Murder on the Ile Saint-Louis by Cara Black Read Free Book Online

in this morning’s paper. It’s time you called Brigade de Protection des Mineurs , the child protective services,” René said, his voice rising. “You don’t know what’s going on. The longer you keep her . . . well, why get yourself in trouble?”
    She gazed at the baby’s fingers, so small, curled around hers. She stroked the velvet fuzz on the baby’s head, like the skin of a peach. All night she’d racked her brain, trying to figure out who the mother could be and how she knew Aimée and had gotten her phone number.
    René made sense. But she couldn’t send the baby away. Not yet. The woman had been in fear for her life and for the baby’s; she hadn’t even diapered her infant. Aimée knew she had to give the woman more time.
    “She knows me, René, and she’ll be back,” Aimée assured him, wishing she felt as certain as she sounded.
    “You’ll have to wing the Regnault meeting on your own, Aimée. Can you manage?”
    “What?”
    “I’m off to Fontainebleau,” he said. “The client likes the proposal but has questions to be answered before they sign a contract. This morning. You know how skittish they’ve been.”
    A big, fat contract, too, if he could seal the deal.
    “Don’t worry, I’ll think of something.”
    There was a pause.
    “Think of the baby. The mother could be in jail, or on the run. Or . . . gone.”
    She heard a thupt from a gas burner.
    “Hasn’t that crossed your mind, Aimée?”
    Just all night long.
    “Promise me you’ll call child protective services.”
    “I’ll take care of it, René.” She hung up.
    In the stark daylight his words made sense. She should call the agency. Go through proper channels. But visions of a dreary nursery, short-staffed like all government institutions, filled her mind. Crowded, babies crying, indifferent social workers and judges and reams of bureaucratic red tape. She couldn’t bring herself to turn this tiny mite over to them.
    Dulcet tones came from the covers. The little mouth was smiling like a cherub. Aimée lifted her arms up to tickle her and the yellow shirt rose on her birdcage chest. Bluish marks showed by a fold of skin under her armpit. Bruises. An awful thought struck her: this newborn might have been mistreated. Had an abusive mother abandoned her child, thrusting her into Aimée’s care? René was right. She was an idiot; she should have checked the baby more closely last night. Come to think of it why hadn’t René noticed?
    Sick to her stomach, she peered closer. What she had thought were bruises—blue marks—looked more like scribbling with a pen. She could make out letters and numbers, a part of a word— “ing” —a name? Then “2/12,” part of a date? Odd. The mother hadn’t had the time to diaper her, yet she’d written. . . .
    She grabbed the first thing she saw on her bedside table—a chocolate-brown lip-liner pencil—and copied into her checkbook the letters and digits she could make out.
    The fax machine groaned as a page began to emerge from her machine. Due to scheduling conflicts, the Regnault meeting has been moved up to 8:00 A.M. Please bring the programming reports. Nadia Deloup, secretary.
    Aimée thanked God she’d downloaded them last night. She glanced at the old clock and panicked. She had an hour. There was only one person she could call on.

    “YOU DO NEED HELP, ” Michou said. He pulled off his red wig, stepped out of a sequined sheath, and hung it on a hanger under plastic. “You don’t know the first thing about them, do you?” He rolled his mascaraed eyes. “Sealing a diaper with packaging tape?”
    She’d ruined three diapers and ended up taping one together.
    Michou, René’s transvestite neighbor, stepped out of his pantyhose and into sweats. “You said it was an emergency so I came straight from the club.” He slathered his face with cold cream, using a counterclockwise motion. “I won’t be a minute.”
    “Does Viard know about your maternal talents, Michou?” He