“Indochina all China once,” she said. Shrugged. “Rape and rule like all conquerors. We kick Mandarins out in tenth century. People stay.”
This could be an opening, Aimee thought.
“They looted emperor’s tombs, didn’t they?” she said, eager to keep the woman talking. She pulled out the auction catalogue page. “And stole things like this. Or was it the French?”
Aimee saw her companion shrink back against the leather banquette.
“Do you recognize this treasure? Weren’t the Cao Dai guarding it?”
No answer. Madame Nguyen still stared at the photo of the jade figures.
“Take your order now?” a waiter asked.
Madame Nguyen shook her head.
“Give us a few more minutes, please,” Aimee said.
The waiter shook his head and walked away.
“Thadee gave me this before he was murdered.” Aimee leaned closer and showed her the disk she held in the palm of her hand. “But I don’t understand why. You said the dragon symbolizes—”
“He give you this?”
Aimee nodded.
“Don’t understand.”
For a moment, Aimee thought she saw fear in the old woman’s eyes.
“Neither do I, Madame Nguyen,” she said.
“No good. Belong to Vietnam.”
“The Cao Dai nun, Linh, wants to thank the man who saved her father’s life at Dien Bien Phu.”
Madame Nguyen said something in Vietnamese.
“What’s that?” Aimee asked.
“Hieu,” she nodded. “Filial respect. Confucian way. Not like
Aimee stared. “You mean the owner of this restaurant?”
“No respect for emperor.”
Aimee knew the deposed Vietnamese Emperor Bao Dai had lived in French exile since the 1950s. She remembered that much from studying for the History section of the Bac. Did this relate to the looting of the emperor’s tomb?
“Could the owner’s uncle have looted a tomb in Dien Bien Phu?”
“Grave robbers never change.”
A cell phone beeped somewhere under the table.
Madame Nguyen pulled out the smallest cell phone Aimee had ever seen.
Bad news?
Madame Nguyen stood. “Must go. Michel have school trip earlier. Must go.”
“Let me find you a taxi,” Aimee said, rising and laying some francs on the table.
Outside, by some karma Aimee figured she or Madame Nguyen had earned, a taxi idled at the stand. She helped the old woman inside. “Take my card; I’m trying to find this jade. Perhaps you may be able to help me.”
Madame Nguyen’s face remained expressionless. But Aimee thought she’d mask her terror, having been well-schooled in concealment in Indochina. Disappointed, Aimee closed the door, and the taxi took off. She remembered her coat left inside the resto and ran back for it. The waiter handed it to her, his mouth turned down in a frown.
“I’m sorry we aren’t staying for lunch,” Aimee said.
“She never eat here,” he said. “Understand.”
“Pardon, but what do you mean,” she asked surprised. “You know Madame Nguyen?”
“Cochin Chinese have long memory. Like elephant.”
“But Madame Nguyen—”
He lapsed into what Aimee took for a Southern Chinese dialect. Several of the waiters around him laughed. Rude and disgruntled, she figured, since she’d taken up his time.
“They’re not saying nice things,” said a frowning young Asian woman, seated by the aquarium. “I’m sorry. No need to act rude, people change their minds.”
“What are they saying?”
“Forget it,” the young woman said. “They’re nervous underneath.”
“But why?” Aimee asked.
The young woman’s frown deepened. “They’re saying the health department visited last week. One man says he’s afraid the health department will close the restaurant and then he’ll be out of a job.”
A good thing they hadn’t eaten here, Aimee thought, running to the bus. She had an idea and somehow she had to get back into her office.
AIMEE KNEW Leduc Detective was being watched. Yet everything she needed was inside the office. She walked up rue Bailleul, entered an apartment building foyer, and kept going to the rear garages she knew corresponded to the back hall window of their rue du Louvre office.
The garage and back alley were deserted. She pulled down the fire escape, hiked up her skirt, and climbed. On the landing, she took the fire extinguisher from the wall—just in case—and unlocked Leduc’s frosted-paned door.
No one.
She had to make this quick. In their storeroom she found the Health Inspector badge from the
Two messages. Both hangups.
In the mail stacked on her desk, she found a letter addressed to her in Guy’s writing. She took a deep breath and opened it. A court summons for damage to his office?
Flyers from Neuilly real estate agents and several full page ads describing apartments for rent fell out. Guy had circled one of them in red.
Below it he’d written: Perfect for my photo lab and your home office. Even a guest bedroom, and the park nearby for Miles Davis!
She looked at the postmark. The day before yesterday. Was this all a misunderstanding? Should she swallow her pride and call him?
Never.
Yet after a moment, she punched in his office number. Four rings later his secretary, Marie, answered.
“I’m sorry, Dr. Lambert left an hour ago,” she said.
“Left. When does he return?”
“Let’s see,” she said. Papers rustled in the background. “I purchased return train tickets for him and Madame Belise.”
“Madame Belise?”
“Can you hold on, please?”
She put Aimee on hold.
“Returning tomorrow,” she said in a businesslike voice when she came back on the line. “Any message?”
Gone with his new woman.
