He looked at her blankly.
“Apartment? Maman lives in a caravan in Avignon. She only comes to Paris sometimes, to do the market.”
“So what’s the address she used at the hospital, on Boulevard des Invalides? Your place?”
“Moi? No. No idea. I crash at the artist squat under Pont Alexandre III,” he said. “But I know the atelier she uses to repair cane chairs. I could take you there.”
Now it made sense. At almost every street market, manouches could be found hawking services to re-cane chairs, a disappearing art.
Every minute counted. “What are we waiting for? You’ve got the key?”
He pulled a key chain from his pocket.
“My scooter’s out front,” she said.
She waved goodbye to Michel. With Nicu sitting behind her, she eased off the brake, nosed the scooter onto the street and took off. The quartier was quiet. In the words of Martine’s tante, who owned a shop on rue du Bac, behind these walls, entre cour et jardin, lay secrets big and small.
Aimée hoped the atelier held some hint as to Drina’s whereabouts; she needed to find her before it was too late to learn anything about her father’s killer.
Nicu directed her past the modernist UNESCO building, the grounds of the école Militaire and the enclave of antique shops known as Village Suisse. After Avenue de la Motte-Piquet, she wove among traffic on crowded Boulevard de Grenelle under the overhead struts of the elevated Métro, which rumbled above them. Line 6, her favorite line, with its uninterrupted view of the Tour Eiffel.
Following Nicu’s directions, she turned in to Passage Sécurité, a narrow lane of one-and two-story buildings off the broad boulevard. At one end of the lane stood a tall housing block, at the other the grey rivet-dotted Métro structure. On the crumbling stucco wall below the blue sign reading VOIE PRIVéE, a rusting metal sign said PLOMBERIE, CHAUFFAGE.
“Here.” Nicu jumped off and inserted a key into the padlock on the grey wooden double door of a small warehouse with butterscotch stucco. Bits of torn newspaper flew through the alley—giving it the abandoned feel of a wind tunnel. She shivered. Not a place she’d choose to frequent.
Inside the musty, skylit atelier was a scene of chaos. Cane chairs overturned, metal tools and empty paint cans littering the cracked concrete floor. The place had been trashed. Pillows slit open, down feathers clumped and matted in a wet corner. Someone had been searching for something. It was the work of a pro.
And it sickened her. Nicu had gone to the back courette, a postage stamp–sized courtyard. Aimée saw a white camper van parked there, its door open.
Her breath caught. Could Drina be hiding here, or even be here as a captive? She reached in her bag for her Swiss Army knife, flicked the blade open. “Watch out, Nicu.”
But Nicu came back, shaking his head. “How could they do this?” he said, a stricken look on his face.
Aimée closed her knife. “More importantly, Nicu, why?” she said. “What were they looking for?”
Inside the small caravan, pots and pans, blankets and clothes littered the floor. The cooktop had been overturned, and a bottle of vinegar broken, leaving a dry residue and a tangy odor. The built-in seat and covers had been slashed with a knife.
Nicu picked up a wooden toy wagon that fit in his palm. He spun the small wheels, which were decorated with a metal band. “She loved these. I carved them for her. The old Gypsy wagons, les roulottes.”
“Nicu, if your mother had something that proved who murdered my father, where would she have hidden it?”
Nicu’s shoulders were shaking. “Face it. She’s … passed.” He shook his head. “I thought I’d know, feel her departure. What does it matter now?”
Was he right? Had she been beaten to the finish by the man who murdered her papa—again?
“We don’t know that. Until we find her, we search. Think, Nicu. Where else would she hide something?”
He gave a shake of his head.
“Don’t you at least want to try your best? How can you give up any hope of helping her?” She wanted to mobilize him. But this kid was in shock, his mother likely dead. Pity mingled with her determination. “I’m sorry, Nicu, but please try to think of where she’d keep money, valuables.”
“Bon,” he said, catching her urgency. “At the market she’d keep her cash and account books in the caravan. She’d customized it.” He went back into the atelier and returned with a screwdriver, which he used to start unscrewing one of the caravan’s outside panels. Nothing inside. He tried the next one. “This could take a while, Aimée.”
He was focused now. No good her standing here wasting time.
“I’ll ask around in the café, the shops, see if anyone noticed anything. Call me.”
“There’s no phone here. And I don’t have a cell.”
She remembered seeing a phone booth, rare enough these days, half a block away under the elevated Métro. “Use the phone at the Métro.” From her wallet she took out a phone card. “Plenty of credit left.”
The heating-system shop next door was shuttered. At the corner café, she caught the waiter’s attention amid loud shouts directed at the horse races on the télé screen overhead. A shrug when she asked about Drina, the atelier. More shrugs from men at the counter. The produce-shop owner, stocking only tomatoes, shook his head. She glanced at her phone. No call from Nicu yet. Up and down the block she’d gotten the same story—no one had seen anything, no one had heard anything. No one wanted to get involved with a Gypsy.
She had more luck on the opposite corner at the tailor’s.
“I know who you mean, the Gypsy,” said the thin old man, hunched over a thrumming sewing machine as he guided fabric through it under a harsh desk light. “Keep to themselves, those manouches. Thieves.”