Rachel turned to her, her eyes boring into Aimee's. "You'll never understand. You can't."
Aimee put her arm around the thin stooped woman. "Talk to me, Rachel. What did Lili see?"
"We had to survive. We did what we had to do." Rachel's stale breath hit Aimee's face. "She told me once that she saw the murder."
"A murder that happened in the light well?" Aimee said, keeping her excitement in check. "So that's why she boarded up the window?"
Rachel nodded.
Aimee willed her face muscles to be still and kept her arm around Rachel's shoulder.
"That's all she said, wouldn't talk about it after that," Rachel said finally. "There's not many people around who'd remember, there were so many deportations."
"Was it the Nazis?" Aimee said.
"All I know is Lili's concierge was murdered." Rachel shook her head. "It's not something people talk about." Her eyes were far away.
"What do you mean, Rachel?"
"Only Felix Javel, the cobbler, he'd remember the bloody footsteps…" She trailed off, lost in thought. "Past is past. I don't want to talk anymore."
Sinta, Abraham's wife, clomped into the room. "Listen, Mademoiselle Detective-" She planted her feet apart as if supporting her wide hips and repinned her thick black hair with tortoiseshell combs. Loud beeping interrupted from the folds of her faded apron. "Alors!" she muttered, pulling a Nintendo Game Boy out of her pocket. She clicked several buttons then slid it back inside her apron.
"Neo-Nazi salopes!" Her voice rang curiously melodic, with a strong Israeli accent. "Day and night, they harass us in the shop," she continued matter-of-factly. "Lili always yelled at them to go away. Told me she wasn't afraid of them, but I guess she should have been."
"A gang? What did they look like?" Aimee asked. The damp cold permeated her wool jacket. Why couldn't they turn the heat on?
"Never paid much attention," Sinta shrugged. "I baked in the back kitchen and she handled the customers."
"Your husband mentioned that she'd been seeing ghosts," Aimee said.
"Yes, old people do that." Sinta rolled her eyes at Rachel, who nodded knowingly.
"I don't speak ill of the dead, she was my mother-in-law. We lived under the same roof for thirteen years," Sinta said. "But she could be difficult. Lately she'd taken to seeing shadows everywhere-in her closet, out the window, on the street. Ghosts."
"Shadows?"
Sinta had turned away, as if dismissing her. Aimee stood up and grasped Sinta's elbow, forcing the woman to turn and face her directly.
"What do you mean by that?" Aimee asked.
Reluctantly, Sinta spoke. "Talking about the past, seeing ghosts around the corner." She shook her head and sighed. "Imagining some collaborator had come back to haunt her." Sinta cocked her head and rested her hands on her hips. "She grew so agitated the other day that I finally said, 'Show me this ghost,' so we walked to rue des Francs Bourgeois and up rue de Sevigne to that park with Roman ruins. We sat there for a long time, quietly. Then she seemed calm and said, 'It comes full circle in the end, always does,' and that was that. No more mention of ghosts."
"Collaborators?" Aimee said, surprised.
Sinta repinned a lock of hair that wouldn't behave. "Yes, all that old talk."
"Why wouldn't you believe her?" Aimee said.
"Up and down rue des Rosiers, Les Blancs Nationaux spray graffiti and smash windows. Seems obvious."
This was the second time she had heard Les Blancs Nationaux mentioned.
Sinta paused and looked around the room. Rachel's eyes had closed, low snores rattling from her open mouth.
"Lately, Lili had become very paranoid." Sinta lowered her voice. "Between you and me, she didn't have many friends. Poor Rachel put up with her, the others wouldn't. Go investigate that trash, that's where you should be looking." Sinta sighed. "I don't have time for the past anymore."
Sinta opened Lili's cracked wooden wardrobe and a strong whiff of cedar came out. Sinta shoved some black skirts together and moved aside a pair of freshly heeled shoes, a repair tag hanging off them. "Too bad. She had just picked these up from the cobbler's." Sinta shook her head. "All this goes to the synagogue sale benefiting Jews in Serbia."
