Show description

Ecole nationale d’ad-ministration, then of Political Science. Nothing. Not even at the Ecole des Beaux-arts. If he needed money . . drugs? But his tracks were old. Gambling? Wait a minute, she’d forgotten something. Paper had rustled in her pocket . . why hadn’t she checked it? She ran, her wool socks padding softly on the floor, to the coatrack in her hallway, and emptied her pockets. Besides the envelope, there was a half of a torn PMU—Pari mutuel urbain— horse race betting slip. She remembered the sounds accompanying his phone call.

This isn’t a public thoroughfare,” she said. ” The woman shrugged and stood aside. Aimée edged past the crisp white sheets piled on the counter, careful not to let the blood from her arm drip on them. “Next time, use the front entrance,” said the woman. But Aimée had pulled on a wool cap over her spiky rain-drizzled hair and gone out the front door. She wrapped her wool scarf around her arm. An ambulance and police cars came to a screeching halt by the boulangerie. She headed over to the next narrow street, her heart thumping.

A wasted trip! She wrote a note and left it in the chef des opérations box. Downstairs, the concierge’s post was vacant. Where was the security man she’d seen? Shadows from the pillars crisscrossed the black and white floor. As she wrote her initials by her name on the sign-out log, the timed lights shut off. In the darkness, she felt her way, her boot heels echoing on the tile, her shoulders tight with apprehension. She sniffed. Only the smell of cold stone and floor wax. Then a rustling and the click of a door closing.