Treasure of Saint-Lazare Read Free Page B

there’s our friend Philippe Cabillaud, a semi-retired executive in the Paris police. When you arrived Margaux told him about it and he offered to bring his daughter, who’s a history professor at the Sorbonne. She should know something about the lost art.
    “My mother is bound to have more insights than either of us. And Aurélie, Philippe’s daughter, has solid connections in the intellectual world here. Even though it has a really high BS level, it is very intellectual.”
    “I won’t say it sounds like fun, but thank you for inviting me.”
    “You can use the guest room to get ready for dinner. I’ll show you a sight or two on the way to the restaurant.”
    As she followed him down the wide central hall past the formal dining room, Jen glimpsed exercise equipment behind a half-open door. “You’re still a weight lifter?” she asked.
    “A casual one. I walk a lot and do some lifting a couple times a week, play some tennis. Not as much as I used to.”
    “It seems to be working.”
    He pushed open the door to an elegant bedroom, classically decorated except that the heavy brocades and mahogany popular in old Paris had been updated to light fabrics and woods, accented with brass. He twisted the handle of a wide double window and opened both panels into the room.
    “In Sarasota we’d call that a French door. It’s far too big for a window,” Jen said with a little laugh. She leaned out over a waist-high protective bar set firmly into the thick stone walls, all that separated her from an eight-story drop to the tree-shaded courtyard below.
    “There’s almost no air conditioning in Paris,” Eddie said. “With windows like this, we don’t regret it more than two or three days a year. And we’re too far north for many bugs, so no screens.”
    She looked across the courtyard and asked, “How many people have this view of Notre Dame?”
    “Not many. It’s beautiful this time of day, with the sun shining from behind us on the towers and the spire. From the front of the building you can look up the Champs Elysées to the Arc de Triomphe.” He turned toward the door.
    “We need to leave in an hour and a half. Please make yourself comfortable, and plan on staying here while you’re in Paris.”
    As he closed the door, Jen tried to sort out what she knew about Eddie Grant. For one, he looked much like the pictures of his father Roy had shown her. Artie had been tall and Eddie was a bit shorter, a touch under six feet. Like his father, he had a large head topped by carefully cut and brushed black hair, so black its highlights appeared purple, long by American standards but fashionable in Paris. His hands were large, like those of a basketball player or a pianist — Jen hoped he was a pianist but they hadn’t talked about either music or sports during their three days together. It was the end of the day, but his navy blazer showed little wear. Neither did his gray slacks or checked shirt. Even the tie was still tightly knotted. It was, she thought, a man’s outfit of the sort she hardly ever saw any more in Sarasota, and missed.
    The apartment’s high ceilings, ornate plaster decoration and designer furnishings reminded her that Eddie’s father had been the last member of the founding family to work at Norway Steel, which had been an industrial giant from the Civil War until U.S. corporations became multinationals and moved their jobs offshore in search of cheaper and more docile workers. The company had disappeared in the wave of mergers that had swept over American business in the 70s and 80s (“stupid financial engineering by mental defectives,” Roy had called it), but Artie had known when to sell and as a result his widow and son were among the wealthiest Americans in Europe. The apartment showed it.

4
    Paris
    Eddie walked back to his office, leaving the door ajar in case Jen called him. He read Roy’s letter again, then began turning over in his mind some of the wartime stories his father had