Murder Below Montparnasse - By Cara Black Page 0,46
francs. It’s all worth it to us if you can patch and tweak before we launch the product for stock trading. And to keep you here. Okay, dude? We’re good?”
Astounded, René felt his eyes widen. Serious, Andy was serious.
“But you can’t think this won’t be discovered,” René said. “Anyone in securities will recognize this scam.”
Andy gave a big laugh. He slapped René on the back. René felt his world caving in.
“Don’t worry, we’re talking about a stock trading advantage of a second or two to three seconds. Harder than bullets to prove. The work’s brilliant. Beautiful, dude,” Andy said. “Hell, you did it yourself.”
Andy pulled out his cell phone.
“So we’re good, right, René?”
“I’m not an employee,” René said, shaking. “I came in on a tourist visa. This has got nothing to do with me.”
“Did you forget the fax you signed and accepted for the CTO position, René?”
One step ahead of him. The whole time. A bitter taste filled his mouth and it didn’t come from faux cappuccino. Their rush employment offer, the private jet, the stock options lured him here, trapped him. Idiot.
Andy had used him. A scapegoat to take the fall if he squealed. René doubted Andy needed him anymore except to keep his mouth shut.
René’s phone trilled in his pocket. He answered automatically.
“Ça va, René?” Aimée’s voice an echoey reverberation as the call pinged over the ocean. “Made your millions yet?”
Little did she know. “I like my millions clean,” René said in English.
Andy folded his arms, planting himself in front of the door.
“Not dirty, Aimée,” he added, looking Andy in the eye.
But he’d lost the connection.
Tuesday Afternoon, Paris
I like my millions? Aimée kicked the matted lime-tree blossoms littering Boulevard du Montparnasse’s zebra crosswalk. Not there forty-eight hours and René had gone Zeelakon Vallaaaay all the way. She hit dial back. No connection.
Just when she needed to talk to someone, throw ideas back and forth like they always had. She needed help reasoning out why Luebet got shoved in front of the Métro.
No doubt René had the corporate jet at his beck and call. She walled up the disappointment. No time for that now. The sky opened and she ran for shelter in a doorway.
La giboulée issued an intense pelting shower, then five wet minutes later layers of blue sky appeared. She shivered in her damp boots. Now confident no one had followed her, she hurried along the rain-spattered boulevard to Luebet’s art gallery. Shuttered and dark. He’d been lured out of a meeting and murdered.
But she couldn’t prove that. The only documented connection between Yuri’s torture and murder and Luebet’s supposed Métro accident was the painting in the photo. Yuri and Luebet were the only ones who could have verified the Modigliani’s existence except whoever took the photo. No doubt the same person who’d stolen it.
Oleg, the stepson? The dead Serb’s partner, the brother?
Or Aimée’s mother?
Whoever had known that Yuri had dined at his stepson’s last night also knew what time to steal it.
Her cell phone blinked with one message. The insurance company giving her repair quotes for the cars’ damages. She sighed, tempted to ignore this particular problem, given René’s millions and the fact that Yuri was gone. But that wouldn’t make it right.
Nearby on Boulevard Raspail, inside the AXA insurance office, she stared at the estimated vehicle damages. The base of her spine went weak. She could blow a kiss goodbye to a chunk of the incoming Arident check. Doing the right thing would cost her.
But she nodded assent, signed the triplicate form and handed it back to the clerk, a young woman all in brown, which only highlighted her already mouse-like appearance. Brown—the new black?
Now she had another reason to reach Oleg—the insurance money. No one turned down the offer of money.
“Just worried about Saj,” she said, crossing Raspail again and realizing she’d left her scooter at the museum. Merde. “Any word from him or the hospital?”
“Not yet.”
She walked by the small tree-lined park on rue Campagne Première, which fronted the glinting tiled art-nouveau façade of artist ateliers. When she had been in the lycée, their art teacher brought the class here for a vernissage, an art opening. She and Martine had snuck out to smoke. And gotten caught.
“Contracts faxed, Aimée. Backups made. Files complete,” Maxence was saying. “Have to go to my evening class now.”
“Call me impressed, Maxence,” she said. “I’ll finish up.”