Time to summon her sleep-deprived, hormone-addled, over-stimulated brain to order. Get a handle on what Rose had told her and make sense of Nicu’s murder. Draw the big picture. She needed to make a timeline, visualize and connect the events. If she could work through her anxiety about Chloé, the pain in her ribs, and her tiredness, and make connections, assemble the pieces, she’d get the whole.
She taped a roll of white butcher paper, courtesy of the butcher who sold her Miles Davis’s horsemeat, to the wall. Then she closed the window against the noise, took her colored markers and wrote down names, grouping them according to what she’d learned:
Constantin clan: Gypsy King, Radu, Djanka/Aurélie, Drina and Nicu.
The Leseurs: Resistance patriarch, Pascal, Roland.
The Leducs: Papa, Aimée.
The Uzes: Aunt, Great-Uncle, Belle, Rose and Lisette.
1999 incidents: H?pital Laennec abduction, faux body in the morgue, Nicu’s knifing, Drina’s last words at the clinique.
Then she graphed a timeline beginning in 1978 with Djanka/Aurélie’s murder and Pascal Leseur’s supposed suicide. She taped the two black-and-white photos roughly where they’d fall on the timeline.
She tried to make connections. After ten minutes she sat down and stared. So far, she’d drawn a series of crisscrossed lines. What had she missed or forgotten?
She added Dr. Estienne, Ninette the faux nurse, Pons and Grévot, the mystery grandpa at Sciences Po. Under a question mark she wrote Tesla, Fifi.
She rubbed her eyes, filled with shame and guilt. Imagined the struggles Nicu had faced. How Drina had raised him in hiding, then worked at the market, caning furniture and informing for her father to put food on the table. Somehow Nicu had pulled himself up and got accepted to the Sorbonne, his whole life ahead of him. Her father had promised their help, yet when Nicu had asked her for it, she’d failed him.
Her brain stalled.
Walk away, her father would say. Let it simmer until your mind clears. She had a business to run—it was her second day back in the office and she had only another twenty minutes to check and program their daily anti-virus scans before Babette would bring the girls so she could nurse Chloé. Then she’d have to change and head out for tonight’s surveillance.
Before she forgot, she left Maxence a detailed phone message about how to remotely hook up Roland Leseur’s tracker feed. Thank God she’d had the backup tracker ready and primed for tonight’s surveillance. She counted on Maxence to bring another, and keep it from René. These trackers cost a bundle.
AIMéE CUDDLED WITH Chloé on the recamier in the office, fighting sleep. Chloé’s warm fingers tightened against her clavicle, her eyelashes fluttered and her intent mouth sucked like a little machine. Aimée’s shoulders sagged; her lids were so heavy. She wanted to let it all go and surrender to sleep. But she couldn’t. The red marks on her arm from Leseur’s grip still showed, her bruised rib hurt and her thoughts whipped like a gale through a wind tunnel. Enveloped in Chloé’s sweet baby smell, she must have nodded off. The next thing she felt was a coldness. An emptiness. She sat up.
No Chloé in her arms. Good God, had she dropped her baby? She reached down to the creaking wood floor. Only the heels she’d kicked off. Was this a nightmare? She shook her head, splashed mineral water from a bottle on her face. She was awake.
“Babette?”
No answer. Only her deserted office, the door to the hallway open.
Panicked, she adjusted her Agent Provocateur bra and noticed the envelope propped on her desk, addressed to “Aimée Leduc” in that familiar angular handwriting.
Melac. He’d come in and taken a nursing Chloé from her arms. The snake stopped at nothing.
Shaking with fear and anger, she ran in her stocking feet to the open office door. Grabbed her coat … non, she had to read what was in the envelope first.
A notice summoning her to appear at an appointment with his lawyer; the notice stated that a nonappearance could force a court-ordered one. Stealing her baby and threatening a court order—he couldn’t do that. She doubted it was even legal.
What did legality matter? Her baby was gone. Chloé. She had to get her back.
A moment later she stood on the landing, hyperventilating in front of the wire-cage elevator shaft, stabbing the button. Scrolling with frantic fingers through her cell-phone contacts for Melac’s number. Merde, she’d deleted it.
“Bonsoir,” said the smiling man who stepped out of the elevator.
Her eyes brimmed, her lip quivered. Waves of helplessness washed over her. “Please, you have to help me … quick … my baby …”
“Ah, Beno?t, you’re early.” Babette stood wiping her hands outside the WC in the hall. On her hip was Gabrielle, shaking a rattle, and in front of her was the baby stroller with a smiling Chloé. Aimée’s knees turned to jelly as relief washed over her.
“We had a spit-up and diaper change times two, so I just took care of the girls here in the WC.” Babette flashed a look at Aimée. “You just missed the fun, Beno?t.”
Beno?t, Gabrielle’s father, whom she’d never met. And now she looked a fool. A neurotic fool.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“Sorry, I must have dropped off and woken up disoriented.”
“Glad you tried that power napping we were talking about, Aimée.” Babette smiled meaningfully. “If you’ve gone into a deep REM state, ten minutes’ sleep is like an hour. Snap and you’re ready to go.”
Aimée nodded, feeling like an idiot and desperate to repair her first impression. Gabrielle’s father would tell his wife she was unhinged.
“Sorry to come early, but my last meeting was near here,” he said, adjusting his messenger bag, “and I’m watching Gabrielle tonight.”
She liked him—tall, bright eyes, lean hipped, longish brown hair. He wore a white shirt under a jean jacket; not the stuffed shirt of an academic that Madame Cachou had painted Gabrielle’s father to be.
“Please come into my office; I should introduce myself. I’ve met your wife, Carine. I’m—”
“I know who you are,” he said, averting his gaze.
She cringed inside.
“But I’m Gabrielle’s uncle.”
“Uncle?” So then maybe … available?