Trickles of perspiration ran down the small of her back.
“The Modigliani belonged to Yuri, Damien,” she said, keeping her voice even. She made herself breathe. “It’s time to do the right thing. I can help you.”
“The right thing? That’s what I’m doing.” His mouth quivered. Then a smile, and he pointed to the alcove. “They’ll listen to me now.”
“With propane, fertilizer … making bombs?”
“Don’t any of you understand?”
“Understand what, Damien?” She kept her voice steady.
“La Coalition will prevent the developers from ruining the quartier.”
With bombs? She didn’t think so. Her shirt stuck to her shoulder blades.
“All thanks to me when Yuri finally cleaned out that cellar,” Damien said. “It was me who found the painting, do you understand? I saved it.” Damien set the phone down on the worktable and picked up his jacket. She could see the lighted band of numbers across the screen. He hadn’t clicked off.
Distract him, keep him talking.
“You saved the Modigliani?” she said. “Why didn’t Yuri tell me?”
“Yuri almost threw everything in a dumpster,” Damien said. “He had no idea. He laughed at me, but I did the research. Still, he wouldn’t listen.”
Aimée was convinced now his aunt’s death had unhinged him—she needed to calm him, keep him talking. Prayed René could hear, that the phone was still connected.
“So you took the Modigliani from Yuri’s closet for safekeeping?” she said. “You knew where he hid it, but he trusted you, non? Just so I’m clear, it was that afternoon Yuri went out for a little while before going to Oleg’s for dinner, right?” When Yuri slipped the envelope under her office door, wanting her help. “That’s when you took it?”
“Good thing I did.” His eyes were too bright. Too focused. “Before the grasping art dealer’s thugs and Tatyana’s Serb could get to it. I told Yuri over and over that it wasn’t safe. Turns out he’d involved you—as if.…” He gave a strange smile. “So many depend on me, it’s the right thing I’m doing. We can continue our work.”
Crazed all right. And delusional.
“By making bombs? That’s destruction, not preservation.”
“Only a means to an end, I explained that to Yuri. Over and over. But he wouldn’t listen.”
She edged closer to the phone on the worktable. Praying René could hear. “I know you meant to protect Yuri. He helped you run this printing business—all that encouragement. You told me, remember?” she said, moving closer. “He regarded you like a son, non? You were there when we hit his car.”
“More of a son than Oleg,” Damien said. “Even if we aren’t related by blood. Or marriage. All Oleg cared about was money. When Yuri boasted about the Modigliani, Oleg and Tatyana buzzed like bees to honey.”
Aimée kept her hand behind her, moving forward with small steps. She needed to reach the wire, or something heavy.…
“Stay back … stay right there.” Damien watched her with glittering eyes.
“Reste tranquille, Damien, we’re just working this out,” she said. “Tuesday morning your aunt went for a CAT scan and Yuri called, just as you told me he did.”
She felt something long, wooden with sharp points. Her fingers traced the sharp edges. Metal. She coughed to cover the sounds of it.
“Damien, I know you meant well.”
He nodded.
“Didn’t you, Damien?”
He nodded again. She needed him to talk. Needed to keep him focused.
“Then tell me what happened,” she said. “I know you’re upset after your aunt’s death. But I need to understand to help you.”
He glanced at his watch. She was losing him.
“Didn’t Yuri want the painting back for the art dealer’s appraisal?” she said. “Then things got out of hand.” She approached him cautiously. “N’est-ce pas?”
“I don’t have time for this.” His voice was different. Harder.
“But you took the time to strangle Yuri with his own tie, to torture and drown him. Why, Damien?”
“You want to know why?” Damien’s voice rose to a shout. “I found the painting, dusty and stuck in the back corner. Yuri promised me whatever it was worth.”
“Of course, Yuri was generous to a fault, he would have shared with you,” she said. “But there’s history behind it. Modigliani gave Lenin’s portrait to Yuri’s father in friendship. His father knew Lenin as a young boy.”
“Generous to a fault?” Damien snorted and grabbed the phone. “I counted on that money. But he’d cut me out. Yuri already had a buyer.”
“So do you—millions from the half-bit oligarch who’s as greedy as you are.” Now more pieces fit. Tatyana was paranoid for a reason—he’d followed her. “You have the Modigliani in that tube to sell via Tatyana.”
“Tatyana?” The muscles in his jaw twitched. “I didn’t mean to.…” His gaze flicked to the corner by her bag.
Alarmed, she stepped forward, for the first time noticing a dark maroon footprint, the red trickle veining the grooved wood floor. The metallic smell of blood she could almost taste. Behind the boxes, under the worktable—a slumped Tatyana, her snakeskin scarf ending in a pool of blood. Her eyes were rolled up in her head.
Aimée gasped.
“She showed no respect for my aunt. She kept yelling, demanding … I never meant to.…”
“Like you never meant to murder poor Yuri?” Aimée said, shaking. “Or shove Luebet on the Métro tracks?” The hypocrite. “But torturing him? The same way Madame Figuer’s brother was tortured, to cover your tracks …?”
“That old busybody? Such a joke, that old story of her brother.”
Cruel as well as unhinged.
“But Yuri turned on me. Wanted no part of La Coalition,” he said. “The bank refused me credit to keep this damned place going. How else can I keep funding the cause, making change happen? Look at Lenin.…”
Lenin? “You think printing posters and making bombs funds a revolution?”