over the press. She followed him past a stairway leading up to a storeroom, then through a dark wood hallway. He pointed to an open door with a sign: CHEF DU BUREAU.
Harsh white light illuminated a scuffed wood desk, file cabinets, and streaked glass windows that looked unchanged since the fifties. Banners and posters she recognized from this morning’s demonstration were piled in the corner. The only concessions to the nineties were the desktop computer, fax machine, and laser printer.
She knocked on the open door. Damien, whom she recognized from after the accident, looked up from his desktop. Bags under his eyes, swollen red lids. He’d aged overnight. She contained her shock at this twenty-something’s haggard appearance.
“So you’re the one Madame Figuer called about. The art flic?”
Madame Figuer couldn’t keep a secret. The busybody. On top of that, Aimée had an awkward feeling she’d intruded on his tears.
“Then you know about Yuri,” she said.
“I can’t … believe it.”
Aimée sat on a wooden plank chair and watched him blow his nose with a blue bandanna. He reached for a water bottle and poured two glasses full, his hands shaking. She noticed the La Coalition armband by his computer.
Shaken over Yuri’s murder?
“Been gone all day and we’ve got to fill this order tonight before I.…” He took a breath. “Un moment, I’m sorry,” he said, scanning an invoice on his laptop.
Shaken all right. She reached for the glass and drank.
Done, he shut down the desktop. “Can we make this short? I need to handle an order.”
Having come all this way, she wouldn’t let him off before he answered her questions. “This won’t take long, Damien. It’s important we talk,” she said. “You know about what happened on Villa d’Alésia?”
He nodded.
“Did Yuri seem worried?”
Damien rubbed his cheek. “My aunt’s in the hospital, maybe I didn’t pay attention. I don’t know.” He was lean and muscular with wavy black hair that went down the nape of his neck. Handsome, wounded—her type. Well, maybe not bad boy enough.
Then she thought of Melac. Look what bad boy had gotten her.
She decided to test her hunch. “Did you not return my call because you’re scared of the Serb?”
“Serb?” Surprise filled his face. “Zut! Three hours ago I returned from my aunt’s hospital bed and found flics waiting to question me over Yuri’s murder.” His shaking hands spilled the glass of water. He wiped at the puddle with his bandanna. “Then they quizzed me over a painting.”
Aimée had no concrete reason to suspect him of anything, just his proximity to Yuri and the uneasiness in her gut. But he must know something, even if he wasn’t aware. She practiced her concerned look.
“Talk about a bad time,” she said. “I know it’s difficult for you now. But the police investigation is focused on a Serb, the man we ran over, in connection with the stolen painting.”
A lie, but they should be focusing on that.
“That Serb? The dead man in the street?” he said, trying to piece this together. “But how could he murder Yuri this morning? That makes no sense … unless you’re saying he was working with others?”
“I’m saying nothing,” she said. “Tell me about the portrait Yuri recovered from the rue Marie Rose cellar.”
Sadness filled his eyes. “Yuri told you, didn’t he?”
If he’d lived he would have. She nodded.
“Yuri’s the only one who believed in me,” he said, his voice choking. “It shouldn’t have happened.”
Alert to the different tone in his voice, she looked up. “What shouldn’t have happened?”
“If only I had.…” His voice trailed off.
Again that fear in his face. Then it was gone. Blaming himself?
“Done what, Damien?”
“Yuri called me this morning. Left a short message on my phone saying he didn’t need a ride to the art appraiser. But my aunt is dying, and I didn’t.…”
Aimée gripped her glass of water. “Did he say why he didn’t need a ride anymore?”
“He told me not to worry. That’s all.”
Odd. “But his painting was stolen last night.”
“That’s what he told me, too.” Damien shook his head. “So I just stayed at the hospital with my aunt all day. What an idiot I was. I should have gone to his studio.”
She understood his feelings of guilt. If only she’d arrived earlier herself. Those damn detours on the Left Bank. The protesters blocking rue d’Alésia.
Damien’s knuckles whitened on the edge of his desk. “The doctors gave my aunt days to live. That was a month ago.” A look of pain crossed his face. Genuine, as far as she could