I fired up the GPS system and scrolled through the preset addresses but found nothing suspicious. I pressed the first item—HOME—but though the hospital was barely two kilometers from my parents’ villa in La Constance, the GPS showed a winding route running for twenty kilometers along the coast toward Nice.

Confused, I released the hand brake and drove out of the parking lot, wondering what this place was that my mother considered home.

2.

Despite the pitch-dark and the driving rain, traffic was moving smoothly. In less than twenty minutes, the GPS told me I had arrived at my destination, a gated community midway between Cagnes-sur-Mer and Saint-Paul de Vence. This was Aurelia Park, the place where Francis had had his bachelor pad and where he had been murdered. I pulled over about thirty meters from the imposing wrought-iron gates. Since the wave of home invasions, security had been drastically ramped up. A night watchman who looked like he was ex-army was on duty.

A Maserati drove past and pulled up to the gates. There were two lanes; the left was for visitors, who had to report to the security guard, and the right was for residents, who drove past a sensor that scanned their license plates and automatically opened the gate. Letting the engine idle, I took some time to think. The initials AP referred to Aurelia Park, the development Francis had had a stake in building. Abruptly, I remembered that Aurelia was my mother’s middle name—one she much preferred to Annabelle. Instantly, I had another realization: Francis had given my mother the Mercedes convertible.

Had my mother and Francis been lovers? The thought had never occurred to me until then, but it didn’t seem entirely far-fetched. I put on my signal and turned into the lane reserved for residents. It was raining so hard that the guard would not be able to see my face. A sensor scanned the license plate of the Mercedes, and the gate swung open. If the plate was in the system, it meant my mother was a regular visitor here.

I drove slowly along the path that wound through a forest of pine and olive trees. Built in the late 1990s, Aurelia Park was famous for its landscaped Mediterranean grounds with its rare and exotic plant species. The development’s pièce de résistance, much praised by Architectural Digest, was an artificial river running through the vast gardens.

There were only thirty houses in the community, each secluded from the others. From the article in the Nouvel Observateur, I knew that Francis’s villa was number 27. It was at the top of a hill, surrounded by lush vegetation. In the darkness, I could make out palm trees and magnolias. I parked in front of another wrought-iron gate, this one flanked by thick rows of cypresses.