In minutes she had accessed de Laumain’s e-mail.
“So, de Laumain’s a lacrosse aficionado?”
“How’d you know?”
“De Laumain subscribes to five lacrosse newsletters.”
The baby’s coos had turned into faint cries. She stretched her feet to touch the edge of the bed and began to bounce it. The cries escalated.
“You have a baby, Mademoiselle Leduc?” he asked.
She didn’t want to sound unprofessional. “My neighbor had to rush to the pharmacy. The baby’s got a fever, so I . . . I’m helping her out for ten minutes.”
There was a pause. She sensed there was something else he wanted to say. There were shuffling noises in the background.
“De Laumain’s the one,” he said. “Look for the word ‘Darwin’ on the subject line.”
She found two messages with “Darwin” as part of the subject.
“Copy them and send them to my e-mail account,” he ordered. “Can you make their status ‘unread’ and exit without any traces?”
“Not a problem, Monsieur Vavin,” she said.
“Of course you won’t . . . read them.”
“You said this was confidential, right? Is there anything else?”
“Let’s hope not. When my meeting’s over, I’ll call you. We should talk.”
He hung up before she could remind him of the system-design overhaul René ached to do.
“RENÉ?” AIMÉE SHOULDERED her cell phone, left arm holding Stella, her right hand clicking away on the keyboard.
His voice mail answered.
Great. Firewalls were his métier; this job really should be his. She saved her work on a backup disc and sent a copy of the completed program to Regnault, as usual. Her laptop clear, she checked the firewall herself. She had started going through each protection system when her cell phone rang.
“René?”
“What have you found out, Leduc?” Morbier asked.
The last person she wanted to talk to. A click came over the line—someone was calling her . . . René? Vavin?
“I’ve got another call, Morbier, and I’m swamped,” she said, irritated. “Real work.”
“That can wait,” Morbier said. “I can’t. Have you run across Krzysztof Linski?”
Her fingers tightened. Stella moved and Aimée propped the baby on her hip.
“You there, Leduc?”
“Why?”
“He’s been taped on video carrying bottle bombs at the demonstration.”
She hadn’t caught that on Claude’s tapes. But she’d been too busy in his arms on the leather sofa to watch the video again.
“What’s that got to do with the student Orla Thiers?”
But she now knew—Krzysztof, Orla, and Nelie were radicals.
“He’s at it again. There’s another bomb scare at the l’Institut du Monde Arabe.”
“How do you know it’s him?”
“Nelie Landrou’s a suspect,” Morbier said, ignoring her question.“What aren’t you saying, Leduc? You owe me.”
She stared down at Stella. Was her mother a bomber?
“Too easy, Morbier. Simplistic. How can you fall for that?”
“Eh?”
“It’s a setup. Orla and Nelie were taking part in a roadblock of trucks at La Hague’s nuclear fuel processing site. . . . MondeFocus has disowned Krzysztof: they say he’s a loose cannon and a right-wing plant.”
Stella opened her mouth, her pink gums glistening. The key to understanding what was going on was Stella. Aimée had to find Nelie . . . make a deal, get the lowdown on Krzysztof, before doing anything else. Then she’d decide what to tell Morbier.
But to get Morbier off her back she’d have to tell him something more. “I checked Krzysztof’s room, a chambre de bonne. He’s gone, disappeared, sleeping bag and all.”
“So?”
“Think outside the box, Morbier. Orla’s murder could—”
“I try. We get witness reports all the time.”
“Meaning?” What wasn’t he telling her?
“The good news: your local secondhand goods dealer claims a clochard, an old woman, saw her being killed. The bad news: we don’t know how reliable she is. She talks to an imaginary sister and thinks it’s 1942.”
“The brocanteur on rue des Deux Ponts?”
He grunted. She scribbled that on the back of a data report; she would check out this information later. Far-fetched . . . but who knew?
“Back to the point. Why would he set off bombs at a peace march and let himself be videoed carrying them? It doesn’t make sense.”
“I’ll make sure to ask him once he’s behind bars.”
He hung up.
She checked her voice mail and found a terse message from Vavin telling her to meet him at his office at once. She couldn’t bring the baby with her; she had to do something with Stella.
AIMÉE HANDED THE taxi driver an extra twenty francs.“Mind waiting?”
He grinned. “Take your time.”
Her back ached as she climbed the red-carpeted stairs of the building, Stella in her arms, and baby bag dangling from her shoulders.
“Quite the modern maman, Aimée,” Martine said, opening the door. “Juggling everything in designer wear.”
She looked down at her agnès b. black dress, the closest thing at hand without spit-up, which she’d grabbed to wear to her meeting. “The babysitter’s here?”
Martine nodded. “The location of tonight’s reception has been changed.”
“Due to the bomb scare?”
“Can’t have all those sheikhs and oil execs in danger, can they? I’ll call you later when I know it.” Martine showed her to a luxurious children’s bedroom decorated with Babar-theme murals, bunk beds against the walls, and Legos strewn on the floor. She introduced Aimée to Mathilde: tight jeans, big sweater, and gap-toothed smile.
“What a beauty,” Mathilde said. “May I hold her?”
Aimée removed her finger from the hot, wet little mouth and handed Stella to Mathilde. “I’m sure you’re experienced,” she said, half to reassure herself.
Her last view was of the flopping pink bunny-eared cap. All the way down the stairs, she could still feel Stella’s warmth in her arms.
“MONSIEUR VAVIN LEFT THIS FOR YOU,” said the smiling receptionist on the ground floor of the Regnault offices.
“I don’t understand. Isn’t he here?” Aimée asked.
The receptionist shrugged. “I’m sure whatever you need to know is all there. He’s been called to a meeting.”
Called to some meeting and she’d gone through hoops rushing here!
She walked to the tall glass window. She could see a few demonstrators standing outside with banners saying, STOP OIL POLLUTION . . . NO AGREEMENT!
Inside the envelope was a piece of crisp white paper with 41 Quai d’Anjou written on it in Vavin’s script.
Her hand trembled. The address was only a block and a half from her building. Why hadn’t he told her to meet him there?
“Pardonnez-moi, when did Monsieur Vavin leave?”
“I didn’t see him go out.”
“Merci.”
She walked past the bomb-removal squad truck parked on the pavement near l’Institut du Monde Arabe. Several Kevlar-suited men stood around, eyes narrowed at passersby.
“False alarm, eh?” she asked one of the women filing back into the building.
“Can’t be too careful,” the woman said.
“True. What happened?”
“A librarian found a backpack left in the library,” she said.
The flics were jumpy. It made them trigger-happy and dangerous.
FORTY-ONE QUAI D’ANJOU was the address of an upscale antique shop. A buzzer went off as she entered it. Her grandfather had haunted the Drouot auction galleries, scouring the sales for bargains. Her cluttered apartment was testimony to his hobby. She lived surrounded by antiques, his “finds.”