Murder Below Montparnasse

Wednesday Morning, Paris


BELLS CHIMED. SOMETHING soft and wet pressed Aimée’s cheek. She cracked open her eyes and squinted at the sunlight streaming in her office. Morning. It was morning.

Nearby rang the bells of Saint-Germain l’Auxerrois. She’d slept on Leduc Detective’s recamier and drooled on the silk duvet.

Groggy, she sat up and rubbed her sore wrists. Beside her lay the concierge’s blue wash bucket, half full of water. A grim reminder. But the rest of the office looked untouched.

Last night floated back to her—that voice, those large hands ripping her hair, plunging her head in the bucket. Her roots tingled. She remembered the deadline, passing out, then coming to, alone, her hands untied, wet and shivering on the floor. The office in darkness. Her head throbbing, knees weak. Remembered phoning her concierge to keep Miles Davis for the night. What else? Beside her, on the silk duvet, a page of notes she’d jotted down last night before she’d passed out again.

She heard footsteps on the landing outside. They were coming back. Controlling her panic, she crawled across the office floor to her desk.

A stab of nausea hit her as she grabbed the desk drawer. Her hand slipped. Tried again, yanked it open and felt her Beretta.

Leduc Detective’s frosted-pane door opened, bringing a gust of lemon-polish-tinged air. Saj entered wearing a neck brace, dreads twisted in a ponytail, army jacket over his stained muslin shirt. His habitual grin faded when he saw her.

“I’m all in one piece, Aimée,” he said, “but it doesn’t look like you are. Mind putting the gun down?”

She wanted to run to Saj and hug him. Instead she laid the Beretta in the drawer by her mascara. “You’re all right, Saj?”

“Apart from a strained tendon. I’ll live,” Saj nodded. Winced. “Zut! Whatever magic happened at the Serb’s autopsy made my day.”

Serge had come through.

“Ready for more good news?” she said through a wave of dizziness.

“To prepare me for the bad?”

“Something like that,” she managed before everything slipped away and went dark.

SHE’D COME TO later, then fortified herself with a double espresso and a fresh brioche from Saj’s foray to the boulangerie. Halfway through a second double espresso, queasiness rose in her stomach again, and a bitter taste filled her mouth. She pushed the demitasse away.

“You’re still reacting to the drugs,” Saj said. “You’ll have to take it easy today, Aimée.”

Then a wardrobe change in the back armoire: black leather leggings, ballet flats, retro Pucci silk tunic topped by a flounced jacket. Feeling slightly better, she finished filling Saj in.

“At least I know I didn’t kill the Serb,” Saj said, sipping green tea next to her on the recamier. “This Feliks.”

“The autopsy proves the Serb’s heart stopped before he fell on the windshield,” she said. “Hence your release.”

“But the robbery and now the old man’s murder complicates everything, Aimée. Not a fait accompli,” Saj said. “I’m still on the hook.”

“What do you mean?”

“The flics questioned me again and again last night—did I know this Yuri, asked about a painting, implying the accident was a screen for a getaway.”

As usual, they gravitated toward the first person they met with any connection to the crime as a suspect. Sloppy police work.

“You kept mum, right?”

“Not difficult on painkillers,” he said. “But the last thing I want is to be a suspect in a robbery when they’ve dropped the manslaughter charge.”

“That’s the least of your worries,” Aimée said. “Another Serb’s entered the equation and knows your identity.”

“Your friend the nurse warned me,” Saj said.

Nora had come through.

But now what? The Serb asking after Saj didn’t know Saj hadn’t killed Feliks—and if everyone who’d warned Aimée to stay away from Serbs was right, that could be a deadly misunderstanding. Meanwhile, she still had a dead man’s money. Yuri had hired her to track down that painting, and so many other people were after it, she knew she had to move fast.

She was tied up in this thing, past the point of just walking away. Someone had broken into her office to torture her for information about the painting. For her own safety, she needed to find the thing, or at least figure out who was behind the theft. Decide whether she wanted to turn the whole thing over to the authorities, whether they could even protect her or would only get in her way. Whether she’d be putting them on the trail of her missing mother, a wanted woman.

Aimée needed advice. She reached for her cell phone, hit speed dial. Then realized René wouldn’t answer. Stupid. She clicked off. Get a grip. Helm the ship, step up—all those trite phrases, but she better follow one. Focus on helping Saj deal with this.

“I need more green tea.”

On the espresso machine he pressed the steamer button, held a cup under as the vapor whooshed out. Pensive, he sat back down next to her on the recamier.

