She felt sorry for this angry little man.
"Monsieur Javel, I feel a connection. Something threading these murders. If I could be more concrete, I would," she said.
"When you do find something, look me up. Not before."
"GUESS WHO?" said Aimee, her hands clapped over the eyes of an older woman who stood in front of rows of aluminum spindles, sorting buttons. The scent of rosemary and roasted garlic wafted through the factory air.
Small and wiry, Leah stood in wool socks and clogs, wearing a sweater buttoned over her work smock. She grabbed Aimee's hands with her rough ones. "Don't be such a stranger, Aimee," she said, twisting herself around and grinning. "You think you can surprise me?"
"I try, Leah." Aimee laughed and gave her a hug. "Something smells wonderful."
Leah, an old friend of her mother's, lived with her family above their button factory, Mon Bouton. She cooked the midday meal for her workers in a kitchen by the melting presses and button die forms.
"You don't have to be domestic to cook, Aimee," Leah said, referring to their ongoing argument about Aimee's lack of culinary skills. "I only see you when you're hungry. Cooking is a creative expression, let me teach you."
"Right now, teach me about Chanel buttons. I want to learn from an expert," she said.
"A case?" Leah's eyes lit up. She read a new spy thriller every week and loved to hear about Aimee's work.
"Leah, you know I can't talk about ongoing cases." Aimee pulled out a rough sketch of the Chanel button she'd made after seeing it. "Just give me an idea about this button."
"Color and material?" Leah said, wiping her hands on the worn smock.
"Hot pink, and the interlocking C's were kind of brassy, shiny metal."
Leah, shortsighted, pushed her glasses onto her forehead and peered intently. "I'd say the button came from a suit in the spring collection. A mohair suit. We made a prototype but the head honcho shipped it out to Malaysia for production. Couture used to mean couture made in France—thread, ribbon, zippers, lining, and buttons. Not anymore."
"Care to generalize about the owner of the suit?"
"Twenties or thirties. Rich and bored. With good legs."
"Why good legs?"
"All the mohair suits were minis."
Saturday Noon
"MADAME IS WORKING IN her office. May I say who's calling?" The smiling housekeeper dusted the white flour off her hands. Tall and thin, her liquid eyes contrasted with her starched maid's uniform.
"Aimee Leduc. I'm a private investigator. This should take only a few moments." Aimee fished a card out of her bag.
Curiosity flickered in the housekeeper's gaze. "Un moment," she said. Her scuffed mules clicked down the marble hallway.
Aimee had changed into a pleated dark blue wool skirt and blazer, her generic security-type uniform. Sometimes she stuck badges on the lapel from her extensive collection. For this interview she'd slicked her hair under a blue wedge-type hat, similar to that of a female gendarme, and wore a touch of mascara with no lipstick.
This drafty marble-floored hallway of Albertine Clouzot's apartment on the exclusive Impasse de la Poissonerie could have fit two trucks comfortably. Littered among a child's bicycle and roller blades were Roman bronze statues and busts resting on pillars.
Almost immediately, the housekeeper emerged and beckoned Aimee down the echoing hallway. Aimee entered a drawing room—for that was the only thing to call it—that could have come from the eighteenth century. And it probably did. Aimee thought it hadn't been heated since then either as she saw her own breath turn to frost in the air. She kept her angora-lined gloves on.
Tapestries with pastoral scenes hung on the twenty-foot-high walls. In the corner, framed by a window with a private courtyard behind it, sat a woman in her late thirties, working on a huge dollhouse, a Southern mansion styled with pillars and "Mint Julep" chiseled above the miniature door. A small portable heater stood by a tray of white wicker doll furniture.
"Thank you for sparing me the time, Madame Clouzot," Aimee said.
"I'm intrigued. Why would a private investigator wish to talk with me?" said Albertine Clouzot. She put a miniature chest down and stood; she wore fishnet stockings, a black leather miniskirt, and maroon lipstick. Her perfectly cut straight blond hair grazed her shoulders. She tottered on faux leopard platform heels. "What's this about? Florence, you may go."
"It might be better if she stayed." Aimee smiled broadly, turning to the housekeeper. She certainly didn't want Florence to leave. "I'd like to talk with both of you."
She reached in her bag and pulled out a note pad that she pretended to consult.
"Madame, do you own a pink Chanel suit?"
"Why, yes."
"Did you receive it from the dry cleaner's with a button missing?"
"That's right. I had to wear something else." Florence stood woodenly as Albertine preened in front of a floor-length gilded mirror. "First time I've ever had trouble at Madame Tallard's."
"I see. You didn't go to the dry cleaner's, am I correct?" Aimee kept a matter-of-fact tone.
"No." Albertine Clouzot's face looked incredulous. "Why would I?"
Albertine belonged to the world that hired other people to do their mundane chores.
"Florence, your housekeeper, did, am I correct?"
Albertine Clouzot nodded absently. She'd lost interest and was pulling open the little doll chest's drawers.
"What time did Florence leave your house on Wednesday evening?"
"Is this an inquisition? I won't tell you any more until you tell me what this is about."
I'm losing her, Aimee thought. "Madame, please bear with me." Aimee smiled broadly again. She stuck the pencil behind her ear and shook her head. "Detecting isn't like the movies. Tedious checking of details makes up most of it. All we know is that a pink Chanel button was found near the body of a murdered woman, not two blocks from your apartment."
"It must have come off. . .my God, you're not trying to suggest that I killed that woman! That woman with the. . ."
Out of the corner of her eye, Aimee saw Florence's arm jerk. Either this housekeeper was the nervous type or Aimee had struck a nerve.
"Madame," she spoke reassuringly, "I'm checking out pieces of evidence and constructing a timetable of the murder."
She looked straight at Florence. "What time did you pick up Madame's suit?"
Florence covered her mouth with her hands. Little feathery spots of white flour were left on her cheeks. "Just before the shop closed," she stammered.
I've hit it, Aimee thought excitedly.
She remembered Sinta commenting on the pair of shoes in Lili Stein's closet, looking at the repair tag and saying Lili had just picked them up. If Lili had picked up her shoes at Javel's, been trailed by an LBN member, and Florence had followed. . .But that didn't explain why Florence would trail her.
Aimee stifled her eagerness and kept her tone businesslike. "What time was that?"
If Florence had seen a neo-Nazi trailing an old Jewish woman on crutches she might have been alerted and followed her. Maybe she'd witnessed something.
Florence hesitated and looked down at the floor.
"Speak up, Florence." Albertine clicked her long maroon nails irritably on the dollhouse roof.
Florence shrugged, "Close to 6:15 or 6:30. Madame Tallard was about to lock her door and so I just got in to grab the suit."
But when Aimee found the body rigor mortis hadn't set fully in. She knew that the cold could retard the onset of rigor mortis but the intense muscular activity, due to Lili's struggle, could have released lactic acids hastening the process. Puzzled, she realized that wouldn't fit with Florence's timetable. But she had to check with Morbier for the inquest findings.