The paris widow, p.10
The Paris Widow, page 10
He nods, and my heart thuds. One lone boom that echoes in my ears. “Is Adam—”
“Still missing, I’m afraid. Sorry, I probably should have led with that. But I do have some answers for some of the other matters we talked about.”
He glances at the tables surrounding me on all sides, their chairs pressed up close. Most of the people here are speaking French, but still. Just because Parisians refuse to speak English doesn’t mean they don’t understand at least a little, and what we have to discuss isn’t exactly fit for strangers’ ears.
The investigation.
The lieutenant colonel’s accusations of Adam, his business.
Lucas must be thinking the same, because he looks up the sidewalk, squinting into a sky already going wispy with clouds. “Like I said, it’s a beautiful morning for a walk.”
Thirteen
“How did you know it was me?” Lucas and I are zigzagging the busy streets of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, an aimless stroll in the general direction of the river. “Back there on the terrace, I mean.”
Just like everywhere else in this city, this neighborhood is unrelentingly gorgeous. Broad boulevards with neat apartment blocks and grand hotels, Gothic churches and cafés spilling out into the streets. A constant barrage of recognizable landmarks.
Lucas steps aside for a leashless Jack Russell terrier, his owner close on his heels. “I saw you on the news.”
He saw me, clutching the picture of Adam on my phone, my cheeks covered in dirt and tears. The Paris Widow, wailing for the cameras and the world. The grief-stricken face of the Parisian bombing, of tragedy.
“Yeah, you and a million other people,” I say. “Though so far, the only ones who’ve seen Adam are either psychics demanding ransom or they’re aliens.”
The Frenchwoman’s words echo in my head—he got what he deserved—and I shudder.
Lucas slides his hands into his pants pockets, looking over with a grimace. “Tragedies like this one bring out the kooks, unfortunately. We’ve had more than a few call the embassy, as well. Our experience is that for every hundred calls, there’s maybe one decent tip.”
One out of a hundred. I think of the thick stack of papers sitting on the desk in the suite, the dozens of new pages lined with names and numbers the receptionists downstairs have been recording for me. How many are there, a couple hundred? A thousand? All those callers, and only a handful of decent tips. The idea of working my way through any more exhausts me.
“Honestly, though,” he says, glancing over, “I probably wouldn’t have even noticed you sitting there if not for your hair. The curls. The color. It’s rather...distinct.”
I nod because I get that a lot. “Kids on the playground used to tease me about being a clown, but personally I prefer the comparison to Flamin’ Hot Cheetos.”
He laughs. “There is literally no way anyone could compare your hair to Flamin’ Hot Cheetos. But now I’m craving some, so thanks, I guess? Another weird expat trait—we crave foods we’d never dream of eating in the US, purely out of nostalgia.”
I summon up a stiff smile, not quite able to share in his joviality. I want Lucas to hurry up and tell me his news. Whatever he trekked all the way across town to tell me in person, so I can get back to the privacy of the hotel and the plain white card with those mysterious numbers. I stay silent, clasping my bag to my chest. Adam’s wallet hums like a hunk of active plutonium.
Lucas takes the hint. “How much do you know about your husband’s business?”
I make a breathy sound, a combination of a sarcastic ha and a sigh. This question again.
“Now you sound like the lieutenant colonel.”
“He hasn’t contacted you again, has he?”
I shake my head. “No, not yet. But to answer your question, I know a lot more about it than I used to.”
“Do you know who Adam saw while he was in Paris? Where Adam does his sourcing?”
“I know there’s a man who owns a shop in the 18th. I know Adam spent a lot of time at the Saint-Ouen market. Other than that, I have no idea. We don’t really talk about our work in that much detail.”
The boulevard opens up before us, a straight shot to the Pont Saint-Michel.
Lucas stops at the curb, pressing the button for the light. “Unfortunately, what the lieutenant colonel told you looks to be the truth. The police prefect confirmed that there is an active investigation into your husband’s business activities, and there has been for a while now. He made it sound like whatever evidence he had was pretty airtight.”
