The Third Girl (Molly Sutton Mysteries Book 1)

by Nell Goddin

  Handsome men are so often slow-witted, she thought, but I don’t think that’s the case with the Chief. He has a smart look about him, but skittery. A little nervous. Is it because he knows more than he’s telling? Or because that’s simply his way?

  “Yes, she has had boyfriends, but none serious,” Marshall was saying. “Art was everything to her, you understand. She wasn’t going to allow a boy to get in the way of her success.”

  “That worried me,” Sally said, her voice barely above a whisper.

  “How so?” asked Dufort.

  “Well,” said Sally, but then paused, and the pause went on and on.

  Molly stood on the balls on her feet as though she were playing tennis, waiting for Sally’s next words so she could hit them softly over the net to Dufort if he gave her the signal she needed to translate. But Sally did not continue.

  “It’s that…Sally has always thought that perhaps Amy’s single-minded pursuit of a career in art might end up making her unhappy,” explained Marshall.

  “Alone,” added Sally. “It’s not like a painting is going to love you back, even if it’s a masterpiece.”

  Everyone in the room considered that statement. And then Sally let out a heart-rending wail, because the clear image of her daughter spending her last moments with someone who did not love her was so painful that her tenuous self-control evaporated. She wobbled, and Marshall reached his arm around her to hold her up.

  “I do understand,” said Dufort, feeling the parents’ agony acutely.

  Molly wondered if he was married and had children. Although it probably made no difference—it’s not like it took a huge leap of imagination for her to understand the Bennett’s pain. She guessed anyone in that room felt it deep in their bodies, as she did, fighting back tears and her legs none too steady. She glanced at Dufort and saw that his handsome face was pale and his lips were pressed tightly together.

  “Molly, can you make sure the Bennetts get back to your place all right?” he asked.

  She nodded, her throat still closed up.

  “Please,” said Sally, reaching a hand out to Dufort.

  “We’re doing everything we can,” he said, his voice cracking. “Everything.”

  * * *

  Molly’s neighbor Mme. Sabourin had found her a cleaning girl, although she made no particular recommendation as to her skill. The girl was the daughter of the man who repaired furniture in a little shop on a back street of the village, and Mme. Sabourin talked at length about the armoire he had fixed up for her: he hadn’t charged too much and his workmanship had been more than adequate, especially on a tricky bit where the lacquer was worn.

  So after a deeply awkward phone conversation during which Molly struggled to get out even a few words of understandable French (she found it ridiculously difficult to speak French over the phone, and all her progress seemed to evaporate on the spot), Constance agreed to come that very day. Molly wasn’t particular; all she wanted was a body. Anyone can run a vacuum cleaner, right?

  With some trepidation she knocked on the door to the cottage to alert the Bennetts that the cleaner was coming that afternoon. Perhaps they wouldn’t mind sitting in the garden or going for a walk while their place was spiffed up? And would they like anything from the village? Molly was going to catch the tail end of the Saturday market.

  The Bennetts were amenable, as they always were, untethered to any reality beyond their missing daughter. Molly wasn’t absolutely sure they understood about the cleaner—they appeared even more tranqued up than before, even Marshall—but she took them at their word, waved, and headed into the village with her market basket over her arm. She wished for tomatoes but the season was over, and hoped she would come home with something besides lavender soap. And croissants aux amandes.

  The first person she saw when she got to the Place was Manette, reigning over her beautifully arranged harvest like a queen of légumes.

  “Bonjour, Manette,” said Molly, a little shyly, unsure whether Manette would remember her.

  “Hello, Molly!” Manette cried, her English accent so wrong that Molly burst out laughing. “Tell me,” she said, continuing in French, “have you figured out where Amy has gone?”

  “Me?” said Molly. “Oh no. I’m not…that’s not my line, I don’t think. Because…” she cocked her head and looked up to the sky. “How can you guess what people will do, when we’re all of us capable of anything?”

