“The yellow feathers?”
Idrissa nodded. “But Christian was taking uppers and downers, he made no sense. I kept trying to question him. But where his father was concerned, he saw nothing. Crazy as he was, his father loved him.”
“Why was Ousmane killed?”
“He wasn’t well but he was hiding me.” She blinked back tears. “Maybe a warning … I don’t know. Then one day, when I went back, the man was sitting in the café opposite. So I ran.”
“Can you describe him?” asked Aimée, keeping her hand steady with effort.
Idrissa went rigid.
Behind them in the salon, people milled and conversed.
“What’s wrong?”
Idrissa was backing away from her.
Aimée half turned and saw a crowd coming toward the door into the corridor. Idrissa began to run.
Who had she seen?
“Wait!”
Aimée ran, too, past the mirrors distorting their movements. But she was in heels and Idrissa wasn’t. Idrissa cornered the hall and Aimée had just about grabbed her when her heel caught in a crack in the parquet. She flew, landing in the Goth designer’s arms, which were full of his costumes.
“I’m sorry,” she said, scrambling up.
Michel caught up with her, his face wreathed in smiles.
“Aimée, we’re going to celebrate,” he said, pulling her arm.
“I have to find Idrissa,” she said, to his surprise. By the time she’d gotten up, kicked off the shoes, and run downstairs, the entrance lay empty.
Aimée pushed open the heavy glass doors, rushing over the cobbles down narrow Passage Montpensier.
No one.
She ran back the other way toward the Comédie-Française, listening for footfalls. But only slanted shadows, and the sounds of her feet slapping on the cobbles and the meow of a cat reached her. She ran past the restaurant Grand Vefour into the Palais Royal gardens, blinking in the sunlight and shading her eyes.
Mothers sat on the shaded benches minding their toddlers. A dragonfly buzzed over the sandbox, swooping lazily in the afternoon sun with shimmering blue-green wings. Aimée sat down with her feet in the warm, coarse sand, as she had as a child.
And the strangest feeling came over her. As if someone watched her.
“Did you see a woman running?” she asked a mother who sat nursing her child.
“Just you,” said the mother with a shake of her head. “What a great outfit!”
A few of the mothers had looked up, scrutinizing her bare feet and slinky look.
“Alors, if I ever get my figure back,” she said. “I’d want that.”
“A Michel Mamou design,” Aimée said. “Remember his name, couture contre couture.”
She stood up and backed away, wishing the years had evaporated and she was playing in the sand with her maman watching her.
Going back up the stairs, she ran into the crowd.
Michel stood surrounded by a group of admirers. She scanned the faces, but there were none she recognized. Who had frightened Idrissa?
She found René in the salon working on a laptop. “Twenty-two orders. Not bad for an unestablished kid—”
“Who won a prestigious award,” she interrupted, “and has a surreal and magical design sense. Pretty impressive!”
“That’s you,” a creamy voice said from the tall double doors. “Dirty feet and all.”
Startled, she looked down at her toes, then saw Etienne grinning in the doorway. Beside him stood an older man, tanned, with slicked-back salt-and-pepper hair, smoking a cigar. Familiar looking.
“I wish I could say it was made for me,” she smiled, “but Michel stitched me into it.”
Etienne had exchanged his pinstripes for an olive linen suit. He looked like a model himself, she thought. And she’d like a private showing. But he probably had come with his girlfriend, or this man who could be his father-in-law.
And then an odd thought unnerved her. Had he been here when Idrissa ran away? Suspicion crossed her mind. This older man, where had she seen him? Now she remembered.
“So you’re in the market for couture, Etienne?”
“Didn’t René tell you I was coming?” he asked, surprised. “Your lip-liner number rubbed off, you know. I finally found René at your office, and he said you’d be here.”
René shrugged with a grin.
“Let me introduce my uncle, Jean Buisson,” Etienne said. “He’s visiting on my birthday. Sort of a family tradition.”
Why was she attracted to nice men now?
“But we’ve already met,” Aimée said, shaking his hand, once again on the receiving end of this handsome man’s laserlike smile. “At the Bourse reception room.”
“Of course, but you never joined me for the good champagne across the hall.” His uncle moved forward. “Let me make amends. Downstairs in the Grand Vefour. Both of you, my treat!”
A very seductive offer.
But she was late for her meeting with Léo Frot.
“Désolée,” she said. And she meant it. “I’d like to but I have an appointment at the Quai des Orfèvres.”
René rolled his eyes in disgust.
Stupid. She was being stupid. But she couldn’t get involved with this man. She had no time. She had to see the files on her father, and somehow find Idrissa again.
“Maybe later?” she asked.
“Feel like dinner at my place?” Etienne asked.
She nodded, wondering if he was for real. He even had a Harley.
“Take your chances with the chef,” his uncle said, “but I’ll bring the champagne.”
And they left; only a whiff of the cigar aroma remained.
“Don’t blow it, Aimée,” René said. “Even I can see he’s a catch. And he’s interested.”
“You’ve been talking with Martine.”
“Sometimes she makes a lot of sense,” René said. “This one’s not flying all over the world and making pit stops like Yves.”
Bad boys had always been her downfall, but this Etienne was different.
“I better change clothes.” And retrieve my own shoes, Aimèe thought.
“Michel said it’s yours,” René said. “A gift.”
“Non, I can’t accept.” It was too much.
“But you sold ten of them,” René said. “Michel said it belongs on you.”
SHE PUT the scooter in gear and headed down rue Saint Honoré for the Quai des Orfèvres. At the Pont Neuf she crossed the Seine, sparkling in the sun, and took a left on the Ile de la Cité.
She parked the scooter and showed her carte d’identité to the blue-uniformed flics. Once inside the cobbled courtyard she veered to the left, passed under the portal that bore the inscription DIRECTION DE LA POLICE JUDICIARE, and climbed the five hundred steps to reach the blue insignia of the Brigade Criminelle.
It had been a long time. But she remembered the way well.
After again showing her ID, she was buzzed in. She found the vaulted wooden doors marked toilette. Now it served both sexes since the former ladies’ room had become part of the communication systems control room.
This was no classic hole in the floor or stinky urinal like many in the building but an elegant Art Nouveau lavatory: private wooden stalls with inset stained-glass panels and a glazed ceramic frieze accompanied by an elegant shoe-shine stand circa 1905.
The usual lavatory attendant was off duty, probably at lunch. A box with five franc tips sat on a ledge. A stall door opened a slit and Léo beckoned with a crooked finger.