AIMéE SIPPED A Badoit at the café counter to settle her stomach. “You’re sure the Commissariat mentioned Zazie?”
“Mais oui, like I told you, the Commissariat called about an hour ago.” Pierre’s younger brother Dizca, a club DJ, wore bibbed overalls and a tank top. He looked like he’d been up all night as he wiped the zinc counter down with a cloth. “Virginie ran out all excited, saying they needed her for an interview. Hope I get my phone back. But what do you expect with a thirteen-year-old?”
“Your phone …?” How could he not be more worried? Could Zazie be at the Commissariat—could it all be over this easily? Where had she been?
Three street cleaners in jumpsuits rolled up to the counter demanding beer. This early? Before her stomach rose in protest at the smell, she paid and left a message for Virginie.
Outside at the kiosk, Maurice, the one-armed Algerian veteran she always bought papers from, grinned. “What about les Bleus, Aimée?”
Even Maurice had caught World Cup fever. He had never been one for sports, but now he wore a bright blue T-shirt and had stuck a French flag near the editions of Soccer World that a stream of early morning commuters lined up to buy.
Then she remembered Pierre’s comments about Zazie’s friend’s mother being in the newspaper. The girl they had banned Zazie from seeing. “Any dirt today on a druggie actress …?”
“Which one?” His business was booming; she didn’t have much time to pick his brain.
“With a titled younger boyfriend.” She put down some francs and took a copy of Le Parisien.
“Old news. Yesterday, I think. Might have copies if I didn’t return the lot.” The line snaked across the pavement. “Check with me later, Aimée.”
Up in Leduc Detective, Aimée nodded to the carpenter at work on the shelves. She tried to ignore the humidity pervading the high-ceilinged office and the whine of his drill. Bright sun splattered the walls and glinted off the framed sepia photograph of her grandfather sporting a waxed handlebar mustache. It had been taken circa his s?reté era.
Saj sat cross-legged on his tatami mat in the adjoining office, at his laptop with headphones nesting in his blond dreads. A coral earring stood out brightly against his tan, and turquoise and sandalwood prayer beads hung over his Indian shirt. He looked up from his laptop, raising his index finger—une minute—and went back to tapping on his keyboard.
Today’s Faits Divers section of Le Parisien contained only a brief mention of last night’s homicide and an alleged suspect in the emergency ward. Nothing about Zazie, of course. But Virginie and Pierre were at the Commissariat right now; she prayed they would bring Zazie home with them.
How could she focus on work with the incessant noise and heat? Or the reality that she had a sonogram appointment this morning and that she’d be going alone? Martine, her best friend since they were at the lycée and guaranteed moral support for most occasions, had canceled on her, claiming a deadline. Aimée couldn’t budge her. Even with the offer to go clothes shopping, Martine’s forte—and Aimée could use Martine’s help with the dreaded maternity wardrobe.
Not that she should be shopping now, even if she wanted to, with their looming tax bill. She’d keep uncinching waistbands and go for the layered look until she blossomed into the whale look.
She tried to focus on running the day-to-day scans. Concentrate on work—the rent wouldn’t pay for itself. Neither would Miles Davis’s horsemeat, nor the Italian stroller that resembled a Gucci-print rocket capsule that René had insisted on.
She’d wasted hours yesterday trying to find Zazie, and all she’d learned was that peach-pit oil prevented stretch marks.
She wished the thought of the cold jelly on her belly and the radar pinging her unborn baby on the screen didn’t terrify her. Why couldn’t she wrap her head around it, why the doubts all the time? The combination of hormones and not having her own mother figure, she surmised, would do it to you. Could she, should she …?
“René filled me in this morning,” Saj said. “So it’s all over for the rapist sailor, eh?”
She hoped not. “Suspected rapist, Saj,” she said. “He’s in critical condition.”
“Like our accounts,” said Saj. “We’re still waiting on three outstanding invoices—make-or-break amounts for the number crunchers at le fisc.”
That bad? On paper Leduc Detective was in the black and solvent, if these clients paid on time. Yet as independent contractors, getting money from clients was harder than chewing granite.
Zazie and now taxes!
“Let’s try a creative approach, Saj,” she said, thinking.
“I’m listening. But the paint’s dried, the brushes worn out.”
Plan B. Always have plan B. And then it hit her—she hadn’t discovered Zazie’s plan B.
“The deadline’s midnight, Aimée. Twenty percent interest fine if we don’t make it. Compounded with what we owe … almost six figures.”
Six figures they didn’t have. She hated her plan B. Not perfect or her first choice and not necessarily legal. But a fallback.
“Check the balance in this Luxembourg account,” she said quietly, cocking her head at the carpenter installing the new fixtures. She opened her desk drawer, consulted the contents of a manila file, jotted down a bank account number and handed the paper to Saj. “Verify it’s kosher. Then arrange and reroute a wire transfer.”
Stunned, Saj mouthed something, but the drill whine drowned him out.
She put her finger to her lips.
With a little shrug that sent his prayer beads clacking, Saj returned to his tatami mat.