Dead and Ganache

by Colette London

  I lifted my chin and hustled toward the croissants and pains au chocolat that awaited me and Travis. “I was planning to tell you I went to the police station.” But interrogating you about yourself took precedence. “But I got sidetracked.”

  “I’m familiar with that.” Travis aimed another wary glance at Lucas, then refocused on me. “This is where my friendship with Mélanie comes in handy, by the way. Otherwise, Madame l’agent would be here at the château, warning you officially.”

  No, thanks. That sounded scary. My few run-ins with law enforcement while sleuthing hadn’t gone particularly well.

  “Thank you for your useful flirtation.” I took a seat at the table we were shown to, then chose an apple pastry.

  My keeper sat across from me. He unfolded his napkin. Precisely. “The policier who helped you has been disciplined.”

  Oops. Now I felt bad. But you couldn’t make an omelet without breaking some eggs, right? “Mildly, I hope?”

  A pause. Travis was making me squirm. “Yes.”

  The silence between us felt leaden, lightened only with sips of café au lait and (my) ravenous bites of apple pastry.

  “Ugh. If you’re going to disapprove of my tactics, do it openly, okay?” I blurted. “I can’t stand the silent treatment.”

  There ought to be a special circle of chocolate-free hell, I figured, for people who dealt with arguments by not talking.

  Caught in the midst of choosing a croissant, Travis paused to give me a meaningful look. “If you feel guilty, that’s not my problem. It’s not up to me to assuage your conscience.” He selected a buttery, flaky croissant and transferred it to his plate. “I simply want you to keep me informed of your actions.”

  “I changed my mind. Let’s revisit the silent treatment.”

  His level gaze met mine. “If that sounded too harsh, I apologize. I’m not awake yet. I’m not a morning person, okay?”

  I gawked. How could this be? “But you’re up at dawn.”

  “That doesn’t mean I like it.” Grumpily, my financial advisor spread berry jam on his croissant. He bit into it.

  I recognized the strawberry logo of Clotilde Renouf’s magasin de confiture on the jam jar. I would have expected the Vetaults to demolish every jar they had on hand, in protest.

  “Also, I’m not comfortable with ethical lapses,” Travis told me. “I realize that, in this situation, there’s a greater good to consider. But that doesn’t mean some things aren’t off limits—or should be. We have to consider all the implications.”

  Aha. I got it. My questionable tactics with the gendarme had reminded him of his own—and the potential costs of both.

  “You feel guilty about Mélanie Flamant.”

  Travis focused intently on his breakfast. Then, “Maybe.”

  I felt instantly better. “We’re not so different, you and me. We’d both rather not be doing this, but since we are—”

  “We want to do a good job,” my financial advisor finished.

  I nodded. “Yes.” I’d never had this conversation with Danny. My longtime pal didn’t like discussing ethics or the consequences of our decisions. As far as Danny was concerned, surviving trumped all. “We’re doing a good job! For instance . . .”

  I filled in Travis on what I’d learned, winding up with, “The business card in Monsieur’s hand was from a place called Antiquités Moreau. I’m planning to visit it later this morning.”

  He frowned. “That’s where I was yesterday, before I saw you collapse in front of the jam shop.” Belatedly, he noticed the jam label. For a moment, he examined it in thought. Then, “Charlotte Moreau is the head of the local small business club.”

  “Then she’s the kingpin! Madame Moreau must be the one who officially vetoed Philippe’s plans for his Fest-Noz banner.”

  “I didn’t find out that much.” Travis ate more croissant.

  Oddly enough, as he did, he turned inexplicably red in the face. A flush blossomed on his sculpted cheeks, then swept lower. If I could have seen through his shirt and tie with X-ray vision, I figured I would see him turning red all the way down.

  For a heartbeat, I thought maybe my financial advisor had been poisoned—maybe the way I (maybe) had been. I seriously considered swatting away the rest of his breakfast, like an NFL defensive end executing a perfect strip sack on a quarterback.

  Have I mentioned the (only) sport I enjoy is football? I’m conversant in soccer, basketball, baseball, and rugby (all the better to make friends in the back-of-house at a restaurant, bakery, or chocolate-processing factory), but the NFL is fun.

