based on where and with whom they were seen. Her colleagues subsisted on injections, all kinds; she’d rather chew on a hunk of brown-crusted bread and cured olives. Olives from her family’s olive mill. Her mind went back to the bitter olive essence ground by the granite grinding wheel, the dripping amber oil in the shadowed stillness, and the slow scrape of stone against stone. The path circling it worn by generations of mules. Cool, despite the relentless heat outside. The whir of bees hovering in the rosemary climbing the walls of the stone mill. Where Lucien had helped her father every summer until . . . that day.
Marie-Dominique shoved the image away. At least here she wasn’t the object of constant scrutiny in an isolated hamlet with its archaic code of honor, presided over by a village chief whose other job was running a corner grocery. Paris might be gray, people living on top of one another, yet here the corner
In the huge gourmet kitchen where she never cooked, she tore off a hunk of baguette and smeared a Corsican
A voice came from Felix’s study. Felix! Had his plans changed? Eager, she opened the door to surprise him and then stared.
Petru, Felix’s factotum, sprawled over the armchair facing the window, murmuring into Felix’s private phone. The way Petru took over in Felix’s absence irritated her. When Felix had hired him this year, she’d nicknamed him “the bodyguard”. His hair was black today. Yesterday it had been white blond; he dyed it more often than the stylists she worked with.
“. . . of course, Lucien’s implicated,” Petru said, with a low laugh.
Implicated? She caught her breath, tugged the smooth brass doorknob back, and put her head to the crack between the door and the wall. What she heard startled her.
“The
Will arrest him or he had been arrested? Who was being discussed? Lucien? He’d denied being political. But was he telling the truth?
“Armata Corsa pamphlets, the works.”
Just as she’d thought. Lucien was with the Armata Corsa. The liar!
“Everything’s arranged. I put them there myself.”
Her heart dropped. No wonder his conversation had sounded ambiguous. Petru was sabotaging Lucien.
“In less than an hour,” he said. Then he turned toward the bookcase.
She couldn’t hear the rest. She was about to storm in and confront Petru but she realized that bursting in wouldn’t help Lucien in time if evidence had been planted already. She had to warn him. Thwart Petru’s plans. But how?
Corsicans betrayed each other but never to an outsider. Unless . . . she looked at her Patek Philippe watch, Felix’s wedding gift. She ran to the hallway, grabbed her shoes and coat. Out in the street, she called Felix. Busy.
She left him a message. Her hands trembled as she pushed the numbers. It was happening all over again.
“MADEMOISELLE ROUSSEAU'S condition remains unchanged,” said Dr. Huissard from Hotel Dieu in a harried voice.
It had taken Aimee twenty minutes on the phone persuading a liaison at the Prefecture to give her authorization and another twenty being switched around departments at the hospital before she was able to reach the doctor who was treating Laure.
“She’s young, that’s in her favor,” Dr. Huissard said. “We’re running tests. She’ll have a CT scan this evening. For now, that’s all we can do.”
“Please don’t think I’m telling you how to do your job, Doctor, but your service provides basic care,” she said, aiming to be tactful. “Can’t you transfer her to another more specialized ward in the hospital?”
Should she ask Guy to put in a word of recommendation? Despite his surgical excision of their relationship, she could call him. Perhaps he could help somehow. For Laure she would beg.
“Doctor, I know an eye surgeon.”
“No outside specialists, they don’t allow it. She’s being treated by the specialists here.”
“Her condition’s deteriorating, as I understand, or it may. Why won’t—?”
“I shouldn’t say this.” She heard the doctor sigh. “I’ve already requested that Neurology take over. Right now, they’re overcrowded. As soon as a bed’s free, she’s next on the list for a neurology consult. She could be moved within the hour or later this evening.”
“May I see her?”
“No visitors. She’s in critical condition. We’re not equipped, as you know, in the criminal ward.”
“How soon could she—?”
“Mademoiselle, I promise you she’s next on the list,” Dr. Huissard said, his voice not unkind. “I need to get back to my rounds.”
“
She opened the shoebox-sized refrigerator under the kitchen counter. On the shelf with the bottle of champagne and yogurt past the due date was a white wax-paper packet of butchers’ scraps.
“Miles,
Miles appeared with what looked like a rag in his mouth.
“What did you find this time?”
He dropped it on the floor, licked her leg, then bent over his bowl.
She picked it up. Guy’s washcloth. She caught the clinging scent of his vetiver soap.
“I miss him, too.” Her lip trembled.
Miles Davis looked up from the rim of his bowl, his head cocked to the side. Sometimes she’d swear he could understand.
She turned on her radio, a 1960s aqua rectangle with a JOHNNY HALLYDAY LIVE AT THE OLYMPIA
On the next station was an interview with the breathy, vaguely sexy voice of Madame Claude, notorious for her exclusive
She switched the channel to Macha Meryl’s show on RTL, the
“Caller,
The husky cigarette-laced voice had gotten that part right. Get on with one’s life!
Aimee put Guy’s washcloth and the moonstone ring inside an envelope and addressed it to him at the hospital. She wished she didn’t long to hear his voice one more time. One last time. Could she make an excuse and ask him for a referral for Laure?
A moment later, she took a deep breath and punched in the number of his hospital.
“Doctor Lambert?” the receptionist said. “We’re referring his patients to the acting head of staff.”
Odd. “For any particular reason?”
“Doctor Lambert’s taken a post with Doctors Without Borders in the Sudan.”