Last Year’s Happiness:
The young half-Asian woman, her long black hair entwined in purple braids, was stunning. She looked familiar. That smile! Her mind traveled back to Thadee’s words, remembered seeing the woman who’d climbed on the Vespa when she first found Sophie, what Madame Nguyen had said. Could this be her, de Lussigny’s daughter, Michel’s mother?
Had she been staying with her uncle Thadee? And most important, where was she now?
“Aimee. Aimee!” Zazie was saying. ”Yoo-hoo, you there?”
She’d been lost in thought. She stared at Zazie.
“You’re a little detective in the making, Zazie,” she said, stabbing out her cigarette.
Zazie’s eyes shone with pride.
And for a brief flash Aimee wondered what it would it be like to have a child. Would she be like Zazie, and never go to bed?
“Is that a photo of you over the espresso machine, from when you were five?”
Zazie grinned. “It’s from the
Close enough. Little Michel was five and had the same smile as his mother, Nadege. Aimee had to find her.
She pulled out her lipstick and slid it into Zazie’s hand. Zazie’s eyes sparkled.
“For me?”
“Don’t tell your
OUTSIDE, ON dark Avenue de Clichy, a lone streetsweeper dealt with the detritus of the local Armistice Day Veterans’ Parade. Each year the number of marchers got smaller. With the driver’s assistance, an old man alighted from a taxi onto the wet pavement. His wool suit hung from his shrunken frame. A blue, white, and red tricolor ribbon was draped over his caved-in chest; several medals glinted on his lapel.
Aimee guessed he was one of the few remaining veterans from the First World War. His limbs trembled as he hobbled to a door on rue Sauffroy. The taxi driver lit a cigarette and drove away.
Peeling posters of the Nigerian footballer Okocha glistened with rain on the stucco walls. Aimee heard the metal clink as the old man’s keys hit the ground. She stooped to pick them up.
“
“I always forget the code,” he said, his rheumy eyes tearing. “It’s in my pocket somewhere. My hands shake so.”
“Permit me?” She stuck her hand in his pocket, found a card with his name, address, and digicode.
“Caporal Mollard, that’s you, eh?” she said.
He nodded.
She punched in his code. The green door clicked open.
“
“Did you enjoy the parade?”
A lost look painted his hollow-cheekboned face. “That farce?”
Shocked, she saw that he picked at the ribbon as if trying to pull it off. But the effort seemed too much for him.
“Most of me died in the trenches. The mustard gas took one of my lungs. The rest, well. . . .”
“Caporal, you must be tired,” she said, not knowing what else to say.
“We were supposed to save the world for peace,
She shook her head. What had happened in 1914–18 on French fields had just been the beginning. “I don’t know. Can I help you inside, does someone wait for you?”
“Everyone I knew is dead,” he said. “It’s my turn.”
RENE HAD left a note on the laptop in the hotel room.
“Dining downstairs on Cameroun manioc, fish and rice
She put her head in her hands, rocked back and forth. Her hands came back sticky with tears and black mascara. She’d lost her man, been tempted to sleep with a chiseled-cheekbone charmer, and still hadn’t found Gassot or the jade. She curled up on the lumpy settee by the window, overlooking wind- and rain-blasted rue Sauffroy, feeling as alone as the old vet.
SHE WOKE UP TO her cell phone’s ringing. Rene lay asleep, pale lemon light pooled on the duvet bunched around him. Her stockings were twisted and she straightened them while listening to Serge’s voice.
“Sorry, Aimee, I was called to Nantes, just got back to the morgue,” Serge said. “I have to work Sundays now.”
“Which twin had the fever?” She could never tell them apart, the boys never stood still long enough to enable her to figure it out.
“Both came down with
“Do me a favor, Serge, find me the autopsy report on Albert Daudet.”
“Why?” he asked.
“It’s a suspicious death.”
“You stopped all that, didn’t you?”
Not Serge, too!
“I’ll bring Miles Davis over,” she said. “Let the twins take him for a walk.”
“Look Aimee, that’s not your field now.”
“It never was,” she said. “But if I tell the boys you wouldn’t let me bring—”
“
“Daudet, Albert.”
“Like the writer, eh? Hold on.”
She heard the shuffle of papers, conversations in the background. By the time Serge came back on the line, she’d taken her pills and pulled on her skirt.
“Daudet died under medical care, so it took a while to dredge it up,” Serge said. “Hmm, interesting report. Most old men who go in for a cardiogram don’t die from cartilage thyroid fractures and hemorrhaging in the neck.”
“Meaning?”
“Asphyxiation due to manual strangulation. My guess is it came from a carotid sleeper hold.”
She gasped. Regnier and his henchmen. Hadn’t Rene said he’d been caught in a carotid sleeper hold?
“Daudet had a preexisting coronary condition. It didn’t help. The compression of the carotid did it for him,” Serge said. “I figure it took three or four minutes. That’s indicated by extensive bruises to the neck and petechiae.”
“Would the killer have to be muscular?” she asked.
“It helps. Hook and hold the neck in the crotch of the arm, apply pressure, and most folks pass out in ten seconds. Hold a few minutes longer and it’s the big sleep.”
“And Serge, in your professional opinion?”
“The evenness and deep pressure bruises indicate a big guy,” Serge said. “But that’s off the record.”
“Fax it to me, will you?”
“You owe me, Aimee. Count some babysitting in, too!”
