AllFreeNovel
Share Us
There were fifteen newspapers in the Parisian area, some small, some not. She had to research all of them, covering the archives for those seven days in question. The task was time-consuming and sometimes the computer would take forever to download a page. Sometimes the connection was broken and she would have to log on again. She had been there three hours when she logged on to Investir, a financial newspaper, and hit the jackpot.
The item was just a sidebar, only two paragraphs long. On August 25, a Nervi research laboratory had suffered an explosion and subsequent fire that was described as “small” and “contained,” with “minimal damage” that would in no way affect the lab’s ongoing research in vaccines.
Averill had specialized in explosives, to the point of being a true artist. He’d seen no point in wanton destruction when, with care and planning, it was possible to design a charge that would take out only what was needed. Why blow up an entire building when one room would do? Or a city block when one building would do? “Contained” was a word often used to describe his work. And Tina had been skilled at bypassing security systems, in addition to being talented with a pistol.
Lily couldn’t know for certain it was their work, but it felt right. At least this was a lead she could follow, and hope it went down the correct path.
While she was online, she pulled up what information there was on the research laboratory, and found precious little more than the address and the name of the director, her pal Dr. Vincenzo Giordano. Well, well. She typed his name into the search engine and came up dry, but then she hadn’t really expected he would have his home phone number published. That would have been the easiest way to locate him, but it certainly wasn’t the only way.
Logging off line, she flexed her shoulders and rolled her head back and forth to loosen the tight muscles in her neck. She hadn’t moved from the computer terminal in over three hours and every muscle felt stiff, plus she really needed to use the facilities. She was tired, but not as tired as she’d been the day before, and she was satisfied with the way her stamina had held up during the brisk walk from the Metro.
The rain was still falling when she left the café, but had slowed to little more than a drizzle. She opened her umbrella, thought for a moment, then struck out in the opposite direction from which she’d come earlier. She was hungry, and though she hadn’t had one in years, she knew exactly what she wanted for lunch: a Big Mac.
Swain second-guessed himself again. He was getting damn tired of doing that, but couldn’t seem to help himself.
He’d located the Joubrans’ old address, and found that the space had evidently been cleaned up, cleaned out, and either rented or sold to another family. He’d had a vague notion that he might break in and see what he could find, but that would have been useful only if no one else had moved there in the meantime. He had watched a young mother welcome a babysitter—her mother, from the resemblance—and two preschool children erupt out of the door into the rain before she could stop them. The two adults had, with much clucking and shooing, rounded up the two giggling curtain-climbers and got them indoors; then the young woman had dashed out again, clutching an umbrella and bag. Whether she was going to work or going shopping didn’t matter to him. What mattered was the residence was no longer empty.
That’s where he second-guessed himself. He’d also planned to question the neighbors and the proprietors of the local markets about the Joubrans, who their friends were, that kind of thing. But it occurred to him that if he beat Lily to the punch with those questions, when she did come around, someone was bound to tell her an American man had asked those same questions just the day before, or even a few hours before. She wasn’t stupid; she’d know exactly what that meant, and go to ground somewhere.
He’d been chasing around after her the day before, trying to catch up, but now he had to adjust his thinking. He was no longer necessarily behind her, which was good only if he knew what her next move would be. Until then, he couldn’t afford to alarm her or she would disappear on him again.
Through channels—with Murray dealing with the French—he knew that Lily had flown back to P
aris using the identity of Mariel St. Clair, but the address listed on her passport had turned out to be a fish market. Just a little humor on her part, he thought. She wouldn’t be using the St. Clair identity again; she had probably slid effortlessly into yet another persona, one he had no way of finding. Paris was a big city, with over two million inhabitants, and she was far more familiar with it than he was. He had only this one chance where their paths might intersect, and he didn’t want to ruin it by jumping in too fast.
Disgruntled, he drove around the neighborhood getting the lay of the land, so to speak, and more than casually studying pedestrians as they hurried up and down the streets. Unfortunately, most of them carried umbrellas that partially hid their features, and even if they hadn’t, he had no idea what disguise Lily might be using now. She’d been just about everything except an elderly nun, so maybe he should start looking for those.
