No Honor Among Thieves

by Nell Goddin

  Molly paused, surprised that she’d never even considered it. “I…I don’t know. I guess I’ll talk to Ben about it. I didn’t change my name when I married Donny. Just not something I ever thought much about.”

  “Oh, you’re so modern. And I don’t mean that in a good way.”

  Molly laughed. She was suddenly feeling peckish and was about to offer to make a hearty breakfast before they got to work, when her cell buzzed. She picked up her phone and looked at the screen, a text from her close friend Lawrence:

  Bernard Petit found dead in his house. Wasn’t he a client of Ben’s?

  Molly stared at the words. A very pleasant little tingle was spreading through her body at the prospect of a new case, though as usual it was only a prospective case so far. Quickly she texted Ben to let him know. She remembered that Petit had grown children—maybe Ben could get somewhere with them?

  “Molly?” said Constance.

  “It’s nothing. At least, well, it might be something. Tell me this, though: what connection does Lawrence have that he finds everything out before I do? It’s been driving me mad for years.”

  Constance just smiled. “So somebody got offed? Hopefully no one we like?”

  “You’re very cavalier about murder, Constance.”

  “You’re one to talk. So who is it?”

  “Bernard Petit, from Bergerac. Though as far as we know, he wasn’t offed, as you so charmingly put it. According to Lawrence, he was found dead in his house. Most likely natural causes.”

  “Didn’t know him. But I’ve heard of him. Because people love to talk about people they don’t like.”

  “True enough,” said Molly. “Well, shall we get to it?”

  They collected buckets and mop, dusters and dustpans, and got over to the cottage.

  “Almighty Lord Jesus!” said Constance.

  “Have you suddenly got religion?”

  “It’s freezing in here, Molls. If anyone’s showing up today, you better jack this heat up!”

  “Yeah, yeah,” said Molly, who had a constitutional aversion to spending money on heating bills. As she adjusted the thermostat, her cell buzzed again, another text from Lawrence.

  Head bashed in

  “Oh!” said Molly, and showed the screen to Constance.

  “Now we’re talking!” said Constance. “I’m not going to feel even a little bit bad. Everyone—and I mean everyone—thought he was a massive jerk. You get what you pay for!”

  Molly paused for a moment, then shook her head. “I think I see what you mean. Though maybe while you’re wishing people dead you could offer up a prayer for their souls at the same time.”

  “Bernard Petit had no soul. Have you heard a word I said?”

  Molly tossed Constance a rag. “Wipe down the bathroom, will you? I’ll dust. As usual there’s like three inches of dust from these stone walls.”

  Constance disappeared into the bathroom and Molly heard her spraying cleaner all over everything. “Where are they from?” Constance called out.

  “Virginia. And New York City.”

  “Ah!”

  “Someday, Constance, we will take a trip there together. Though I’m afraid it will never live up to your expectations.”

  “Are you kidding? New York? Of course it will. Sweet Mary and Joseph!”

  Molly ducked her head into the bathroom. “What?”

  “Look at what your guests left behind,” said Constance, pointing into the cabinet under the sink.

  Perched next to a bottle of floor cleaner was a fat roll of bills. Molly plucked it out and slipped off the elastic band.

  “Fifties,” she said, eyes big. “There must be a few thousand euros here. What in the world?”

  Constance was practically drooling. “If, uh, if you’re at a loss about what to do with it,” she said, patting Molly on the shoulder. “I’ve got a few ideas. And you know, when it comes to ideas, mine are super-ultra-good.”

  Molly flipped through the bills to make sure the fifties weren’t just on the ends of the wad. Nope, it looked to be all fifties, through and through.

  Curious.

  The Donalds had stayed in the cottage last, having left only the day before. They were an unassuming couple, not given to chit-chat.

  “The Donalds?” said Molly, incredulous.

  “Those two little mice? Well, just goes to show—you never know about people.”

  “True enough,” said Molly. “You never know.”

