Murder Below Montparnasse

Thursday Morning


AIMÉE WOKE UP to a sweet, woody fragrance wafting from the yellow and orange petals sprinkled over her duvet. Miles Davis’s wet nose nudged her ears. He sported a red collar with a rosebud.

What in the world?

She grabbed her father’s old wool robe and followed the aroma of coffee to her kitchen. Dozens of orange, yellow, and red roses in vases filled the counter.

“Your landline’s been ringing off the hook, sleepy head.” Melac, tousled hair and barefoot in jeans and a T-shirt, sipped from a steaming demitasse of espresso. Beside him was a plate of fresh-baked brioches with raspberry confiture and a slab of rich Brittany butter. Her stomach growled.

“So you raided a florist’s?”

“I missed you too.” He picked her up, engulfing her with his arms and kissing her neck, sweet and sticky raspberry breath in her ear.

Her heart dropped. Last night she’d almost slept with Dombasle. She felt a stab of guilt. But hadn’t she seen Melac with the blonde?

This was his way of making it up to her—flowers and affection, always a man’s telltale signs of guilt. He’d deny everything.

“You wasted your money, Melac. Send them back to the florist.”

“But our sting op ended by the flower market. The florist’s a friend.” He gestured to the small green ivy topiary and miniature lemon trees.

“You think I’ve got an orangerie?”

“Use the jardin d’hiver, you’ve got enough room.”

The old glassed-in terrace full of ancient rattan chairs she never used.

His gray eyes narrowed. “Why didn’t you return my calls last night?”

“I was busy.” He didn’t deserve to know. “I broke my rule, never mix with flics.”

“Not this again,” he said, moistening his thumb and picking up brioche crumbs.

“That blonde, the drunk sports star at la Rotonde,” she said. “Don’t deny it. I saw you.”

Melac’s eyes clouded. “I can’t talk about it.”

“Can’t talk about it? You expect me to believe—?”

“A honeypot sting,” he interrupted.

“And I’m Madame de Pompadour,” she said.

Melac grinned. “Better. Zut, Aimée, she’s an agent.”

Of course he’d say that. “Liar, no one kisses like that.…”

“We needed him jealous.” Melac shook his head. “The operation got more complicated than usual. Let’s just say the footballer opened certain doors for us. Suzanne, the blonde, is married to my colleague. They’ve got three kids.” He shrugged. Took the wallet from his back pocket, flipped it open to a photo: on a sailboat, the blonde, windblown and smiling with three blond children, and Melac with his arm around a man she recognized. He sighed. “That’s Paul. You met him last month, remember? None of us can wait to finish this operation.”

Aimée knew that look in his eyes. It had been just another day at the office for him.

“Desolée.” Her voice came out small. Now she hated herself for doubting him. For what might have happened if that taxi hadn’t appeared.

“What’s wrong, Aimée?”

Was she being that obvious?

He pulled her to him. Held her. She breathed in his citrus scent.

“Aimée, I’ve got a tuxedo, so I can escort you to Sebastien’s wedding. I’ve blocked the date. They can’t call me in.”

She stared down at Miles Davis’s battered Limoges food bowl. Should she tell him about Dombasle? Would he understand something she didn’t understand herself? Could they work through this?

If she didn’t, it would fester and never be right between them.

Melac picked a bottle of champagne from his sports bag and put it in her suitcase-sized fridge. “Shall we order in tonight, so you can make it up to me?”

She dropped the demitasse spoon. “Make it up to you?” Now she felt racked by guilt.

“For not returning my calls.” He grinned. “Seems your cell phone’s off. Saj has called five times.”

Suddenly worried, she nodded. Saj was a priority. But first she had to tell him.

“Alors, last night.…”

Melac’s cell phone rang. He reached in his pocket and pulled out two. “It’s Sandrine. Give me a second.” His daughter. “Oui, ma chérie?” His eyes shuttered. “Calm down, Nathalie.” His ex-wife.

Another custody issue?

