by Louise Penny
“No, go to the border, stick to the plan. Whatever happens, the chlorocodide has to cross into the States, and the only thing we know for sure is where it’ll happen. Your informant is watching the church?”
“Yes. We’ll at least know when the drug is being moved. And if they don’t use the established route?” Toussaint asked.
“Then you’ll be in the forest for nothing, and Beauvoir, Lacoste and I will take care of it.”
He said it so calmly, as though he was talking about mending a fence.
There was silence again.
“All actions contain an element of luck,” he reminded her. “Besides, we’re all in. There’s a great advantage in that.”
“Our backs to the sea. Yes, patron. This’ll work, because it has to.” She laughed softly and wished that was actually the equation. “Good luck,” she said, either forgetting to say merde or not wanting that to possibly be the last thing they ever said to each other.
“Oui. Good luck to you, Madeleine.”
* * *
Matheo and Lea were sitting at a table in the far corner by the time Lacoste returned. Away from the others. But close to the two Americans.
She carefully replaced the phone, making sure no one saw, and went into the kitchen to say hello to Anton. And to warn him.
“Bonjour,” he said, greeting her. “I’d have thought you’d be in the city.”
“I was, but wanted to get away just for a few hours. Too hot. I’m not the only one.”
“I bet,” he said, going back to work, then looking up when she didn’t speak.
“Matheo and Lea are here,” she said. “And maybe Patrick, though I haven’t seen him.”
Anton put down his knife and looked at her. “Why?”
“I don’t know, but I thought you should be warned.”
That wasn’t completely true. Isabelle Lacoste had a pretty good idea why Matheo and Lea were in the bistro and she didn’t want Anton to get involved.
“Merci.” He looked grim and took a deep breath. “I have to testify in a few days. I’ve been dreading it. I hear they’ve been rough on Monsieur Gamache.”
“Well, they always are.”
“Even the Crown attorney and the judge? Aren’t they on the same side?”
“Trials are funny things,” she said. Trying to make what had happened in the courtroom sound normal. “It’s my turn tomorrow.”
“Where’re they sitting?” asked Anton. “So I can avoid them.”
“In the corner.”
“By the two Americans?”
“You know them?”
“Never seen them before, but one considers himself a chef. After trying the soup”—Anton nodded toward a bowl—“he asked if I’d give them the recipe.”
Lacoste looked down at the notebook and the page headed Watermelon Gazpacho with Mint and Mango.
She wanted to eat the paper.
“I notice that Ruth isn’t out there. Do you mind if I call her?”
“Be my guest. Might be the first time her phone’s ever rung. I wonder if she’ll know what it is.”
Isabelle smiled, knowing that the young chef and the old poet had established a sort of friendship. Based on him giving her free food, and her giving him grief. And both knowing what happened when the straight road splayed.
Lacoste went to the phone attached to the wall and dialed. After about ten rings, during which Isabelle imagined her searching the small home for whatever was ringing, Ruth picked up.
“Hello,” she shouted into the receiver.
“Ruth, it’s Isabelle Lacoste. I’m at the bistro. We’re having drin—”
“Be right over,” Ruth yelled, then hung up.
Lacoste turned and saw Anton smiling. He’d obviously heard. She suspected everyone in Québec had heard.
She returned to the bistro. Clara and Myrna had joined Reine-Marie and Annie, and after greeting them, Isabelle took a seat.
Her back was to the two men at the table, and to Matheo and Lea, though she could just see their distorted reflections in the leaded-glass window.
“Not sitting with you?” Isabelle asked, tipping her head toward Matheo and Lea.
“Oh, it’s not us they’re avoiding.”
“It’s me,” said Lacoste.
She knew why, of course. The trial. Like her, Matheo and Lea were witnesses for the prosecution. But, unlike her, they were unwilling witnesses.
Lacoste knew the first question the prosecution would ask them, and she suspected they did as well. It was pretty much the first question Chief Superintendent Gamache had asked that November night when they’d made their way through the sleet to the B&B.
