"Ever seen him around?" She showed Joel the photo Elise Peltier had left of her father.

"That's the man who was assaulted?"

"You could say that."

Joel shrugged. "Not a local in here. But the older guys like Regine's."

Aimee walked past the back of the Claridge, the elegant hotel, then by a bote de nuit-no name-with quilted gold leather doors for an entrance, and reached the Pharmacie Optique du Docteur Athias, its name bright in green letters. Another architectural victim of the seventies, looking out of place among the glittering neon club marquees behind the Champs-elysees.

It would still be a while before the night action got going. There was no point in surveilling Suzy now-that wouldn't bear fruit until later. What could she do for the next few hours? What would her father do?

He'd start at Regine's and work his way down the street. But how would she get these bouncers to talk to "a kid" like her?

She had an idea. She'd treat it like an experiment in the lab: she'd try out a hypothesis, then categorize what worked and didn't in two mental columns-one for positive trial outcomes, one for negative ones.

She sidled up to the bouncer who stood, arms crossed, in front of the black facade under the silver letters spelling out Regine's. The half-open door revealed a slice of the glitz factor inside.

"Have you seen my grandfather?" she asked innocently. "We live around the corner, but he wanders sometimes, forgets where he is. He hasn't come home, we're worried."

She showed him the photo. As he studied it, she considered how natural it felt to lie to someone to get information out of them.

"Desole." He shook his head.

She got the same response with varying degrees of sympathy from all the club bouncers. So far, her hypothesis was not testing well; several points in the minus column.

The last bouncer, whose hair glistened with gel, shook his head. "I'm substituting. Raoul, the regular, is sick. Check with the bartender."

In the deserted club, purple strobes flashed, "Love Shack" by the B-52s blared on the speakers. That song was everywhere. The smell of clove cigarettes tickled her nose.

"You're early, ma chere," said the bartender, an untied bow tie hanging down his pristine white shirt as he polished glasses.

"Sorry to bother you, but it's my grand-pere. We live on rue Washington but he wanders, you know, forgets where he is. Seen him?"

He didn't even look up. "A missing person, eh? Talk to the flics."

"That's my next step." She sighed. "He used to come to the clubs in the forties and sometimes he thinks he's still a young man."

"Don't they all?" said a middle-aged woman with bright red hair. She heaved an armload of account books on the black bar counter. "Accounts done," she said to the bartender, and then, turning to Aimee, "An old, lost gentleman? Let me have a look."

Aimee concealed her excitement. Showed her the photo.

The woman pulled her glasses down from her head.

"His name is Bruno Peltier. Look familiar?"

"Been a while. But he came in several times."

Ooh, the woman remembered him. Had Aimee hit pay dirt already? "Alone?"

She shook her head. "Can't remember. You sure he's as forgetful as you think?"

Aimee tried for a perplexed look. Then shock.

"Mon Dieu, did Grand-pere run off with a girl?"

The redhead shot the bartender a quizzical look. From the corner of her eye Aimee saw him shake his head slightly.

"Not one of ours," the redheaded bookkeeper said. "Again, haven't seen him for a while. Bonne chance."

Glad to get out of the blaring music and clove smell, Aimee stepped into the cold street. Looks like Bruno had liked the nightlife. But she'd tracked down a Bruno sighting. Score one in the plus column.

She huddled in a doorway. With the windchill factor, she needed a down coat. What could she do now? She couldn't go home to change, didn't relish waiting hours in a cafe for Suzy.

Several shopping arcades from the Champs-elysees connected to rue de Ponthieu. The Club Alibaba cornered one of them. She waited until the bouncer got involved in a conversation.

Could she slip by him?

Just then Suzy and two other women sashayed past him and into the Alibaba's door under the club marquee. She took a quick photo, but the bouncer looked up and saw her. Wagged his finger at her as if she'd been a bad girl.

Let him think he owned the street. He didn't own the arcade. At least she'd seen Suzy go inside.

As a truck passed, she ducked into the arcade-a dimly lit seventies steel-and-chrome affair with a bunch of shuttered boutiques and a small bar. Deserted on a cold autumn night. She saw what she took for the Alibaba's back delivery door. Tried the handle. Locked.

Sheltered from the wind, she kept an eye on Alibaba's back door. A waiter wearing a long white apron and black vest came out of the small bar and lit a cigarette. He exhaled, blowing smoke rings. She was about to cadge a cigarette when he glanced at his watch, pulled out a key chain, unlocked the Alibaba's back door and went inside. The staff must work in both establishments.

She ran and caught the door, pinching her fingertips in the gap before it shut. Somehow she wedged the door open and slid inside. Damn, she'd have a blood blister.

She needed to act quickly. A wall of thudding sound reverberated in the dim corridor; she felt the pounding of Duran Duran in the soles of her boots.

She found Suzy applying eye makeup in a communal dressing area partitioned by curtains. A stale odor came from an empty box of chocolates.

"Alors, how did you get in here?" Suzy expelled air in annoyance. "Shouldn't you be in bed?"

