She made a left and found Le Vieux Lapin mid-block, one of many antique shops on the street. Dealers smoked on the pavement, and she heard snatches of conversation drifting—“… belonged to the Rothschilds …”
Le Vieux Lapin’s interior, dim and cool, gave off a wax-polish smell, just like what grand-père used.
“Bonjour,” Aimée called, her eyes adjusting to the low light.
“Talking to the whore again?” said a woman’s voice from the shadows. “About that Watteau? Zut! Forget it.” Aimée heard a phone slammed down on the receiver.
“Excusez-moi, but—”
From the dim interior emerged a young woman with prematurely white hair pulled into a beehive. Maroon lipstick on a smooth, made-up face, lime green cigarette pants, red heels and a white blazer. Right out of Vogue.
“Oui?” she said, her voice clipped.
Aimée pulled out a card. Glanced around the showroom filled with antiques—walls lined with cracked oil paintings; eighteenth-century portraits of powdered, bewigged men; countryside scenes of rolling green and winding rivers.
The woman surveyed Aimée’s card and snorted. “Here about some insurance claim? I’m not a fence. That’s the territory of the red collars, those Savoyards.”
She remembered her grand-père negotiating with the red collars amid winks and exchanges under the table. Hence his “deals.” “Non,” Aimée said, “I’m not here to see any fences.”
“It’s like that saying,” the woman said, eyeing Aimée with a smirk. “Drouot resembles a wonderful old whore—you know she’s corrupt and full of flaws, yet you keep going because she’s charming and funny and she gives you lots of pleasure.”
She had that right. “I’m here to see Madame Tonette.”
“Busy.” Crisp, to the point, end of discussion.
On closer inspection the woman appeared older; a hint of crow’s-feet, smoker’s lip lines. But Aimée wished to God she could have fit into those cigarette pants. A scallop shell of red embroidery on the seam, last season’s Lacroix.
“Monsieur Sillot, the lycée teacher, recommended I speak with her.”
A little expulsion of air. “Et alors?”
She had to appeal to this woman. Somehow. How else could she track Zazie?
She lowered her voice. “His student, Zazie Duclos, whom Madame Tonette knows, is missing. I need Madame Tonette’s help, s’il vous pla?t.”
Concern crinkled the woman’s brow. A moment later her heels clicked on the hardwood floor. From the rear door to the office Aimée heard, “Tante Tonette, you decent?”
A muffled reply. The woman beckoned Aimée.
“Don’t tire her out,” she said. “She’s got a cinq à sept tonight.”
That meant one thing only. A lover over apéros between five and seven.
Unsure of what to expect, Aimée smiled. “Merci.”
A well-coiffed, white-haired woman, seventy if she was a day, sat at an ebony desk spreading Tarot cards, her trim figure encased in a white linen sheath. A fuchsia foulard was knotted around her neck, matching her Chanel sling-back heels.
Fashion genes in every generation in this family.
“Excusez-moi, Tonette?”
A bat of her mascara’d lashes at Aimée. Then a wave of her hand as she scooped up the Tarot deck.
“You’re not here for a card reading,” she said, her voice graveled and deep.
A fortune-teller. Another surprise. But then she realized she didn’t understand a lot of what had happened since Zazie disappeared.
“Madame, if I could, this concerns—”
“Aah, pardonnez-moi.” She’d pulled on her tortoiseshell reading glasses. “Now I can see better. You’re the attorney representing the Ziegler heirs.”
“Heirs? But …”
“I prepared,” said Tonette, reaching for a worn, leather-bound ledger. “You can see the sale documents of my father’s purchase of Monsieur Ziegler’s shares in the antiquaire. Papers, all the Jews needed papers, for Aryanization, you know. So we kept everything for the Zieglers, but they didn’t return. Now it’s ready for the heir claimants.”
Aimée gave a sigh. “Madame Tonette, I think you’ve mistaken—”
“Attendez, please hear me out,” she said. The woman wanted to talk. “The ledgers detail every transaction, tax paid. It’s all here,” she said. “For fifty years and up to date.” Tonette shot her a look. “Dénoncés, you know. Denounced by their neighbors.”
The Occupation, and what the French did to the French during that dark time, remained as vivid as the present in those shrewd eyes. But Aimée hadn’t come to dip into the sad past.
“You’ve confused me with an attorney.”
“Mais oui … But you look like her. You’re both pregnant.”
Aimée handed her a card, sat down.
“Aah, la détective, the one Zazie goes on about.”
Encouraged, Aimée perched on a fragile gilt and red upholstered chair, hoping it would hold her, and spread out Zazie’s map, the report.
“Zazie’s teacher said you inspired his class’s end-of-year project,” said Aimée. “That you and Zazie spent time together. I’m hoping Zazie told you about her subject, a man she practiced surveillance on. Can you help me understand more?”
“Aaah, to catch le Weasel.” Tonette took off her glasses. “Her teacher and I, we had a bet. Challenged the students to get by without electronics, like we did during the Occupation. We encouraged them to partner and communicate. Like a game of spies, to make it fun. Surveil someone in the quartier—with their permission, of course. Using techniques of keeping a log, photographing, following and writing a report.”