  Back to Travis. “You didn’t find out if Charlotte Moreau prohibited Monsieur’s banner? What did you find out, then?”

  He cleared his throat. “Not much. More juice?”

  He was acting peculiarly. “What did you find out, Travis?”

  My suit-wearing financial advisor adjusted his eyeglasses. I’d already guessed that was his “tell.” Now he’d confirmed it.

  “You’re hiding something,” I surmised. “What is it?”

  “Nothing big.” He looked straight at me—like a man headed to the gallows. “I offered your services as a guest speaker at the next small business club meeting. It’s tomorrow at ten A.M.”

  Aha. I got it. “You knew I wouldn’t like this, didn’t you?”

  “Our interactions so far would suggest as much, yes.”

  “Yet you did it anyway.” I shook my head, exasperated. “I don’t speak, I do,” I reminded him. “That’s my thing! I troubleshoot chocolates—I don’t talk about them.” I was already stretched thin, trying to comfort Monsieur’s family, track down his killer, and make chocolates on the side. Plus, find out all there was to know about Travis. I shot him a stern look. “You were supposed to be scouting Saint-Malo for your company’s international clients, remember? You had a cover story.”

  “My skills don’t lie in the area of subterfuge.”

  “No kidding,” I said drily. I glanced outside—watching the video crew setting up shots with Lucas at Capucine’s direction—tr ying to maintain my exasperated front. But I couldn’t keep it up. I looked at Travis. “That’s okay. Honestly? Neither do mine.”

  We traded a smile. Inexplicably, it was happening. We were bonding. Over a shared fault (sort of), but still. Yay, us.

  “We’ll just have to keep going,” I added, pulling my trusty Moleskine notebook out of my crossbody bag. I flipped it open to my notes on Philippe’s murder. “We’re doing the best we can.”

  “At least you got some pertinent information from that Antiquités Moreau business card,” Travis pointed out. “Bravo.”

  “Yeah, about that—” Reminded of that blood-spattered proof of Monsieur’s untimely death, I shuddered. “I’ve been thinking about it. Charlotte Moreau runs a local antiques shop, right?”

  Travis nodded. We both knew antiquités were antiques. “Her shop has been open in that spot for that past fifteen years,” he confirmed. “But her background is clean. I checked last night.”

  It was good to have him—and his ace research skills—on the job. I inhaled, mulling things over. “Then maybe Charlotte Moreau isn’t a suspect,” I surmised. “Maybe she’s a clue.”

  My financial advisor gave me a puzzled frown. “How so?”

  “Well, if Antiquités Moreau has been operating in Saint-Malo for fifteen years, then Philippe wouldn’t have needed a business card from Charlotte Moreau to remind him of that.”

  I chose another pastry from the napkin-covered breadbasket that accompanied the jam, Breton butter, coffee, juice, fruit, and yogurt on our table’s lavish spread. We would never eat all of it, but I meant to try. A girl needed brain food, right?

  “But he might have needed a business card to remind him of something else,” I went on. “Something like . . . an appointment?”

  I brushed away crumbles of laminated pastry from my notebook, then showed the page to Travis. I pointed at it.

  “See here? Look at the numbers, handw
ritten right there.”

  I’d sketched the business card in my notebook, striving to make the image authentic, even with the constraints I’d had.

  Travis squinted, then shook his head. “Sorry. That looks like chicken scratch to me.” He looked up, his face uncertain. “You’re sure those were numbers? They could be almost anything.”

  “Are you kidding me?” I hadn’t spent all that time working with my mentor without learning his handwriting. Being able to decipher the difference between 40 grams of Swiss chocolate and 400 grams of Swiss chocolate was the difference between success and failure. I pointed again. “Right here. I copied it exactly.”

  I’d even copied those small blood droplets, noting their size and position in case it was important. But I didn’t want to dwell on those. Instead, I turned my notebook toward Travis.

  “If that logo is reflective of your drawing skills, then we’re in trouble,” he mused. “I’ve seen Madame Moreau’s antiques-store logo. It looks like an old-fashioned woodcut. But this—”

  “Forget the logo, Renoir!” I didn’t need an art critique, not even from him. “It’s the numbers that matter.” I pointed at them with my pencil to clarify. “See? 10.09 and 15:30.”

