No Honor Among Thieves

by Nell Goddin

  Ben resisted the urge to grin. “It’s a tough one, for certain. Maybe we can do a bit of information sharing, to both our benefit.”

  “Perhaps. Laurine Petit breathing down your neck, wanting results?”

  “That’s not what she seems to want at all,” murmured Ben.

  Léo laughed. “So I hear. She’s such a cuckoo I’d be putting my sights on her, but her alibi is tight as a drum. She got you into the sack yet?”

  Ben rolled his eyes. “I’m not going to dignify that with an answer. Look, I have a few questions to ask you, if you’re feeling generous.”

  “Almost always,” said Léo, with heavy irony. “But I don’t think you’re going to be very satisfied with anything I can tell you.” Léo leaned across the table and shout-whispered. “Forensics is still not back. The place could be covered in the murderer’s DNA and here we sit, none the wiser. We’ve interviewed the neighbors, the people he worked with, his family. Multiple times. I expect our conclusion is the same as yours: Bernard Petit was a man who deserved to die, at least according to every single person who knew him.”

  “He was a real prince, no doubt about that,” said Ben.

  “We’ve got a solid motive from no fewer than eight people.”

  “Exactly. Though some are stronger than others.”

  “Sure, but what difference does that make? Some people wouldn’t kill you even if you tortured their dog. Others might do it if you stepped on their toe on the wrong day.”

  Same conversation I had with Molly, Ben thought.

  “We’ve found no witnesses at all,” Léo continued. “It was a freezing night and apparently everyone close to rue Lafayette was home by the fire, not looking out any windows. Nobody saw anything, heard anything, knows anything.”

  “So you’re saying your investigation is a complete bust?” said Ben, his eyes merry.

  “Utterly,” said Léo. A pause, and then he let out a raucous belly laugh. “Total and utter garbage.” The two men laughed until tears sprang from their eyes, and then quickly got serious. “All right,” said Léo. “What do you want to know?”

  “Couple of things. Have you found Petit’s wife?”

  “We’ve spoken by phone. She’s in India. Has plenty of people to vouch that that’s where she’s been for the last several weeks. Dead end, and I can say that with some certainty.”

  “She’s not a suspect. But I’ve found someone, if the rumor is true, that she had an affair with. While still married to Petit and living at the house on rue Lafayette. This same man got stiffed by Petit in a business deal.”

  Léo yawned. “Eh, add him to the list. I’m not impressed.”

  Ben didn’t know Léo quite well enough to know whether he was faking disinterest.

  “That doesn’t sound promising to you? Would you want to be in the position of cuckolding a man like Bernard Petit?”

  “Well, no. Even if he hated his wife by then—which he did, by every account—he’d still come after you and make you pay. Rather savagely, I’d expect.”

  “Right. I believe Petit did just that, by luring the man into a business deal, and backstabbing him.”

  “What sort of deal?”

  “Oh, Petit needed an investor to bankroll the import of some expensive fabric. He then sold it—maybe through Laurine, but I don’t think it matters either way—and then did not repay the investment or split any profit.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “I…I found records in…” Ben trailed off, realizing too late that he had no official status that would allow him to be going inside Petit’s house, much less pawing through his financial records and personal correspondence.

  “Why, Benjamin Dufort,” said Léo, leaning back in his chair and putting his hands behind his head with a grin. “You’ve been trespassing on a crime scene. Hmm. This is quite serious. I’m going to take the part of judge and jury both at once. That’s going to cost you another meal at La Grenouille, my friend. Plus the name of this man you’re being so coy about?”

  Sometimes, thought Ben, I can be such an idiot.

  “Because I am a man with an infinite sense of justice, and because I think so well of you, as I do of anyone who pays for lunch at La Grenouille, I will toss you a few tidbits before you reveal this man’s name. Fair enough?”

  “I skipped breakfast, so I hope these tidbits of yours are something substantial.”

