Murder in Passy by Cara Black Read Free Book Online Page B

at her. She was shouting. “That he’d ruin his last chance at happiness? No, René, I don’t. It smells like a setup.”
    The tinkle of a piano sounded in the background. “Meet you at the office later,” René said, his voice now hushed. “Got to get back to the meeting.”
    “Some meeting, René.”
    But he’d hung up. She stared at the Préfecture’s cobbled courtyard, recalling the times she’d met Morbier here and they’d grabbed a quick coffee at Le Soleil, the flic hangout around the corner. His shuffling gait on the uneven cobblestones, the sweater vest he wore against the cold, the stoop to his shoulders. How he’d aged. Their relationship, often problematic, seesawed over the years. Close during her childhood, he’d kept his distance after her father’s death.
    But the force he’d worked for all his life had now turned its back on him. No one would blacken their fingers to pull him from the fire. Or get scorched by association.
    They’d done that to her father. Scapegoated him for a colleague’s crime, she’d discovered years later. Years too late.
    “But not this time,” she said, looking up at the yawning gray Préfecture’s windows.
    Not this time.
    * * *
     
    A IMÉE SQUEEZED THE handlebar brakes of her faded pink Vespa as she bumped over the uneven cobbles of the police laboratory courtyard. Weak slants of sunlight filtered through the sparse-leafed chestnut trees off rue de Dantzig. Five minutes later, she walked into the office of Viard, the crime-lab head. Viard and René’s neighbor Michou, a transvestite performer in Les Halles, had just celebrated their three-year anniversary.
    Misting his orchid collection, he looked up as Aimée set an orchid plant tied with a purple bow beside her shoes in the Baggie on his desk. “I could use your magic, Viard.” She pointed to the signature red soles.
    “Naughty, ruining a good pair of Louboutins,” he said. “Walked over your latest conquest’s chest in your high heels? You want a luminol test?”
    She shook her head. “I’ll settle for blood type, tissue samples, DNA. Tonight?”
    “Dreamer.” He raised his mister in mock protest. “Even the Interior Ministry DNA priority requests have a three-week backlog. Want to tell me why I’m more popular than the Préfecture lab?”
    “Too in-house and you don’t want to know,” she said. Her hand trembled. “Look, I know you’re busy, but.… ”
    “It’s personal?”
    Viard didn’t miss a thing.
    “Family.” There, she’d said it. Morbier was her family, her godfather.
    She didn’t trust the lab in the Préfecture basement. Her contacts there were Morbier’s contacts and under tight rein from upstairs. Plus she didn’t qualify for entry into the old-boy network.
    “A career’s at stake, Viard,” she said. “A whole life.”
    “Stop. You’re right: I don’t want to know,” he said. “We’re booked solid, a time crunch.” He paused. “But I do appreciate the orchid, Aimée. A beauty.”
    He dabbed the smooth leaf of the orchid she’d brought him with a linen handkerchief, then made a moue of distaste at the blinking red lights on his phone console. “See?”
    She nodded, wondering what she could do, who she could ask, how in the hell.…
    “You’re shaking, Aimée. Sit down,” said Viard.
    She clasped her hands, took a breath. “It’s all wrong. But no one lifts a finger, Viard,” she said. “I need to prove that this blood belongs to the murderer. Not to him.”
    Viard stared at the lit-up phone console. Sighed. “Prelim blood typing, tissue analysis, if there’s any. Say tomorrow morning at the earliest.”
    She kissed him on both cheeks. “I owe you.”
    “Just persuade René to roast a Bresse chicken in morel sauce,” he said, donning a blue lab coat over his pink T-shirt. “We’ll call it even.”
    * * *
     
    A IMÉE KNOTTED THE wool scarf around her neck and popped the Vespa into first gear. She turned onto rue de Dantzig, gunning past the