“Mademoiselle, who are you?” her voice rasped. “Security officers don’t wear Chanel.”
Aimée looked down to see that her windbreaker had come undone to reveal her little black dress. If she didn’t come clean, the woman wouldn’t cooperate. “A détective privé, hired by Nicu Constantin, the son of Pascal Leseur and Djanka Constantin.” She flashed her detective license with the post-pregnancy photo—slim and smiling for once. “On Sunday, the woman who raised him after his mother was murdered was abducted from her deathbed because she knew secrets.”
Fran?oise fiddled with the belt on her trench coat. “Secrets … what secrets?”
“A cover-up, but it’s not exactly clear what’s being covered up. And whatever it is these people want to hide, they’re ticked off about it. Nicu was murdered yesterday. Knifed in public, quick and dirty, just like Roland.”
Fran?oise gasped.
Aimée moved to the dining room’s window, peered from behind the half-drawn damask curtain. The flics had arrived. She pulled the curtain closed. “Get your daughter, your diplomatic passports and what you can throw in that Hermès carryall.” Aimée pointed to the bag on a chair.
“But our things, mon Dieu, I’ve got so much left to pack and box.”
Fran?oise hadn’t moved. Aimée wanted to shake this cosseted woman who either couldn’t fathom the danger or … Aimée froze. She felt as though a vise was tightening around her throat. What if she’d read this wrong—what if Fran?oise was in league with them? Whoever “they” were.
The sudden ringing of a telephone on the hall table pierced the silence.
“I wouldn’t answer that,” said Aimée. And then she had a thought. “Are your husband’s things still here?”
“Most of them are packed in his old office. Why?”
The hall phone stopped ringing. The sound was immediately followed by the trilling of a cell phone. Fran?oise jumped and took it out of her trench coat pocket.
“Wouldn’t answer that either,” Aimée snapped and took it from her.
Fran?oise’s blue-violet eyes blinked. For the first time, she looked terrified.
“Get your daughter, your passports. Now.”
The next moment, she’d disappeared up the wide staircase.
Aimée had to use this time wisely. She didn’t know what she was looking for in Gerard Delavigne’s office, but Fran?oise’s words—Your bosses would have done anything to keep my husband quiet—kept running through her head.
Keep him quiet about what?
She only knew she had precious few minutes before the flics would ring the bell.
Delavigne’s office was lined with empty bookshelves; the floor was covered in packing boxes and furniture shrouded by sheets. The sodium lights shining on the Champ de Mars gave off just enough light through the tall windows for her to see. Like having a private park outside your house, she thought, except for the flashing red light of the ambulance parked on the allée where they’d just been walking. Where Roland Leseur sat dead on the bench.
The musty smell of old paper tickled her nose, and she sneezed. In the corner sat a withered ficus in a Chinese porcelain planter. A large baroque desk with a wooden inlay was bare except for an old framed portrait of Giscard d’Estaing. No drawers.
Think. This man had been Pascal Leseur’s classmate. They’d attended the elite grande école together, which was a conduit to a ministry position. They were the types who melded for life, kept the power in-house. The old boy’s network.
Fran?oise and Gerard had been sent to faraway postings to get them out of the way. Say Gerard’s ambassadorships hinged on what he knew of Pascal’s suicide and the cover-up over Djanka. Knowledge so valuable he needed to be kept quiet and in clover? Quick and dirty, but a working theory.
She flicked on her penlight and scanned the boxes—filled with old magazines and books, mostly. Some boxes were labeled PHOTOS or DECORATIONS. She moved toward the empty bookcases. Didn’t he have a safe? Most men of his ilk would.
She pressed her fingers along the bookcase ridges and found it on the lowest shelf—an old Fichet-Bauche safe, like her grandfather’s. Open and empty.
Of course, Fran?oise would have packed the valuables for the move. She looked more carefully at the boxes near the bookcase and found one labeled DOCUMENTS, FINANCIALS.
She hated rummaging through people’s personal documents. But not enough to stop her from shining the penlight on the box’s contents. Kneeling, she flipped through the family birth certificates, marriage certificate, property deeds, Banque de France livret. The usual.
But underneath was a distinctive blue folder, legal-size and bearing the insignia of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. State secrets? But these were old. She thumbed it open. A black-and-white photograph of a half-dressed young boy and a man in what looked like a hotel room; written on the back were the words Insurance via Pascal.
“What are you doing in here?”
Aimée’s heart jumped to her stomach. She looked up to see Fran?oise standing in the doorway with a young woman. Their figures were silhouetted against the flashing blue lights from the police car out front, and their faces tinged red from the ambulance lights bleeding in from the Champ de Mars.
Think, she had to think. She slipped the folder under her windbreaker and did it back up, took the penlight out of her mouth and got to her feet.
“What right do you have to go through our things?”
“Maybe I got it wrong, Fran?oise,” she said, edging forward to the door. “Roland was the target, you the bait.”
“What in God’s name do you mean?”
Aimée wished she could read the woman’s expression.
“You’re in league with them,” Aimée said. “That’s why we got away, n’est-ce pas?”
Fran?oise was moving her hands and fingers rapidly. She had turned to face the young woman beside her, who responded, signing with her hands.