“Do you understand?” Aimée gripped the woman’s arm. “Zazie’s parents are desperate to find her.” Aimée stepped inside. “Please, it’s vital you help me.”
Madame Vasseur led her into a salon with carved moldings, a chandelier and large abstract paintings on the paneled walls. Taken from the pages of an architectural magazine—a showpiece without a lived-in feeling.
Madame Vasseur poured herself a glass of Burgundy. “Wine?”
Tempted, Aimée shook her head. “Non, merci.”
She sat down on a maroon-suede couch, gestured for Aimée to do the same. Took out a pack of cigarettes, lit one and offered the pack to Aimée.
“Much as I’d like to …”
“Ah, d’accord.” She eyed the bulge in Aimée’s middle. “Pregnancy’s a bitch, I remember. Then joy of joys, potty training.”
A real candidate for mother of the year, Madame Vasseur. She sat back, blew a plume of smoke and kicked off her heels. Talk about rubbing it in. Aimée wanted to tear that cigarette out of her mouth and that wine out of her hand.
A tan pigskin Hermès briefcase lay open on the couch, revealing files and legal documents. The woman tapped her cigarette ash into a blue bowl, distracted.
“Mélanie was attacked three days ago, as I understand?” Aimée said to prompt her.
“My husband, Claude, found Mélanie,” she said, her voice hollow. “When he returned from work.”
“Any sign of forced entry, anything stolen?”
Madame Vasseur shook her head. “Nothing was touched but my daughter. But Claude blames me because I worked late. I’m prosecuting a huge case. Three years of litigation, and they threatened to bow out. I had to hold their hands.”
Aimée’s blood ran cold. What about holding her daughter’s hand?
“I know it’s painful, but can you give me any details of Mélanie’s attack?” she said.
“The maid didn’t work that afternoon. Claude thinks Mélanie returned at nine P.M. Like usual.”
Usual? “Isn’t that late for a twelve-year-old to come home?”
“She was coming from her violin lesson,” Madame Vasseur said. Aimée thought of Sylvaine’s scattered music, the stickered calendar. “Her teacher’s not a day person. She takes pupils after school and in the evening. We gave Mélanie taxi money like always. At ten thirty P.M. he found her in the conservatory … her music room.”
More than an hour alone after the attack before her father found her? Horrible. But it fit the pattern.
“Mélanie couldn’t reach the phone? Was she bound or taped?”
“Traumatized, I told you,” she said, downing the wine and pouring herself another glass. “Mais tied up and her mouth taped, oui.”
Like the other girls.
“After the medical examination, Claude brought her to the clinic. She wouldn’t talk. They told us not to push her or insist.”
“But she described the rapist to the composite artist. He looks like this.” Aimée showed the FotoFit to her. “Seen him? Maybe a gardener or delivery man at a shop, someone in the quartier?”
Madame Vasseur shrugged. “No one I recognize. Could be anyone.”
“What did Mélanie tell you?”
“Wouldn’t talk about it.”
“But she talked to Zazie.”
“Red-haired girl, intense?” she asked, with a raise of her eyebrow.
Aimée nodded.
“I know her mother, Virginie. She runs a café, nice. We’ve met at the lycée,” said Madame Vasseur, the wine she drank thawing her out. “Claude and I are both lawyers. We work a lot. When Mélanie bonded with Zazie, I was happy. You know, Claude’s more le snob. But I let Mélanie come home by herself after school. Mélanie said she was too old for the maid to babysit her. I trust her. She’s always been a responsible, focused girl. Well, mostly. She’s brilliant. A musical prodigy.”
Madame Vasseur gestured to a framed photo. In it a young blonde girl wearing an expensive-looking silk dress and grinning to reveal braces posed with a violin beside an older man and a smiling young couple arm-in-arm. “That’s Mélanie at her last recital, at a student exhibition sponsored by the Lavignes. Monsieur Lavigne, the elder, with his son Renaud and new daughter-in-law. They’re old family friends and supporters of the Conservatoire de Musique. Mélanie is eligible to try out for the Conservatoire this year, and I insisted. No negotiation on that.”
Aimée heard a catch in Madame Vasseur’s voice.
“Insisted? Do you mean Mélanie seemed reluctant to try out for the Conservatoire, Madame?”
“Think back to when you were twelve,” she said, exhaling a plume of smoke. “You rebel against your parents. Everything matters, the way a boy looks at you, or doesn’t look at you. Life’s heightened, magnified. The world turns on what someone says, on being accepted by your peers—or not.”
Mélanie sounded sensitive. But hadn’t Aimée felt the same at that age, too?
A few more sips of wine and Madame Vasseur revealed she’d missed seeing Zazie at the clinic last night. She’d found Mélanie asleep and, after conferring with the doctor, sent her to Lausanne this afternoon.
“But what about school?”
“She’ll retake the exams in September. And the violin lessons, well … we’ll see.”
At least Aimée had an idea about where to go next. “What’s Mélanie’s violin teacher’s name and address?” she asked.
“Madame de Langlet, a former professor at the Conservatoire. She’s very selective. Her studio’s in Square d’Orléans.”
Aimée made a note. Not far away. “That’s important, Madame. Tonight’s victim was also assaulted after a violin lesson.”
“N’importe quoi,” she replied. “As I told you, Madame’s quite selective. She only takes pupils of Mélanie’s caliber.”
“Selective or not, there could be a link, Madame.”
“Then you’d need to speak with her.” Madame Vasseur sighed. She opened her mouth as if to say something but took a sip of wine instead. “But I’ll fight those battles over lessons when I come to them.”
“Battles?”
“Mélanie’s so gifted. I want her to continue with the violin.”