AL07 - Murder on the Ile Saint-Louis

“I rubbed off all those ink marks. An infant’s skin is very delicate. Why in the world would anyone . . . ? But it doesn’t matter. She didn’t have an allergic reaction and they’re gone now.”

Good thing she’d copied them.

Aimee eased the pink bunny-eared hat she’d bought over the baby’s fontanel. “Never too early for a fashion statement, petite.”

“You’d like to keep her, Aimee.”

She froze.

“It’s written all over your face,” Michou said.

“She’s not mine, Michou.”

He sighed. “You’re becoming involved; it’s impossible not to with a baby. Aimee, don’t let yourself get hurt. . . .”

Of course she wouldn’t. She kissed Michou on both cheeks. “You’re a lifesaver, merci.

”

A tinge of color swept over Michou’s cheeks. He paused. She’d never seen him tongue-tied before.

“All in a working girl’s day, cherie.”

THERE HAD BEEN no call. Aimee rubbed her eyes, strained from monitoring Regnault’s system. Boring, tiring, drudge work. Several hours of it. The most lucrative in the business. The baby, on a pillow in a hatbox on the floor, gurgled.

She entered her old student ID number on a second computer and combed the Sorbonne student directory. She accessed the administrative files using the technique a savvy friend had shown her—useful for altering grades. She accessed the personal files of all the students, then narrowed her search to emigre- status students with the name Linski.

Voila. Krzysztof Linski was an engineering major. She even found his class schedule, which she downloaded. Twenty years old, born in Krakow, Poland. Member of the chess club and an above-average student. And he knew about computers.

She copied the information, put it in a file. The baby let out a bleating cry and Aimee picked her up and rocked her.

With the baby in the crook of her arm, she hunted online for Orla, a search by first name. But the program, an old one, indicated that the last name was required. No go.

At least she could contact MondeFocus and seek some answers there. She telephoned the number given on the flier but a generic recorded message was the only answer: Sorry we missed your call. Leave a message. Frustrated, she left her name and cell-phone number and hung up.

Right now she should be questioning the garage owners for information about the woman who had used their phone. Again she wondered why the woman hadn’t called back. She stood the baby in her arms and reached for the group photo she had stolen from Linski’s room. Too bad there were no last names written on the back. She sniffed as she caught a rank whiff, then gasped in horror at what leaked from the baby’s diaper all over the keyboard of her computer.

As she reached for a tissue, beeping came from her computer. Error code. GX55 flashed on the screen with respect to Regnault’s system. The beeping was a counterpoint to the baby’s cries. A system glitch. Perfect timing. Everything happened at once.

Tuesday Afternoon

BON, HELENE THOUGHT, counting eighty-four glasses. She hadn’t broken even one washing up! Her quavering hands rubbed the linen towel over the last champagne flute stem. She felt the warmth of satisfaction as she aligned the glassware in sparkling rows on the shelves just so. The Comte liked everything in order.

From the Polish Foundation’s kitchen window she could look out over the manicured garden in which trellised ivy climbed the courtyard walls. She imagined last night’s gala—the wax-encrusted candelabra she’d cleaned blazing with tapers, platters of hors d’oeuvres dotted with caviar she’d washed, the gowned and tuxedoed crowd milling in the high-ceilinged salon under carved gilt boiserie. Each detail to savor and recount later to her sister, Paulette.

“Helene?”

She paused, startled. Listening, she took a deep breath. She suppressed her fear, the fear that was always with her, the fear that never went away.

“Helene?”

Non, the voice was different, it was not the bad man. She gathered herself. “Oui, Monsieur le Comte?”

Comte Linski leaned on his cane, a strained smile on his gaunt face. “Please, no need for formality,” he said. “I’m the charge d’affaires, only a glorified watchman, you know. And I’m even too old for that now, Helene.”

Helene folded the towel. Always too modest, the comte. “They’re lucky to have a cultured man like you. A decorated war hero.”

And she was lucky, too, that he asked her to work odd jobs after receptions and gave her the leftovers.

“A Polish community that’s dying out and a heritage to protect; it’s not an easy task.” The comte went on, “If only the young generation . . . ah, that’s another discussion. But I must thank you for your efforts.”

She beamed, smoothing down her apron, until he held out an application form to her.

“Helene,” he said, “write down your address so I can process your paycheck.”

Paperwork . . . why did people always need paperwork? She avoided all banks, forms, bureaucracy.

“Mais, Comte, you’ve always paid me in francs before. I prefer cash. I don’t trust banks.”

“Now I must pay you by check,” he said. “We have to protect our nonprofit status should we be audited. Just fill this out, Helene.” He set the form on the counter.

She untied her apron, folded it, backed away. No paper trail . . . never leave a way to trace her.

“I’m late, pardon,” she said.

The comte’s eyebrows rose.

A tall woman rushed into the kitchen and shot a withering look at Helene. She was puffed up with self- importance, this one, Helene knew.

“Comte, the director needs to speak with you about the Adam Mickiewicz display in the library. As he was the leading poet of Polish romanticism, the director deems it fitting that we—”

“Pardon, Helene,” the comte interrupted. “Talk to me before you leave.”

Helene nodded but she had no intention of doing so. She knew she could never come back here again. In the coatroom off the courtyard she gathered her shopping bags and put on her woolen jacket.

She paused at the glassed-in temperature-controlled storage salon, where paintings to be cataloged were stacked. She recognized the portrait in a gilt frame on the very top. A young girl on a swing, skirt trailing over the sun-dappled riverbank grass, painted by a Polish Impressionist. One of Paulette’s favorites, it had hung in her family’s brocante, once the only secondhand shop on the island.

Out on the quai, Helene knotted her scarf over her white braids, picked up the shopping bags that held most of her earthly possessions, and tried to ignore the pangs of hunger. No leftovers this time.

Somehow she’d have to feed them.

She turned onto rue des Deux Ponts. At least the bains-douches municipaux were free. And warm. Inside the white-tiled bathhouse she set her bags down. The bored middle-aged attendant listened to the weather on the radio as he handed her a key. “Take cabin three,” he instructed her.

“Merci.” She took a towel from the pile on a plastic chair and shouldered her bags again, ignoring the curious look that he didn’t bother to hide.

She turned on the chrome shower faucets. Hot water steamed out into the warped wooden stall, which was like the one in which she and Paulette had changed their bathing suits at Dieppe. But instead of coarse sand