Murder Below Montparnasse - By Cara Black Page 0,60
full of water. A grim reminder. But the rest of the office looked untouched.
Last night floated back to her—that voice, those large hands ripping her hair, plunging her head in the bucket. Her roots tingled. She remembered the deadline, passing out, then coming to, alone, her hands untied, wet and shivering on the floor. The office in darkness. Her head throbbing, knees weak. Remembered phoning her concierge to keep Miles Davis for the night. What else? Beside her, on the silk duvet, a page of notes she’d jotted down last night before she’d passed out again.
She heard footsteps on the landing outside. They were coming back. Controlling her panic, she crawled across the office floor to her desk.
A stab of nausea hit her as she grabbed the desk drawer. Her hand slipped. Tried again, yanked it open and felt her Beretta.
Leduc Detective’s frosted-pane door opened, bringing a gust of lemon-polish-tinged air. Saj entered wearing a neck brace, dreads twisted in a ponytail, army jacket over his stained muslin shirt. His habitual grin faded when he saw her.
“I’m all in one piece, Aimée,” he said, “but it doesn’t look like you are. Mind putting the gun down?”
She wanted to run to Saj and hug him. Instead she laid the Beretta in the drawer by her mascara. “You’re all right, Saj?”
“Apart from a strained tendon. I’ll live,” Saj nodded. Winced. “Zut! Whatever magic happened at the Serb’s autopsy made my day.”
Serge had come through.
“Ready for more good news?” she said through a wave of dizziness.
“To prepare me for the bad?”
“Something like that,” she managed before everything slipped away and went dark.
SHE’D COME TO later, then fortified herself with a double espresso and a fresh brioche from Saj’s foray to the boulangerie. Halfway through a second double espresso, queasiness rose in her stomach again, and a bitter taste filled her mouth. She pushed the demitasse away.
“You’re still reacting to the drugs,” Saj said. “You’ll have to take it easy today, Aimée.”
Then a wardrobe change in the back armoire: black leather leggings, ballet flats, retro Pucci silk tunic topped by a flounced jacket. Feeling slightly better, she finished filling Saj in.
“At least I know I didn’t kill the Serb,” Saj said, sipping green tea next to her on the recamier. “This Feliks.”
“The autopsy proves the Serb’s heart stopped before he fell on the windshield,” she said. “Hence your release.”
“But the robbery and now the old man’s murder complicates everything, Aimée. Not a fait accompli,” Saj said. “I’m still on the hook.”
“What do you mean?”
“The flics questioned me again and again last night—did I know this Yuri, asked about a painting, implying the accident was a screen for a getaway.”
As usual, they gravitated toward the first person they met with any connection to the crime as a suspect. Sloppy police work.
“You kept mum, right?”
“Not difficult on painkillers,” he said. “But the last thing I want is to be a suspect in a robbery when they’ve dropped the manslaughter charge.”
“That’s the least of your worries,” Aimée said. “Another Serb’s entered the equation and knows your identity.”
“Your friend the nurse warned me,” Saj said.
Nora had come through.
But now what? The Serb asking after Saj didn’t know Saj hadn’t killed Feliks—and if everyone who’d warned Aimée to stay away from Serbs was right, that could be a deadly misunderstanding. Meanwhile, she still had a dead man’s money. Yuri had hired her to track down that painting, and so many other people were after it, she knew she had to move fast.
She was tied up in this thing, past the point of just walking away. Someone had broken into her office to torture her for information about the painting. For her own safety, she needed to find the thing, or at least figure out who was behind the theft. Decide whether she wanted to turn the whole thing over to the authorities, whether they could even protect her or would only get in her way. Whether she’d be putting them on the trail of her missing mother, a wanted woman.
Aimée needed advice. She reached for her cell phone, hit speed dial. Then realized René wouldn’t answer. Stupid. She clicked off. Get a grip. Helm the ship, step up—all those trite phrases, but she better follow one. Focus on helping Saj deal with this.
“I need more green tea.”
On the espresso machine he pressed the steamer button, held a cup under as the vapor whooshed out. Pensive, he sat back down next to her on the recamier.