“So the Serb’s brother, or 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.”

That stopped him. Saj shook his head, his dreads coming loose.

“Good idea to alarm the office, Saj,” she said.

“So Maxence stays as intern?” He pointed to the neat piles of proposals, invoices, the color-coded files.

“René’s star pupil. A go-getter. Brilliant.” Almost too brilliant. “Why not? One thing less for us to worry about.”

Saj sipped. “But there’s one thing I don’t get.”

“Only one?” Right now she was bobbing like a cork in a flooded gutter.

“Old Piotr’s living on charity for twenty years in the Russian nursing home. Why? When he stored a priceless painting in the cellar?”

She’d wondered the same thing. “Piotr’s letter shows it carried a sentimental meaning. He counted both men, Lenin and Modigliani, as friends. He wanted Yuri, his son, to have it. But …” She chewed her pencil. “Could he have sold off other art over the years, then forgotten this one?”

“Forget a Modigliani?”

“Alzheimer’s, or dementia. I don’t know.”

“Who would let him ‘forget’ this if they knew it existed?”

Good point. She doubted Natasha would have understood the painting’s value, with that silly red rock on her finger—wait. What if the ring was real, after all?

She had to put herself back on track. “Say he’d kept this for the son he abandoned. He’s guilt-ridden in his later years, like he writes in the journal.…”

“But would guilt have been enough of a reason to hang onto a valuable painting while he was living in poverty?” Saj interjected. “My grandfather sold his Rembrandt before he gave up his race horses, Aimée. Off-loaded his Picassos to repair the roof. Kept the Rodin to pay for my sister’s debutante cotillon.”

Open-mouthed, she stared at Saj. “I had no idea.”

“And they wonder why I visit only once a year,” he said with a little smile. “Moldy tapestries and crumbling châteaux aren’t my thing. Or those living in the past who expect me to recoup their lost fortune and carry on the family name.”

Saj never talked about his aristo background.

Aimée’s phone vibrated in her pocket. The men who had threatened her last night? Her fingers shook as she hit answer.

“You left a message for Lieutenant Michel Olivant,” said a man’s voice. “He’s en vacances.”

Michel, her contact in the art squad.

“You’re handling Michel’s cases?”

Pause. “I assume you have info on the Cézanne?”

Cézanne?

“I didn’t get your name,” she said, trying to stall. Come up with something.

“Raphael Dombasle.”

Her mind went back to meeting with Michel last year, the photos of him and his unit lining his office. “Of course, Michel’s partner.”

“We work on a team.” His tone was brusque.

“Monsieur Dombasle, we need to talk.”

“Concerning the Cézanne?”

Pause. The clink of silverware, the blare of a horn.

“No Cézanne, eh? Make a report, Mademoiselle,” he said, bored. “I’ve got fifty cases on my desk right now.”

“But this involves a homicide.”

“That’s Brigade Criminelle turf,” he said, businesslike. In a rush. Like all of them. “We’re overloaded with cases, desolé. I’m due at Thirty-Six in fifteen minutes.”

“Thirty-Six,” as they all referred to it, was 36 quai des Orfèvres. But across the street from 3 rue de Lutèce, where the art theft division of the BRB, Brigade de Répression du Banditisme, shared the building with the RG, Renseignements Généraux, the domestic intelligence. Not her favorite people.

Before she could say Modigliani, Dombasle had rung off.

Saj sat on his tatami mat, scrolling through files on his laptop. “The kid’s good, Aimée.” He nodded in appreciation at the neatly stacked work on her desk. “Got us up to speed. Gives me time to work on the new project.”

“René trained him,” she said. “We couldn’t hope for better.”

Saj turned his neck, stretched. “The Serb bothers me, Aimée. I feel disturbed auras.”

“More than disturbed auras, Saj,” she said. “Yet I don’t know what.”

“Then find out.”

Yes, she could do this. She wasn’t lost at sea without René anymore; the office wheels were now running with irritating efficiency thanks to Maxence. And Saj was back on board. Thank God. Now she had to get to the bottom of this so he no longer had to fear vengeance from the Serbian mafia, and so she could clear her guilty conscience about Yuri, who had needed her help and ended up dead—possibly at her mother’s hands.

In her bones she knew that, like a bloodstain, the traces of this tragedy wouldn’t disappear.

DOWN ON RUE du Louvre, she stopped at the newspaper kiosk. “Anything earth-shattering, Marcel?” Aimée handed Marcel, the one-armed Algerian vet, two francs. In return he handed her a morning copy of Le Parisien.

