She was caught in bright lights on stage.
“Number 13.”
She waited for one of the women to step forward. Looked around behind her for a door. Saw a red lighted EXIT sign. But she needed her bag with her laptop, and the man had taken it!
“Number 13!”
“That’s you,” the blonde woman next to her hissed. And she shoved Aimée forward.
“We need to question everyone,” a flic was saying.
Her hands shook.
The man who’d taken her bag clutched her arm and guided her to the table, behind which several men were seated. She saw a pile of whips and jackets on the chair. “I’m cold, do you mind?” Without waiting for a reply, she pulled the closest jacket to her—a hand-stitched feathered brocade affair further adorned with a vintage diamanté brooch—and slipped her arms into the sleeves.
“Your portfolio’s not here,” said a man at the table.
The flics stood in a circle by the strobe lights. “Auditions, I told you,” a tall man was saying. “We’ve been here all afternoon, Officer. We rent this room by the hour. Now can we get back to work, eh?”
“Who’s your agent?” the man asked her.
Aimée thought quickly. “Her card’s in my bag. Can I have it?” She beamed her brightest smile at him. “I just switched to a new agency.”
Her eyes stung from the smoke and the glare of the lights. Someone thrust her bag and shoes into her lap. She dug into her card case, picked one of her aliases with a Saint Germain address, and handed it to him.
“If you’ll assemble everyone in the courtyard,” the flic said, annoyance in his voice. “It won’t take long.”
They’d have a crowd to question with the actors, the women at the audition, and the crew. Before they could proceed, they would try to contain the possible witnesses while waiting for the medical examiner.
“I’ll be in touch,” the man with the tousled hair said, his gaze skimming her legs.
I bet you will, she thought.
“Feel like an aperitif?” he asked.
Fluff from the feather edging on the jacket got in her eyes and she blinked.
“Love to,” she smiled. Glanced at her watch. Shrugged. “But”—she leaned forward—“this will take forever.”
He turned around. “Merde!”
She grabbed her tube of Stop Traffic Red and swiped it across her lips.
“Unless we go out the back door.” She licked her lips.
He grinned. “Bet you look good in just feathers.”
“I need to make a list,” the flic was saying, “Everyone who’s here. Get your things, ladies.” A flic gestured to them. “You two, now.”
She lingered at the back of the line filing out, trying to catch the eye of the man with the tousled hair. But the flic clapped him on the shoulder and guided him to the front of the line. So much for her hope to use him as cover. What could she do? She leaned down as if to pick up her bag, got onto her hands and knees, and crawled under the table. She could see several pairs of black-stockinged legs and two pairs of solid police brogues just beyond her nose.
The damn feathers kept coming off. She was molting. She crawled sideways, thankful for the dim light. If she could just reach the stage curtains and get behind them . . .
“Wasn’t there another one?” a flic asked.
She reached for the loose change in the bottom of her bag and pitched the coins out onto the floor. They hit the surface, then rolled.
“Et alors, someone dropped a purse,” a voice said.
Heads ducked, eyes focused on the coins, and she crab-walked behind the curtains. She stood against the wall and pulled the dusty curtains around her, trying to cover her toes.
She waited, praying they’d hurry and that she wouldn’t sneeze. Her nose itched and she pinched it hard. The exit door lay behind her, stage left.
“I only count twelve.”
“No, that’s my ten-franc coin.”
“I dropped it; give it back.”
She had to take her chance right now!
She slid from behind the curtain and over to the door, pushed it open, and gently closed it behind her. The exit led to a dank passage, so narrow that her shoulders scraped the sides of the adjacent stone buildings. She broke into a run and found herself on the street next to the post office in a drizzling rain. Several blue-and-white flic cars on her right blocked the way to the quai.
Another pulled up to her left. A bus, wipers going, was stuck in traffic in front of her.
She grabbed a real estate journal from a newsstand, put her head down, and shielded her face with it as she put the stopped bus between herself and the theatre. Keep walking, don’t stop, make it to the brocante, she told herself. A siren wailed on her right and she heard the squeal of brakes.
Wednesday Afternoon
RENÉ FUMED, TAPPING his short fingers on the Citroën’s steering wheel in time to the baroque chamber music on France2. He sat stalled in traffic at Porte de Vincennes with no reception on his cell phone and looming trucks sending waves of rain over the windshield. His seat was customized for his height. He adjusted the knob that extended the accelerator pedal to ease his aching leg.
Five centimeters did it. Eased the twinge in his right leg. But nothing alleviated the low back pain radiating down his legs after the fall he’d taken at the dojo last week. Even though he had earned a black belt in karate, it still happened.
Not that he’d ever let on about that to Aimée. Or that he hoped they’d become more than partners. He repressed that thought.
He planned on buying a stroller in which to push Stella instead of carrying her. But looking at the dashboard clock, he saw that, due to the unexpected traffic, it was now too late to shop. And all this driving and dampness had exacerbated his hip dysplasia.
A sickening crunch and he lurched forward, feeling a sharp twinge in his chest as it hit the steering wheel.
“Merde!” Just what he needed . . . a fender bender. He punched the seat in frustration. Whoever had hit him better have insurance. He switched off the engine, took out paper and pen and his umbrella.
“Not even a dent,” said a red-haired trucker in a rain-beaded slicker after peering at the Citroën’s bumper.
He’d see for himself.
The trucker grinned at him as he took in René’s height. “Where’s the driver, petit?”
“There’s a long scratch on the chrome.” René pointed it out, containing his anger. His 1968 Citroën, specially customized, had a huge slash on its bumper. “See.”
“I said, where’s the driver, little man?”
“I hope you have insurance,” René told him. “And I’m the driver.” He wrote down the truck’s license plate number and the model. “Your license and registration, please.”
The truck driver bent down and peered under René’s umbrella. “You must be a dwarf flic!”
Horns tooted in the pouring rain. Traffic had started to move. Angry shouts came from the cars behind them. The upright row of budding cypresses lining the highway glistened and swayed in the wind.
“Et alors, I only tapped you,” the trucker said with a short laugh. Dismissively, he rubbed his hands, big meaty ones, the skin bulging over a wedding ring. “Quit making a big fuss.”
René didn’t relish arguing on the expressway in the beating rain, his Italian shoes and the cuffs of his suit pants getting soaked. “Have it your way. I’ll deal with your firm and mention your rudeness to your supervisor. I doubt that he’ll be happy to hear about the damage and your attitude, Alphonse.”