The designer knew it was exactly what her client wanted: classical enough to be worn at a gala, but hip enough for hitting a nightclub afterward. This dress fit the bill in every respect. No one who saw her in it would ever forget it.
Which was both good and bad. As an haute couture creation, it was supposed to be one of a kind. But Fleurs already knew in her gut that she was going to introduce a replica with only the slightest of modifications at the July shows.
The dress would be the showstopper that she needed to turn things around. The last few seasons had seen a drop-off in her company’s growth rate, and she saw the frock as a return to wider acclaim and bigger profits.
Fleurs figured there were only a few things standing in the way of putting the dress on the runway. The client’s m-
The designer thought she heard something behind her in the hallway off the workshop that led to stairs and the rear exit. She was alone. She’d been alone for hours tinkering with the more subtle aspects of the dress.
It had to be the cat. Where had she gotten to?
Fleurs set her wineglass down and headed toward the rear hallway, calling, “Madeline?” and making kissing noises. “Come here, little puss.”
She flipped on the hallway light and managed a short shriek of surprise and terror before a six-inch leather awl was driven straight into her heart.
“What?” Fleurs coughed. She stared blankly down at the tool handle sticking out of her chest and then up at her killer. “I was going to…”
She coughed again and reached for the handle.
Then she staggered backward into her workshop, careened off the cutting table, and died on the floor, facing the mannequin and her final creation.
Chapter 58
5 a.m.
“JACK?”
I startled awake at the whisper, pistol up reflexively, wondering where I was before realizing that I was back in the suite at the Plaza Athénée, sitting in an overstuffed chair by the bed, and Louis Langlois was standing in the open doors to my bedroom.
Louis murmured, “If Kim’s friends are coming, it will be soon.”
“Okay, I’m up,” I said. “Petitjean?”
“Still working on the lighter,” Louis replied. “But the letter? AB-16 sent it to ten different news services.”
Louis handed me an iPad. The screen showed the France 4 television website and a photograph of the letter in a hodgepodge of font sizes and styles clipped from various newspapers. In that respect, it looked different from the one Ali Farad had received at Private Paris, but the text was the same as I remembered it, word for word.
“AB-16 is trying to light that powder keg you were talking about last night,” I said to Louis, handing him back the iPad.
“Most definitely,” Louis replied grimly. “And Fromme is petrified of that happening. I would not be surprised if-”
The doorbell to the suite dinged.
I glanced at my watch: 5:15 a.m.
“Here we go, Jack,” he murmured, drawing a Glock, which carried a stubby sound suppressor. “Back-to-back.”
In our stocking feet, we crept out into the living area. Louis followed me into the entry hall, walking backward and watching the balcony, which we’d left lit.
I smeared myself into the wall on the hinge side of the door. Knowing that someone as ruthless as Whitey might shoot through the peephole the second they saw a shadow appear, I held up the room key card in front of it.
Nothing.
I glanced at Louis, eased over, and peered out into the hallway.
Randall Peaks, the Saudis’ security guy, was staring back at me, looking as though he’d recently developed an ulcer.
What the hell was he doing here? And at this hour?
Peaks reached over impatiently and rang the bell again.
“We’re good,” I murmured to Louis. I stuck the gun in my waistband and opened the door.
“How many men can I hire through you?” Peaks asked.
“When?” Louis said.
“Now,” he replied. “Can we speak inside?”
I let him in and closed the door behind him.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“I’m missing a princess,” Peaks grunted.
“Never a good thing,” Louis said.
The Saudi security chief glared at Louis. “This is bad, Mr. Langlois, and I need Private Paris’s help finding her as soon as possible.”
“Of course,” I said. “Whatever you need. Which princess?”
Peaks hesitated and said, “This has to be handled discreetly.”
“I gather you’re the client?”
He nodded. “I don’t want the other princesses knowing. No one can know.”
“And heaven forbid the dad back in Riyadh,” Louis said. “Which princess?”
“Mayameen,” he said, showing us his cell phone and a picture of the young princess I saw in the Plaza’s breakfast room a few days before. “She’s just turned sixteen.”
“When did she disappear?” I asked.
“Shortly after midnight she snuck out of her room while one of my men was using the john. We didn’t pick up on it until twenty minutes ago, when we checked our security tapes.”
“How was she dressed when she left?” Louis asked.
“For a club,” Peaks said sourly. “Stiletto heels. Black leather pants. White top. Too much skin between the two.”
“She went out alone to a club?” I asked.
Peaks cocked his jaw. “She has a history of this sort of behavior.”
“So she’ll come back eventually?”
“I can’t afford ‘eventually,’” the security chief insisted. “If she’s not at Millie Fleurs’s for a fitting at nine with her mother, I’ll be terminated.”
“Then we start now,” Louis said. “Ten thousand dollars and I’ll send investigators to every club in the city still open.”
It sounded like highway robbery to me, but Peaks said, “Done.”
Louis said, “Bon. Most of the late-night clubs are in the 11th and 17th, but the two closest are Showcase and Le Baron. I will go there myself.”
“I’ll go with him,” I promised.
“You’ll text me the moment you find her?” Peaks asked.
“Immediately,” Louis promised. “And in the meantime, if her mother and sisters ask after her, say that she’s got the terrible twenty-four-hour stomach virus that’s been going around Paris.”
Peaks brightened. “Is there one going around Paris?”
“Not that I know of. But it should buy you some time.”
Peaks texted us the photograph of the princess and a picture of her passport. We promised to be in touch.
Though the air exiting the elevator spoke of croissants baking and espresso brewing, the area outside the breakfast room and the lobby were dead.
Even Elodie was struggling to remain awake until she saw me approaching. She stiffened enough to complain quietly, “S’il vous plaît, Monsieur Morgan, can it wait? I’m off duty in just five minutes, and-”
I showed her the photograph. “Did she come through here after midnight?”
The concierge studied the picture and then said, “She looked much older than in the picture. Who is she?”
“You don’t want to know. Leave it for the shift change.”
Elodie tried to hide her worry with a professional smile. “When will you be leaving us, Mr. Morgan?”
“Believe me, Elodie,” I said, “as soon as I can.”
I found Louis out front, trying to hail a cab. But the Avenue Montaigne was as quiet as the lobby of the Plaza.
Louis gestured up the street two blocks toward the Rue François 1er, where a taxi crossed, and then another. “We have better luck there.”
He began to jog, with me following. We were crossing the Rue Clément Marot when a woman’s bloodcurdling screaming stopped us in our tracks. Louis ran toward the screams, which had turned into hysterical crying.
Racing after him, I realized that she wasn’t on the street. Her weeping was coming from overhead, through an open, lit window on the floor above the haute couture shop of Millie Fleurs.