“Thadée, your godson, de Lussigny’s brother-in-law, was killed. He had this jade in his possession. Of course, you’re upset.”
Madame Dinard smoothed down her skirt and poured another glass of wine.
A dog barked from somewhere in the back.
“Mon Dieu. Felix! I have to let him into the garden.” She stood and wobbled to the back room.
Great. A tipsy, sad woman who wouldn’t talk.
“Please, Madame, don’t you realize?”
“Thadée was always in trouble,” Madame Dinard said, her bleary eyes tearing. “But I couldn’t do anything for him.”
Madame Dinard had changed her tune. Aimée nodded, encouraging her.
“Creative people see things with different eyes, don’t they?” Aimée said. “Such a shame and so sad for you.”
“He painted so well.” She took Aimée’s arm, brought her into the next room, and pointed to an unframed canvas on the wall.
“See?”
A green-hued dragon was surrounded by the astrological figures Aimée had seen in the photograph in Derek Lau’s office. It took her breath away. With deft strokes he’d created the ensemble. A little boy peeked at the opalescent dragon from a grove of bamboo.
What did it mean?
“Did Thadée tell you anything about this painting?”
“His last work. So much talent wasted.” Madame Dinard let the sentence dangle. She paused. “I don’t want to talk about it.” Then wobbled to the back stairs and the barking dog.
Aimée pulled out her cell phone and punched in Tessier’s number. If she could get him on the phone, he might have better luck with Madame Dinard.
“Allô, Tessier?” she said. “It’s Aimée Leduc. I’m at the Dinards’. Can you explain to his wife. . . .”
“Not a good idea,” he said.
In the background Aimée heard the revving of engines and insistent beep of a truck backing up.
“What do you mean?” Aimée asked.
“I’m in the Parc Monceau.”
She heard a nervous edge in his voice.
“Has something happened?”
“Dinard left a strange message on my cell phone. To meet—” the rest of the sentence was lost in the backfire of a bus.
“Where?”
“Boulevard de Courcelles, the men’s bathroom,” he said.
Aimée knew the Chartres Pavillon, a rotunda housing lavatories at the entrance to the park, the remnant of the old toll house.
“I’m just two blocks away,” Aimée said.
She would have to hurry, to catch Dinard. This could be the break she needed. Tessier had hung up.
Madame Dinard sat in the twilight-filled back garden, rocking a small springer spaniel who growled at Aimée.
“I’ll say goodbye,” she said, handing the woman a glass of water. “Your husband just left a message with his assistant.”
Instead of the hope she expected to see on Madame Dinard’s face, the woman waved her away. “If he cared, he’d be here.”
ANXIOUSLY, AIMÉE hurried down rue de Phalsbourg. The red Métro sign, like a beacon in the dusk, reflected in the puddles and off the gilt-tipped wrought-iron gates of the Parc Monceau. Guards in dark blue uniforms walked the gravel paths, informing strollers the park was closing.
No sign of Dinard.
The worn stone lavatory was at the gate of the Chartres Pavillon rotunda. From the distance came the muted quack of the ducks in the park’s pond. She remembered feeding ducks stale baguettes on a hot summer’s day long ago. Remembered her mother’s strong hands gripping her small ones, and how with deft twists they’d fashioned twigs and leaves into a duck.
Now rain clouds threatened once more. She thrust the memory aside.
The smell of wet grass and Tessier’s gaze met her over the hood of a small Renault. His glasses had fogged in the chill air and he brushed at them with the sleeve of his raincoat.
“When did you get Dinard’s message, Tessier?” she asked.
“I just found it,” he said. “I’d forgotten my cell phone in the pocket of my other coat. When I took it from the rack there was this message. I hurried over.”
Raincoated commuters spilled from the Métro. Tessier’s eyes darted over the crowd. “He’s not here.”
“Let’s check inside,” she said. “You might have missed him.”
They walked through the gate into the park. Bare sycamore branches and oriental plane trees shuddered in the evening wind.
Aimée saw the orange plastic barriers used by the toilet cleaning brigade and a sign reading FERMÉ on the men’s lavatory door. No sign of Dinard. Just the scrape of wet gravel as a mother pushed a stroller toward the gate.
“Tessier, may I hear the phone message?”
He handed her his cell phone and Aimée listened. “Tessier, don’t answer the office phone,” said Dinard. “Meet me at the men’s room at the Parc Monceau gate. No questions . . . now!”
She took out her mini-flashlight and scanned the phone’s display.
“Alors, Tessier, look at the date. He called yesterday.”
“My mistake. He wasn’t in the office today.”
She didn’t want to let it go. “Come with me.”
“But the park’s closing.”
Guards shooed people toward the gate.
“Hurry,” she said, grabbing his arm and running up the three steps to the WC. She shoved the orange plastic stanchion aside and pushed. But the door held. She tried the handle and it turned.
“Help me. Push hard.”
“What are you doing? You’re not supposed to—” Tessier said.
The door was blocked by something. Mops and buckets, she assumed. She pushed again and it opened partway.
Aimée stumbled forward, shining her flashlight over the simple porcelain sink, then over the tiled floor to the open stalls. A man’s shoe stuck up from the metal drainpipe grill centered in the tile.
Dread filled her.
She traveled the light up a twisted trousered leg and gasped. Then further, to Dinard’s bulging eyes and to a line of dark red congealed blood across his throat. They hadn’t bothered to string him up by the toilet pipes.
“We’re too late, Tessier.” The smell of putrefaction and the iron tang of blood permeated the air of the cold lavatory.
Tessier peered in and gasped. “But who . . . mon Dieu . . . it’s my fault!”
And then she noticed what the killer wouldn’t have seen. Dinard’s swollen fingers, nails caked with blood, and the character he’d scrawled on the tile.
“You read Chinese, right?”
He gagged. “I’m going to be sick.”
“Not in here, it’s a crime scene now,” she said.
“What’s going on? You’re not allowed in there,” said the guard’s hoarse voice behind them.
“My boyfriend’s sick and then we saw this man,” she shouted.
She edged out, but not before grabbing her pen and copying the Chinese character onto her palm. Tessier heaved into the bushes and the guard muttered “Nom de Dieu!” and made the sign of the cross.
“Quick,” she said to Tessier as he straightened up. She took his arm again and left through the gate.
“Attendez, wait,” the guardian raised his voice. “You’re witnesses.”
“We should cooperate, poor Monsieur Dinard,” Tessier said.
“Not on your life,” Aimée interrupted. “Trust me.” The last thing she wanted was another encounter with the flics. They’d lock her up this time. Ronsard would throw away the key and Morbier would say, I told you so.
She led Tessier down the Métro steps, battling the onrush of the exiting crowds. They rode one stop, Tessier pale-faced, to exit at Villiers, then doubled-back two blocks to the dark Musée Cernuschi.