* * *
“What time is it?” asked a groggy Gabri, as the knocking on the door continued. “Did someone forget their key?”
“Everyone’s in,” said Olivier, hauling himself awake. “And what key?”
“It’s one thirty?” Gabri was fully awake now, swinging his legs out of bed and reaching for his dressing gown. “Something’s happened. Something’s wrong. Here, take this.”
He handed Olivier a two-by-four.
“Why?” asked Olivier.
“That’s our burglar alarm.”
“Burglars don’t knock.”
“Wanna risk it?”
They walked softly so as not to disturb their guests, though they were far from sure any of them would be able to sleep. Especially Patrick, who’d looked both exhausted and wide awake even as he was being led to bed by his friends.
Olivier and Gabri turned on the porch light and peered through the window. Then they quickly opened the front door.
* * *
Patrick heard the knocking.
Little good ever came from being aroused at that hour. Though Patrick had not been asleep.
When they’d gone to bed, Gabri had offered to put him in another room, but Patrick had wanted to go back to the one he’d shared with Katie. That had all of Katie’s clothes, and her jewelry, and her toiletries.
All catalogued and photographed by the homicide team, and returned to exactly where Katie had left them, when she’d left.
Her purse on the chair. Her reading glasses on the book on the bedside table.
He’d lain in bed, listening to the creaking of the old inn. Listening as the others had settled and all human sounds died down. And he could be alone with Katie. He could close his eyes and pretend she was there, beside him, breathing so softly he couldn’t even hear her.
Patrick inhaled the scent of her. And he knew she was there. How could she not be? How could she be gone?
But she wasn’t gone, he told himself quickly, before he fell off the ledge. She was there. Beside him. Breathing so softly he couldn’t hear.
And then, into the night, came the knock on the door. Then the tap on their bedroom door.
“Patrick?”
“Oui?”
“Can you come downstairs, please?” asked Gabri.
* * *
Patrick, Lea and Matheo entered the living room. And stopped.
Facing them were Chief Superintendent Gamache, Chief Inspector Lacoste and Inspector Beauvoir.
And Jacqueline. The baker.
Gabri stirred the embers in the hearth and threw on a couple of birch logs. The wood caught, and crackled, and temporarily drowned out the sound of the sleet against the windows.
“What’s happening out there?” Olivier whispered when Gabri joined him in the kitchen.
“They’re staring at each other.” Gabri got out the brioche and turned on the oven while Olivier brewed coffee. “What’s Jacqueline doing here?”
“She must know something,” said Olivier. “Maybe she saw something.”
“But why do they want to speak to Patrick and the others?” asked Gabri. “And in the middle of the night. What won’t wait?”
Only one thing wouldn’t wait until morning, and they both knew what it was.
* * *
“Shall we sit?” Gamache asked, ges
Beauvoir remained standing, positioning himself by the fireplace. Not coincidentally, he also blocked any way out to the door. It would be futile for any of them to try to run away, but cornered people did desperate things.
So far only Lea had spoken. She’d whispered, “Finally,” when she’d seen the officers. Though it was Jacqueline she’d been staring at when she’d spoken.
Lacoste began.
“Jacqueline came to us tonight with an extraordinary story.” She glanced at the baker, who was sitting bolt upright and staring defiantly at the others. “Extraordinary to us, at least, but not, I think, to you.”
And yet, Gamache thought, it shouldn’t have been a complete surprise. Once said, it seemed obvious and he’d wondered how he could not have seen it sooner.
And much like Anton’s confession earlier in the day to Jean-Guy, Gamache knew Jacqueline’s visit to them had been preemptive. Even as she’d told her story, he knew that she wasn’t telling them anything they wouldn’t have discovered within hours anyway. And she knew it too.
“She told you everything?” Matheo asked, his eyes moving from Jacqueline to Lacoste and back again.
“She confessed, yes,” said Lacoste.
