Until You

"Making judgments is not part of your job, Mr. O'Neil. Perhaps I should ask my husband to put in a call to Mr. Thurston and tell him you're overstepping your bounds."

"That's a wonderful idea," Conor said, and ended the call. He counted to ten, then to twenty before hitting the speed dial number that connected him to Harry Thurston's home phone.

It was obvious that he woke him, too, but Thurston covered it better.

"What's the good word, Conor?"

Conor brought him up to date.

"Well, now that you've eyeballed the girl, what's your best guess? Could she have sent that note to her mother? Or could it be somebody else? That Frenchman she married, maybe? Or the Frenchman's cousin?"

Conor shifted the phone to his other ear and glanced at his watch.

"I haven't ruled anything out yet, Harry. The embassy dug up some phone numbers and addresses for me. I'm going to pay a couple of visits today, do some sniffing around but I've

got to tell you, what I'm figuring is that the note was a one-shot."

Thurston yawned. "And the break-in at the Beckman girl's apartment?"

"Probably another one-shot. I doubt if there's any connection."

"Maybe it wasn't even a break-in. The girl could just be a slob."

Conor laughed. "I'll be in touch," he said, and hung up.

* * *

An hour later, he was tooling down a back road southwest of Paris.

It wasn't much of a road, not even by French standards. Barely one-car wide, cut off from the sun by the overgrown branches of the oak trees that grew along either side, it was closer to a dirt track than a road. Unless Conor missed his guess, nobody had bothered to re-grade the surface since the days of the Three Musketeers.

He shot another glance at the directions he'd scrawled during his phone call to Amalie de Lasserre. When you were dealing with a series of lefts and rights marked by signposts like the crumbling walls of an ancient chateau or what remained of an old vineyard, it was hard to tell if you were on track or not.

It wouldn't have surprised him if Miranda's once-upon-a-time roommate had given him instructions that would lead him straight to the middle of a cow pasture. She had sounded politely guarded at first, when he'd identified himself as a journalist, but when he'd mentioned Miranda, her tone had become downright frigid.

"I know nothing about Miranda Beckman," she'd said. Conor had spoken quickly, sensing she was about to hang up. He'd explained that he was a writer doing an article about American models working in Paris and that it was off-the-record background information he was looking for.

"I have not seen Miranda in many years," Amalie had said, but less abruptly, and Conor had assured her that the Miranda he was interested in was the one Amalie had known as a teenager.

"Why?" she'd said, and he'd gone for broke, following his instincts, telling her he wasn't just writing an article, he was writing an expose about the seamier side of high fashion. Of course, he'd added, he'd pay her for her time. Amalie had asked how much, he'd tossed out a number he figured might raise a couple of eyebrows when the bean counters checked his expense sheet, and now he was bouncing along a road in the middle of nowhere, looking for a grey stone farmhouse with a slate roof and the ruins of a church just behind it.

And there it was. Conor stood on the brakes. And there she was, Amalie de Lasserre, standing in the doorway and looking just as he'd pictured her: stout, unwelcoming and unattractive.

There didn't seem to be a driveway so he pulled the car onto the muddy stretch of ground that he assumed had once been a lawn and got out.

"Mr. O'Neil?"

Her English was perfect, better than his French. He smiled and extended his hand.

"Mademoiselle de Lasserre. Thank you for agreeing to see me."

She hesitated, then gave him her hand. It was large and callused. She had, he saw, a faint mustache.

"You said you would have something for me, Mr. O'Neil?"

Conor took a handful of bills from his wallet and dumped them into Amalie's meaty palm.

No dancing around the issue, he thought. Well, that was something to be grateful for.