The Missing Sister Read online

  I raise an arm and hail a black SUV cab coming toward us. “Are you going to keep asking questions?”

  Jean-Luc snorts, then follows me into the back seat. We head home to Montmartre, fighting traffic the whole way. Jean-Luc asks about Emmanuelle, about her relationship with Angela, but I sidestep answering each time. Rule abider that I am—finally—I’m following Angela’s instructions not to trust anyone.

  When Jean-Luc turns to the window, I whip my phone out to text Valentin. It feels weird texting a detective, but each minute counts this week, and I can’t go see him with my guide in tow.

  Staying till Sunday, need time to pack up the apartment. What do you know about Emmanuelle Wood? She may have had a grudge against Angela—E was stalking A.

  Valentin texts back almost immediately:

  Leave police work to me. Wood is missing and not a suspect. I learned you signed the corpse identification form. Many thanks. If anything new arises, I shall contact you.

  “What’s wrong?” Jean-Luc asks. He leans in to look at my screen, but I shift it away.

  “Nothing. My web access stinks, is all.”

  Jean-Luc opens his phone to his news app and frowns. “Well, you’re not missing anything heartwarming. There was another shooting, in Toulon. South of France.”

  “That’s terrible. Was anyone hurt?”

  “Not sure yet. Information is hazy.”

  “It seems like shootings are becoming more common here, too,” I observe. “Any reason why?”

  Jean-Luc drops his hand to look at me. “Hard to say. France’s long history of colonialism doesn’t help when ex-subjects immigrate here for better lives. It’s not an easy transition, generally—there is pressure on them to assimilate and little tolerance for those who don’t. The system has to do better by them, and not everyone agrees how.” We’re each silent in our own thoughts as the cab drives onto the Pont Alexandre.

  The drunkard’s assault on me in the police station might have been more than an old Frenchman hating American politics—he could have been riled by me simply speaking English and not French. There’s a vast difference between the experiences of a mixed-race, upper-middle-class American like Angela and those of refugees seeking safety in France, but how much of a role might this socially, historically complex opinion of transients—of anyone who’s other—have played in Angela’s disappearance?

  We arrive at Angela’s apartment building, and Jean-Luc pulls out his wallet.

  “No, I got it,” I say and pay with a card.

  Jean-Luc puckers his lips—a mannerism I’m learning is incredibly French. “Suit yourself, but I rode in the cab, too. Dinner, my treat?”

  I laugh, a nervous tic I can’t help, as we exit to stand on the sidewalk. “I’ve got a date with Angela’s stocked cabinets. But thanks.”

  Jean-Luc smiles, then waves me forward. We climb the stairs of the building together, walking single file just like I did with Seb. Jean-Luc pauses at Angela’s landing. “Well, I hope I was of some help today. Let me know if you need anything tomorrow. I could search for the coordinates of another café if you feel like huffing coffee beans.”

  No matter how good Delphine’s, Seb’s, or Nour’s English is, there are still linguistic hints that show they’re not native speakers. I have thirty. You are the sister of Angela. I smile at the first I’ve heard from Jean-Luc: coordinates, like some seafaring captain, instead of directions or location.

  “Thanks. I’ll keep that in mind.” I wave goodbye and dash into the dark apartment. His shy grin stays with me until my eyes adjust to the falling night. The place is a mess. Boxes opened with Seb, the tiny pile of clues, my clothing mixed with Angela’s, and shoes splayed about the room. Flicking on the light switch, I toss my bag on the bed, then freeze.

  Coordinates.

  Angela’s mapping class.

  I hurry to the laptop, click the bookmark for her blog, and find the message as I left it:

  Divine Research

  48535.75 2201

  A cut and paste in the browser reveals these digits are not a phone number but latitude and longitude. I text a quick message to Jean-Luc:

  Meet at 11:00 a.m. tomorrow. We’re grabbing an early lunch.

  The ping of his cell phone is audible one floor above. Within seconds, I receive his reply:

  Wouldn’t miss it.

  Chapter 12

  Day 4, Wednesday

  Famine. Urban planning. Plague.

