“To prepare me for the bad?”
“Something like that,” she managed before everything slipped away and went dark.
SHE’D COME TO later, then fortified herself with a double espresso and a fresh brioche from Saj’s foray to the boulangerie. Halfway through a second double espresso, queasiness rose in her stomach again, and a bitter taste filled her mouth. She pushed the demitasse away.
“You’re still reacting to the drugs,” Saj said. “You’ll have to take it easy today, Aimée.”
Then a wardrobe change in the back armoire: black leather leggings, ballet flats, retro Pucci silk tunic topped by a flounced jacket. Feeling slightly better, she finished filling Saj in.
“At least I know I didn’t kill the Serb,” Saj said, sipping green tea next to her on the recamier. “This Feliks.”
“The autopsy proves the Serb’s heart stopped before he fell on the windshield,” she said. “Hence your release.”
“But the robbery and now the old man’s murder complicates everything, Aimée. Not a fait accompli,” Saj said. “I’m still on the hook.”
“What do you mean?”
“The flics questioned me again and again last night—did I know this Yuri, asked about a painting, implying the accident was a screen for a getaway.”
As usual, they gravitated toward the first person they met with any connection to the crime as a suspect. Sloppy police work.
“You kept mum, right?”
“Not difficult on painkillers,” he said. “But the last thing I want is to be a suspect in a robbery when they’ve dropped the manslaughter charge.”
“That’s the least of your worries,” Aimée said. “Another Serb’s entered the equation and knows your identity.”
“Your friend the nurse warned me,” Saj said.
Nora had come through.
But now what? The Serb asking after Saj didn’t know Saj hadn’t killed Feliks—and if everyone who’d warned Aimée to stay away from Serbs was right, that could be a deadly misunderstanding. Meanwhile, she still had a dead man’s money. Yuri had hired her to track down that painting, and so many other people were after it, she knew she had to move fast.
She was tied up in this thing, past the point of just walking away. Someone had broken into her office to torture her for information about the painting. For her own safety, she needed to find the thing, or at least figure out who was behind the theft. Decide whether she wanted to turn the whole thing over to the authorities, whether they could even protect her or would only get in her way. Whether she’d be putting them on the trail of her missing mother, a wanted woman.
Aimée needed advice. She reached for her cell phone, hit speed dial. Then realized René wouldn’t answer. Stupid. She clicked off. Get a grip. Helm the ship, step up—all those trite phrases, but she better follow one. Focus on helping Saj deal with this.
“I need more green tea.”
On the espresso machine he pressed the steamer button, held a cup under as the vapor whooshed out. Pensive, he sat back down next to her on the recamier.
“So the Serb’s brother, or partner or whoever, didn’t find the painting that night, came back and tortured the old man to find it?”
Her hands shook. “I thought the same.” Sadness filled her. “Yesterday Yuri asked for my help. Then changed his mind. I wish I knew why.”
Saj took off his neck brace. Did a cautious neck roll. “Something tells me there’s more,” he said.
“Luebet the art dealer ‘falls’ on the Métro tracks, but that doesn’t explain what he’d left behind at the musée.”
She showed Saj the photo, the envelope with the note, M—Find it this time.
“I’d say there are more crooks in the pot, Aimée. Bad ones.”
Made sense.
“There’s something I’m not seeing,” she said.
“What about Oleg? You think he could have held his stepfather under the water to make him reveal the location?”
She thought. Shook her head. “Oleg didn’t tell me everything. But a murderer? Besides, he claims he told Yuri to hide the painting until it was appraised.”
“Didn’t Yuri tell the world? Must have been lots of interested people. You’re talking a Modigliani, Aimée.”
“Of the four who I know saw it, two have been murdered. Oleg has a buyer and he thought I had the painting. Or so he said.”
Saj moved to his tatami mat, set down his tea, and opened his laptop.
Aimée related more of what happened—about seeing the Serb’s Levi’s jacket button on Yuri’s floor, the blood smear on the pantry wall, Serge pointing out the telltale bruises on the Serb’s corpse.
“Sounds like a fight.” Saj sipped his tea. “Perfect timing, with the old man out.”
“But it bothers me why, if he worried over the security, he left me cash and an urgent note, but accepted a dinner invitation and left a Modigliani in the broom closet.”
Saj shrugged. “Put that aside for now. Go back to the Serb. He comes in to get the painting, but someone else beat him to it. They fight, the painting snatcher escapes. Let’s go on the assumption the Serb wasn’t the only one searching for the Modigliani,” Saj said. “Luebet for starters. Do you think Luebet could have been the one to hire the Serb?”
Aimée shook her head. “It’s possible, but then who is ‘M’? The Serb’s name was Feliks, and besides, he was already dead. So who was Luebet’s note to?”
Saj pondered for a moment, then began to tick off fingers. “Oleg and Damien both knew about the painting, and might have tried to steal it. Piotr Volodya’s concierge knew there was a painting, maybe a valuable one, although probably not where Yuri would have kept it, and you don’t suspect her. Perhaps Madame Natasha, although you think she’s too paranoid to tell anyone. And the neighbor, Madame Figuer, she knew Yuri had come into something, but you don’t think she knew it was a painting. Do we know of anyone else who might be involved?”