I lift my hands in frustration, letting them fall to my sides with a slap. “But how can that be? I’ve been on Adam’s laptop. I’ve read every single one of his emails and texts, and there are a lot. But there is nothing that even remotely suggests what he’s doing is illegal.”
Lucas frowns. “I’m a little surprised the French police haven’t confiscated Adam’s laptop, honestly. Normally I’d think it meant they didn’t have enough evidence for a warrant, but in this case, the prefect implied he has more than enough to charge him. I’m guessing that’s why, because the police have already built a case. They don’t need whatever is on Adam’s hard drive.”
The light flips to Walk and we step into the street, our soles tapping across the zebra path. A chocolate wrapper skitters across the pavement.
“Which is nothing,” I say. “I’ve searched it. Multiple times.”
Every inch, over and over until deep in the night. Every time I dozed off it was with the laptop on my chest, and it was the first thing I saw, sitting cool and dark next to me on the bed, every time a dream snatched me from my sleep. This morning I made myself a cup of Nespresso and went through it all over again, just to be sure. The only thing I didn’t spot was the contact card for Antoine, but that’s because I didn’t remember his name until an hour ago, when I found it scribbled across one of Adam’s receipts. Drinks with Antoine.
Lucas shrugs. “Or because whatever evidence they have, they found elsewhere.”
“Like where? Not our house back in Atlanta. The lieutenant colonel said Atlanta police were going to search it, but my girlfriend who’s watching it would have told me if they had. The only other place would be Adam’s shop, and I can’t imagine he would keep anything illegal there.”
“The prefect is keeping a tight lid on this case. He revealed very little about the actual investigation, only that there was one and they had more evidence than they needed. Though Adam’s cell phone in the wreckage complicates things.”
“Why? Because I wouldn’t give the lieutenant colonel the passcode?”
“Do you know the passcode?”
“That depends. Are you going to get me in trouble if I say yes?”
“For the record, I work for you. My job is to be your advocate, to support you and promote your interests to the French authorities.”
I give him a tight smile, because that’s not exactly an answer, is it? “You’re quite the diplomat, but I plead the Fifth.”
He arches a brow: touché. “Understood. But as I was saying, the complication is that while Adam’s cell phone was found in the wreckage, there’s still no sign of Adam.”
“Yeah, the lieutenant colonel told me to prepare for the worst.”
“Normally I would say that’s good advice, except that’s not what I mean. The prefect told me they’re still searching for evidence he was actually there when the bomb went off.”
His words stop me dead, the rubber soles of my sneakers sticking to the sidewalk of Pont Saint-Michel. Lucas doesn’t notice. He strolls onward, and so does the man on my heels, ramming me in the shoulder as he tosses a hasty pardon into the wind.
I aim my words at Lucas’s back. “What are you suggesting, exactly?”
Now, finally, he notices the empty air next to him. He turns around, doubles back. “I’m not suggesting anything. I’m only relaying the information I got from the prefect. He sounded suspicious of the discrepancy.”
“What is he thinking, that Adam disappeared on purpose? That he planted his cell phone to throw them off his trail?”
“I didn’t say that. Only that he’s considering it as a possibility.”
I have to sit with that a minute. The French police think it’s possible Adam faked his own disappearance. They think he might have left me here, in a strange city, to mourn his death when really he’s alive and well and in hiding. They think this is all a ruse, orchestrated by Adam to escape the authorities.
I shake my head, wind from the traffic whipping the curls across my face. “Adam wouldn’t do that. He wouldn’t do that to me.”
I say it as much to convince Lucas as myself, at the same time the memories flash: those silly sunglasses he ran back to fetch, his warm, dry hand sliding around the heart necklace, tugging me in for a kiss. His deep voice before he disappeared down the alleyway, promising me: See you in ten, back at the hotel.
