dice at the half-zinc, half-Formica counter.
A shame to ruin the counter like that, she thought. And a bigger shame to see no espresso machine.
“Badoit, s’il vous plaît,” she said to the man behind the counter. He looked up from the dice, revealing a craggy, pitted face and dark-knit brows. He was the size of a truck.
“No Badoit.”
“Bon, something sparkling, as in water.”
He popped the bottle top of a Knjaz Miloš.
“Nice label.”
“From Serbia, my country,” he said, as if challenging her.
“Bon.” She smiled, took a sip. Mineral-tasting fizz trickled down her throat. “We’re off to a good start, you sharing with me and all.”
“Eh?” His brows knit closer together.
One of the mecs jerked their thumb at him. “You raise or not?”
He inclined his big head with the barest of nods. If she hadn’t been watching him closely, she wouldn’t have noticed. She realized this crew communicated in subtle ways.
They’d sussed her out from the moment she walked in. At least no one had raised a gun. But she doubted the bulges in the waistbands of their jogging pants held packs of facial tissue.
“No need to waste time, eh? Tatyana.…”
“Who?”
Like he didn’t know.
“Russian, blonde.” That sounded generic. She racked her brain. “Sports a white Chanel watch—a client who referred me.” Also lame. She took a breath. “I have a job for Feliks’s brother.”
She saw no reaction on his face.
“Job? You’re in a café. My café. Go to the labor exchange.”
“I mean a job for a specialist.”
A smile spread over his jowls. An ugly smile that didn’t reach his dull eyes.
“Construction, you mean—removals, concrete work. I refer you. But plumbers, you get Polish in their own their café, or the soup kitchen outside Notre Dame de l’Assomption church.”
“Not that kind of work.” He’d make it hard. He didn’t trust her. She felt the others looking at her. Better to leave a card and then … what? Hope word would trickle down and the Serb’s brother would call her?
Her cell phone rang.
“Aimée, you’ve got to see this.” Serge’s excited voice on the other end.
See what? She turned away from the counter. “Can’t you just tell me, Serge?”
“I asked the lab to expedite a broader screening using liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry.”
She looked back and noticed the men throwing dice. One had his eye on her.
She lowered her voice. “So you found the cause of death?”
“It took a lot of doing,” Serge said. “Let me tell you. This screen shows what peaks pop up, then we did a quantitative assay, looking at the peaks the compound fell in. Fascinating.”
She turned away again, wishing he’d cut to the chase. “Say it so I understand it, Serge.”
“Xylazine. An injectable horse tranquilizer. Not a high dosage, but the victim suffered an allergic reaction to it.”
“Like anaphylactic shock?”
“Similar. His body shut down within minutes. But not before he’d gotten a few steps.”
“So he staggered from Yuri’s atelier.…” That fit. “And you think …?”
“The lab tech’s seen it before,” he said. “For a home invasion the thief takes precautions. In this case, a syringe of horse tranquilizer to neutralize the occupants if they wake up or return home unexpected. Not a lethal dose, but enough to knock them out and give him time to clean out the house.” Serge paused. “In this Serb, a portion of his bruising happened before death. I conclude he got interrupted, fought with someone, and stabbed himself by mistake.”
“By mistake?”
“A small needle puncture in his derrière. Aligning with the back pocket of his jeans.”
He’d killed himself.
“Brilliant.” Her mind spun. “But where’s the syringe?”
“Check the crime scene report,” Serge said.
She thought back. It might be in the bushes, in the gutter where he got caught between the cars, or it might even have fallen in the atelier that night and washed away in the detritus of Yuri’s overflowing sink.
On some report she’d find it. But what she needed most was the lab report to prove this to the Serb’s brother. Suddenly, one more thing made sense. She reached in her jacket pocket for the straw she’d found at Saj’s, thought of the matching straw twined in Yuri’s trampled rosemary, and the barnyard smell Nora mentioned. “Where would he obtain this … what’s it called?”
“Xylazine? Around horses.”
“Meet me in ten minutes,” she said.
She turned to the man behind the counter. Smiled. “I’m looking for the mec who works with horses,” she said. “There’s money in it.”
He pointed to the door. “Drink’s on me. Go back the way you came in, Mademoiselle.”
She ground her teeth. Wondered what the going rate