Read Online Murder in the Bastille by Cara Black - Free Book Online Page A

are you?”
    “About to meet Vincent for Diva ’s cocktail preview, our biggest night. Cherie , you were invited, too. Aren’t you coming?”
    Of course, with everything that had happened, she’d forgotten.
    “Alas, no. I’m in l’hôpital des Quinze-Vingts.”
    “Visiting someone sick?” She heard Martine’s sharp intake of breath. “ Ça va? ”
    “You could say that.”
    “What’s wrong?”
    Should she tell her best friend? On her biggest night? Ruin it for her? Not now, not when Martine was about to launch her new venture. She could tell her tomorrow.
    “I’d feel better if you persuade Vincent to turn over his hard-drive,” she said. “Besides, how could I come, I’ve got nothing to wear.”
    “All you think about is work, Aimée,” she said. “Can’t this wait until . . .”
    “Please Martine, la Procuratrice will subpoena Vincent’s firm.”
    “For what? He’s not guilty. It’s the salopes he did business with!”
    “So tell him to cooperate, Martine.”
    Again, doubt assailed her about Vincent. An unease floated over her.
    Aimée heard a low hum of conversation, strains of a chamber orchestra in the background. She visualized the fashionable crowd, smelled the wax dripping from the candles and tasted the bubbling champagne. And it came home to her that she was talking to her best friend since the lycée , as she’d done so many times, but it felt different. Like she was speaking in a vacuum.
    “Aimée, right now, it’s impossible . . . tiens, there’s Catherine Deneuve . . .”
    Aimée heard the smack of lips near cheeks as bisous were exchanged. In the background she overheard part of a conversation, “. . . she’s chic, she’s fierce and there’s something fresh about her. A Belle de Jour punk.”
    “Big night here,” Martine said.
    The background conversation continued, “. . . a facility for accents and for sliding up and down the social scale to play classy or crass, posh or punk. A little glam. A little raw.”
    “If Vincent doesn’t act voluntarily,” Aimée said, raising her voice, “that makes him look bad.”
    “I’ll try, got to go,” she said, and hung up.
    “What did Martine say?”
    “Besides gushing over Deneuve? She’s rushing to interview fashionistas, do profiles on glamour queens not afraid to get dirt under their fingernails, get sidebar tidbits on hot new authors. If only I could see or . . .”
    She reached for his hand and found his arm.
    “René, remember the article we read in the Japanese software magazine about technology for the blind?”
    Silence. She heard René take a deep breath. “You mean the screen reader software that converts text into speech?”
    “Exactly,” she said. “And the speech recognition software that converts speech into text for the laptop?”
    “We make a deal,” he said. “You let me help find who attacked you, and I’ll get you these software programs. Even if I have go to Japan to do it.”
    “Deal.”
    But René didn’t have to go that far. A few phone calls and he found several programs via a hacker friend in the Sentier.
    “He’s leaving,” said René. “If I don’t go now, I won’t get it installed . . .”
    “But first I have to make sure the victim was the woman in the resto,” she interrupted, “and check the speed dial numbers on this woman’s phone.”
    “There’s time for that,” René said. “The Judiciare problem can’t wait and I need your help.”
    And with that, René left.
    She must have drifted off. Aimée heard the metal rings on the top of the curtain beside her slide across the rod. Footsteps hurried across the linoleum.
    “Mademoiselle Leduc, we’re evacuating the ward,” said the nurse from Burgundy, the nice one. She broke Aimée’s reverie of a gloom-filled future: her apartment sold to pay debts, creditors hounding René at Leduc Detective.
    “Evacuating? There’s a fire . . . ?”
    No smell of smoke.
    “A train disaster . . . the TGV crashed coming into Gare