AL07 - Murder on the Ile Saint-Louis

In the stark daylight his words made sense. She should call the agency. Go through proper channels. But visions of a dreary nursery, short-staffed like all government institutions, filled her mind. Crowded, babies crying, indifferent social workers and judges and reams of bureaucratic red tape. She couldn’t bring herself to turn this tiny mite over to them.

Dulcet tones came from the covers. The little mouth was smiling like a cherub. Aimee lifted her arms up to tickle her and the yellow shirt rose on her birdcage chest. Bluish marks showed by a fold of skin under her armpit. Bruises. An awful thought struck her: this newborn might have been mistreated. Had an abusive mother abandoned her child, thrusting her into Aimee’s care? Rene was right. She was an idiot; she should have checked the baby more closely last night. Come to think of it why hadn’t Rene noticed?

Sick to her stomach, she peered closer. What she had thought were bruises—blue marks—looked more like scribbling with a pen. She could make out letters and numbers, a part of a word—“ing”—a name? Then “2/12,” part of a date? Odd. The mother hadn’t had the time to diaper her, yet she’d written. . . .

She grabbed the first thing she saw on her bedside table—a chocolate-brown lip-liner pencil—and copied into her checkbook the letters and digits she could make out.

The fax machine groaned as a page began to emerge from her machine. Due to scheduling conflicts, the Regnault meeting has been moved up to 8:00 A.M. Please bring the programming reports. Nadia Deloup, secretary.

Aimee thanked God she’d downloaded them last night. She glanced at the old clock and panicked. She had an hour. There was only one person she could call on.

“YOU DO NEED HELP, ” Michou said. He pulled off his red wig, stepped out of a sequined sheath, and hung it on a hanger under plastic. “You don’t know the first thing about them, do you?” He rolled his mascaraed eyes. “Sealing a diaper with packaging tape?”

She’d ruined three diapers and ended up taping one together.

Michou, Rene’s transvestite neighbor, stepped out of his pantyhose and into sweats. “You said it was an emergency so I came straight from the club.” He slathered his face with cold cream, using a counterclockwise motion. “I won’t be a minute.”

“Does Viard know about your maternal talents, Michou?” He and Viard, the crime-lab head Aimee had introduced him to, had been together for eight months . . . a milestone for both of them.

“Every man wants Paul Bocuse in the kitchen, Mother Teresa to care for his children, and a whore in the bedroom.”

No wonder she had no man. “What kind of dinosaurs think like that?”

“Not that we get it.” He grinned. His face wiped clean, Michou reared back in horror. “What did you do to this formula? It’s like cement, nom de Dieu!”

Aimee rubbed her eyes. “I was up all night, Michou, watching her, afraid she’d stop breathing. I couldn’t figure out that damn diaper. And this formula . . .” She shrugged. “You get it in and it comes right up again.”

Michou patted Aimee’s arm. “You need some coffee.”

AIMEE SHOWERED, SLICKED back her hair, hoped that concealer would cover the rings under her eyes, then rimmed her lids with kohl. She slid into her pinstriped suit, a Dior from a consignment shop, and picked up the daily Le Parisien from outside her door.

In the kitchen Michou hummed, hot milk frothing on the stove as he held the baby in his arms. Rays of sun haloed the baby’s head. Through the open window, Aimee saw sunlight glinting on the Seine, a tow barge gliding under the Pont de Sully’s stone supports. Another warm day. She scanned the quai for someone surveilling the apartment but saw no one lingering behind the plane trees or the stone wall. Just the man she recognized from the first floor walking his dog, a plumber’s truck idling out front. A morning on the Ile Saint-Louis, like any other. No sign of a stalker.

Michou stroked the baby’s cheek. “Notice how she turns toward my finger—she’s ‘rooting.’” He placed the bottle between her lips and she sucked. “Voila, she’s a pro! Tilt the bottle up so the formula fills the nipple, otherwise . . .”

“Some kind of baby voodoo, Michou?”

“I’m serious, air’s the enemy,” he said. “If air gets in, she gets gas. Gas you don’t want.”

“Merci, Michou, you’re a lifesaver.”

“Such a little beauty, Aimee.”

She was.

He looked at her. “So she’s on loan, to see if you want to order a model?”

“Do I look the type?” Aimee gave him a brief version of how she had gotten the baby.

“Et alors, the minute the mother calls, I’ll let you know,” he assured her, rocking the baby, blowing air on her toes, eliciting a gurgle.

“You have the touch, Michou.” Some people were born with it . . . a woman’s touch, a maternal side.

“Maybe you do, too, Aimee.” He gave a knowing wink. “It comes with practice.”

“They should come with instruction booklets . . .”

“Like your computer? If only it were that easy,” he said. He grimaced at her chipped lacquered nails. “If you waited long enough for your nails to dry properly, they wouldn’t chip like that.”

As if she had time. She was lucky when she could grab a manicure at all. Still . . . “Gigabyte green, Michou, it’s the new color.”

“Quel horreur. Without that, you’re naked, Aimee.” He pointed to the tube of Chanel Stop Traffic Red on the counter.

As she wiped the lipstick over her lips, she checked Le Parisien for a mention of an abandoned baby or of a woman being attacked on the Ile Saint-Louis. But the headline was about the MondeFocus protest erupting into a riot. The accompanying story alleged that the CRS had provoked the demonstrators. She turned to the short articles from the police blotter, but saw nothing about a woman having been assaulted or a kidnapped baby. The crime section continued on the next page. There had been incidents of purse snatching and an attack in the Chatelet Metro. Strange, nothing about . . . then she saw a short notice in the lower corner: Body of a young woman found in the Seine by Pont de Sully near Place Bayre.

Her hands clutched the rim of the steaming cafe au lait bowl as she read: Police request help in identifying a young woman, early twenties, recovered from a drain in an overflowing sewer in the Seine.”

The public was allowed into the morgue in such cases in hopes that someone could identify the victim.

Her skin prickled. She recalled the figure with the tire iron who had chased her in the Place Bayre, across from the Pont de Sully. So close by, almost outside her window.

Her cell phone trilled.

“Taxi downstairs, Mademoiselle.” The meeting would start in twenty minutes.

“Go. Buy more diapers on your way back.” Michou kissed her on both cheeks. “What about bisous for the little peach, eh?”

Aimee leaned down into the baby smell, kissed the soft cheeks, and swallowed hard. She tucked the newspaper under her arm and headed for the door, walking faster than she had to. Then she turned around, came back for the denim jacket, thrust it into her backpack in a plastic bag, and ran.

AIMEE NODDED TO Vavin, Regnault’s head of publicity, a man in his mid thirties, trim, with wide-set eyes. He was cradling a cell phone at his ear.

“Bonjour, Monsieur Vavin.”

He flashed her a quick smile and raised a finger, indicating that he wanted her to wait a moment.

She knew his type: a harried blue-suit who traveled all the time, delegating and supervising ten publicity campaigns all running at once.

Beige carpet, beige walls, beige cabinets. He stood behind his desk. Also beige. The only personal touch was a framed photo on his desk, a smiling child on a wooden hobby horse.

Vavin clicked off his cell phone. “We’ve been hacked,” he said, punching the thick stapled pile of computer