  “Well, let’s see. You’re interested in Petit’s financial picture, as you should be, and so what we’ve found may be of interest. He was cynical about banks, apparently, or perhaps I am jumping to conclusions about his reasons for keeping large amounts of cash in his house. So far the gendarmes have found upwards of 75,000 euros, divided up, in various places. One stash was under the floorboards of a bedroom on the second floor. Another unceremoniously tucked into a shoebox in his closet. Can you imagine keeping over 10,000 euros in a shoebox?”

  “I cannot. I cannot imagine holding 10,000 euros of cash in my hand at all.”

  Léo chuckled. “We’ve got a lockbox we still haven’t opened yet. Hoping to find a key but so far no luck.”

  “What about the will? Do you have any thoughts about Franck and Laurine?”

  “Thoughts? Are you asking if I suspect them? Franck seemed like a decent sort. He’s left Bergerac and gone back to Bordeaux to finish the term. As for Laurine…she’s got a screw loose, or maybe several, but her alibi is rock-solid. Can’t see why she bothered to hire you, was it only to be around your pretty face?”

  Ben rolled his eyes, though he couldn’t answer that question himself in any satisfactory manner, now that no evidence had come to light that indicated her brother had anything to do with their father’s murder.

  “So to answer your question—the will is the most pedestrian document you can imagine. I’ll be honest, I was quite disappointed. I figured a man like Petit would use the opportunity to screw over anyone he could from beyond the grave. Leave all his money to a cat, or tie it up in some way as to make it nearly impossible to get the thing through probate without spending most of it on lawyers.”

  Ben shook his head, remembering Molly’s talking about what a slog it can be, working so hard to find justice for a person so mean, so barren of any redeeming virtues. “All right then,” he said, “My turn. The man who cuckolded Petit and then was bankrupted by him—his name is Stephane Burnette. Any chance you’ve heard of him?”

  “I have not. But Bergerac is not a tiny little outpost, you know. We’ve got nearly fifty thousand inhabitants now, so you can’t expect I’m going to have my eye on every one of them.”

  “Of course not,” said Ben. “I hope you find him quickly, and we get some answers.”

  “As do I,” said Léo, extending his hand for a shake. “I would like to tell you to make a reservation at La Grenouille for next week, so we can toast our mutual victory.”

  “Might be getting a bit ahead of ourselves.”

  “Perhaps.”

  35

  Molly had a chicken roasting in the oven, surrounded by potatoes so they could soak up the delicious drippings. It was dark early, of course, though the temperature was still not as punishing as it had been. But cold enough, and dark enough, to make her worries feel harder to bear.

  She had never thought of herself as a worrier, not really, but that particular December, the list felt endless. The Valette girls, stoically making their way after their mother’s tragic suicide. The brave troublemaker Malcolm Barstow, who was trying to look out for his family any way he could. The thought of these children and what they had to bear—well, Molly understood perfectly well that the world was full of strife and always had been. Only sometimes that was easier to bear than others.

  She looked out the front window of the living room at La Baraque, hoping to see Ben’s car turn in the driveway, thinking that it was going to be a relief when spring came. Christmas was all well and good, and she reveled in a bûche de noël as much as the next girl, but somehow the sight
of plants starting to sprout and the spring sound of birds gave her a kind of optimism, a reassurance that everything in the world was more or less all right, despite the fact that she spent so much of her life thinking about death and killing.

  And she hoped that her new marriage would feel safe and established by then, the unsettling questions settled. Forgotten.

  She thought about making a kir but did not want to leave the window. Her thoughts turned, as they usually did in quiet moments, to the case. Ben had done good work, finding out about Stephane Burnette, and it was exactly the kind of work she wasn’t very good at: poring over emails and financial records, and trying to construct the story from the various scraps of information told. Molly was much better talking to people.

