dangling from her shoulders.
“Quite the modern
She looked down at her agnes b. black dress, the closest thing at hand without spit-up, which she’d grabbed to wear to her meeting. “The babysitter’s here?”
Martine nodded. “The location of tonight’s reception has been changed.”
“Due to the bomb scare?”
“Can’t have all those sheikhs and oil execs in danger, can they? I’ll call you later when I know it.” Martine showed her to a luxurious children’s bedroom decorated with Babar-theme murals, bunk beds against the walls, and Legos strewn on the floor. She introduced Aimee to Mathilde: tight jeans, big sweater, and gap-toothed smile.
“What a beauty,” Mathilde said. “May I hold her?”
Aimee removed her finger from the hot, wet little mouth and handed Stella to Mathilde. “I’m sure you’re experienced,” she said, half to reassure herself.
Her last view was of the flopping pink bunny-eared cap. All the way down the stairs, she could still feel Stella’s warmth in her arms.
“MONSIEUR VAVIN LEFT THIS FOR YOU,” said the smiling receptionist on the ground floor of the Regnault offices.
“I don’t understand. Isn’t he here?” Aimee asked.
The receptionist shrugged. “I’m sure whatever you need to know is all there. He’s been called to a meeting.”
Called to some meeting and she’d gone through hoops rushing here!
She walked to the tall glass window. She could see a few demonstrators standing outside with banners saying, STOP OIL POLLUTION . . . NO AGREEMENT!
Inside the envelope was a piece of crisp white paper with 41 Quai d’Anjou written on it in Vavin’s script.
Her hand trembled. The address was only a block and a half from her building. Why hadn’t he told her to meet him there?
“
“I didn’t see him go out.”
She walked past the bomb-removal squad truck parked on the pavement near l’Institut du Monde Arabe. Several Kevlar-suited men stood around, eyes narrowed at passersby.
“False alarm, eh?” she asked one of the women filing back into the building.
“Can’t be too careful,” the woman said.
“True. What happened?”
“A librarian found a backpack left in the library,” she said.
The
FORTY-ONE QUAI D’ANJOU was the address of an upscale antique shop. A buzzer went off as she entered it. Her grandfather had haunted the Drouot auction galleries, scouring the sales for bargains. Her cluttered apartment was testimony to his hobby. She lived surrounded by antiques, his “finds.”
She noticed a hefty price tag on a Sevres porcelain figurine. Not her type of bargain at all. The shop contained chateau-sized armoires, stone statues, marble busts on faux fireplace mantels, and delicate Louis XIV desks. But it held no clients.
“Mademoiselle, how can I help
“I’m meeting Monsieur Vavin. Perhaps he’s here . . . in back?”
“
“I’ll wait if you don’t mind.”
But he has already left, Mademoiselle,” he told her.
She was going around in circles. She should have ignored Vavin’s message and kept working.
“Did he leave any word for me?”
“He left in a hurry, that’s all I know.”
“Where did he go?”
The man shrugged. “He’s a client but I don’t keep track of his movements.”
“A client?”
“Such good taste.” The man’s face brightened. He’d thought of another sales tactic. “Mademoiselle, are you interested in antique children’s toys, like Monsieur Vavin is? This is a delightful nineteenth-century rocking horse.” He gestured to a miniature horse with a horsehair mane and leather reins, its white paint peeling.
“It’s just ornamental, isn’t it?” she asked. It was so small that she doubted a child could ride it.
“Monsieur Vavin’s daughter rides one very like it, he tells me. It’s been repainted, of course. Monsieur Vavin’s very particular. He never buys plastic or mass-market toys for her. He wants her to appreciate craft and tradition.”
She let him ramble on, her mind elsewhere. Vavin might have stepped out to buy cigarettes, talk on his cell phone, or for a myriad other reasons. She’d wait.
“ . . . the MondeFocus petition . . . ,” the man was saying.
Her ears perked up. “Pardon, Monsieur, what did you say?”
“Not that I’m against the environment, you understand,” he said. “I signed her petition. Monsieur Vavin explained how important it is.”
“Today?”
He tapped his forehead. “A few weeks ago.”
Her mind raced. “Monsieur Vavin came here together with a woman who had a MondeFocus petition?” She had an idea. “Was it about oil pollution?”
“Saving the whales, I believe,” he said. “So important.”
She pulled out the photo. “Do you recognize her in this group?”
He peered closer. “So polite.
Nelie Landrou.
“When she visited the shop, was she pregnant?”
He stuck his arms out and linked them in a big circle. “Like this.”
The door opened to a rush of traffic noise from the quai. She looked up. Instead of Vavin, a couple had entered, triggering a buzzer.
“Monsieur, which way did Monsieur Vavin go?” she asked.
“If you’ll excuse me . . .”
“Through your glass windows you can see the quai. Did he go left or right?”
The man stuck his thumb to the right. “Aaah, Madame
Vavin, the Regnault publicity head, and a pregnant Nelie, a MondeFocus activist . . . together?
She stood outside on the quai. The gunmetal gray sky threatened rain. She tried Vavin’s number. No answer or message. Then why had he summoned her here?
A BATEAU-MOUCHE PASSED under the supports of Pont Marie more slowly than usual because of the rising level of the Seine. The slap of water against the stone mingled with the blaring horn of a taxi. Cars, unable to use the flooded road on other bank, crossed the bridge at a snail’s pace. Fliers advertising neighboring Theatre de L’Ile Saint-Louis performances were caught up in the wind; they swirled around her ankles. She grabbed a handful, meaning to bring them back to the theatre. Inside the building, she set them down in a corner stacked with theatre notices and more fliers. She saw a pile of MondeFocus report pamphlets, identical to the one she’d found in
