they’d moved her.
“Nurse, the patient’s agitated. Monitor the EKG. Now!”
A white-coated doctor stood over her, his prominent nose and plastic-coated badge catching the light from the blinking machines. “Laure, take it easy. Don’t struggle. Do you feel this?”
A pinprick. Cold.
She shook her head. Thought she shook her head. Only her thumb and index finger moved. She concentrated.
“Blink, Laure,” he said. “Once for yes, two times for no. Can you do that?”
Laure blinked twice.
“What’s that? You’re trying to say you didn’t feel it?”
She blinked two times again. Felt her eyes bulging from her head. Couldn’t he see her fingers moving on the white sheet. Look, she wanted to scream, my
Do it. Touch it. Show him.
But her hand didn’t respond. Her eyes followed the path where her fingers would go; she could almost feel how smooth the steel disk would feel. How cold to her touch. But like a stalled engine, trying to kick over, coughing, choking, sputtering to a stop, the rest of her didn’t cooperate.
“Give her two milligrams of Valium,” the doctor said. “We’ve got to control the tremors or the tubes will pop out.”
Look at my eyes . . . my eyes! She blinked twice in rapid succession. No more drugs, no more slowing my mind and words. She had to communicate. To tell them.
“Doctor, she’s trying to tell you something,” said the nurse. “That dose will knock her out.”
“Just do it, nurse.”
Laure pinched his stethoscope so hard it popped off his neck.
AIMEE DIDN’T NEED LUCIEN Sarti’s kind of trouble. Why couldn’t she get the way his eyelashes curled out of her head?
At the bookstore on Place des Abbesses that had stayed open late for a poetry reading, she found an edition of that morning’s
At least the bookstore had a heater, so she could get the chill out of her bones. On the third page she found two articles datelined Bastia. One reported a bomb threat to the central Bastia post office, discovered to be a hoax. A shorter article described vandalism of a fighter jet on the runway at a military installation, blaming workers from the nearby construction site. The construction company, Conari Ltd., declined to comment. Felix Conari’s firm.
Flights had been canceled, and the airspace over Corsica declared a no-fly zone. Overreaction? That was a precaution the military enforced when national security was at stake. Even at an outpost on the tip of Corsica, far from the French mainland? Yet Conari had flown back.
Her eyes fell on another stack of newspapers.
IN COLD BLOOD, MY HUSBAND’S PARTNER SHOT HIM! The headlines stared back at her from
Sick to her stomach, her anger simmering, Aimee stuck her metal nail file into the antenna slot of her cell phone, wiggled it, and called 12 for information. She requested the number of Nathalie Gagnard and was connected.
“Why ask me for ideas? You’ve already planned Jacques’s funeral,” said Nathalie, her voice slurred.
Drunk?
“Nathalie, you’re going to retract those lies in the newspaper article,” she said, controlling her tone. “Taking vengeance on Laure won’t bring Jacques back.”
“What? You
Aimee caught her breath.
“Gambled?”
A sob answered her. “Debts. I can’t even pay to bury him.”
It began to fall into place. Jacques gambled yet he had a new car. He was in debt. But something on that snow-covered roof was supposed to make him a rich man.
“Nathalie, it’s Aimee Leduc. I’m coming over.”
The line went dead.
On her map, she found the nearest station—Lamarck-Caulincourt, one of the deepest stations, carved out of the old gypsum mines.
Ten minutes later she emerged in the drizzling mist under the curving Art Nouveau arch of the Metro. An inviting yellow glow came from the bistro by the steps. Dark stairs like parentheses ran up both sides of the hill. Then another flight of stairs, a street, and more stairs. They looked like rows of sagging accordion keys. At the top, the frosted white dome of Sacre Coeur resembled a pastry made of spun snow.
Plastic bags tossed by the wind fluttered and caught on a metal grille. Like her progress in this investigation, she thought, every step impeded and whipped about by the wind, ending nowhere. Laure’s innocence was still in doubt. She’d have to make Nathalie admit Jacques’s gambling habit to the authorities. Aimee wouldn’t leave until she did.
Deep inside, Aimee felt that a larger conspiracy existed, and that Laure was enmeshed in it, like the fly in a spider’s web. If only Laure were to recover and could talk!
The green metal lamppost illuminated the little-trafficked side of Montmartre where the occasional cafe still sold charcoal. A chic pocket of
Out of breath, she paused, noticing the walled Saint-Vincent’s cemetery entrance with placards illustrating various plans for coffin burial. Three-deep coffin burials were the most economical. She turned left on rue Saint Vincent, passed the rose-walled Lapin Agile cabaret, and the last vineyard in Paris, its bare stalks of vines coated by a rim of frost.
Nathalie Gagnard’s building adjoined the rue du Mont-Cenis stairs. Not thirty minutes ago, she’d stood at the top with Felix Conari and Lucien, overlooking another cemetery.
Circles . . . she’d gone in circles all night.
She pushed Lucien out of her mind.
The building was once a
After hitting the light switch, she scanned the mailboxes, found “Gagnard,” and hurried up the spiral staircase before the timed switch could cut off.
“Nathalie?” She knocked on the door. “Nathalie! It’s Aimee Leduc!”
Silence, except for the measured ticks of the timed light.
She pounded on the door. “Are you there, Nathalie?”
A man wearing chunky black motorcycle boots peered from behind a neighboring door on the landing.
“Mind keeping it down?” he said. “We’re conducting a seance in here!”
A seance?
“Sorry, I’m worried about Nathalie. . . .”
“I feed her parakeet. Nathalie was fine the last time I saw her.”