  Ben’s car appeared out of the darkness of rue de Chêne, and she realized that if she were really so good at talking to people, then the person she had better start with was Ben. She had allowed the nonsense of the robot messages to go on far too long, and the business with Simon Valette as well. It’s not that a married couple had to share every single thought or feeling they ever experienced, of course not. But this was something else. This stuff was coming between them, no matter how much she’d been trying to pretend it wasn’t.

  It was time to come clean. Time to be a grown up. Else why bother getting married again?

  Molly felt nervous, even a little bit scared, as she heard Ben’s footsteps approach the door and Bobo ran over to greet him.

  “Bonsoir,” she said, and fell into his arms, hugging him tightly.

  “Bonsoir to you too,” he answered, breathing in her scent and then pulling back to look at her face. “The chicken smells incredible. Potatoes?”

  “Of course. And a salad. I have an expensive dark chocolate bar to share for dessert.”

  “Perfection. All right, Molly, tell me what’s on your mind.” He took her hand and led her to the sofa.

  “Want a drink?” she said.

  “Stop stalling.” They sat down. “I’ve seen that something’s bothering you. So all right, let’s have it. Have I done something to upset you?”

  “No! Oh, not at all. It’s not you,” Molly said. Her voice trembled slightly as she kept going. “Well, it’s going to sound ridiculous, honestly. I should have said something ages ago.”

  Ben waited.

  “Well, where do I even start?”

  He kept waiting. When she stayed quiet, he reached for her hand again and squeezed it, but otherwise did not urge her on. Occasionally, his experience as a detective came in handy in his non-working life; he knew how to wait out a subject and not try to force them to talk because silence is uncomfortable.

  36

  Molly and Ben woke up the next morning feeling like newlyweds. They stayed in bed longer than they should have, talking and caressing and laughing.

  “This is so much better,” he said, tucking a stray curl behind Molly’s ear, as he often did when he felt affectionate.

  “No kidding.” Molly kissed his chest and put her head back down on it. “Listen, I know I was being ridiculous. I mean—I knew the whole time it was ridiculous. But I couldn’t help my reaction, I was stuck in it.”

  “Forget it, chérie. It’s over and done now. Though I might need to have a manly word with Simon Valette.”

  “Not necessary!”

  Ben smiled, “Just teasing. So…someone wants to break us up. Why?”

  “Oh! I don’t know why I didn’t think of this weeks ago. Could it be Laurine making those calls? She’s so brazen, the way she goes after you. Maybe she figured she’d scare me off and then you’d be free to ravish her as she so desperately wants.”

  Ben considered. “Thing is, the calls are so passive, hidden. Whereas Laurine…”

  “…doesn’t beat around the bush.”

  “Beat the bush?”

  “She’s direct,” said Molly. “Not just direct, but aggressive. If she wanted me to think you were cheating on me, I think she’d just come right out and say it to my face.”

  “You’ve got a point.”

  “Well, do you have any still-obsessed exes I should know about?” asked Molly.

  “They’re all eminently sane. And boring, compared to you. Maybe some Yankee has heard you were engaged, and come over to sabotage?”

  Molly laughed. “It’s funny, I can remember when I first learned the word sabotage, and how it meant to throw a sabot into a machine to break it. For some reason I thought that was the most glorious thing I’d ever heard. A country where people throw shoes to cause trouble!”

  “These robot messages, they are sabots, in a manner of speaking.”

  “You’re a genius!” said Molly, sitting up. “Do you think it could be Petit’s murderer, trying to distract us?” Molly shrugged. “Maybe Burnette’s been worried, thinking we might be closing in. He could have been doing surveillance on the Petit house and seen you inside, even seen you sitting at Petit’s desk looking at his files.”

  They looked each other, picturing a man lurking outside in the cold on rue Lafayette, narrowing his eyes at Ben as he worked through Petit’s papers. Sitting in the same chair where Petit was killed.

  “But we don’t even know where Burnette is. He could be in India with Alaina for all we know.”

