Murder on the Ile Saint-Louis

Wednesday Morning

AIMÉE REACHED OUT her arm. Instead of Claude’s taut chest she felt something wet against her hand and she blinked. Light streamed through the window. Something was ringing near her head. Beside her, half under the duvet, Stella cooed like a little pigeon with a leaking diaper. Time to change the sheets. Again.

Warm air floated through the open window. She groped under the pillow, fumbled in the damp sheets, and found the phone.

She stretched her legs, inhaled the baby’s smell and the sandalwood scent of Claude still on her skin.

She rubbed her eyes and pressed the answer button. “Allô?”

“Mademoiselle Leduc,” Vavin said. “I’m concerned. Have any more firewall attacks occurred?”

She sat up, grabbing her father’s old flannel robe, still dotted with spit-up. She was awake now. Not many heads of departments worried about this kind of detail once they’d hired a consultant.

“Un moment.” She hurried to the laptop on her desk. Thank God she’d forgotten to turn it off last night. She clicked on Regnault’s system.

“Right now we’re working on your new workstations setup, Monsieur Vavin,” she said. She had to act as if she was on top of the assignment and to be polite, she reminded herself. And enthusiastic, too; they were paying Leduc Detective big francs. “I’ll check with my partner. Can you give me ten minutes?”

She’d come back so late last night. Stella, wide awake and hungry, had given her no time to discuss anything with a grumpy René but getting the formula temperature right. Not even the time to decipher the odd look in his eyes. “I’ll call you right back,” she promised.

“Meanwhile, there’s another detail,” Monsieur Vavin said, his voice tentative.

New user account configurations filled her screen.

“Of course, we’re making great progress.” She glanced over at Stella’s kicking feet. Slants of sunlight played over her pink toes.

“Glad to hear it,” he said. He cleared his voice. The clinking of cutlery and the sounds of chairs scraping were in the background.

Some breakfast meeting?

“I’d appreciate a favor,” Vavin said. “This involves accessing a colleague’s e-mail. It’s very confidential. Can you help me?”

As system administrators, she and René controlled the domain and e-mail server. Their clients often asked them for this kind of service: evidence of a colleague’s wasting time in chat rooms or visiting dodgy sites. But spying on his colleague’s e-mail wasn’t her kind of thing.

“Monsieur Vavin, we’re on a tight schedule,” she reminded him. “We run on deadlines, you know.”

“I appreciate that,” he said.

Stella would need a bottle soon; the little thing packed away more than Aimée had imagined.

“Newborns lose weight, then gain almost a kilo in the first few weeks,” René had quoted from the birth-to-one year book he’d bought. Thank God she could read up on breaks, try to get some handle on why babies spit up and what infant gas was all about and how to avoid it.

“It won’t take but a minute for you, I’m sure,” he said.

Her fingers typed at 120 strokes a minute; one didn’t get much faster than that. His request seemed to be made with the assumption that she had nothing better to do with her time than snoop. But it would be impossible to refuse him.

“This sounds odd,” he continued,“but certain negotiations . . . well, it’s difficult to go into right now.” He lowered his voice, she heard the sound of a door being closed. “I’ve heard some disturbing information. But I can’t say anything until I know what’s being concealed from the public.”

This sounded cryptic and not like anything she wanted to get involved in. Probably some promotion blackmail or a hatchet job he wanted the skinny on.

“The e-mails I’m concerned with could have been read by hackers who got past our firewalls. Please, take a look. I’ll hold on. The name’s de Laumain.”

She turned to her second laptop, which was already logged on. She hit some keys and entered a back door in systems administration mode.

In minutes she had accessed de Laumain’s e-mail.

“So, de Laumain’s a lacrosse aficionado?”

“How’d you know?”

“De Laumain subscribes to five lacrosse newsletters.”

The baby’s coos had turned into faint cries. She stretched her feet to touch the edge of the bed and began to bounce it. The cries escalated.

“You have a baby, Mademoiselle Leduc?” he asked.

