Murder in Passy Read Online Free PDF Page B

aspirin, dry-mouthed, in the back seat. Fifteen minutes later, she punched in the digicode of her building, a seventeenth-century soot-stained townhouse on the quai, and stepped into the cobbled courtyard. Beyond the ancient pear tree, she noticed with relief, the windows in her concierge’s loge were lit.
    “Late and breathless,” frowned Madame Cachou, her concierge. “As usual.”
    Aimée leaned down to pet Miles Davis, her bichon frisé. His wet nose sniffed her ankles. “ Désolée, Madame. Work. Traffic.” Murder, but she left that out.
    “Good thing!” said Madame Cachou. “With my bursitis, I can’t walk Miles Davis up and down three times a day.”
    Madame Cachou, a chronic complainer, was growing worse in her old age. Framed in the doorway of her loge in the courtyard, Madame handed Aimée the leash from the wall hook. Miles Davis emitted a low growl, which reminded Aimée of her shoes, the dog poo.
    “Un moment,” Madame Cachou said. “There’s a package for you.”
    Warmth emanated from Madame Cachou’s loge, a steaming cup by an armchair near the télé showing the late-night France2 news. Aimée’s tired body ached and she couldn’t wait to get under the duvet. An announcer spoke as a scene flashed on the screen: dark sky punctuated by lights, yellow crime-scene tape, a narrow lane bordered by high walls. Her shoulders tightened. She recognized those stone walls. The walls of Xavierre’s garden.
    “The Police Judiciaire refused to issue a statement regarding the murdered ex-wife of a prominent attorney found tonight in her bedroom in the 16th arrondissement.”
    Bedroom? She dropped Miles Davis’s leash.
    “Sources close to the investigation revealed that attention is being focused on the victim’s relationship, referring to it as a crime of passion. The source indicated that a suspect was about to be detained.”
    Crime of passion? The hair rose on the back of her neck. The media and the flics had gotten it all wrong.
    “Last time,” Madame Cachou said. “Building regulations don’t permit receiving business correspondence here, Mademoiselle.” She pointed to a yellowed paper of building regulations as she handed Aimée a Frexpresse package.
    Always a stickler for rules, her concierge. Aimée glanced at the return address. Infologic. Work-related files she could handle tomorrow.
    “I bent the rules, but …, “ said Madame Cachou, “seeing as you’re recovered, fit, and back at work, no more.”
    She wished she felt fit instead of exhausted. More worry lodged in her head over this turn of events with respect to Xavi erre. The pain of telling Morbier … but he certainly must already know by now.
    She trudged up the worn marble stairs to her door. Darkness, a chill, and rising damp from the Seine outside met her in her empty apartment. She kicked the radiator. Then again, until it sputtered to life. She hung up her faux fur, tossed the Frexpresse package on the hall table with her bag, and wedged off her heels. Miles Davis pawed at them. “Not this pair, furball.”
    She picked them up. A dark brown-maroon blotch stained the candy-red insole. Ruined. She’d never get the blood out.
    And then it struck her, piercing the fog of tiredness in her mind: she was holding the proof right in her hand. The killer’s blood. Her spine stiffened. She took a plastic baggie from the hall escritoire drawer, slipping her high heels inside. “They go straight to the lab in the morning. Good call, furball.”

Tuesday Morning
     
    M ORBIER’S TOBACCO-STAINED FINGERS trembled as he lit his second Gauloise. Why couldn’t he feel numb? Numb like the victims’ families he’d broken the same news to countless times, more times than he liked to remember. And he remembered every one. Their shocked faces: “… but it can’t be”; then his words sinking in. The collapse into tears.
    Why didn’t he even feel anger, hurt, grief? Instead he floated, as if out of his body. His mind blurred when he