“What’s wrong?” René asked, giving her a look she couldn’t fathom. “Does it have to do with Melac?”
She put her feet up on the recamier, hesitant to dump her non-existent love life on René. Again. She couldn’t help it. “The father of my child appears and just like that expects me to uproot to Brittany. Wants to do the right thing, he says.”
Doing the right thing, my ass.
She lifted the damp strands of hair from her neck and sighed in disgust. “Then I sleep with him. But he’s got to rush back because of his high-maintenance ex and poor daughter’s fulltime nursing issues.”
“But I thought you …” René hesitated, choosing his words.
“Funny thing, René. Melac’s jealous of you.” She rubbed her ankle, wishing she’d had that pedicure last week.
“Moi?” René blinked.
“He can’t understand we’re best friends,” she said. “How involved you’ve been with the baby.”
Was that disappointment on his face?
“But you were debating leaving the business? Taking time in Brittany?”
“Like that will ever happen, René.”
René brightened. “You mean it?”
“At least about the going to Brittany part,” she said. Going part-time felt more and more appealing as her stomach expanded and tiredness dogged her every worn marble step to her apartment. But she’d never admit it to René. “You’re more interested than him in the baby, René.”
René smiled. “Of course, Saj and I will helm the ship when you take maternity leave. We’ll have the crib, too.”
A stab of guilt hit her. The idea she toyed with of selling the business to Florian at Systex, who’d barraged her with offers to merge. Another thing she’d kept from René.
“… bring the baby to work …” René was saying. But she listened with half an ear as she pulled up her email. Checked for the deposit Saj had requested from the Luxembourg bank wire transfer. Done. Taxes paid. Relief filled her.
But René was one step ahead of her.
“Looks like Saj won the hacker competition and lent us a hundred thousand francs for our taxes,” said René, his voice laced with suspicion. “Or maybe you used your hormonal imbalance, welled up in front of the tax adjuster?”
Not this. Not now. “It’s complicated, René.”
“I spotted this a kilometer away,” he said, “not that le fisc would. Want to explain how you paid the taxes?”
Should she tell him?
“Working here involves me,” he said. “It’s my skin, too, Aimée.”
So she told him. The mounting feeling that her mother’s clout worked in mysterious ways. How the financial information had all arrived by diplomatic courier pouch—the last one from Dar Es Salaam, around the time Agence France-Presse reported a coup against the dementia-ridden dictator by a well-funded rebel group.
René’s eyes went round as demi-tasse saucers. “Your mother’s arming rebel insurgents in Africa?”
“Did I say that, René?”
She recounted that last call from the diplomatic attaché, their hurried meeting on the quai. How when she’d pressed him for info on her mother, his face had shuttered. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. And if you ask any more, this avenue shuts down. Vous comprenez?”
René’s gaze swept the ceiling boiseries. “Knowing our luck, they’re bugging our conversation. Or they’ve embedded microphones in …” He paused and turned on the radio to the classical station.
“A healthy dose of paranoia is one thing, René,” she said, “but what’s done is done.” All of a sudden, tears brimmed in her eyes.
“Don’t get emotional on me, Aimée,” he said, looking awkward.
“These days I well up at anything,” she said, wiping her eyes. “Even the ads for Alouette brie yesterday on the radio. Hormones.”
“How can you think of financing a baby’s layette with arms-dealing money?” René hopped off his ergonomic chair, grabbed his jacket. “Dirty money your mother’s stashed in a Luxembourg shell company?”
“René, I don’t see any dirt in those zeros,” she said. “That’s keeping us afloat until our clients pay up.”
But he’d slammed the office door.
Now what had she done?
Her phone vibrated in its charger. Morbier. Filled with mixed feelings, she hesitated before picking up. She wondered if word of Zacharié’s half brother’s death had traveled. Best defense was a good offense.
“Just thought you’d want to know, Leduc.”
“Not to count on police protection?” she said. “Or Melac in my life?” Stupid. She hadn’t meant that to come out.
A long sigh from Morbier. “Hormones in overdrive, Leduc?”
“My body’s swimming in estrogen,” she said, noticing the pregnancy book René had left open to the chapter on the second trimester. If only she weren’t so emotional right now. Sleeping with Melac hadn’t helped; neither had killing someone in self-defense. And all in one morning.
Calm down. She needed to keep herself in check.
“Why did you tell Melac about the baby?” she said.
“Not me,” he said, surprise in his voice. “Worst-kept secret. Everyone knows. But that’s not why I’m calling, Leduc. If you’d kept your phone charged you’d know about the suspect in garde à vue—looks good for the rapist.”
“Who?”
“A Monsieur Vasseur came up with priors as he identified his wife at the morgue.”
Priors? “But he’s an attorney.”
“Don’t attorneys batter their wives, Leduc?”
“I mean, how could he practice with a record?”
“We’re talking the ‘unofficial’ files—on two occasions his wife wouldn’t press charges.”
The unofficial files. Just like the files Zacharié stole for Jules. She held her breath, wondering if Morbier was intimating in his indirect way that he knew about Jules’s death.
“Not enough for court, I know, Leduc,” Morbier was saying. “Turns out after the Brigade Criminelle questioned the neighbors today, a family friend who had given him an alibi last night at the reception has changed his ‘tune.’ ”
“Old man Lavigne?”