Murder at the Lanterne Rouge

Sunday, 5 P.M.

AIMÉE WORKED OFF two laptops in the vaulted Gothic nave, wishing the faded tapestries didn’t smell their age. She’d spent hours alone in the dark alcove transferring the Musée des Arts et Métiers’ archaic database to the new digital operating system. On the other laptop, she ran a concurrent search for a fourteenth-century document. Fruitlessly.

She backed up a 1695 water pump invention to the digital archive. Hit SAVE. Done.

She pulled her silk scarf tighter against the chill and sighed. Only three more centuries to go. Her boots rested on a smooth paver engraved with Latin, a remnant of the original tenth-century abbey. Norman columns blended into the Gothic priory, evidence of the Parisian habit of building on centuries of history. She was surrounded by history.

And by ghosts.

The creakings and shiftings in the building unnerved her. What sounded like whispers came from the adjoining chapel. The wind? She stifled her unease and focused on her screen. But after several hours, her stiff neck decided for her that the rest would have to wait. Time to go.

Her cell phone vibrated in her pocket.

“Still working, Aimée?” asked René.

“Just backed up the seventeenth century,” she said.

“Any luck finding Pascal’s file?”

“Not yet, desolée,” she said. “Nor the log he supposedly signed in on. Odd. Hope you had better luck with the stained-glass window.”

“I spent the afternoon at the Archives,” he said, excitement in his voice. “Get this, Aimée. Pascal’s diagram is a map.”

“A map?” Why had Pascal made this so difficult?

Gargoyle-like stone carvings stared down at her, their disembodied faces like masks in the stonework. She rubbed the goosebumps on her arms.

“Long story,” he said. “The map leads through the medieval sewers.”

“They didn’t have sewers then, René.”

“Zut, I know. Now it’s the sewer, going right to rue Charlot, rue Meslay, and along rue Béranger, where he lived.”

“No sewers for me.”

Or army of rodents wintering underground. She’d faced enough of those already.

“There’s more,” René said. “There is one remaining Templar tower Napolean forgot to destroy. The church’s stained-glass window lies in a direct line from the south end of its old wall.

The wind rattled the scaffolding bars lining the nave. Her mind went back to her conversation with Jean-Luc at the piano bar: Samour’s message to Jean-Luc mentioning an atelier. Another piece fitting in Samour’s damned puzzle.

“Of course, that’s it,” she said. “His work studio, René. Where is it?”

“73 rue Charlot. Bring his keys.”

He clicked off before she could ask him if he’d reached Meizi.

All of a sudden there was a high-pitched whine from a distant fuse box. Then the building plunged into darkness. A power outage.

She froze, rigid with fear. She was wrapped in darkness, alone, just as she’d been last night. She recalled the sensation of those huge hands around her neck, the plastic bag over her face, straining to breathe. Had he come back to finish the job? Move, she had to move. Quickly she closed the programs on her laptop, not wanting to linger under the groaning scaffolding lacing the nave. It seemed as if it could topple any minute in this blackness.

Or did she imagine it?

She shuddered. The only light came from the stained-glass window in the chapel. Beautiful and unnerving.

“Monsieur Vardet?” she called out to the security guard. Her voice echoed in the nave. She didn’t like this.

The soft flutter of snow settled like a sigh on the protective plastic sheeting, and again she saw Pascal’s eyes under the snow-dusted plastic. “Sécurité?” Where was Vardet?

“Par ici, Mademoiselle, no cause for alarm,” Vardet’s reassuring voice answered. “You’ll need to exit through the refectory. Let me show you out.”

Thank God.

TEN MINUTES LATER, Aimée stood in the porte cochère of 73 rue Charlot under a clicking timed light. The snow lay upon upturned cobblestones like confectioner’s sugar in the deep courtyard.

“This leads to the tower in the remaining bit of Templar wall, Aimée.” René pointed to the mildewed wooden door. “Try Samour’s keys.”