  Manette nodded solemnly. Molly didn’t know what it was about her that brought on these fits of philosophy.

  “It is true,” said Manette, “that people lie. About anything! And to ourselves most of all. Now look,” she said, gesturing to a heap of artichokes. “They’re imported, I won’t lie to you”—she winked—“but see how beautiful they are? A bit of butter sauce, just a squeeze of lemon?”

  “I’ll take five,” said Molly, and waited for Manette to weigh them. “Do you have children, Manette? I’m sorry if that is too personal a question.”

  Manette waved off her apology. “No, no. Yes, I have four! I’m in the center of chaos! The eye of the hurricane!”

  Molly smiled. It was so easy to picture, rosy-cheeked Manette laughing in her kitchen with children everywhere. She felt a stab of envy and forced herself to keep smiling anyway.

  Then she went to find that attractive organic farmer Rémy, hoping for some tomatoes. He had none, but she talked with him for about fifteen minutes about the weather and then about Lapin Broussard. His English was extremely good and she relaxed into speaking English herself.

  “I’m not sure I give intuition any weight,” she said, “but honestly, Lapin is incredibly annoying and I’ve considered moving to another village to escape him—but a killer? Or at the least, a kidnapper? I just don’t get that from him.”

  “My wife slapped him once, at Chez Papa. Right across the face. He stopped bothering her after that,” Rémy laughed.

  Molly took a quick breath. She had been flirting a little with Rémy—he had a sort of hippie farmer appeal, broad-shouldered and capable, with a smudge of dirt on his chin—and now felt embarrassed that he was married.

  “My ex-wife, I should say,” said Rémy, with a smile, as though reading her mind.

  Molly smiled back. And although all in all she was finished with that part of her life, and she was more suited to a single life, she really was…her next thought was about how lovely his smile was, and his mouth, and how if at some point in the future he wanted to kiss her, she wouldn’t say no.

  And then he had been saying something and she had missed it entirely with her daydream of kissing.

  What, am I fifteen?

  “So sadly you must wait until next July for real tomatoes,” Rémy was saying. And then a last-minute crowd of customers surged up behind her, and it was time to go home to La Baraque.

  She went straight to the cottage to see how far along Constance had gotten, sure that the Bennetts would be anxious to get back inside as soon as possible.

  “Constance!” she called, seeing a bucket filled with dirty water and a mop leaning against the wall. Molly walked into the tiny kitchen and saw a pile of dustrags on the counter. “Hello? Constance?”

  But Constance was gone. The cottage was not particularly clean, and the implements of cleaning were scattered upstairs and down, so that Molly spent her last ounces of energy straightening up after her cleaner so that the Bennetts could leave the garden and go back into seclusion.

  23

  This was a terrible idea, thought Dufort as he tried to straighten up his living room on Sunday evening. He had invited Marie-Claire over for an apéro, forgetting that the Bennett case had thrown him off his usual routines and his small apartment in the gendarmerie was not really tidy enough for company. Especially for company he was hoping to impress. Quickly he tossed back ten drops of tincture and dashed around the living room, neatening and straightening, shoving things under the sofa and into drawers.

  Marie-Claire drove up in her ancient deu
x chevaux. Dufort watched her check her makeup in the rear-view mirror, which made him smile. He went to the kitchen and took out a bottle of pineau and then out the door to welcome her.

  “Bonsoir!” he said, very glad to see her. She was wearing pants, which Dufort was sorry about because he liked to have a look at her legs. But the pants were snug and showed off her fit body, and he grinned like a schoolboy as she walked towards him.

  “Bonsoir Ben,” she said, smiling back. They kissed cheeks, Ben noticing how nice she smelled, and headed inside.

  “I’ve never been inside the gendarmerie before,” said Marie-Claire, looking all around. “It’s not bad, is it? Do you mind being moved around from place to place?”

