This wasn’t going well. Accusing him might not have been the best plan. But she had a feeling.
“Oleg, you’re in the dark with a buyer and no painting,” she said. “Guess we’ve got nothing to talk about.”
“Attends, I never intended for this to get out of hand.”
Her foot paused on the kickstart. Her hand gripped the phone. “What do you mean?”
“The buyer’s anxious.”
“So you hire someone to threaten me?”
“Never. You’re crazy.” His voice rose a notch.
“But to kill your own—”
“I’d never hurt Yuri. Ever.”
“Expect me to believe that? He sent you away, never regarded you as his.…”
“Son?” Oleg said. “You don’t understand. Tatyana—we never thought the Serb would die. That you’d run him over.”
Realization hit her gut. “You hired the Serb.”
“A fiasco.” He’d admitted it.
“The Serb bought it before he hit our windshield,” Aimée said. “His partner’s an angry dog and I want him brought to heel or—”
“What can I do?” His breath caught. “A simple job.…” What sounded like a sob erupted. He sounded afraid. “But I never hired anyone to hurt you. Or Yuri. Don’t you get it?”
She believed him. He sounded in over his head. But he was withholding something. She leaned on the quai’s stone wall, overlooking the rippling Seine. Below chugged a long, open barge loaded with sand like she remembered from years ago. Didn’t see many of those these days.
“Then explain. I’m listening, Oleg.”
“Tatyana knew someone who knew someone,” he said finally.
“Too vague, Oleg.”
“A word here and there, back channels, I don’t know,” he said. “Zut, part of me wanted Yuri to keep it. A family heirloom.”
His depiction of himself as a solicitous stepson contradicted Madame Figuer’s, Natasha’s, and Damien’s accounts. Again, that suspicion niggled—had he stolen the painting and concocted an elaborate scheme to derail the flics? And now answered her call to find out what she knew?
“I wish we could have kept that painting. The Modigliani spoke to me, I told you,” Oleg said. “But we’re working people. Tatyana convinced me, said this buyer has a private museum, people would admire it. Yuri needed money for an operation. I thought he’d come around, given time.”
She doubted that part. Yuri was a feisty old goat who wanted things his way. Hadn’t he “hired” her?
“You invited him over for dinner, Tatyana cooked his favorite meal. But he refused to let you sell the painting,” she said. “Ruined your plans. He’d found a fixer to handle the painting.”
A sigh. “He told you all this, then you know.…”
She wouldn’t disabuse him of the idea that Yuri had confided in her. Or reveal that she knew nothing.
“But someone stole the Modigliani before the Serb got there,” Oleg said. “And now his brother’s demanding payment. A job’s a job, he insists, no matter the outcome.”
That she could believe.
“Call him off, Oleg.”
“Believe me, I want to,” he said. “I tried.”
“Tried, Oleg? Tell me how you contacted him.”
“By cell phone, but he doesn’t answer.”
Why couldn’t he just spit it out?
“Give me his number. He’s gone vigilante on my colleague.”
Pause.
She wanted to kick him. Raised her voice. “Now, Oleg. I need it”
Aimée reached in her bag, grabbed a pen from the car insurance company, and wrote the number on her palm. A seagull strutted down the wall, squawking. She covered her other ear to hear better.
“Tell me who else wanted the Modigliani,” Aimée said.
“I don’t know.”
Holding back again.
“I think you do, Oleg,” she said. “There was blood on the wall.”
“Look, I’ll give you a percentage,” he said, sounding rushed now. “Think it over.”
He thought she wanted in on the profit. Thought she knew the painting’s whereabouts. Damien’s words came back to her. “But Damien heard you argue that night.”
“That bleeding heart?” Oleg said. “Damien should mind his own business. Yuri never gave me a chance whenever I tried to help him. But Mr. Do-Gooder’s always at his beck and call, when he’s not demonstrating, or at the hospital with his dying aunt. He wants first place in line for her inheritance.”
“Funny, he said the same thing about you.”
Oleg hung up.
As long as Oleg thought she had access to the painting, she had value. But he might have already told her everything he knew. The desperation in his voice sounded real enough.
Aimée tried the Serb’s phone number. Out of service. A disposable phone. And a dead end.
She kicked loose gravel at the stone wall. Alarmed, the seagull took off, his wings making a flapping whoosh as he skimmed the dimpled surface of the green-brown Seine. The color reminded her of lentil soup.
She rang Saj. Gave him the latest.
“What did you expect, Aimée? Thought the Serb would answer and apologize?” Saj sounded worried. “Like a slap on the wrist would make any of them walk away? High stakes like this?”
She figured these were rhetorical questions. “Bon, Oleg lives not far from Yuri in the fourteenth.…”
“So pay him a visit,” Saj said. “Meanwhile, since I don’t have the thumb-drive prototype.…” He paused. “I’d like the anti-malware program that’s in the drawer at my computer desk at my place. Can you stop by? Grab my stress busters while you’re at it?”
Her neck felt hot with shame. “Don’t tell me you came from the hospital to the office without even going home?”
“Good thing, too, with you getting attacked,” he said. “Someone’s got to mind the office with René gone. Look, I want to keep the business going, forget what I said before.”
Guilt riddled her. Unlike René, loyal Saj stuck with her. And he needed help in return.