Murder in the Latin Quarter Read Online Free PDF

had the legal right to come to her door and question her.
    One of the men emerged from the car. He wore a brown leather bomber jacket and sunglasses. He flicked a cigarette butt onto the quai and leaned on the stone wall. Alarms rang in her head. He’d broken the first rule of police surveillance: never make your presence known.
    If they weren’t flics, she wondered who they might be. Her mind returned to the previous night and the car that had fol-lowed her. Nervous, she ran to her room, opened her armoire, and grabbed the first thing at hand, a dry cleaner’s plastic bag containing a vintage black Lanvin dress, her denim jacket, and black patent leather heels.
    She stuck the laptop in her bag and locked her front door. As she ran down the building’s worn marble steps, she swiped Chanel Red across her lips, then hurried over the black-and-white diamond-shaped foyer tiles. She wanted to avoid Madame Cachou, her inquisitive concierge.

    INSTEAD OF LEAVING by the front doors, Aimée passed through the old carriage house to the rear courtyard. She walked over damp magnolia leaves into the next courtyard and exited via a smaller door cut into the main one. Now she stood on crowded rue Saint Louis-en-l’isle among parents taking their children to the école maternelle around the corner. She saw a taxi and, instead of dealing with her scooter, waved it down.
    In the taxi she took advantage of the moment and went to work on her face, taming a rogue eyebrow, outlining her eyes with kohl. A few blocks later she turned to look through the rear window. The dented Peugeot was two cars behind.
    “Try the less direct route,” she told the taxi driver, a small man wearing a rain cap.
    “What do you have in mind, Mademoiselle?”
    She thrust fifty francs over the top of the front seat. “Get creative.”

    A HALF HOUR later, after the taxi had circled the block twice, Aimée reached her office. She stared out the window of Leduc Detective. Below, on rue du Louvre, the usual snarl of traffic crawled and horns blared, punctuated by the ringing of bicycle bells.
    No dented Peugeot in sight.
    But no Mireille waiting for her with an explanation.
    Instead she’d found Cloutier, the contractor, gesturing to her from the rear of the office. She shoved down her worry, tried to clear her mind and focus on the work at hand.
    Cloutier, a large-boned Breton with a wide brow and thick mustache, looked like he’d be more at home at sea than in the cluttered interiors of buildings. He had a nice array of crow-bars and steel hammers which would be handy for protection, in case. But he didn’t know that.
    “Desolé, Mademoiselle, the truck-driver strike held up my supplies,” he told Aimée. He took a notepad from the pocket in his overalls. “I took measurements according to the specifications of your partner, Monsieur Friant, and ordered the lumber and structural braces.”
    Aimée scanned the blueprint Cloutier spread over the top of the fax machine. An opening in the adjoining wall, a partition to be erected. A straightforward job to merge the next-door office with Leduc Detective. Nothing could be more simple, she thought.
    “So, when can you start?” Aimée asked.
    Cloutier grinned, rocking back on his workboot heels. “My supplier guaranteed delivery tomorrow morning. We’ll start early.”
    The radiator groaned, emitting heat. In typical fashion, as René often pointed out, it functioned full bore in warm weather while giving out only dribbles in the bone-chilling days of December. Once construction started, the office would be a mess; she’d work at home. But if Mireille showed up and didn’t find her . . . she’d have to figure that out.
    After Cloutier left, she stared at the papers on her desk. Again she repressed unease; after all, the taxi had lost the Peugeot. Work faced her: surveillance to monitor, client calls to follow up, and bills to pay. A business to run.
    But those men obviously knew where she lived. Would they