Free Murder in the Palais Royal by Cara Black Page B

stomach churn too. The crime-scene tape was still draped over René’s chair.
    “Can’t you get the woman who cleans at night to remove it?” Saj asked.
    “Véro?” She considered. “Why didn’t I think of her? She was working last night; she may have seen something.”
    “The flics will have questioned her,” Saj said.
    If so, Melac hadn’t mentioned it. But she hadn’t seen the report. Maybe she was clutching at straws, but right now that’s all she had.
    After he hung, up, a bad feeling dogged her. Did Saj doubt her?
    She grabbed her leather coat, knotted the wool scarf around her neck, and ran down the stairs.
    * * *
    A IMÉE PEERED INTO the ground-floor concierge’s loge.
    “Véro?”
    But it was Anna, the building concierge, a short Portuguese woman, who frowned back. Her black hair, streaked with premature gray, was pulled back from her lined face. “Véro’s off tonight.”
    Aimée clenched her fist in disappointment. In the small loge, Anna’s two young children argued about whose turn it was to feed the caged parakeet in the window.
    “Véro worked last night, non ?”
    Anna shrugged and consulted a sheet on the wall. “It says so here. Not my responsibility; my job starts in the morning.”
    “Do you have Véro’s number?”
    Another shrug. “She works sometimes for her sister at another job.”
    “What’s her sister’s number?”
    “It’s here somewhere. Hold on.” Aimée heard the children’s shouts, then the parakeet’s feathers flew in the air as birdseed sprayed on the floor.
    Before she could ask her to hurry, Anna had rescued the squealing parakeet in the cage.
    Aimée scanned the sheet on the wall herself, found Véro’s number, wrote it on her palm with an eyeliner pencil, and closed the door.
    * * *
    T HERE WAS NO answer on Véro’s cell phone, so she left a message. Hunger gnawed at her. If the woman was asleep or had gone to her other job, she’d grab something to eat, then go back to the office and hope it wouldn’t take hours before Véro returned her call. But by the time she’d paid the man at the charcuterie on rue du Louvre and clutched her takeout, her phone was vibrating in her pocket.
    “Aimée, I’m sorry,” Véro’s voice boomed over the line. “I should have called you.”
    She pictured the dark-haired thirtyish Véro, a woman with pulsating energy, a sure touch at cleaning and the gleam mistress of crystal chandeliers: “Vinegar, that’s my secret.”
Might she have information about René?
“Let’s meet, Véro.”
“I’m sorry, I can’t. I’m subbing at my sister’s job tonight.”
Blocked at every turn, Aimée thought.
“What time’s your break?”
    Look, I meant to drop the letter at your office, I’ll bring it “ tomorrow.”
    “What letter, Véro?”
    She heard voices, then the roar of a machine. “My supervisor. Got to go, Aimée.”
    “Forget the letter. Haven’t you heard? René was shot last night, in our office.”
    She heard Véro’s gasp. “ Nom de Dieu. Let me ask the supervisor to switch my break.”
“Where are you, Véro?”
“Just five minutes away from you. Hurry.”
“Eh?”
    “Porte de l’Oratoire. The Louvre’s staff entrance, on rue de Rivoli.”
    * * *
    A IMÉE STOOD AT the inconspicuous staff entrance of the Louvre. There was nothing to indicate that more than a thousand employees filed through this stone-framed doorway, day and night, into the offices, galleries, and fifteen kilometers of corridors under the Louvre. Curators, museum admin staff, historians, archeologists, electricians, guards, glaziers, exhibition hangers, carpenters, cleaners, and chefs. Like a small contained city, the Louvre operated its own medical center, staff cafeteria, gym, painting and sculpture restoration studio, and library. Plus three hundred thousand works of art, not all of them displayed.
    A guard ground out his cigarette on the gravel of the walkway, then shoved it into the drain with his shoe. She couldn’t count the