THE LUNCH CROWD AT the café was larger than normal. Claude and Burke chatted for a couple of minutes about Claude’s recent misadventures, and then the café owner had to excuse himself to help handle customers, leaving Burke to relax over a glass of rosé.

When Burke spotted Hélène walking toward the café, obviously to start a shift, his heart beat a little faster. He caught her eye, and she smiled and waved. As she approached, he grinned, excitement growing inside him.

She kissed him on both cheeks and then gently on the lips.

“I have to work, chéri,” she said with a shrug. She nodded toward Claude. “And I have to make sure Uncle doesn’t get into more trouble.”

“I understand.”

“Tomorrow, maybe? I don’t have to work, and it is Sunday. We can spend the day together.”

“That sounds perfect,” Burke replied. And it did. “I’ll call you in the morning.”

“But not too early, chéri,” Hélène said, waving a finger for emphasis. “I’ll need my beauty sleep.”

“I’ll call you at eleven,” Burke suggested.

“Perfect. Maybe a little lunch, a visit to the beach and then…” said Hélène, leaving the rest unspoken but understood.

She went off. Burke pondered having another drink and maybe something to eat, but in the end, he opted for neither, paying his bill and waving goodbye to Claude, who seemed surprised to see Burke leave so soon.

Back home, Burke stretched out on his couch. He suddenly felt drained. He put it down to the mental work he was doing, not the morning’s bike ride, which hadn’t been anything too strenuous. He laughed at the notion that he was overworking his brain.

He rested for a half hour and then decided to go for another ride. When he was tired, a ride would often snap him out of his lethargy.

Soon, he was pedaling toward Vence and feeling rejuvenated by the effort. He didn’t stop at the historic village. Instead, he kept going east until he cycled down into Nice.

The city was bustling with its July tourist trade. There were thousands of people on their way to the beach or coming from the beach. Even the locals seemed to be out in record numbers. A couple of times, Burke had to dodge a vehicle going outside its lane to escape traffic congestion.

He turned toward the lovely Old Harbor, with its lively cafés and bustling marina, and then climbed out of town. He didn’t stop until he reached the more peaceful atmosphere of neighboring Villefranche-sur-Mer. He stopped for a quick drink of water by the tourist information center, the gardens of which were more colorful than ever. Then he turned around and rode back, charging down the hill into Nice at seventy kilometers per hour—fast enough to earn a substantial speeding ticket if he got caught.

He headed to André Rousseau’s bike shop once again. It wasn’t so much that he wanted to talk to André. He was actually hoping to have a chat with Léon Petit if he was working today. Something was bugging Burke, and he wanted to explore it.

Léon was working, toiling away in the back shop truing a wheel. He didn’t look up when Burke said hello, just acknowledged him with a quick nod.

“Léon often doesn’t have the best people skills,” whispered André, noticing the exchange.

Burke wasn’t bothered. It seemed talking to people was a stretch for the mechanic, although Petit had been almost chatty the other day. He seemed much more comfortable alone, working on bikes. Or with his mother.

Burke talked a few minutes with André and then left him so he could attend to two young cyclists who had just walked in. Burke returned his attention to Léon, who was putting the wheel back onto the bike. In the background, a radio played some pop music.

“I saw you outside the forum yesterday with your mother,” Burke said.

Léon shrugged.

“Were you in the crowd at the forum?” Burke said.

“I was.”

“What did you think about it?”

“I didn’t think much about it at all,” Léon said, putting aside the restored bike and grabbing a top-end racing machine and hoisting it onto the bike stand.

“Boring?”

“A little.”

That gave Burke his opening. “Your mother added some spice, though,” he said.

Léon looked up at him. He didn’t say anything.

“If she hadn’t spoken, I don’t think the forum would have been interesting at all,” Burke said.

“She speaks her mind,” Léon said as he applied a small screwdriver to the front derailleur, which played a major part in switching gears.

“So she knew McManus?” Burke asked.

“A little.”

“Enough to think he was a bastard,” Burke said. “When did she meet him?”

Léon stopped working on the racing bike and stared at Burke.

“Why are you interested?” he asked.

