Wednesday Noon
AIMÉE WORKED IN HER apartment on her computer, accessing Thierry Rambuteau's credit-card activity, parking tickets, and even his passport. He drove a classic '59 Porsche, lived with his parents, and had dined the night before at Le Crepuscule on the Left Bank using his American Express card.
On the previous Wednesday morning, the day Lili was murdered, the card showed a gas purchase off the A2 highway near Antwerp, Belgium. That gave him plenty of time to drive into Paris by early evening. She scrolled through the rest and was about to give up, but just to be thorough she checked his passport activity. There it was. Entry into Istanbul, Turkey, a week ago Saturday and no record of return. But most countries didn't stamp your passport on departure. No wonder he had a tan, she thought, when she'd first seen him at LBN office. And a possible alibi.
She took a swig of bottled water and called Martine at Le Figaro.
Martine put her on hold briefly, then spoke into the phone. "Here's what I found. Like clockwork, there's a deposit every month into Thierry and Claude Rambuteau's joint account from DFU. That's the Deutsche Freiheit Union, the fascists who burn Turkish families out of their homes. Why are you investigating this guy? I'm just curious."
"He's a suspect in a Jewish woman's murder," Aimee replied.
"Let me guess," Martine yawned. "He's really a Jew."
Aimee choked and almost dropped her bottle of water. "That's an ironic angle I hadn't thought of."
Martine was awake now. "Really? I was just kidding; it would give him some excuse to be screwed up."
"Screwed up enough to strangle a woman and and carve a swastika into her head?" Aimee said.
"Oh God, Gilles told me about that, it's in his follow-up story for the Sunday evening edition. You think he did it?"
"Martine, this is between us. Not Gilles," Aimee said firmly. She tapped the name Claude Rambuteau into her computer as she talked. "Why would Thierry's father…?"
"Wait a minute, Aimee. Who is his father?"
"According to Thierry's Amex application, his father is Claude Rambuteau," she said, pulling up the information from her screen and downloading it.
"Were you wondering why he would have a joint account with his son Thierry and receive DFU money?" Martine asked.
"Something along those lines," Aimee said. "I better go ask him."
RAIN SPLATTERED over the cobblestones as Aimee ran to number twelve. She rang the buzzer next to the faded name Rambuteau, adjusting her long wool skirt and tucking her spiky hair under a matching wool beret.
The outline of a smallish figure materialized, silhouetted in the frosted-glass door. A portly man, short with gray hair and dark glasses and dressed in a fashionable tracksuit, opened the door halfway.
"Yes?" He remained partly in the door's shadow.
"I'm Aimee Leduc, with Leduc Investigation," she said, handing him her card. "I'd like to speak with Thierry Rambuteau."
"Not here, he doesn't live here, you see," the man said. Already she'd caught him in a lie.
"Perhaps I could come in for a minute," she said evenly. Her beret was soaked.
"Is there a problem?" he said.
"Not really. I'm working on a case and-"
Here he interrupted her. "What is this about?"
"Lili Stein, an elderly Jewish woman, was murdered near here. A local synagogue enlisted my services." She glanced inside the hallway. A black leather storm-trooper coat hung from the hall coatrack. "That's your son's coat, isn't it? Let me talk with him."
He shook his head. "He's not here now. I told you."
"I'd like to clear up a few points, Monsieur Rambuteau. You can help me." She edged closer to him. "I'm getting awfully wet and I promise I'll go away after we talk."
He shrugged. "A few minutes."
Shuffling ahead, he led her into an antiseptically clean windowed breakfast room. A long melamine-topped table held a place setting for one. Next to a sunflower-patterned plate, its matching cup and saucer, and an empty wineglass were vials of multicolored pills. Yellow roses wafted their scent from a bubbled glass vase by the window.
The man motioned for her to sit down on a couch by the window. He leaned forward and took off his dark glasses. From the kitchen she could hear the monotonous tick of a clock. Piles of papers and a cardboard box of yellowed press clippings littered the floor.
Aimee opened her damp backpack and took out a sopping note pad.
Embarrassed, she said, "My ink will run on this wet paper. Can I trouble you for some dry paper?"
Monsieur Rambuteau hesitated, then pointed. "On top of one of those piles should be a writing tablet. I was making a list."
"Merci." She reached for the nearest stack. On top was the empty tablet. She took it and a folder to write on.
He was nervously twisting the knuckle on his ring finger. "Are you investigating Les Blancs Nationaux group?" A note of anguish stuck in his voice.
Aimee replied calmly, "I'm exploring all possibilities."
He let out a big sigh and rested his palms on the spotless white table, facing Aimee. "My wife just passed away." He pointed to a silver-framed photo sitting atop a glass-front china cabinet. "I'm due at Père Lachaise; her funeral is today."
"I'm very sorry, Monsieur Rambuteau," she said.
In the photo, a woman with thin penciled eyebrows wearing shiny leather pants and a rhinestone-flecked sweater peered out from under a helmetlike bob of hair. Her eyes had a surprised look that Aimee attributed to a face-lift.
"Her things," he said, indicating the piles of paper.
"I know this isn't a good time, so I'll be brief," she said. "Did your son know Lili Stein?"
"My son gets carried away sometimes. Is that what this is about?" he said.
"I'll put it another way, Monsieur Rambuteau. Your home isn't far from the victim's deli on rue des Rosiers. Did Thierry know Lili Stein?"
"I don't know if he knew her or not. But I doubt it."
"Why do you say that?" Aimee said.
"He didn't make a habit of…er…let's say, having social contact with Jews," Monsieur Rambuteau said.
"Would he carry his feelings to an extreme?"
Startled, Monsieur Rambuteau looked away. "No. Never. I told you he can get carried away but that's all. My fault really; you see, I've encouraged him. Well, at the beginning I was happy to see him get involved in politics. A good cause."
Obviously, Aimee thought, Thierry's apple didn't fall far from the tree. She willed herself to speak in an even tone. "A good cause, in your opinion, includes Aryan supremacist groups?"
"I didn't say that." He cleared his throat. "At the beginning, Thierry and I talked about their ideology. There are some points in their program, whether one agrees or not, that make sense. I'm certainly not condoning violence but as far as I know, Thierry hasn't been involved with them recently. Filmmaking is his field."
"Would you say, Monsieur Rambuteau, that your son's upbringing was in a politically conservative vein?" she said.
He raised his eyebrows, then shrugged, "Let's say we served sucre a la droite, not sucre a la gauche."
He referred to white and brown sugar, the metaphor for right-wing conservatives and leftist socialists. She knew that in many households political leanings were identified by the kind of sugar sitting in sugar bowls.
"Did your wife hold these views?" she said.
"I'm not ashamed to say we held Marechal Petain and his Vichy government in the highest regard. You didn't live through a war. You can never understand how Le Marechal aimed to untarnish the reputation of France," he said.
Aimee leaned forward. "Is that why Thierry receives funds from a German right-wing extremist group and you support Les Blancs Nationaux?"