“What happened? You’re where?” Pause. “Sandrine, in the school bus? Speak slower for God’s sake.… How long ago?” He reached for his gym bag, his face ashen. “What hospital?”

FROM HER COURTYARD, she watched Melac pull away in an unmarked Peugeot, sirens screaming down the quai. A sliver of blue lined the zinc rooftops under a cloud-filled sky. She stood under the budding branches of the old pear tree and prayed his daughter would make it.

Madame Cachou, her concierge, poked her head out of the round window in the courtyard loge.

“The way men come and go around here!” Her penciled eyebrows had climbed up her forehead.

“His daughter’s one of thirty children injured in the school bus crash with the TGV,” Aimée said.

“That train catastrophe in Brittany? It’s all over the télé newsflash. Mon Dieu.” Madame Cachou made a sign of the cross. “I’ll tell the curé. We’ll say a novena.”

From Melac’s terse description, she’d need to say a novena and more.

Miles Davis pawed the paving stone.

“Wants his walk, the little man,” Madame Cachou said, coming out with his leash. She zipped up a bright aquamarine hoodie that fit her now—she’d lost five kilos doing yoga. And looked ten years younger.

“We’ll stop at the church. Shall I keep Miles Davis tonight?”

Aimée nodded. “Merci.” She pulled her scooter off the kickstand. Walked it over the damp cobbles. Paused. “What men, Madame Cachou?”

“Un Russe,” she said.

Aimée spine stiffened. The former KGB chauffeur had tracked her down already? But how?

Madame Cachou made a sniffing sound. “Vodka seeping from his pores. Couldn’t fool me. The old coot stank to heaven.” She reached back behind the loge door. “He left something for you.”

A Trotsyskist newspaper. It must have been the old man with the red-veined nose, drunk to the world, at Marevna’s resto. But he’d already left one for her with Marevna.

“He said you’d understand.”

Understand?

Taped to the second page was a postcard-sized blue note card.

Sainte Anne Hospital, Allée de Kafka. Friday, 5 P.M.

“SIM CARD CLONED,” Saj greeted her. He was sitting cross-legged on his tatami mat, laptop in front of him, the neck brace still on but his arm without the sling.

“Delay switch in place for the Bereskova Swiss bank account,” René said, smiling. Cables and wires were draped over a massage table that had been set up by the fireplace in the office. The scent of eucalyptus oil hovered. René noticed her look. “The shiatsu masseur makes office visits, Aimée. I feel new again. You look like you could use one yourself.”

Like she had the time.

“So you defused your situation, René?”

“Big time, Aimée.” Maxence’s eyes shone from the desk next to René’s. “I’m in awe. Brilliant work. I’m designing a game based on the delay stock market option.”

“Not for a while, Maxence,” René said. “I want to reenter the States with my own name, and not the way I left.”

“How did you leave, René?” Aimée asked.

“With a lot of luck and a drug smuggler,” René said. “More your style. Hate to think of all the laws I’ve broken.”

“And with only a sombrero to show for it,” she said.

“Don’t forget my clean conscience.”

“What about Rasputin’s take on the oligarch?”

René pulled a window up on his screen. “Interesting. Said we should ask the question: Why would a low-end oligarch create a museum in France? Tax laws in the UK favor the Russians more and they all create strings of shell companies to move their money to London. A museum in France doesn’t make sense, Rasputin says. Unless the museum’s non-profit, given government subsidies, tax loopholes to foster Russian relations, cultural exchanges, keep tsarist art stolen during the war or brought by the White Russians back here.”

“What’s in it for the oligarch?” Saj asked, clicking keys on his keyboard. “Curry favor?

“Loopholes, if you know where, exist in the regulations,” René said. “Money laundering and kickbacks become donations and a perfect conduit for bribes. Financial compliance on minimal security for non-profits. Too many big fish to catch—why pursue minnows in the arts?”

“How does Rasputin know?” Aimée asked.

“It’s all done through backdoor operations of hired hackers,” Saj said.

René nodded. “True. He’s Estonian. The best.”

René caught her look.

