"What did the grown-ups say?"

"Pah, the usual. The mayor's wife slept around, their son wasn't his, that the mayor had knifed the Boches over a black-market deal, or maybe he knifed them for making time with his wife . . . things like that."

For a kid he'd heard a lot.

Village gossip, a necessary evil since time immemorial. Gossip equaled currency, clout in the village. Sounded like this gossip's roots had taken hold and deepened over the decades. Still, why did it matter now?

"What happened to his wife?"

"She blamed the villagers for killing him. Un peu fou-you know, not right in the head. They locked her up in the loony bin, my mother said once. Never came out."

Convenient.

The rain lashed the window. A steady drumming pelted the roof tiles-a veritable downpour.

The mayor's story connected to Peltier and Baret's execution-style murders-she was sure of it, although she didn't know how. Either that, or someone wanted to make it look like it connected. And the gypsy taxi was involved. She shuddered thinking of it.

Someone was lying. Had lied for years.

A thought formed in her mind, indistinct.

"And their child?"

Clement shrugged. "A class clown, accident prone-that I remember. My mother pitied the boy. No clue what happened to him."

Aimee tried to make sense of Clement's words. "Why would someone want to kill messieurs Peltier and Baret in the same way the mayor was killed?"

"How should I know? You're not accusing me, are you?" said Clement. "Plenty of others saw the mayor dead."

"Then . . . why is this happening now?"

His face sagged. "There were some who made money in the war. That's what my parents said. What everyone says to this day-at least, the old ones who are still around."

Aimee turned this over in her head. "You mean wheat farmers who somehow made out during the war? Suddenly became wealthy?"

"Rich as Croesus, the old ones say," said Clement. "Whoever Croesus is."

"Croesus?" She searched her memory. "That's right, the legendary Greek-he's the wealthy king who first minted gold coins."

She saw Clement stiffen.

The phone rang downstairs.

"That's Elise." Clement hurried away and clattered down the stairs. She put on dry socks and her low-heeled Valentino boots and caught up with him. He was pulling on his overcoat.

"Elise's car's stuck in the mud," he said.

"I'll join you."

"Turn the heater on. I'll be right back." Then, in a blast of wet wind, he'd rushed out the door. She heard his battered Renault start up.

Great.

On second thought, she wouldn't mind warming up-and it was a good chance to delve into the Peltiers' past. With the place to herself and any luck, maybe she'd be able to find more about this corporation whose info she'd taken from the bookstore's sleek office.

She fiddled with the furnace controls until it rumbled to life and heat radiated from the floor vents.

Her stomach growled. Hungry even after the rabbit her grandfather had packed for her, she peered in the pantry. Flour, rice, salt-the staples, along with glass jars of Petrossian caviar, foie gras, Fauchon tins . . . a gourmet treasure trove. One of those big jars of caviar would cost more than the rent of someone's Parisian apartment.

She helped herself from the tin of Hediard truffle biscuits. Picked up a newspaper lying on the faded-green linoleum floor.

La Gazette de la Loire, dated this past October. It was folded open to an article headlined Discovery in the Cher: German WWII convoy truck found submerged near old mill of Chambly-sur-Cher.

Not that uncommon. Farmers found war relics all the time, unexploded ordnance and even active toxic mustard gas, left in fields since the First World War.

The military truck's ID had been tracked-it had been bound for Portugal, bearing "recovered contents" of a German train, and had disappeared during a bombing raid on Vierzon. In the article a Georges Ducray, a Givaray resident who was quoted at length, insisted the sunken truck was linked to the execution of sixty villagers by Germans in 1942.

This article was only a month old-why hadn't Clement mentioned it?

After her snack, Aimee started snooping. The chocolate-brown file cabinets yielded little besides old wheat crop reports. But according to these, Bruno Peltier's fields belonged to a cooperative. How had he made all his money?

Outside the kitchen window a light shone in the opposite building. Two figures were silhouetted against the curtains. Even in the pounding rain she could make out their raised arms. A fight? She unlatched the window hook a few centimeters. Inhaled the dampness, the scent of molding leaves.

The room across the way had gone dark.

About to turn back, she heard raised voices over the splashing. What sounded like two men arguing. Was she hearing what she wanted to hear, or had one of the men said the name Baret? She leaned forward. Tried to hear, to understand, catch a phrase.

Impossible in the pounding rain. Concentrate, she had to concentrate. A glass shattered. "Imbecile." The slam of a door.

Then quiet, apart from the splattering rain outside.

She retraced her steps as she heard the grinding gears of the Renault. Ran upstairs to get a sweater from her bag, and to pop a painkiller. Back down in the warm kitchen, she found Elise huddled at the table. Clement had his arm over her shoulder.

Elise's tear-swollen lids, the rings under her wide-set eyes, her drawn, pale skin made her look as if she'd aged overnight.

