There passed for Rachel one of the most unpleasant afternoons and nights of her life. She imagined breaking into 21 Rue la Boétie only to discover that the reception for the memorial had been moved there, or arriving at the building only to see that it was under police guard. She imagined her lock-picking skills suddenly deserting her, and just to be sure of herself, she spent the hours between supper and bed picking her model lock, relocking it, then angling it or herself so she could pick it again in some more difficult position. When she finally fell asleep, she dreamt that she did successfully pick the locks on the front door and the door to the archive, only to discover Roland Guipure himself waiting for her in the file room, skeletal and icy pale at having been hidden underground for a month.
At two o’clock the next afternoon, she and Magda came out of Miromesnil station and crossed over to the Sauveterre headquarters. No clochard today, Rachel noticed. She gave thanks for small mercies.
Trying to calm herself, she bent over in the doorway of 21 Rue la Boetie, pretending to tie her shoe. From this low vantage point, she could see that the building’s glass and metal front doors had two locks, one above and one below the handle. Both appeared to be simple tumbler locks. As she leaned in to look a little closer, she noticed that the white paint on the art deco grille had been allowed to peel away, and the gray iron was beginning to show.
“Stand behind me,” she said to Magda.
“What? Why?”
“So no one will see that a middle-aged woman is trying to pick the lock of Maison Sauveterre while everyone who works there is at the memorial service!” She reached into her jacket pocket and unzipped her picklock holder, choosing the ones she needed by feel.
“Oh, right, right.”
Magda stood behind her, facing the street, so close that Rachel could feel her body warmth through her own jacket. Rachel took one of the thin lengths of metal out of her pocket and slipped it into the top lock. Willing her other hand into steadiness, she inserted the second pick on top of this first one and began gently moving it up and down, feeling for the edges of the pins so she could ease it under. No, no, n—yes! One, two, three pins clicked up, and the bolt slid back. She felt what she always felt at this moment, a powerful rush of euphoria and disbelief. It flashed across her mind that this must be how a gambling addict felt when a bet paid out—or a heroin addict when the needle went in.
She pushed that thought aside and moved the picks to the lower lock.
“Stop!” Magda’s voice was a bullet.
Rachel froze. She heard the sound of approaching heels.
“Pretend to throw up.”
“Wh—”
“Pretend to throw up!”
Rachel made retching noises. The heels stopped for a moment and she heard Magda say, “Çe n’est rien, madame. Mon amie a mangé une mauvaise huître.”
The heels hurried away. Rachel no longer felt like an invincible gambler; she took several deep breaths to stop herself from actually vomiting. Slightly calmed, she managed to release the second lock despite her shaking hands.
As she slipped into the foyer of the building, she felt cold sweat breaking out all over her. “Quick,” she said to Magda as she shut the door behind them.
Eleven steps across the foyer, another ten to descend the stairs to the basement, and each one seemed to Rachel to ring out like a pistol shot. At last, though, they faced the steel door with its ugly deadbolt, the protruding knob that seemed simple but was actually more secure than any digital lock. Or so Gabrielle said.
“Hold the knob,” she whispered to Magda, “and pull when I say.”
Magda held the knob. Rachel’s hands shivered only a little as she repeated the movements she’d executed at the front door. The pick slipped under one pin, then another, then smoothly under another two. “Pull the knob! Pull the knob!”
Magda pulled the knob just as the pick slid under the last pin: the door swung open.
Once more the fluorescent lights flickered on as they crossed the threshold. The room looked exactly as it had on their last visit, or perhaps slightly more sterile. The boxes of gloves seemed to have been centered with a ruler on the tables; the Formica tabletops gleamed like mortuary slabs. Rachel had the strange feeling common to those performing illicit actions in empty rooms: that some hidden person was watching, or someone was about to walk in and catch her.
She quashed this sensation by striding over to the fourth cabinet along the wall and opening its top drawer. It was empty. She opened the one underneath it, then the one underneath that. They were filled with folders, all arranged by date and then keyword, but none were the folders that held the Galerie Sauveterre receipts.
She opened the top drawer of the fifth filing cabinet. Empty. It rattled as she pushed it shut. The drawers below were just like those in the fourth cabinet: packed, but not with what she needed.
“Shit.” She bit her lip. “Shit.” She put out her hand to open a drawer in the sixth cabinet, then dropped it. She knew she wouldn’t find what she wanted.
But beside her Magda straightened up and turned back toward the door. “Fine. We’ll just have to look upstairs.”
“Upstairs?” Why did “upstairs” sound so much more dangerous than “downstairs”? But Rachel knew why. “Downstairs” matched the instinct to burrow, to hunker down and stay safe. “Upstairs” represented windows that people could see through and a literal inability to put her feet on the ground. Upstairs was endless white space with nowhere to hide.
“Yes, upstairs.” Magda was brisk. “You just broke and entered, and I just aided and abetted you. We didn’t do that to end up finding nothing. We need to check upstairs, to be sure.”
She was right. They needed those receipts to prove their case, and they needed to find them before a triple murderer came back from the memorial service and found them there.
“Okay.” But still she asked, “What time is it?”
Magda checked her watch “Three. They’ll be halfway through the service. And then there’s the reception until five thirty.”
Rachel lifted her heels in an effort to avoid making noise as they climbed the marble stairs. Up they went, past the couture fitting rooms and the ateliers behind them, past the storage rooms and across white landing hung with white-framed mirrors that reflected blankness back at itself. Finally they reached the business offices on the third floor. Rachel nudged Magda. The framed receipt that had hung on the wall was gone.
The door to the reception area was open, the white desk and chair unoccupied. They walked through to Gabrielle’s office. Once again Rachel’s eyes were drawn to the giant button, the knife-edge hem, but only for a moment before she switched her attention to Gabrielle’s desk. Its surface was empty.
She drew a deep breath and let it out, crossing the room to the doorway to Antoinette’s office. The carpet in the two outer offices had muffled her footsteps, so the sound of her first step across the threshold, clacking on the naked wood, surprised her. She started, then gave a little snort at her own foolishness. Tossing her head, she crossed the threshold and entered the room.
“Hello,” said Antoinette.