“I didn’t ask any more, Aimée. Disrespect him once and he’ll never answer another email. Hired hackers set up the system to evade security nets and skirt financial compliance via loopholes. Nothing new. Done it myself.”

“I don’t want to know, René,” she said.

“Rasputin’s info checks out. Give it another eight months until an idiot talks, gets caught, and tumbles it,” he said. “The exchanges of art and culture translate to a Neuilly flat for a ministry official who accepts the bid from—”

“A Russian metal cockpit aerospace firm,” she interrupted. “Like Bereskova?”

René clicked and dragged a screen. “Such an easy way to move money, no questions asked. Bereskova gets the party to agree to the agenda and transfers the money to the official who happens to sit on the museum board.”

“But he needs art credibility.” Rays of morning light caught and illumined the blue glass vase of daffodils on the fireplace mantel.

“True. They didn’t think this through or have a long-term game plan. It’s all about now, while international cultural organizations go through minimal regulatory hoops. The Ministry of Culture is anxious for foreign cultural investment, so they ’spread their legs’—Rasputin’s words—to facilitate a Russian cultural center, museum, whatever.”

“Sounds too easy,” Saj said. “Then why doesn’t everyone do it?”

“The regulations are brand-new. Went into effect this year. Few know. But one glitch.”

Of course. Aimée had been waiting for this. Worried, she tapped her heels.

“The time factor,” René said. “The ministry’s co-funding arm dries up tomorrow. But institutions who’ve applied are grandfathered in.”

“Meaning Bereskova’s paper museum’s in?” she said. Maxence was listening, eyes wide with excitement. Aimée had almost forgotten he was there, he was so quiet. For once. “Then what will the Modigliani give him?”

“Credibility.”

“He needs the Modigliani.”

Saj nodded. “Rasputin puts the info up and promises that it will go viral in three continents within, say, three to four hours. He’s dying to—”

“Put a collar on him for now,” she said. “We need the timing right. I’m not sure.”

“No muzzling the wild man,” Saj said. “If we try, he’ll take the reins and run.”

René sat up. “I see the problem. If we delay the funds transaction, where’s the proof? That’s what you mean, Aimée?”

“Exactement. I need to get my hands on the painting first.”

“Even if the sham museum’s a front?” Saj said. “And Marina’s deposit slip proves it?”

“Exposing layers like this takes time,” René said.

“Time we don’t have,” Aimée said. She set down her bag, poured herself a warm espresso from the still-dripping machine. “If we screw up the timing.…”

“I’ve got an idea,” René said.

“Like what?” Saj readjusted his amber beads.

“If it could scam Wall Street, it could scam a Swiss bank.” René padded over to his desk. “But give me two hours.”

“I haven’t found the Modigliani,” she said, feeling off her game. Was it the water torture, or those drugs? She’d felt so tired, sad, and confused after Melac left this morning. “I think I’m anemic.”

“Take care of yourself for once.” The skin around René’s green eyes creased in concern. “Get a blood test. Iron supplements.” He opened a screen on his computer. “But our girl wonder falls off the job? We’ll forgive you once—but to give up?”

“Did I say that, René?”

“We’re covered here.”

“You mean you’re staying, René?”

“If you’ll have me, Aimée,” he said. Then he looked down, got off his ergonomic chair. Reached for his briefcase. “But I understand if you feel otherwise. I let you down.”

Three pairs of eyes stared at her.

“Not at all,” she said. “I need your help, René.”

He grinned, climbed back on his chair.

“What are you waiting for?”

SHE NEEDED TO go back over everything. From the beginning. In the office, while everyone worked, she propped the dry erase board against the massage table. Studied the timeline of events from the Serb’s accident on Monday night, Yuri’s murder on Tuesday, then Luebet. Pored over the notes she’d made at Madame Figuer’s kitchen table, the details from her to-do list on Oleg and Tatyana, Damien, the concierge at rue Marie Rose.

What cracks in their stories had she missed? What wasn’t she seeing? Her eye caught on her grand-père’s commendation from the Louvre on recovering the Degas—she could see the framed certificate just above the dry erase board.

