Dussollier shrugged. “Informers?”
She’d keep her theories to herself, see what he came up with. “No clue.” Shook her head. “Can you use your contacts here in the seventh to find out their identities, Dussollier?”
“I’ll do what I can before I bow out of the force, Aimée,” he said. “Pitiful, eh, but I’m all you’ve got for now. Tell me what else I can do.”
She nodded. “Scratch beneath the surface at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, dig for rumors—old and new—on Roland Leseur and his brother, Pascal.”
“D’accord, leave the heavy lifting to me. I know people. And people who know people, compris?” Dussollier took her face in his hands. “Let this vieux do his last bit of police work. I’m old, but I’m not out of touch.”
His warm hands, cupping her face the way her father’s used to. How she missed him.
“I sent you the invitation.” Dussollier kissed her forehead. “You’re coming to my daughter’s engagement party, non? My wife insists; she won’t take no for an answer.”
SHE GOT A taxi on rue du Bac in a panic over the time. Dussollier had been so intent on talking to her that she hadn’t felt she could get away, but now she was close to forty minutes late for her meeting with the lawyer. She called Ma?tre Benosh’s office and the secretary put her through to the lawyer.
“Where are you, Mademoiselle Leduc?”
“Je suis vraiment désolée. I was called to an unexpected security meeting at l’H?tel Matignon. I’m in a taxi.”
True, sort of.
“I’ll see you in fifteen minutes then.”
THIRTY MINUTES LATER—THE road had been clogged with a large demonstration—she ran into Ma?tre Benosh’s office. The building lay across from square Louis XVI, home to the Chapelle Expiatoire, the site of an annual royalists mass in honor of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, whose guillotined bodies were dumped here.
She fought to catch her breath. Her heels sank into the wine-red carpet of the waiting room. She noticed a man near the secretary. Melac. He stood by a black lacquer Chinese cabinet, his gaze locking on hers.
“So you decided to show up.”
“Moi? What are you doing here, Melac?”
“A little detecting of my own.”
Merde. He’d been a homicide detective at the Brigade Criminelle until a year ago. Still had connections.
“Leave it to the professionals, Melac.”
“Nothing wrong with getting a grasp of the playing field.”
“Here? At my lawyer’s office, at my appointment?” She wanted to spit. “Why the hell do you think—”
“I’m impressed, Aimée,” he interrupted. “Your child’s welfare is on the line and you show up late as usual.”
Tired, irritated and conscious of that uneasy chord still vibrating in her stomach, she refused to argue and waste words. “I was called to l’H?tel Matignon.”
His grey-blue eyes—so like Chloé’s—narrowed. “Like I believe that?”
“Like I care? Reasons of state security, Melac. I had no choice. Now if you’ll excuse me …” She headed toward the receptionist to check in.
“Ma?tre Benosh is seeing her next client. Your appointment’s been cancelled, Mademoiselle,” said the receptionist.
Panic-stricken, mired in this deep carpet, she felt helpless.
“Mademoiselle Leduc, we need to reschedule.” Ma?tre Benosh appeared in her office door, trim in a navy suit and medium-high heels. Her dark shoulder-length hair was bobbed.
“But Ma?tre Benosh …”
“It’s okay.” She smiled. “Tell my assistant to shuffle things around and fit you in as soon as possible.”
The door closed. Aimée turned around to see Melac pausing at the double doors leading to the black-and-white tiled foyer. “Since you’re so bullheaded, we’ll work this out at the magistrate’s,” he said. “Recognizing my daughter’s a done deal. A formality.”
“Good God, Melac, she’s six months old. Her place is with me, her mother.”
“When it fits your schedule,” he said.
“My life centers around Chloé,” she protested.
But Melac had shut the door.
She rescheduled, begging for something sooner than the day after tomorrow. Impossible, the secretary told her, handing her a manila envelope left for her by the “gentleman.”
DEJECTED, SHE TOPPED up her expired Métro card at the station, squeezed through the doors of a Line 9 train just before they closed. Finding a seat as the train took off, she opened the envelope.
An album of photos of Melac’s Breton farmhouse, a sketch of the playground he’d build beside the farmhouse’s organic garden, photos of Donatine’s loom, where she carded and spun wool from their herd of sheep. The wholesome country life.
Aimée’s shoulders slumped. She almost missed changing at Chaussée d’Antin–Lafayette.
Thinking about Chloé’s prospects filled her with feelings of inadequacy and guilt. All she could offer Chloé was a sweet child-minder, Sundays in the Jardin du Luxembourg and love. Like her father had done. It had been good enough for Aimée … hadn’t it?
On rue du Louvre she checked for a blue van. Nothing. Maurice’s kiosk was closed for his coffee break. She entered the office, set the alarm. It was deserted for once—Maxence was at the Hackaviste Academy, René dropping off de Brosselet’s contract according to the Post-it on her desktop screen.
She brewed espresso as the radiator hiccuped to life after a good kick. From the half-open window overlooking rue du Louvre came the hissing of bus brakes. Four large screens ran data on René’s desk.
Doubt gnawed at her. What kind of mother was she? Why did she feel guilty when 90 percent of mothers in Paris worked?
But she couldn’t dwell on that right now.