Inside she saw garbage bins tucked under winding stairs so steep and narrow elves would feel at home. There was no locked door to the stairwell—in fact there was no door at all. She climbed, pausing to catch her breath as she pulled herself up the almost ladder-like stairs.
On the third-floor landing, jutting off to the left, lay a narrow walkway lined by an old hinge rack with just enough space to store sacks of coal—a common practice. She didn’t envy the help who had to carry up those sacks.
She hit René’s number. “Try de Mombert’s number again, okay? No need for surprises.”
Pause.
“Wait un petit moment, don’t tell me you’re breaking in?” René said. “Think you’ll find le Weasel sleeping it off, Zazie locked in a closet?”
“Something like that.”
“Alone? With a dangerous mec who’s—”
“The reason I asked you for backup, René,” she interrupted. “Make the call.”
She clicked off, put her ringer on mute. A moment later she heard a phone ringing from deep in the apartment’s bowels, but after ten rings, no answer.
Her neck damp with perspiration, she reached into her bag. Under her prenatal vitamins she found her mini lock-pick set, which she kept in her Dior sunglasses case. Inserting the pick and switch clip, she toggled up and down until she heard a click. The half-glass-paned back service door yielded, and in less than two minutes she had checked the walk-in pantry, cupboards, and cabinets under the old-style porcelain kitchen sink. No Zazie.
Not much cooking done here, either, evidenced by the Chinese take-out cartons in the trash. The refrigerator held yogurt and a glass bottle of capers. Nice and pickled, but she resisted the temptation. On the wood trestle kitchen table was half of a stale baguette and a bowl of café au lait. Cold, a beige skin floating on the surface of the milk. She sniffed. Not curdled, so from this morning.
She needed to work fast. The apartment’s rooms were laid out along a parquet-floored hall. So far all she had heard behind any of the doors was the flushing from the pipes above.
A loud buzzing disturbed her thoughts.
She froze.
In her pocket she felt her phone vibrating. Merde. She’d thought she’d silenced it, but she’d only put it on vibrate. She checked the display.
René.
She stepped behind the door to the salon—formal, with period furniture and wall tapestries. Unused, by the look of it.
“What?” she whispered into the phone.
“Buzz me in. I’m downstairs. You’re not doing this alone.”
“Then hurry up.”
She tiptoed to the front door. Pushed the button for PORTE, waited a few seconds, then pressed the second buzzer, ENTRéE.
By the time René came puffing up the stairs, she’d done a cursory check of the whole apartment. “If he was here, he’s long gone, René.”
“So you’ve checked the armoires, the closets …?”
“We have to dig deeper. Any information about le Weasel or Marie-Jo … You take the left side, and I’ll do the courtyard side.”
He rolled up his sleeves.
The apartment phone rang. René jumped. “Good God, what are we doing here, Aimée, besides getting arrested for breaking and entering?”
“Shh.”
After nine rings the answering machine clicked.
“Monsieur, the dry cleaner on rue de la Rochefoucald won’t give me your suit without the ticket. Pff. So don’t wonder why I’m late to work this afternoon, eh?”
The housekeeper.
“That’s two blocks away,” said René. “Sounds like she expects him to be here. Maybe he’s stepped out for cigarettes.”
Any moment he could appear. If they were going to confront him, it couldn’t be in this flat they’d broken into. They needed some kind of proof first.
“Quick, René.” She pawed through her bag. Where was her bug? Finally her fingers closed around it. “If you find a computer, use this.”
“So that’s where my scramble tracer’s gone!” He shook his head. “Concentrate on the girl’s room. Figure we’ve got less than ten minutes.”
Through the second door she found a teenager’s room—clothes on the floor, photos of boy bands on the walls, a few schoolbooks on a maple-wood rolltop desk. She scanned notebooks—only schoolwork—and then she found the camera. A high-end Nikon with a telescopic lens. No film inside.
She stepped back and surveyed the cluttered floor.
“Aimée, let’s go …”
On the floor by her foot, peeking from below a hoodie, she saw a red tassel. The red tassel she’d last seen on Zazie’s backpack.
Her heart cartwheeled, flipping from relief to fear. Zazie had been here.
But where was she now?
“Now, Aimée! Or do you want to get arrested?”
“Head through the kitchen to the pantry—the service stairs,” she said, scooping the tassel into her pocket. “I’m right behind you.”
But her feet refused to take her past the foyer. Zazie had been here and gone. There had to be more. Footsteps sounded outside the front door.
Her palms moistened in a hot sweat.
The shoes. A pair of scuffed Polo loafers, just like in Zazie’s photo, sat under a coatrack with a man’s linen jacket.
A key turned in the front door. Perspiration dripped between her shoulder blades. She reached in the linen jacket’s pockets and snatched the contents.
Moments later, breathing hard, she’d shut the back service door and was padding down the steep, winding stairs. Reaching the courtyard, she took deep breaths, focusing on the breeze blowing over the stone wall and trying to still her thumping heart.
Men always left things in their pockets. Incriminating things. Le Weasel proved no exception: the dry-cleaning receipt and a coat-check ticket she recognized from the Cercle de Jeux casino below Place Pigalle. There was also a rolled-up twenty-franc note—snort material.
René waited by the ivy, checking his phone. “Hurry, Aimée.”
The blurred outlines of le Weasel came into focus: a gambler, careless enough to leave white crystals on the rolled-up note in his pocket.
“Look what I found in le Weasel’s pocket.”