And waste more time trying to pry open sealed lips? He needed a less vague promise of help.
“Tant pis.” René felt in his pocket for his billfold. “So young and full of life, only twenty-four years old, a beauty, this Djanka. See.” He slapped the photo and a hundred francs on the zinc. “This help?”
The woman pulled her glasses from around her neck.
“Wasn’t called Djanka back then.”
René’s spine straightened. His stool creaked. “So what did you call her?”
“Aurélie.”
“You knew her?”
“She sang, her husband played guitar. He died in a fire in their caravan.”
“Pascal?”
She shrugged. “I don’t remember.”
“Pascal’s not a typical manouche name, is it?”
She gave a sideways grin. “What’s a name to us? We have many: three, four …”
As many as a particular situation demanded, René knew. He had read the newspapers—last year a Gypsy crime king had been sentenced, but six months into his term, the flics discovered it was his brother serving in prison.
“So she used Aurélie as a stage name?”
“Wouldn’t surprise me. Anyway, I never saw her after her husband died,” she said. “C’est tout ce que je sais.”
He contained his excitement. Now he had something to tell Aimée.
“Funny,” the woman continued, “you’re the second one to ask in as many days.”
Another person had come sniffing around? He was getting somewhere. Excited, he tried to keep his voice level. “A flic?”
“Not my business, mon petit.”
But she’d labeled the man, René could tell.
“It matters to me if I’m not the only one asking,” said René. “Tell me what this person asked you about.”
She shrugged. “Didn’t stay long after I told him I’d never heard of her. Not my type of person,” she said. “You, you’re different.”
He had gotten her to identify with him after all. And maybe the other mec hadn’t left a hundred-franc note on the counter.
“Can you describe this man?”
“Ugly mug. Chain-smoked.”
René sucked in his breath. He was getting somewhere all right. “Old, young?”
“Been around.” Her face broke into a lopsided grin.
“So any scars, tattoos?’
She had a calculating twinkle in her eye. “A man must put grain in the ground before he can cut the harvest.” She extended her palm.
He deliberated. Made to feel around in his pocket. Waited.
“Maybe in his sixties, thick eyebrows,” she said, “a smoker, as I told you.”
Could be anyone. He decided to move on and slid another hundred francs onto the counter. “I’ve heard in Romany culture, families insist on taking care of dying relatives. C’est vrai?”
“Selon la tradition, oui,” she said.
He wished he could remember Nicu’s uncle’s name, the uncle Aimée had mentioned. He decided to keep on trying. “Then why would a brother abduct his sister from the hospital and lie to her son?”
“That’s not our way,” she said. “Families prepare the traveler by keeping vigil at the bedside. We fear vengeance if wrongs aren’t righted or forgiveness not granted before a person departs on their journey. Never happens. C’est tabou.”
If what she said held true, this put the Constantin uncle in the clear.
“Then who would?”
“I could ask around but it’d cost you.”
More? No chance of help from the goodness of her heart, if she had one.
“Les gens du voyage move around,” she said. “Things get compliqué.”
And René had little time. He took out three hundred francs—the rent due on his garage—and put a hundred and fifty on the counter with his card. “Half now. Half when I meet anyone who knew her.”
His gaze caught on the Cirque Gitane poster beside the mirror. He recognized the uncle’s name now—stupid, it had been staring him in the face the whole time. René jerked his thumb at the poster for the Constantin family circus. “Radu Constantin I’ll talk to myself.”
Monday, Late Afternoon
AIMéE RAN INTO her apartment building’s courtyard, her flounced wool Gaultier coat damp from the drizzle. She wished she’d thought to pack her umbrella—then immediately felt racked with guilt for even thinking of such a thing and wished instead she hadn’t sent Nicu to his death. But those thoughts would get her nowhere. The pear tree’s budding leaves dripped on the lichen-laced cobblestones.
Only enough time to grab her laptop for tonight’s surveillance and zip back to the office in the waiting taxi. Not even a moment to kiss Chloé, who was napping across the courtyard.
Someone stepped out from the shadows under the eaves near the mailboxes. Startled, Aimée almost dropped her bag in a puddle.
It was Donatine. The last person she wanted to meet. Melac’s squeeze … non, his damned wife.
How the hell does she have the gall?
“Aimée, it’s been bothering me since last night. There’s been a terrible misunderstanding,” said Donatine, her face concerned. Her long red braid snaked over her belted wool jacket. Shielded by an umbrella, she was dry from her rouged cheeks to her ankle boots. A perfect provincial. She was clutching a package with the brand-name Bonpoint, the chichi baby store, under her arm—“We got off on the wrong foot; please let me explain.”
Aimée could feel words bubbling up in her mouth. Words like Why did Melac choose you over me and his child?
“My lawyer doesn’t want us in contact,” she said instead, determined to keep her hands in the pockets of her coat. Otherwise she’d swat this woman out of the way.
Donatine stepped aside. “Bien s?r. This package …”
“I don’t want anything from you,” she said. “No conversations, no gift, no trouble.”
“Hear me out for two seconds, please,” Donatine said.
“I’m sorry.” She struggled to keep her tone businesslike. “My lawyer instructed me not to talk to anyone concerned.”
“Melac thought that with your job you’d welcome our help. I’m a nurse.”