Frozen Heat

NINE

Lysette Bernardin picked up Heat’s phone call sounding wary and frail, which she attributed not to age but to the soul-crushing grief Nikki had heard in the voices of so many families of murder victims over time. The old woman spoke excellent English and brightened when she learned that the caller was the daughter of her dear Nicole’s best friend, Cynthia. Her husband was at a doctor’s appointment for his new hip until early afternoon. Madame Bernardin gave Heat the address on Boulevard Saint-Germain near Rue du Dragon and they fixed two P.M. for a visit.

They took a taxi-a new Mercedes-to the Left Bank and had the driver drop them not far from the Bernardins’ apartment so they could have some lunch before their meeting. Rook had his mind on reliving the Rive Gauche writer’s experience, either at Les Deux Magots or Cafe de Flore. Both were crowded with tourists. Even the iconic sidewalk tables were hemmed in by rolling carry-on luggage. They opted for an open table across the boulevard at Brasserie Lipp, which Johnny Depp had told Rook also once served as a hangout for the likes of Hemingway, Proust, and Camus. “Can you imagine waiting on an existentialist?” asked Rook. “‘What will you have, Mr. Camus, the steak tartare or the escargots?’ ‘Oh… What does it matter?’”

Heat checked her watch. “One o’clock here. In New York, they should be in the precinct by now.” She tapped in the international code and called Raley’s cell.

“Hey,” said the detective. “Or should I say, bonjour? I was just going to call you. How’s your jet lag?”

“I have been living my life jet lagged. I can no longer tell. Why were you going to call?” Heat got out her notepad, hopeful something would be worth writing down.

“I’ll give you the good news first. Forensics called and said they confirmed gunpowder residue on that glove Ochoa found. Also paint particles that may match your front door. The pigment’s right, but they won’t know for certain until this afternoon.”

Nikki covered the mouthpiece and relayed the information to Rook, then said, “OK, Rales, let’s hear the bad news.”

“Hang on.” After some rustling and the sound of a door opening and closing, he continued, accompanied by reverb, which made her picture him seeking privacy in the back hall off the bull pen. “It’s Irons. Now that the glove looks like it might bust a lead, he’s pulled Team Roach off Forensics watch.”

“Please, not Hinesburg.”

“Not that bad, but close. Captain’s taking it over himself. Lab’s still working on finding fingerprints on it, but if they do, the Iron Man is poised for glory.”

Inside, Nikki fumed, but kept a light touch with her detective. “I can’t leave town for one day, can I?” His laugh echoed in the hall, and she said, “Look, it is what it is. Thanks for the update, and keep me posted.”

The waiter had been standing by until she hung up, and when he arrived, Rook gestured to Nikki and said, “Want me to handle this?”

“No, I’ll blunder through.” She turned to the waiter and said flawlessly, “ Bonjour, monsieur. Je voudrais deux petits plats, s’il vous plait. La salade de frisee, et apres, les pommes de terre a l’huile avec les harengs marine. ”

Rook composed himself, muttered “ Deux,” and handed the menus back. “Wow, I had no idea.”

“Once again,” she said.

“Full of surprises.”

“I have always loved the language. They even let me skip French Four in high school. But there’s no substitute for immersing yourself and speaking it with the locals.”

“When did you do that?”

“On my college semester abroad. I had been in Venice most of the time, but Petar and I came here for a month before I went back to Northeastern.”

“Ah, Petar. Shall we set a place for him?”

“God, drop the shoe, Sparky. So you know? Jealousy? Totally unattractive.”

“I’m not a jealous guy, you know.”

“Oh, right. Let’s run down your list of hot buttons: Petar? Don? Randall Feller?”

“OK, now, he’s different. That guy’s name says it all. Randy Feller? I’m just sayin’.”

“I think you’re ‘just sayin” a lot.”

He brooded, fumbling with his silverware, playing one-handed leapfrog with his forks, then finally said, “You named three. Is that about it?”

“Rook, are you seriously asking me my number? Because if you are, that’s going to open up a ginormous subject. That’s defining for a relationship. It’s going to mean talk. Lots and lots of talk. And even if you’re willing to go there right now and put in that work, I’d ask myself one thing, first: How many surprises can you handle in forty-eight hours?”

