Rook could see the change in her when he came out of his office to join her. “We’re still going,” he said. She told him about the glove and his response was “We’re still going.”
“But I feel like I’m being irresponsible. Like I should stay close in case something breaks.”
“You’re on leave. And what are you going to do, sit outside the door to Forensics, yelling ‘Hurry up’ every half hour?” She chewed at the inside of her lip, unsold. “Nikki, we covered this last night. Remember Boston? We ended up ID-ing Nicole and connecting her to your mom, big-time.”
“All right,” she said. “We’re still going.”
“Excellent. Because the real reason is those tickets are nonrefundable.”
Their overnight flight got them into Paris-Charles de Gaulle at six the next morning. Both slept soundly on the plane, but as a contingency, Rook had reserved and paid for their room from the previous night so they could nap and adjust if they needed to without waiting for afternoon check-in. “Nice,” said Nikki on their ride up in the elevator.
“I know it’s not the George V, and the name Washington Opera doesn’t sound very French, but as boutique hotels go, this is a find.” Rook told her the elegant building was the former town house of Madame de Pompadour, and Nikki couldn’t help but think of her father’s job when he arrived in Europe in his twenties, finding properties just like this to invest in and flip. The thought both comforted and unsettled her. She reflected on her therapist’s message to reconnect to the past she had been avoiding and accepted that this would be a trip of mixed emotions that needed to be felt.
From their room, Rook opened the shutters to show her Paris’s oldest bakery across the street, promising warm croissants and pain au chocolat every morning. “The Louvre is a few blocks that way,” he said, pointing to his left. “The Opera is to our right, and out the back of the hotel, the gardens of Le Palais Royale. Curb your dog, please.”
“If we were here for sightseeing, that would all be splendid,” she said. “Or does this fall under your rather loose definition of Romantic Trip While On The Case?”
“Paris? How can you talk about romance while we’re in Paris? We have work to do. You’ve got the number of Nicole’s parents, and as soon as it’s nine A.M., we’re calling them.”
“That’s a half hour away.”
“Then I say we strip and knock off a quick one.”
“How romantic.”
“Paris, baby,” he said, and they raced each other bare.
NINE
Lysette Bernardin picked up Heat’s phone call sounding wary and frail, which she attributed not to age but to the soul-crushing grief Nikki had heard in the voices of so many families of murder victims over time. The old woman spoke excellent English and brightened when she learned that the caller was the daughter of her dear Nicole’s best friend, Cynthia. Her husband was at a doctor’s appointment for his new hip until early afternoon. Madame Bernardin gave Heat the address on Boulevard Saint-Germain near Rue du Dragon and they fixed two P.M. for a visit.
They took a taxi—a new Mercedes—to the Left Bank and had the driver drop them not far from the Bernardins’ apartment so they could have some lunch before their meeting. Rook had his mind on reliving the Rive Gauche writer’s experience, either at Les Deux Magots or Cafe de Flore. Both were crowded with tourists. Even the iconic sidewalk tables were hemmed in by rolling carry-on luggage. They opted for an open table across the boulevard at Brasserie Lipp, which Johnny Depp had told Rook also once served as a hangout for the likes of Hemingway, Proust, and Camus. “Can you imagine waiting on an existentialist?” asked Rook. “‘What will you have, Mr. Camus, the steak tartare or the escargots?’ ‘Oh … What does it matter?’”
Heat checked her watch. “One o’clock here. In New York, they should be in the precinct by now.” She tapped in the international code and called Raley’s cell.