She searched the old file cabinet for all his files. The ones she’d planned to digitize but never got around to.

Then she found it. The old investigative report on the stolen Degas. She’d been ten at the time. After her ballet lesson, he’d taken her to the art recovery unit in the complex at the préfecture. She remembered how huge the place felt, how musty it smelled. In a vault, he’d picked up a small bronze statue. Smiled at her. “This could be you, Aimée.”

A small bronze ballerina, no taller than an uncut rose stem, her tutu suspended in midair like fluff, caught in the act of a twirl. Mesmerizing. So lifelike.

She could almost hear the rustle and swish of the short tulle skirt, the grinding twist of the leather-toed shoe on the wood stage floor of l’Opéra.

The old grande dame had been so thankful to Aimée’s grandfather that she willed the ballerina to the Louvre, much to the chagrin of her heirs.

She pored over her grandfather’s cramped writing on the yellowed pages in his case report—surveillance, suspects, alibis, possible motives, a diagram of interrelations.

Bon, she’d done all that. Timelined events. Followed everything step for step per her grandfather’s example.

Correction—her grandfather had rechecked the alibi of the old dame’s trusted secretary. The hospital nurse, who was finally back from vacation when he followed up, had never seen the secretary the night of the robbery when the secretary claimed to have been visiting her mother.

It was the little things, the details, that made 2+2 = 5, as her grandfather had said.

Aimée knew where to start.

“Let’s pull up the numbers from Marina Bereskova’s phone.”

“Done.” Saj handed her a printout. “Pretty self-explanatory. Calls to Dmitri, Svetla the bodyguard, Tatyana, a boutique.…”

“And this one?”

Saj shrugged. “The bank?”

She pulled out her cell phone and checked the call log.

The same number. Received two days ago at 6:10 P.M. She thought back. Damien the printer.

Her head spun. How did he connect to Marina? Wasn’t she Tatyana’s friend? Why was Marina talking to her friend’s husband’s rival?

“I’ve got an idea. Try Dmitri’s number from one of our disposable phones.”

“I just tried. Still working,” Saj said.

Could it be so simple?

“BONJOUR, MADAME FIGUER,” she said on the phone. “I want to send flowers to Damien’s aunt, but.…”

“Madame Perret? She’s at death’s door. He’s beside himself, that young man.”

That answered her first question.

“Voilà. But I forgot which hospital she’s in.”

“Damien moved her to a nursing home,” said Madame Figuer.

“Vraiment? Where?” The old busybody should know, just as she knew everyone’s business. And never kept her mouth closed.

Pause. “A private one. Expensive. Near the Métro at Mouton Duvernet.”

“But I thought she was too ill to be moved. Can you remember?”

“On Villa Coeur de Vey, I think,” she said. “How’s the case going?”

Aimée clicked her pen. “Another call, Madame, got to go. Merci.”

Fifteen minutes later, she parked her scooter outside the Monoprix cornering the thin slice of an alley. On Villa Coeur de Vey, next to the charitable organization that handed out free food, she found the nursing home.

“Madame Perret?” the dark-haired receptionist said. “Too late, I’m afraid.”

“She’s passed away?”

“Her nephew took her home. Contacted hospice. He’s following Madame’s wishes.”

Aimée thought back.

“When was that?”

The receptionist consulted her computer screen. “Let’s see, we discharged her Tuesday to Hôpital Broussais for a CAT scan. Oui, the ambulance took her.”

The morning of Yuri’s murder.

“Her nephew accompanied her, I assume.”

“He made the arrangements,” the receptionist said.

Something about this bothered Aimée.

“Did you see him?”

“Tuesdays I’m off. But ambulances only transport patients.”

“Then her nephew met her at Hôpital Broussais?”

The receptionist pulled the readers down from her head.

“You’re a flic, non? I’ll need to see identification, Mademoiselle.”

Aimée flashed her father’s police ID with her photo.

