Of course he’d say that. “Liar, no one kisses like that.…”
“We needed him jealous.” Melac shook his head. “The operation got more complicated than usual. Let’s just say the footballer opened certain doors for us. Suzanne, the blonde, is married to my colleague. They’ve got three kids.” He shrugged. Took the wallet from his back pocket, flipped it open to a photo: on a sailboat, the blonde, windblown and smiling with three blond children, and Melac with his arm around a man she recognized. He sighed. “That’s Paul. You met him last month, remember? None of us can wait to finish this operation.”
Aimée knew that look in his eyes. It had been just another day at the office for him.
“Desolée.” Her voice came out small. Now she hated herself for doubting him. For what might have happened if that taxi hadn’t appeared.
“What’s wrong, Aimée?”
Was she being that obvious?
He pulled her to him. Held her. She breathed in his citrus scent.
“Aimée, I’ve got a tuxedo, so I can escort you to Sebastien’s wedding. I’ve blocked the date. They can’t call me in.”
She stared down at Miles Davis’s battered Limoges food bowl. Should she tell him about Dombasle? Would he understand something she didn’t understand herself? Could they work through this?
If she didn’t, it would fester and never be right between them.
Melac picked a bottle of champagne from his sports bag and put it in her suitcase-sized fridge. “Shall we order in tonight, so you can make it up to me?”
She dropped the demitasse spoon. “Make it up to you?” Now she felt racked by guilt.
“For not returning my calls.” He grinned. “Seems your cell phone’s off. Saj has called five times.”
Suddenly worried, she nodded. Saj was a priority. But first she had to tell him.
“Alors, last night.…”
Melac’s cell phone rang. He reached in his pocket and pulled out two. “It’s Sandrine. Give me a second.” His daughter. “Oui, ma chérie?” His eyes shuttered. “Calm down, Nathalie.” His ex-wife.
Another custody issue?
“What happened? You’re where?” Pause. “Sandrine, in the school bus? Speak slower for God’s sake.… How long ago?” He reached for his gym bag, his face ashen. “What hospital?”
FROM HER COURTYARD, she watched Melac pull away in an unmarked Peugeot, sirens screaming down the quai. A sliver of blue lined the zinc rooftops under a cloud-filled sky. She stood under the budding branches of the old pear tree and prayed his daughter would make it.
Madame Cachou, her concierge, poked her head out of the round window in the courtyard loge.
“The way men come and go around here!” Her penciled eyebrows had climbed up her forehead.
“His daughter’s one of thirty children injured in the school bus crash with the TGV,” Aimée said.
“That train catastrophe in Brittany? It’s all over the télé newsflash. Mon Dieu.” Madame Cachou made a sign of the cross. “I’ll tell the curé. We’ll say a novena.”
From Melac’s terse description, she’d need to say a novena and more.
Miles Davis pawed the paving stone.
“Wants his walk, the little man,” Madame Cachou said, coming out with his leash. She zipped up a bright aquamarine hoodie that fit her now—she’d lost five kilos doing yoga. And looked ten years younger.
“We’ll stop at the church. Shall I keep Miles Davis tonight?”
Aimée nodded. “Merci.” She pulled her scooter off the kickstand. Walked it over the damp cobbles. Paused. “What men, Madame Cachou?”
“Un Russe,” she said.
Aimée spine stiffened. The former KGB chauffeur had tracked her down already? But how?
Madame Cachou made a sniffing sound. “Vodka seeping from his pores. Couldn’t fool me. The old coot stank to heaven.” She reached back behind the loge door. “He left something for you.”
A Trotsyskist newspaper. It must have been the old man with the red-veined nose, drunk to the world, at Marevna’s resto. But he’d already left one for her with Marevna.
“He said you’d understand.”
Understand?
Taped to the second page was a postcard-sized blue note card.
Sainte Anne Hospital, Allée de Kafka. Friday, 5 P.M.
“SIM CARD CLONED,” Saj greeted her. He was sitting cross-legged on his tatami mat, laptop in front of him, the neck brace still on but his arm without the sling.
“Delay switch in place for the Bereskova Swiss bank account,” René said, smiling. Cables and wires were draped over a massage table that had been set up by the fireplace in the office. The scent of eucalyptus oil hovered. René noticed her look. “The shiatsu masseur makes office visits, Aimée. I feel new again. You look like you could use one yourself.”
Like she had the time.
“So you defused your situation, René?”
“Big time, Aimée.” Maxence’s eyes shone from the desk next to René’s. “I’m in awe. Brilliant work. I’m designing a game based on the delay stock market option.”
“Not for a while, Maxence,” René said. “I want to reenter the States with my own name, and not the way I left.”
“How did you leave, René?” Aimée asked.
“With a lot of luck and a drug smuggler,” René said. “More your style. Hate to think of all the laws I’ve broken.”
“And with only a sombrero to show for it,” she said.
“Don’t forget my clean conscience.”
“What about Rasputin’s take on the oligarch?”
René pulled a window up on his screen. “Interesting. Said we should ask the question: Why would a low-end oligarch create a museum in France? Tax laws in the UK favor the Russians more and they all create strings of shell companies to move their money to London. A museum in France doesn’t make sense, Rasputin says. Unless the museum’s non-profit, given government subsidies, tax loopholes to foster Russian relations, cultural exchanges, keep tsarist art stolen during the war or brought by the White Russians back here.”