Murder in Passy by Cara Black

Author:Cara Black [Black, Cara]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction, Women Sleuths, Mystery & Detective, General
ISBN: 9781569478820
Publisher: Soho Crime
Published: 2011-03-08T06:00:00+00:00

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IN THE ROOM the Balzac museum pamphlet described as his “study,” Aimée paused at Balzac’s simple wood writing desk. At least the place was dry, the heater worked, and quiet reigned until the next tour of this labyrinthine series of small rooms—a strange place where one entered on the third floor, then descended a corkscrew staircase to the first. Like entering the neck of wine bottle.

But a place in which to think. Figure out Melac’s angle. At La Crim, she’d seen his empty desk. The receptionist confirmed he’d taken leave. But a leave of two days, as he’d said? Or two weeks? She couldn’t be sure. There was no guarantee in the sweet talk of this man who’d put her under investigation last month.

Morbier’s cryptic comment about the leaking robinet in the jail’s visiting room made sense now. A leak. A leak in the force.

Knowing Morbier, he was keeping something close to his chest. He could have been putting on a show for watching eyes in the visiting room. Just like him.

Her mind went to the secrets he was keeping from her, hinted at by a gesture, a word when he was unaware. This gray past buried deep. As if she didn’t know. Didn’t suspect what had really happened to her father. Or her mother. Every time she’d asked, his answer had been to tell her to leave the past alone.

She paused by the window overlooking the narrow, walled back lane. The heater hissed, emitting puffs of warmth. In the terracotta vase, an arrangement of burnt orange-red maple leaves glowed in the light. But the maple leaves provided no answers.

Nor did the bust of Balzac with his opaque marble stare. A debt-ridden Balzac had rented rooms here in Passy, then a village outside Paris. Hounded by creditors, he’d often had to escape out the back door and down the lane. In spite of this, he’d written much of his early nineteenth-century saga, the many-volumed Comédie Humaine, and drunk fifty cups of coffee a day at this gouged wooden desk. She could relate to that.

She chewed her lip, trying to face the fear that was making her insides shiver. She kept reliving Melac’s appearance in the hallway, his nuzzled kisses along her neck, his insistence on knowing her feelings, his curiosity about the phone call. The probing of his gray eyes.

She didn’t do flics. Simple. She’d ignore the way he’d made her feel, his warm legs entwined with hers under the sheets, this talk of a “relationship.”

No mistaking the veiled panic in Morbier’s voice. He needed her help. The little he’d given her—a leak, an informer he couldn’t name—didn’t point her to Xavierre’s murderer. Unless a bent flic had murdered her to put blame on Morbier and derail his investigation. She doubted that. But this Lyon case, this leak? She put that aside for now.

She had to concentrate on the info Martine had given her on Xavierre’s background. Find a link, figure out if it led anywhere. Her father

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