Out of breath, she paused, noticing the walled Saint-Vincent’s cemetery entrance with placards illustrating various plans for coffin burial. Three-deep coffin burials were the most economical. She turned left on rue Saint Vincent, passed the rose-walled Lapin Agile cabaret, and the last vineyard in Paris, its bare stalks of vines coated by a rim of frost.
Nathalie Gagnard’s building adjoined the rue du Mont-Cenis stairs. Not thirty minutes ago, she’d stood at the top with Félix Conari and Lucien, overlooking another cemetery.
Circles . . . she’d gone in circles all night.
She pushed Lucien out of her mind.
The building was once a hôtel particulier, now chopped into apartments. Aimée saw the worn digicode numbers and letters. Too bad she’d left her plasticine back at the office. Frustrated, she pulled out her miniscrewdriver, unscrewed the plate, and connected the red and blue wires. The door clicked open. She stuck her boot in the opening, screwed the plate back on, and entered a dark hall.
After hitting the light switch, she scanned the mailboxes, found “Gagnard,” and hurried up the spiral staircase before the timed switch could cut off.
“Nathalie?” She knocked on the door. “Nathalie! It’s Aimée Leduc!”
Silence, except for the measured ticks of the timed light.
She pounded on the door. “Are you there, Nathalie?”
A man wearing chunky black motorcycle boots peered from behind a neighboring door on the landing.
“Mind keeping it down?” he said. “We’re conducting a séance in here!”
A séance?
“Sorry, I’m worried about Nathalie. . . .”
“I feed her parakeet. Nathalie was fine the last time I saw her.”
“Her voice sounded slurred over the phone. Do you have her door key? Would you mind opening the door for me?” She flashed her detective badge.
His eyes crinkled in interest. “A detective in kitten heels?”
“Let’s forget the fashion commentary.”
“I bet you ride a scooter, too.”
He meant Aimée didn’t look like a professional. What should a detective look like?
“Should I wear some kind of uniform to look official and stand out in a crowd?”
If René were here, he would have shot her a warning look. A ripple of chimes came from inside the neighbor’s apartment.
“Désolé,” he said and slammed the door.
Her feet hurt, the cold air chilled her legs, and her patience was exhausted. She pounded on his door until he opened it.
“Look, I’m on official inquiry. You must cooperate with me.”
His eyes widened and he stepped back. “Bossy, aren’t you?”
“Nathalie’s in trouble,” she said. Deep trouble from the sound of her voice.
“The spirits won’t like that.”
“The spirits? Ask me if I care!” Too bad she hadn’t kept the fish-gutter knife. She stepped closer and glared at him.
He read the message in her eyes.
A moment later, he held out a key chain around the frame of the door. She took it, tried the keys until one fit, turned it, and opened the door.
“Merci,” she said, delivering the keys back to him. Then at Nathalie’s door she called, “Allô?”
She found Nathalie sprawled in her vomit on the parquet floor. Labored breaths whistled from her open mouth. The phone and pill bottle lay next to her.
She panicked, then reached under Nathalie’s shoulders, dragged her to the small bathroom, and put Nathalie’s head over the toilet.
“Come on, Nathalie, get the rest out!” she urged.
Nathalie’s head rolled, her black hair clumped to her thin cheekbones.
Aimée grabbed the rubber gloves by the bottle of CIF cleanser near the shower, pulled them on, and stuck her finger down Nathalie’s throat. A loud heave was followed by a spew. All over Aimée’s leopard-print heels and the floor, missing the bowl.
And for fifteen francs more she could have waterproofed them.
Then Nathalie heaved again, this time on target.
“Nathalie. Nathalie, can you hear me?”
Her head lay on the toilet-bowl rim.
So much for relentlessly questioning her about Jacques’s gambling.
Aimée stepped out of her shoes, put them in the sink, and toweled off. In the other room, she picked up Nathalie’s phone and dialed 17 for SAMU, the ambulance corps, and gave the address.
“I found Nathalie Gagnard unconscious with a half-bottle of Ambien, I got her to throw up—”
Clicks and a sound like waves in the background.
“You’ve got to hurry.”
“We’re sending an ambulance that’s already in the area,” said a calm-sounding dispatcher. “It should arrive in three to five minutes.”
“There are several flights of stairs,” Aimée said.
“Aah, a Montmartre special,” the dispatcher said. “So no ballerina medics on this call. Thanks for letting us know.”
“Any advice?”
“Check for other pills.”
Aimée rooted around on the floor and found some pills in the cracks between the wood slats. “I just scooped up more Ambien from the floor.”
“Make sure her mouth stays clear and she can breathe, that there’s no obstruction,” said the dispatcher without missing a beat.
THE STRETCHER carrying Nathalie bumped the wall, and one of the buff paramedics, a Hôpital Bichat armband straining around his arm, swore. Aimée shut Nathalie’s apartment door behind them, used the rest of the CIF to clean up the mess on the floor, and set her shoes to dry by the heating vent. That done, she located coffee beans in the freezer of Nathalie’s trunk-sized refrigerator, ground them, and found a beat-up metal Alessi all-in-one espresso maker. She lit the gas burner, which flared to life with a blue flame.
She wouldn’t leave this apartment until she found some evidence documenting Jacques’s gambling. The two rooms, wrapped around the corner of the building, remained quasi-intact with a high recessed sculpted ceiling, and she realized this had once been part of a ballroom. A faded charm remained despite its crude conversion into living room and sleeping nook.
While the espresso maker dripped and hissed, she searched the apartment. No desk, no files, no books. Nothing. Just a pile of well-thumbed Marie Claire magazines and a parakeet, asleep in a covered birdcage, a box of bird seed below. Where did Nathalie keep her bills, paychecks, records?
She checked the kitchen cabinets, under the sisal rug, unzipped the sofa cover, checked the lamp shades, and felt for anything taped under the table. Again, nothing. In Nathalie’s armoire, she found a selection of skirts, white shirts, several jackets, and one black dress. And an array of colorful scarves to dress up her basic wardrobe.
Didn’t she ever wear jeans?
Aimée got on her knees and struck gold. Under Nathalie’s bed she found a squat olive green file cabinet. Nicked, old—and locked. She levered it out and pushed it across the floor to the kitchen where she swiveled her nail file inside the lock. Instead of popping open, the lock jammed and broke. Just her luck! Par for the course, she thought, a perfect accompaniment to an eventful evening: a knife held to her throat; an encounter with a moody, sarcastic artiste whose touch she wanted to forget; Félix Conari’s reminder of his affiliation with church and state; and only a garbled reference to Jacques’s gambling from a pilled-out Nathalie. And then Nathalie’s special addition, vomit on her good heels!