She didn’t want to sound unprofessional. “My neighbor had to rush to the pharmacy. The baby’s got a fever, so I . . . I’m helping her out for ten minutes.”

There was a pause. She sensed there was something else he wanted to say. There were shuffling noises in the background.

“De Laumain’s the one,” he said. “Look for the word ‘Darwin’ on the subject line.”

She found two messages with “Darwin” as part of the subject.

“Copy them and send them to my e-mail account,” he ordered. “Can you make their status ‘unread’ and exit without any traces?”

“Not a problem, Monsieur Vavin,” she said.

“Of course you won’t . . . read them.”

“You said this was confidential, right? Is there anything else?”

“Let’s hope not. When my meeting’s over, I’ll call you. We should talk.”

He hung up before she could remind him of the system-design overhaul René ached to do.

“RENÉ?” AIMÉE SHOULDERED her cell phone, left arm holding Stella, her right hand clicking away on the keyboard.

His voice mail answered.

Great. Firewalls were his métier; this job really should be his. She saved her work on a backup disc and sent a copy of the completed program to Regnault, as usual. Her laptop clear, she checked the firewall herself. She had started going through each protection system when her cell phone rang.

“René?”

“What have you found out, Leduc?” Morbier asked.

The last person she wanted to talk to. A click came over the line—someone was calling her . . . René? Vavin?

“I’ve got another call, Morbier, and I’m swamped,” she said, irritated. “Real work.”

“That can wait,” Morbier said. “I can’t. Have you run across Krzysztof Linski?”

Her fingers tightened. Stella moved and Aimée propped the baby on her hip.

“You there, Leduc?”

“Why?”

“He’s been taped on video carrying bottle bombs at the demonstration.”

She hadn’t caught that on Claude’s tapes. But she’d been too busy in his arms on the leather sofa to watch the video again.

“What’s that got to do with the student Orla Thiers?”

But she now knew—Krzysztof, Orla, and Nelie were radicals.

“He’s at it again. There’s another bomb scare at the l’Institut du Monde Arabe.”

“How do you know it’s him?”

“Nelie Landrou’s a suspect,” Morbier said, ignoring her question.“What aren’t you saying, Leduc? You owe me.”

She stared down at Stella. Was her mother a bomber?

“Too easy, Morbier. Simplistic. How can you fall for that?”

“Eh?”

“It’s a setup. Orla and Nelie were taking part in a roadblock of trucks at La Hague’s nuclear fuel processing site. . . . MondeFocus has disowned Krzysztof: they say he’s a loose cannon and a right-wing plant.”

Stella opened her mouth, her pink gums glistening. The key to understanding what was going on was Stella. Aimée had to find Nelie . . . make a deal, get the lowdown on Krzysztof, before doing anything else. Then she’d decide what to tell Morbier.

But to get Morbier off her back she’d have to tell him something more. “I checked Krzysztof’s room, a chambre de bonne. He’s gone, disappeared, sleeping bag and all.”

“So?”

“Think outside the box, Morbier. Orla’s murder could—”

“I try. We get witness reports all the time.”

“Meaning?” What wasn’t he telling her?

“The good news: your local secondhand goods dealer claims a clochard, an old woman, saw her being killed. The bad news: we don’t know how reliable she is. She talks to an imaginary sister and thinks it’s 1942.”

“The brocanteur on rue des Deux Ponts?”

He grunted. She scribbled that on the back of a data report; she would check out this information later. Far-fetched . . . but who knew?

“Back to the point. Why would he set off bombs at a peace march and let himself be videoed carrying them? It doesn’t make sense.”

“I’ll make sure to ask him once he’s behind bars.”

He hung up.

She checked her voice mail and found a terse message from Vavin telling her to meet him at his office at once. She couldn’t bring the baby with her; she had to do something with Stella.

AIMÉE HANDED THE taxi driver an extra twenty francs.“Mind waiting?”

He grinned. “Take your time.”

Her back ached as she climbed the red-carpeted stairs of the building, Stella in her arms, and baby bag dangling from her shoulders.

