“Your stepfather wouldn’t make a robbery report,” she said, switching to another tack. “That only makes sense if he feared something.”
Oleg ground his teeth. “Do you speak Russian?”
She shook her head. “Do you?”
“My wife, Tatyana, is from Ukraine.”
“Meaning you don’t and she does.”
He didn’t deny it. She had no idea why he had asked her in the first place.
“I don’t know why, but he trusted you.” Oleg hung his head. “More than me.”
And then she understood. “He knew my … mother.” The word caught in her throat. Sounded strange coming out of her mouth.
“How?”
“I don’t know.”
“Come on, you just said—”
“We never got that far, Oleg.”
Her mother—words never spoken by her father, never used while she grew up. This phantom spirit in the house no one ever talked about. Like the elephant in the salon everyone pretended not to see.
She came back to the conversations in the café, the hiss of the milk steamer, what Oleg was saying. “Yuri asked me to find a buyer.”
Should she believe him?
“I’ve got someone who’s interested.”
His cell phone vibrated non-stop.
“What do I do?” Oleg looked lost.
He was asking her?
“Besides ignore that call?” She leaned closer. “If you didn’t steal the painting, who do you think did? Your stepfather hired me before he discovered it was missing—why? Threats, extortion?”
“He told me he owed someone.”
Yuri’s words about owing her mother thudded through her mind.
“Like who? Any specifics?”
“A woman—oui, that’s right.”
“Did he let on why? Their connection?”
“I thought you were the detective,” Oleg said, standing up abruptly. “Fat lot of help you’ve been to me.”
A swish of air and he’d gone. Left half his espresso and her with the bill. Her gaze followed him to an idling late-model Peugeot, a blonde at the wheel. She glimpsed a flash of something red as he opened the door. Then the car roared away down Avenue du Général Leclerc.
Aimée’s mind spun. Was Oleg playing an elaborate game? Had the painting been stolen while Yuri dined at his house? Was he pretending he didn’t have it to force her hand, find out what she knew, what Yuri might have confided in her? But that was all conjecture.
When you hit a wall, think of the opposite scenario, her father always said.
What if Oleg figured she knew the painting’s whereabouts? And he clutched at her connection because of what Yuri had led him to believe?
Had her mother stolen the painting? Aimée’s stomach clenched. In Yuri’s last message, he had been adamant that she leave it alone. Too dangerous.
Crazy. She had to stop these crazy thoughts.
But she’d learned that he had a buyer. A buyer and, she was guessing, no painting. That’s why he’d met her.
In his shoes, she’d be off to stall the buyer. Hold him or her in the wings until the painting surfaced. Or, if he was the one who stole it, until attention died down and it was safe to sell it.
Oleg hadn’t even hounded her for money for Yuri’s damaged Mercedes.
A race to recover the Modigliani and she’d gotten ensnared in it. She downed her espresso, caught the waiter’s attention, and slid some francs over the counter.
“Your friend uses our café as a meeting place,” the waiter said as he made change. “But he doesn’t pay for his drink?”
She pushed the coins back at him. Waiters knew the clientele in the quartier. “But I bet his father Yuri did.”
A shrug. “Old Russian, gray hair?”
“The bookbinder,” she said.
“That’s right.” He nodded and smiled. “All that Russian winter of the soul.”
A waiter quoting literature? She tried to remember if that had been a question on the baccalaureate exam. Or had René, a voracious reader, quoted that from a crime novel?
He noticed her quizzical look. “Tolstoy.”
RIDING THE MéTRO back, she took out her to-do list, wrote down:
Damien
Oleg—nervous
Letters
Off rue de Rivoli, she stood in line for takeout salade ni?oise, thinking of those black agnès b. cigarette pants. She needed to lose a kilo before she’d be back to her normal size. Awful. She’d never let this happen before. Time to swim laps.
For the second time she called Morbier to check if he’d pulled strings for Saj. Only voice mail. She left a message for him to call her back. Frustrated, she tried the criminal ward at H?tel-Dieu. A new nurse who refused to give her any information.
Tired of voice mail and people who gave her the runaround, she headed to her office. She had reports to finish up, a security scan to run. And Maxence’s printouts on Yuri Volodya to go through. But when she punched in the entry code on the keypad, no answering click opened the door. Merde. On the blink again.
She searched in her bag, dropped the boxed salad, and found the old key after a minute. Picking up the salad, she inserted the key, turned it twice, and finally the tumbler turned. She’d complain to the concierge. First the lift didn’t work, then the door. Always something. And a long, empty evening of work ahead.
She hit the timed light. Nothing happened.
Then she heard scuffling, felt a whoosh of cold air.
“What the …?”
Before she could turn in the darkness, something was pulled over her head. And then everything went black.
Tuesday, Silicon Valley
RENé’S HANDS SHOOK in his jacket pockets. He faced Andy and Susie, who towered over him on strappy sandals and tanned legs. Only one door out of the back supply room, and that was blocked by the rent-a-guard.
“Reconsider, René. Two new investors fly in tomorrow. The pot’s growing. With the three we’ve got so far, that IPO gives you twenty million, give or take. Put that against two hundred thou’ a year, René.” Andy shook his head. “Why would you say no to a two hundred percent profit increase? Doesn’t make sense.”
“Andy, it’s wrong.”
“Sounds right to me. Do the math.”
“You can’t think—”