Natasha took another sugar cube between her teeth. A good set of dentures, Aimée figured. Natasha’s gaze wandered. Her neck muscles quivered under thin white skin.
Aimée leaned forward. She needed this old woman to open up. “Wasn’t Piotr instrumental in the twenties avant-garde art movement?”
“Instrumental? Piotr was a penniless Russian émigré from the shtetl. Just a classic émigré story.” Natasha waved her thin blue-veined hands. “In those days, after the Revolution, you’d find a prince driving a taxi.” She sighed. “Piotr served … how do you say it, like a waiter in a bistro where destitute artists—all famous now—paid for meals with their paintings.”
Natasha sounded rational. As if she’d heard this story many times.
“Worth a fortune now, I’d imagine,” Aimée said.
“A franc a dozen then. You call that instrumental in the avant-garde?” Natasha’s tone turned petulant. “Piotr’s supposed to help me. Awful man, late again.” She pushed her wheelchair back. “But you young know the price of everything, not the value. See art as merchandise to trade and sell.”
Surprised, Aimée shook her head. “I don’t understand. Didn’t Piotr pass his painting collection to Yuri?”
“You sound just like Yuri’s stepson.”
Aimée’s mind went back to Yuri’s neighbor’s words—how Oleg the stepson had been buzzing around him like a fly lately.
“Oleg’s no friend of mine,” Aimée said. How could she make sense of the strands running through the old woman’s words? To do that, she’d need to gain her trust. “As you know, Piotr’s on a mission. I came to assist.”
“But the code.…” Natasha’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. “I thought you knew.”
The old woman went from rational to irrational in seconds. Would Aimée have that to look forward to if she lived as long?
“There are more letters, n’est-ce pas?”
“Like everything else, I had to keep them for him. They’re somewhere, of course.”
Letters that should have been given to Yuri. Letters that could authenticate the painting, she imagined.
“All his talk about drinking la fée vert,” Natasha said.
La fée vert, the green fairy, the old name for absinthe. Where did that come from?
“Absinthe’s been outlawed a long time,” Aimée said.
“All those drinks at la Rotonde with the artists, poets, revolutionaries, anarchists,” Natasha said. “Montparnasse in the old days. The good old days. As if Piotr knew.”
Aimée started to put things together.
“Tall tales, eh? Or you believed him?”
“Piotr loved recounting how Lenin bounced him on his knee. The way Modigliani wore a red scarf and danced on the table.”
Aimée remembered that lesson in history class about the Russian Revolution. 1917. She calculated mentally that Piotr, if one hundred years old, would have.…
“I’m tired,” Natasha said. She clicked the remote and the télé went dark.
Instead of leaving, she could go along with the old biddy and search for more letters.
“Let me take you to your room,” Aimée said.
NATASHA’S ROOM GAVE off that same cloying rose scent she’d noticed before, coupled with disinfectant. A hospital bed with a stained duvet, old Russian newspapers piled on a secrétaire desk with an old-fashioned inkwell—all bathed in light streaming in from the tall window. A small armoire and chest of drawers were topped by china figurines, giving off a sense of genteel disorder. Framed sepia-tinted ballet posters covered the walls, which were fringed by a ceiling of carved wood boiserie. So many places to hide letters.
“They’re listening,” Natasha whispered, gesturing to the ceiling. “They put special devices in the wallboards.”
Aimée gave a knowing nod, determined to get some sense out of her. Appeal to her somehow. “Between you and me, Natasha, I’m shocked Yuri and his father didn’t get along,” she said, trying again. “Any idea why?”
“Piotr always said he wanted Yuri to understand.” She leaned toward Aimée conspiratorially.
“To understand what?”
Natasha shrugged her thin shoulders. “So sad. He trusted me with everything.”
“The letters, that’s what you mean?”
“It’s all in the code.” Natasha’s blue eyes sparkled. “We celebrated Piotr’s one hundredth birthday last month. Big celebration. Even the priest from the Alexander Nevsky church came.”
Aimée knew the Russian Orthodox church on rue Daru—a gold cupolaed confection near the Parc Monceau. Nestled in an enclave called Little Russia in the chic 8th arrondissement, the church was well known for its Orthodox ceremonies. René had found a terrific freelancer, a dissident émigré hacker who went by the name Rasputin, on the job board at the side vestry. It was a Russian community hub.
Was Natasha dropping a clue here?
“Any bad blood between Yuri and Piotr?”
Natasha fiddled with the control on her oxygen tank. “Piotr abandoned his son and his mother.” A sigh. “I think Piotr wanted to make it up to Yuri. But never had the chance.”
Or maybe he did. In butter, the neighbor had said. And Aimée had Yuri’s cash in her bag.
“Didn’t Piotr leave Yuri something special, Natasha?”
Natasha yawned. “Where’s Piotr’s key?”
“Key?”
“In his drawer. There was a key.” A bell sounded from downstairs. “His son took it. But he didn’t take everything.”
“A key to what?”
“How do I know?”
“What did it look like?”
Natasha yawned again. Her lids drooped.
“Small, like for a bank safety deposit box? Or a bigger key, like to an apartment or storage? Try to remember, Natasha.”
“Old-fashioned.” Natasha rang a bell for the nurse. “I need my pills.”
Aimée scanned the room. Handed Natasha the pink pills in the oval plastic cup. “These?”
Natasha shook her head. “I want the purple ones.”
Now or never. She’d appeal to the paranoia. “I’ve got to find the cameras, Natasha.”