One hell of a struggle, Aimee thought. She leaned over and smelled the damp earth from a cluster of dirt-encrusted leaves. She gripped the tweezers and picked up a mud-spattered paper strip covered with numbers. Carefully, she lifted a length of variegated-colored wool, then a centime-sized cloudy, plastic cylinder. She peered intensely at each. She left the knobby pink button in the Baggie. Aimee turned the Baggie over, pointing out the double interlocked C's on the button.
"Odd," she said. "Lili Stein didn't look the Chanel type."
"Aha!" He let out a big sigh. "The killer wore Chanel and lost a button in the struggle pulling her upstairs." Morbier poked the chunky button. "A designer murder!" He smiled.
She ignored him. "Assuming that's Lili Stein's wool, where are her knitting needles? Or the bag she carried her knitting in?"
And what about Soli Hecht's name in Lili's knitting, the photo, or the threatening fax? She didn't mention any of this to Morbier, especially since Morbier had mentioned the federal BRI, the government's strong-arm enforcement. She'd figured Hecht didn't want flics involved due to his innate suspicion of them. But maybe it was something else. . .maybe he suspected corruption.
"Checked the dustbins, public and private?" she asked.
"Dustbins, that's quaint," he said. Morbier made a long face and consulted his notes. "Garbage pickup was that morning and the hotel bin had just been emptied."
She cocked her head sideways. "Which hotel?"
"Hôtel Pavilion de la Reine nearby." She'd heard of this exclusive hotel, multi-starred in the Michelin guide.
"What about this?" She pointed to the scrap of paper in the Baggie. "How near to Lili's body was it?"
"The crime-scene unit noted this was found in the courtyard entrance," he said.
"See the numbers. That looks like a receipt. Let me make a copy," she said. "And I'd like to borrow the photographs."
He nodded.
She took a sterile strip of Saran Wrap, laid it on the copier plate, picked up the paper scrap with tweezers, and set it down. Then she laid another sterile Saran strip over it, put down the lid, and pressed "Copy."
The ripped edge had a number, like the bottom of a receipt. She decided to check the shops near the alley.
"Thanks, Morbier." She eyed a Columbo-style trench coat with a patched lining on a hook. "Yours?"
Morbier shook his head. "I'm on call. Inform me if you find out anything."
"Think someone would mind if I borrowed the trench coat for a while?" she said.
He grinned. "Be my guest, your tattoos are guaranteed to offend every group."
"I do try," she said, donning the coat.
OUTSIDE OF La Double Morte, Aimee walked smack into a large knot of people clogging one side of the rue de Francois Miron. Orthodox Hasidic Jews in black stood grouped among bystanders in suits and jeans.
"Nom de Dieu, Soli Hecht!" she heard an old woman wail.
Aimee flinched at hearing Soli's name.
Red lights flashed from an ambulance straddling the sidewalk ahead. She pulled the trench coat tighter and started running. She made it to the corner before the ambulance pulled away. White-coated attendants slid a stretcher into the back door. She caught a glimpse of a blanketed mound before the doors clanged shut. The siren echoed off the cobblestones as it sped down rue Geoffrey l'Asnier towards the Seine.
Worried, she shook her head as she stood in front of the bronze six-pointed star on the gate of the Centre de Documentation Juive Contemporaine.
Two men conversed beside her in Yiddish. Both wore the black upturned hats; one was bearded, the other's skimpy suit pants didn't quite reach his white ankle socks.
"What's happened?" she asked.
"Soli Hecht got clipped by the Bastille bus," said the bearded one, switching into French. A Hebrew magazine stuck out of his pocket.
"An accident? Is he all right?" she said.
The bearded man turned to look at her and shrugged. "Hard to say, but they didn't pull the sheet over his head. No panier a salade," he said, referring to the blue van that picked up corpses. "An accident? If you believe it was an accident. . ." He didn't finish.
Startled, she backed into the stone wall. "But he's an old man. . .," she trailed off as the men walked away.
The bearded man looked back over his shoulder at her. "Do recriminations ever stop?"
Now, with the crowd mostly dispersed, she saw the blood-stained cobblestones by her feet. A shiver ran down her spine. Lili Stein had been murdered less than three blocks away.
The institutional-looking Centre de Documentation Juive Contemporaine stood close to the Seine. A bronze memorial to the Martyr Juif Inconnu filled the entrance. Aimee strode briskly past it to the gravel quai.
She remembered the envelopes in Lili Stein's desk drawer addressed to the center, the list in her knitting with "Soli H" on it. Most of all, she thought about Hecht's words. She had put the photo in Lili Stein's hand. But it had been too late. What did Hecht know that put him in danger?
Uneasiness gnawed at her. First Lili, now Soli.
Pigeons swarmed near her feet hoping for bread crumbs as she pulled out her cell phone. Her footsteps popped gravel and the pewter-colored Seine flowed lazily beside her. She shooed the pigeons away as Morbier answered.
"I just saw Soli Hecht put into an ambulance," she said. "Rumor is he got pushed in front of the bus."
Aimee wanted to hear the official spin from Morbier. See if the police were treating it as an accident or attempted homicide.
"Alors!" came Morbier's reply. "Someone trips in front of a bus and you call me at le Commissariat! Anybody see him pushed? Eh? A perpetrator and a motive would help, too. Voila, then you have something."
"Just sharing information." She clicked off.
She didn't like this at all. She hadn't from the beginning. Things didn't smell right, as her father would say. She entered the Center's paved square to inquire if Soli had been there or if someone noticed something. On the memorial, death camp names were chiseled. She gazed, saddened by the long list: Auschwitz, Belzec, Birkenau, Chelmno, Ravensbruck, Sobibor—so many places she'd never heard of. "Never forget" was handwritten in bold letters on a placard propped below.
"Never forget," Lili Stein had told her young son, Abraham. What had Lili meant? Aimee wondered—had it killed her?
The interior of the five-story building blended fifties architecture with anonymous high-tech features. State-of-the-art alarm sensors and high-density vision cameras perched in marble niches above her. On the wall in the sparse reception area hung a directory of the Center's services in several languages.
A small young woman with a thick black braid down the back of her denim smock bustled out to greet her. Her name tag read "Solange Goutal, Administration Assistant."
"Yes, may I help you?" Behind rimless glasses her bright eyes were puffy.
Aimee displayed her ID. "Did you know Soli Hecht was involved in an accident in front of this building?"
"Why, yes," Solange said. Anguish was printed on her face. "I spoke with him as he left."
Aimee hoped her surprise didn't show. "When was this?"
"Are you from the police? Show me your ID again," said Solange.
Aimee kept her smile businesslike. This woman could have been the last person to speak with Hecht before his accident. "I'm a private detective, investigating the murder of the Jewish woman near here."
"Of course I want to be helpful, but how is it related?" Solange said. She pulled a lace mouchoir from her pocket and blew her nose loudly.
"My job," Aimee said, frustrated that Solange Goutal was the curious type, "consists of eliminating coincidences to find solid clues and build a case."