“Quite the modern maman, Aimée,” Martine said, opening the door. “Juggling everything in designer wear.”

She looked down at her agnès b. black dress, the closest thing at hand without spit-up, which she’d grabbed to wear to her meeting. “The babysitter’s here?”

Martine nodded. “The location of tonight’s reception has been changed.”

“Due to the bomb scare?”

“Can’t have all those sheikhs and oil execs in danger, can they? I’ll call you later when I know it.” Martine showed her to a luxurious children’s bedroom decorated with Babar-theme murals, bunk beds against the walls, and Legos strewn on the floor. She introduced Aimée to Mathilde: tight jeans, big sweater, and gap-toothed smile.

“What a beauty,” Mathilde said. “May I hold her?”

Aimée removed her finger from the hot, wet little mouth and handed Stella to Mathilde. “I’m sure you’re experienced,” she said, half to reassure herself.

Her last view was of the flopping pink bunny-eared cap. All the way down the stairs, she could still feel Stella’s warmth in her arms.

“MONSIEUR VAVIN LEFT THIS FOR YOU,” said the smiling receptionist on the ground floor of the Regnault offices.

“I don’t understand. Isn’t he here?” Aimée asked.

The receptionist shrugged. “I’m sure whatever you need to know is all there. He’s been called to a meeting.”

Called to some meeting and she’d gone through hoops rushing here!

She walked to the tall glass window. She could see a few demonstrators standing outside with banners saying, STOP OIL POLLUTION . . . NO AGREEMENT!

Inside the envelope was a piece of crisp white paper with 41 Quai d’Anjou written on it in Vavin’s script.

Her hand trembled. The address was only a block and a half from her building. Why hadn’t he told her to meet him there?

“Pardonnez-moi, when did Monsieur Vavin leave?”

“I didn’t see him go out.”

“Merci.”

She walked past the bomb-removal squad truck parked on the pavement near l’Institut du Monde Arabe. Several Kevlar-suited men stood around, eyes narrowed at passersby.

“False alarm, eh?” she asked one of the women filing back into the building.

“Can’t be too careful,” the woman said.

“True. What happened?”

“A librarian found a backpack left in the library,” she said.

The flics were jumpy. It made them trigger-happy and dangerous.

FORTY-ONE QUAI D’ANJOU was the address of an upscale antique shop. A buzzer went off as she entered it. Her grandfather had haunted the Drouot auction galleries, scouring the sales for bargains. Her cluttered apartment was testimony to his hobby. She lived surrounded by antiques, his “finds.”

She noticed a hefty price tag on a Sèvres porcelain figurine. Not her type of bargain at all. The shop contained château-sized armoires, stone statues, marble busts on faux fireplace mantels, and delicate Louis XIV desks. But it held no clients.

“Bonjour,” said a middle-aged man with a receding hairline. A smell of espresso clung to him. His eyes flickered as he sized her up, estimating the cost of her dress. Not couture but a good label. No way he’d know it came from the rack at her favorite secondhand stall in the Porte de Vanves flea market.

“Mademoiselle, how can I help you?” he asked with a smile.

“I’m meeting Monsieur Vavin. Perhaps he’s here . . . in back?”

“Non, Mademoiselle,” he said.

“I’ll wait if you don’t mind.”

But he has already left, Mademoiselle,” he told her. “

She was going around in circles. She should have ignored Vavin’s message and kept working.

“Did he leave any word for me?”

“He left in a hurry, that’s all I know.”

“Where did he go?”

The man shrugged. “He’s a client but I don’t keep track of his movements.”

“A client?”

“Such good taste.” The man’s face brightened. He’d thought of another sales tactic. “Mademoiselle, are you interested in antique children’s toys, like Monsieur Vavin is? This is a delightful nineteenth-century rocking horse.” He gestured to a miniature horse with a horsehair mane and leather reins, its white paint peeling.

“It’s just ornamental, isn’t it?” she asked. It was so small that she doubted a child could ride it.

