Cara Black - AL07 - Murder on the Ile Saint-Louis

She was late. Ahead, a snarl of buses and cars sat in midday stalled traffic. Pedestrians filled the zebra-striped crosswalks; the outdoor café tables on the sidewalks spilled over as the lunch crowd took advantage of the unexpected heat.

“Quai d’Anjou. Fifty francs extra if you skirt the traffic on rue Saint Antoine,” she said, perspiration dampening her collar.

The driver grinned and hit his meter.

Ten minutes later, she set her bags down in her sun-filled kitchen, where the wonderful scent of rosemary filled the air.

“Bought out the whole baby section, have you?” Michou pulled out pureed broccoli tips, yellow squash in small jars. “Quite the organic gourmet . . . but a thing this little won’t eat solids for a few months.”

She was useless. She couldn’t even buy the right food.

The baby cooed, wrapped in Aimée’s father’s soft old flannel bathrobe. Michou had improvised a bassinet from an empty computer-paper box resting on the table.

A surge of protectiveness overwhelmed Aimée. Duty—no law—required her to turn the baby over to the authorities. But the mother knew her name and had begged her not tell the flics . Until the autopsy result revealed whether Orla was the baby’s mother, she’d keep her and care for her.

She put the future out of her mind . She planned to monitor Regnault’s system, deal with their other contracts, and master diapers this afternoon . She lifted the lid of the copper pot simmering on the stove, swiped her finger across the surface, and licked it. “Ratatouille!” The last time she’d used the stove had been for heating up takeout. For her, that counted as cooking.

The wavering slants of pale light pouring through the window, the aroma of herbes de provence perfuming the kitchen, reawakened a warm familar feeling she remembered from the deep recesses of her childhood. Good homemade food had been as much a given as breathing in her grandmother’s kitchen. She recalled the hazy summer heat in her grandmother’s Auvergne garden; her mother’s laugh, her sun-warmed pockets filled with fragrant fresh-picked raspberries—red, glistening jewels exuding a scent that was so sweet. Her laughter as she popped them into Aimée’s mouth. Her mother . . . where had that memory come from?

“Take a cooking class, Aimée.”

“I’d do better to get a wife, Michou. Like you.”

Michou grinned. “Try cuisine dating. It’s for singles. You cook together, eat, and see if any sparks fly.”

Baby products, cooking classes . . . what next? As if she had spare time after completing her job: computer security, sysad-min, and programming. Let alone time to discover why a baby had been left in her courtyard, and why the mother, if indeed it was she, was lying in the morgue.

“At least you bought diapers. That’s a start, Aimée.” Michou shouldered his bag, rubbed his chin. “I need to wax my chin and iron my gown. We’re playing in Deauville tonight.”

She caught her breath. “Deauville? You’ll be that far away?”

“The casino.” He smiled. He patted her on the back. “You’ll do fine. Oh, by the way, the phone rang in the middle of her bath, but when I answered they hung up.”

She wondered if the mother had tried to make contact, then had hung up, scared by a man’s voice answering Aimée’s phone.

“Michou, did you hear voices?”

“Only in my head, chérie.”

“Wait a minute, Michou. You answered the phone, said, ‘Allô’—”

Common courtesy, of course,” Michou interrupted, putting “ his wig case into his tote bag.

“Try to think, Michou. Repeat what you did and said. There could be a clue, some way to—”

“You mean like in Agatha Christie?” Michou’s plucked eyebrows shot up on his forehead. “Mais oui , I looked out the window.” He took a mincing step. “I showed la petite the birds nesting in the . . .”

“I mean when you answered the phone?”

“I bathed her in the kitchen sink, wrapped her in a towel, of course, but oui , right here.”

He took another step, gestured with wide arms to the open kitchen window. “ Allô, allô . . . I kept saying allô , that’s all.”

From below came the churning of water, the lapping of waves against the bank as a barge passed them on the Seine.

“Michou, think back,” Aimée said, trying to keep her foot from tapping. “Did you hear anything in the background? Maybe traffic, indicating the call came from a public phone, or was it quieter, like in a resto or from a home. . . .”

“That’s why it seemed so hard to hear—it was the water.”

“Water?”

“C’est ça!”

“You heard water like the sewers being flushed or—”

“The river.”

Aimée controlled her excitement. “You’re sure?”

Michou’s eyes gleamed. “Over the phone, I could hear a barge whistle . . . that’s right. Like someone was calling from right downstairs.”

Hope fluttered in Aimée’s chest. There were no public phones on the quai downstairs but the mother was nearby, and alive, she sensed it. She would surely make contact again.

Michou shouldered his bag.

“Don’t forget, Aimée, keep the baby’s umbilical stump out of the water for at least two weeks.”

“But I don’t know how old . . .”

“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.

Aimée 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, Aimée.”

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. Aimée, 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, chérie.”

THERE HAD BEEN no call. Aimée 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 émigré -status students with the name Linski.

Voilà. Krzysztof Linski was an engineering major. She even found his class schedule, which she downloaded. Twenty years old, born in Kraków, 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 Aimée 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.