“Alors, a note here says the hospital’s CAT scan machine was broken,” the receptionist said. “Madame Perret was brought back here in the ambulance.”

How did that fit in?

“Anything else?”

“We were unable to contact her nephew until late afternoon,” she said. “He took care of the arrangements that evening.”

“Tuesday evening?”

The receptionist nodded.

Damien told her he’d been with his aunt all day at the hospital.

“May I check that cell number against the one we have for her nephew?” Aimée mustered a smile. “It’s routine.”

The receptionist swung the screen for Aimée to see. She copied it down on her to-do list.

“Such a caring young man, as I remember,” the receptionist said. “Very concerned over his aunt. Not many like that these days.”

“But didn’t one of our force question your staff?” Aimée gave a sigh. “It’s about dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s for reports. We’ve got to follow the new regulations.”

“You’re the first.”

Sloppy police work. And on her end, too.

SHE UNLATCHED THE gate of the printing works on rue de Châtillon. Today the courtyard lay quiet. No pounding machines or delivery camionnette. An older woman she hadn’t seen before stood locking the warehouse door.

“Lost?” the woman asked, a frown marring her mouth.

Aimée’s heels sank in the gravel. “Looks like you’re closing early.”

“I’m not the boss,” she said.

“Where is Damien?”

“Full of questions, aren’t you? Take a number.”

Such helpful staff, a tradition here, she thought, remembering Florent, who’d attacked her in the truck.

The woman shrugged. “I’m off the clock. Forever. He’s shut down the factory.”

No wonder. It all added up.

“Everyone’s gone.”

Aimée saw a light upstairs at the back window.

Watching her? “I guess I’ll try reaching him another way.”

“Suit yourself, but I’m locking up.”

Aimée walked out of the gate.

The woman locked the padlock. Without a goodbye, she walked toward the Métro.

Aimée turned into the park, following the wall away from the maison de maître—the former squat she now recognized, where Yuri once held a Trotskyist banner and her mother had been arrested—to a worn path among some rosemary and lilac bushes. It ended at the back of the printing works. A scattering of metal rungs led up the crumbling masonry, rusted in places, well worn in others.

She came up with a plan while she climbed, gripping the worn rungs, testing her weight each time. At the top, she reached a ledge covered with pigeon droppings. Two stories above ground and hidden by wild lilac bushes. A perfect view of Yuri’s atelier from the lighted upper floor of the printing works.

She punched in René’s number.

“Any verdict, Aimée?”

“Nothing happens until I find the painting,” she said. “I’m at Damien’s printing factory.”

“But Rasputin.…”

The ledge by her foot gave way. Rocks tumbled and she grasped a rock higher up. Heights, she hated heights.

“Hold on.” She pulled out the phone numbers Saj had printed out. “Do you see a call to or from 06 78 90 42 30 on Marina’s call log?”

“Service was cut … but yes, that’s on the list.”

“Call that number in three minutes. Use one of the throwaways in my desk drawer. Say you’ve got the money, tell him the plans have changed, to bring the painting. You want to meet now.”

Aimée heard René swallow. “If he asks where?”

She thought quick. “Café Zèbre at Alésia.”

“You’re serious? Do you need me for backup?”

Too late for that now. Merde.

“Convince him you’re the contact, your boss wants him to deal with you. Keep him talking as long as you can. Please, René. And fake a Russian accent.”

She clicked off. Switched her phone to vibrate, stuck it in her bag, and edged her way to the lighted window. Behind the bushes lay a grilled balcony invisible from the park. She climbed onto it. Stood at the curtained French doors. Silence.

She tried the door. Locked. Merde. Just as she was about to take out her lockpick set and get to work, she noticed another set of French doors half covered by lilacs. One of the doors was open. A fat black crow perched on the balcony ledge, eyeing her with his pinpoint yellow gaze. A sweetish smell grew stronger as she slid sideways into a semi-dark room with flickering candlelight.

She heard a phone trill. Footsteps. Bravo, René.

Her eyes adjusted to the light. Votive candles on the floor silhouetted a bed with a rose satin duvet. And she froze.