Why would he say that if he knew what was about to happen? Why fly me all the way over here? Why bring me to Paris only to leave me here alone?
I say it again, certain this time. “He wouldn’t.”
Lucas shrugs, nodding like the matter is settled. “Okay.”
“Do you?”
He frowns. “Do I what?”
“Do you think that Adam did this on purpose?” Suddenly, it’s very important I know Lucas’s answer. It’s imperative. “That he planted his cell phone. That he knew to get out of there before the bomb went off.”
Lucas sighs, a resigned sound that makes me brace. He looks over with a grimace. “I’m very sorry, Stella, but you have to see how this looks, right? Your husband is the subject of an active investigation, one that is airtight, but he vanishes before they can make an arrest.”
All the hairs on my arms and the back of my neck rise. Adam was going to be arrested. The police were going to handcuff him and toss him in a jail cell. The sidewalk swims, the sparkling water of the river up ahead so bright it burns my eyes. A moped buzzes by, and I flinch at the sudden noise.
“But—but... They’re still looking for him, right? The rescue workers are still looking for Adam.” The last one’s more a statement than a question, but I need to hear the answer. I hold my breath and wait for it. I need to hear the word come out of his mouth.
“Yes,” he says, and the air leaves my lungs in a loud whoosh. “They’re still looking for victims, but at this point they’re assuming they are just that—victims. By now they’ve pretty much cleared the building of rubble. It’s down to three people missing as of this morning, and if they don’t find them soon, they’ll be...”
He cuts his gaze away from me and to the river. Like he doesn’t want to say the next part while looking at me. Like he can’t.
“They’ll be what?” I say, but my throat is closing up because I already know the answer.
“I’m sorry, Stella, but they’ll be presumed dead. At some point very soon, the official search will be declared over and done because—and again, I’m very sorry to be so blunt, but I don’t know how else to say it—there will be virtually nothing left of them to find. Traces of DNA, but that’s about it.” He pauses, another sign for me to brace for his next words. “They’re looking extra hard for traces of Adam’s.”
The horror of his message crackles through me like a bolt of lightning, and I clasp the nearest solid thing, a street sign, to keep from falling over. I try not to think about what Lucas is telling me, but the truth has already lodged itself somewhere in my brain. What’s worse—that Adam would fake his death to escape arrest, or that he was evaporated by a bomb? A bomb with Adam as a target.
A sudden surge of cars comes barreling through the green light on the bridge. Gently, Lucas nudges me forward. I take a step, then another. We’re coming up on the Île de la Cité, normally one of my favorite views. Now I barely even notice.
“Do I...do I need a lawyer?”
“That depends. Did you know of your husband’s illegal activities? Were you willfully involved in any of them?”
“No. On both counts. And I’m still having trouble reconciling all this. I know my husband, and I’ve not found anything in his things to make me think he’s a criminal.”
I say this while in my mind, a whisper: Really? What about the gold ring on your thumb? What about the statues and artwork back home? What about the white card with the mysterious string of numbers? You haven’t found anything?
But Lucas must believe me, because he shakes his head. “Then no. You don’t need a lawyer. And look, this is France. Wine lunches and red tape—that’s what this country is best known for. Nothing here moves fast, especially when there are governmental agencies involved. The best thing to do now is wait for the DNA results.”
“What about the lieutenant colonel? When you and I spoke on the phone, you didn’t sound like a fan.”
“Lieutenant Colonel Collomb is not the most diplomatic of agents, and I get that, as a diplomat myself, it’s highly possible I’m holding him to excessively high standards, but still. Don’t deal with him if you can avoid it. As soon as I hear anything from the French authorities, I’ll make sure to pass it on to you.” He smiles. “But it would be helpful to have your number.”
I slide my cell from my bag, pull up his contact on WhatsApp and shoot him a text: Thank you. Truly.
His phone beeps, and he checks the screen, smiling again. “You’re welcome.”