  “If I had my way, I’d stay in Castillac indefinitely. I’ll probably be off to a new posting sometime in early January. It’s not that I don’t like new places…more that I’m just attached to this one. When I am away from the golden stone of the Dordogne for too long…” He looked up suddenly and smiled. “How about a drink? Would you like a kir? Pineau?”

  Marie-Claire nodded. “A kir would be lovely.” She looked around, trying to see what she could learn about Ben from his place. It was neat enough. One pile of books was on a side table and another pile next to the sofa. She tried to peer into the kitchen without being obvious about it.

  “Perhaps a thoroughly unsurprising question, but you know we detectives have to cover the background,” said Dufort, handing Marie-Claire her drink. “I don’t think you’ve told me where you grew up and how you managed to end up in Castillac.”

  Marie-Claire smiled and sipped. “An unsurprising question with an unsurprising answer,” she said. “And I will ask the same: you are Castillac born and raised, I take it?”

  Dufort nodded.

  “Seems to be the case for most of the village. I’ve been here close to two years now, and not sorry at all I came,” said Marie-Claire.

  Dufort noticed, of course, that she did not answer either of his questions.

  “So Ben, forgive me—I should not ask about your work. It’s the height of rudeness, and ordinarily…”

  Dufort sighed inwardly. “Amy.”

  “Yes. Amy.” She looked at him hopefully. “Any news at all? Of course I understand if there are things you can’t tell me, but I just…I just want something….”

  Dufort opened a packet of nuts and shook them into a glass bowl. “We’re still collecting evidence.” Inwardly he cringed at that little lie, since there had been precious little evidence—actually, zero—to collect.

  “And Lapin? Have you interviewed him, if that’s what you call it?”

  “No. We don’t know where he is. And we’ve not narrowed it down to him, in any case. Just someone we want to talk to.”

  “Is it difficult to be objective, since he’s your friend?”

  Dufort swallowed a sip of his drink. Marie-Claire was making him uncomfortable; it felt almost as though she had agreed to come for a drink just so she could get the latest gossip. Or was he being overly cynical?

  “I wouldn’t say friend, not exactly,” said Dufort. “I’ve known him all my life, like a lot of people here. He’s…I guess you would say he’s a fixture of the village. A pain sometimes, especially to women….”

  Marie-Claire nodded. “Apparently I am not his type—I don’t think he’s ever given me a second look.”

  “Hard to believe,” said Dufort with a hint of a smile, which Marie-Claire found very charming. “In any case, fixture of the village or not, we have to look at the evidence, obviously. The fact that we’ve not been able to find Lapin to question him, that is actually more worrisome than the video itself.”

  “If he had a good explanation, then why not march into the station and give it?”

  “Right.” Dufort nodded. “But not everyone is capable of that sort of practical directness, taking an action that might seem obvious to you or me.”

  “But I think…excuse me if I’m coming too…close in. But I get the feeling from you that you do not believe Lapin took that girl. That you will go down the list and ask the questions, etc. and etc. But your intuition says no.”

  Dufort shrugged, smiling again. He liked this woman. Liked that she said what was on her mind, and that she obviously had some decent intuition herself. When she reached for her drink, he let his eyes roam over her for just a moment, and when she put her glass back down, he touched her cheek with the back of his hand, then put a lock of hair behind her ear. The movement felt impossibly intimate and he took a deep breath and stood up.

  “It’s gotten so chilly, I thought I would light a fire,” he said, rummaging in a drawer for some matches. He was grateful for the old building, which still had fireplaces in most of the rooms.

  Marie-Claire hugged herself and shivered. “It is rather damp,” she said, watching him with an animated expression. The fire he had set earlier caught beautifully, and the couple sat on the sofa next to each other gazing at the flames. They had another drink, they ate some nuts, and soon enough they were sitting close enough to touch, and then close enough to kiss, and at least for a precious few hours, Benjamin Dufort did not think about Amy Bennett even once.

