“The cameras? Mais, oui. I want to dance,” she said, her breathing labored. “Get my tights.”
Aimée opened the drawers: mothball-tinged lace camisoles, graying leotards crumbling to her touch. In the armoire she found folded linens, hanging vintage wool coats, a pleated Fortuny pale lemon chemise. Timeless.
The secrétaire drawers yielded worn leather boxes of costume and paste jewelry. A gray, gummed tarnish came off on Aimée’s fingers.
Perspiration dampened the back of Aimée’s neck, the thin skin at the crook of her elbow. The old woman had become quiet during her search. Aimée shot her a glance.
Natasha’s lids drooped. Short, shallow breaths issued from her. The oxygen tank meter level had dropped to the red range. What should she do?
Aimée twisted the oxygen meter knob, but the needle stayed steady on red. Her stomach clenched. The poor old woman wasn’t getting oxygen. Thank God the red call light lit up on the wall. A bell rang from the corridor. She figured she had a minute at most.
She shook the Russian newspapers. No hidden letters. Desperate, she reached under the hospital mattress, looked under the bed and found dust balls. Footsteps pounded in the hallway. She ran her hands under the crisp cotton pillow. Inside the pillowcase she felt something hard and cylindrical, recognized an old-fashioned pneumatic tube. She stuffed the tube in her waistband.
Of course it made sense now.
“Madame Natasha?”
A nurse stared at Aimée. She stiffened. “What are you doing?”
“Quick. Her oxygen’s.…”
“Low because she fiddled with the knobs again.” A sigh came from the nurse who turned on the reserve. “It happens every day. Why are you in here?”
“I can’t find her tutu.”
Natasha sat up, wide awake, with a glint of fire in her crow’s-feet eyes. “Stop her, she’s the Okhrana agent. She’s spying on me!”
Aimée fluffed the pillow, then shot the nurse a knowing look. “Bien s?r, Madame Natasha. Next time we’ll decipher the code.”
Aimée winked at the nurse on her way out the door. She took the stairs two at a time. Too bad the writing she’d glimpsed inside was in Russian.
But she knew where to start. She climbed on her Vespa, double-knotted her scarf, and headed back to Paris.
“PIOTR VOLODYA? I don’t know him,” said the plump, black-cassocked priest with matching black beard. He sported a thick gold cross on his chest. “Can’t help you, Mademoiselle.”
He reminded her of a black bear standing on the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral steps.
“You’re sure he’s not one of your flock, Father?” She smiled. “The nursing home at Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois mentioned that one of your priests visited for Piotr Volodya’s one hundredth birthday party.”
“The rector might know, but he’s in Nantes until tomorrow, Mademoiselle. Check back then.”
The priest stepped down the last step of the cathedral’s wide staircase. He waved to several women setting out food on a table under an umbrella by budding plane trees. Young boys played nearby. A quiet islet of peace next to the church. Plates of smoked fish, thick black bread. Quite a spread. Reminded her she hadn’t eaten since a yogurt this morning.
“If you’ll excuse me, Mademoiselle?”
A dead end already?
“Sadly, Piotr passed away,” she said, thinking hard. “Alone. But I want to inform his relatives in Russia. Or here. Speak with someone who knew him.”
“Now I remember,” he said. “That was Father Ninkinov. But he’s down south for a retreat.”
Didn’t people confide in priests? Especially dying people? She pressed her card in the priest’s big hands.
“The man died without family here. I’m just trying to help out. Please ask Father Ninkinov to contact me.”
“A retreat of silence, Mademoiselle.” He turned away.
Now she didn’t hold out much hope. Her heels scrunched over the gravel, trying to keep up with him. As they passed the message board, paper slips with Cyrillic names and phone numbers fluttering in the breeze, she made one last attempt. “I need a translator. Who do you recommend, Father?”
He paused long enough to consider the board. “Marevna or Valeria. Try either of these two.” He tore them off. “Don’t forget to mention Father Medveyed recommended you.”
“You’re a close community, Father,” she said, biting her tongue before adding “closed against outsiders.”
“Cautious,” he said. “Introductions count within our community, just like in yours.”
Did they have such different cultures? Not for the first time she felt she was stepping into another world, complete with a language and alphabet she couldn’t decipher.
“Merci, Father.”
A few pops of the gravel and he disappeared under the trees.
THE TRAIL HADN’T iced up yet. The first twelve hours after a murder—crucial in an investigation—yielded the most. Her father had drilled that into her.
But she could kick herself for not insisting Yuri reveal what made this painting so valuable that it was stolen before the appraisal. Why he’d begged for her help, then changed his mind.
She reached the first recommended translator, Marevna, who agreed to meet with her. At last, some luck. Aimée circled chic Place de Catalogne in the 14th arrondissement and wound her scooter down rue du Chateau, run down in places, passing narrow lanes marked by two-story workshops, a bakery, a cobbler shop. The old Paris.