Instead of rising to Suzy's bait, Aimee shrugged. She had to get something out of this woman.

"Wouldn't you like to make extra for just sitting on your derriere, Suzy?" She leaned toward the makeup-smudged mirror. "Me, I only get paid if I deliver. I'm in school and this is how I make my rent, compris? I live in a place smaller than yours and Romy's."

A slight exaggeration. Several of Suzy's chambres de bonnes could fit into Aimee's seventeenth-century townhouse apartment on the Ile Saint-Louis. Minor details.

"Does this jog your memory?" Aimee dropped a hundred francs and the matchbook into the chocolate box. If she didn't pace herself, she'd run out.

Suzy lit a cigarette. "Men on the verge of cardiac arrest aren't my type."

"Fine." Aimee reached to take back the note. The carrot-and-stick approach her father used. Too bad she didn't have a stick.

Suzy's hand stopped her. Offered her a cigarette. Aimee took one. And accepted a light.

Thupt went the flare of the match. The tobacco jolt hit her, as good a rush as the espresso.

"I only worked at Le Gogo maybe for a week and a half in October."

The date clicked into place. Bruno Peltier had died on October 9.

Aimee pulled out the photo again. Always make sure, her father said.

"And you know him, you're sure?"

Suzy nodded. "Saw him twice."

"Go on. What was he like?"

Suzy glanced around. Stabbed out her cigarette, stood and closed the door.

"Never flashed his money but appreciated good things," said Suzy.

"A typical old money type?"

Suzy thought, then shrugged. "Depends what you call typical."

"Loaded and discrete?"

"That's funny you say that. He's a provincial, like me-not old money. I went to meet him and his friends once for a drink on Avenue Gabriel."

Ooh, this was working. Aimee nodded in what she hoped looked like encouragement. "Which place?"

Suzy thought. "That chic spot, off the Champs-elysees."

"Which one, Suzy?" She heard her own eagerness, tried to soften her voice and sound more encouraging. "Can you remember?"

"You know, the old hunting lodge . . . Laurent, that's right, it's called Laurent."

That fit with Elise's statement. Score this in the plus column.

"I drank champagne, then split. Not my crowd."

Now a minus.

She shook her head. "I don't understand. Why would you leave, Suzy?"

Suzy balled up a chocolate wrapper. Twisted it between her thumb and forefinger. "He wanted eye candy, tu comprends? To show off. But I got another booking. Left. Glad not to face a dinner with a bunch of old farts."

"The night of October ninth?"

Suzy shrugged.

Could she have been with him the night Bruno was murdered? What were the odds that his friends had gathered two nights that same week at Laurent? But hadn't his friends told Elise's mother that Bruno hadn't shown up for dinner?

Aimee pulled out her school pocket calendar, found the date and pointed to it. "A Monday, October ninth. Remember?"

Suzy's brows knit in thought. "My mother had a gallbladder operation the next day, I remember. Let's see. The operation was on Tuesday."

"You're sure?"

"Yes. I had to get up early the next day to get to my mother's. There are no direct trains from Gare de Lyon to Cantal."

Cantal, a town in the Auvergne region. "My grandmother's from near there. Whereabouts?"

Suzy made a face. "Aurillac, the land of old geezers-that's all that's left down there."

Aimee thought through what Suzy had just told her. People lied sometimes, her father always said, and sometimes they lied for reasons unrelated to an investigation.

If Suzy accompanied Bruno to Laurent, yet his friends said he'd never showed up, someone was lying.

Aimee's pulse sped up. Her father had told Elise Peltier that random murders were sometimes the hardest to solve-but if the people who had last seen Bruno Peltier alive were lying, it didn't seem like such a random murder after all. Why had the police declined to follow up?

Was Suzy part of the setup? But why had she admitted going there-implicated herself-if she was?

Aimee wished her father were here.

Suzy took her brush and applied eyeliner.

"Last time I saw him, kid. Never heard from him again. I've helped you now."

Aimee reached in her bag. What bonus could she give? "Tell me about his friends."

"We were in the bar. Like I said, got another booking and left before they came."

"Did he talk to anyone?"

"Maybe. The bartender? Look, I've got to go."

Aimee took out another hundred-franc bill and her card and left it on the table. Hoped that looked legitimate enough. "That's got both my numbers and my pager, if you remember something else."

She added the small bottle, part of a sample packet, of Chanel No. 5 she'd acquired at Galeries Lafayette when she'd splurged on Chanel lipstick.

"Chanel. Nice touch, kid. You're more professional than most."

A rush of pride surged through Aimee. Wow, she had gotten real information from this woman.

Suzy stood up, giving Aimee the full-length view of her micro silver mini and matching boots. "Bruno's wife's checking up on him?"

"Not anymore." Aimee shook her head. "Why's the bouncer so protective of you?"

Suzy didn't meet her eyes. Aimee saw a slight tremble as Suzy slid the cigarettes into her bag. "Jealous, maybe?" Suzy shrugged.

Instinct kicked in. Suzy was lying.

"What are you afraid of, Suzy?"