  “Appointment times?” Travis guessed. “But what day? And why? Philippe was a chocolatier, not a collector—at least not as far as we know. Was he interested in buying art? Collectibles?”

  “Not buying,” I’d decided. “Selling. Selling something on the tenth of September at three-thirty in the afternoon. That’s not two appointment times, it’s one European-style date and time, written side by side. See the punctuation? That’s got to be it. Philippe might have known all his neighbors, but he was terrible at remembering appointments—truly the worst, in fact.”

  Travis looked impressed. “I see it. That makes sense.”

  “It does, because I think Monsieur was getting ready to move on.” Saying so aloud made me feel horribly wistful. I wished I’d had more time with my mentor. “I think Philippe knew his marriage to Hélène was over. With Nathalie getting married and La Maison des Petits Bonheurs passing into Poyet’s hands, he had no reason to stay in Saint-Malo. His legacy was over.”

  “Or solidified. You could think of it that way.” Travis drank more coffee, becoming visibly more alert. “Poyet is a major player. Scoring a deal with them would be a coup for any company, especially one the size of Philippe’s.” He looked thoughtful—probably mulling over the details. “Your mentor had reached the finish line of his profession. He’d won.”

  “Or he’d given up.” I felt morose at the thought. It had to be contemplated, though. All possible scenarios did. “Monsieur was handing his third-generation, family-owned chocolaterie to his biggest rival. That has to hurt, doesn’t it?”

  “Not if you’re getting a big enough paycheck in return.”

  Hmm. Maybe Travis was as cynical as Danny—if the arena was right. I couldn’t accept his reasoning, though. “If it was such a big paycheck, then why sell anything to Antiquités Moreau?”

  “We don’t know that’s what he was doing.” At my mention of the antiques store, Travis’s face turned a shade pinker. He went on. “Clotilde Renouf already maintains that your mentor was having a long-term extramarital affair with her mother, right?”

  “Ugh! Please say ‘fling,’ okay? It sounds less awful.”

  “So you have to wonder . . .” Travis gave me a cautionary look—one that said I wouldn’t like what was coming next. “What if Madame Renouf wasn’t the only one?”

  “You mean, what if the elder Madame Renouf wasn’t Monsieur’s only affair? Come on, Travis. No way. I can’t believe it.”

  “You mean you won’t believe it.”

  There wasn’t much difference, as far as I was concerned. If I could keep Philippe Vetault’s memory safe in my mind, I would.

  “Look,” I said, “when I trust someone, it’s forever.”

  “No matter who might disagree with you? Or why?”

  “No matter what. Not unless I have proof of wrongdoing.” I had to be honest. “Maybe not even then. I’m kind of stubborn.”

  But mine was the good kind of stubborn, in my opinion. The kind that keeps you trying, even when things look hopeless.

  I stared out at the manicured jardin, lost in thought. At that moment, not even the pains au chocolat looked good to me.

  When I finally glanced back at Travis, he nodded. “I get it now. Your loyalty explains a lot about you and Danny.”

  I guessed it did. “Good.” I sat up straighter. “Maybe now you two can stop being at each other’s throats all the time.”

  Travis looked doubtful. “I’m not sure the enforcer and I will ever see eye to eye about anything, including you.”

  Right. That was the part I found so difficult about their ongoing antagonism. I liked both of them. I probably always would. I wasn’t wild about having so much discord in my life.

  On the other hand, I wasn’t crazy about being mixed up in murders, either. Yet here I was. So, on with the show, right?

  “You’re suggesting that Monsieur had an affair with someone else?” I wrinkled my nose. “That his ‘appointment’ with Charlotte Moreau wasn’t really a buy-and-sell occasion?”

  “More of a ‘get down and dirty’ occasion,” my financial advisor agreed with a nod. “Madame Moreau is an attractive woman.”

  I considered it. Then, “Nope. I don’t believe Monsieur had one affair, much less two. He was a chocolatier, not a playboy!” I sighed. “It seems much likelier to me that Philippe had official business at Antiquités Moreau—something so important that he wrote it down to make sure he wouldn’t forget.”

