caught her eye.
She centered the flashlight beam and peered forward.
Long wisps of what appeared to be red hair peeked out from the hall closet door.
Why hadn’t she asked Sebastien to wait? Her flashlight beam centered on the closet door. She willed her hands steady and slowly coaxed the door open wider.
A shag-style red wig lay on the warped linoleum.
Nothing else. Aimee peered closer. The wig looked as if it had been tossed in as a casual afterthought. It had to be the one Sylvie used as Eugenie.
A lot of things bothered her, but one thing in particular cried out. She walked back into the shadowed bedroom. It was the phone jack with no phone. But perfect for a modem. Had Eugenie used a laptop and gone on- line?
She searched among the clothes in the closet. In the back pocket of the overalls she found the phone cord. The laptop had to be somewhere close.
She shone her flashlight and began searching the closet. Testing each floorboard to see if it had been pried up recently, feeling each wallpaper seam for bubbles or uneven joining.
Nothing.
She sat back on her heels. Where would she have hidden a laptop?
What spot could she have shifted the laptop to if she’d been caught off guard, with only time to slip the phone cord in her pocket?
The battered desk had one drawer. She opened it. Empty. But the drawer stuck slightly as she pulled it out. Kneeling down, she pulled out her miniscrewdriver and poked the pine strut holding the drawer support. Cheap pine, staple-gunned in places. She felt around, found a knobby spot, pressed it. The pine strut flap popped open.
A hidden drawer in plain view. Aimee was impressed. And if Eugenie had a wireless modem, she would have been more impressed. In France few people did. She and Rene lusted for one but were waiting for the price to drop.
Aimee reached inside, exploring the crevices and ridges. She felt a smooth booklet and pulled it out. It was a manual for a new laptop. Either the men before had found it, or Sylvie had taken it with her and it had gone up in smoke.
Outwitted or too late; either way it was gone.
Dejected, Aimee knew the only place left to find answers was in the trash. Before she left, she unrolled the felt from the windows.
By the time she got to the corner, Sebastien had loaded two blue garbage sacks in back of his van. He gunned the engine as she opened the door. They took off down rue Jean Moinon, narrowly missing the striped cat.
“I’ll know after we check what you found,” she said, the sodium streetlight glistening above her.
They sped into the raw Paris night along rainwashed, cobbled streets.
THE OLD tack room where they unloaded the garbage occupied a courtyard corner of Aimee’s building on He St. Louis. Once used by horses stabled in this former Due de Guise mansion, it now housed discarded window frames, a ganglion of PVC piping, and twenty-five kilogram
“Having fun yet?” Aimee said as they sifted through the bags of Sylvie’s trash.
Sebastien, intent on his work, hadn’t bothered to look up. They both wore gauze masks. But there was no way of getting around the smell.
“I’ll need a
“Me, too,” she said, visualizing the
“
She nodded. “Let’s keep the organic matter over there.”
Aimee’s flashlight shone amid the candles she’d lit, casting a medieval glow under the vaulted seventeenth- century ceiling. Over the industrial-strength clear plastic, they’d spread out the contents of the garbage bags on the stone floor. She and Sebastien were hunched over sorting the contents.
They’d gotten lucky, she realized, to find the uncollected trash. The
Thirty minutes later they’d sorted the bulk into three piles: paper, perishables, and other.
The other consisted of a pair of black Prada shoes. They were marred by a broken heel, but &
The perishables: apple peels, almond shells, and the green slimy thing. She sniffed. Mint. Cotton balls smudged by tan foundation, sparkly blush and black mascara streaks.
She surveyed a half-used jar of Nutella, a white plastic Viva bottle of sour milk, and a smashed carton of strawberry Danette yogurt.
They bundled the piles back up and shot them in Aimee’s trash bin.
“I know I owe you, Aimee,” Sebastien said, “but next time let me repay you in other ways.”
Together she and Sebastien sifted all the papers into several piles: Monoprix circulars advertising April sales, crumpled receipts and envelopes, and torn gray paper. Aimee picked up a goldenrod sheet, like those plastered on posts around Belleville. Printed on it: AMNESTY FOR THE
She sat up. Her heart quickened. She remembered Philippe’s reaction to Hamid on the radio: his anger and how he’d taken off in the car. Had Sylvie picked up this flyer and tossed it—or had she kept it for a reason? Was there a connection?
Aimee turned it over. On the other side was smudged writing. The name “Youssef’ and “01 43 76 89.” She wondered if this could be a phone number of one of the Arabes, whom the baker Denet disapproved of, hanging around Eugenie’s. Aimee put it aside.
Sebastien assembled the gray pieces on an ironing board while she smoothed them with a travel iron. After ironing the strips flat, she set them in rows, adhering them to a clear contact sheet. She did this several times until all the gray paper had a contact front.
“Now for the interesting part,” she said to Sebastien.
They trudged upstairs to her apartment, the temperature only a few degrees warmer.
No welcoming lights, no heat.
And no Yves. Too bad. She’d tried to push Yves out of her mind. But thoughts of him kept popping back in.
Sebastien rubbed his gloved hands together and stamped his feet. They unzipped their jumpsuits and Aimee threw them in her laundry. Someday she’d get to the
Sebastien set the papers on the faded Gobelin carpet. Her grandfather had purchased it at the Porte de Vanves flea market. She’d been twelve and remembered helping him lug his fifty-franc find home on the Metro. “A classic, Aimee,” he’d said. He’d filled the place with “classics”—a bit worn and frayed at the edges.
She flicked her scanner on and began scanning the contact sheets of paper scraps. Now she could bundle up at the computer and run some high-resolution software programs to match paper fibers. After that she’d run another program to fit spatial and numerical characteristics. With a little maneuvering she’d match the paper together in the right order and read the contents.
“Sebastien, why don’t you warm up with some Calvados?” she said. “Or help yourself to
“And you?”
“Calvados, please, I need a toasty think-drink.”