In the meantime, maybe he should take a look at that Nervi lab, eyeball the outward security measures. Who knew when he might need to get inside?
After an unhealthy and extremely satisfying lunch, Lily took the SNCF train to the suburb where Averill and Tina had lived. By the time she arrived there, the rain had stopped and a weak sun was making fitful efforts to peek through the dull gray clouds. The day wasn’t any warmer, but at least the rain wasn’t making everyone miserable. She remembered the brief snow flurry the night Salvatore had died, and wondered if Paris would see more snow this winter. Snow events didn’t happen in Paris all that often. How Zia had loved playing in the snow! they’d taken her skiing in the Alps almost every winter, the three adults who’d loved her more than life itself. Lily herself never skied, because an accident could put her out of commission for months, but after they’d retired, both her friends had taken to the sport like fiends.
Memories flashed in her mind like postcards: Zia as an adorable, chubby three-year-old in a bright red snowsuit, patting a small and extremely lopsided snowman. That was her first trip to the Alps. Zia on the bunny trails, shrieking, “Watch me! Watch me!” Tina taking a header into a snowbank and emerging laughing, looking more like the Abominable Snowman than a woman. The three of them enjoying drinks around a roaring fireplace while Zia slept upstairs. Zia losing her first tooth, starting school, her first dance recital, showing the first signs of changing from child to adolescent, getting her period last year, fussing with her hair, wanting to wear mascara.
Lily briefly closed her eyes, shaking with pain and rage. Desolation filled her, the way it often had since she’d learned they were all dead. Since then she could see the sunshine but hadn’t been able to feel it, as if its warmth never touched her. Killing Salvatore had been satisfying, but it wasn’t enough to bring back the sun.
She stopped outside the place where her friends had lived. There was someone else living in the house now, and she wondered if they knew three people had died there just a few months before. She felt violated, as if everything should have been left the way it had been, their things untouched.
That very first day she’d returned to Paris and discovered they’d been murdered, she herself had taken some of the photographs, some of Zia’s games and books, a few of her childhood toys, the baby album she had started and Tina had lovingly continued. The house had been cordoned off, of course, and locked up, but that hadn’t stopped her. For one thing, she had her own key. For another, if necessary she would have torn the roof off with her bare hands to gain entrance. But what had happened to the rest of their belongings? Where were their clothes, their personal treasures, their ski equipment? After that first day she had been busy for a couple of weeks finding out who had killed them, and beginning her plan for vengeance; when she’d returned, the house had been cleaned out.
Averill and Tina had each had some family, cousins and such, though no one close. Perhaps the authorities had notified those family members, and they had come to pack up everything. She hoped so. It was okay if family had their possessions, but she hated the idea of some impersonal cleaning service coming and boxing things up to be disposed of.
Lily began knocking on doors, talking to neighbors, asking if they’d seen anyone visiting that week before her friends were murdered. She had questioned them before, but hadn’t known the right question to ask. She was known to them, of course; she’d been visiting for years, had nodded hello, stopped for brief chats. Tina had been a friendly person, Averill more aloof, but to Zia there’d been no such thing as a stranger. She’d been on very friendly terms with all the neighbors.
Only one had seen anything that she remembered, though; it was Mme. Bonnet, who lived two doors down. She was in her mid-eighties, grumpy with age, but she liked to sit by the front window while she knitted—and she was constantly knitting—so she saw almost everything that happened on the street.
“But I have already told all of this to the police,” she said impatiently when she answered the door and Lily posed her question. “No, I saw no one the night they were killed. I am old; I don’t see so well, I don’t hear so well. And I close my curtains at night. How could I have seen anything?”
“What about before that night? Any time that week?”
“That, too, I told the police.” She glared at Lily.
“The police have done nothing.”
“Of course they have done nothing! Worthless, the lot of them.” With a disgusted wave of her hand she dismissed a small army of public servants who every day did the best they could.
“Did you see anyone you didn’t know?” Lily repeated patiently.
“Just that one young man. He was very handsome, like a movie star. He visited one day, for several hours. I hadn’t seen him before.”
