to recover. “I’m having my attorney read this.”
“Wouldn’t matter,” he said. “He’s got media lined up. Matter of fact, he is the media.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“Charles Frenet, aka the teenage lover, is the former announcer on RTL. He’s been paid off to keep this quiet all these years, I imagine. Now he’s broke, wants a new liver. The interviews go live day after tomorrow.”
“I’ll stop him.”
“Good luck with that.” Jacques shot him a meaningful look. “Françoise’s husband’s name came up. There are implications …” Jacques sighed. “What you
can
do is warn Françoise.”
Monday, 11 A.M.
A IMÉE ’ S EMPTY STOMACH was knotted in fear. Her raw throat hurt and she was trembling. She tried to piece the implications together as she sat on a bench under a canopy of linden trees. Her mind spun.
She had sent Nicu to his death.
Focus. She had to focus. Drina was still out there. Whoever she was.
Put it together, her father had always said, piece together the puzzle. If you fail, try again. And again.
Half a notebook. Drina now fourteen hours gone and counting; her limbs would be ceasing to function.
Loose ends—she only had loose ends. Names and a few family photographs. And without the notebook, which she’d never had a chance to see, it led nowhere. She had zero.
Nothing to follow up on.
Chloé depended on her. What kind of fool was she, putting herself in danger like that? And she’d found nothing but a trail of smoke and names.
Part of her wanted to run away from the whole damn thing. Erase what had happened. As if she could. If she stopped now, whatever Drina knew about her father’s killer would go with her.
Her father’s words came back to her from an afternoon at the park long ago when she’d fallen off the swing. “No pity party, Aimée. If kisses don’t make the tears go away, be a biggirl, put on the Band-Aid.” Her ten-year-old self that afternoon needed to put on a brave face and get back on the swing.
If she gave up now, Nicu’s death would mean nothing. Any chance of finding her father’s killer would disappear.
She hitched her bag over her shoulder. Time to put on the Band-Aid, get back on the swing and fit the pieces of the puzzle together. If she didn’t, she could be next.
N UMBER 39 B OULEVARD des Invalides, the address from Drina’s hospital record, stood three stories high opposite the nineteenth-century Saint-François-Xavier Church, amid the green stretches of Place du Président Mithouard. This was the stomping ground of France’s titled families, and it oozed privilege.
Pas mal
, she thought.
Drina Constantin had given this as her address. A friend’s place, maybe? Where she received mail? Worth a try. And if she came up with zero, she’d figure the next thing out from there.
One of the tall, dark-green double doors yielded to her touch. She found herself in a covered
porte cochère
with a directory listing the names of priests and one monsignor. No listing of Constantin.
She strode over the moss-veined cobbled courtyard to look for the concierge. There was only an office of the nearby Lycée Victor Duruy Christian youth association with a F ERMÉ sign in the window. Frustrated, she turned to leave. Just then, she heard a scraping noise from behind what she had assumed was a wall covered in thick wisteria. Looking more closely, she realized it was a fence, and from behind it was coming the scratching of dirt accompanied by a grunt.
“Il y a quelqu’un?”
She entered a gate and followed the gravel path into a garden the likes of which were not often seen in Paris. Stone walls splotched with white and yellow lichen enclosed a profusion of budding plants, red-button flowers, a weeping willow, trellised vines.
“Dump that in the compost pile.” A man’s voice.
A man with a white-collared black shirt that looked like a priest’s, tucked into Levi’s, poked his head up from a bed of large, yellow-petalled
“Wouldn’t matter,” he said. “He’s got media lined up. Matter of fact, he is the media.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“Charles Frenet, aka the teenage lover, is the former announcer on RTL. He’s been paid off to keep this quiet all these years, I imagine. Now he’s broke, wants a new liver. The interviews go live day after tomorrow.”
“I’ll stop him.”
“Good luck with that.” Jacques shot him a meaningful look. “Françoise’s husband’s name came up. There are implications …” Jacques sighed. “What you
can
do is warn Françoise.”
Monday, 11 A.M.
A IMÉE ’ S EMPTY STOMACH was knotted in fear. Her raw throat hurt and she was trembling. She tried to piece the implications together as she sat on a bench under a canopy of linden trees. Her mind spun.
She had sent Nicu to his death.
Focus. She had to focus. Drina was still out there. Whoever she was.
Put it together, her father had always said, piece together the puzzle. If you fail, try again. And again.
Half a notebook. Drina now fourteen hours gone and counting; her limbs would be ceasing to function.
Loose ends—she only had loose ends. Names and a few family photographs. And without the notebook, which she’d never had a chance to see, it led nowhere. She had zero.
Nothing to follow up on.
Chloé depended on her. What kind of fool was she, putting herself in danger like that? And she’d found nothing but a trail of smoke and names.
Part of her wanted to run away from the whole damn thing. Erase what had happened. As if she could. If she stopped now, whatever Drina knew about her father’s killer would go with her.
Her father’s words came back to her from an afternoon at the park long ago when she’d fallen off the swing. “No pity party, Aimée. If kisses don’t make the tears go away, be a biggirl, put on the Band-Aid.” Her ten-year-old self that afternoon needed to put on a brave face and get back on the swing.
If she gave up now, Nicu’s death would mean nothing. Any chance of finding her father’s killer would disappear.
She hitched her bag over her shoulder. Time to put on the Band-Aid, get back on the swing and fit the pieces of the puzzle together. If she didn’t, she could be next.
N UMBER 39 B OULEVARD des Invalides, the address from Drina’s hospital record, stood three stories high opposite the nineteenth-century Saint-François-Xavier Church, amid the green stretches of Place du Président Mithouard. This was the stomping ground of France’s titled families, and it oozed privilege.
Pas mal
, she thought.
Drina Constantin had given this as her address. A friend’s place, maybe? Where she received mail? Worth a try. And if she came up with zero, she’d figure the next thing out from there.
One of the tall, dark-green double doors yielded to her touch. She found herself in a covered
porte cochère
with a directory listing the names of priests and one monsignor. No listing of Constantin.
She strode over the moss-veined cobbled courtyard to look for the concierge. There was only an office of the nearby Lycée Victor Duruy Christian youth association with a F ERMÉ sign in the window. Frustrated, she turned to leave. Just then, she heard a scraping noise from behind what she had assumed was a wall covered in thick wisteria. Looking more closely, she realized it was a fence, and from behind it was coming the scratching of dirt accompanied by a grunt.
“Il y a quelqu’un?”
She entered a gate and followed the gravel path into a garden the likes of which were not often seen in Paris. Stone walls splotched with white and yellow lichen enclosed a profusion of budding plants, red-button flowers, a weeping willow, trellised vines.
“Dump that in the compost pile.” A man’s voice.
A man with a white-collared black shirt that looked like a priest’s, tucked into Levi’s, poked his head up from a bed of large, yellow-petalled
Similar Books