  4

  Ben wasted no time after hearing from Molly about Petit. He had been visiting with his friend Rémy at his organic farm, who was taking advantage of the cold weather to enjoy a bit of leisure. Rémy waved goodbye from the doorway as Ben sped off down the twisty road on his way to Bergerac, trying to remember everything he could about the Petits.

  The case Petit hired him for had ended inconclusively. Petit claimed someone had been stealing from him, and Ben had dutifully set up video cameras and beefed up overall security but never found the culprit.

  Ben wasn’t entirely sure there was a culprit. First of all, the items missing were a bit strange: pillowcases and shoe trees, not exactly the sorts of things that make burglars’ eyes light up. So Ben had guessed that whoever was doing it was trying to get under Petit’s skin, gaslight him, make him feel persecuted—all of which seemed to work, more or less, though as far as Ben knew, there had been no more thefts, which seemed to satisfy Petit well enough (though he complained—often—about Ben’s failure to identify the thief, he did pay the fee without complaint). Ben had written in the file that it was possible Petit had made the whole thing up, though he had no evidence or any kind of motivation for Petit to do such a thing.

  Petit’s children were grown, both at university, a son and a daughter. Petit had not spoken of them warmly and Ben thought the relationships were strained. Same with the ex-wife; the divorce was fairly recent, if Ben remembered correctly.

  The Petit house was not quite grand, but close to it, a solidly-built upper-middle class house, the color of terra cotta with a slate roof. It was three stories high with a garden in back, on one of Bergerac’s nicer streets. Had Petit left any sort of estate? Was there a will? Were the children to divide everything? And how about business associates? What line of work was he in? Ben couldn’t quite remember, if Petit had ever told him. Ben knew Petit to be an annoying jackass…maybe he was worse than that, maybe he had finally screwed over the wrong person. So often, thought Ben, everything devolves to money. He guessed that whatever had happened to Bernard Petit, money would turn out to be the largest part of it.

  Seeing a blue and white police car in front of Petit’s house, Ben parked down the block and walked with his head down and hands jammed in his pockets, the frigid wind tearing down the street and hurting his face. He saw a white van, too, and was glad he arrived before the body was taken away.

  Of course, Ben Dufort was a private citizen, no longer Chief of the Castillac gendarmerie for years now. But he was old friends with nearly every cop who worked in the area, with Bergerac no exception.

  “Bonjour, Enzo,” he said with a grin, when the officer opened the door.

  “Ben!” said Enzo, waving him in. “How is everything? You show up to every murder within two hundred kilometers, eh?”

  Ben shrugged and asked after Enzo’s wife and children.

  “They are superb,” said Enzo. “I’d show you some pictures but you know how fussy—” he jerked his head to the side, to indicate where his boss was, just as the boss rounded the corner.

  “Ah, Benjamin!” said Léo Lagasse, a big man who had been a detective in Bergerac since forever. The two friends kissed cheeks. “Haven’t seen you in an age. What have been up to, besides sniffing around murders that don’t concern you?” He smiled widely, showing a gray tooth on one side. The skin on his face had patches of red, pink, and white, giving him a colorful but not healthy appearance.

  “Petit was my client not long ago. Thought I might be of some assistance.”r />
  “Uh huh. Sure you did.” Lagasse grinned, not fooled for a second. “Buy me lunch and I might toss you a few crumbs. But it’s gotta be at La Grenouille. I’m famished,” he said, patting his belly with a woeful expression though it was only nine in the morning.

  Ben nodded. “I’ll call for a reservation. May I see the body?”

  “By all means. Reservations are rare as hen’s teeth, as I don’t have to tell you. Their classic sauce espagnole is sublime. You’ve had it? It’s the sort of dish you have dreams about afterward. And I don’t mean dreams of dyspepsia either.”

  “I’ve only eaten there once, actually. Years ago.”

  Lagasse looked shocked. “Who are you? Have you forgotten that an excellent meal is the highest achievement man can hope for? The pinnacle of human existence?”

  “Been busy,” said Ben, smirking.

  Lagasse just shook his head. “In there,” he said, pointing down the hall. “It’s a messy one.”

