Free Murder in the Latin Quarter by Cara Black Page B

she’d found out that he was married. Very married, with a pregnant wife.
    “Here for a drink, a chat, or both?” He winked. “ Le strych-nine? The usual?”
    Why not? On second thought, though, she changed her mind. She needed a clear head.
    “Without the strychnine,” she said.
    He bypassed the absinthe bottle, reached out and knocked the grounds from the metal espresso filter. The machine grumbled to life.
    She passed through the stone arch to the cavernous back room and took a seat at a table by the upright piano, below the stuffed cow sticking out of the wall. Beneath them, in the ancient vaulted caves, existed the remains of a torture chamber with rusted iron instruments on the walls, at least according to Sorbonne lore. She’d never explored to find out for herself. On weekends, DJ’s spun here and bands played for a hefty cover charge. Chalk it up to the ambience.
    A minute later, Vincent set a demitasse of espresso on the wooden table gouged with initials, and a small shot glass of milky absinthe beside it.
    “On me. In case you change your mind.”
    She’d almost changed her mind about him once. “How’s your wife?”
    “Finished law school. And left me. Now I have the kid.” He pulled out his wallet and flashed the photo of a pink-cheeked toddler.
    “ Trés belle, Vincent.“
    “Like you, Aimée.” He grinned. “My life’s different now.”
    She nodded. “Right, you’re a single dad. And your life’s not your own.”
    Like her own father.
    “It’s funny, but I kind of like it this way.” Fatherhood became him. He gestured to the seat beside her. “Feel like some con-versation to go with that?”
    She felt tempted. After all, the only male in her life right now had a wet nose and short legs, and needed a grooming appointment.
    “Only if you’re a world-renowned expert on pig anatomy.”
    She smiled and dumped the contents of her bag on the table next to the demitasse.
    “I knew I’d picked the wrong profession,” he said, taking the hint.
    At least he had someone who waited at home for him . . . albeit with colic or wet diapers.
    “The place heats up in an hour or two. But you know that. Take your time.” He strode back to the counter.
    Alone, she sipped the espresso. If laced with too much absinthe, it became lethal. It had been outlawed for years; she’d always wondered how the owner obtained the illegal liqueur.
    She stared at the few assorted items relating to Azacca Benoît among her Le Clerc compact, kohl eye pencil, day-timer, and broken shells from the Marseilles beach. Not much. Then she got to work.
    The loose papers, a notebook, graphs, and charts she put in one pile. The lab coat, folded, in another. A plastic bag with a moldy uneaten piece of something in another.
    Touching these things gave her a strange feeling. Stolen. A corpse’s things. A man sprawled lifeless under the gatehouse window, so far a cipher except for his status as a world author-ity on pigs, and for Dr. Severat’s words . . . consumed by his work, passionate, dedicated. She’d found a window onto this man; now she needed to open it, discover his connection to Mireille, and what had put her in danger.
    Or what had led her to murder him.
    She found the item that had fallen from Edouard’s pocket: a postage-stamp-sized pouch of straw-colored burlap. She sniffed it. It gave off a sage and cinnamon smell. Affixed to it was a red cloth string, similar to the red string she’d observed tied around Mireille’s wrist. Some kind of Haitian amulet?
    She’d watched her father once at his desk in the Commissariat, touching a hairbrush, a tattered holy card, a small bottle of Arpège with faded gold letters on the label. “Why do you look in ladies’ purses, Papa?” she’d asked. He’d shrugged; the banal residue of a life was spread over the green blotter on his desk. “It’s to get the feel, the least I can do,” he’d said. Later, she realized he was attempting to discover a person, a sense of