Lying on it was a white-haired woman in an old-fashioned lace nightgown, centime coins on her lids to keep them closed, hands crossed in prayer with a blue-beaded rosary trailing from them.

Aimée realized the source of the sweetish stench. The old woman must have been here since Damien brought her back from the clinic. Dead and decaying for several days.

The flap of the crow’s wings came from the balcony. Aimée made herself move.

Damien stood in a high-ceilinged workroom that overlooked the silent printing presses below. Rays of late afternoon light glowed on the old wood, giving off a burnished honey hue.

To one side were piled boxes; on the other, paper-cutting blades and a sharpening stone were grouped on a long-gauged worktable partly obscured by more boxes. To her right were shelves with brass wire rolls and boxes of metal type.

Dotting one wall, like flypaper, hung lopsided yellowed cardboard signs with raised dots of Braille. Remnants from the turn of the century, when blind laborers worked the presses. The past clung to the dust-filled corners.

She peered over the boxes and caught her breath. To the left, in a recessed alcove, were stacked La Coalition posters; above them hung a detailed street map of the Montparnasse quartier dotted with Post-its marked with X’s. On the floor sat blue canisters of propane gas, the kind available at a hardware shop. Bags of fertilizer.

Aimée froze. Good God … bomb-making material. And a map of the locations. Hadn’t Solange, Saj’s Goth neighbor, said—what had it been?—La Coalition is militant organizing?

Damien was leaning over something at the worktable. The phone was stuck between his shoulder and ear as he listened. Above him, on the shelf, she saw the detonators. She stifled a gasp.

“But Bereskova called me an hour ago,” he said.

Merde. She’d been afraid of that.

“What do you mean?” he said. Pause. “I won’t go a centime lower on the painting. He agreed on the price.”

He had it. She remembered Yuri’s message: “I know who stole the painting.” She’d thought he meant her mother. But Yuri had counted on reasoning with Damien to return the painting.

But reasoning with someone crazed by grief who kept his moldering aunt next door? A fanatic obsessed with his political cause, bomb-making … Why hadn’t she realized it sooner?

What if Yuri had confronted Damien about the painting, things had heated up, and.…

Had Damien killed Yuri? Her mind went back to the demonstration blocking rue d’Alésia—how easy for Damien to slip into the crowd and blend in. She remembered the La Coalition armband on his desk.…

But torture his mentor and friend?

“Change the plan, why?” Damien said.

She had to move fast. Wanted to kick herself for leaving her Beretta in her office drawer. Now she had to find a way to defend herself, a different way out. The stairs down to the printing presses were blocked by boxes. Ducking low, she moved over the slanting wood floor toward rolls of brass wire, careful to avoid the metal drums of ink, the shelves with boxes of metal type.

“We worked this out,” Damien was saying. “Now … you’re sure?”

Damien carefully slipped something in a cardboard tube, the kind used for posters. Her heart thudded. The phone still to his ear, he headed for the door—right where she stood. Stepping back, she tried to slip into a recess. Her bag fell off her shoulder and she made a vain attempt to catch it. Too late.

“You?” White-faced, rings under his eyes, he looked more haggard than before. He was still wearing the same clothes, wrinkled as if he’d slept in them.

Before Aimée could bend down for her bag, he’d kicked it into the corner. Her phone was in it. No chance of reaching the flics now.

Trickles of perspiration ran down the small of her back.

“The Modigliani belonged to Yuri, Damien,” she said, keeping her voice even. She made herself breathe. “It’s time to do the right thing. I can help you.”

“The right thing? That’s what I’m doing.” His mouth quivered. Then a smile, and he pointed to the alcove. “They’ll listen to me now.”

“With propane, fertilizer … making bombs?”

“Don’t any of you understand?”

“Understand what, Damien?” She kept her voice steady.

“La Coalition will prevent the developers from ruining the quartier.”

With bombs? She didn’t think so. Her shirt stuck to her shoulder blades.

