“Why ask me?”
“You shared a cell with Jutta, she was excited about getting out. She might have told you something. You’re in the system, you might have heard things. Or whether someone else knows. Then I can lay it to rest.”
“I doubt that,” Liane said.
Startled, Aimée looked up. “What do you mean?”
“If you wanted to forget about your mother, you’d have ignored Jutta.”
Her astute observation rankled. Maybe because it felt true.
“Is it wrong to want to know what’s happened to her?”
Liane Barolet shook her head. “The only wrong part might be the answer,” she said. “What’s that saying … let sleeping dogs lie?”
“Look, I’ll make it worth your while,” Aimée said. That struck home, she could tell.
“How could you do that … sleep with the warden at Clairvaux?” Liane gave a sneer, then shook her head. “Non, mon petit, I wish that on no one.”
The way she said it gave Aimée a chill.
“But you could help me, they threatened to dig her up,” Liane continued. “Even though I only just found out. I paid right away!”
Aimée realized she was talking about a cemetery. When the grave fees were not paid, the bodies were dug up. No wonder she was upset.
“Parloir terminé!” shouted one of the guards, signaling that visiting time was over.
Aimée stood. “Help me and I’ll help you.” If Liane was desperate enough she’d talk. “Did you know my mother, did you ever hear of her?”
“There was a lightweight, an American woman.” Liane waved her hand dismissively.
Aimée’s hopes soared. Then her fear grew.
“What was this American’s name?”
“Who knows? I just remember her saying things like ‘If I can’t dance, it’s not my revolution.’”
Her mother? “Can you find out her name … what happened?”
“She wasn’t in long,” Liane said. “Well, compared to me, eh?”
“How long?”
“The system moves prisoners around,” Liane said. “I didn’t keep track.”
“You can do better than that,” Aimée said. “What was she in for?”
“That’s the thing.” Liane leaned forward. “She’d been in on some heist with Jutta. But only Jutta was charged.”
“But everyone gets charged who comes …”
Liane shook her head. “They hold people for months, sometimes years, before arraignment. At least they used to. She was one of those.”
“So they use Frésnes like a jail?”
“Only for the special ones,” Liane said. “That pissed Jutta off.”
“Did she write to Jutta in prison?”
Pause. The bell sounded the second and final warning. Chairs and stools scraped over the concrete floor.
“The letters are in my cell,” Liane said.
“Letters from my mother?”
“Reading material’s scarce here,” Liane said. “Jutta left me her books. She used to keep her letters in them.”
Aimée’s hope rekindled. She tried to keep her voice even. “What do these letters say?”
The cubicle door opened.
“Barolet! Visiting time’s over,” said the guard.
“Help me to keep my mother’s bones beside my father’s,” Liane said. “My lawyer’s in contact with me. I’ll give the letters to him if you get me a receipt from the cemetery for the money they say is overdue.”
“D’accord, here’s my address,” Aimée said, glancing at the paperwork she had been handed. “Matter of fact, I’ll go there now. Your deadline’s passed. But I’ll take care of it and send you the receipt.”
Liane stood up slowly. “Do you know what I’m in for?”
Aimée shook her head. “Whatever you’ve done, you’re being punished for it.”
“You should know,” Liane said. “So you don’t think I withheld anything.”
“As I said …”
“Blowing up banks. Terrorism,” Liane said, her eyes gleaming in the light. “I’m proud of that. No one ever called revolution a dainty proposition. My ideology hasn’t changed. It never will.” She stared at Aimée. “We regard these as acts of war. But I’m not proud about the little children who happened to be too near.”
Aimée shuddered. She wondered if explosives had claimed Liane’s fingers. Or had prison?
Aimée said, “Keep your end of the deal and I’ll keep mine.”
HER THOUGHTS roamed helter-skelter on the way back to Paris. Did Liane have letters to Jutta from her mother? Was her mother alive? During the long journey, Aimée made several calls.
When she reached Montmartre cemetery on rue Rachel, she remembered her schoolteacher saying that corpses had been thrown into an old plaster quarry—which was now the cemetery—during the French Revolution. And how the vineyards of Montmartre had produced an astringent wine with such diuretic properties that a seventeenth-century ditty went: “This is the wine of Montmartre, drink a pint, piss a quart.”
The grave digger she finally located tapped his shovel. “The old bird was heavy,” he said. “That’s for sure.”
Aimée groaned inwardly. She’d have to give him a big tip.
He looked pointedly at his watch, sighed, then said, “It’s too late to put her back but you can see her for yourself.”
They wound over the gravel and dirt, past the graves of Zola and Degas. Midway, the grave digger paused and wiped his brow. “Over there.”
The marble mausoleum’s gate hung open. Dead flies, fossilized bees, and dusty plastic flower bouquets were strewn within.
“Doesn’t the Barolet family own this?”
“Leased for a hundred years,” he said, his tone matter-of-fact.
“Surely, it’s more trouble to dispose …”
“Mademoiselle, there’s a long waiting list of people eager for this space.” For the second time he looked at his watch.
“Her daughter paid,” Aimée said. “Here are the receipts.”
“Then she’s been notified. According to my patron, she wasn’t up to date with payments,” he said. “If she disputes this, let her talk to him on Saturday when he returns.”
A lot of good that would do, with Liane in prison.
“Meanwhile what happens?”
“We take what’s left to the boneyard.”
“Boneyard!”
The grave digger shrugged. “That’s standard procedure.” His blue overalls were stained and muddy.
What if this man was lying, trying to make more money.
“Let me see the coffin.”
He gestured to the right. “Over there, behind François Truffaut.”
Aimée walked behind the mausoleum. She saw two coffins, one newer and with tarnished brass handles, the other wooden and water-stained.
“Which one?”
“The fancy model,” he said. “Think of this like an eviction, I tell people.”
“Evicting the dead?”
“What do you want me to do, eh?” he sneered. “Someday you’ll be here too, Mademoiselle high and mighty!”
Burn me first, she almost said. Scatter my ashes from my balcony over the Seine, before a dirty old coot like you can rattle my bones.
Of course it all came down to money.
“How much?”
“Take that up with administration,” he said. “All I do is shovel up the leftovers and leave them for the bone men.”
Aimée hoped he didn’t see her shudder.
The cemetery office was closed. Shadows lengthened over the stone houses of the dead.
“Can’t you put her inside the mausoleum until I straighten this out?” she said, placing a hundred francs in his palm.