Belligerent and breathless. Not even a bonsoir.
“We had an accident. I’ve filed the insurance claim, everything will be handled. But your stepfather wasn’t hurt.” What’s that to you, she wanted to say, moving away from his crowding elbow.
“Maybe you had something to do with my father’s murder this morning.”
He’d turned the tables. Accused her.
The waiter slid Aimée’s express in front of her. “Monsieur, something to drink?” he asked, poker-faced.
Oleg pointed to Aimée’s cup. “The same.” The waiter nodded and moved down the counter.
“Yuri told me you’re the son of his wife,” she said, unwrapping a sugar cube and plopping it in her espresso. “So you have no legal grounds in any of this. I’ll deal with his lawyer about the car.”
“I’m the only family Yuri had.” Oleg drummed his nail-bitten fingers on the counter. “We’ve kept him company since my mother passed. He was lonely, had bad health.”
And you’d been sniffing around for an inheritance, according to his neighbor and Natasha at the nursing home. Oleg might qualify as extended family, but everything told her to keep Piotr Volodya’s letters in her bag.
“Not that it’s my business,” she said, taking a sip, “but Yuri intimated otherwise last night. Nine times out of ten, it’s the family the flics find guilty of crime. I’d keep that in mind before you accuse me, a stranger.”
Oleg stared as the waiter set down a salade ni?oise in front of a young woman wearing slim, black cigarette pants. Aimée recognized them from the latest agnès b. collection. Eating salad—no wonder she could wear size two.
But Oleg looked hungry. Why didn’t he order one? Cheap.
“Robbery. Murder.” She took another sip. “Your supposed inheritance, I’d imagine, would be their line of inquiry. It comes down to motive.”
“But he was at our house for dinner just last night. My wife cooked his favorite dish.”
“Yuri’s place was trashed,” she said. “He told me a valuable painting had been stolen.”
Oleg stared at her. “So you’re the detective he asked to help.”
He’d put things together fast.
“Quite a coincidence, eh? Running someone over, hitting Yuri’s car.” Oleg leaned closer. “Maybe you set him up, robbed him, and appeared to offer your services with a nice cash reward.”
This man was geting on her nerves. His affected academic air, his insinuations. His incessant drumming on the counter with his nail-bitten fingers. Ignoring café etiquette.
“Funny, that never crossed my mind,” she said, clenching the demitasse spoon. She wanted to slam it on his drumming fingers. “My colleague’s up for possible manslaughter, Yuri’s murdered, and you’re accusing me? Turn it around—say you hired someone to rob Yuri and it backfired?” She paused. “You don’t seem upset over his murder.”
Oleg’s mouth parted in surprise. Deflated, he stared at the water rings on the zinc countertop.
“What happened?” She needed to know his take.
“You won’t understand.” He shook his head.
“Try me.”
“Yuri abandoned me,” Oleg said, “like his father had done to him. Some role model. My mother sent me to boarding school when I was six. It broke her heart.” He shrugged. “Still, we’re the only family each other has … had, now. Alors, he liked to complain about Tatyana’s cooking but he ate it.”
Hurt showed in Oleg’s eyes. She believed him. The only thing he’d said that rang true.
“Mon Dieu, such a big mouth, he told everyone about that painting. Damien, the art dealer.…”
Just what Damien had said. Poor Yuri, his big mouth had gotten him killed. And yet, she hadn’t been able to get the story out of him. Sad and frustrating.
“You took him to Luebet, the art dealer, when?”
“Sunday. We warned him to put the painting away. Hide it. At least until this morning.”
Part of her wanted to believe him. The other part figured he was telling a version of the truth.
“He called me after the accident last night,” Oleg said. “Told me he’d spoken with you. Hired you.”
She chose her words. “Hired me?”
“To recover the Modigliani.”
“A Modigliani?”
“Don’t play dumb. He called you, didn’t he?”
“Not dumb, cautious.” She decided to trust him. A little bit.
“But why would someone torture him for a painting that was already stolen?” Oleg said, his brow creased.
Aimée wondered the same thing. She pulled out Luebet’s Polaroid. “Of the four people who’ve seen the painting, only you and Damien are still alive.” She left out his wife. “Did you take this?”
Oleg stared at the photo.
“Doesn’t do the painting justice,” he said. “Even in the humidity, that dim light, the shadows, the painting … it spoke.” Oleg’s eyes glowed.
“Go on.” Oleg seemed more than acquainted with the art world, from the way he spoke. “You’re an artist?”
“When I was at boarding school, every Sunday I was the only boarder who never went home.” Self-pity stained his voice. “The art teacher used to take me to the musées in Bordeaux.”
“Now you’re an art teacher, that it?”
“You’re a detective, all right,” he said with sarcasm that could have sliced stale bread.
The mirror behind the counter reflected the gauzy, fleecelike light from rue Daguerre’s street lamps.
Oleg reached for his espresso. “This glimpse into Lenin moved me.” He turned and his eyes pierced her. “Where is it?”
She almost choked on her espresso. “Like I know?”
His cell phone vibrated on the polished wood counter, but he ignored it. Oleg patted his jacket pocket, turned his back to her. In the mirror behind the counter, she saw him checking something from his pocket—what looked like a glossy hotel brochure with a logo she couldn’t make out.
She averted her eyes as he turned back.