Clement looked up, his brows knit. "Snooping around, kid?"

"Shush, Clement. Tell me what you've discovered about Suzy, Aimee."

"It's all in my report. Isn't that why you wanted me to come?"

"Your report? But I thought your father was taking this on-"

"Time's essential, Elise," she interrupted, afraid of where that was going. Worried she wouldn't get Elise enough in her debt to ask about her mother. "It's all here and with photos."

Elise opened the file Aimee put down on the table. Thumbed through, her fingers shaking.

"So Suzy's connected to my father's murder?" Elise said.

"Not that I found, Elise."

For a good fifteen minutes Aimee explained her surveillance report, detailing her activities up to her visit to the hunting bookstore and finding the agenda for the meeting.

"Eh, what's all this mean?" Clement snorted. "You solved nothing. Child's play."

Aimee seethed. He gave her no credit for all her work, much less recognized the professional quality of her documentation.

But Elise, not Clement, had hired her, and she'd delivered.

"If you'll just sign this contract, please. The job was to find Suzy and talk to her," she said to Elise. "I found Suzy and talked to her. It's all in the report. Now can we talk about my mother?"

"Mother?" Elise looked up, startled. "What do you mean?"

What did she mean? "But you knew my mother. Told me there were photos."

Elise expelled air from her mouth. "I met her once."

Aimee's stomach tightened. "What?"

"If you can call it that," said Elise. She uncorked a bottle and poured herself a glass of wine. "You know, we never kept in touch. Your family had the nerve to shun us over Papa's uncle's illegitimate son. A baby who died."

Hadn't her grand-pere hinted at this? Yet how was she related exactly?

"That's nothing to do with my mother, Elise."

"I met her once at a resto. You were in a stroller." She shrugged.

"But you said there were photos. You knew she was an American." Desperate, she was desperate.

"A big argument, that's what I remember. Years-old saga of the Leducs against the Peltiers, your grandfather's complaints about the baby's mother and support." Elise shrugged. "Your parents left."

"But you led me to believe . . ."

"Sorry, Aimee, I didn't want to bring all that back up. Everyone stormed out. C'est tout."

Aimee's shoulders sagged in exhaustion. Defeat. She'd been so foolish to hope. She stuffed the bitter pill down.

"Renaud told me you met him last night. He's coming here-wants to help."

"Then I'm finished here," said Aimee.

"Please stay, Aimee. Desolee, good job, you found Suzy. You've done better than the police."

She had that right. And look where it got her-attacked by a taxi driver and stranded in a country downpour.

Elise shook her head. "Forgive me, but stay, please. I don't know what to do now. My mother is so unwell. She keeps saying the fifth Boche came back."

"Boche?"

Clement nodded. "That's what we called the Germans behind their backs. There were other names, too-Fritz, Kraut, a Hermann. The worst was a chleuh."

The fifth German? Another war connection? Aimee thought of the German reprisals, the sixty dead. "Does this figure in the murder of your father and now Monsieur Baret?"

"I don't know."

"Someone followed me to the bookstore tonight and attacked me, Elise. It's dangerous."

"Attacked you? Mon Dieu." Elise's hand flew to her mouth.

Aimee explained what happened. "But Royant and Dufard, Elise, they're next. You need to talk with them."

"But it's too late."

Aimee gasped. "You mean . . ."

"They pulled out as we drove in."

Late again.

Chambly-sur-Cher * November 12, 1989.

Sunday Morning.

After Clement left for the night, a distraught Elise had uncorked another good Medoc, and her words had flowed like the wine. She had told Aimee about her childhood boarding school in Montreal, how she'd stayed in Canada for university and then taught economics. She had only come back to France permanently two months ago, when her father had insisted she return home to run the family investments.

From what Aimee could understand, that's what the meeting was about-to incorporate the shareholdings this group of men held together. After her father's passing, the aging members wanted her, with the accountant's assistance, to assume daily operations out of the bookstore which they owned jointly. But Elise had passed out before Aimee got the full story.

There were still so many questions to answer. There were still two men in danger and a dangerous killer on the loose. Aimee had the headache to prove it.

She couldn't leave this undone-she had to figure it out one way or the other. So she'd come up with a course of action while Elise slept.

First thing Sunday morning, she tried the hospital. Madame Peltier remained under observation and couldn't be disturbed, or so the nurse told her. A shame-Aimee was certain the woman would have been able to answer some of her questions. She must have known something about her husband's affairs.

She gave it another try, called the hospital, this time pretending to be Elise and asking for the ward directly.

"But I just spoke with you, didn't I?" said the nurse.

Great. "Look, I'm sorry, but it's important. It's vital that I reach Madame Peltier."

"And I told you she's taken medication. Impossible. Doctor's orders: she's not to be disturbed."

Click as the nurse hung up.