“Damien, my neighbor, the political boy, just brought me back from dinner at Oleg’s place. Oleg’s my stepson, as he calls himself. My wife’s child. Not mine.” Yuri’s voice rose, petulant. “Oleg’s wife served burnt blinis, like cement—can you imagine?”
Aimée contained her impatience with effort. “Why contact me to protect your painting?”
“Pour me another.”
Frustrated, she reached for the bottle. His liver-spotted hand clamped on her gloved one with surprising strength. His confusion was gone.
“If the Serb left empty-handed,” he said, “someone else didn’t.”
He knew something. She saw it in his eyes. Suspicion filled her.
“So you claim a painting is missing, but the man who appears to have broken into your house didn’t have it. Strange, Monsieur. And I still don’t understand what any of this has to do with my mother.” She sipped the vodka. “Why do I feel all this is some ruse?”
There was fear in his eyes. He downed the vodka. His hand clenched in a fist, his knuckles white. “I’ve been rude to you, I’m sorry.”
He was wasting time she should have been using to help Saj. “S’il vous pla?t, Monsieur Volodya, quit the guessing games.” She was angry with herself for getting caught up in this, for buying into his fishy story just because he’d mentioned her mother.
“So help me. I know you’re a detective. I wanted to hire you to protect the painting, but now it’s too late for that. I’m hiring you to get it back for me instead.”
Like she needed to add to Leduc Detective’s workload. They were already drowning. “Like I said, Monsieur, we don’t do art recovery.” She couldn’t resist adding, “You didn’t really know my mother, did you?”
“Of course I knew your mother. The American.”
Aimée gripped his hand. “How?”
“It’s complicated.” He stiffened. “I didn’t know her well.”
Aimée didn’t know her well, either. Sydney Leduc had abandoned them when Aimée was eight years old. “But you knew her. When?” Hope fluttered despite his vagueness.
“Of course, she was much younger then. Changed a little, but … it’s been years.”
Years? Her heart sank. “Where … how?”
“Now I want to make good on my debt.”
“Debt?” Why wouldn’t he give her a straight answer? “Is this about the painting?”
Footsteps crackled over the glass, and a draft of cold air rushed through the atelier. “Monsieur?” It was the flic with the clipboard.
“Please, Monsieur, how do you know my mother?”
“Not now.” Yuri put his finger to her lips. Dry, rough skin.
She’d had enough. She reached into her bag for the francs, about to tell him to forget involving her, when he whispered, “I’m being watched.” He held her hand. “Tomorrow. Wait for my call. I’ll tell you about her.”
“But I can’t take your money—”
“Recover my painting.”
“Monsieur, I need your car registration,” said the flic. He glanced around, noticing the scattered objects. “Your house was broken into as well? Is anything missing?”
“My wife. She died last year.”
“Desolé,” he said. “But I’ll need to take down the accident details before I make a robbery report.”
“No report,” Yuri said, shaking his head. His defiance belied the fear in his eyes. “I’m remodeling.”
She wondered why the old man was lying.
The flic’s eyes narrowed. Maybe he wondered the same thing. Yuri pulled open a drawer in the Art Nouveau chest, the most expensive-looking piece in the room. Took out a folder and handed it over.
As the officer noted the vehicle info, Aimée watched Yuri sit hunched in his chair, his mouth set, the blood clotting on his cheek. She wasn’t sure she believed him about her mother, or trusted him about his missing painting, but she felt pity for him.
“Let me ask a medic to look at your cut, Monsieur.”
He waved his wrinkled hand in dismissal. “Now both of you get out.”
OUTSIDE YURI’S DOOR on narrow Villa d’Alésia her hands shook. A man dead, her friend injured and in police custody, an old man who claimed to know her mother, and now a stolen painting. A sour aftertaste remained in her mouth and it wasn’t from the vodka.
The day had gone from bad to worse after René’s departure. She wanted this all to go away. To go home, crawl under the duvet. But first she had to help Saj.
Aimée needed her laptop case and reached for the car door handle. Couscous végétarien dripped all over the back floor.
“Not so fast, Mademoiselle,” said a balding flic. “I’ll need to search the car. And you.”
They suspected her now? “Search the car? I tell you, the man ran into us. Not our fault.” She hoped to God that René hadn’t left his unlicensed Glock under the seat.
“If you’re in such a hurry, better give me the details at the commissariat, Mademoiselle.”
A “midnight special” in a wire-frame holding pen? Forget it. Weren’t they supposed to offer her a trauma counselor?
“You call that procedure?” She flashed her détective privé license at him. Time to pull out the big guns. “I’m sure my godfather Commissaire Morbier will be interested, since that’s his dinner all over the floor.” A little lie, as Morbier’s appetite ran to bifteck-frites. But a way to take the focus away from her—and maybe divert it to Yuri. She gestured to the spilled takeout. “Care to explain to him why you think picking up takeout somehow involves me in the robbery of an old Russian man’s atelier?”
The flic’s mouth tightened. “Morbier’s into couscous végétarien now?”
So he knew Morbier better than she’d guessed. Oh well, she had to roll with it now. “Part of his new healthier lifestyle.” One could always hope.
“Robbery of the old Russian, you said, Mademoiselle?” The flic didn’t miss a thing.