“Yes. This painting, some papers—” He stopped talking, sucking in his lower lip like a child who had accidentally said the wrong thing.

“Papers?” I asked.

Chaudron said nothing, again steering me toward the front door. His hand was at my back when someone called out, “Bonjour!” A pretty young woman at the top of the staircase, tugging the sash of her silky robe tighter. “Je ne savais pas que nous avons de la compagnie.”

“He was just leaving,” Chaudron said.

“Vous êtes américain?” she asked.

“Guilty,” I said.

“You are not here about that, are you?” She tilted her chin toward the Vermeer. “C’est un faux, a fake, you know. Étienne’s great-grandfather—”

“Great-uncle—” said Chaudron.

“Cela n’a pas d’importance,” she said, then slid easily into the American idiom: “Whatever.”

“Monsieur Perrone was just leaving,” he said again, opening the door.

“Nice to meet you, Mrs. Chaudron.”

“Mrs. Chaudron?” The young woman giggled. “Pas de tout!”

“Have a nice trip to the south of France,” I said.

“Quoi?” the young woman looked perplexed. “No. Mexique.” She did a pirouette and disappeared down the upstairs hall. A moment later, there was music blasting.

“I thought you said the south of France.”

“You were mistaken,” Étienne Chaudron said and ushered me through the front door. It closed behind me with a thud.

56

A dark-haired young woman with a mournful face out of a Modigliani painting sat at a desk at Pelletier Editions. I introduced myself and asked if she knew my friend and fellow rare-book collector Antonio Guggliermo.

“I have not been here long,” she said.

I showed her the receipt I had found for a journal Guggliermo had purchased at her store.

She studied it a moment, seemed to be fighting tears as she perused a drawer of folders. She plucked one out labeled Guggliermo and handed it to me. “You may look through it yourself.”

I skimmed through about a dozen receipts, all for books sold to Guggliermo, but nothing for a journal.

“There should be copies of everything,” she said.

I told her I did not see a receipt for what I was looking for, and she said I could take the folder, that the shop would soon be closing, and she would no longer need the receipts.

“Closing?”

“Yes. For good. It belonged to my father, and I’m afraid he has…died.”

I said I was sorry and asked when.

“About…two months ago.”

“I hope you will forgive another question, but how did he die?”

She looked a bit shocked but answered. “It appears his heart gave out, though it is unclear. He was not very old and in good health. He was found here…in the shop”—she choked back a sob—“on the floor.”

“So he died of natural causes.”

“Yes, as I said—” She stopped, this time angling a suspicious look at me. “Are you police?”

“No, nothing like that.”

“Then what? Is there something you are not telling me?”

“No,” I said.

She swiped her tears away. “If there is no copy of the receipt, I cannot help you.”