  An orchestral call and response pierces my thoughts. Three notes trill in repetitive sequence outside Angela’s third-floor window, and they tear me from reviewing highlights I made in Angela’s notes.

  The birds’ song would be beautiful had I not passed out around two in the morning and woken six hours later with my face sticking to a handout on cities that developed on top of marshland. I fiddle with the shutters, trying to open them to shoo away my avian band, but the damn metal clasp sticks. They’re quiet for a moment. Then resume chirping with fervor. Between the shutter clasp and the sticky dead bolt on the door, it’s a miracle I can get in and out as often as I do.

  My smartphone vibrates against Angela’s writing desk, and Seb’s name rolls across my screen.

  What are your plans today? We need to work together. This is not about you and me.

  “Exactly,” I grumble. “Get lost, Seb.” I lock my phone to black and wonder whether it was wise to share with him that I’d extended my trip.

  “Shayna? It’s Jean-Luc.” His voice carries through the door, right on time. I straighten my dress and scan the room for my messenger bag. After sending an email to the address I found for Dr. Charles Leroux, requesting to speak to him, I fell down a rabbit hole of Angela’s browser history; zero progress was made on packing or organizing, again. All of Angela’s research papers, including the rough draft of her dissertation that she was working on when she disappeared, line the floor. The different rooms discovered in the catacombs seem to have fascinated her. She mentions a room filled with fibulae, a room devoted to soldiers, judging from the many bone fractures, and—creepiest of all—a room full of twins, if modern DNA tests are to be trusted. She even cataloged the twin skulls, noting fifteen pairs and five skulls without a match. I grab my notes and a bottle of water, then step out into the hall.

  “Bonjour,” Jean-Luc says. French pop plays from the apartment below us, blaring on a Wednesday morning. Jean-Luc mouths the lyrics along to the music. Serons-nous détestables? The distressed jeans and graphic tee that reads in English RANGE FREE (I don’t know whether the irony is intended) could be an outfit from the album cover of a brooding band—Parisian hipster chic. For once, he’s not wearing purple.

  “You seem very French today.” He points to my crisscrossed sandals. “Or Roman.”

  “Yeah, with this heat wave, I started wearing Angela’s clothing. All mine is doused in sweat.”

  Jean-Luc offers a slow nod in response. I pass him and head down the stairs, Angela’s sundress billowing with each step. He follows, keeping a few feet more between us than yesterday. While being too open in thinking like Angela has had its downfalls—and I do want to quell any idea of flirtation before it begins—the need for clean clothing is real during these extra days abroad.

  We cross the street, scattering a horde of pigeons into flight. Jean-Luc watches me from the corner of his eye. “What’s our destination?” he asks.

  “A restaurant I found: Les Deux Moulins.” Last night I punched the Divine Research coordinates into a search engine. It took a few tries, but I found a combination that made sense: 48° 53′ 5.75″ N, 2° 20′ 1″ E—global coordinates to a restaurant that served as the chief location for one of Angela’s favorite movies. She was obsessed with Amélie in high school, and by the end of senior year, she no longer used the subtitles; she understood it perfectly in French.

  Jean-Luc’s elbow brushes mine as we walk. His knapsack grazes my hip, and I take a conscious step out and away.

  A waitress greets us inside the cozy
building, almost the same as I remember it from the movie. In place of the cigarette counter seen in the film lie extra tables and banquettes, with a dozen more tables squeezed throughout the room. We follow her jeans and crew-neck T-shirt to a corner booth beside the window. Sunlight filters through the burgundy curtains, casting a seductive ambience. Angela must have loved this.

  “Something to drink?” Jean-Luc opens the wine menu.

  “A coffee. Please.”

  Our waitress brings a tiny espresso I manage to down in one gulp.

  “You all right?” Jean-Luc’s mouth freezes in a taut smile. His eyes dart to my hands, picking at a sugar packet. “Do you need me to interpret the menu for you? Or is this a trick to get me to recite lines from Amélie Poulain?”

  When I don’t answer, he says, “Shayna, you don’t have to tell me specifics.” Jean-Luc plucks the sugar packet from my fingers. “I understand you’re being guarded. I just want to help. To make this easier on you.”

