeral mass for Piotr Volodya—”
“Who’s that?” she interrupted.
“Yuri Volodya’s father, who died at one hundred last week,” Maxence said. “Big to-do out at the Russian nursing home. Le Figaro’s obituary makes him out to be some kind of art connoisseur. Instrumental in the art movement in the twenties, apparently. That’s the most recent hit I found.”
Not bad, this kid.
“What did the old Russian say?” Maxence asked.
Her heart clenched. “Tell you later. If anyone calls, you don’t know where I am. Take a message.” She took a breath. “Keep researching. Find out how active Yuri was in political groups in the seventies.” Her mother’s time. “How’s it going with the reports?”
She spied her scooter where she’d left it. A police car turned into the street ahead of her. She kept her head low as it passed.
“Printed out, filed, and backed up on René’s computer.”
Already? The kid took initiative. “Mind running the next batch? And give me a status update midway, d’accord?”
En route to her scooter she had an idea. “Maxence, where’s that Russian nursing home?”
MORE THAN AN hour and two wrong turns later, Aimée located the Château de la Cossonnerie, outside Paris, now the nursing home adjoining the Russian cemetery. She downshifted past the grilled gate into a circular gravel-lined driveway and parked her scooter to the side of the tall limestone building. Her pulse raced. She was determined to discover how Yuri got “in butter” and then murdered. And how it involved her mother, if it did.
The deserted reception area—dark maroon chairs and matching wallpaper under a high ceiling bordered by faded gilt woodwork—exuded dim gloom. The back office lay dark. Paprika aromas drifted from the hallway, a low hum of clinking cutlery. Lunchtime. Didn’t old people eat early? Not a bad idea. Her stomach growled. But she saw no computer to search for patients’ names and rooms. Under a vase holding heavily scented freesias, she found the visitor log.
She wished the reception area offered more light as she searched the dates. But going back a few days she found a Piotr Volodya, Room 34, and Yuri’s scrawled signature. Better to question a fellow patient who’d known him. She’d get more info that way than from a staff member bound by confidentiality and privacy laws.
An orderly in white appeared in the hallway pushing a lunch cart. Behind him a woman, wiping the sides of her mouth with a napkin, bustled in from the dining room.
“You wish to tour, make an appointment?” Red, flowing curls framed her round, highly blushed face. Buxom and sealed into a green dress with shoulder pads, she could have stepped out of the eighties. “I’m Madame Gobulansky, la directrice.”
“Aimée Leduc. It’s regarding the late Piotr Volodya’s estate.”
Madame Gobulansky played with her drop earrings. Wary.
“Estate? The man lived on charity here the last twenty years. Who do you represent?”
From her tone it sounded like Piotr had overstayed