“What does it mean?” I asked. “AB-16? Some French thing?”
“We have no idea,” Hoskins said. “Or at least I have no idea. Yet. But tell me, Mr. Morgan, what does it all suggest to you? This mystery woman Henri was with. The fire diversion across the street so her accomplice could enter. The weapon. The setting. The position of the body postmortem. And this graffiti.”
Louis cleared his throat and said, “I’ll tell you what I think.”
“I didn’t ask for your opinion, Louis,” Hoskins said brusquely. “I’m interested in an L.A. perspective for the moment.”
Langlois puffed up in irritation but bit his tongue when I gave him an almost imperceptible shake of my chin and said, “From an L.A. perspective, the position of the corpse and the tag is meant to cause shock, attract attention, provoke interest, and perhaps invite speculation. Through a West Hollywood lens, it could be interpreted as fetishistic, the killers acting out some kind of perversity, real or imagined.”
“The weapon?”
After considering that, I went with my instincts and said, “The curtain rope is part of Richard’s world, so it could be symbolic or it could be ironic. The setting could be interpreted in either way as well, depending on the killers’ intent.”
The investigator wrapped her arms together and pursed her lips.
“And this graffiti?”
“In L.A., graffiti can mean a lot of things,” I replied. “But here it strikes me like gang graffiti, meant to define turf in some way.”
Hoskins walked around the tag, considering it, glancing up at the body, and then halting. She looked at Louis. “And you, Monsieur Langlois?”
Louis’s eyelids went heavy. “Jack has said it all.”
She stared at him with her jaw moving slightly, but then smiled at me and extended her hand. “Well, then, I appreciate you coming in, Mr. Morgan. At the moment, we need to clear the theater so the criminalists can do their job.”
I shook her hand, took her card, and gave her mine.
As we turned to leave, she said, “And Louis, I know you said Private Paris has been hired by Richard’s mistress, but that gives you no legal standing to get in the way of my murder investigation. We’re clear on that?”
His eyelids still heavy, Louis said, “Très clair, madame l’investigateur.”
The streets outside the Palais Garnier had been turned into a media circus by the time we exited the opera house. Word of Richard’s death was out. There were white television vans parked beyond the cordoned area. Several reporters recognized Louis and started peppering him with questions in French.
He begged off, telling them that Investigateur Hoskins was the person to find. When we’d finally broken free of them, Louis lit a cigarette and puffed on it violently while using his iPhone to summon a ride through Uber, an app and company that provide on-demand private cars and drivers.
“Two minutes,” he said. “This Uber thing really works, you know.”
I nodded. “I’ve used it in L.A. when I’ve wanted to go out, have a few drinks. On another note, Hoskins really does not like you.”
“Oh, really?” Louis said, drawing it out and dripping with sarcasm. Then he flicked his ash and added, with a tinge of regret, “It is a pity, actually, because I do admire her, and in the art of love she was truly magnificent.”
The Uber car turned up before I could reply. We climbed in and Louis gave the driver the address of our new client, the opera director’s mistress.
When we were rolling, I said, “You did see something in the opera house that I missed, right?”
“Perhaps,” Louis said.
“Want to enlighten me?”
“There is a friend of mine I wish to consult before I draw any conclusions or make any claims.”
“Former cop?”
“A professor of art,” he said. “And an expert on graffiti.”
Chapter 19
16th Arrondissement
11:35 a.m.
LOUIS AND I pulled up in front of a beautiful old building in a chic neighborhood north of Place du Trocadéro. The mistress’s maid, a tiny Vietnamese woman, opened the apartment door before Louis could knock.
She led us into a well-appointed living area where two women sat on a couch, holding hands and struggling not to weep. The younger and larger of the two women was in her late forties, with dark, Mediterranean features. The older woman, a petite platinum blonde with a dancer’s posture, might have been sixty, but if so she’d aged incredibly well.
The younger woman said, “Louis, we are so glad you’ve come.”
“How could I not for an old and dear friend?” Louis said, taking her in his arms for a brief bear hug. Then he turned and said, “This is Jack Morgan, the head of all Private. Jack, this is Evangeline Soleil.”
She greeted me with a sad smile and said, “I wish it were under different circumstances, Monsieur Morgan. And may I introduce Valerie Richard?”
Before the name could register with me, Louis went straight to the woman and clasped her hand in his great paws, and said, “Madame Richard, I am so very sorry for your loss. If Private Paris can do anything, please ask.”
For a second there I admit I was kind of floored to find the widow and the mistress comforting each other in their hour of grief, but then I chalked it up to one more thing that confused me about the French. I shook Madame Richard’s hand and she, too, thanked me for taking an interest.
After the maid brought us coffee, the women sat side by side again, holding hands, looking expectantly at Louis.
“What have you found out?” Evangeline Soleil said.
“La Crim will tell us nothing,” Valerie Richard said.
“How did you know your husband was dead?” I asked.
The opera director’s wife said, “One of the guards called me, and I immediately called Evangeline.”
“And I called La Crim,” the mistress said. “And all they said was that someone would be along to talk with us in due time.”
“Have either of you heard Henri mention the phrase ‘AB-16’?” I asked.
Both women shook their heads.
“What does it mean?” Valerie Richard said.
“We don’t know,” Louis said, and then masterfully recounted what we’d learned without telling them what we’d seen, as I’d guaranteed Hoskins.
Rather than express shock or outrage that Richard had been with a young redhead, the two women looked at each other as if in vindication.
“We were right,” the mistress said. “He was up to his old tricks.”
“The foolish old goat,” the wife said. “It got him killed after all.”
Both women said that Richard was ordinarily given to melancholy, but he had been acting strangely happy in the past few weeks, disappearing at night for mysterious meetings and telling neither of them where he’d been.
Richard’s wife said she had confronted her husband finally, and he had said there was no new love interest, that he’d been holing up in a studio flat in Popincourt that he’d inherited from his mother to work on the libretto of a new opera. He had told his mistress the same thing.
“Devious, wasn’t he?” Evangeline Soleil said to Valerie Richard.
The wife sighed in anguish and said, “There are things we cannot change about some men no matter how hard we try.”
“Some men?” the mistress said. “All men.”
This vein of discussion made me shift in my seat and try to change course. “Did he have any enemies?”
Valerie Richard shot me a look as if I were mentally challenged. “What man in a position like his does not have enemies?”
I hadn’t thought of opera house director as being a particularly dangerous or controversial job before. “Anyone specific?”
Evangeline Soleil let out a long, slow breath and said, “Anyone in the opera community you might think of, Mr. Morgan. I mean, they all acted nice to Henri, but you know how it is when someone is successful in Paris.”