night or this morning. He also said that Maxence left his room about eight o’clock yesterday evening.”
Casimir nodded. “See? It did get us some information. We have a confirmed sighting at eight o’clock last night.”
Arthur’s eyebrows contracted over his silvery eyes in a frown. “Surveillance footage from the casino’s closed-circuit security camera system shows one brief sighting of him in the casino around ten-thirty in the evening. He was standing off to one side of a room in a surveillance shadow, but he poked his head into view once.”
Gen said, “But his security people called us just after eleven and said he’d been missing for four hours.”
Arthur twitched his eyebrows and studied his tea. “Either they had lost him earlier in the evening, or they called us directly after the incident.”
“That’s distressing,” Gen said.
Arthur nodded. “Rather.”
“And how did you find that out?” Roxanne asked him.
Arthur sipped his morning tea before he answered. “A friend.”
Roxanne waited for a follow-up question, but Gen and Casimir didn’t comment on Arthur’s obvious evasion.
There was something about Arthur that Gen knew and Casimir wasn’t asking questions about, and Roxanne wanted to know what it was. “Anything else?”
Arthur was sipping his tea again and returned his cup precisely to the center of its saucer and adjusted the handle to its perfect location. “It was difficult to discern from the footage, but it appears that a mutual friend of ours rushed up to him in the casino. Caz, do you remember Simone Maina from Le Rosey?”
Casimir was pouring a waterfall of coffee into his mug. “Vaguely.”
“She was from Mauritius. Stunningly beautiful, and she ended up marrying Estebe Fournier.”
Casimir looked up at Arthur, startled. The hot coffee reached the very rim of his cup, brimming, and he set the coffee carafe aside just before it overflowed. “Estebe Fournier? Estebe Fournier’s wife rushed up to Maxence in a casino in broad daylight?”
“Just after ten o’clock at night, but in full view of everyone,” Arthur said.
Casimir shook his head. “Right, right. But, as a lawyer, you hear things, you know? You hear things about people.”
Roxanne sipped her coffee and tried to remember anything about Estebe Fournier. Emails and tangential references surfaced in her head. None of them were good references.
Arthur and Gen waited quietly and watched Casimir. Roxanne wasn’t entirely sure that she shouldn’t ask Casimir about this in private.
Casimir stared into his black coffee. “Fournier is involved in some unsavory things. He appears to have financial connections to Russian mob bosses in the Ilyin and Butorin organizations, meaning that both his money and name have been involved in the same projects as theirs. Those guys are involved with illegal pornography in Asia and Europe, which is why we strongly recommend to our clients that they don’t accept roles in films if those people are producing or financing them. There’s been a rash of unsavory funding sources lately, so we’ve been keeping close tabs on them. We don’t let our clients get mixed up with mob money.”
Arthur nodded. “It’s hard to avoid the black hats sometimes.”
Roxanne mused, “I guess we’re left asking the question of why the wife of a man with ties to Russian mobsters would rush up to Maxence and the two of them vanished together.”
“But why on Earth would he leave with her?” Casimir asked the ceiling. “The Russian mob is trying to take over Monaco right now because they love tax havens. Why would he trust the wife of someone mixed up with them and go somewhere with her?”
“The fact that Maxence was in Monaco might be important,” Gen said, still cradling her pregnancy tea and sipping dreamily. “If something happened to him here, the police could be told not to investigate it.”
Roxanne nodded. Little countries sometimes had the same underhanded politics as small Southern towns, as she knew all too well. “I can’t believe Max has disappeared at the same time his uncle is in the hospital and might not make it.”
“What?” Casimir nearly rose from the table. His makeshift toga slipped, and he grabbed the white sheet as it slid down his six-pack of abs.
Arthur raised one dark eyebrow above his pale gray eyes, and Gen hurriedly set her preggo tea back on the table and said, “I beg your pardon?”
“Yeah. Maxence is related to that musician you represent, right, Caz? Max said he was that one time when he was over at the house. He said he was going to call him up to get tickets to a show. Xan Valentine, I think?”
Casimir