Murder Below Montparnasse - By Cara Black Page 0,64

“Nothing like that.” He paused. “No happy face for me? I went végétarien and put myself on the line for Saj’s release. Why that look, Leduc?”

It broke out before she could stop herself. And she didn’t care. She needed the truth.

“She’s alive, isn’t she? The fixer?”

He blew a plume of smoke that hovered in the sunlight slanting in from the window.

“Can’t say it, Morbier?”

“Say what, Leduc?”

“My mother.”

His thick brows knit in his forehead. “Didn’t we handle that?”

What kind of jargon was that? “How about the real story, Morbier?” Her lip trembled. “The truth?”

His cell phone rang in his hand. A brief check and his eyes softened. He turned away to answer. “Jeanne, I’ll call you back.…” The rest she couldn’t hear.

“Ah, cherchez la femme,” she said when he turned back to her. “The woman who makes you morning coffee, irons your shirt.”

Hurt hazed his eyes, then disappeared. He stabbed his cigarette out in her Ricard ashtray.

“Jeanne’s my grief group facilitator, Leduc. Cheap shot.”

Morbier, in grief counseling?

“She’s helping me deal with Xavierre’s loss.” A shrug. “But that’s off point.”

“Désolée, I didn’t know.” Why did she always feel like a little girl with Morbier? That inner compulsion to throw him off balance. Hurt him, like now.

But she knew why. All the secrets he’d kept from her. She needed his help again.

“Last night someone broke into my office, drugged me, and almost drowned me in a water bucket,” she said. She chewed her lip. “They called my mother ‘the fixer.’ Demanded I contact her.”

“Who did this?”

“I don’t know,” Aimée said. “She’s in danger. I need to reach her.”

“Let the past go, Leduc.”

That’s all he could say?

“Leave it alone for once. It’s over, you know that. She’s gone.”

“That’s not what I’ve heard,” she said. “I’m in over my head. They almost killed me, Morbier. They gave me twenty-four hours.”

“For what, Leduc?”

She told him what happened. Finished up with his voice message on the machine. “Zut alors, your irritated message saved my skin.”

An unreadable look crossed Morbier’s face. “How?”

“Your name carries weight. It’s not like last time. No one’s using me to get to her. She’s involved.”

“How can you be sure of that, Leduc?”

“Yuri was an old Trotskyist.” She thought quick, putting her assumptions together. “They knew each other from the raid in the seventies, when she got caught. My father kept a file—”

Just then, Raphael Dombasle entered and waved to her at the café door. What timing.

“What do you know, Morbier?” she said.

“Never kept tabs on her history,” he said. “Take a vacation, Leduc. Sun, sand, and surf.”

“That’s all you can say?”

He shrugged. “Cherchez l’homme? Melac not bad boy enough for you?”

“You know him, Morbier?”

“I wish I didn’t.”

What did that mean?

“Don’t think you can suck me in, Leduc.” Morbier chewed his cheek.

And then he stood up, nodded at Dombasle, and went out the door to be swallowed up in the crowd. Just like that.

“You’re well connected, Mademoiselle Leduc.” Raphael Dombasle hung his coat on the rack, sat down.

“Morbier’s my godfather,” she said.

Dombasle pointed to the Perroquet and called, “I’ll have the same, Louis.”

Louis winked. “You two make a nice pair.”

Aimée’s cheeks reddened.

Dombasle tucked his briefcase under the round table. “Word goes you’re an investigator with a knack for manipulation.”

“You say it like that’s a bad thing,” she said, determined to concentrate, to forget the sting of Morbier’s abandonment. He hadn’t even blinked when she’d told him her life was in danger. Why did she keep trying to bridge the distance between them when he cared this little about her? “But my job’s computer security, Monsieur Dombasle.”

“Michel vouched for you, or I wouldn’t be here,” he said. He’d checked her credentials.

She studied him. Slim. Intense dark eyes, tousled russet hair curling over his collar. Not the typical flic. More of an art historian, a tad intello. An interesting mix of flic and bobo.

“What do you have to tell me?”

Right now she had no way to find the painting unless the art cop gave her a lead—she’d parse the details, avoiding her mother. She gave him an edited version.

“Please, call me Raphael.” Dombasle loosened his tie. “But we’re talking about an unknown Modigliani, which I imagine has no authentication or provenance?”

“Hypothetically, if the painting had authentication, documentation and all that, what’s the value?”

“Why do I feel I’m missing something?” Dombasle sipped his drink.

“Michel I trust. You I don’t. Yet,” Aimée said. “But I’m sure you’d like to find it. So would I. And so would some Serbs.”

Dombasle grinned. For a moment he relaxed. “Et alors, you