“Monsieur Vavin’s daughter rides one very like it, he tells me. It’s been repainted, of course. Monsieur Vavin’s very particular. He never buys plastic or mass-market toys for her. He wants her to appreciate craft and tradition.”

She let him ramble on, her mind elsewhere. Vavin might have stepped out to buy cigarettes, talk on his cell phone, or for a myriad other reasons. She’d wait.

“ . . . the MondeFocus petition . . . ,” the man was saying.

Her ears perked up. “Pardon, Monsieur, what did you say?”

“Not that I’m against the environment, you understand,” he said. “I signed her petition. Monsieur Vavin explained how important it is.”

“Today?”

He tapped his forehead. “A few weeks ago.”

Her mind raced. “Monsieur Vavin came here together with a woman who had a MondeFocus petition?” She had an idea. “Was it about oil pollution?”

“Saving the whales, I believe,” he said. “So important.”

She pulled out the photo. “Do you recognize her in this group?”

He peered closer. “So polite. Oui, that’s her.”

Nelie Landrou.

“When she visited the shop, was she pregnant?”

He stuck his arms out and linked them in a big circle. “Like this.”

The door opened to a rush of traffic noise from the quai. She looked up. Instead of Vavin, a couple had entered, triggering a buzzer.

“Monsieur, which way did Monsieur Vavin go?” she asked.

“If you’ll excuse me . . .”

“Through your glass windows you can see the quai. Did he go left or right?”

The man stuck his thumb to the right. “Aaah, Madame et Monsieur Renaud, so good to see you. That cloisonné vase has your name on it.” He’d already forgotten Aimée as he scurried toward the couple.

Vavin, the Regnault publicity head, and a pregnant Nelie, a MondeFocus activist . . . together?

She stood outside on the quai. The gunmetal gray sky threatened rain. She tried Vavin’s number. No answer or message. Then why had he summoned her here?

A BATEAU-MOUCHE PASSED under the supports of Pont Marie more slowly than usual because of the rising level of the Seine. The slap of water against the stone mingled with the blaring horn of a taxi. Cars, unable to use the flooded road on other bank, crossed the bridge at a snail’s pace. Fliers advertising neighboring Théâtre de L’Ile Saint-Louis performances were caught up in the wind; they swirled around her ankles. She grabbed a handful, meaning to bring them back to the theatre. Inside the building, she set them down in a corner stacked with theatre notices and more fliers. She saw a pile of MondeFocus report pamphlets, identical to the one she’d found in Krzysztof’s room and noticed in Vavin’s office. She’d better check this out.

Her footsteps echoed in the damp tunnel-like passage that led to a seventeenth-century courtyard like that of her own building. The theatre proper and rehearsal studios were upstairs. She climbed a switchback series of neo-Gothic wood-railed steps and heard a voice coming through a window that opened onto the courtyard. The words themselves were in old formal French. I find that everything goes wrong in our world; that nobody knows his duty, what he’s doing, or what he ought to be doing, and that outside of mealtimes . . . the rest of the day is spent in useless quarrels. . . . It’s one unending warfare.

She recognized lines from Voltaire’s Candide. Valid then and today.

Loath to interrupt the rehearsal, the first drops of rain pattering in the vacant courtyard, and with nowhere else to stand but the dank hallway, she entered the small theatre. Red crushed-velvet curtains were halfway drawn. The brightly lit stage was bare except for a throne-like wooden chair and a woman mopping the scuffed black-painted floor planks, humming, her bucket beside her.

“Madame, are any of the crew about?”

The woman looked up, squinting into the darkness beyond the stage lights. She pointed. “Rehearsal.”

“Merci, I’ll wait.” Aimée pulled up a corner of the dust sheet that covered a seat, glad to take a rest, even in the cramped velvet chaise designed in the nineteenth century for a less statuesque person. She put her feet up, rubbed her calves. Checked her voice mail. No message from Vavin or René.

The woman finished mopping and left. Aimée tried Vavin again. No answer. She let the cell phone ring.

