The Aimee Leduc Companion

working on a tight deadline when she gets a phone call that disrupts all her progress. The female voice on the other end begs Aimée to go out into her courtyard, insists that her life is in danger, that Aimée must not call the police, then hangs up. Aimée’s project is in jeopardy, and her partner, René, will be furious if she botches this assignment, but she can’t ignore the distress in the mysterious caller’s voice. That doesn’t mean she’s prepared for what she finds in the courtyard, though: a newborn baby, wrapped in a blood-stained beaded jacket.
    Aimée wants to track down the baby’s mother, but when a young woman’s body washes up in the Seine on the shores of the Ile Saint-Louis, the little island where Aimée herself lives, she realizes the situation is very dangerous. Paris has been rife with bomb threats linked to protesting environmental groups, and with a little investigating Aimée becomes convinced the baby, the body in the Seine, and the protests are somehow linked. Not that Aimée can afford distraction from her paying work right now. Leduc Detective is in bad financial straits, but despite themselves, Aimée and René have both fallen in love with the baby girl, whom Aimee nicknames Stella. Taking care of Stella’s needs—and protecting her from whoever hurt or killed her missing mother—must take priority over their computer security contract with a big publicity firm. Meanwhile, she’s following leads to the infant’s mother that take her to a radical dispossessed Polish prince, a community of homeless people who live in the sewer caves of the Seine, and a sexy documentary film maker. Can Aimée finish her security job, figure out who Stella belongs to, track down the missing mother, and protect herself and her friends from the danger that is circling them, all while juggling a newborn infant?
    Characters

    Series characters whose info has changed since the previous book:
    Martine is still doing investigative reporting and writing, but solely with L’Express now. She is still living with her boyfriend Gilles and his children. Martine has three married sisters, all with children; one sister is Liliane .
    Non–series characters appearing in this book:
    Alphonse (trucker in accident with René )
    Bernard (runs cheese shop)
    Cachou, Madame ( Aimée’s concierge)
    Caplan, Jean (secondhand shop owner)
    Ciel, Viktor (brigadier of CRS)
    de Laumain (Regnault employee with suspicious e-mails)
    Deroche, Mathieu (Alstrom CEO)
    de Rosnay, Saj (Leduc Detective’s tame computer hacker)
    Fache, Brigitte (sponsor of MondeFocus protest)
    Franck (MondeFocus)
    Gaelle (fellow organizer of MondeFocus protest)
    Hélène (old clochard, sometime employee of Comte Linski ), sister Paulette
    Jules (sewer denizen)
    Landrou, Nelie (another protester)
    Leclerc, Gabriel (terrorist)
    Linski, Comte ( Krzysztof’s uncle)
    Linski, Krzysztof (20-year-old Sorbonne student and the crown prince of Poland)
    Lorrain, Col. (Ministry of Interior, the Comte’s old comrade)
    Magali ( René’s sometime girlfriend)
    Martin ( René’s contact at the telephone company)
    Mathilde (young babysitter at Martine’s )
    Michou (transvestite, René’s next-door neighbor, Viard’s partner)
    Momo (gas station employee)
    Montard (at baking academy)
    Nadia ( Vavin’s assistant)
    Nederovique , Claude (filmmaker)
    Nicolas (cameraman)
    Pascal (MondeFocus)
    Radziwill, Jadwiga (old woman at Chopin party)
    Ravic (at reception desk at morgue)
    Ristat, Daniel ( Martine’s L’Express journalist)
    Sabine (co-owner of Aimée’s corner café), brother Janou
    Sezeur, Capt. Michel (River Police)
    Stas (gas station boss)
    Thiers, Orla (MondeFocus)
    Vavin, Édouard ( Regnault’s head of publicity)
    Viard, Boris (runs the police ballistics lab)
    Xaviera (cleaning woman at theater)
    Yves (former Aimèe boyfriend, now Cairo bureau chief)
    ANIMALS
    Bibo (Jadwiga Radziwill’s Chihuahua)
    Nemo (River Police German shepherd)
    Pirandello ( Ravic’s parrot)

    Ile Saint-Louis

    1. Aimée’s apartment, 17 quai d’Anjou. You never win an argument with plumbers or electricians or gardiennes.
    2. Polish Foundation: Bibliothèque Polonaise, 6, Quai d’Orléans.
    3. Institut du Monde arabe: why do the CRS know more about this demonstration than the demonstrators do?
    4. MondeFocus office, 38 quai d’Orléans: a matter of trust.
    5. A garage where you wouldn’t expect one: boulevard Henri IV.
    6. Place Bayre: by day, a children’s playground; by