“Allô?”
“Mademoiselle Leduc?” said a familiar voice. She searched her memory, came up blank. The guitar of an old Georges Brassens song played in the background, punctuated by an engine starting.
“Oui?”
“You asked about a tire iron. Well, one’s missing from the garage stockroom.”
Momo, the mechanic from the garage near Pont de Sully. Chances were the figure in Place Bayre had stolen the tire iron while Nelie was telephoning Aimée, and had then used it to attack Orla. Not a comforting thought.
“Momo,” she said. “Can you remember anything more about the woman who used the garage phone?”
No, I’m sorry,” he said. “
Too bad.
“But I thought I saw her,” he said as she was about to click off.
She gripped the phone tighter. “You did? Where?”
“The scarf . . .” The sound was muffled as he put his hand over the phone, speaking to someone.
She controlled her frustration. “Her scarf, Momo, you’re sure? Do you remember the color, the design?”
“Chic, you know,” he said. “Never saw one embroidered like that. But I’m not sure. Just an old woman. They’re like crows, you know; they go through the garbage—”
“What color?” she interrupted.
“Chic, with papillons, pink butterflies. I’ve got to go.”
He hung up.
INSIDE HER APARTMENT, all was still except for the strains of a lullaby. From the doorway, she saw René sprawled on the recamier, eyes closed, mouth open. Miles Davis was curled on the floor by René and faint whistles of sleep came from the bundle in the hammock. She checked on Stella. And sat, watching her, lost contemplating the little balled fists and feathery eyelashes until she noticed a note in René’s handwriting. It read, Never wake a sleeping baby. Nesting all right. And in this case, it was a tired René who was catching up on his sleep. The old lullaby on the tape deck played over and over again.
His laptop screen showed a program running a standard virus check. Bon. Again René had it all under control.
Still, she prepared a bottle, in case, then sat down, expectant. But Stella’s little peeps of breath came measured and slow. She glanced at the clock, then tiptoed to her bedroom, riffled through the hangers in her armoire. A white military-style frock coat with a double row of buttons, over-the-knee boots, striped black-and-white trousers with a Left Bank mottled brown leather oversized doctor’s bag? Or a more soignée Right Bank assembly of cropped wool Chanel jacket and rope of pearls worn over dark washed jeans and stilettos with a metallic python-skin handbag?
Neither. Her role was that of a concerned eco journalist. She chose the jeans, stilettos, frock coat, a T-shirt silk-screened with Che Guevara’s chiseled face and her leather backpack, pinched her cheeks for color, and daubed a drop of Chanel No. 5 in the hollow of her throat.
“ SANTÉ . ” AIMÉE CLINKED her wineglass against Claude’s. The bottle of Chinon sat open and breathing on the wooden West African manioc-kneading table. At least her pants were dry and she wouldn’t drip puddles on the floor this time.
“I am so sorry the video didn’t come out more clearly. But take it with you.” Claude brushed his hair back. His long legs were clad in black leather pants and he wore a black V-neck sweater and a small silver hoop in his ear. “Did Brigitte help you reach Nelie?”
She felt stupid. He looked as if he had dressed for a date. She thought she had better leave now.
“Non, but I’ll keep trying. Merci.” She downed the wine in one gulp and picked up her bag.
“Wait a minute—why rush off? I’ve got a joke to tell you.” He threw his arms up in mock supplication. “I’ve practiced it all afternoon.”
Was this part of his “lighten up” campaign?
“Sit down again,” he said, refilling her glass.
“Do I have to laugh?” She took a sip. The wine slid down her throat, smooth and full bodied.
“In Dakar, a steamroller operator’s at work flattening the dirt for the highway. He is injured. His friend goes to visit him in the hospital. ‘What room’s my friend in?’ he asks the nurse. ‘Rooms 15, 16, and 17.’”
Aimée grinned dutifully but she didn’t find his joke very amusing.
“OK, I tried,” he said.
She hoped he wasn’t going to pull out some cowrie-shell game to teach her.
“Now it’s your turn.”
Jokes . . . she didn’t know any clean enough, or politically correct enough, for a documentary filmmaker.
She pointed to the tattoo of a lizard on his arm. “Nice. From Africa?”
“Marseilles, on the dock. Young, dumb, and drunk,” he said. He ran his hand up her arm. “Do you have any tattoos?”
She averted her face, blushing.
“Look at me.” He grinned. “You do!”
She couldn’t lie before that intense dark gaze.
“A Marquesan lizard,” she said, “the symbol of change, with the sacred tortoise inside.”
“Et donc, didn’t I say we were the same? Both branded with lizards. Show me.”
She took another sip of wine, shook her head, and stared at the tribal rug under her feet.
“From Marseilles, too?”
“It’s a secret,” she said, loath to admit that she had once had to hide from a flic in a Sentier tattoo parlor and wound up with one.
When she looked up, his face was almost touching hers, so close his eyelashes feathered her cheek. “We all have secrets,” he breathed in her ear.
His finger traced her mouth. Soft and warm. The only sound in that moment was the patter of rain on the glass roof over the courtyard. She inhaled his sandalwood scent, stronger now, engulfing her.
A tentative look shone in his dark eyes. “What’s in your mind right now?”
Her fingers explored his shoulders. “You really want to know?” The wine was talking, she couldn’t believe she’d said that.
Then his arm was around her waist. His hand dropped to the small of her back.
“I know what’s in mine,” he said.
His hair brushed her chin, his warm lips finding her neck.
“Time to see your lizard.” His arms were tightened around her, pulling her toward him. His mouth was on hers, tasting it.
“Then you’ll have to find it.”
Wednesday Afternoon
KRZYSZTOF SENSED THE presence of the plainclothes flic leaning against the scuffed wainscoting of the engineering lecture hall before he recognized him. He’d noticed the man shifting from one foot to the other in his fresh white Nikes. It was the same flic who had showed him Orla’s body in the morgue. He turned on his heel, suppressed a shudder, and merged with a laughing group of Sorbonne students heading out of the hall.
Brigitte had turned him in. And the flics had lost no time in tracing him here. He had to move fast, to get away. He broke from the group by the reception desk, eased down a passage toward a sign saying ÉLECTRICITÉ BUREAU, and opened the door. Inside, he balled up his sweatshirt jacket, pulled a brown ribbed sweater from his backpack, and put it on. Then he studied the diagram on the wall that showed the exits from the building in case of fire.