In the middle of a yawn, she heard a digitized ring-tone version of “Frère Jacques” from the stage. Then an ear-piercing scream made her sit up. It was followed by another, higher pitched.

She ran down the aisle and up the side steps leading backstage. The white-faced cleaning woman leaned, heaving, against an electrician’s stage-light panel.

“Are you hurt?”

A salvo of Portuguese erupted from the woman’s mouth. She crossed herself. “Maria Madonna” was all Aimée could make out as the shaking woman pointed to the partly open door of a broom closet.

A stout security guard arrived, red faced and panting. The ring tone was repeated. It was closer now.

“Not another mouse! Xaviera, I told you last time, old buildings have them,” said the guard. Catching Aimée’s glance, he rolled his eyes. “Answer your phone, Xaviera!”

The cleaning woman’s hands were trembling, her eyes wide with terror.

“Non . . . telefono de mi . . . non ai . . . non telefon.”

No phone, that much Aimée understood. She stepped over the fallen mop and opened the broom-closet door wider. The annoying ring tone was repeated.

Vavin’s trouser-clad legs sprawled. His head was turned away and slumped onto his shoulder. The brooms and a tin pail were overturned next to him inside the closet.

“Monsieur Vavin?” she said. She knelt and gripped his shoulders. “Can you hear me?”

His body slid forward, limp. He was not conscious. She took his head in her hands, turned it to face her. His eyes stared up at her, lifeless. Then she saw the clotted blood on his temple and glimpsed the cell phone in his hand. No wonder he hadn’t answered it.

“Nom de Dieu!” the guard gasped, knocking over a bucket and spilling ammoniated suds over the wooden floor.

“Quick! Get help.” Aimée grabbed the guard’s arm and they laid Vavin flat on the suds-soaked planks.

Xaviera backed away, crossing herself.

Vavin’s phone tumbled to the floor. Aimée hit a button to stop the ringing and thrust the phone at Xaviera. ”Call 17 . . . call the ambulance!”

Vavin’s eyes seemed to stare at her. Watching her, he was watching her. The guard cleared Vavin’s mouth of spittle, began mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

Aimée tried to steady herself. Her fingers on Vavin’s wrist confirmed that he was not even cold. His fists were clenched.

“How long has he been here? Did you see him come in?”

Xaviera shook her head. “I non . . . non see him.”

No pulse. Lifeless.

Aimée looked around the barren backstage; there was no place for the attacker to hide. She didn’t remember seeing anyone else in the theatre.

The guard said, “He’s gone,” and reached for his walkie-talkie.

She’d been too late. She wondered what he’d wanted to tell her. He’d left the message an hour and a half ago. Why had he asked her to meet him at the antique store?

To see Nelie? But a few weeks had passed since Nelie had accompanied Vavin there.

She heard the static of the guard’s walkie-talkie. Her eye rested on the photo of a child amid the soaked clutter spilling from Vavin’s briefcase onto the floor. A happy little girl sitting on a rocking horse.

The guard got to his feet.

Something glinted among the broom bristles. A key ring. One she remembered Vavin pocketing in his office. Had the killer, searching through Vavin’s briefcase, missed it? Or had Vavin tried to hide the keys? She had to deflect the guard’s attention.

“Did you check in the wings?” she asked him.

As he turned, she reached down and clutched the keys, dropped them into her pocket, and stood. She backed into the velvet curtain, then made for the stage stairs.

“Attendez, you know him, don’t you?” the guard asked.

He was sharp, just her luck.

“Hold on,” he called out.

And wait for the flics and a trip to the Commissariat to give a statement that would reveal her connection to Vavin? Not on her life. She had to work fast, use her sysadmin access, and read his e-mail before the firm turned it over to the police. She wanted to search his office before whoever did this got there first.

He’d wanted to tell her something. And was murdered before he could.

More crackling sounds came from the walkie-talkie. The guard spoke into it.