  * * *

  That night Molly did not go out. The interview with Chief Dufort and the Bennetts had been absolutely harrowing, and then on top of that her new fiasco of a cleaner. So she worked in the garden with headphones on, then drank half a bottle of Médoc and went to bed early. The next morning, she decided to go on a long walk using one of the maps of trails she had found at the Presse. It was one more thing to love about France, how apparently landowners large and small not only allowed perfect strangers to go traipsing across their property, but encouraged them to do so by allowing the trails to be marked on very detailed maps found at any presse.

  She chose a route that would take her through the forest, then across several pastures, and loop back around to rue des Chênes and home. It will take hours, she thought, and I’ll come home so beat I won’t have any energy to worry.

  It did occur to her that being alone in secluded places might not be completely safe with an abductor on the loose, so she took along a canister of mace she’d managed to get past security at the airport—a hold-over from the old neighborhood back home. It had given her a real sense of safety then, even though she’d never actually pulled the trigger. But anyway, surely whoever took Amy—and the others, she thought with a shiver—wasn’t roaming around the forest. Probably not where you’d go on the prowl for young women.

  Part of her brain knew that she was rationalizing, which is likely a mistake when you’re trying to guess what a murderer might or might not do. But the other part trampled all over those objections and set off anyway. And there is always hope there has been no murder, the rationalizing part whispered.

  The first section of the walk was down rue des Chênes, away from the village, but she had walked that way before and so it did not offer enough distraction to keep her from obsessing about the Bennetts and about Amy.

  I wonder if the Bennetts know, she wondered. Is there a particular sixth sense parents have, so if their child is dead they can feel it?

  I sort of bet there is. And that’s why Sally is so undone.

  Molly consulted the map and found the path off the road to the left without trouble. It was wide enough for a car, and in minutes she felt as though she were miles and miles from civilization—except for the path, there was no mark of humanity in any direction, and she was far enough from the village that there was no human sound either, nothing but the chatter of birds and the rustle of branches in the light breeze.

  It wasn’t until the first twinge of hunger hit that she realized she had left her lunch behind. A neatly packed lunch that included a very nice cheese and a water bottle filled with ice—sitting on the kitchen table. She considered turning around but thought she would lose any sense of accomplishment, even though she knew that was silly. But it did feel good to exert herself, and to be outdoors, far from genda
rmes and the Bennetts and poorly-done housework. No duties save putting one foot in front of the other.

  The path turned and went around a hillock, then came out into a small pasture. Molly was increasingly aware of the sound of her footsteps and her breath (a little labored as that last part had been uphill). It was lonely where she was, the trees in the midst of shedding their brown leaves, the sky low and gray.

  If someone wanted to find a private place to do something bad, this would do pretty well, she thought, stopping to catch her breath. No houses in view, no roads. There’s not even any livestock to watch what you’re doing…just woods and pasture, empty of everything but the odd vole.

  Suddenly she felt a kind of chill. An emotional chill, as though her body sensed something wrong though she could not consciously see what it was. She turned to look behind her, wondering if someone was coming.

  There was no one.

  She was alone on the edge of the woods, and as far as she could tell, there was no one for miles, or close to it. But nevertheless she felt endangered somehow, as though there was something lurking in those woods, something she could not see but could sense, and its presence was large and dark and not going to back off just because of a little canister of mace on her keyring.

  Her fear was absurd and she felt foolish, but nevertheless Molly jogged back the way she had come, running away from all the feelings, all the way down the path to where it popped out on rue des Chênes, trying hard to focus on the lunch that was waiting for her, and not give in to the impulse to look behind her, into the dark woods.

  24

  It was Gilles Maron who found him. As well as checking several times during the day, Maron had been driving by the Broussard house at least once or twice every night since seeing the incriminating video. Finally, on Monday night, eleven days after Amy Bennett had disappeared, he saw a small light on in the kitchen, barely visible from the road.