The concierge sighed. “The apartment’s vacant. The upper floors are being remodeled.”
“Bon, we’ll go home,” Aimée said, turning toward Sebastian. “You can explain to the commissaire why snow blew in through the windows to blanket the apartment like a rug. Squatters will love it then.”
The woman glanced at her thumb, pushed the cuticle back. “The top floors have been empty for a month already.” She shrugged. Another sign of the gentrification that was invading the area. “Be sure not to disturb the old coot on the first floor. He’s furious as it is what with all the commotion,” the concierge said. Her mouth turned down and she stabbed the cigarillo out in an empty flowerpot. Then she thrust a small key ring at Aimée. “That’s the door key. I won’t wait up for you.”
“We’ll see ourselves out,” Aimée said, nodding to Sebastian, who shouldered the tool kit.
He followed her up the staircase, its worn red carpet held in place by bronze stair rods. The wrought-iron banister, an intricate pattern of acorns and leaves, spiraled up several floors. Once it had been exquisite, the latest style.
“Talk about a hike! What the hell can we find after all this time, Aimée?”
Sebastian’s words mirrored her own doubts. Yet new evidence was vital. “If one listens, the scene will speak,” she remembered her father saying. If there was any chance to prove Laure’s innocence she had to find it.
“Put on your surgical gloves,” she said, panting, wishing she hadn’t gained that kilo over the holidays. She left the key in the door. “Rooftop first.”
The snow flurries had subsided, melting onto the floor of the scaffolding. She and Sebastian pulled on woolen ski masks. Sebastian followed Aimée’s lead and dropped to his knees. With luck, they might find something the police had missed.
“What are we looking for?” Sebastian asked.
“Wood splinters, blackened metal on the scaffold, a discarded lighter, cigarette butt, scraped tile . . . anything.”
“Like in those shows on the télé?”
She nodded. She was doubtful but one never knew. The concierge had said the apartment had been vacant for a month. Was that why Jacques had arranged to meet his informer there?
The spires and roof of the church blocked the view of all but the adjoining roof and a dark neigboring building across the street. Witnesses, if any, would be few.
They crouched, moving silently to avoid detection from the adjoining apartments connected by the roof. One tall lighted window shone from across the courtyard. Below, from the construction site, came a pinprick glow like the tip of a lit cigarette. And then it disappeared. Into a hole in the earth? The remains of old quarries underlaid all of Montmartre. Gritting her teeth, she turned her gaze back to the roof.
For forty minutes, they crawled. They covered every centimeter of the scaffold, inspected chimney pots, stones, the windows and sills let into the mansard roof, and the small flat area of the zinc roof on top. Aimée’s hands were wet with snow, sore from abrasion by pebbles and rough stucco. Disheartened, she leaned against the chimney.
“Find anything?” she said to Sebastian, who was leaning over the edge and combing the rain gutter.
He held up a fistful of sodden brown leaves. “Toss it or . . .?”
“Wait.” She edged her way toward him, opening a plastic Baggie. “In here. What’s that?”
“Just a twig, like these,” he said indicating others clogging the gutter. “They need to clean this or . . .”
She pulled out a green stem. Smelled it. “Freshly broken, a geranium stem.”
“My cousin, the botanist!” he said.
She gave him a wry smile. “A Calvados says there’s a deck or window ledge nearby with pots of geraniums.”
“Proving what?” he asked.
A few stars glittered under the thinning clouds, just over the dark line of roofs.
“I’m guessing. What if someone leaned out their window and saw the shooting.”
“But, Aimée, people keep geraniums inside in this weather.”
He made sense. A dead end?
Right now, it was all they had to go on.
“Give me a boost, I want to check.”
Sebastian reached up the wall and tied the rope around the chimney bracer. Aimée tied the other end in a slip knot around her waist.
“Ready?” he asked, knitting his hands together and planting himself against the concrete. “On three.”
“One-two-three.”
Chill air and a dirt-encrusted skylight greeted Aimée as she reached the adjoining roof. She grabbed the roof edge, hoisted herself up further, and came face to face with a dormer window. Several pots of geraniums were visible within.
Now she knew where to start asking questions in the morning. But she’d found no evidence to indicate that anyone other than Laure had shot Jacques. Yet something . . . something had to exist.
“I’m coming down,” she said, gripping the ledge caked with pigeon droppings by one hand, the other braced against the smooth wall.
“Sebastian, can you shine your penlight over here?”
“Gifts from the pigeon gods?”
As his thin beam illuminated the chimney pot, a light went on in a courtyard window opposite and they heard someone struggling with a window. “Quick, Sebastian. Time to go.”
She felt him tug at the rope and her feet slipped on the slick ice.
“We’ve got company,” he said, pointing below. “The flics.”
Two cars had pulled up in the street, their blue lights casting a glow over the snow-laced courtyard. Had someone heard them and called the flics? She peered around the chimney, saw more rooftops and the pale moon’s reflection glinting on more skylights, a few feet away.
“Grab the bag, come join me,” Aimée said.
“You’re kidding, right?”
“Hurry up. We can jimmy open a skylight.”
She felt the rope tug.
“How many skylights do you see?” he asked.
“Three. Two side by side, then one some distance away.”
“Bon. One of them must be over a hall. I’m right behind you.”
She tucked the Baggie in her jumpsuit pocket, climbed, then gripped the chimney edge and let herself down on the other side.
Her feet scrabbled and she landed on all fours. And then she was sliding down the slick wet roof surface. Panic gripped her. Only the gutter ledge was between her and a drop of several stories. She grabbed and her hand caught the metal. She pulled herself up toward a rectangular flat area.
Sebastian landed behind her. By the time they reached the furthest skylight she was panting. The cold air hurt her lungs.
“Here,” he said, handing her the pliers. “Work the skylight lock open.”
She was startled to find that it was already broken. Sawtooth-edged shards of glass, knife sharp, jutted from the frame. Deftly, she eased her hand past them and grasped the lock from inside. Within seconds, with Sebastian’s help, she’d lifted the skylight. She held onto the metal rim and let herself down, hoping her feet would find the ladder usually attached to the wall of a communal hallway, that she wasn’t about to land in someone’s bedroom.
Her toes hit ladder rungs, and she climbed down to a level surface, a musty carpet, wet with footprints. Odd.
“Quick, take the bag,” said Sebastian, handing it down to her. He made a perfect tiptoe landing and they found themselves in what appeared to be the entry of a sixth-floor chambre de bonne, a maid’s room converted into an apartment.
“Look at the footprints.”
“My feet aren’t that big,” he said, about to rub them out with his boot.
“Leave it, let’s go,” she told him.
They crept down the flights of creaking wooden stairs, past a glass entry door and into a covered courtyard area. Several doors fronted the coved stone alcove. Large green trash containers stood by a concierge’s loge. Sebastian thumbed a button on the side wall and within the huge vaulted door a small door clicked open.