He saw the waiter coming and said, “You know what I think we should do? Let’s just relax and enjoy whatever the hell it was you ordered.”

“ Merveilleux,” she said.

Monsieur and Madame Bernardin greeted them in the foyer of their spacious apartment, a duplex comprising the top two stories of their six-floor building. In spite of the Left Bank’s Bohemian pedigree, that stretch of Boulevard Saint-Germain whispered unpretentious wealth tidily wrapped in Louis XV facades. The block of apartments rose above street-level shops that were limited to elegant necessities. In this neighborhood, it would be easier to find a wine boutique or seamstress than a place to get a tattoo or Brazilian wax. The couple, in their mid-eighties, reflected the neighborhood in their attire. Both were smartly dressed in understated classics: a black cashmere pullover and tailored slacks for her; a maroon sweater vest under a butterscotch corduroy blazer pour monsieur. No velvet smoking jackets, but these were certainly not matching-track-suit seniors, either.

Lysette accepted the small bouquet of white lilies Nikki had bought on their walk there with a mix of thanks at the kindness of her gesture and sadness at their grave symbolism. Emile rasped a heavily accented “This way, please,” and they followed him as he hobbled to the living room and his wife disappeared in search of a vase. As they sat, he apologized for his slowness, blaming a recent hip replacement. She returned with the flowers and placed them on a corner table with some other condolence arrangements that surrounded a framed photo of their daughter. To Heat’s eye, the portrait was identical to the New England Conservatory yearbook photocopy in her murder file.

“Thank you for seeing us today,” said Nikki in French. “I know this is a difficult time, and we are truly sorry for your loss.” The old couple facing them on the couch took each other’s hand simultaneously and held it comfortably. They were both thin and small like Nicole, but seemed even more so-almost birdlike under the load of mourning their only child.

They thanked Nikki, and Emile suggested they continue in English, as they were both fluent and could see that M. Rook would like to be more included. He limped around the coffee table with a bottle of Chorey-les-Beaune to pour into the wineglasses that had been set beside a small plate of petits fours in anticipation of the visit. After a muted toast and polite sips, Lysette set her glass down, eyes riveted on Nikki. “Pardon me for staring, but you look so much like your mother,” Heat heard again. “It is so strange for me to sit here across from you, who are occupying the same chair Cynthia liked to use. The sensation is as if time had… what is the word…?”

“Warped,” said her husband, and the pair smiled and nodded in unison. “We cared very much for Cindy, but I am sure you know that.”

“Actually, this is all new to me. I’d never met your daughter and my mother never mentioned her to me.”

“That is odd,” said Lysette.

“I agree. Did my mother and Nicole have some sort of falling out at some point? Anything that might have caused them to become estranged?”

The Bernardins looked at each other and shook no. “ Au contraire,” Emile said. “As far as we knew, their relationship was always strong and happy.”

“Forgive me if this is sensitive to discuss, but I believe Nicole’s murder is somehow connected to my mother’s, and I hope to learn as much as I can about their relationship so I can find the killer.”

“They were like sisters,” said Emile. “They had their differences, though.”

“It’s what made up the friendship,” said Lysette. “Opposite personalities that complemented each other so beautifully. Our Nicole, she was always an esprit libre.”

Heat translated for Rook. “A free spirit.” He nodded like he got it already.

“She worried us so much as a child,” continued Emile. “From the moment she could walk, she was always testing things, taking risks. Climbing this, jumping over that. Just like that urban sport these days. What is it called?”

“Parkour,” said his wife. “When she was seven, she gave herself a concussion. Oh, mon Dieu, we were so frightened. We gave her the pair of roller skates she wanted for her birthday. A week later, our little daredevil thought she would try riding them down the stairs of le Metro.”

Her husband shook his head at the recollection and pointed to his own body to indicate Nicole’s traumas. “Concussion. Knocked out a tooth. A broken wrist.” Heat and Rook shared a glance, thinking the same thing: that explained the old scar. “We thought she would outgrow all this but her esprit, her wild side, only got more worrisome at adolescence.”

“Boys,” said Lysette. “Boys, boys, boys. All her energy went to boys and parties.”

