Page 28 of A Mother’s Love

It took Halley an hour at the embassy to fill out the forms to cancel her stolen passport and order a new one.

Millie sent copies of her last passport and driver’s license to her new phone, so at least she had some form of ID.

No one had turned in her stolen passport at the embassy.

And then she went back to the house. She’d had a really nice time with Bart.

He was good company, and he loved his job as CEO of one of the country’s leading corporations in electronics.

He seemed to have a great relationship with his son.

He had told her he never saw his ex-wife anymore.

She lived in Florida, but they were on pleasant terms, and had even danced together at their son’s wedding.

She had been remarried for twenty-five years, and had chosen well that time.

She had no other children and neither did Bart.

He said Ryan was enough, and he was proud of him.

Halley was happy when she got to the house.

She answered some emails, and called the girls.

They were out swimming. The doorbell rang as she hung up, and a messenger delivered a huge pink hat box from Fauchon, with all kinds of treats to eat, and a card from Bart.

“Please don’t starve. Use the card. Bart.

” He was fun and gentlemanly and a little bit old-school, and she liked that.

He was smart, kind, respectable, and had a huge job.

And why not go out with him? She was alone in Paris.

She thought Robert would understand and want her to be happy. She had mourned him for three years.

She put the alarm on, and as the night wore on she got more nervous, knowing the thief had her keys. She slept with the lights on again, and in the morning, her cellphone rang, and a male French voice sounded very serious and identified himself as Major Augustin Leopold. He sounded very official.

“Madame ’Olbrook?” He dropped the H in her name, but the caller spoke English fluently, despite his accent.

“Yes?” She couldn’t imagine who it was.

“I am an inspector of the S?reté Territoriale, of the police. We are a special branch for the investigation of high and VIP crimes on our territory. We have your dossier now. It has been turned over to us by the commissariat at the Grand Palais to pursue the stealing of your bag, because of its high value. We are working on it now. Would you be so kind as to come to my office, to complete further questions?”

“Yes, of course.” He sounded so solemn that it made her smile. But she was glad they were taking it seriously and had referred it to a special department of the police. At least they hadn’t brushed it off.

“Will you have time today?” he asked her.

“Yes.”

“At noon?”

“Fine.” He gave her the address, and she called the car service and got dressed.

The special branch for high-end thefts against individuals was in a small innocuous building in a quiet neighborhood and was very discreet. She was stopped as soon as she walked in by a tough-looking police officer who asked for her ID.

She showed him the copies on her phone and explained that the originals had been stolen. “That’s why I’m here to see Major Leopold.” The officer told her to wait, made a call, and then smiled at Halley, pointed the way to the elevator, and told her where to go.

His name was on the door when she got there, and she knocked and walked in cautiously.

A very large man stood up, very tall, with broad shoulders and a paunch.

He had a mustache, and reminded her of a walrus.

He was somewhere in his late fifties, and seemed military in his bearing as he greeted her.

“Madame ’Olbrook?” She nodded, slightly intimidated by his size if nothing else. The office was very spare, but there were a few photographs of the major with celebrities, including one of the French president pinning a medal on the major’s chest. Her case was in good hands.

He invited her to sit down in the narrow metal chair across his desk.

The office wasn’t luxurious, by any means.

Major Leopold was wearing slacks and a tweed jacket, had reddish brown hair, and looked more Anglo-Saxon than French.

Two uniformed police in bulletproof vests walked in and out when they saw he was busy.

“Your bag upsets me,” he said, as she sat at attention. She felt a little bit like a schoolgirl in the headmaster’s office. “This should not happen to visitors in Paris. And your bag is very valuable. On the form, you said you paid fifteen thousand U.S. dollars for it.”

“Yes, I did.”

“Do you know what it’s worth now?” She shook her head.

“That bag was a special order. It has a small stamp on it to indicate that. One of my men went to Hermès yesterday, and they showed him a similar stamp. That bag, in that size, today would sell for seventy-five thousand dollars. For a special order, you must add thirty percent more, so another twenty or twenty-five thousand U.S., and there was only one made in that size, so it is safe to assume it is worth one hundred thousand dollars, and in the right hands, for a person desperate to own such a bag, you could possibly sell it for two hundred thousand dollars. But very certainly it is worth one hundred thousand now, if they could even replicate it. Hermès told my officer that it would be nearly impossible to find so many similar skins today for a bag that size. That is an object of great value, and extremely rare, which entirely changes the nature of the crime, and the punishment. When we catch the man who stole it, he will with absolute certainty go to prison.” She was impressed, and Major Leopold made it sound like the thief had stolen a valuable work of art.

She was surprised that he didn’t scold her for being wasteful or for having spent too much money on herself, even at a lower price, and that he treated the value of the bag, and its origins, with great respect.

He handed her a photograph of a pleasant-looking man in his forties, clean-shaven, good haircut, ordinary face, possibly an Italian suit, and wearing a large gold watch.

She recognized the man from the security video at the restaurant.

“The watch is worth five hundred thousand dollars. He stole it a year ago, in the south of France. We have been looking for him ever since. He stole your bag. His brother is in the drug trade, he is in luxury goods. They’re Colombian.

They are high-end professionals. He is very elusive and clever.

I want to find him. We have contacted all of our informants.

I want to bring him to justice and send him to prison,” he said with determination.

“I don’t suppose you can track down my bag,” she said, feeling nostalgic for a minute and shocked by its current value.

She wouldn’t have used it as a travel bag if she had known what it was worth today.

And now she’d lost it. She was sad because she loved it, it was such a beautiful piece, with a bright red interior.

Leopold handed her the list of the contents of the bag she’d filled out at the Grand Palais station, and he asked her to make sure she hadn’t forgotten anything. She read it and said she hadn’t, as he nodded at her.

“You know, in this office, with the kind of objects and people we deal with, anything is possible. If people steal a cellphone, an ordinary purse, something small, it disappears. They throw it away, give it to a friend, sell it for a few euros. But at this level, with this kind of merchandise, it’s complicated.

If they sell it, they can make a lot of money, but not as much as you would get selling it in a reputable way, like an auction.

But a bag like this is not so easy to place.

It’s recognizable, there is only one. It is very high quality.

He may have sold it already, or maybe not.

Or he might give it to his mother or his girlfriend.

I’m not promising we will get it back, but we have a chance.

And I will do everything in my power to return it to you.

” She was touched by how intense he was, and they had done some very good research already.

They even had a photo of the bag from the Hermès archives.

It made her sad to see it. She wanted her bag back, which she knew was unlikely, and it seemed foolish to be so attached to a bag.

Major Leopold handed her another list then. They were charges on her credit cards that the Colombian thief had made.

“Do you know any of these stores?” he asked her. “Have you purchased anything there?” She read it carefully, shook her head and handed it back to him. “These charges were all made after the bag was stolen, in one area of Paris, perhaps where he lives.”

“My assistant in New York canceled my cards within an hour after the theft, when she got my text.”

“Some stores don’t check. American Express notified us of the activity on the stolen card.

You will not be billed, but these will be added to the charges against him.

His name is Tomás Maduro, but he uses many names.

We know a great deal about him. Now we have to find him.

He blends in well, which is how he steals where he does.

He fits right in. He eats in the restaurant and steals a bag.

He goes to a theater or the opera, and he steals a bracelet, and the woman wearing it never feels it leave her wrist. Very professional.

He and his brother are pros. We will find him, Madame ’Olbrook.

I don’t know when, but we will.” He stood up and thanked her for coming, and assured her he would be in touch, even after she went back to New York.