She felt in her bag for the keys she’d taken from under the geraniums, inserted the largest, old-fashioned one, like the key her grandmother used to the cellar on her farm. She heard a tumble as the well-oiled lock turned.

Winding stone steps, deep and narrow. No handrails but uneven walls to feel their way upward. Like entering the Dark Ages.

On the first landing stood a hinged wooden door with a beaten metal clasp. Original, no doubt. She inserted the key again, turned it, and pushed the door open to a mustiness laced with chocolate.

René hit a wall light switch, flooding the circular tower room with light. Aimée saw a blackboard covered with formulas in blue chalk, and an open laptop with a blinking green light on a long trestle table. Next to it, a distilling apparatus. Test tubes, glass flacons, and copper wires. An alchemist’s lab down to the medieval walls. Then she saw what looked like a small, industrial, high-temperature stainless-steel oven.

She gasped.

“That’s it, René.” She ran forward, excited. “The drawing in the encryption.”

She sniffed the contents of the cellophane bag by the laptop. Chocolate. Popped one in her mouth. “Dark-chocolate espresso beans. Pascal had good taste.”

“Thinking what I’m thinking, Aimée?” René asked.

“That Samour distilled his own absinthe? Not quite.”

But René had opened up the screen on Samour’s laptop.

“Look, it’s the same alchemical formula Saj deciphered. Why did he hide this, yet …”

“More than why, René, from whom,” she said. “Trawl around and see if you find more.”

She stared at the formulas in intricate blue chalk. Meaningless to her. A funnel of white sand, technical magazines, a fiber optics newsletter on an Aeron chair. An incongruous collection until de Voule’s words came back to her.

“He told his classmate no one has invented anything new since the fourteenth century. What if he tried to prove that here?”

René rolled his eyes. “By making stained glass in an ancient alembic? Melting the contents in that machine?”

She remembered the preliminary autopsy report. “He had burn marks on his hands,” she said. “It could have come from this heater. The guilds worked with little more than sand, potash, and fire.”

René put his camera in her hands. “Check out the real masterpiece, from the church. The camera captures little of the star’s clarity. But you get the idea.”

The stained-glass window images conveyed bright, streaming light. “Such radiance. Amazing.”

Perplexed, she picked up the magazines. “It’s all here, but we don’t understand.”

“Think where we are.” René’s finger traced the diagram. “Inside the fortified walls of an old Templar enclosure.”

“Et alors, I took that history class, too, René.” She ran her fingers over the smooth glass alembic. “But it proves what?”

“We’re in the last remaining Knights Templar tower.” René grinned. “It’s part of the prison where Marie Antoinette and her children were kept.”

“Not all that Holy Grail business.”

René snorted. “Think of the Templars as investors in startups,” he said. “They had more money than kings, or the Pope.”

“So you took Medieval Studies 101 at the Sorbonne?”

“Fundamentals of Economics, second semester.” René went on, “So the Templars were venture capitalists, this tower was their Silicon Valley. Instead of developing microprocessors, the Templars built cathedrals, castles, a whole series of industries. They employed the guilds for research and development in architecture, weapons, communication.”

Pascal would have appreciated René’s enthusiasm for his project. René got to work on the laptop. Pulled his goatee. “No wonder there’s been no more activity, his laptop’s frozen.”

“Try mine. See if you can unfreeze and network.”

René stood engrossed at the trestle table, comparing Aimée’s backed-up work from the Musée. She checked the magazines, the newsletter. Nothing jumped out at her. She tried to make sense of this, put things together.

Finally, René broke the silence. “Samour’s search prints show all over the Musée files you digitized today, Aimée.”

So Samour had been looking. “That’s what I’ll tell the DST.”

“Make sure that’s all you tell them. We found this tower on our own.” René plugged a cable from Aimée’s laptop to Samour’s. Hit several keys. “I’m rebooting his laptop and will network it to ours.” He tugged his goatee again. “Why didn’t Mademoiselle Samoukashian tell you about this tower?”