“All thanks to me when Yuri finally cleaned out that cellar,” Damien said. “It was me who found the painting, do you understand? I saved it.” Damien set the phone down on the worktable and picked up his jacket. She could see the lighted band of numbers across the screen. He hadn’t clicked off.

Distract him, keep him talking.

“You saved the Modigliani?” she said. “Why didn’t Yuri tell me?”

“Yuri almost threw everything in a dumpster,” Damien said. “He had no idea. He laughed at me, but I did the research. Still, he wouldn’t listen.”

Aimée was convinced now his aunt’s death had unhinged him—she needed to calm him, keep him talking. Prayed René could hear, that the phone was still connected.

“So you took the Modigliani from Yuri’s closet for safekeeping?” she said. “You knew where he hid it, but he trusted you, non? Just so I’m clear, it was that afternoon Yuri went out for a little while before going to Oleg’s for dinner, right?” When Yuri slipped the envelope under her office door, wanting her help. “That’s when you took it?”

“Good thing I did.” His eyes were too bright. Too focused. “Before the grasping art dealer’s thugs and Tatyana’s Serb could get to it. I told Yuri over and over that it wasn’t safe. Turns out he’d involved you—as if.…” He gave a strange smile. “So many depend on me, it’s the right thing I’m doing. We can continue our work.”

Crazed all right. And delusional.

“By making bombs? That’s destruction, not preservation.”

“Only a means to an end, I explained that to Yuri. Over and over. But he wouldn’t listen.”

She edged closer to the phone on the worktable. Praying René could hear. “I know you meant to protect Yuri. He helped you run this printing business—all that encouragement. You told me, remember?” she said, moving closer. “He regarded you like a son, non? You were there when we hit his car.”

“More of a son than Oleg,” Damien said. “Even if we aren’t related by blood. Or marriage. All Oleg cared about was money. When Yuri boasted about the Modigliani, Oleg and Tatyana buzzed like bees to honey.”

Aimée kept her hand behind her, moving forward with small steps. She needed to reach the wire, or something heavy.…

“Stay back … stay right there.” Damien watched her with glittering eyes.

“Reste tranquille, Damien, we’re just working this out,” she said. “Tuesday morning your aunt went for a CAT scan and Yuri called, just as you told me he did.”

She felt something long, wooden with sharp points. Her fingers traced the sharp edges. Metal. She coughed to cover the sounds of it.

“Damien, I know you meant well.”

He nodded.

“Didn’t you, Damien?”

He nodded again. She needed him to talk. Needed to keep him focused.

“Then tell me what happened,” she said. “I know you’re upset after your aunt’s death. But I need to understand to help you.”

He glanced at his watch. She was losing him.

“Didn’t Yuri want the painting back for the art dealer’s appraisal?” she said. “Then things got out of hand.” She approached him cautiously. “N’est-ce pas?”

“I don’t have time for this.” His voice was different. Harder.

“But you took the time to strangle Yuri with his own tie, to torture and drown him. Why, Damien?”

“You want to know why?” Damien’s voice rose to a shout. “I found the painting, dusty and stuck in the back corner. Yuri promised me whatever it was worth.”

“Of course, Yuri was generous to a fault, he would have shared with you,” she said. “But there’s history behind it. Modigliani gave Lenin’s portrait to Yuri’s father in friendship. His father knew Lenin as a young boy.”

“Generous to a fault?” Damien snorted and grabbed the phone. “I counted on that money. But he’d cut me out. Yuri already had a buyer.”

“So do you—millions from the half-bit oligarch who’s as greedy as you are.” Now more pieces fit. Tatyana was paranoid for a reason—he’d followed her. “You have the Modigliani in that tube to sell via Tatyana.”

“Tatyana?” The muscles in his jaw twitched. “I didn’t mean to.…” His gaze flicked to the corner by her bag.

Alarmed, she stepped forward, for the first time noticing a dark maroon footprint, the red trickle veining the grooved wood floor. The metallic smell of blood she could almost taste. Behind the boxes, under the worktable—a slumped Tatyana, her snakeskin scarf ending in a pool of blood. Her eyes were rolled up in her head.