By now we’re in the middle of the bridge, and I suck in a breath because there she is—the twin columns of Notre Dame towering above the island. Even flanked by a maze of scaffolding and cranes, leftovers from the 2019 fire, she’s majestic enough to stop me in my tracks. I stare at the colorful stained-glass windows, the gargoyles and flying buttresses, and suddenly I am back on the square with Adam’s warm breath in my ear. His front pressed against my back, one arm hooked around my neck, the other wound around my waist. Holding me so tight there was no space between us.
“A thousand oaks were sourced from the ancient forest of Bercé to replace the spire,” he said in my ear. “All of them somewhere between a hundred and fifty and two hundred years old, all straight, fifty to ninety centimeters in diameter and between eight and fourteen meters tall. They chopped them down before the spring, before they could start producing sap, and still they have to let them dry for another year before they can use the logs. The framers will work with medieval techniques and tools to re-create the spire, making it look exactly the same as it did before the fire took it. La foret, they called it. The forest.”
He said a lot more. That the restoration is a master class in historical accuracy and precision, that the architects are geniuses, that people will be studying this project for centuries—all in a voice filled with wonder.
Which is exactly why I still can’t square that Adam, a man awestruck by the mending of an ancient church, with the one pawning off contraband artifacts to corrupt billionaires, objects he knew were plundered from ancient temples or stolen from a museum.
Now I turn on the bridge to face Lucas. “You don’t know me or my husband, so you have zero reason to believe me when I say that Adam respects history. All those antiques he saves from old buildings, he doesn’t add so much as a swirl during restoration to honor the artist. The thought of him selling goods he knew were ripped from a church... It just doesn’t make sense. Adam wouldn’t. Not the Adam I know.”
Lucas takes this in with a slow nod. “And what you said before, when I asked if you knew your husband’s cell phone code.”
He reaches into his jacket pocket and pulls it out—an iPhone, the same size and color of Adam’s.
“Is this—” I take it from him and tap the screen, and there I am, sweaty and red-cheeked in front of a North Carolina waterfall. I tick in Adam’s passcode, and the lock screen dissolves into a page of colorful apps. Adam’s apps. This is his phone.
I look up, and Lucas is watching me. “How did you get this?”
“I have my ways.” He smiles, pushes up his sleeve to check the time on his watch. “Listen, I have to run, but you have my number. Use it anytime, okay? I’ll call you as soon as I have something to report.”
We say our goodbyes, and I watch him disappear up the tree-lined street on Île de Cité, wondering what kind of salaries they pay at the US Embassy.
Substantial ones, apparently, for Lucas to be able to afford that Rolex.
Fourteen
It’s almost closing time by the time I make it all the way up to the 18th arrondissement, clutching Adam’s phone in one hand and the taxicab’s door handle in another. The driver speaks a few words of French and exactly zero English, and he doesn’t understand the concept of GPS. For the past ten minutes, he’s been zigzagging around the same few blocks while the meter ticks higher and higher.
I scoot to the edge of the seat, tapping a finger to the Plexiglas divider. “No, go straight. Tout droite.”
He ignores me and takes a right into a narrow street, almost sideswiping a biker. The man shouts and waves a fist, and I toss him an apologetic wave through the rearview window. The taxi swerves, luring me off my seat as he narrowly misses a parked FedEx truck, and I beat a fist on the Plexiglas.
“You know what? I’ve had enough. Stop. Arrêt.”
The cabbie slams his brakes, screeching the cab to a stop, and I thread two twenties through the slot. A hell of a lot more than he deserves, but my stomach is about to revolt at his shitty driving, and besides, according to the map on Adam’s phone, it’s only a ten-minute walk from here.
The neighborhood is iffy at best, and I am more focused on the blue line on my iPhone than watching where I’m actually going, which is why I don’t see him until he’s already turning away. A man in all black, slim-fitting jeans and a T-shirt stretched tight across his broad back, hustling toward the corner. I can’t see his face, but something about him stops me in my tracks. His build, maybe, or the set of his shoulders as he hurries away.
