“She made that for me!” said Nikki.
“So, tell me, how am I, as a cook?” Lysette chuckled.
“Three Michelin stars. Your cassoulet was always a special occasion meal.” Lysette clapped her hands together joyfully, but Nikki could see fatigue descending on the old couple, and before they faded, there were some basic questions she needed to ask. The same ones she would ask the parents of any victim from her precinct. “I won’t take much more of your time, but there are some details I wish to know about Nicole.”
“Of course, you are a daughter but policewoman, too, n’est-ce pas?” said Emile. “And, please, if it helps you discover what happened to cher Nicole…” He choked up, and the couple joined hands again.
Detective Heat began with Nicole Bernardin’s work. She asked if she had any professional bad blood such as rivalries or money troubles. They answered no, same as when Nikki asked if they knew of any troublesome relationships in her personal life, either in Paris or New York: lovers, friends, jealous triangles? “How did she seem to you the last time you spoke?”
M. Bernardin looked at his wife and said, “Remember that call?” She nodded and he turned to address Nikki. “Nicole was not herself. She was curt with us. I asked her if something was wrong, and she said no and would say nothing more on the subject. But I could tell she was agitated.”
“When was that call?”
“Three weeks ago,” said Lysette. “That was another unusual thing. Nicole always called on Sundays, just to check in. She went her last weeks without contact.”
“Did she say where she was when she called?”
“An airport. I know this because when I asked her what was wrong, she cut me off and said she had to board her flight.” The woman’s brow fell at the memory.
Rook asked, “Did your daughter have a place here in Paris?” In preparing for the visit he and Nikki had hoped to discover an apartment to search-with the parents’ permission, of course. But Nicole didn’t keep one.
“Whenever she visited the city, Nicole stayed here in her old bedroom.”
“If you don’t have an objection,” asked Detective Heat, “may I see it?”
Nicole Bernardin’s bedroom had long before been redecorated and put to use as an art studio for Lysette, whose watercolor still lifes of flowers and fruit lay about in various stages of completion. “You will pardon the mess,” she said unnecessarily. The room was tidy and organized. “I don’t know what you wish to see. Nicole kept some clothing and shoes in the armoire, not much. You may look.” Nikki parted the antique wood doors and felt the pockets of the few items hanging there, finding nothing. Same for the insides of her shoes and the lone, empty purse hanging on the brass hook. “Everything else of hers is in there,” Lysette said, moving an easel to indicate a large drawer at the bottom of a built-in. Nikki found the drawer as orderly as the rest of the apartment. Clean underwear, bras, socks, shorts, and tees-neatly folded-lived in a clear plastic container. Heat knelt and unsnapped the lid to make her inspection, carefully returning everything as it had been, stacked and sorted. Beside the container sat a pair of running shoes and a bicycle helmet. She examined the interiors of both and found nothing.
“Thank you,” she said, closed the drawer, and replaced the feet of the easel to the dimples they had made in the rug.
As they rejoined Emile in the living room, Rook asked, “Did Nicole keep a computer here?” When Mme. Bernardin said no, he continued, “What about mail? Did she get any mail here?”
M. Bernardin said, “Nothing, no mail.” But when he said it, both Heat and Rook noticed something unsettled in the way he lingered on the thought.
“You seem unsure about the mail,” said Nikki.
“No, I am quite sure she got no mail here. But when you asked me, it reminded me that someone else had recently asked the same thing.”
Heat got out her notepad, making complete her transition from houseguest to cop. “Who asked you that, M. Bernardin?”
“A telephone caller. Let me think. He said it so quickly. An American voice, I think he said… Sea-crest, yes, Mr. Seacrest. He said he was a business associate of my daughter’s. He called me by my first name, so I had no reason to doubt him.”
“Of course not. And what exactly did this Mr. Seacrest ask you?”
“He was concerned a package of Nicole’s might have been misdirected here by error. I told him nothing had arrived for her here.”
Rook asked, “Did he describe what kind of package or what might be in it?”
“Mm, no. As soon as I said nothing had come, he got off the line quickly.”
Heat quizzed him about the caller and any characteristics about his voice-age, accent, pitch-but the old man came up at a loss. “Do you remember when the call came?”
“Yes, a few days ago. Sunday. In the evening.” She made a note and he asked, “Do you think it is suspicious?”
“It’s hard to know, but we’ll check it out.” Nikki handed him one of her business cards. “If you think of anything else, and especially if anyone contacts you again to ask about Nicole, please call that number.”
Lysette said, “It has been a pleasure to meet you, Nikki.”
“And you,” she said. “I feel like you gave me a glimpse into a big part of my mother’s life that I missed. I wish I could have learned more about it from her.”
Mme. Bernardin got up. “Do you know what I want to do, Nikki? I have something I’d like to share with you that you may find enlightening. Excusez-moi. ”
Heat sat again, and in Lysette’s absence Emile topped their glasses, even though neither had gone beyond the toast sip. Nikki said, “My father met my mother when she was playing at a cocktail party in Cannes. He said she had been getting by doing that and giving piano lessons. Did she start that here during the summer she visited you?”
“Oh, yes. And I am proud to say that I was instrumental in finding her employment.”
“Were you involved in music?” she asked.
“Only to sing in the shower,” he said. “No, no, my business was commercial and corporate insurance. Through that work I developed a relationship with an investment banker-an American who was living here who became a dear friend of the family. Nicole adored him so much she called him Oncle Tyler.”
“Uncle Tyler,” said Rook.
“Very good,” said Emile with a wink at Nikki. For no reason other than instinct she asked his name. “Tyler Wynn. A charming man. I got a lot of business through him over the years. He was very well connected to international investors and knew anyone who mattered in Paris. And Tyler’s generosity of referrals didn’t just extend to me. No, no. Whenever Nicole was home from Boston, he would find her summer work as a music tutor for the children of some of his wealthy acquaintances. It was good experience for her and paid very well.”
“And kept her out of trouble,” said Rook.
Emile pointed a forefinger to the air. “Best of all.”
Nikki had done the math and urged him on. “So this Tyler Wynn also found tutoring clients for my mother that summer?”
“Exactly. And Cindy was so good at it, soon she had appointments every day. Tyler made more referrals and one job led to another. Some of her patrons who had vacation homes would even hire your mother to come along with their family on les vacances to continue the tutoring. A week in Portofino, another in Monte Carlo, then Zurich or the Amalfi coast. Travel, room and board, all first class. Not a bad life for a woman of twenty-one, eh?”
“Unless your life was supposed to be something else,” she said.
“Ah, once again, Nikki, so much like your mother. Both dutiful and beautiful.” He took a sip of wine. “Remember what one of our philosophers once said, ‘In the human heart there is a perpetual generation of passions, such that the ruin of one is almost always the foundation of another.’”
Lysette seemed newly invigorated by her mission and hurried back into the room carrying a keepsake container about the size of a shoebox covered in burgundy and white toile fabric with matching burgundy ribbon ties done into bows. “I can see I’ve been gone too long. Emile’s quoting maxims again.” She stood before Nikki’s chair and said, “In this box are old photos I kept of Cynthia from her times with Nicole and also of your mother’s travels. Cindy was a wonderful correspondent. If you please, I am not going to look through them with you now. I don’t think I am able to endure seeing them at the moment.” Then she offered the box. “Here.”