Free Murder on the Ile Saint-Louis by Cara Black Page A

shopping.

    SHE STARED AT the Monoprix aisle crowded with diapers, formula, teething rings, bibs, nonirritant soap . . . endless. How could tiny babies require all this? Every package bore labels color coded to age and weight. Endless varieties of formula, including soy and lactose-free. A large display printed with symptoms and arrows cross-referenced photos of homeopathic herbs for diaper rash, floral remedies for colic, a veritable rainbow of products for ages zero to five; it resembled the duty-free brochure on an Air France 747. Her mind balked; she was overwhelmed. Unless it was for shoes, shopping wasn’t her forte.
    Did it have to be this complicated, did she need to take courses? In Madagascar, women squatted by thatched huts, letting their diaperless babies do their business in the white sand, then rubbed them with coconut oil. No vast crowded Monoprix aisle for them.
    Her hand brushed a booklet, Using a Pacifier or Not . . . the Hidden Traumas. Here was a new world, new worries . . . pacifier trauma?
    She had to get a grip; it couldn’t be that difficult. She looked for the newborns section, figuring the baby weighed less than five kilos, like her laptop. But she stood devastated by the array of baby wipes, scented and unscented; shampoos; vitamins. She would need hours to read the labels, to compare and match them to the baby’s skin condition and digestive disposition. She didn’t have that kind of time; she had work to do—a body that had been found in the Seine to identify, her security programming assignment to complete . . .
    She needed a method to bring order out of confusion.
    Within three minutes she’d located several women with infants. One held a baby in a carrier across her chest, its pink knit cap with rabbit ears poking up, who looked the right size. She trailed the woman to the baby aisle. Every time the woman selected an item from the shelf and put it in her cart, Aimée followed suit.
    With a full cart she stood at the cash register.
    “You sure you want the night-control protection diapers for a newborn and for a ten-month-old?” the cashier asked with a wink. “Had them close together, eh?”
    Aimée reddened. “ Oui . . . non , I mean you can’t be too careful at night.”
    A woman chuckled behind her in the long checkout line. She stammered merci , grabbed her change. Ran out and hailed a taxi, jumped in, and piled her bags on the seat.
    She was late. Ahead, a snarl of buses and cars sat in midday stalled traffic. Pedestrians filled the zebra-striped crosswalks; the outdoor café tables on the sidewalks spilled over as the lunch crowd took advantage of the unexpected heat.
    “Quai d’Anjou. Fifty francs extra if you skirt the traffic on rue Saint Antoine,” she said, perspiration dampening her collar.
    The driver grinned and hit his meter.
    Ten minutes later, she set her bags down in her sun-filled kitchen, where the wonderful scent of rosemary filled the air.
    “Bought out the whole baby section, have you?” Michou pulled out pureed broccoli tips, yellow squash in small jars. “Quite the organic gourmet . . . but a thing this little won’t eat solids for a few months.”
    She was useless. She couldn’t even buy the right food.
    The baby cooed, wrapped in Aimée’s father’s soft old flannel bathrobe. Michou had improvised a bassinet from an empty computer-paper box resting on the table.
    A surge of protectiveness overwhelmed Aimée. Duty—no law—required her to turn the baby over to the authorities. But the mother knew her name and had begged her not tell the flics . Until the autopsy result revealed whether Orla was the baby’s mother, she’d keep her and care for her.
    She put the future out of her mind . She planned to monitor Regnault’s system, deal with their other contracts, and master diapers this afternoon . She lifted the lid of the copper pot simmering on the stove, swiped her finger across the surface, and licked it. “Ratatouille!” The last time