“Et voilà, in the seventh month of the Princess Diana inquiry, the lead investigator reveals … the investigation continues.” Marcel shrugged. “Rumors of the Russians reneging on aerospace contracts at the trade show.” He gestured to the line of limos parked on rue de Rivoli. “At least the oligarchs’ wives don’t renege on their shopping sprees.”

The scent of the budding plane trees mingled with diesel exhaust from the Number 75 bus on rue du Louvre.

“No strikes today, Marcel?”

“Only one, the TGV.”

Good thing she hadn’t planned a railroad trip. “Mind taking Miles Davis to the groomer’s and dog sitting tonight?”

A flicker crossed Marcel’s face. “Hot date?”

She wished. “The glam life, Marcel. Work.”

Ten minutes later, she reached the corner café on Île de la Cité frequented by flics and administrators. A few doors down stood 3 rue de Lutèce. An anonymous door, no sign. Nothing to indicate the nest of vipers working here.

Notre Dame’s bell chimed. Right on time, a tall man in his late twenties rose from the café table, grabbed a briefcase, and took a few steps. She recognized him from the photo Michel kept on his desk.

“Raphael Dombasle?” she said. “I’m Aimée Leduc, Michel’s friend.”

“How did you know that …?”

“Forgive me, you’re in a hurry,” she said. “Let’s talk while we walk.”

“Try taking no for answer, Mademoiselle,” he said. “I need to brief them on the dossier for tomorrow’s hearing. The lawyer’s got thirty minutes.…”

“A Modigliani’s worth more than a Cézanne. I checked. Especially one that’s been hidden for seventy years.”

Dombasle’s shoulders jerked. “What’s your name again?”

“Aimée Leduc, détective privé.”

He glanced at his sports watch. “Give me thirty-five minutes. But it better be worth it.”

She nodded. “Back here.” She pointed to the café table he’d risen from.

“Too many people I know.” He lifted his chin. “Café du Soleil d’Or on the other corner.”

Too many ghosts for her there. But she nodded.

AIMÉE TOOK AN inside table at the window. Memories drenched the old bistro—the back banquette where she’d done her geography homework while her grand-père bantered with the owner over a bottle of wine. Her father had been denounced by a colleague at the bar, humiliated in front of off-duty officers. They’d engineered for him to be thrown off the force.

She’d vindicated him, but only years later, after his death.

“Mademoiselle Aimée?”

She smiled up at Louis, the owner and her grandfather’s drinking partner. “How’s your wife, Hélène?”

Louis’s eyes clouded. “Her funeral was last month. We held the wake here, didn’t Morbier tell you?”

“I’m sorry.” Saddened, she took Louis’s hand and squeezed it. A generation was passing. “I would have come if I’d known.” Would she have? She averted her eyes.

“Couldn’t face them, could you?”

“The old-boy network who accused Papa?” She caught her breath, wishing she’d bitten her tongue. Her father’s supposed friends, who kicked him when he fell. Yet all of them were still in power at 36 quai des Orfèvres.

“Then why come here today, Mademoiselle?” He set a carafe of water on her round marble-topped table. “Seems you can’t forgive and forget.”

“I’m investigating, Louis.”

“So you want to bend a flic’s ear?”

“He better bend my ear.” She winked. “Information.”

A little smile cracked his wrinkled face. “Just like your grand-père. You learned from the best. But a fille like you should be having babies. Your grand-père wanted.…” He paused. “Women do it all these days, they say, juggle a job, children.”

Not this again. She’d heard those words often before. “I need wider hips, Louis.”

But Louis snapped his finger at the waiter smoking on the pavement and motioned to a table with patrons waiting to order. Always hands-on. “The usual?” Louis asked.

She nodded. A few minutes later, Louis set a Perroquet on the table. She diluted the intense green mint syrup with water from the carafe, and sipped the anise-flavored Pernod. From the window she watched the sun-drenched balconies of the blackened stone préfecture, the mid-morning throngs in line for the Sainte-Chapelle, workers spilling from offices to smoke on the pavement or heading to the bus stop. Pulsing with energy like always.

“That seat taken?”

That deep voice shook her to the core. Surprised, she looked up to see Morbier.

He held a cigarette between his thumb and forefinger in one hand, a cell phone in the other. Today the bags under his eyes were less pronounced, his clean-shaven chin showed less pallor, and he looked almost relaxed. Morbier, relaxed?

The ironed blue shirt, the tie, the whiff of Vetiver cologne, no stains on his corduroy jacket for once—it all spoke of promotion. Had that case been closed with her help?