“To the murder?” asked Patrick, staring in shock at the baker. “You killed Katie?”
“She told us about the cobrador,” said Lacoste. “And now it’s your turn. Tell us what you know.”
They looked at each other, and then, naturally, it was Lea who spoke.
“Jacqueline came to us with the idea.” Lea turned to her husband, who nodded agreement. “She’d heard about the cobrador while working for that Spanish guy. At first we thought she was kidding. It sounded ridiculous. A guy stares at someone and it magically does the trick?”
“No one took Jacqueline’s suggestion seriously,” said Matheo. “Désolé, but you know that’s true.”
Jacqueline gave one crisp nod.
“But it gave me an idea for a story,” Matheo continued. “So I wrote that piece about the cobrador del frac, the debt collector in the top hat and tails, and thanked Jacqueline for the idea. That’s when she said it wasn’t that cobrador she was thinking of. It was the original.”
“She sent us links from Spain,” said Lea. “That cobrador was very different. Terrifying.”
“And yet,” said Lacoste, “when you spoke to Monsieur Gamache about it that first time, you said the only thing you knew about the original came from that old photograph. You said sightings were rare.”
“Well, they are rare,” said Matheo. “But—”
“But we didn’t want to spoon-feed you,” Lea said, speaking frankly to Gamache. “We knew you’d pursue it and find out what you needed. And you’d be more invested, if you came to it yourself.”
At the fireplace, Jean-Guy bristled. No one liked being manipulated, and Lea Roux had done it perfectly. She was clearly very, very seasoned at controlling, maneuvering. And he wondered how much of it was happening at that moment.
Though Gamache didn’t seem upset or angry. He simply nodded agreement. But kept a thoughtful eye on her.
“That’s when we began to consider what Jacqueline was suggesting,” said Matheo. “We’d tried everything else. There seemed nothing to lose.”
“It took longer than we thought to get everything organized,” said Lea. “For one thing, we had to find a costume. Finally, we decided to make one. Didn’t Jacqueline tell you all this?”
She looked at the baker, sitting pale and contained on the sofa between Gamache and Lacoste.
“She did. But we need to hear it from you,” said Lacoste. “Who made the costume?”
“Jacqueline,” said Lea. “Even when it was finished, we weren’t all in. It just seemed stupid. Katie was the one who convinced us. She’d been the closest to Edouard. She wanted him to pay.”
“Even after all these years?” asked Lacoste. “Edouard died almost fifteen years ago.”
“When you see your best friend jump off the roof, it never goes away,” said Matheo. “Especially when the person who did it hasn’t paid any price. Hasn’t even apologized.”
“Is that what you wanted?” asked Gamache. “An apology?”
They looked at each other. It seemed possible they hadn’t really discussed what they wanted. What would be enough.
“I think so,” said Lea. “We’d fuck with him, scare him a bit, and then go back to our lives. What more could we do?”
“You said ‘him,’” said Lacoste. “Who’s he?”
“Didn’t she tell you?” asked Matheo.
“Again, I need to hear it from you.”
“Anton,” said Lea. “We’d begged him to stop selling to Edouard, and he agreed, but the shit was lying to us. He kept doing it. More drugs. Stronger.”
“We didn’t know,” said Matheo. “Until—”
Matheo was staring at Lacoste, but seeing the leap.
It was no accident. No stumble. Edouard had stood on the ledge while around him everyone partied. And below him, in some dorm room, his great love, Katie, and his friend Patrick had sex.
All around him there was youth and freedom, sex and love.
But Edouard had been left on the island, with the Lord of the Flies. And the insatiable beast gnawing inside him.
Edouard had slowly spread his arms, like something magnificent. And as Matheo and Lea watched, too stunned, too far away to do anything, he’d jumped.
Beauvoir closed his eyes, and while he didn’t know Edouard, he knew that despair. And the blessed release of drugs. And how easy it was to mistake falling for flying.
