“Edouard’s eyes will open up,” the old woman said, lifting the lid on a pot. She smiled knowingly. “Yolande can’t cook to save her life.”
Why did Madame Visse ignore her question? The woman’s left hand shook with a slight, constant tremor Aimée hadn’t noticed before.
“That smells wonderful,” Aimée said, sidling toward Madame in the narrow kitchen. “Were you home when the car exploded last night?” She asked in what she hoped was a casual tone.
“Monday-evening rosary, dear,” Madame Visse sighed.
“Did you see anything happen in the courtyard last night?”
“All I saw was that idiot man across the courtyard exercising his cockatiel comme d’habitude, like he does every night.” She lifted a lid and stirred a simmering cassoulet. She controlled her tremor well.
“Did you notice anything unusual on the street?” Aimée asked. “Any strangers?”
“You look hungry,” Madame said, filling a bowl and thrusting it at her. “Sit down. Tell me if it needs more herbes de Provence. I have recipes I can share with you.”
“Nan merci, Madame,” Aimée declined, perching on a stool at the narrow table. Exasperation was creeping up on her. It had been a long day. She was in no mood for this woman.
She was sure the steaming cassoulet would melt in her mouth. A crusty baguette poked out of a bread basket.
“Try this,” the old woman said, proffering a bit of stew.
Aimée shook her head. “I’ll just take a bit of baguette.”
“Ah, you’re just like Eugénie. Too polite,” she said.
Aimée sat up, alert. First Hassan Elymani and now this old woman had mentioned Eugénie.
“We look alike too, eh?” Aimée said, in what she hoped was a tone inviting conversation.
Madame Visse crinkled her eyes, surveying Aimée from the stove. “That wouldn’t have been my first comment.” She set the lid down with a clang on the pot. “Your face and big eyes are similar, but Eugénie’s hair was…” she stopped and reached for a spice jar.
Aimée remembered Sylvie’s hair as long and dark, when she stood by the Mercedes.
Madame unscrewed the lid, sniffed, and slowly put the cap back on. “Stale.”
“You were describing Eugénie’s hair?” Aimée let the question dangle.
“Red, bien sûr,” she said. “And short like yours.”
Aimée gripped the tabletop. Red. Had Sylvie worn a wig? Or was this another person?
“Now I’m confused,” Aimée said, “Did Eugénie live in number 20?”
“Everyone had moved,” Madame said. “Eugénie was the only one left.”
If Sylvie lived a double life, it could have been a rendezvous spot with Philippe. However, she doubted that this part of Belleville was to his taste.
“Why would someone get murdered here?”
“Good question,” Madame said, slamming the baguette on the table, attacking it with a steak knife, and carving uneven slices. “Never seen her before. No one had.”
“Who?”
“The dead woman, God rest her soul.”
“Madame, you said you never saw the murdered woman!”
“Why should I?” she said. “But people who live here don’t drive Mercedes!”
The woman had a good point, Aimée thought.
Madame opened the silverware drawer, pulling out a long-handled serving spoon. Amid the cutlery Aimée saw a distinctive silver box with “Mikimoto”—the famous pearl store on Place Vendôme—embossed across the top. She doubted Madame Visse would own expensive pearls.
Then she remembered the odd-shaped pearl she’d found in the mucky passage. When Anaïs had denied it belonged to her, Aimée had slipped it in her pocket and forgotten about it.
“I love pearls,” Aimée said, inclining her head toward the drawer. “I see you do too.”
Madame glanced at the box.
“Just the boxes,” she said, wiping her hands on her apron. She picked up the distinctive rectangular box, surveyed it. “Eugénie was throwing some away. I kept this one.”
Owning Mikimoto pearls and living in Belleville didn’t add up, Aimée thought, unless one was a wealthy mistress.
Mikimoto was in Place Vendôme near the bronze-spiraled column melted from cannons Napoleon captured at Austerlitz. Again the carnage of her father’s explosion revisited her. She pushed those thoughts away. Reliving the past would get her nowhere.
“Pearls aren’t cheap, Madame,” she said. “Eugénie has expensive taste, wouldn’t you say?”
“She kept to herself,” Madame Visse said.
Madame motioned her to the door. “My boy will be home soon. He doesn’t like me to have guests. It’s up to God, my dear,” she said. “Good day.”
At least she’d found out Madame Visse knew Eugénie, corroborating Elymani’s comment. And she liked pearls. But was Eugénie \ Sylvie? Eugénie lived in a building ready for the wrecking ball and had expensive tastes. That’s if Elymani and Madame Visse were telling the truth.
Back on rue Jean Moinon, Aimée buzzed the remaining apartment buildings. No answer. Most had bricked-up windows. She figured soon they would all be gone and the area would look like the day-care center nearby: concrete, squat and ugly.
Several more attempts at ringing doorbells on the back street brought no luck.
Aimée tried reaching Anaïs again to check on her health, but the person who answered stonewalled her, saying Anaïs couldn’t be disturbed. Why hadn’t Vivienne answered the phone? she wondered.
Since she’d discovered Madame Visse’s box she felt it all connected. She decided to call Mikimoto.
Monsieur Roberge, the Mikimoto appraiser, declined to answer her questions or give an appraisal over the phone. “Liability,” he’d sighed. “Bring the piece in.” Aimée had wanted no part of Place Vendôme or the memories it carried for her.
But she’d made an appointment for later in the day, picked up her partner Rene’s car and driven the winding Belleville streets. She parked by Leduc Detective on rue du Louvre.
State-of-the-art computer monitors and scanners lined their art deco office walls. Sepia-tinted Egyptian excavation photographs and digitally enhanced African maps hung beside a poster of Faudel, a French-born star of Algerian descent, Rene’s favorite. Beside that was a Miles Davis poster, her favorite, from his performance at the Olympia.
“What happened to you last night?” Rene asked as she burst through the door.
A handsome dwarf with large green eyes, black hair, and a goatee, Rene enjoyed comparisons to Toulouse-Lautrec. The hem of his Burberry trenchcoat, tailored for his height, had dripped a puddle on the parquet floor under the coatrack by the door.
“Sorry, Rene,” she said. “I had guests.”
“I’ve refined our Electricite de France systems vulnerability scan,” he said. He sat on his customized orthopedic chair, clicking on his keyboard, eyes fastened on the flashing screen in front of him.
“Any word on the EDF probationary contract?” she asked, picking out her black leather coat from the rack.
“The EDF manager liked you—liked you a lot,” he said. “He had some questions.”
Too bad she hadn’t spent time discussing their services with him since she’d hurried to meet Anaïs.
“But it’s the big guys at headquarters who need persuading,” Rene said. “I’m meeting EDF’s lawyer later.”
“Did you check the data report?” she asked. “See any virus?”
“So far the EDF system looks clean. But there’s a nasty little virus going round,” he said. “Think I’ve isolated its birth mother. She’s uglier than her spawn!”
“You’re the terminator at the terminal.” She grinned. “The virus’s days are numbered.”
René watched her. “Anything else you want to tell me?”