The implications spiraled, spinning in her head. Vavin’s knowledge of Nelie, his desperation concerning a co-worker’s e-mail, and the meeting, the fact that he was her boss . . . she’d mull that over later. Right now she had to leave.

“I’ll show them the way,” she said, edging down the steps.

“The location’s been radioed in. What’s your name?”

But she was already striding up the aisle. “Non, it will be quicker if I guide them.”

“Wait,” he barked.

Xaviera’s sobbing and the guard’s shouts telling her to stop echoed in the empty theatre.

SHE RAN DOWN THE stairs, colliding with a man in a black turtleneck sweater who held a folded-back script. Irritation knit his brows.

“Pardon me.”

The hall was full of people; conversations buzzed all around her.

“Point me to the restroom, please?” she asked him.

“Down there.”

She rushed past him down the stairs to the street level, realizing she smelled of ammonia. The door to the ladies’ room was locked. The mens’ room door, too.

A siren wailed from down the passageway. Morbier would give short shrift to her deepening suspicions. And so far, that’s all she had.

Vavin . . . his eyes staring up at her. Why kill him?

She had to find a way out and get to his office fast.

Several doors lay ahead. She tried one. Locked. And the next.

A loud voice filled the courtyard. “No one leave the building, please.” She looked back, saw blue uniforms. Talk about fast response! But since the nearby bomb threats, they were on high alert.

The third door opened. She ran inside a vestibule where hanging coats and damp umbrellas leaned against the paneled walls. The next door, was locked, too. She took off her wet heels and found her red high-tops, emergency footwear, in her bag and laced them up. The door scraped opened.

Voices and dense cigarette smoke emanated from the next room.

“Entrez,” someone said. “Sorry to keep you waiting.”

Before she could stuff her wet shoes into her bag and leave, a man’s face appeared at the door.

“Aaah, you’re changing. But we’ve only got five minutes. You’re the last one.”

She nodded.

“After you,” he said, gesturing her inside. “Here, I’ll take your things.”

“Wait . . .”

But he’d taken her shoes and the bag with her laptop and gone ahead.

Nothing she could do but walk in, make an excuse, and retrieve her bag.

Bright lights and a haze of cigarette smoke hit her.

“Mademoiselle, if you don’t mind,” another voice said. “Go to the right.”

She turned.

“Non, face right. Bon.”

She felt like a deer caught in the headlights.

A murmur of voices: “ . . . tall enough, what’s with the shoes? Non, it’s eclectic . . . androgynous look . . . too skinny?”

She could distinguish several heads through the haze of smoke and the burning orange tips of cigarettes.

“Dip, please.”

What the hell did that mean?

“From the knees, please.”

She took a step and tripped. An arm caught hers.

“We’re making a video, not auditioning for a clown act, Mademoiselle.”

What?

She bent her knees and kept her back straight, afraid to bump into anything else.

“Now lower, more décolletage!”

A porn video? They wouldn’t see much of her in this agnès b. spaghetti-strap dress. She bent and thrust her chest out while peering through the haze for another door.

“Now jump in place once, then run over there—make space for her, please—as if you’re afraid.”

At this moment, that wouldn’t require her to act.

Someone pounded on the door.

She jumped higher than she’d intended, heard the table vibrate when she landed, then kept running.

“Over here,” someone said. She found herself by a group of women sitting on the edge of a small stage. Some filed their nails; one thumbed a Marie Claire magazine. All wore foundation, black eye makeup, and had platinum or dirty-blonde hair reaching below their shoulders.

A number was thrust at her.

“We’re ready. Mount the stage, please, Mesdemoiselles.”

She followed them, out of place except for the number that she—like the rest of them—held. Unlike the others, she had dark spiky hair, wore no heels, and had no décolletage to speak of. They stood on the stage like a lineup of Barbie dolls; she was the black sheep.

“One last dip, please.”

What was with this dip?

She watched the others, mimicked them, and thrust her chest out even more. Several men had entered the room. She heard the static of a walkie-talkie. The flics.

She was caught in bright lights on stage.

“Number 13.”

