His body slid forward, limp. He was not conscious. She took his head in her hands, turned it to face her. His eyes stared up at her, lifeless. Then she saw the clotted blood on his temple and glimpsed the cell phone in his hand. No wonder he hadn’t answered it.
“Nom de Dieu!” the guard gasped, knocking over a bucket and spilling ammoniated suds over the wooden floor.
“Quick! Get help.” Aimée grabbed the guard’s arm and they laid Vavin flat on the suds-soaked planks.
Xaviera backed away, crossing herself.
Vavin’s phone tumbled to the floor. Aimée hit a button to stop the ringing and thrust the phone at Xaviera. ”Call 17 . . . call the ambulance!”
Vavin’s eyes seemed to stare at her. Watching her, he was watching her. The guard cleared Vavin’s mouth of spittle, began mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.
Aimée tried to steady herself. Her fingers on Vavin’s wrist confirmed that he was not even cold. His fists were clenched.
“How long has he been here? Did you see him come in?”
Xaviera shook her head. “I non . . . non see him.”
No pulse. Lifeless.
Aimée looked around the barren backstage; there was no place for the attacker to hide. She didn’t remember seeing anyone else in the theatre.
The guard said, “He’s gone,” and reached for his walkie-talkie.
She’d been too late. She wondered what he’d wanted to tell her. He’d left the message an hour and a half ago. Why had he asked her to meet him at the antique store?
To see Nelie? But a few weeks had passed since Nelie had accompanied Vavin there.
She heard the static of the guard’s walkie-talkie. Her eye rested on the photo of a child amid the soaked clutter spilling from Vavin’s briefcase onto the floor. A happy little girl sitting on a rocking horse.
The guard got to his feet.
Something glinted among the broom bristles. A key ring. One she remembered Vavin pocketing in his office. Had the killer, searching through Vavin’s briefcase, missed it? Or had Vavin tried to hide the keys? She had to deflect the guard’s attention.
“Did you check in the wings?” she asked him.
As he turned, she reached down and clutched the keys, dropped them into her pocket, and stood. She backed into the velvet curtain, then made for the stage stairs.
“Attendez, you know him, don’t you?” the guard asked.
He was sharp, just her luck.
“Hold on,” he called out.
And wait for the flics and a trip to the Commissariat to give a statement that would reveal her connection to Vavin? Not on her life. She had to work fast, use her sysadmin access, and read his e-mail before the firm turned it over to the police. She wanted to search his office before whoever did this got there first.
He’d wanted to tell her something. And was murdered before he could.
More crackling sounds came from the walkie-talkie. The guard spoke into it.
The implications spiraled, spinning in her head. Vavin’s knowledge of Nelie, his desperation concerning a co-worker’s e-mail, and the meeting, the fact that he was her boss . . . she’d mull that over later. Right now she had to leave.
“I’ll show them the way,” she said, edging down the steps.
“The location’s been radioed in. What’s your name?”
But she was already striding up the aisle. “Non, it will be quicker if I guide them.”
“Wait,” he barked.
Xaviera’s sobbing and the guard’s shouts telling her to stop echoed in the empty theatre.
SHE RAN DOWN THE stairs, colliding with a man in a black turtleneck sweater who held a folded-back script. Irritation knit his brows.
“Pardon me.”
The hall was full of people; conversations buzzed all around her.
“Point me to the restroom, please?” she asked him.
“Down there.”
She rushed past him down the stairs to the street level, realizing she smelled of ammonia. The door to the ladies’ room was locked. The mens’ room door, too.
A siren wailed from down the passageway. Morbier would give short shrift to her deepening suspicions. And so far, that’s all she had.
Vavin . . . his eyes staring up at her. Why kill him?
She had to find a way out and get to his office fast.
Several doors lay ahead. She tried one. Locked. And the next.
A loud voice filled the courtyard. “No one leave the building, please.” She looked back, saw blue uniforms. Talk about fast response! But since the nearby bomb threats, they were on high alert.
The third door opened. She ran inside a vestibule where hanging coats and damp umbrellas leaned against the paneled walls. The next door, was locked, too. She took off her wet heels and found her red high-tops, emergency footwear, in her bag and laced them up. The door scraped opened.
Voices and dense cigarette smoke emanated from the next room.
“Entrez,” someone said. “Sorry to keep you waiting.”
Before she could stuff her wet shoes into her bag and leave, a man’s face appeared at the door.
“Aaah, you’re changing. But we’ve only got five minutes. You’re the last one.”
She nodded.
“After you,” he said, gesturing her inside. “Here, I’ll take your things.”
“Wait . . .”
But he’d taken her shoes and the bag with her laptop and gone ahead.
Nothing she could do but walk in, make an excuse, and retrieve her bag.
Bright lights and a haze of cigarette smoke hit her.
“Mademoiselle, if you don’t mind,” another voice said. “Go to the right.”
She turned.
“Non, face right. Bon.”
She felt like a deer caught in the headlights.
A murmur of voices: “ . . . tall enough, what’s with the shoes? Non, it’s eclectic . . . androgynous look . . . too skinny?”
She could distinguish several heads through the haze of smoke and the burning orange tips of cigarettes.
“Dip, please.”
What the hell did that mean?
“From the knees, please.”
She took a step and tripped. An arm caught hers.
“We’re making a video, not auditioning for a clown act, Mademoiselle.”
What?
She bent her knees and kept her back straight, afraid to bump into anything else.
“Now lower, more décolletage!”
A porn video? They wouldn’t see much of her in this agnès b. spaghetti-strap dress. She bent and thrust her chest out while peering through the haze for another door.
“Now jump in place once, then run over there—make space for her, please—as if you’re afraid.”
At this moment, that wouldn’t require her to act.
Someone pounded on the door.
She jumped higher than she’d intended, heard the table vibrate when she landed, then kept running.
“Over here,” someone said. She found herself by a group of women sitting on the edge of a small stage. Some filed their nails; one thumbed a Marie Claire magazine. All wore foundation, black eye makeup, and had platinum or dirty-blonde hair reaching below their shoulders.
A number was thrust at her.
“We’re ready. Mount the stage, please, Mesdemoiselles.”
She followed them, out of place except for the number that she—like the rest of them—held. Unlike the others, she had dark spiky hair, wore no heels, and had no décolletage to speak of. They stood on the stage like a lineup of Barbie dolls; she was the black sheep.
“One last dip, please.”
What was with this dip?
She watched the others, mimicked them, and thrust her chest out even more. Several men had entered the room. She heard the static of a walkie-talkie. The flics.