computers.”
That fit with the .25 he’d been given by Hemingway, kept framed under glass.
“So, did he find this Frenchman?”
A pause. Idrissa looked around. “A woman came the day Figeac died.” She hesitated. “Then a man. It was right before.”
Jutta? But it couldn’t be Jutta, she’d been released from prison after Romain Figeac was killed.
“What did this woman look like?”
Silence.
Then, “She wore dark glasses,” Idrissa said. “A scarf around her head, a long coat. Seemed bizarre in such heat.”
Her mother? Idrissa’s words reverberated like a tuning fork in Aimee’s head. Her mother alive?
“What did she sound like?” Aimee was surprised at her own question. Of all the things she wanted to know, why had she asked this?
“Never spoke. At least I didn’t hear her.”
“How long did you see her?”
“A few minutes. I left. I never saw Figeac alive again.”
Her mother Romain Figeac’s killer? … But why? She didn’t know whether to hope this stranger was her mother or to fear it.
“But … wait … you said there was a man.”
“Outside, coming up the stairs,” Idrissa said. “A Frenchman. He entered Figeac’s apartment. I was rounding the stairs but he saw me.”
“Saw you?” Aimee asked but didn’t wait for an answer. Now she put it together. “So that’s why you think he’s trying to kill you?”
Idrissa gave a small nod. “He swore at me in Wolof.” Fear pooled in her eyes.
It made sense. Idrissa was terrified.
“But why didn’t you tell Christian?”
“I’d gone to Fontainebleau for my business seminar class,” Idrissa said. “Four days later, when I returned, Christian told me he’d found his father dead. Suicide. Showed me the note. The
“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 cafe opposite. So I ran.”
“Can you describe him?” asked Aimee, 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.
Aimee half turned and saw a crowd coming toward the door into the corridor. Idrissa began to run.
Who had she seen?
“Wait!”
Aimee ran, too, past the mirrors distorting their movements. But she was in heels and Idrissa wasn’t. Idrissa cornered the hall and Aimee 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.
“Aimee, 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.
Aimee pushed open the heavy glass doors, rushing over the cobbles down narrow Passage Montpensier.
No one.
She ran back the other way toward the Comedie-Francaise, 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. Aimee 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.
“
“A Michel Mamou design,” Aimee said. “Remember his name,
She stood up and backed away, wishing the years had evaporated and she was playing in the sand with 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 Rene 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 Rene tell you I was coming?” he asked, surprised. “Your lip-liner number rubbed off, you know. I finally found Rene at your office, and he said you’d be here.”
Rene 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,” Aimee 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 Leo Frot.