  “Léo was pretending the tip was no good. But I can bet he scurried back to the station and put out an alert for Burnette. Gendarmes all over the country will be looking for him now, flight manifests will be checked, the whole deal.”

  “Do you miss having the powers of the gendarmerie at your fingertips?”

  “Never. Well, mostly never.”

  “Are we ever going to get this thing solved before December 5th?”

  Ben pulled her up and kissed her. “I don’t really care,” he said. “I’m going to marry you that day even if the case is still wide open, the food for the reception is burnt, La Baraque catches fire—”

  Giggling, Molly jumped out of bed. “In that case, I’m taking a shower and getting to it. I can’t do anything about random fires breaking out, but at least I can start making a menu for the party. As long as you think there’s nothing else to do right now but wait for Léo to find Burnette? I…I have to admit, Ben, that as much as I want Burnette to be the killer, we’ve been saying all along that this case is all about opportunity, not motive. And yet that’s exactly what we’re focusing on with Burnette.”

  “You’re not wrong,” said Ben. “But we have to find him before we can check out any alibi, right? This isn’t the final step, it’s only the first step.”

  Molly grinned and nodded, heading into the bathroom for her shower. But as she got under the hot water and started to wash her hair, the smile was long gone. We aren’t anywhere on this case, said the small voice she had learned to respect.

  Everybody wanted to kill him. And so far—almost anyone could have.

  Molly spent a long time in the shower, having intended to plan the menu but instead going over and over her conversations with Franck Petit, Claude Blanchon, and Inès Bériot. Sometimes it was like she had a tape recorder in her brain, and she could sit back, with hot water pouring on her head, and hear the conversations verbatim as though she had only finished them moments before.

  Sometimes, if she was very lucky, the person’s words would seem to hit a snag, as though the tape had gotten sticky, and when she focused on just that bit, another meaning would occur to her. It was crazy, the way people are so apt to think that their first impression was the correct one. So often, that impression was influenced by a million unrelated things: how satisfying lunch had been, whether the significant other had been in a good mood at breakfast, the front page of the newspaper, whether the pâtisserie was out of almond croissants when you really needed one…the list was endless.

  But with the Petit case, when Molly listened to everyone she had talked to, she hit no snags. There was no moment when she said, Hmm, what’s that again? No moment when she felt doubt, after letting the words sink in and thinking ab
out how the person had looked while saying them.

  “Molly! There’s not going to be any water left in the entire Dordogne!”

  She did overuse the water, it was a bad habit and yet the guilt had thus far not produced any change in her behavior. “Sorry!” Molly called out, turning the handle and stepping onto a fluffy bath towel. She heard Ben’s phone ring, then the low sound of his voice, but could not make out the words, and toweled off quickly and got dressed, leaving her hair wild and damp.

  “That was Léo. I’ve got some bad news. Stephane Burnette filed for bankruptcy only a few months ago.”

  “But that—”

  “He killed himself. In London, two days before Petit was murdered.”

  Molly sank down on the bed. “So back to square one.”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “I don’t like it,” she said. “I know I didn’t know Burnette or have any connection to him at all, but to hear of another suicide…”

  Ben stood next to her, putting his hand on her shoulder. They were both thinking of Camille Valette, and then the girls, and then this never-ending case with too many suspects…

  “Maybe we should just get back in bed and call it a day,” said Molly, trying to joke. But neither of them laughed.

  IV

  37

  The appointment at the mairie to get married was only a little over a week off. Fifty of their friends were showing up to La Baraque to celebrate afterwards—and Molly and Ben were nowhere near ready. After the brief flirtation with catering from La Metairie, the intention had been to make the party low-key—but with only eight days to go, it was going to be no-key if she didn’t put the Petit case aside and start knocking items off her list. She had no menu, no food, no dress. At this rate, the guests would be arriving to a messy house decorated with Angela Langevin’s flowers, and Molly dressed in blue jeans.