Murder Below Montparnasse - By Cara Black Page 0,61
partner or whoever, didn’t find the painting that night, came back and tortured the old man to find it?”
Her hands shook. “I thought the same.” Sadness filled her. “Yesterday Yuri asked for my help. Then changed his mind. I wish I knew why.”
Saj took off his neck brace. Did a cautious neck roll. “Something tells me there’s more,” he said.
“Luebet the art dealer ‘falls’ on the Métro tracks, but that doesn’t explain what he’d left behind at the musée.”
She showed Saj the photo, the envelope with the note, M—Find it this time.
“I’d say there are more crooks in the pot, Aimée. Bad ones.”
Made sense.
“There’s something I’m not seeing,” she said.
“What about Oleg? You think he could have held his stepfather under the water to make him reveal the location?”
She thought. Shook her head. “Oleg didn’t tell me everything. But a murderer? Besides, he claims he told Yuri to hide the painting until it was appraised.”
“Didn’t Yuri tell the world? Must have been lots of interested people. You’re talking a Modigliani, Aimée.”
“Of the four who I know saw it, two have been murdered. Oleg has a buyer and he thought I had the painting. Or so he said.”
Saj moved to his tatami mat, set down his tea, and opened his laptop.
Aimée related more of what happened—about seeing the Serb’s Levi’s jacket button on Yuri’s floor, the blood smear on the pantry wall, Serge pointing out the telltale bruises on the Serb’s corpse.
“Sounds like a fight.” Saj sipped his tea. “Perfect timing, with the old man out.”
“But it bothers me why, if he worried over the security, he left me cash and an urgent note, but accepted a dinner invitation and left a Modigliani in the broom closet.”
Saj shrugged. “Put that aside for now. Go back to the Serb. He comes in to get the painting, but someone else beat him to it. They fight, the painting snatcher escapes. Let’s go on the assumption the Serb wasn’t the only one searching for the Modigliani,” Saj said. “Luebet for starters. Do you think Luebet could have been the one to hire the Serb?”
Aimée shook her head. “It’s possible, but then who is ‘M’? The Serb’s name was Feliks, and besides, he was already dead. So who was Luebet’s note to?”
Saj pondered for a moment, then began to tick off fingers. “Oleg and Damien both knew about the painting, and might have tried to steal it. Piotr Volodya’s concierge knew there was a painting, maybe a valuable one, although probably not where Yuri would have kept it, and you don’t suspect her. Perhaps Madame Natasha, although you think she’s too paranoid to tell anyone. And the neighbor, Madame Figuer, she knew Yuri had come into something, but you don’t think she knew it was a painting. Do we know of anyone else who might be involved?”
Aimée hesitated, knowing the more Saj knew, the more dangerous it was for him. But then the Serb had already found his name.
So she told him about her mother. The deadline.
The color drained from Saj’s face.
“We’re installing an alarm system. Now.” Saj picked up the phone. “My friend wires security systems.” He paused. Fingered his beads.
“Did your mother torture Yuri?”
And for a moment she couldn’t answer.
Her own mother, a supposed terrorist gone rogue. Aimée kept coming back to her mother’s scent, muguet, which she had recognized at Yuri’s. That scent that clung to the wool sweater her mother forgot in a drawer. The sweater Aimée slept with until she was ten, when her father discovered and burned it.
Conflicting emotions swirled. Love and pain.
Saj punched in some numbers on his phone. He organized an appointment quickly and turned back to her.
“You ready to answer, Aimée?” he said. “Do you know if it was your mother who tortured Yuri?”
“We’re not exactly close, Saj.” Her hands shook.
“According to Yuri, he ‘owed your mother,’ non?”
“If she brokered Yuri a deal, why murder him?” she said. “The goons see me as the link to her. Bait. But they’re wrong. The Modigliani is the bait.”
“What do you mean?”
The stakes had risen—this threat, the deadline. “We’re all ensnared. I need the Modigliani.”
“Et alors? By what logic?”
“The painting’s my only shot to find her.”
“Does she want you involved? Non, think about why.” Saj blew air from his mouth. “Have you any idea what she’s like now?”
If she’d ever known. Aimée felt a shiver run down her spine.
“And our work, the business?”
“Maxence and I have survived so far,” she said. “The kid scored two contracts yesterday.”