  Ben took a deep breath to prepare himself, never having developed the thick skin of some in law enforcement, who could arrive at a murder scene or a terrible accident and take the whole thing in stride. To Ben, the pain of the deceased and the deceased’s friends and relatives was all too close and could not be pushed away. This tendency—some might call it sentimental, but it was not—both hindered and helped him in his investigative work.

  He turned the corner to the study, his eyes going straight to Petit and his poor head. Blood spattered the elaborate toile wallpaper, and Ben immediately saw the heavy glass ashtray on the floor, presumably the murder weapon. He crouched down to look from a different perspective, careful not to enter the room. Backing up, he returned to Lagasse near the front door.

  “I’m waiting on forensics, they’ll take pictures before we touch anything. You saw the ashtray?”

  “Couldn’t miss it. With any luck you’ll get some good prints.”

  “I don’t expect to be lucky. Never do. Makes for less disappointment. Now La Grenouille? That never disappoints. Perhaps that is the quality that puts the finishing touch on its perfection, the absolute reliability of its pleasures. Can’t say the same about most things, I’m afraid. Certainly not most people.”

  Dufort shrugged, feeling a little impatient with Lagasse’s chatter. “Petit has two children, grown. I might have their contact information but not with me. Also, an ex-wife who does not live in the area. Travels a lot, according to Petit.”

  “From what I know about him, everyone around him wanted to keep their distance as much as possible. So it’s no surprise his family’s not living close by.”

  “Ah, it’s a different world these days,” said Dufort. “People are so much more mobile than they used to be. I wouldn’t necessarily make anything of it.”

  Lagasse raised his bushy eyebrows way up.” Oh, you wouldn’t, eh? Going to start instructing me on what to make of what, in my own investigation?”

  Ben wasn’t sure whether his friend was joking. “Just thinking out loud, Léo, don’t get your diapers in a twist.”

  Lagasse let out a belly laugh, causing Enzo to jump. “Okay, old fart, I want you gone before the techs get here. Don’t need anybody grumbling about my letting civilians into the crime scene.”

  “Did you get the video from the cameras?”

  “Oh, you know all about the cameras, eh? Well, somebody bashed them in as thoroughly as Petit’s head.”

  “That’s a shame. Any day all right for that lunch? Reservations are really that hard to get?”

  “Very. Rare as unicorn penises. Just let me know the soonest you can get one, I’ll be there.”

  Ben laughed, nodded to Enzo, and went out to the street.

  It was nowhere near lunchtime, but he knew a place over near the cathedral that sold the most delicious salted caramels. He thought they might be the perfect thing to chew on while he reviewed the scant facts of the Petit case, in the hope of turning up some ideas about who had murdered the unpleasant man…and how he could get hired to solve the crime.

  Cocktail hour found Ben and Molly at La Baraque. Molly was on her second kir, Ben drank beer, and they munched on potato chips and salted peanuts while talking over the new murder.

  “So if Petit got his head cracked open with a glass ashtray, can we assume the ashtray was Petit’s and the murderer just picked it up when he got there?”

  “I think that’s fair.”

  “The ashtray was definitely the weapon?”

  “Looked like it. It was on the floor near the body, and the wound was unquestionably made with something heavy, not a fist. I suppose the killer could have taken the weapon with him—or her—but I should be able to find out from Léo when I take him to lunch. It’s the sort of information he’ll delight in holding over my head to torment me, but eventually he’ll tell me.”

  “Okay, good. So…is it possible the murder was unplanned? Who goes to murder someone and doesn’t take a weapon? Or chooses an ashtray to bring? Neither of those options sound at all likely.”

  “As you’re fond of reminding me, ‘unlikely’ does not mean ‘impossible.’”

  Molly smirked at him but nodded in agreement. They sipped their drinks. Ben ate another handful of chips. “I would say,” he said, “that there is a decent chance it was unplanned—someone was visiting, there was an argument that went really wrong—except that Petit was sitting at his desk with his back to the hall. If tension was that high, do you think he’d have done that, turned his back to the other person, putting himself in such a vulnerable position? Seems like if someone was in your house who was so angry he was about to murder you, you’d want to face front.”