“Pascal protected her,” she said. “Considering his diagrams and secrecy, it’s like he wanted to discover something here.”

“Or prove it before he showed anyone,” René said.

She picked up the newsletter, thumbed through it until an article caught her attention. “Aren’t fiber optics made of glass?”

René looked up, nodding. His eyes met hers and widened.

She lifted a slim, colorless strand, little thicker than a hair, from the drawer. “Like this?”

René blinked. “Fiber optics is a hot market in telecommunications these days,” he said. “Bundle that up with more strands and it will carry up to ten million messages, using light pulses.” He shot her a look. “Not chump change either.”

“Bon, I’ll ask my dinner date about it,” she said, applying Chanel Red to her lips. “He runs one of those things.”

“The same mec from last night?”

Odd, she could have sworn René sounded … non, not jealous, he had Meizi. But concerned.

“How’s Meizi?”

His brow creased. “I’m worried. She’s at the hotel, but doesn’t answer the phone.”

Aimée buttoned her coat. “You’re staying until I come back?”

“Until I find something,” René said, a grim set to his mouth. “I’ll have Saj bring what he finds over and we’ll work on this together.”

A quiver ran down her spine. “Whoever murdered Samour didn’t find this place, René. The murderer is still looking.”

“Then make sure you’re not followed, Aimée.” René pulled out the diagram. “According to this, if you go left in the courtyard there’s an exit to rue de Picardie.”

Her heeled boots clicked down the tower’s steep, damp staircase. And then she missed a step, lost her balance. She caught a rusted ring in the wall and held on for dear life. No broken bones, no fall, but a scuffed leather heel and a pang in her sore wrist. Damn medieval towers.

Her phone beeped. One new message. Prévost.

“Give me Clodo’s phone and I’ll tell you when the raid’s scheduled.”

Nothing else.

She hit callback. Tried to leave a message, but his voice mail was full.

She had to find Clodo’s phone.

“WHAT’S THE WEATHER report tonight, Monsieur?” She smiled at the homeless man on the grate at Carreau du Temple.

“Radio’s broken, ma chère.”

“This should help,” she said, laying twenty francs on his sleeping bag. “How’s your daughter?”

“Doing her homework.” His face lit up.

“Don’t you have something for me?”

He handed her the prepaid phone card she’d given him. “Desolé, I couldn’t find a phone cabin. Everyone has mobiles.”

Disappointed, she wanted to kick the grate. She needed a bartering tool for Prévost. A way to protect Meizi.

“But you’re interested in this, non?” A cell phone. “I can’t vouch it’s the one Clodo took, but rumor goes it is.”

“Brilliant.” She slipped him a hundred francs. “Don’t forget I count on your weather predictions for my wardrobe.”

Now she had something to bargain with Prévost. Finally, the trail smelled like it went somewhere.

But she was late. At the small square, she spied a taxi, ran to catch it and jumped in, and overtipped the driver for the short six-block ride.

But the maître d’ at the bistro shook his head. “Desolé, the monsieur changed your dinner reservations to seven thirty. An urgent meeting. He apologizes.”

More than an hour away. Why hadn’t Jean-Luc called her? Then she remembered she hadn’t given him her number. Stupid.

But she had his. She got only his voice mail, left a message to call her.

“Why don’t you wait at the bar? I’m sorry, Mademoiselle, blame it on the symposium. The attendees booked the whole bistro.”

She glanced around. Suits in earnest conversations, consulting handheld calendars under the dark oak beams. Great. “Any idea where the symposium’s held?”

He shrugged.

So now she’d have to wait in the crowded bistro where she couldn’t hear herself think, or roam the dark, wet street?

She didn’t think so. She wedged a place at the bar by an engineering type, a young man with thick-framed glasses, an ill-fitting suit, and licorice-black hair.

