"Why?" Sarah mumbled. "Is it my son?"
"That's a separate issue. He abhors the fact that you are Jewish because it means he is too."
"Is Helmut after me?"
Of course, now it all made sense. Hartmuth was Helmut Volpe.
"No, he told me you were in trouble. He's trying to save you. And Lili tried to save you too," Aimee said.
"What do you mean?"
"From Laurent. Can't you see?" Aimee said, trying to control her excitement but her words spilled out. "Think about how, as you talked with Lili, she changed. How she pretended not to know you and edge away. He was there, somewhere. She did it so he wouldn't know who you were." Aimee sat down close to Sarah. "I promise, he's not going to get you!"
FRIDAY
Friday Morning
HARTMUTH'S NIGHTMARE S WERE FILLED with ice tongs and crying babies. Sleep had eluded him.
There was a slight knock on the door from the adjoining suite. It would be Ilse. He pulled on a robe and shuffled to the door.
"Mein Herr," Ilse said, her eyes bright as they quickly swept his room. "You are back! I checked late last night but your room was empty. We missed you!"
Hartmuth forced a grin. "This rich French food, Ilse, I'm not used to it. If I don't walk, it just curdles in my stomach."
"Jawohl, you are so right. Myself," she sidled closer to him, "I miss our German food. Simple yes, but so good and nutritious." Without missing a beat, she continued, "I don't mind telling you, mein Herr, that Monsieur Quimper and Minister Cazaux are of the old school. Because of their sincerity, all the delegates have agreed as of tonight to sign the treaty. But of course, this happens tomorrow at the ceremony. And with your signature to make it unanimous."
"What time is the ceremony, Ilse?" he said in as businesslike a tone as he could summon.
"Nineteen hundred hours, mein Herr," and she smiled. "In time for the CNN worldwide news feed. A nice touch, I thought." She lumbered to the door. "Unter den Linden."
The treaty was as good as signed.
Friday Noon
AIMÉE KNOCKED TWICE, THEN again. Slowly, Javel opened the door wearing a tattered undershirt.
"I'm busy," he said, not smiling. "There's nothing more to say."
Aimee put her foot in the door. "Just a few minutes; it won't take long," she said and slid through the doorway.
He grudgingly stood aside in the hallway.
"Does this go into your shop?" Aimee said, pointing at a damp, moldly door.
He nodded, his eyes narrowing.
She quickly climbed the three stairs and pushed the door before he could stop her.
"Eh, what are you doing?" he said.
By the time he had painstakingly climbed the steps she was back out the door again and had shot past him down the narrow hallway.
He caught up with her in the parlor and found his tongue. "You're just a nosy amateur detective running around in circles," he said.
Aimee stared at him. "You heard the whole thing, didn't you?"
"What are you talking about?" he asked angrily, gripping the back of his only chair.
"In this shop and around the rue Pavee. The spot's so close I bet you can spit that far," she said.
He spluttered, his eyes furtive. "None of this makes any sense. You're all the same!" He hastily shut the drawer in his pine kitchen table and moved to his rocking chair.
"Is that why you decided to take the law into your own hands, be a vigilante for a fifty-year-old crime?" she said.
He was obviously hiding something. She sidled next to the table, opening the single drawer by its rusted knob.
"What are you doing? Get away from there!" he yelled.
Aimee felt under Arlette's hand-embroidered napkins and reached towards the back. She pulled out a string bag and yarn from the drawer. "Why did you keep it?"
"Keep what?" he said.
"Lili Stein's bag and her knitting," she said as she lifted it out of the drawer.
"I-I found it," he said.
"On Wednesday you overheard Lili and Sarah talking about the past," she said. "From what you overheard, you thought Lili had killed Arlette, fifty years ago. After Sarah left, you confronted Lili. Lili vehemently denied killing her but she called Arlette a thieving, opportunistic blackmailer who had it coming to her. Didn't she?" She paused, looking at Javel's glittering hate-filled eyes. "Or words to that effect. You reached in your pocket for the only thing available," she said and pulled a thin wire out of her pocket. "You followed her, then strangled her with one like this from your shop. Finally, you carved the swastika to make it look like neo-Nazis."
She dangled the metal shoe wire in the air. "See the clear plastic at the end of this that protects and makes it easy to lace through the holes. That bit came off next to Lili. The other end is in the police evidence bag," she said.
Shaking his head, he screamed, "Stop this fantasy. Stop these lies!"
Aimee continued, "It's this that puts you at the scene of the crime with a motive!" She held up Lili's bag with her knitting.
His face was florid and he was panting.
"But you had killed the wrong person. Arlette's killer was back in Paris," she said.
"No! Idiot!" he said, furiously shaking his head back and forth. "Never left, I tell you."
She watched him carefully. "You were about to kill Hartmuth, only. . ."
"Lies, lies," he screamed.
When he rushed at her with an old pipe he'd lifted from behind the chair, she was prepared. Swiftly she twisted the pipe away and tripped him up. He thudded to the ground and she straddled his legs, immediately pinning him down. She felt sorry for him until he ripped out chunks of her hair while he struggled. "Jew lover! Arlette's murderer is still alive!" he said, gasping.
"Are you going to fight me all the way?" she said. "OK, little man, I can fight too." Whereupon she punched him solidly in the head. "That's so you won't cause me any more hair loss."
At least he couldn't fight her now. She stood up, attempting to brush her roosterlike hair down. She lifted his bowlegs and began to drag the semiconscious man awkwardly through his hallway. A stinging whack whipped her off balance and she landed under his old television. She envisioned the TV's rabbit-ears antenna about to spear her as they tumbled off, but she couldn't move.
"Javel, Javel!" she mumbled.
Silence. Then the insistent jingle of bells.
AIMÉE WONDERED why they hadn't even bothered to trash the place. Javel's bulging eyes stared at the ceiling. His head was cocked in a way only a dead man's could. He had been strangled by wire from his own shop, just like the kind used on Lili. Someone had tried to make it look like suicide, dangling him from a rafter. The note looked genuine enough, especially if he'd been forced to write it. I will join you, Arlette.
Only she had heard him scream. She'd come to and passed out again. Why hadn't she been strangled, too? A distant jangling lodged in her brain. The bells. Then she recognized the noise. Bells from the shop door to the street meant customers who came in and out. A voice asked, "Il ya a quel qu'un? Somebody here?" Then the bells jingled and she heard the door shut as the customer left.
She struggled out from under the TV table and felt guilty. Again. She'd accused Javel and when he started telling her that Arlette's killer was alive she'd slugged him. The killer, entering through the connecting shop door, had probably stood right there and silently thanked her. Until sending her across the room, knocking her and her theory to smithereens. Not only had she barked up the wrong tree but she'd helped the killer.