  “Maybe the murderer wasn’t angry.”

  “Huh,” said Ben, who was often surprised at the way Molly was able to keep herself from making the sort of assumptions other people made without realizing it. “I guess when you see someone looking like Petit did—it wasn’t pleasant, I can tell you—you wonder how a person could do it unless they were in a blind rage.”

  Molly shrugged. “Could be. But it could also be, I don’t know, someone who was just being careful to hit hard enough to get the job done. Could even be a murder-for-hire, with no connection to Petit at all, for all we know.”

  “I doubt Castillac is crawling with hit men.”

  “You never know,” said Molly. “Tell me about his kids. Who, what, where—everything you know.”

  “Unfortunately, not much. Their names are Franck and Laurine. Petit did not suspect them for the thefts he hired me for. Franck, I believe, lives in Bordeaux and goes to the university there. Laurine…I had to check my notes…she lives in Paris, works in the fashion industry. A booker for a modeling agency.”

  “Are they coming to Bergerac?”

  “I would assume so, but if Lagasse had spoken to them, he wasn’t telling me.”

  “Tell me about Lagasse. I just have the vaguest sense about him. Something of a gourmand?”

  “Very much so. He has real talent as an investigator—he’s like you that way. Can see human behavior without sentiment, without jumping to conclusions. He would probably have risen to a top job, could be in Paris, a very big cheese.”

  Molly waited. “And why didn’t he?” she said finally, impatient.

  “He’s…I guess you could say he’s a man who’s ruled by his appetites. His outsized appetites. He adores food, as all Frenchmen do, of course. But with him, it’s a little extreme. He has a reputation for allowing the enjoyment of a meal to come before almost everything. Sometimes, in the course of an investigation, you have to be nimble, be willing to have a ham and cheese on baguette for lunch because something you’re doing requires speed. But Léo—he’s not going to make those concessions.

  “And then there’s the matter of the women.”

  “Ah! Now the story’s getting interesting!”

  Ben smiled. “He’s had more affairs than your average detective, I’ll just put it that way. And he’s not especially careful to avoid consor
ting with the wives of people who could make his life difficult.”

  Molly nodded. “I look forward to meeting him,” she said, with a twinkle in her eye.

  Ben laughed. “Not your type, I don’t think—though you do have some things in common, so there’s that. But I’ve noticed that your taste in men runs to a quieter type, more thoughtful, not so much the life of the party.”

  Molly leaned over to Ben and kissed him, tasting the salt on his lips. It was true that the wedding itself was not taking up much of her attention, but Ben as her husband? That was an idea she could get behind with enthusiasm.

  “Do you think we should put off the wedding, in case we get hired for the Petit murder?”

  Ben kissed her back, unhurried and loving.

  “I do not,” he said. “On December 5th, I’m going to marry you, Molly Sutton, and I don’t care if we’ve got a murderer stashed in the cottage and nothing but broken potato chips to serve our guests.”

  She grinned so hard it felt like her face would break, hugged him tight, then got up to look in the refrigerator to see about dinner.

  5

  Paul-Henri, junior officer of the Castillac gendarmerie, put his phone into the front pocket of his jacket and heaved a deep sigh. Ninette over at the épicerie had called to say Malcolm Barstow had shoplifted again. To Paul-Henri, this meant searching all over the village trying to find the boy, who was a master at hiding when he put his mind to it, as well as explaining to the chief, who was relatively new to Castillac, the complicated situation that was the Barstow family. Add to that placating Ninette, who in the phone call had sounded at her wit’s end.

  He went to the bathroom in order to check his uniform before going out: all buttons were at a high polish and sewed on tight; no lint, stain, or stray pet hair marred the fabric; his hair was neatly combed and there was nothing between his teeth. Satisfied, he left the station and went first to the épicerie to get the whole story from Ninette.