“My friend Jean-Luc’s late to meet me from the symposium.” She smiled.

“Which symposium?” he asked, his eyes catching on her cleavage. The pianist in the corner struck up “L’Heure Bleue,” the Françoise Hardy version.

“You know … he’s with Bouygues … I forgot …”

“Do you mean fiber optics in today’s world? Or fiber optics infrastructure in the Third World?”

Fiber optics. “I’m not sure.”

“No matter, they’re both held at the old cloister, on rue des Archives. Cloître des Billettes.”

Close by.

He smiled, revealing a set of braces that caught the light. He looked twelve. “Like a drink?”

“Next time.”

She’d crash the symposium and find Jean-Luc. Too bad she didn’t have her business suit.

Three blocks away, she only had to wait a few minutes before a group of men exited the arched doors of the cloister. She slipped inside. Quiet reigned, broken only by the drip of melting snow on worn pavers. She passed under the fifteenth-century vaulted arcade surrounding the small courtyard.

She half expected robed religious figures treading in prayer. But at the far end, a door opened to a crack of light and voices. A place to start, she thought. Inside, she found a cavernous chapel with men huddled by pillars, signs posting seminars in various rooms, and a label reading Wine Reception on the sacristy door. But the sacristy was empty. Jean-Luc could be in a meeting anywhere here, or somewhere else entirely.

But she could learn about fiber optics. She consulted a symposium schedule in the main chapel and headed to the first room on the right. The meeting had broken up. A few people lingered by a grouping of red velvet gilt-backed chairs, thick binders under their arms. Above them on the sandblasted stone wall, a canvas banner read: Information Highways—Fiber Optics in the 21st Century. René would eat this up. And ask for another helping.

A man in a suit was speaking. “As outlined in our presentation, clients should connect with solar companies like ours via infrastructures with up-to-date fiber optics …”

Weren’t solar and fiber optics two different things? Her eyes began to glaze until she saw his name tag: Rimmel, Solas Energie. De Voule, the Gadz’Arts she spoken with on the phone, headed the company.

“Excusez-moi, Monsieur.” She smiled, stepping into the group. “That’s like connecting apples and oranges, non?”

He took in her leather pants, faux fur coat. “If you interns bothered to attend our presentation, the correlation would be obvious.” A sneer appeared on his long, pale face.

Intern? Thank God the concealer had masked the shadows under her eyes. She’d buy it by the kilo.

“Who do you work with, Mademoiselle?”

She thought quickly. “Jean-Luc at Bouygues,” she said. “Have you seen him?”

“The symposium’s finished for today,” he said dismissively.

His condescending air rankled, yet who better to ask about fiber optics than one in the business? “I’m assembling a marketing proposal for a fiber-optics campaign, Monsieur. I’d like to get a handle on it. Maybe you could elaborate?”

His sneer relaxed. He seemed the type who enjoyed imparting his expertise.

“Third World countries, without existing infrastructure, can put fiber optics in place immediately without expensive adaptations to outdated and often malfunctioning systems,” he said, flicking lint off his tweed jacket.

Patronizing, too.

“The goal would be to provide renewable energy coordinating with a basic delivery infrastructure,” he said. “The horse with the buggy.”

A young engineer type nodded. “Brilliant. Basket the services.”

“And corner the million-franc market,” said an older professor type next to her. “However, given the unstable politics and the issues you outlined, cost-wise that makes coordination inefficient.”

“At present, but …”

Her eye wandered to a tall man who’d entered the room and gestured to Rimmel. She could only make out part of his name tag, but he was from Solas Energie. He appeared to be in a hurry. She followed him outside to the drafty corridor.

“Monsieur?”

He turned. Tall, wide-shouldered, late twenties with a shock of reddish-brown hair parted to the side. And she deciphered his name tag illuminated in the light.

“So we meet, Monsieur de Voule,” she said, handing him her card. “I’m Aimée Leduc. We spoke on the phone concerning Pascal Samour.”

