Free Murder in the Latin Quarter by Cara Black Page A

to take deep breaths. Let her body absorb them, let these things battle inside her and hope they won. The effects of the potent mix lasted a day, two days at most.
    She slept. This time restfully, without dreams or visitations.
    By mid-afternoon, she’d managed to change into the dress she kept in the closet and apply rouge to hide her pallor. She folded the one bank statement they hadn’t discovered, next to her will, in her handbag.
    She reached for the hated cane. Another sign of weakness. The knob was a carved goat bone, in the shape of a leering mouth. It was her only remnant of Edouard’s uncle, besides the illness he’d given her.
    Fatigue hit her again. But she couldn’t succumb. Wouldn’t. As a young woman in Port-au-Prince, she’d started down this trail of lies and now it had grown out of proportion. She had nothing to lose, but Edouard did.
    “Call a taxi for me, Marie, if you’d be so kind.”
    She’d take care of this; she should have done it years ago. Her legs buckled and she gripped the cane.
    Her juju . . . she felt for it around her neck. Gone. Edouard had taken it.
    “Madame?” Marie smiled, her work-worn hands folding her apron. “I’m glad you feel better; it’s good you go out. And how nice you look.”
    She needed her juju. What if Edouard had tossed it away?
    “Marie, I think I dropped something on the floor.”
    Marie bent down, embarrassing Léonie for a moment . . . a French woman on her hands and knees for her. “You mean your earring?”
    “It’s like a sachet, Marie. A small pouch.”
    “Non, Madame, nothing. I don’t see it.”
    “Désolée, Marie. . . .”
    “For what, Madame Léonie?” Marie stood. “You gave me this job. No one else would hire me. The staff don’t treat you right, Madame. Of course, that’s not for me to say.”
    “We promised not to go through this again, Marie.”
    She nodded, her face now a mask. “Nothing on the floor, Madame.”
    The taxi waited. But she couldn’t go without her juju.
    She looked at the clock. She had to go now before the place closed.
    “Madame, I hear something; there’s a call on your cell phone.”
    Léonie took the phone from Marie and hit the button.
    “They found Benoît,” the voice said without preamble.
    “Then you’ve got the information.”
    “He was murdered. The file is gone.”
    Shock flooded over her.
    “It’s up to you to find it,” the voice continued.
    The phone fell from Léonie’s hands and clattered on the parquet floor.
    Darkness descended . . . non, not now. She breathed, forcing the air into her lungs. If she didn’t go now, it would be too late.

Tuesday Afternoon

    AIMÉE ENTERED PIANO Vache, a student dive down the hill from Place Sainte Geneviève on the narrow rue Laplace. The place was dark; the corners smelled of beer. Despite the outside heat, the stone walls kept the interior chilled. Like a cavern, she thought, the blackened sixteenth-century stone walls unchanged, a favored haunt of students for centuries. And hers, too, in her Sorbonne days when she’d spent hours drinking and debating philosophy, trying to sound intellectual like everyone else. Always aware that in the quartier they fol-lowed in the footsteps of Descartes, Verlaine, and Camus.
    Furnished with flea-market tables and mismatched chairs, the place had a homey feel. Here she could clean up, examine what she’d found, and still reach the database center in time.
    In the lull before the aperitif hour, the bar was deserted except for Vincent, who was setting up bottles in rows behind the bar. A good place to sift through the contents of Benoît’s locker undisturbed.
    “Long time, Aimée,” Vincent said. Tanned, muscular, in his thirties, all in black except for the silver belt buckle that caught a gleam of light. He hadn’t changed.
    He ran an appreciative glance over her. “Rough and tumble, comme toujours. ” He hadn’t forgotten. A few years ago, their one-night stand had extended for a week. Until