She waited for one of the women to step forward. Looked around behind her for a door. Saw a red lighted EXIT sign. But she needed her bag with her laptop, and the man had taken it!

“Number 13!”

“That’s you,” the blonde woman next to her hissed. And she shoved Aimée forward.

“We need to question everyone,” a flic was saying.

Her hands shook.

The man who’d taken her bag clutched her arm and guided her to the table, behind which several men were seated. She saw a pile of whips and jackets on the chair. “I’m cold, do you mind?” Without waiting for a reply, she pulled the closest jacket to her—a hand-stitched feathered brocade affair further adorned with a vintage diamanté brooch—and slipped her arms into the sleeves.

“Your portfolio’s not here,” said a man at the table.

The flics stood in a circle by the strobe lights. “Auditions, I told you,” a tall man was saying. “We’ve been here all afternoon, Officer. We rent this room by the hour. Now can we get back to work, eh?”

“Who’s your agent?” the man asked her.

Aimée thought quickly. “Her card’s in my bag. Can I have it?” She beamed her brightest smile at him. “I just switched to a new agency.”

Her eyes stung from the smoke and the glare of the lights. Someone thrust her bag and shoes into her lap. She dug into her card case, picked one of her aliases with a Saint Germain address, and handed it to him.

“If you’ll assemble everyone in the courtyard,” the flic said, annoyance in his voice. “It won’t take long.”

They’d have a crowd to question with the actors, the women at the audition, and the crew. Before they could proceed, they would try to contain the possible witnesses while waiting for the medical examiner.

“I’ll be in touch,” the man with the tousled hair said, his gaze skimming her legs.

I bet you will, she thought.

“Feel like an aperitif?” he asked.

Fluff from the feather edging on the jacket got in her eyes and she blinked.

“Love to,” she smiled. Glanced at her watch. Shrugged. “But”—she leaned forward—“this will take forever.”

He turned around. “Merde!”

She grabbed her tube of Stop Traffic Red and swiped it across her lips.

“Unless we go out the back door.” She licked her lips.

He grinned. “Bet you look good in just feathers.”

“I need to make a list,” the flic was saying, “Everyone who’s here. Get your things, ladies.” A flic gestured to them. “You two, now.”

She lingered at the back of the line filing out, trying to catch the eye of the man with the tousled hair. But the flic clapped him on the shoulder and guided him to the front of the line. So much for her hope to use him as cover. What could she do? She leaned down as if to pick up her bag, got onto her hands and knees, and crawled under the table. She could see several pairs of black-stockinged legs and two pairs of solid police brogues just beyond her nose.

The damn feathers kept coming off. She was molting. She crawled sideways, thankful for the dim light. If she could just reach the stage curtains and get behind them . . .

“Wasn’t there another one?” a flic asked.

She reached for the loose change in the bottom of her bag and pitched the coins out onto the floor. They hit the surface, then rolled.

“Et alors, someone dropped a purse,” a voice said.

Heads ducked, eyes focused on the coins, and she crab-walked behind the curtains. She stood against the wall and pulled the dusty curtains around her, trying to cover her toes.

She waited, praying they’d hurry and that she wouldn’t sneeze. Her nose itched and she pinched it hard. The exit door lay behind her, stage left.

“I only count twelve.”

“No, that’s my ten-franc coin.”

“I dropped it; give it back.”

She had to take her chance right now!

She slid from behind the curtain and over to the door, pushed it open, and gently closed it behind her. The exit led to a dank passage, so narrow that her shoulders scraped the sides of the adjacent stone buildings. She broke into a run and found herself on the street next to the post office in a drizzling rain. Several blue-and-white flic cars on her right blocked the way to the quai.

Another pulled up to her left. A bus, wipers going, was stuck in traffic in front of her.

She grabbed a real estate journal from a newsstand, put her head down, and shielded her face with it as she put the stopped bus between herself and the theatre. Keep walking, don’t stop, make it to the brocante, she told herself. A siren wailed on her right and she heard the squeal of brakes.