Murder Below Montparnasse - By Cara Black Page 0,87

planning and hiring her accomplices: Servier, to break into Volodya’s atelier, and a mec called Flèche to transport the painting to Orly. But someone else beat him to it, Servier says, no painting. A mec punched Servier, he returned the favor and ran.”

“But you can arraign them on breaking and entering.”

“After the fact.”

Flics always worried about technicalities and judges.

“You don’t call screwing up my building door, drugging and almost drowning me in a bucket in my office …?”

Ahead of them, a mother with her child in her arms turned in alarm.

“Blindfolded, weren’t you?” Dombasle said, his voice lower. “Can you prove who did it?”

Her head hurt—the music and the dense air made it hard to think.

She forced herself to remember. Felt those large hands shoving her head down as she gasped for air, water filling her mouth, her nose, down her throat, her lungs bursting. Those hands ripping her hair. Stop, she had to go back to the voice on the phone. Remember. The slushing tires over wet pavement, the car horns, the street sounds. No doubt the call came from a pay phone. Useless.

“Morgane blamed it on the hot-tempered amateur she’d hired,” Dombasle said, pulling out a notebook from his pocket. Consulted it. “This Flèche. She said he’d threatened to take things in his own hands.”

“Rounded him up yet?

He turned pages in the notebook, sucked in his breath. “You could say that. We discovered his corpse in a rented room close to Yuri Volodya’s. The concierge heard a gunshot. Saw a tall female figure leave the courtyard.”

Aimée shivered. The fixer?

“So make it up, Dombasle,” she said. “Morgane doesn’t know if the blindfold slipped, if I saw her mec leave. That I couldn’t identity him from a mug shot.”

Lie, she wanted to say. Force the truth. That’s the flics’ speciality.

“You’re scared,” he said, his tone changing to concern.

“No wonder you’re a detective,” she said. Her mind went back to poor Yuri tied to his kitchen sink, to Madame Figuer, his neighbor, the sobbing tale of her brother water-tortured on rue des Saussaies.

Dombasle enveloped her hand in his warm ones. Calming and firm. “You’re shaking.”

“Going to ask me to dance?” she said.

A smile lit up his gold-flecked eyes. “Tango’s more my style. I want you to meet that man drinking cider over there.”

Aimée’s phone vibrated. She needed air.

“Meet you in a moment, I’ve got to take this call.”

She didn’t want to talk to anyone, but it could be Saj or René. Another break-in attempt?

“Aimée, given any thought to chapter titles for my book?” Martine asked.

“Book?” Her heel caught in the cracks of the damp cobbles. She grabbed the ivy trellis for support just in time.

“The style editor’s on my back.”

“Right now, Martine?”

Martine blew a long exhale. Aimée imagined the nicotine rush, the cigarette’s spiraling blue smoke. She’d kill for a cigarette right now.

“What’s wrong? I hear it in your voice. But you can’t bail on me, Aimée. Not now.”

A couple hurried past her into the Breton center.

“You know you’re going to tell me,” Martine said.

Where to begin?

“Does this have to do with Saj running over that Serb?”

“He didn’t kill him.” She gave Martine the capsule version. And threw in how she’d seen Melac lip-locked with a blonde.

“Not that again! You know you were wrong before—remember, with Guy, the eye surgeon, the one I liked? He had his arm around his sister. And you were blind. Literally.”

Like she could forget.

“If Melac’s undercover … Alors, he’s got to do.…” Martine’s voice wavered, “what he’s got to do.”

“Not like that.”

“Bon, at least René’s back.”

“I can’t count on him with all—”

“But his tuxedo’s still at the cleaners, non?” Martine interrupted. “He’ll escort you to the wedding. The couturier alteration appointment’s the day after tomorrow. Don’t forget.”

Aimée wanted to smack herself. The vintage blue Dior. No way could she fit into it.

“But I’ve gained a kilo.” More.

“It’ll be a piece of gâteau for an old pro from Patou.”

“Letting out seams for a whale?” she said. “Martine, she’ll have to sew me into it.”

“Like Marilyn Monroe, eh?” Martine said. “By the way, ELLE’s sending a photographer to the wedding.”

She cringed inside. The camera would add even more kilos.

“Vintage couture works at a hip wedding,” Martine went on. “We’ll make it the book’s last chapter, of course. C’est parfait.”

Then it hit her. An idea that Martine, a born journalist, would eat up.

“What if I interested the oligarch’s wife in an interview with you? Couple it with a fashion shoot—besides the usual magazine sidebar on the über-wealthy slum-shopping? With