“And the Beatles,” Emile scoffed. “And incense.”

Rook shifted cheeks in his antique chair as the parents continued through the 1960s. Nikki knew this was taking a lot of time, but she didn’t try to stem their oral history. It seemed important for them to tell her Nicole’s story-especially considering their loss. But their narrative also gave Nikki what she wanted-not just the obvious rewarding of her attempt to dig for background to help her homicide investigation, but the opportunity to go to the places she had never gone before to learn about her mother and her world. The ceremony of sharing this moment with the family of her mom’s best friend gave her a feeling of completeness about herself she hadn’t expected; a sense of personal connection to things she had long avoided. If Lon King didn’t reinstate her after this, that shrink could bite it.

Madame Bernardin said, “We did not know where she would go in her life until she found her passion in the violin.”

“Which is how she met Nikki’s mother,” said Rook, scrambling to put up a stop sign on memory lane.

“The best thing that ever happened for our girl,” said Emile. “She became immersed in the development of her talent in Boston and, at the same time, met a friend with opposing sensibilities to ground her.”

“Nicole needed that,” agreed his wife. “And I believe-if I may say so, Nikki-that our Nicole helped to open up your mother, who had such a serious nature. So full of purpose, so duty-bound to her work, rarely giving herself permission to simply have fun.” She paused. “I can see this makes you a little uncomfortable, but don’t be. We are talking about your mother, after all, not you.”

“Although, you could be her sitting there right now,” Emile added, only making Nikki feel more exposed, until Rook, thank God, jumped in brandishing his odd sock.

“That’s what so curious to me,” he began. “Cynthia-Cindy-had such drive and purpose and investment to succeed as a concert-class pianist. I’ve seen her play on video; she was astounding.”

“Yes,” they both said.

Rook placed his hands palms up to the heavens. “What happened? Something changed when she came here in the summer of ‘71. Something big. Maybe Nikki’s mother didn’t quit the piano, but she seemed to quit the dream. She had career opportunities back in the States and she didn’t bother to go back to see them through. I just wonder, what took such a serious young woman off course?”

After thinking a moment, Lysette said, “Well, I understand, as I am sure you do, that young people do change. For some, the rigors of the serious pursuit of a goal cannot be sustained. There is no shame in that.”

“Of course not,” he said, “but, with all due respect, Paris is a wonderful city, but three weeks’ vacation here, and she drops out?”

Lysette turned from him to Nikki to answer. “I would not say that your mother dropped out. It is more as if she took a hiatus from the pressure she put on herself and enjoyed things. Touring, visiting the museums, of course. She loved to learn new cooking. I taught her how to make cassoulet with duck confit.”

“She made that for me!” said Nikki.

“So, tell me, how am I, as a cook?” Lysette chuckled.

“Three Michelin stars. Your cassoulet was always a special occasion meal.” Lysette clapped her hands together joyfully, but Nikki could see fatigue descending on the old couple, and before they faded, there were some basic questions she needed to ask. The same ones she would ask the parents of any victim from her precinct. “I won’t take much more of your time, but there are some details I wish to know about Nicole.”

“Of course, you are a daughter but policewoman, too, n’est-ce pas?” said Emile. “And, please, if it helps you discover what happened to cher Nicole…” He choked up, and the couple joined hands again.

Detective Heat began with Nicole Bernardin’s work. She asked if she had any professional bad blood such as rivalries or money troubles. They answered no, same as when Nikki asked if they knew of any troublesome relationships in her personal life, either in Paris or New York: lovers, friends, jealous triangles? “How did she seem to you the last time you spoke?”

M. Bernardin looked at his wife and said, “Remember that call?” She nodded and he turned to address Nikki. “Nicole was not herself. She was curt with us. I asked her if something was wrong, and she said no and would say nothing more on the subject. But I could tell she was agitated.”

“When was that call?”

“Three weeks ago,” said Lysette. “That was another unusual thing. Nicole always called on Sundays, just to check in. She went her last weeks without contact.”

“Did she say where she was when she called?”

“An airport. I know this because when I asked her what was wrong, she cut me off and said she had to board her flight.” The woman’s brow fell at the memory.

