AL07 - Murder on the Ile Saint-Louis

dark brown wood font of Saint-Louis-en-l’Ile and a younger version of her father in his good blue suit, her grandfather with a black mustache, a slimmer Morbier, and the woman who must be her mother.

Her stomach knotted. She hadn’t seen a photo of her mother since her father had burned them, right after she’d left them.

Young, hair in a simple knot, a light in her eyes that the camera caught. Those carmine red lips. And for the millionth time Aimee wondered what had happened to her mother.

“Beautiful,” Madame Cachou said. “You don’t see many christening gowns like this anymore. Friends of your family, Mademoiselle?”

Aimee’s thoughts returned to her dim hallway and the flushed face of Madame Cachou. She felt stupid, sifting through memories, wallowing in self-pity. But she couldn’t help thinking that the christening gown would fit Stella.

She nodded. Her grandfather must have saved this and it had gotten mixed up with other people’s boxes in the basement. She had better make nice, keep Madame Cachou on her good side.

“I’ll have to apologize and thank the tenant who left this. Which floor does she live on?”

“No tenant that I know of,” Madame Cachou said. “Et alors, the way people come and go these days, it’s like the Gare du Nord.”

“What do you mean?”

“The lady said you might need this.”

“Need this?”

“For your baby,” Madame Cachou said.

The hair rose on the back of Aimee’s neck.

“You modern career women!” Madame Cachou sighed, hands on her ample hips. “Rushing everywhere. No time to cook.” She glanced into Aimee’s hallway. “Or clean. At least someone respects tradition.”

But the baby’s not mine, Aimee almost said.

“What else did this woman say?”

Madame Cachou shrugged. “She wasn’t French. That accent, eh, I could tell.”

Her mind went back to the woman’s figure on the quai and the feeling of being watched. Hope battled against disappointment as she took a deep breath, a little girl again.

“Of course, you wouldn’t have noticed, would you?” Aimee paused. “She didn’t look like this woman, did she? Older, I mean.”

Madame Cachou scratched her arm. She shrugged, pointing to Aimee’s mother in the christening photo. “Too hard to say.”

“Of course.” Hopes dashed, Aimee got to her feet.

“Same carmine lipstick, though,” Madame Cachou said. “You don’t see that shade much anymore.”

Just then a warm breeze swept through the balcony doors. The breeze enfolded Aimee, like a pair of warm arms.

*Thirteen to fourteen feet

**Centigrade