Aimée gasped.

“She showed no respect for my aunt. She kept yelling, demanding … I never meant to.…”

“Like you never meant to murder poor Yuri?” Aimée said, shaking. “Or shove Luebet on the Métro tracks?” The hypocrite. “But torturing him? The same way Madame Figuer’s brother was tortured, to cover your tracks …?”

“That old busybody? Such a joke, that old story of her brother.”

Cruel as well as unhinged.

“But Yuri turned on me. Wanted no part of La Coalition,” he said. “The bank refused me credit to keep this damned place going. How else can I keep funding the cause, making change happen? Look at Lenin.…”

Lenin? “You think printing posters and making bombs funds a revolution?”

“My aunt told me I deserved it. I do and now I will.”

“Your aunt’s beginning to smell as bad as your ideas,” she said. “You fired your staff and shut the doors. Old news. Try something fresh, like admitting the truth.”

“Yuri had already sold the painting—it never mattered what the appraiser valued it at.”

Aimée shuddered. “You mean to the fixer?”

Damien grabbed the cell phone, shoved the boxes at her, and ran. But she’d darted back, ready, and batted at him with the typeset roller. He ducked and tripped on the scattered boxes, dropping the phone and the tube, which skittered across the floor. Pieces of the rust-encrusted roller fell apart in her hands. Rust flakes spun in the air.

Damien hobbled to his feet, grabbed the paper-cutter blade from the worktable. “You’re like the others,” he shouted. “You won’t get away.”

The phone lay on the floor. She had to reach René. “Tell Rasputin now, René. Now!” she shouted, hoping to God the phone was connected, that he heard.

Damien swung the paper cutter. Her back was up against the wooden boxes, nowhere to go. Shaking, she couldn’t stop shaking. She scrambled sideways, grasping for the floor—which, in her terror, seemed to tilt away. She heard the blade rip her jacket. Cold air whooshed up her blouse.

An Yves Saint Laurent vintage jacket. Now she was angry.

From one of the boxes by her elbow, she grabbed the first heavy thing her fingers closed on, a letterset bar of sharp, raised metal letters. She pulled it out and whacked him in the jaw. Damien cried out, spun, blood dripping from his cheek. He came back at her waving the blade. Darting left, she swung again. Hit his rib, heard a crack. The metal letters A and S clattered to the floor. But the sharp-edged letterset bar had pierced his T-shirt and was embedded in his chest.

Damien collapsed, moaning in pain. His bloodstained fingers scrabbled to wrench it out. She bound his ankles and wrists with the wire before she pulled the bar out. Then she found the phone.

“René … René?”

“Funds delay done three minutes ago,” he said. “And Rasputin’s one happy camper now.”

“Took you long enough,” she said. “Partner.”

“I’ve missed you too, Aimée.”

AIMÉE HEARD THE crow flapping in the next room. Managed to shoo it away from the old woman’s face. She’d leave it to Dombasle to call the health department, but he wasn’t answering his phone. She left the rue de Châtillon address on his voice mail. Let him figure it out. It was time she got out of here.

Going out the way she’d come, she paused on the ledge and took the crackling canvas from the tube. Not much bigger than a large atlas, missing and unmissed for so many years, and now the cause of so much greed and death. In the fading sun, the lilac leaves brushing her arm, she unrolled it.

It took her breath away. A man almost alive looked back at her. The curve of his cheek, the thin mustache, the almond-shaped nut-brown eyes. So vulnerable, so in love, it shone. Warm with an appetite for life, a hunger to experience. Flecked with doubt, maybe, but a fully fleshed-out human being in an ingenious assemblage of deft brushstrokes. The earth tones and still-vibrant green of the jacket, the patched elbow, the hands holding a booklet.

Painted on the back, in quavering letters: M o d i g l i a n i for my friend Piotr.

She took the photocopied letters from her bag, rolled them up with the painting, put them all in the tube, then stuck the tube in her bag. She’d let history decide what it meant.