“Nice outfit, Morbier. Nominated for an award?”

A flicker of surprise. “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 don’t beat around the bush, do you?”

“I don’t have the time.”

“In our field, it’s word of mouth, trust, relations built up over the years. The art dealers’ world is hermetically sealed, apart from small fissures from time to time.”

“When greed takes over?”

He nodded. “Usually. If our department recovers ten percent of the art stolen in a year, we consider that good. The number of thefts, private and national, is immense. But the profit’s enormous too.”

Only 10 percent? Her heart fell.

“But people don’t fence a Modigliani on the corner,” she said. “This painting warrants an elite type of buyer, non?”

“You want Interpol statistics? Three quarters of stolen art end up transited through a minimum of three countries, exchanged for goods including arms and gold. Recently, someone traded art for a restaurant chain in Slovakia.”

A means to an end. A kind of currency.

“Collectors comprise less than one percent of art theft. A focused hit is rare.” He paused. Angled his fingers toward hers. “A Modigliani—say one of the several he painted of Jeanne Hébuterne, his last lover—would go for seven or eight figures.”

Dombasle’s cell phone vibrated on the table. He glanced at the number.

“Museums shy away, since the authentication process would eat up a good portion of their funds. Modigliani is one of the world’s most forged artists. Not worth the connoisseur’s effort, to be blunt. Your Yuri Volodya might have had a fake.”

Luebet hadn’t thought so.

“Sounds like you’re chasing smoke.”

Little did he know. She hadn’t learned much from this conversation. Frustrated, she fingered the cardboard drink coaster.

“My office investigates robbery claims,” Dombasle said. “Where’s the robbery? There was no report made.”

“To investigate, you need a dead man to make a claim?”

“Why do I think you want my help, yet aren’t telling me the real story?”

Time to give him something. Figure out how to work an exchange. Use him.

She brushed back guilt. Less than twelve hours remained and so far she’d come up clueless. If he was smart—and there was no doubt on that score—he’d use her too.

“Say an old man found a forgotten Modigliani in his father’s cellar,” Aimée said, glancing around for listeners. Only at a far table, a woman talking into her phone, a bulldog at her feet. “He’s unsophisticated and runs his mouth. He contacts a renowned art dealer—you might know him, his name is Luebet—for an appraisal. But before the appointment, the painting’s stolen. The old man, Yuri, is found tortured and dead the next morning. Later, Luebet ‘falls’ on the Métro tracks. I can’t prove any of this except they are both dead.”

“Then it’s the Brigade Criminelle’s territory. Not mine.”

Didn’t the forces work together? Collaborate? “People don’t murder for fakes, do they?”

“You’d be surprised.” Dombasle shrugged. She noticed the gold flecks in his dark-brown eyes.

“Then time for show-and-tell. I show and you tell, d’accord?”

“Depends on if you’ll accompany me to a reception tonight. A vernissage.”

Was he flirting with her?

“An art opening, that’s your tell? Would I find it interesting?”

“You might learn something.”

“Meaning?”

“A respected world authority on Modigliani will attend,” he said.

“That’s all?” she said, disappointed.

“Then you’re afraid this supposed Modigliani will crumble under an expert’s scrutiny?”

Smart-ass, she almost said.

Instead she placed the Polaroid over the Stella Artois cardboard coaster.

Dombasle pulled out an eyepiece like a jeweler’s loop. Adjusted the magnification and added a small lens. Like an optician.

He read out loud. “ ‘For Piotr, a keepsake of your friend Vladimir. Modigliani.’ ”

“Still think it’s fake?”

“Where did you get this?” He leaned forward and covered her hand with his.

Aimée grinned. “With your hair poking out like that and your eyepiece, you remind me of a mad scientist.” She pointed to the Polaroid. “You know one of those men, don’t you?”

He nodded. “Luebet.” He stared closer. “Taken when?”

She took a guess. “Sunday.”

“How are you involved?”

She had her story—a version of the truth—ready. She showed him the message written on Luebet’s envelope.

“So Luebet wanted the Modigliani,” he said, glancing at his insistent vibrating phone. “He’d contacted some person or persons to steal the painting for him before he performed a professional appraisal.”

Her thoughts, too. Brought it back to the theory that there were two teams on the playing field. But the ball had already been stolen.

“But a respected art dealer.…”

“Seen it before. No surprise. He’d contact someone who’s ripped him off before—a thief who knows his métier—say ‘Let bygones be bygones, I’ve got a job for you.’ ” He lifted the photo to look at the painting again. “Any idea who stole it?”