Edouard left the ledge, and the island. And his friends. And family. But they never left him.
Lea looked at Jacqueline, who’d sat silent through this.
“Anton killed him,” Lea said to the baker. “He might as well have been the hand on Edouard’s back. We all knew that.”
Jacqueline held Lea’s eyes, and nodded a small acknowledgment.
“The cops told us Edouard’s death had been ruled an accident,” Matheo continued. “Even if they found Anton, he’d never be charged with anything other than trafficking, and even then the charges might be dropped or the sentence suspended. First offense, young university student—”
“The family hired a private investigator to find him,” said Lea. “Took a long time. He’d bummed around, gone into rehab and later got a job with the Spanish family. Worked for cash. But the investigator finally tracked him down.”
Jean-Guy, standing by the fireplace, nodded.
Anton had told him all this. He went by Lebrun but his real name was Boucher.
Butcher.
A good name for a murderer, Beauvoir had thought. Though he also knew it was ridiculous to suspect someone because of their last name. But still …
“That’s when Jacqueline got back in touch with us,” said Lea, looking again at the woman sitting stiffly on the sofa. “She told us they’d found Anton, and that the family was looking for a nanny and tutor, to teach the Spanish children French.”
“She wanted to use us as references,” said Matheo. “We agreed and when Madame Ruiz called we vouched for her.”
Beauvoir wondered, in passing, who’d vouched for Anton.
It had been a sticking point. The one thing that hadn’t rung true in Anton’s conversation with Jean-Guy that afternoon. He’d admitted to all this. Confessed his sins. Showed remorse.
But there was that one tiny little thing. Why the Ruiz family, especially Antonio Ruiz, hadn’t checked out Anton before hiring him. As they apparently had with Jacqueline.
Instead, Ruiz, a suspicious, perhaps even paranoid man, had hired some stranger to come live with his family.
Why was that? Beauvoir wondered. Why hadn’t he placed a single call?
“What happened next?” Lacoste asked.
“After working there for a few months, Jacqueline heard about the cobrador and got back in touch with us,” said Lea. ��Once we were convinced, we just needed to work out the details. When and where to spring the cobrador on him.”
“We couldn’t have it stand outside the home,” said Matheo. “Ruiz would probably shoot it. He’d certainly think it was there for him, and so would Anton. We needed someplace else.”
“Then the family was transferred back to Spain and it looked like our plan might fall apart,” said Lea. “But then Anton got a job here as a dishwasher. We’d been to Three Pines a few times, for reunions. It seemed perfect. It even had you.”
“Me?” asked Gamache.
“We needed to make sure the cobrador was safe,” said Matheo. “That no one would attack him.”
“We knew you wouldn’t let that happen,” said Lea.
“You played me?” asked Gamache.
“We trusted you,” said Lea. “To uphold the law, no matter how personally upsetting the situation might be.”
Gamache took a long, deep breath. More manipulation. But, far from annoying, it was enlightening. It certainly threw a light onto Lea Roux, and her ability to strategize.
She’d come a long way from the young elected official and Edouard’s Law.
“Jacqueline got a job at the bakery, and then our plan fell into place.”
“And what was your plan?” asked Lacoste.
“It was simple,” said Lea. “The cobrador would show up and scare the crap out of Anton.”
“And then?” asked Lacoste. “Was that it? To scare him?”
Matheo was about to answer, then he shut his mouth and looked at Lea, then Patrick, and finally Jacqueline.
They seemed confused by the question, and Isabelle thought she knew why.
What had begun as one thing, the quest for an apology, had become something else.
How often something starts off as noble, and then warps, corrupts, takes on a life of its own. Becomes a creature in a black cloak.
A body in a root cellar.
How it came to that was the question. And she intended to have the answer that night.
“This was in the spring,” said Lea. “We were going to have the annual reunion here in the summer and it would work perfectly. Except—”
“Daylight,” said Matheo.
On hearing that, Gamache gave one small grunt.
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