His forehead crunched in thought as he read her card. “A detective? But you said you worked at the Conservatoire …”

“True on both accounts, Monsieur.” Behind him on poster board was the list of symposium meetings. “Your firm stands to make millions in Third World countries.…”

He blinked. Swapped his briefcase from one hand to the other, glanced at his watch.

“So do many others,” he said. “Everyone here, in point of fact.”

“But you specialize in solar energy,” she said. “What do fiber optics have to do with you?”

“For example, Mademoiselle, installing a solar-energy harvester in the middle of the Sahara or Gobi Desert sounds obvious. Free sunlight, immense profits. Yet an isolated energy source does little in the grand scheme, makes no sense if you can’t connect with a delivery system down the road. My firm found out the hard way.” He gave a little shrug. “We’re trying to convince telecommunications to band this together or it’s not worth the investment development.”

“Meaning?”

“Unless dramatic developments in fiber optics make it economically feasible for China or African countries to build and maintain telecommunication systems, it’s a moot point. No one likes to hear that here.”

Money. Did it all come down to money?

She tried a hunch. “So how was your classmate Samour connected to fiber optics?”

“I’m confused. Weren’t you concerned with a fourteenth-century document? Some pie-in-the-sky dream of Pascal’s?”

He’d avoided her question.

“He was murdered, Monsieur de Voule. I’m looking at all angles.”

“You’re implying what?”

“I found pieces, but not how they fit into the puzzle,” she said. “Weren’t you just away on a work site?”

He nodded. “Going back tomorrow. But I need to meet with staff at this event. And if you’ll excuse me …”

She couldn’t let him leave like that. “Hear me out for one minute, please.”

“You’re trying to tie in Pascal’s murder somehow, aren’t you?” De Voule said, his tone exasperated.

“If Samour discovered an economically feasible fiber optic and manufactured it cheaply, who’d want it?”

“Apart from corrupt governments, the military, and politicians who pocket UN subsidies for grain and health services?”

Hmm, not so much money there after all, she thought. “So you think his murder’s personal?”

“I don’t know.”

“He confided in Becquerel,” she said. “But with his death, that leads nowhere.”

He looked stricken. “That led you to me.” A small sigh. Rimmel’s tapping foot echoed in the corridor, and de Voule looked up. “Desolé, Pascal and I were close in school, but it’s been several years. I’ve got an appointment.”

“His great-aunt said that Becquerel mentored him.”

De Voule paused. “Petite Madame Samoukashian?”

“She hired me. You know her?”

“Best soup in the world.” Memories flooded his eyes. “They presented her with the Légion d’honneur for her work in the Resistance, you know. But she refused it.”

“She was a résistante?” Aimée knew but wanted to draw him out.

“A hero,” he said. “She ran a clandestine safehouse network in the Arts et Métiers.”

Aimée thought back to her feisty nut-brown eyes, the determination in her thin shoulders.

De Voule shrugged. “But she said she wouldn’t accept until the government acknowledged the role her cousin Manouchian, the Armenian poet in the Affiche Rouge, played during the Occupation. And until they reburied the group with honors, since the Germans executed them and dumped them in a mass grave.”

Surprised, Aimée took de Voule’s sleeve. “Pascal meant everything to her. She believes his murder is due to a project he was working on. We found material relating to fiber optics. Can’t you think back? Anything would help.”

He shrugged.

“Your classmate Jean-Luc thinks otherwise.”

He shook his head. “Jean-Luc and Pascal didn’t get along. Well, except when Pascal could help Jean-Luc.”

Before she could press him, Rimmel took his arm and they left. She pondered his last comment. Spite? But he seemed honest and revered Pascal’s aunt.

The rooms in the cloister had emptied. Feeling chilled, she wanted to warm up and go over Pascal’s laptop with René. She paused to pull her coat around her, then tried Jean-Luc’s number.