“Would I be meeting with you if I did?”

Dombasle’s phone rang again, and he excused himself to answer the call outside. She counted on him, as a member of the art squad charged with recovering stolen national art treasures, to investigate. She knew Michel’s team kept more irons in the fire than she could imagine. Contacts, information, a network she hoped to access. Right now, with no leads, she didn’t see another option.

Doubt gnawed her insides, raw and festering. It would never be completely gone until she located the painting. And she didn’t have much time. The painting was the only key to her mother.

And to finding out if her mother had tortured Yuri.

She tried to keep those thoughts at bay and had almost drained her Perroquet by the time Dombasle slid back onto the rattan café chair.

“I’ve got a proposition,” he said.

She saw excitement in his gold-flecked eyes. Whoever had contacted him on the phone had changed his mind.

“Twenty minutes ago, an antiquaire at the flea market showed my colleague the same photo,” he said.

“So you believe me now?” she said.

“We propose to stage a buy. Use you as the client. Interested?”

“Moi?” She sat back, her leather leggings rubbing on the rattan chair rungs. “You trust this antiquaire?”

“They’re all crooks at Marché Sainte-Ouen, but this one’s my informer,” Dombasle said, downing his drink.

“He gives you a little info and you look the other way?”

“Works for both of us.”

She’d heard of the pipeline, how antique dealers moved stolen paintings, furniture, and jewelry for thieves in a hurry. Wished she’d thought of it herself.

“But fencing a Modigliani in the flea market? Sounds unprofessional.”

“Two years ago, I nailed a Velázquez there by the frites stand,” Dombasle said. “Still in the eighteenth-century frame. Idiots, thank God. They didn’t know what they had. Didn’t much care either, after the quick cash.”

Aimée’s mind clicked over everything she knew. What about Oleg’s buyer?

“Has your antiquaire sparked any interest?”

“My colleague intimated as much,” he said. “First I need to check the painting against our database of stolen art.”

She doubted he’d find it.

“Modigliani’s daughter inherited nothing,” he said. “Not a single painting.”

Aimée shook her head. So unfair, when her father’s work fetched millions today.

“A sad, broken woman.” He paused. “I met her once before she died. You’d never have known she’d run a Maquis network during the war.”

“Part of the Resistance?”

“In the South. Then a long affair and children with a married man who kept a double life. In the end, too much of the bottle, forgotten by her last lover. Her body was found days after she died. Tragic. Like her father.”

But what about the Serb? All kinds of questions rose in Aimée’s mind; the blood smeared on Yuri’s wall, his Levi’s jacket button—all evidence of a fight. Who was this phantom thief who supposedly stole the painting first and somehow murdered the Serb in Yuri’s house? The Serb’s “brother”? But then why would he pursue Saj? To tie up loose ends? Or, less likely, a flunky of Luebet’s? But that didn’t make sense, according to what Luebet wrote on the envelope.

Dombasle’s buy complicated things.

“I’m confused,” she said, “too many threads. You haven’t told me the plan.”

He explained over another round of Perroquets. “We’re organizing a buy. Setting the wheels in motion. All the more reason for you to attend the reception tonight. I’ll know more details. The drop schedule.”

She’d bartered her info for what … a Modigliani expert? That was it? And now she was a pawn in a buy? “This could work?”

“If the thief’s desperate, and thieves usually are, it works nine times out of ten. A hot piece for quick cash, that’s what they want.” He paused. “Worried?”

“I’m guessing you involved la Crim and the art cops at BRB.”

“You know I can’t say.”

“But you’re asking me to stick my neck out, wanting to use me as a patsy?”

Had word of her involvement in Morbier’s sting gotten around the préfecture? She couldn’t fathom Morbier compromising his case or talking when he’d promised “no leaks.” But she still wanted to kick him.

Dombasle looked down at his drink. “Let’s just say all law enforcement involved would appreciate your assistance. That do it for you?”

All frothing at the mouth, too.

She needed to think how to use this to her advantage. No matter what happened with the painting, she needed to make sure Saj was safe, and learn the truth about her mother. But showing Dombasle the Polaroid had at least gotten her on the inside of the formal investigation, or some layer of it. Like an onion, her father said of cases involving more than one jurisdictional branch, keep peeling and try not to cry.

She took the Polaroid back and stuck it in her pocket. “So in return I want the fixer.”

“Who?”

“When you find out, Raphael, let me know.”

She put down her card and threw twenty francs on the table. Stood, waved at Louis, and slipped onto the quai.