René face soured as he scanned the items in her palm. “With pedophiles it’s not unusual for them to have families, professions, even be pillars of the community. It’s about a double life. Power.”
“Yet gambling wouldn’t necessarily fit the profile of a serial rapist,” she said.
“Unless the screws tightening up in the quartier stressed him, he’s gambling, amping up. What’s the red tassel?”
“Proof.” Aimée’s palm shook. “This was on Zazie’s backpack the last time I saw her. But the flics need more for a case.”
“We don’t,” said René, taking the Cercle de Jeux ticket from her. His jaw set. A single-minded focus in his green eyes. “Now we know Zazie was here. Time le Weasel coughs up her location.”
A woman’s voice carried over the pavers. The apricot light streaming into the arched carriage entrance sharpened her figure into a dark silhouette—a woman not much taller than René, a chignon atop her head and what appeared to be a long apron tied around her ample waist.
The voice, not the one she’d heard on the answering machine minutes before, sounded familiar. She knew that woman’s voice. But from where?
Time to find out.
“Bonjour, Madame. You’re the concierge?”
Startled, she fumbled with her shopping bag. Red and white radishes—reminding Aimée of little torpedoes—fell on the cobbles.
“You’ve no business here,” she said, irritated. “It’s private property.”
“Excusez-moi, Madame,” said Aimée, bending down with difficulty to recover the radishes. Soon she’d need a crane for such a maneuver.
The low smoker’s voice was at odds with the woman’s clear complexion and bright grey eyes. “But you’re Leduc’s daughter, non? The big eyes, skinny legs—you’re taller now. Grown up.” Her eyes narrowed. “And a bun in the oven, as they say.”
Now Aimée remembered Cécile. A Pigalle working girl whose pimp Aimée’s father had put in prison. Instead of turning informer, as he’d counted on, or showing him any gratitude for freeing her from the life, she’d found another macquereau—so named for their sardine-shiny flash suits. Would the woman be friendly to her now or hostile?
“Cécile.” She smiled, bent down to brush both cheeks. “You’re looking even younger than the last time I saw you, if that’s possible.”
“I found mon Sauveur,” she said, tugging the gold cross around her neck. “In Saint Rita’s chapel.”
“You look happy,” Aimée said.
“I’ve made my peace with the past. How is Leduc now?”
Aimée looked down at the worn pavers. Almost ten years gone, but the memory seared like it was yesterday.
“He died in a bomb explosion in Place Vend?me,” she said.
“Désolée,” she said, glancing at Aimée’s stomach. “He won’t see his grandchild, then. You know, I made my peace with everyone but your father. I always wanted to.” She shrugged. “C’est dommage.”
“Can you help us, Cécile?” She folded Cécile’s hand in her own. “Marie-Jo’s friend Zazie’s missing. She’d been following the rapist.”
“That pig who murdered the little girl above the cheese shop?”
Aimée nodded. “Maybe if you could help me find Zazie … Think of it as some way of making it up to Papa.”
Cécile glanced at René. Her brow furrowed.
Impatient, René was tapping his handmade Lobb shoes on the cobbles. She noticed his balled-up fist clutching the detritus from le Weasel’s pocket, the other jingling his car keys. “Cécile, where’s le … I mean, Monsieur von Wessler?”
“Him? If he didn’t answer the door, some modeling job or out gambling, I expect. Comme d’habitude, these days.”
René shot her a look. “Excusez-moi, Madame. Talk to you later, Aimée.”
Gung ho, René headed to his parked Citro?n, which glowed dark green in the sun. Where was he going? To try to track down le Weasel? She wished they’d had a chance to discuss a plan, but she would call him when she’d gotten more information from Cécile.
But before she could, the phone rang in the concierge’s loge. “I’m busy, and with any luck that’s the plumber.”
Before Aimée could press her, she’d gone into the loge and shut the door.
Aimée’s bad feeling mounted. She hesitated on narrow rue Chaptal, the afternoon sun melting into dim gold reflections on the mansard windows. Did René believe he could force a confession from le Weasel in a casino? René had taken off like a shot, unprepared and without thinking things through, just like he often accused her of doing. He was tired, too. The purple-tinged rings under his eyes worried her.
She knew Zazie had been here, that Zazie had trailed le Weasel and was after the rapist—but had she ever found out they were one and the same? Or just assumed?
In the fog of her pregnancy brain, she’d missed something with Cécile. She couldn’t let this unease in her gut go. Cécile had to know more.
“Zut alors, I’ve told you all I know,” said Cécile peering out from the concierge’s loge. She made a tsk sound. “But you can’t let things go, eh? Like your father.”
Her father’s lopsided grin flashed in front of her; his tired, smiling eyes over a bowl of café au lait in the morning, poring through police files at the kitchen table. His bathrobe, the musk and fresh laundry scent it carried, her father’s smell. The ache of missing him never went away.
But she wouldn’t let Cécile fob her off again. “It’s more than that, Cécile,” she said. “Zazie’s in danger. What more can you remember? There must be something.”
Cécile glanced at the time. Untied her apron.
“Red hair?”
Aimée stepped closer. “Curly and red. You saw her, Cécile?”
“Marie-Jo and this Zazie went out yesterday afternoon. With this nice man, a friend of her father’s.”
Alarm flooded Aimée with this new twist. Wasn’t the father in prison?
“Were the girls struggling? Upset?”
“Mais non, not at all.”
Aimée felt a tightening in her chest. Who the hell was this “nice man”?
“What time was this?”
She thought. “A bit after five. Something like that.”