  Red wallpaper and framed lime-green posters from the movie cover the walls. Movie poster, movie poster, framed set of gnomes, movie poster. What is it that I’m supposed to find here? I finally figure out my sister’s second clue after days of wasting time in locations that don’t matter, and the words divine and research aren’t suggested anywhere. There are no posters of gods or Sherlock Holmes—not even a cross or a pair of glasses. Why lead me here?

  “Honestly, I’m not sure what I need,” I say, finally. “The food is supposed to be good.”

  A thoughtful line marks the space between his eyes. “Maybe we should ask someone if they know Angela. She could have been a regular since we only live a few blocks away.”

  His choice of words—we—causes me to suck in a breath. I keep forgetting he used to be Angela’s neighbor versus simply my embassy liaison.

  He waves over the waitress, then asks if she’s seen my twin sister before. She peers at me like she’s trying to memorize my pores but doesn’t recall. Our meal arrives, putting the mini interrogation to an end. We consume our lunch with pensive chewing. My summer vegetable galette—essentially a buckwheat crêpe with vegetables, Jean-Luc tells me—forms a bridge of stringy cheese to my plate, its steam rising then bursting against my lips with each bite. A lot has been accomplished in the past few days. But not enough. Never enough to find her.

  Jean-Luc sets down his burger. “This is a nice change for me from the office,” he muses. “I wasn’t sure you’d be into me helping, at first. You couldn’t have known how knowledgeable I might be about the city, whether I was a psycho or sociopath. I mean, I’m not—”

  “You just like to freak out women by talking about them?” I offer a half smile, then stab a square of thin pancake. His eyes are a light green up close, less hazel than flecked with gold.

  Jean-Luc smirks. “What I meant was I wasn’t sure whether you’d allow me to do my job, whether you would trust me. To be fair, sociopaths are pretty easy to spot, but psychopaths—those are the ones that sneak up on you.”

  The Amélie soundtrack loops back on the speaker system, the whine of the accordion mingling with surrounding conversations. I pick at my exotic food while eyeing the dozen fries untouched on Jean-Luc’s plate. My mouth waters at the thick sea salt, visible from my chair.

  I shrug. “I had my serial killer phase and learned a lot. They like to take things from the crime scene or leave something of themselves, keep trophies, all that stuff. I know about Bundy. You’re no Bundy.”

  Jean-Luc laughs. “No, I’m not. Then again, sociopaths are marked by their turbulent upbringing, some kind of trauma. Maybe an erratic nature, repeated law breaking. Clearly not me—I had a stable home, if with overly critical parents. Psychopaths, though—they lack empathy, unlike sociopaths. They’re charismatic, manipulative, great planners. That’s Bundy. That’s your Manson. And our Ogre des Ardennes. You can’t tell with them until it’s too late.”

  “You have an ogre?”

  Jean-Luc dips a fry in a ketchup-sriracha mixture. “Michel Fourniret? You haven’t heard of him? He’s not someone you wanted to meet in the late eighties.”

  “Got it. Well, I’ll be wary of you being too charming.”

  Jean-Luc turns a shade of red. Chewing his last bite takes forever before he swallows. “Actually, Shayna, I’ve got something to show you. Something I hope you’ll like. Nothing too charming, I swear.” A shy smile turns up the corners of his mouth. He peers at me from beneath thick, dark lashes, gauging my reaction.

  “Bathroom.” Warmth climbs my neck, and I slide from my chair before he notices. The weight of his gaze follows me until I bolt down a narrow hall in the back, through a door marked TOILETTES.

  I enter a shrine as the restroom door swings shut. Celebrity photos plaster the toilet stalls. Signatures from the film’s cast are scrawled across their headshots. The rest have been graffitied by fans and restaurant patrons.

  None contain any divine element I can identify—although I would accept a piece of burned toast with a dubious face of Buddha at this point.

  “Everything okay?” Jean-Luc asks when I return. “You look pale.”

  “Just tired.” Emotionally. Physically. I remain standing by the cleared table. “Ready?”