Rook asked, “Did your daughter have a place here in Paris?” In preparing for the visit he and Nikki had hoped to discover an apartment to search-with the parents’ permission, of course. But Nicole didn’t keep one.

“Whenever she visited the city, Nicole stayed here in her old bedroom.”

“If you don’t have an objection,” asked Detective Heat, “may I see it?”

Nicole Bernardin’s bedroom had long before been redecorated and put to use as an art studio for Lysette, whose watercolor still lifes of flowers and fruit lay about in various stages of completion. “You will pardon the mess,” she said unnecessarily. The room was tidy and organized. “I don’t know what you wish to see. Nicole kept some clothing and shoes in the armoire, not much. You may look.” Nikki parted the antique wood doors and felt the pockets of the few items hanging there, finding nothing. Same for the insides of her shoes and the lone, empty purse hanging on the brass hook. “Everything else of hers is in there,” Lysette said, moving an easel to indicate a large drawer at the bottom of a built-in. Nikki found the drawer as orderly as the rest of the apartment. Clean underwear, bras, socks, shorts, and tees-neatly folded-lived in a clear plastic container. Heat knelt and unsnapped the lid to make her inspection, carefully returning everything as it had been, stacked and sorted. Beside the container sat a pair of running shoes and a bicycle helmet. She examined the interiors of both and found nothing.

“Thank you,” she said, closed the drawer, and replaced the feet of the easel to the dimples they had made in the rug.

As they rejoined Emile in the living room, Rook asked, “Did Nicole keep a computer here?” When Mme. Bernardin said no, he continued, “What about mail? Did she get any mail here?”

M. Bernardin said, “Nothing, no mail.” But when he said it, both Heat and Rook noticed something unsettled in the way he lingered on the thought.

“You seem unsure about the mail,” said Nikki.

“No, I am quite sure she got no mail here. But when you asked me, it reminded me that someone else had recently asked the same thing.”

Heat got out her notepad, making complete her transition from houseguest to cop. “Who asked you that, M. Bernardin?”

“A telephone caller. Let me think. He said it so quickly. An American voice, I think he said… Sea-crest, yes, Mr. Seacrest. He said he was a business associate of my daughter’s. He called me by my first name, so I had no reason to doubt him.”

“Of course not. And what exactly did this Mr. Seacrest ask you?”

“He was concerned a package of Nicole’s might have been misdirected here by error. I told him nothing had arrived for her here.”

Rook asked, “Did he describe what kind of package or what might be in it?”

“Mm, no. As soon as I said nothing had come, he got off the line quickly.”

Heat quizzed him about the caller and any characteristics about his voice-age, accent, pitch-but the old man came up at a loss. “Do you remember when the call came?”

“Yes, a few days ago. Sunday. In the evening.” She made a note and he asked, “Do you think it is suspicious?”

“It’s hard to know, but we’ll check it out.” Nikki handed him one of her business cards. “If you think of anything else, and especially if anyone contacts you again to ask about Nicole, please call that number.”

Lysette said, “It has been a pleasure to meet you, Nikki.”

“And you,” she said. “I feel like you gave me a glimpse into a big part of my mother’s life that I missed. I wish I could have learned more about it from her.”

Mme. Bernardin got up. “Do you know what I want to do, Nikki? I have something I’d like to share with you that you may find enlightening. Excusez-moi. ”

Heat sat again, and in Lysette’s absence Emile topped their glasses, even though neither had gone beyond the toast sip. Nikki said, “My father met my mother when she was playing at a cocktail party in Cannes. He said she had been getting by doing that and giving piano lessons. Did she start that here during the summer she visited you?”

“Oh, yes. And I am proud to say that I was instrumental in finding her employment.”

“Were you involved in music?” she asked.

“Only to sing in the shower,” he said. “No, no, my business was commercial and corporate insurance. Through that work I developed a relationship with an investment banker-an American who was living here who became a dear friend of the family. Nicole adored him so much she called him Oncle Tyler.”

“Uncle Tyler,” said Rook.