"What's the hurry, Sinta?"
"Time to clean things out," Sinta said with determination. "No more living in the past."
As Sinta reached in the back, Aimee noticed a coat half-covered in yellowed paper with an old cleaning tag labeled MADAME L. STEIN pinned to it. The cut and drape spoke couture, but the combed wool with nubby black tufts resembled a postwar concoction of available materials.
"That's beautiful," she said.
Sinta grabbed it from the wardrobe and threw it in the pile.
Aimee stared into Sinta's eyes as she lifted the coat up. "Maybe you should keep this."
"Why?"
Aimee looked at it wistfully. Her mother had worn a coat like this. "Don't you feel this coat was from a happier time in her life?"
Rachel snorted awake. Her eyes brightened, seeing what Aimee held. "Ah, the new look from Dior…1948! Lili sewed a coat for me like this one. Mine had bows down the back seam."
"Schmates! Rags! Everything goes to the synagogue; Serbian refugees will use the cloth. Make it functional and useful, not just a moth-eaten memory."
Aimee felt something intensely personal from Lili Stein emanated from that coat. "Instead, let me keep the coat and I will donate money to the synagogue fund. In honor of my mother. I didn't know her either."
Sinta stood back. "I'm supposed to feel sorry for you?" Her black eyes glittered. "Grieving for a mother you didn't know?" She planted herself close to Aimee. "My sympathy market is closed. I had a mother born in Treblinka. As far as I'm concerned, mentally she never left. Couldn't leave the past. Kept scratching for lice and begging for food even on the kibbutz in 1973…" She stopped as Abraham came in.
He glared at Sinta.
"That's enough." He picked up the coat and handed it to Aimee. "Maman hadn't worn it in years. Take it."
"Thank you, Monsieur Stein," she said. She picked some piled Hebrew newspapers from the corner and wrapped the coat in them.
Down the hallway, she heard Sinta's raised voice, which she knew was meant to be heard. "She doesn't look like a detective…why did you take that shiksa's side, Abraham?"
Sinta's words in her ears, Aimee retraced her steps down the stairs. Out in the courtyard, garbage bins blocked the light well. She pushed them to the side, trying to ignore the rotten vegetable smell. Inside the circular space, a patch of weak light shone. Lili's boarded-up window had looked right down to where she stood.
Mentally, she filed away Rachel's comment about the bloody footsteps to check out later. Right now, it was time to pay Les Blancs Nationaux a visit.
Thursday Evening
"TOTAL SHUTDOWN," MINISTER CAZAUX said under his breath. "The left Confederation Francaise du Travail, the trade unions, promise stoppages across the board if the trade treaty passes." He shrugged. "On the other hand, the rightists lead the popular vote."
Hartmuth had learned techniques for controlling his stutter; clenching his fists was one of them. He was using it now.
"A work shutdown is a socialist tradition here," Hartmuth said, keeping his hands in his pockets. He knew who wielded real power. Parliament belonged to the right, not the CFDT. "It's purely a statement, and then it's over."
"This is true," Cazaux nodded. "But there will be lots of unpleasantness first."
They stood under the chandeliers in the partially refurbished eighteenth-century Salle des Fêtes in the Élysee Palace. In the reception line, Hartmuth had noticed uneasily how Cazaux assessed him with laserlike intensity. He could all but hear the gears shift in Cazaux's brain amid the clink of cutlery and low buzz of conversation. Like an astute diplomat. Like Hartmuth himself.
Tall windows overlooked the Élysee's neglected back garden. Ahead in the Salon des Ambassadeurs, which was closed for renovations, the ornate ceiling sagged alarmingly. He had been surprised to see the palace, a national symbol, in such disrepair. In Germany, it wouldn't be allowed. But he'd never understood the French and doubted he'd understand them any better now.