“Well, it was clear at the forum that she knew him and that she didn’t like him,” Burke said. “And I did agree with her about McManus. He was a bastard.”

Léon shrugged again.

“She seemed very upset afterward,” Burke said. “I saw you both sitting outside the theater.”

“She has trouble speaking in front of people, and it took a lot out of her to go to the microphone.”

“Why did she go up and speak if she gets so nervous?” Burke asked.

“You’d have to ask her.”

“When did she first encounter McManus, Léon?” Burke asked, hoping he sounded friendly and not like a flic.

“I’m not sure. Years ago, I believe,” Léon said. He paused. “I don’t know. It isn’t important.”

“It was important enough that she told everyone what she thought of him.”

Léon said nothing.

“Are you from around here, Léon?” Burke asked.

“Nice.”

“So you grew up on the Côte d’Azur? Lucky guy,” Burke said.

Léon ignored the comment and kept his attention on the front derailleur. Something was slightly off-kilter with the mechanism.

The time was now for him to pursue what had been truly bugging him.

“Is your father dead, Léon?” Burke ventured.

Léon turned and stared at Burke. “Yes,” he finally said.

“My dad just died recently,” Burke said. It was a lie, since both his parents had been killed in a car crash when he was a teenager, but Burke hoped it might free Petit to talk a little bit about his father, whoever he was. “Did yours pass away a long time ago?”

“Why do you care?”

“Just curious,” Burke said. “I miss my father, so sometimes I search for ways to deal with that. Asking people how they’ve coped with losing their own father sometimes helps me.”

“If you’re so sad, maybe you should talk to a professional,” Léon suggested.

Burke waited. Then he asked what Léon’s dad’s name was.

“My business,” Léon said.

Another pause. He had to ask. “You know, it’s strange, but you look a lot like Pierre McManus,” he said.

And it was certainly true. In fact, the more Burke looked at Léon, the more he saw McManus’s rough, squat features and the piercing brown eyes and arched eyebrows. They also had the same stocky, muscular build.

Léon was rigid. Not a muscle moved—not even his eyes, which were locked onto Burke’s.

“I’m working, so maybe you can stop with the questions and just fuck off,” he said in a low, threatening voice.

Burke nodded. “It’s just that you could be his younger brother—or even his son. You have the same look.”

Léon moved toward him, his hand now grasping a heavy wrench. His face was flushed, and his eyes blazed.

“I told you to fuck off,” he said, stopping a foot away from Burke.

“What’s going on here?” Rousseau stood just inside the shop.

“He’s distracting me from my work,” Léon replied, moving back to the bike stand.

Burke looked at André and shrugged. “I know when to leave,” he said and walked through the door and into the main shop.

Rousseau followed, looking annoyed at having to stop a disagreement between his mechanic and his friend.

“What the hell was all that about?” Rousseau asked in a low voice, even though the back-shop radio probably drowned out what was being said.

“I was asking Léon about his mother,” Burke said.

“Why do you care?”

Burke told him how she’d appeared at the forum in such an angry state and had asked questions that changed the entire tone of the gathering.

“I understand Léon is close to his mother, but there had to be more than that for Léon to get so pissed at you,” Rousseau said, his voice still low. “He looked like he was going to clobber you with that wrench.”

“I also told him he looked a lot like Pierre McManus. He didn’t seem to like that.”

Rousseau paused. He took a step back, glanced into the back shop and then returned his attention to Burke.

“Now that you say it, Léon does look like McManus a fair amount,” he said. “Maybe the cat got into the milk a long time ago. McManus always was one for the ladies.”

“My thoughts, too.”

“Paul, you are becoming quite the troublemaker,” Rousseau said.

“Have you ever heard Léon say anything about his father?”

“Never.”

“Interesting,” Burke said.

“OK, enough of the detective work. If you aren’t going to buy anything, maybe you should go investigate elsewhere,” Rousseau said with a smile, gently leading Burke and his bike to the front door.

Burke nodded at his friend and then stepped outside. Rousseau wasn’t angry. On the contrary, he seemed almost equally curious about Petit, his mother and a possible connection to Pierre McManus.

Burke wondered if there was any way he could learn who was listed as “father” on Léon Petit’s birth certificate.