“Very good,” said Emile with a wink at Nikki. For no reason other than instinct she asked his name. “Tyler Wynn. A charming man. I got a lot of business through him over the years. He was very well connected to international investors and knew anyone who mattered in Paris. And Tyler’s generosity of referrals didn’t just extend to me. No, no. Whenever Nicole was home from Boston, he would find her summer work as a music tutor for the children of some of his wealthy acquaintances. It was good experience for her and paid very well.”

“And kept her out of trouble,” said Rook.

Emile pointed a forefinger to the air. “Best of all.”

Nikki had done the math and urged him on. “So this Tyler Wynn also found tutoring clients for my mother that summer?”

“Exactly. And Cindy was so good at it, soon she had appointments every day. Tyler made more referrals and one job led to another. Some of her patrons who had vacation homes would even hire your mother to come along with their family on les vacances to continue the tutoring. A week in Portofino, another in Monte Carlo, then Zurich or the Amalfi coast. Travel, room and board, all first class. Not a bad life for a woman of twenty-one, eh?”

“Unless your life was supposed to be something else,” she said.

“Ah, once again, Nikki, so much like your mother. Both dutiful and beautiful.” He took a sip of wine. “Remember what one of our philosophers once said, ‘In the human heart there is a perpetual generation of passions, such that the ruin of one is almost always the foundation of another.’”

Lysette seemed newly invigorated by her mission and hurried back into the room carrying a keepsake container about the size of a shoebox covered in burgundy and white toile fabric with matching burgundy ribbon ties done into bows. “I can see I’ve been gone too long. Emile’s quoting maxims again.” She stood before Nikki’s chair and said, “In this box are old photos I kept of Cynthia from her times with Nicole and also of your mother’s travels. Cindy was a wonderful correspondent. If you please, I am not going to look through them with you now. I don’t think I am able to endure seeing them at the moment.” Then she offered the box. “Here.”

Nikki reached out hesitantly and cradled it in both her hands. “Thank you, Mme. Bernardin. I’ll be careful with them and return them tomorrow.”

“No, Nikki, these are yours to keep. I have my memories in here.” She placed a hand over her heart. “Yours are in there yet to be discovered. I hope they bring you closer to your mother.”

It was a struggle. Even for the self-proclaimed queen of delayed gratification, who so wanted to rip the lid off the keepsake box in the taxi back to the hotel. But she held firm. Her fear of losing a single photo trumped her aching curiosity.

Rook gave Heat some space. He set out to find a zinc bar to serve him a stand-up double espresso to supply a much-needed caffeine bounce at the far reaches of the afternoon; she stayed in the room and pored over the unexpected treasure from the Bernardins. He returned to the hotel a half hour later with an icy can of her favorite San Pellegrino Orange and found Nikki cross-legged on their bed with rows of neatly arranged snapshots and postcards radiating out from her like beams from the sun. “Finding anything useful?”

“Useful?” she asked. “Hard to know what’s useful. Interesting? Absolutely. Check out this one. She was so cute.” Nikki held up a shot of her mom, striking a ditzy, laughing pose while she squeezed the bicep of a gondolier under the Bridge of Sighs in Venice. “Turn it over, she wrote on the back.”

Rook flipped the snapshot and read it aloud. “Dear Lysette, Sigh!”

“My mom was a babe, wasn’t she?”

He handed it back. “I’m too smart to answer a question like that about your mother. At least until we appear on Jerry Springer.”

“I think you did just answer.”

He sat on the edge of the bed, careful not to upset her sorting. “What’s your take from all this?”

“Mostly that she had one hell of a good time. You know how in Vanity Fair and First Press you see all those photo layouts of the European rich and privileged and wonder what it must be like to live like that? My mom lived like that. At least she did one job at a time. Look at some of these.” Nikki dealt out the photos like playing cards, one after another, each showing young Cynthia in a posh surrounding: on the sweeping lawn of a country estate out of Downton Abbey; at a lacquered grand piano with the rocky coast of the Mediterranean out the picture window behind her; on the private terrace of a hilltop manor overlooking Florence; in Paris with an Asian family under the marquee for the visiting Bolshoi Ballet; and on and on. “Apparently, for her, tutor-in-residence was like a fairy tale dream you had to wake up from, but when you did, the butler came and got your bags.”

