Meanwhile I took a tactical vest and crammed as much ammo as I could into it, plus the roll of duct tape. I looked around the room. Maria and Madame Vaugeois had gone to rest. Nazari was showing Miriam how to use the Beretta M9. Bonnet brushed past me, and out the door. I figured he was using the head. In the corner of my eye the white maps waved in the breeze coming through the old window.

Then something clicked in my mind, like a marble dropping into a chain-reaction machine.

The nagging problem, the intuition that something was not quite right. It was the white pieces of map paper. One on top of the other. I looked at Nazari. She was already looking at me. We were tuned up, on the same wavelength.

I said, “The fact-pattern.”

“What about it?”

“I think I can make an addition.”

“How so?”

I pulled the paper receipt that I’d got for the coffee and croissants out of my pocket and handed it to her. “Hold that. It’s the receipt from the tennis club coffee hut.” Then I put my fingers into the little change pocket of my jeans and pulled out the crumpled receipt I’d found way back, when I was searching the Woodcutter’s empty office. I held it up. “Remember this?” She nodded. I examined the older receipt, then handed it to her. “Looks the same.”

There was electronic printing in dark violet against the white paper. Five items. No words on the receipt, just numbers, prices and codes. The top right side had a seven-digit computer printed code. Nazari looked at it, looked at the new one from the coffee hut. Two white pieces of paper, one next to the other.

She said, “It is the same. See the numbers up top?”

I looked at the numbers up top, which were the same.

She said, “It’s the retail identifier. Same retailer.”

“Same place.”

She looked down at the receipts, then up at me. “The tennis club. Everyone goes there.”

“Who’s everyone?”

“The rich guys. Rigalle went there, the mayor, Antoine goes there. It’s the spot. Bonnet goes there as well of course.”

I said, “But not everyone had a reason to be visiting the Woodcutter.”

“Yes, that must narrow things down some.”

And then the marble dropped again, like a definitive click.

“And there’s another thing.”

“What’s that?”

“Tennis balls.”

She looked at me as if I were making a joke. But I guess my face didn’t look so funny, because she just examined my eyes, like she was searching for something there, rationally and with curiosity. She wanted the facts. “What about tennis balls, Keeler?”

“Take a look at the receipt I found in the Woodcutter’s office. There are five items listed. Three of them are the same price, five sixty-nine. Then you’ve got a couple of higher ticket items. Is that right?”