  The elation I felt at discovering Angela’s blog post, her note to me—Divine Research—has all but disappeared. The momentary confidence that buoyed my hopes when I realized those numbers were latitude and longitude has dissipated like a gray curl from a teenager’s cigarette here.

  “Not yet.” Jean-Luc gestures for me to sit. He pulls a sheaf of clipped papers from his knapsack, then lays it on the laminate tabletop. “For you.”

  He slides it across to me like a Bond operative. The cover sheet’s heading reads:

  Bureau des Nations Unies, Conseil de Sécurité.

  Office of the United Nations, Security Council.

  “What is this?”

  “I came home last night and did some research of my own.” Jean-Luc pats the space beside him. He scoots a foot over to show there’s no funny business. On his cell phone, he shows me a website with the title Les Archives de Paris 1. In the History section for 2015 is Angela’s name along with the title of her Sorbonne research paper—in English, given her bilingual undergrad degrees.

  “Wow,” I breathe. “I’ve never seen this. Are all undergrad papers published online?”

  Jean-Luc shakes his head. “This must have been one of the handful chosen by the department to represent that year’s work. You have to be a student at the Sorbonne to access the archives, or be granted permission like the embassy. This”—he taps the file with his index finger—“contains hard copies of her graded and published essays.”

  Hope blazes in my chest, renewed by Jean-Luc’s ingenuity. The papers seem to tingle in my hands, a new treasure trove of Angela’s work. A stupid grin tightens my cheeks, squinting my eyes. “I never would have found this.”

  “Happy to help.” He waves a hand.

  I shake my head in disbelief and turn back to the cell phone screen. “I wonder why Angela wrote about the homeless.”

  Jean-Luc relaxes into the booth. “Well, that was the summer of the record heat wave. It killed around seventy people who had no shelter and no air-conditioning. A lot of elderly died.”

  Despite this revelation not being the burned toast I was expecting, tears fill my eyes. “Of course she would devote her thesis to the forgotten.”

  “Your parents must be proud of you both—a Sorbonne doctoral candidate and a med school student.”

  A clumsy sound issues from my throat. “Ah, they were. Our parents died. About three years ago now. The embassy didn’t tell you that?”

  Jean-Luc’s mouth drops. He straightens to face me. “No, I had no idea. They only provide us with information they consider relevant to your visit. I’m so sorry.”

  I shrug, then reach for my bag. “Thank you. Drunk driver in San Diego. An accident, and sudden, when he careened into them on a narrow juncture.”


  Jean-Luc stops my hand. His eyes are glassy. “You know. Just in case no one has ever said this to you out loud: it’s not your fault. That they died.”

  “Excuse me?”

  He ignores my amused expression and, instead, he waits. Watching me. Attempting to force a response from the heavy silence that falls like a morose curtain between us. Amusement shifts to irritation; what kind of response is that, to a confession like mine? I’m split between anger and a desire to believe his words.

  The former wins out. “I’m aware, thanks. Is this a part of your bitch duties now, psychoanalyzing me?” I lower my gaze and stare at the gift he gave me seconds before. Whereas the action seemed so thoughtful and generous then, providing my sister’s essays now comes off as presumptuous, boundary crossing, and inappropriately intimate. He doesn’t even try to argue.

  “I’ve never lost anyone, not like a sibling,” he says, slowly. “My relationship with my parents isn’t great, but I can go visit them an hour away in Rouen if I want. However, guilt, I know. Growing up in a small town in Normandy, I got into some . . . trouble. My friend and I, Benoît, were pretty aimless. We were classic bourgeois kids—bored, with money we stole from our parents.” He pauses. I look up, and he’s staring at the table’s checkered design.

  “We started experimenting with hard drugs. Pot turned to cocaine, which for a split second turned to heroin. Benoît overdosed. The hospital was able to reverse the effects, and he pulled through the longest night of my life, but with consequences. He lost some cognitive ability while he was unconscious, before the paramedics came. Now he lives at home, going from one dead-end job to the next. While I play tour guide to attractive foreigners in Paris.” Jean-Luc exhales the words slowly, like they might detonate in his mouth.

  “That’s terrible. I’m so sorry,” I murmur, wishing I had something more meaningful to add.