There were also pictures of Nicole and other young friends her mom’s age, plus a bunch of snapshots of her mom and her pals standing individually in various locales around Europe, grinning and gesturing grandly like Price Is Right spokesmodels, obviously their shared joke. But Nikki remained fixated on her mom and the frozen record of her bopping around in France, Italy, Austria, and Germany. In a number of photographs she appeared posed with her host families. Most of Cindy’s patrons had that look of old money, standing pompously in a circular drive or in private gardens, but mostly in predictable small-to-tall groupings of moms, dads, and impatient young musicians in bow ties or ruffled dresses in front of a Steinway grand. There was one other person in all those group pictures. A tall, handsome man, and in most of them, her mother stood close beside him.

“Who’s the William Holden knockoff?” asked Rook, tapping a shot of just the man and Cynthia together outside the Louvre. He was older than Nikki’s mother by twenty years and did give off the former leading man’s gritty attractiveness.

“I’m not sure. There is something familiar about him I can’t place.” She snatched the picture from him and put it back in the proper pile.

“Whoa, not so fast.” He picked it right back up. “Maybe it’s the William Holden thing you recognize… Or is it something else?”

“Like what?” Nikki tried to grab it away again, but he dodged her. She said, “I don’t see William Holden.”

“I do. I see William Holden and Audrey Hepburn. They’re both straight off the movie poster for Paris When It Sizzles.” He held the photo up to her nose. “Check it out. His weathered good looks paired with her refined innocence masking the sexy tigress inside. You know, that could be us.”

Nikki looked away. “There is no sizzle in those pictures. He’s too old for her.”

“Know who I bet this is?” he said. “He’s that Oncle Tyler who set up her tutoring clients. Yeah, this is Tyler Wynn. Am I right?”

Ignoring him, she plucked another shot from the stack and held it up. “Hey, here’s one of just Mom taken right here in Paris.” The developer’s time stamp on the reverse read “May 1975.” The photo was of her mother balanced on one foot with a hand shading her eyes, comically peering into the future. It was snapped in front of the Cathedral of Notre Dame. “I want to go there,” said Nikki. “Right now.”

They left the keepsake box with the hotel manager to lock in the safe and took a taxi to Ile de la Cite. Darkness had fallen and the gray stoneworks of the edifice were bathed in white light, which also cast a spooky glow upon the gargoyles observing from above.

Rook knew what this was all about; she didn’t have to say it. They left the taxi and hurried along silently, walking around the back of a tour group that encircled nighttime street performers who juggled flaming batons. They made their way to their destination: the center of the square that faced the front entrance of the massive cathedral. They paused, patiently waiting for a high school field trip to clear away and then approached a small piece of metal embedded in the paving stones, a shiny octagon of brass rubbed smooth by years of wear. This was the exact location in the photo of Nikki’s mom. She took the picture out of her pocket to prepare herself and did what she’d come to do. A month shy of thirty-five years later, Nikki Heat stood in her mother’s footsteps. Then, raising one foot off the ground, she shielded her eyes in the identical hammy pose, which Rook captured with the flash of his iPhone.

This spot of her reenactment was the famous Point Zero, the Paris milestone outward from which all distances are measured in France. This, the saying went, was where all roads began. Nikki hoped so. She just didn’t know where it would lead yet.

They ate at Mon Vieil Ami, a ten-minute stroll to Ile Saint-Louis. Over dinner they talked some more about their visit with Nicole’s parents, which gave Rook a chance to say he didn’t buy Lysette and Emile’s whole theory about Cindy’s taking a break from the rigors of pursuing her passion as the explanation for why she quit her dream. “You have a better theory?” Heat asked. “And does it involve UFOs, cranial needle probes, or memory-erasing light flashes from men in dark suits?”

“You know you hurt me when you mock my outside-the-box approach to case solving. Chide me if you must, but chide me gently. I’m as tender as a fawn.”

“OK, Bambi,” she said, “but don’t look at the chalkboard, venison is the special.”

After they placed their orders, Rook came right back to it. “It’s still the odd sock,” he said. “If someone’s going to prepare her whole life like your mother did for a concert career, she doesn’t just drop it. It’s like an athlete training for the Olympics only to walk away from the starting blocks to become a personal trainer. Great gig, but after all that sacrifice and training?”

