All the Devils Are Here(72)

Jean-Guy leaned forward and began digging again. Digging deeper.

Armand picked up the screw, examined it, then replaced it in the box.

“Those were in the desk, I imagine,” said Claude, watching his host.

“On the desk, yes. Thank you for bringing the box. Have you found anything?”

“No, though the password for this”—Claude held up Stephen’s laptop—“would help.”

“And I happen to have it.” Armand retrieved his notebook, and, writing the word down, he ripped the page off and gave it to Claude, who read it with surprise but without comment.

Lutetia.

“Merci.” Claude Dussault put the paper in his pocket.

“Aren’t you going to try it?” asked Armand.

“Non. It’ll take hours to go through the laptop and analyze what’s on it. I’ll hand this over to Fontaine.”

Armand went back to the box and brought out the GHS annual report. The first page had a greeting accompanied by a photo of the president, Eugénie Roquebrune, as she nursed peregrine falcon chicks. And another of her releasing baby sea turtles into the ocean.

Madame Roquebrune, even in these rustic surroundings, managed to look elegant, with her perfect, and lightly applied, makeup, and her beautifully done gray hair. Not unlike, he thought, Reine-Marie.

Though these photos were filled with artifice. Reine-Marie had none of that.

Then he turned to the list of board members and raised his brows. “Impressive.”

“Incredibly so, oui,” agreed Claude. “Do you mind?”

He indicated his jacket, and Armand said no. It was indeed quite warm in the apartment.

Armand scanned the rest of the report while Claude got up and took off his jacket, then wandered the room, examining the paintings on the wall and the books on the shelves. He drifted, apparently aimlessly, over to the tall windows and, pulling aside the lace curtains, looked down onto the street below.

The annual report was upbeat in its broad statements about the financial success of the past year. It described the engineering giant’s ongoing commitment to the environment. To improving lives in developing nations. To equality. Sustainability. And to profit.

But there was precious little hard information. And no list of its actual projects or holdings.

When he’d finished, Armand took off his reading glasses and rubbed his eyes.

“Not much here. I wonder why Stephen was interested in it. I’ve read a few annual reports in my time, and most are far more informative.”

As Claude returned to his seat, Armand noticed a small stain on his shirt, on the inside of his left elbow.

A bloodstain. Plessner’s blood?

“It’s probably just the corporate culture,” said Claude. “Secretive.”

“But that begs the question—”

“What’re they hiding?” asked Dussault.

“Yes.”

“You must be excited about the baby,” said Monique.

“We are.” Reine-Marie plugged in the old percolator.

She was suddenly exhausted, and just wanted them to go home so that she and Armand could talk, then go to bed. Bed. Bed.

But there was too much still to do before that could happen.

The aroma of coffee filled the tiny kitchen, and she watched as Monique sliced the bright pink Ispahan cake. The sharp knife cut through the layers of macaron and rose and raspberry cream.

Alexander Plessner stood at the doorway, watching her. Reine-Marie nodded acknowledgment and, taking a deep breath, she turned to Monique.

“Our anniversary is coming up, and I’m looking for a gift for Armand. Please, please don’t tell him, or Claude, that I asked, but I noticed Claude’s cologne and really like it.”

“You do? I think it smells like bark. And mud. I like Armand’s. A lot. What is it?”

“Sandalwood.”

“You’re not thinking of having him switch, are you?”

“Well, it’s just that sometimes it’s nice to have a choice. What is Claude’s cologne?”

“Something his second-in-command gave him a few years ago after they’d been to a conference in Cologne together. His number two bought a bottle for each of them when they toured the factory where it’s made. Have you ever been to Cologne? Beautiful city. Or at least once was. All but destroyed in the war.”

This conversation was hardly linear, and Reine-Marie wondered if she could continue to steer it back to a stinky cologne when there were other more interesting topics on the table.

One more try.

“He and his second-in-command wear the same scent?”

She knew the Prefect’s second-in-command was a woman, Irena Fontaine, the investigator who met them at Daniel’s apartment.

She was a protégé of the Prefect. They were obviously close, professionally, but this sharing of scents seemed a little beyond that.

“Oh, yes. Claude doesn’t wear it all the time, thankfully. Only when they’re going to meet.”

Reine-Marie stared at Monique. Didn’t she see how convenient this was? If Claude came home after this “meeting” smelling like his younger, female second-in-command, there would be no suspicion.

But this wasn’t her business. And maybe there was nothing there.

After all, Armand’s new number two was also a young woman. Isabelle Lacoste. She’d become a close family friend. A cherished and valued colleague. He’d brought her into homicide and mentored her. Isabelle had repaid Armand by saving his life, at a terrible personal cost to herself.