  “It had to be buying,” Travis mused. “Given the big payday that was coming his way from the Poyet merger, he wouldn’t have needed to sell anything. Your mentor wasn’t exactly reduced to pawning his possessions to get by—although he could have, given the valuables the Vetaults have used to decorate their château.”

  I didn’t want to discuss decorating. “How much did Monsieur stand to gain from the merger? I wouldn’t have been surprised if he took less than he deserved, just to make sure the deal went forward, especially if he knew that’s what Nathalie wanted.”

  “That’s not a sensible way to run a business,” Travis maintained. “If Nathalie had that much interest in La Maison des Petits Bonheurs, she should have taken over the chocolaterie herself, instead of coercing her father into a subpar deal.”

  “It wouldn’t have been coercing or Nathalie’s doing,” I disagreed. “It would have been Philippe’s. He was generous that way. Besides, running a chocolate business isn’t like running a laundromat or a grocery store. To properly make chocolate, you have to have a passion for it. You have to be willing to sacrifice. You have to be called to it, in a way.” I shook my head, remembering that long summer I’d trained en formation with my mentor. “Nathalie isn’t passionate about chocolate making. But that doesn’t mean she wanted to lose the family business.”

  “So Nathalie purposely got together with Fabrice Poyet, just to make sure her family’s chocolaterie was in good hands?” Travis sounded unconvinced. “That’s a stretch. Even if Nathalie could have been sure Philippe would agree to a merger with Poyet, Fabrice and his board would have had to agree to it.”

  I knew Travis had researched my mentor’s more prestigious rival. I knew he’d made several valid points, too. And yet . . .

  “I’m not suggesting some sort of scenario where Nathalie seduces Fabrice to make him invest in La Maison des Petits Bonheurs.” I made a face, hoping to convey exactly how abhorrent that sounded. “But what if they really are the Romeo and Juliet of French chocolate? What if Philippe saw how good they were together and seized his chance to cement his legacy? He must have known that Nathalie has no personal interest in chocolate.” I reminded Travis of her demanding PR job in Paris. “But Monsieur was in favor of Nathalie and Fabrice’s wedding. He helped them dig out Grand-mère’s wedding dress from the atti
c!”

  I pictured my mentor in the château’s dusty grenier (attic), triumphantly pulling a lacy white gown from a trunk and then tenderly handing it to his daughter. It was a lovely idea.

  Travis shattered it. “The merger wasn’t an altruistic gesture. It wasn’t a wedding gift, either.” He steepled his hands and rested his chin on his fingertips in thought. “Your mentor needed that merger. His margins were razor thin.”

  “You just said he didn’t need to pawn things to get by.”

  “Surviving isn’t the same as flourishing. Even if Philippe had had the château’s B&B income to rely on—which is slightly more tenuous, right now, than the chocolaterie’s is, by the way—Philippe would still have been smart to merge with Poyet.”

  “Wait.” I must have misheard him. “Did you just say that the château—the B&B portion of the château—is struggling?”

  “Not struggling per se,” Travis clarified. “But the hospitality business has fine margins, too. It’s high risk and easily impacted by economic downturns and currency fluctuations that affect occupancy rates, especially in Europe.”

  I frowned. “Why didn’t you say so before?”

  “Because the château doesn’t belong to Philippe,” Travis explained dispassionately. “It belongs to Hélène and Hubert.”

  “What?” When I’d asked my financial advisor to run his usual check on everyone involved, I hadn’t expected to learn anything new about Philippe. But I just had. “Since when?”

  Travis drank more coffee, considering it. “A year ago, more or less. Although Hubert Bernard has worked there much longer.”

  I glanced around the château’s beautiful dining room, seeing it—and the château beyond—with new eyes. Then I regarded my financial advisor. “Let me get this straight. Are you saying that Philippe allowed his wife and her lover to run this place?”

  “To run it and own it. I’m sorry, Hayden, but it’s true.”

  “I don’t doubt it. I told you Monsieur was generous!”

  My keeper looked at me as if I were crazy. “This goes beyond ‘generous,’” he argued. “It’s financially irresponsible.”