“I hear you, but what about what Emile said about changing passions?”

“Uh, with all due respect? Merde. I refer you back to my Olympics versus personal trainer theory. One’s a passion, the other is a J-O-B job.”

Heat said, “All right, maybe it wasn’t necessarily a passion, but you saw her face in those pictures. My mom was having a ball. And probably earning just enough money to make it hard to quit. Maybe the work got to become golden handcuffs.”

“Not that the subject of handcuffs doesn’t titillate me, but that’s also a hard sell. Responsible young woman turns into Paris Hilton in one summer? Doubtful.” His salad and her soup arrived. He took a bite of tender lentils and then continued, “Do you think she had something going with this Tyler Wynn?”

Heat put her fork down and leaned over her plate toward him. “You are talking about my mother.”

“I’m trying to help us-correction, help you-get an understanding of what happened over here to change everything back then.”

“By going to some pretty seedy places.” Her quiet tone was what unnerved him. And the steely gaze.

“Let’s put a pin in it.”

“Good idea.”

“Besides,” he said, “we already hit pay dirt with a suspect. I hope you told Raley and Ochoa to put out an APB on Ryan Seacrest.”

She laughed and said, “Roach had the same response when I called them. Obviously a bogus name, but they’re going to run phone records to see where that call originated last Sunday.”

“It tells us one thing, for sure. Someone definitely wants to get his hands on something. And since the timing of that call came after Nicole’s town house got tossed, we know he didn’t find it.”

“Assuming that it’s the same person looking,” she said.

“Well fine,” he said, teasing her. “If you want to be all ‘objective’ in this investigation instead of leaping to conclusions, go ahead.”

“Objective’s kinda what I do,” she said.

“Kinda,” he said with a tentative edge. Her look told him Nikki knew exactly what he meant by that jab, but she let it go and concentrated on her soup.

A subtle breeze had given the night a soft spring warmth, and when they left the restaurant, Heat and Rook decided to bypass the taxis and walk back to their hotel. They strolled arm in arm over the footbridge to Ile de la Cite, skirting the cathedral and the Palais de Justice until they came to Pont Neuf and stood in one of the bridge’s semicircular bastions to stop the world and enjoy the spectacle of Paris at night reflected in the Seine.

“There it is, Nikki Heat, the City of Light.” She turned to him and they kissed. A dinner bateau passed underneath them, and a happy couple on the top deck called out “ Bon soir ” and raised champagne flutes to them in a toast.

They mimed a toast back to the couple, and Nikki said, “Amazing. No, magical. What is it about this place? The air smells better, the food tastes like nothing I’ve ever had…”

“And the sex. Did I mention the sex?”

She laughed. “Only constantly.”

“Who knows what it is?” he said. “Maybe it’s Paris. Maybe it’s us.”

Nikki didn’t answer that, only nestled against him. Rook stood holding her, feeling her breath against the soft of his neck, but at the same time he felt drawn to silently watch the hypnotic flow of the Seine. Its dark waters streamed underneath them, a powerful force channeled between thick walls of stone revetment engineered to be impenetrable and to keep nature itself within controlled, reliable boundaries. He wondered what would happen if one of the walls ever cracked.

They didn’t set an alarm. Instead Heat and Rook awoke at daybreak to pink light filtered under a thin canopy of gray clouds. Turning to each other, they smiled and said their good mornings. Rook began to slide under the sheet, but Nikki mumbled, “No, stay up here with me this time,” and drew him to face her. The two made love again to the peal of morning church bells and the scent of heaven’s own bakery across the street at Au Grand Richelieu. “All in all, not a bad way to start another day of homicide work,” said Heat on her way to the shower.

As he had calculated, their warm pastries lasted from the bakery door to the espresso bar he had discovered the afternoon before. They found one pair of open stools at the high top counter in the window, and each drank a blood orange juice and a cafe au lait as they watched a businessman standing on the sidewalk turn his back to the wind and expertly roll his own cigarette.

