Suspects(11)

She was surprised when the workmen started to go home.

“It’s only eight o’clock,” she said, looking disappointed. It was two a.m. for her, on Paris time, which didn’t seem to stop her. She was fully energized by what she was doing and seemed tireless. She had been exhausted for a year. But working with her hands in the empty store, she felt alive again. It wasn’t serious, in the grander scheme of life, but it was something she could do, a magic she could still create, and that was at least something. It reminded her that she was good at her job, and all its component parts. She hadn’t been able to save her son or her husband, no matter how hard she’d tried, but she could take an empty space and make something beautiful of it.

She set up the desk and told them where to put the cash register, just around the corner in a less visible part of the store. By the time she left at nine o’clock, the bare bones were there, and the color palette, which dominated the room, looked like a sky at dawn, with mauves and purples, soft peaches, brighter oranges, and a splash of shocking pink. She was happy when she turned the alarm on, locked the door, and walked up Madison Avenue, with her bodyguard beside her. She didn’t speak on the brief walk uptown, but he could see that she was happy, more than she had been in a year.



* * *



—

The agent assigned to Pierre de Vaumont checked in with Mike every few hours, as Mike had asked him to do. He wanted to keep a close eye on who Pierre met with and his activities. He had arrived late at Harry Cipriani at the Sherry Netherland Hotel for lunch, but had called the man he was meeting as soon as he cleared customs, and they had delayed their lunch by an hour. The man had a modeling agency in New York and wanted to open an office in Paris, and he was looking for investors. A friend had told him that Pierre de Vaumont would know who had money and would be interested in the project. Pierre suggested a Russian businessman who loved spending time in Paris and had money to burn. Pierre knew the Russian businessman would view the venture as a never-ending source of women for him to date, who were a cut above the girls he went out with now. Pierre told him that he would arrange an introduction the next time the Russian came to New York, or they could make a plan to meet in Paris.

At four o’clock, he stopped at an art gallery where he knew the owner, another Russian, who greeted him with open arms. Pierre had found a backer for him.

At six, he went back to his hotel, and changed into a black suit, which fit him to perfection. Then he met with a new Chinese client downstairs at his hotel.

He had dinner at La Grenouille with a group of Saudis he had met in Dubai, members of the royal family, all in their twenties. Pierre went back to their hotel and dancing with them afterwards, and then he joined them in a suite at a small discreet hotel, where their assistants had hired the lustful young women they were going to spend the night with. Pierre left quietly when their choices had been made. It was after four by then and had been a very full day.

The agent who had followed him since his arrival that afternoon marveled at his stamina, and had gotten photographs of everyone he met with. He sent the photos to Mike, who had run them through their computers. All involved appeared to be legitimate and had no criminal records, but just looking at them, he understood what Pierre was doing. He didn’t know what the projects were, but he was meeting their needs, and they obviously paid for his own lavish lifestyle. He was exactly what he said he was, a matchmaker, for whatever kind of project came along.

The agent went home when Pierre went back to the Plaza. It seemed unlikely he would go out again. The agent would be replaced the next day, so that his face didn’t become familiar to Pierre and alert him.

When Pierre got back to his room, and the agent left, Mike was asleep in his comfortable bachelor pad. It had all the technology and comforts he needed for the life he led. And Theo was just waking up at the Carlyle. She was still on Paris time, and it was five a.m. in New York, eleven in the morning in Paris. She had fallen asleep at midnight, in her clothes, with all the lights on, and five hours was enough sleep for her.

She stood looking out the window of her suite, at Central Park still shrouded in darkness, and she remembered all the times she had been there with her husband and Axel. If she closed her eyes, she could imagine that they were still there, asleep in the bedrooms of the suite. Then reality hit her, as it always did. They were gone, and all she could do now was keep going. She could hardly wait for the city to wake up, so she could go back to their store location and get to work again.

They had today to work on it before the party the next day. As it had in the past, work had always saved her. She couldn’t afford to let the memories flood in. Their marriage hadn’t been perfect. Matthieu was difficult at times, and there had been power struggles between them, but they had been happy enough. The only thing she couldn’t forgive him for was that he had had their son with him when they took him, and no protection. She had begged him for years to get private security, particularly at the chateau, which was fairly isolated, but he insisted he didn’t need it. He liked having no help in the house on the weekends, and he thought no one would ever dare attack him, but they had, and none of the happy memories changed that. Their dream life had turned into a nightmare, and she was left to live it alone.





Chapter 3


Theo was back at the store with her bodyguard at eight-thirty that morning. They had given her a key and the alarm code the night before, and she was already hard at work draping fabric on the walls and using the staple gun with her security guard’s help. He wasn’t adept at it, and she was relieved when Valentina and Bella walked in together and were stunned by the progress Theo was making. The rest of the furniture was delivered that morning, and by the afternoon, it was beginning to look like a real store. Two Damien Hirst paintings had been dropped off that morning, on loan from a well-known gallery. They had the proper insurance that Theo had paid for. When she saw them, she was tempted to buy one of them. She could afford them, but she hadn’t bought anything in the past year, not even a pair of shoes. She just didn’t care. But she loved the paintings, it was a small sign of her coming back to life. Working on the store had been good for her.