“He still works with stolen art, n’est-ce pas?”
“Bah ouais,” came the typical Parisian reply. “That’s what they do there, Mademoiselle.”
“Mind transferring me?”
A click. Another receptionist, who transferred her to the third floor, then another series of clicks. A bland recording of extension numbers. Finally, after punching in Lieutenant Olivant’s extension, she got his voice mail. Didn’t anyone answer their office lines anymore?
She got as far as giving her name and number before the recorded voice came on. Message box full.
Great. She’d try later. Right now a big, fat zero.
The old man’s letter hadn’t shed any light on one mystery, though. How did Yuri know her mother? Dead, he couldn’t tell her. But if there was any chance to learn something about her mother, she’d find it.
By now the flics would have questioned people on the street, the inhabitants of Villa d’Alésia. The mink-coated neighbor knew something—even if she didn’t know she did. She’d heard the raised voices. Aimée had to risk going back there to find this Oleg. She didn’t even know his last name.
“YOU AGAIN?”
Yuri Volodya’s neighbor, Madame Figuer, whose name Aimée discovered by reading the mailbox, stood in her door in a black jogging suit. Her red-rimmed eyes darted under freshly applied black eyebrows. “The flics want to talk to you, Mademoiselle. Ask you why you ran away.”
“Please, Madame, I need your help,” Aimée said. “I’ll explain.”
Madame Figuer gripped a pink cell phone. “May I help?” She punched in a number. “Explain it to them.”
Aimée reached out and hit END. “Pardonnez-moi, Madame, but no phone calls. Desolée, it’s important.”
Alarmed, Madame Figuer stepped back. Started to close her door. “Leave me alone.”
Aimée stuck her foot in the door. “Please, we need to talk.”
“They said you could be an accomplice.” Her voice rose. “Dangerous.”
“Can you keep a secret?” Aimée shouldered her way inside, going with her plan B: on-the-fly improvisation—approaching plausible, she hoped. She needed to keep this woman quiet and glean information.
“Madame, my unit investigates stolen art of national cultural importance,” she said, reaching in her bag. “Not many know of us. We work out of 3 rue de Lutèce.”
At least her contact did. Unless the bureau had moved. Openmouthed, Madame Figuer stared at her.
“Art investigator? In that outfit?”
Aimée noticed a nick on her Prada boots. The pair she’d borrowed from Martine.
“You think we wear uniforms? Forget those crime shows you watch on the télé, Madame,” Aimée said. “Nothing exotic. Our cases involve painstaking investigation. Any detail could lead to recovery.”
Madame Figuer pulled herself ramrod straight. She was about to throw Aimée out the door.
“We work independently, but often in tandem with police,” Aimée said. “Our interest coincides here, but I’m working another angle.”
“Likely story. You ran off.”
Aimée nodded. “I’m undercover. But I shouldn’t have told you.”
“So I should believe that? Show me your credentials, your ID.”
Undercover never carried ID. Too compromising if they were rumbled. But Madame Figuer wouldn’t know that. She pulled a card from her alias collection.
“Ministry of the Interior?” asked Madame Figuer.
“Thefts from cathedrals, state museums. In certain cases we investigate robbery from private collections. But that’s all I can say.” Aimée leaned forward as if in confidence. “I’ve told you more than I should. Yet your brother was an artist. Talented.” She gestured to the watercolors in the hallway. “You of all people will understand. That’s why I came to explain. Enlist your aid.”
Madame Figuer blinked several times. Cheap to use the dead brother? But Aimée had struck a nerve.
“You can’t think old Yuri possessed …”
“A national treasure, Madame Figuer?” she said. “We do.” Suddenly she noticed a wonderfully buttery smell emanating from the kitchen. Her overwhelming hunger, which she’d forgotten in the excitement of the letter, came roaring back.
“Yuri was tortured and murdered for it?” Madame Figueur’s hands shook.
“I’d rather talk here, but we can go to headquarters.”
Madame Figuer adjusted the jacket zipper of her jogging suit, played with the snap on her coin purse. “But I’m late for the market. The melons. Then the plumber’s coming to repair the water damage.”
“We’ll make this quick.” Aimée gestured to Madame’s kitchen.
By the time Aimée had eaten half the plate of Madame Figuer’s fresh-baked crisp almond financiers plus leftover pain perdu, she’d gleaned an outline of Yuri’s movements for the past three days.
“The flics questioned me,” Madame Figuer said, “but then I didn’t volunteer much. Couldn’t. The shock. I took one of my pink pills.”
“Pills?” The woman was elderly but seemed clear and alert to Aimée.
“For my nerves, you know. When I think of Yuri tortured next door … just like my brother was betrayed and tortured in forty-three … it’s all so.…” Her voice trailed off.
Coincidental? But Aimée kept that to herself. Perhaps Madame’s retelling over the years had, like such stories steeped in shame, become unspoken common knowledge?
Madame Figuer shuddered. “Do you think la police will ask me more questions?”
“Possible.” Aimée needed to work fast. “Let’s go back to when you noticed Yuri got ‘in butter,’ as you said.”