This spot of her reenactment was the famous Point Zero, the Paris milestone outward from which all distances are measured in France. This, the saying went, was where all roads began. Nikki hoped so. She just didn’t know where it would lead yet.
They ate at Mon Vieil Ami, a ten-minute stroll to Ile Saint-Louis. Over dinner they talked some more about their visit with Nicole’s parents, which gave Rook a chance to say he didn’t buy Lysette and Emile’s whole theory about Cindy’s taking a break from the rigors of pursuing her passion as the explanation for why she quit her dream. “You have a better theory?” Heat asked. “And does it involve UFOs, cranial needle probes, or memory-erasing light flashes from men in dark suits?”
“You know you hurt me when you mock my outside-the-box approach to case solving. Chide me if you must, but chide me gently. I’m as tender as a fawn.”
“OK, Bambi,” she said, “but don’t look at the chalkboard, venison is the special.”
After they placed their orders, Rook came right back to it. “It’s still the odd sock,” he said. “If someone’s going to prepare her whole life like your mother did for a concert career, she doesn’t just drop it. It’s like an athlete training for the Olympics only to walk away from the starting blocks to become a personal trainer. Great gig, but after all that sacrifice and training?”
“I hear you, but what about what Emile said about changing passions?”
“Uh, with all due respect? Merde. I refer you back to my Olympics versus personal trainer theory. One’s a passion, the other is a J-O-B job.”
Heat said, “All right, maybe it wasn’t necessarily a passion, but you saw her face in those pictures. My mom was having a ball. And probably earning just enough money to make it hard to quit. Maybe the work got to become golden handcuffs.”
“Not that the subject of handcuffs doesn’t titillate me, but that’s also a hard sell. Responsible young woman turns into Paris Hilton in one summer? Doubtful.” His salad and her soup arrived. He took a bite of tender lentils and then continued, “Do you think she had something going with this Tyler Wynn?”
Heat put her fork down and leaned over her plate toward him. “You are talking about my mother.”
“I’m trying to help us—correction, help you—get an understanding of what happened over here to change everything back then.”
“By going to some pretty seedy places.” Her quiet tone was what unnerved him. And the steely gaze.
“Let’s put a pin in it.”
“Good idea.”
“Besides,” he said, “we already hit pay dirt with a suspect. I hope you told Raley and Ochoa to put out an APB on Ryan Seacrest.”
She laughed and said, “Roach had the same response when I called them. Obviously a bogus name, but they’re going to run phone records to see where that call originated last Sunday.”
“It tells us one thing, for sure. Someone definitely wants to get his hands on something. And since the timing of that call came after Nicole’s town house got tossed, we know he didn’t find it.”
“Assuming that it’s the same person looking,” she said.
“Well fine,” he said, teasing her. “If you want to be all ‘objective’ in this investigation instead of leaping to conclusions, go ahead.”
“Objective’s kinda what I do,” she said.
“Kinda,” he said with a tentative edge. Her look told him Nikki knew exactly what he meant by that jab, but she let it go and concentrated on her soup.
A subtle breeze had given the night a soft spring warmth, and when they left the restaurant, Heat and Rook decided to bypass the taxis and walk back to their hotel. They strolled arm in arm over the footbridge to Ile de la Cite, skirting the cathedral and the Palais de Justice until they came to Pont Neuf and stood in one of the bridge’s semicircular bastions to stop the world and enjoy the spectacle of Paris at night reflected in the Seine.