“The report indicates your former husband saw other women,” Aimée said, thinking of Laure’s comment about a girlfriend. A new tactic might loosen her lips. “We believe he was meeting an informer that night. A woman.”
“You don’t understand. Jacques respected women,” Nathalie said, as though stating a simple fact. “He treated them well. But she took it the other way.”
“I’m curious, looking at the logic of that evening,” Aimée said, hoping her voice sounded reasonable. “From the suspect’s viewpoint, it wouldn’t make much sense to murder Jacques since everyone saw them leave the café together!”
Nathalie’s eyes hardened into slits. “Do your job. Nail her.”
“Was Jacques under pressure? Bills? The job? Did he mention people he owed money to?”
Nathalie stood. “I have an appointment.”
“Nathalie, La Proc demands proof. Facts. When did you last see Jacques?”
“I set a place for him at dinner on the eve of Noël but at the last minute he had to work.” Her brow creased as she combed her memory.
“That was a few weeks ago. Nothing more recent?”
Nathalie shook her head, hurt pooling in her eyes.
For a moment, Aimée pitied her. Guy had bought a Christmas tree and together they’d strung the lights on the tree and on Miles Davis, too, finally falling asleep in each other’s arms at dawn.
Snap out of it, she told herself. Get down to business. Think. Did Jacques have mistresses whom he supported? Was he trying to maintain a lifestyle beyond his reach? She’d seen it happen to her father’s colleagues.
“Jacques was making monthly car payments according to the report,” Aimée said. She remembered seeing the tow truck hooking the Citroën. “What happened to his car?”
“I can’t make the payments,” Nathalie said. “I’ve returned it.”
“Did you divorce him because of his spending?”
Nathalie leaned forward. “Just between you and me, things were tight. We divorced and declared bankruptcy to save our assets, but we were still together. How plain must I make it? The woman killed him out of jealousy. But she won’t get away with it, I won’t let her.”
Aimée felt sorry for Nathalie, desperate to revenge her unhappiness somehow. But her accusations damaged Laure, who was surely innocent.
“The Brigade Criminelle will investigate and find the criminal.”
“Wake up,” Nathalie said, rising and pushing back in her chair so that it scraped on the wood floor. “The old-boy network didn’t want her father’s name dragged in the mud. But no one will cover up for her.”
“Yet, Jacques took her as a partner—”
“Like I said,” Nathalie interrupted, “he liked to help people.”
Something struck Aimée as wrong.
“I’m late.” Nathalie looped a tangerine kerchief around her neck, reached for her coat, and walked out of the building.
Aimée followed her to the low-slung Renault Mégane with the AUTO-ÉCOLE plastic box on top parked outside. Wind whipped down the street, bringing the smell of wet, sodden leaves.
“You own a driving school?”
“We only kept this,” Nathalie said, unlocking the door. Her sigh indicated she’d known a better life. “Before the divorce we had a fleet of six cars, eh. I’m not the type to sit at home so I was involved in the business.”
So the divorce had saved what was left of their business. Again she wondered if Jacques had grown too accustomed to the finer things. Flics often moonlighted, doing security to supplement their salary.
“Did Jacques work security?”
Nathalie’s mouth formed a moue of distaste. “Consultant,” she said. “He did consulting.”
The rain-swept pavement mirrored the dull gray clouds. The number seventy-four bus shot out diesel exhaust as it gunned by.
“With his skills, of course,” Aimée said. So both of them had held two jobs, working hard. Yet Nathalie had stiffened when she’d asked about Jacques’s past.
Nathalie opened the car door.
“I need to verify this,” Aimée said. “Can you remember the company for whom or the location where he consulted?”
“He knew Montmartre, he had contacts here. Sometimes he took private jobs, you know, for VIPs.”
“Who could I talk to who might know about this sideline?”
“I didn’t get involved.”
Why wouldn’t this woman talk?
“Try to remember, Nathalie. A name?”
“Look, she murdered Jacques, how does it matter?”
“Everything’s important,” Aimée said, trying to appeal to the woman’s pride. “Let me stress that if all the facts don’t come to light now, they could be used later to prevent a conviction, to let the killer go free. As a flic’s wife, you know that.”
Nathalie blinked, threw her purse in the passenger seat. “He talked about Zette sometimes, an old boxer who runs a bar. On rue Houdon.”
CLUB CHEVALIER , the bar on rue Houdon, had seen better days. And they had passed several decades ago, Aimée figured. The dark bar was lined with plastic-covered banquettes and decorative columns, their plaster bases now heavily gouged. A large woman with blonde hair, a pink apron around her girth, vacuumed the matching once-pink carpet. What VIPs did they serve here, Aimée wondered?
“Pardon, Madame, may I speak with Zette?”
“Eh, we’re not open.”
“Is Zette here?”
The woman sighed and switched off the vacuum. An artificial-stone water fountain gurgled in the corner, green fungi grew on the lip of the shell-like basin. Several game machines blinked red and blue in the corner, the kind that used to have slots but now were computerized. A radio blared out the results of the horse races from somewhere in the back.
“Who wants to know?” the woman said, her hand on her hip.
Aimée grinned. “Jacques’s friend sent me.”
“Not that business again?”
Have the police been here, too, Aimée wondered. “I need to talk with him.”
The woman shouted, “Zette!”
No answer. Just the excited voice announcing the race winners: “Fleur-de-Lys by a head, Tricolor a close second, and Sarabande makes it third!”
Aimée heard the clink of a glass and someone slapping papers down.
“Zette!”
“Leave me in peace, woman!”
“Someone to see you,” the woman said.
Aimée heard a muttered “Merde.”
A balding gray-haired man poked his head around the door in the back of the small bar. He had several gold teeth, a crooked nose, and a white scar splitting his right eyebrow, giving him a perpetually questioning look.
“Will talking to you make me happy, Mademoiselle?”
“How about a drink and we’ll find out.”
“Aaah, such possibilities!” He scratched his neck, gave her the once-over, and raised his other eyebrow. “But I can smell a flic from way off,” he said, with a wide smile. “Have your boss call me. I deal with the commissaire. Show me some respect, eh, Mademoiselle.”
Respect? Who gained respect that way? The woman, a bored look on her face, pulled the vacuum cleaner into the back.
“I’m not a flic, but my father was.”
“So you say. Where?”
“Commissariat in the fourth arrondissement before he joined my grandfather at the detective agency that I run now.”
“Aaah, so you know Ouvrier?”
He was testing her.
“I went to his retirement party last night, around the corner.”
“Me, too,” he said. “I didn’t see you.”