A phone trilled somewhere. The ring tone, a techno beat, escalated, echoing in the vaulted stone corridor. Pleasantly surprised, she followed it to the sacristy.

“Desolé, Aimée, I’m late,” Jean-Luc said. “Where are you?”

“Right here.” She smiled, waved to him and headed to the sacristy bar. “I could use a drink right now instead of dinner.”

“I apologize.” She noticed his flushed cheeks, the rapid rising of his chest under his suit jacket. “But how did you find me?” His eyebrows rose on his forehead.

“No apology necessary,” she said, uncorking a dense red Burgundy and pouring two glasses. She glanced at the label. Not cheap. “We couldn’t talk at a crowded bistro, anyway. They suggested I’d find you here.”

She handed him a glass, determined to relax him. Probe for information and check it against de Voule’s words. She clinked his glass. “Salut.” She let him take a sip. Then another. “Symposium overload or work issues?”

“Department miscommunication,” he said, a tired edge to his voice. “Nothing I can’t handle. But I’m still new at this.”

“You’re not trying to avoid me?” She gave a little laugh. “Look, I wouldn’t want you to feel I’m hounding you. You’re so busy …”

“Not at all.” A crease worried Jean-Luc’s brow. “Now that I’ve listened to Pascal’s message, it’s adding up. But not in a good way.”

Alert, she poured more Burgundy in his glass.

“I feel terrible,” he said.

Aimée tried to look understanding. “Something bothered you in Pascal’s message, didn’t it?”

“That’s just it, it’s my fault. He needed my help.”

“Needed your help?”

De Voule said it had been the other way around. Which one told the truth? Which should she believe?

Jean-Luc sipped. Pushed his blond hair back. “A month, non, six weeks ago, they promoted me to division head. A new division concerned with logistics. In telecommunications that translates to nuts and bolts, infrastructure, systems placement …” He took a breath. “I’m boring you, desolé. Here I am still talking work after the all-day symposium.”

“A fiber-optics division, that’s what you’re getting to, non?” Aimée took a linen napkin and set the bottle on it.

Jean-Luc blinked. “How did you know?”

She pointed to the fiber-optics symposium banner.

“Alors, I’ll cut to the chase,” he said. “Added responsibility, and one I qualified for, but of course I’m learning as I go. My team’s brilliant.”

“Composed of fellow Gadz’Arts?”

He gave a brief nod. “That’s where Pascal came in,” Jean-Luc said. “He visited me at my office several weeks ago. Turns out he worked on a fiber-optic formula and wanted my advice.”

The connection. Aimée willed her fingers to remain steady on her glass.

“Anything specific you can tell me?”

Jean-Luc shook his head. “Pascal caught me between meetings. A five-minute conversation.” He shrugged. “To play fair, I couldn’t reveal the company’s plans. I can’t say I understood all the projects we’d undertaken. That’s why I attend these symposiums, to get up to speed.”

“That’s it?” Aimée felt hope slipping away.

“Three days ago, he begged me to meet at his office,” Jean-Luc said. “But I’d just gotten back from our new lab in Strasbourg. Then Friday night he left the message, excited, saying he’d found something, a fourteenth-century technique that could be the missing fiber-optic link. He needed to show me, show me before …” His lip trembled.

“Please go on, if you can,” she said, hating to push him. “Before what?”

He nodded. “He said, ‘before they find out what I’ve done,’ almost as if he’d stolen something.”

“You’re sure?” Yet according to the DST, Pascal worked for the security of the country.

“But I don’t know who or what.” He squeezed her hand, then let go. Large, tapered fingers, worn fingernails. Even as department head he’d said he still did the dirty work. “Then this afternoon.” He downed his wine, his brow furrowing. “I couldn’t find reports in my briefcase for today’s presentation. Gone. My secretary checked, but I hadn’t left them at the office.”

He shot her a troubled look.

“Vital reports?” Aimée asked.

