“Where’s Anais?”
Aimee heard splashes, then a thud. Silence.
“Leave Anais out of this,” he said.
“Wasn’t Sylvie protecting you?” Aimee said.
“Let me h-h-handle this,” Philippe interrupted. “You’re trouble—complicating things!”
“Quit meddling.” Philippe slammed down the phone.
She had to make him understand. And find out why Sylvie had another persona. Grabbing a wool
By the time she reached Villa Georgina, the de Froissart home lay in darkness. She went up to the side door and knocked.
Silence.
Old metal-framed windows looked onto the garden. A dim light shone from over the blue Aga stove in the kitchen. Peering through the bubbled-glass window, she saw Philippe half-sprawled across the pine kitchen table. Distorted, motionless.
Panic rippled through her. Was he hurt?
She pounded on the door.
No sound. No movement.
She tried all the windows. Finally the farthest metal-framed one jiggled. Grabbing a long twig in the garden, she inserted it and shoved it up again and again until she felt the hasp flip. The window scratched open.
She hitched her coat up, climbed in, and sniffed. Whiskey lay in an amber puddle on the floor. Philippe snored loudly, dead drunk. Relieved, she shook him several times, he sputtered and drooled. His graying hair was matted and plastered on one side of his head.
Philippe had passed out. Frustrated, she wanted to pound him in the head—he’d triggered this whole mess because he couldn’t keep his pants zipped.
Or had he?
With Philippe passed out, only Anais could tell her—and An-a’is had disappeared.
Aimee searched the kitchen, the phone table in the hallway, Philippe’s mahogany-walled study, and every drawer in his desk. Nothing to indicate where Anais could be. She looked under the piled folders on his desk, through ministry directives and business prospectuses.
And then she saw “ST196” labeled on the outside of a brown envelope. Inside were hundreds of small black- and-white photos. Algerian men with number cards safety-pinned to their shirts. Just like the ones in the gym bag.
What did this mean?
She looked closer. Some cards were pinned directly to the skin on their chest. But what got her were the mostly expressionless faces, interspersed by the ones with fear shining from their eyes. Unnerving.
No text. Just the faces.
On the back flap, she saw something written in pencil. Smudged. “Youssef,” and a number. Again the same name and phone number.
She went back to the kitchen table where Philippe still snored, dead to the world. Aimee opened the stainless-steel fridge and helped herself to a fresh Badoit. She sucked the bubbly mineral water, then rifled through Philippe’s pockets. Stuck in his pants pocket was a receipt from Centre Hepitalisation d’urgence en psychiatrie Esquiro for Madame Sitbon. Of course, that had to be Anais. Sitbon was Anais’s maiden name!
Aimee recognized the hospital, noted for its
ON THE fourth floor of the clinic, Aimee brushed Anais’s cheek with the back of her hand.
Anais’s eyes fluttered open.
“It’s so good to see a familiar face,” Anais said, smiling weakly at Aimee.
“Sorry to disturb you.”
The private room overlooked the manicured trees on Square de la Roquette. Beside the hospital bed, a monitor beeped, slow and steady.
“How’s my Simone?”
Aimee started guiltily—she hadn’t checked.
“
She held another photo Rene had morphed together—of Sylvie with the red wig.
“Sylvie wore wigs,” Anais said. “Some men like that. Philippe did.”
Poor Anais.
“There’s more to it than that. I’m sorry,” Aimee said, controlling her excitement. “But I found some odd photos.”
Tears ran down Anais’s cheeks.
“What’s the matter?” Aimee said. She couldn’t understand why Anais wasn’t interested.
“Philippe’s changed. He’s dead inside.”
“He’s trying to forget,” Aimee shook her head. “Tiens, if he were dead inside he wouldn’t be drinking himself into a stupor.”
“Nothing will be over until the killer…,” Anais’s chest heaved, then the tears spilled down her pale cheeks, “until you catch them. If Sylvie pretended to be someone else, you’ve got to find out why—what’s the reason. Nothing will be over until then. I hired you to find out who murdered Sylvie.”
Aimee sighed. “Look, Anais, I’m doing my best, but you and Philippe haven’t helped me. I’ve been working in the dark. If you knew about the photos, why didn’t you tell me? It’s like you gave me half a deck and want me to play cards!”
“The General,” Anais said, rubbing her wet cheeks.
Aimee’s hand tightened on the bed’s railing and she leaned forward. “What’s that?”
“I remembered … someone saying “general,” maybe it was Sylvie … but then the explosion.”
What did that mean? “Did Sylvie say this upstairs in the apartment?”
Anais nodded. “Sylvie said terrible things happened in Algeria. Philippe knew about them.”
Did it have to do with those photos? she wondered.
“What did Sylvie give you?”
“Some envelope,” Anais rubbed her eyes.
“The envelope with ‘ST196’ written on it?”
“Philippe has it.”
“Did you see the General?”
Anais shook her head.
“Did you hear a voice, a sound?”
“The smell,” Anais squinted, as if trying to remember could force it to come back.
“What smell?”
“I feel so stupid,” Anais said. “My brain’s so mixed up.”
“Which smell, Anais?”
“I can’t remember,” she said. “Philippe says I should recover without worrying about Simone,” Anais shoulders slumped under her hospital jacket. “Martine’s taking Simone to the ecole
“If someone is blackmailing him I’ve got part of the evidence,” she said, trying to get that through Anais’s skull. “You’re safe. He’ll come and get you tomorrow.”
“Licorice,” Anais said.
Aimee froze. Her mind went back to the military man chewing licorice at the circus.
“You smelled licorice in Sylvie’s apartment?”