Nikki checked her voice and e-mails. Roach, ever keen about keeping her in the loop, had closed their workday reporting that the request was in process on the phone records search for the Seacrest call to the Bernardins. The wheels of international bureaucracy turned slowly, but Detective Raley said Interpol was helping, so that was something positive anyway. Forensics had promised fingerprint test results on the found glove by morning, and Irons had told Ochoa he would check with the lab personally on his way in. Heat pocketed her phone then took it out again to double-check the time in New York, and determined it was too early to call.

Rook said, “I’ve been doing some further reflection.” He paused, knowing this remained a touchy area. “And I think you got more than a shoe box of memories yesterday. My gut tells me we got a new lead, and it’s Tyler Wynn,”

“Why am I not surprised to hear this?”

“Relax, I’m speculating in a totally new direction, seeing him in a whole other light.”

“Let me guess. He’s no longer William Holden, he’s Jason Bateman.”

“He’s not a lover, he’s a spy.” Heat laughed. “Hear me out, Detective.” He waited until she stopped chuckling and then he leaned closer to her, trying his best not to have madman eyes. “International banker has sort of a phony ring to it. Kind of like ‘embassy attache’ or ‘government contractor.’ It sounds to me like a cover.”

“OK… And what is the possible connection to my mother?”

“I don’t know.” She scoffed and took a sip of her coffee. He repeated, “I don’t know.”

“Of course you don’t.”

“I don’t know!” he hissed. “Isn’t this great?!!” This time his eyes had indeed widened madly. Nikki looked around self-consciously, but nobody in the cafe had noticed. Even the man on the sidewalk smoking the roll-your-own had turned the back of his blue suit to them. Rook startled her, grabbing Nikki by the elbow. “Oh, I know!” He snapped his fingers and pointed at her. “Tyler Wynn-air quotes-international investment banker-was using your mother just like his fake job. As a cover. Pretending to be her lover.” He paused. “Notice I said, ‘pretending.’ Which is why Cindy quit and moved back to the U.S. when she married your dad.”

Heat finished her coffee and slid a euro under the saucer. “Rook, you need to know. There’s out of the box and there’s out of your mind.”

He worked on her the whole way back to the hotel, and one point of his logic she found hard to refute. That they came to Paris to look into the change in her mother’s life, and since Tyler Wynn had been such a factor-spy or not-they’d be remiss not to see if Uncle Tyler was still around to talk to. “Or is that too sensitive an area for you?” he asked. A crafty move on Rook’s part because, even if it were, the challenge aspect of his question made it impossible for her to back down.

Up in their hotel room Rook paced, spitballing how best to approach checking out Tyler Wynn. “I still have some viable clandestine contacts over here from the days I worked my Russia-Chechnya article. Also, there are a few favors I could call in at CIA and NSA. No, wait… Maybe we should start incrementally and make a vanilla sort of inquiry through the U.S. embassy… Or possibly, Interpol. On the other hand,” he rambled, going back and forth, “this is potentially important enough that we could step it up to the DCRI-that’s the French equivalent of the CIA, if you didn’t know.” He noticed Nikki getting on her cell phone. “Who are you calling?”

She held up a finger for silence. “ Bonjour, Mme. Bernardin? C’est Nikki Heat. First of all, thank you for your hospitality and for those wonderful photographs. I am so grateful to have them.” She nodded and said, “You, as well. I was hoping I could ask a favor. Do you have phone number for Tyler Wynn?” Heat smiled at Rook and began writing it down.

When she hung up, he said, “Well, there’s the lazy way, if you go for that sort of thing. I don’t. Feels kind of like cheating.”

Nikki held up the pad with Wynn’s phone number. “Should I not call it, then?”

He said, “Do you want to play games or get serious about this case for once?”

Her call began in French, but whoever answered spoke English. When Rook saw her shocked reaction when she asked to speak to Tyler Wynn, he scooted from his spot standing at the window to sit on the edge of the bed beside her. “That’s terrible,” she said. Rook waved for her attention, mouthing “What?”s like a pestering adolescent, and she turned away to concentrate, muttered a series of “Uh-huhs,” asked for an address, which she wrote down, then said her thanks and hung up.

“Come on, out with it. What’s terrible?”

“Tyler Wynn is in the hospital,” said Nikki. “Somebody tried to kill him.”

Rook leaped to his feet and spun in a circle. “That. Is the coolest. Lead. Ever.”