“Topics relating to our presentation,” Jean-Luc continued. “We’re on the cusp of discoveries in fiber optics. But of course, no detailed specifics. We’re sharing the current trends with the participants.” His phone vibrated. He glanced and ignored it. “It’s like a knife in my heart. I can’t believe Pascal would have taken the reports from my office. I don’t want to believe it. But if I’d met him Friday, defused the situation, convinced him to own up or …” Pause. “But I’m projecting.”

Had Pascal stolen reports? She needed to think about this new spin.

“I’m still not understanding how this links,” she said. “Was he obsessed with the project?”

“A geek, you mean?” Jean-Luc’s tone changed, verging on sarcastic.

Realizing she’d struck a sore point, she shrugged. “I’m quoting your fellow Gadz’Arts, de Voule.”

“We’re all geeks, some of us more obviously than others,” he said. “Fascinated by engineering and the arcane.” He shook his head, almost apologetic now. “No one wanted to date mecs like us in engineering school.”

So he spoke from experience? Had he in his youth resembled Pascal: glasses, wild hair, a distracted and bookish look? If so, he’d changed. Pascal hadn’t.

“Vraiment? You?” She’d ease a smile onto his face. Get him to talk. Reveal more about Pascal. Learn what she didn’t know, why he suggested Pascal stole. “More like a catch, I’d say.”

He grinned. “And you?”

“Me?” He turned the tables in a neat switch.

“So you’re taken, Aimée?”

By a man married to a job he couldn’t talk about? Who might never have a weekend free but asked her to go with him to Martinique?

“Relationships? I don’t get them.” She shrugged.

“But I can tell,” he said. “Alors, give me credit for trying.”

He hadn’t tried very hard. And his being department head of a conglomerate, not bad boy enough for her.

“Weren’t de Voule and Pascal outsiders?” Aimée asked, persisting. “De Voule said you and Pascal butted heads. That you used him. How do you explain that?”

“Crapaud! You believe de Voule? Consider the source.” Jean-Luc downed his wine. “Alors, de Voule inherited his father’s company. Lucky for him. A mediocre engineer, a passable technician who paid lip service to our traditions to bolster his credentials. His firm’s in financial trouble. Their ministry project defunded. Yet he thinks himself too good for a Gadz’Arts, can you imagine?”

“Yet Pascal didn’t buy into any of it, did he?”

“We knew where we stood with him.”

She poured more wine. The bottle was almost empty. “Did you use Pascal?”

“Moi? The other way around. I felt sorry for Pascal. These flashes of brilliance he had, with no discipline to follow through. His scattershot approach. We were so different from each other, but I understood him. His obsessive tendencies from a solitary childhood. Like my own. Now I hate to think he repaid me by …”

“Stealing reports? Is that what you’re implying?”

“I hope to God not.” He glanced again at his cell phone, worried. For a moment vulnerable. “Another work crisis.”

Overwhelmed by responsibility. She could relate to that.

“Forgive me, but I need to go over tomorrow’s project.” He gathered his overcoat from the rack. A camel-hair coat. It was one of several similar coats on the rack, but her stomach went cold. And she remembered the man darting in front of the car. The thread in her fingernail after the attack. “That’s your coat?” Had it been him? Her throat caught.

He snorted in disgust. “Can you believe that?” He pointed to a grease stain. “A brand new coat—I only just bought it this afternoon. Dirty. Teaches me not to shop the sales again.”

“Today?” A tingle in her ankles rose up her legs.

“Before my seminar. A new coat, to make a good impression. And look.” He shrugged for a moment like a little boy.

Relief flooded her. It couldn’t have been him.

“Look, if my reports surface in Samour’s files, will you tell me? Keep it between us? No need to implicate Pascal now.”

Not to mention keeping his company ignorant of this. But she understood.

Jean-Luc kissed her on both cheeks. Lingering kisses, and then he’d gone. She wanted him to be wrong about Pascal. Very wrong.