by Nell Goddin
Over the course of a very long day, she learned a considerable amount about these families, their interrelations and connections to other parts of the country and beyond. But not once did she get so much as the tiniest inkling that anyone was up to anything remotely untoward, nor did she spy a single shred of evidence that Valerie Boutillier was living anywhere nearby.
* * *
The next morning Achille woke up and instantly leapt out of bed. It was Monday, the day of the Salliac market, and he was not going to waste half the day doing nothing this time. He was going straight there, right after the morning milking.
He was not going to miss her again.
The morning chores seemed to take forever: get the girls in from the far field, hook them up to the machine, turn them out in the west field; take Valerie her breakfast and empty her bucket; take a bucket of slops to the hog; feed the dog.
All the animals seemed to move in slow motion, and it was frustrating to Achille that there was nothing he could say or do to move them along any more quickly. When he urged Bourbon on, she turned and looked askance at him, and he kept quiet after that.
At long last, he was ready to go. He considered showering and combing his hair but did not want to take the time, so he climbed on the tractor smelling of manure and sweat, his hair sticking up in back, in a terrific hurry.
The tractor coughed and sputtered but the engine caught, and slowly moved down the short driveway to the main road, and off to Salliac.
Achille sold his milk to a cooperative, and had just received a payment. He was feeling wealthy and full of optimism, envisioning the moment when the girl climbed on his tractor to go home with him, and how it was going to give him more pleasure than anything ever had in his entire life. He kept picturing it, running the image in his head over and over, changing small details and running it through again.
He knew perfectly well that even if he could convince her to come home with him willingly, she would never want to stay there with him. He was under no illusions on that score. But holding her, being in charge of her completely, responsible for everything having to do with her—being her whole world—that was part of the point. The best part, he admitted to himself sometimes.
At first, the new girl would have to stay in the attic. It would be warmer there at night anyway, although he would likely have to endure some shrieking and crying.
He didn’t like crying.
That was why he had been forced to build the root cellar where Valerie lived. It had been a massive undertaking and he still felt proud of himself for having managed it. After a few months with Valerie in the attic, he had had enough of her crying and screaming, all night long. He had a milking schedule to adhere to and nothing was allowed to affect that. It had taken him months to build the cellar, even using the digger attachment on the tractor for the bulk of the digging. He had to research, to gather materials—imagine building an underground dwelling all by yourself, and making sure the roof wasn’t going to cave in!
It hadn’t been easy, no. Not on top of all the daily responsibilities he already had. It’s not like Valerie was going to pitch in. She had spent those months screaming herself hoarse. He had been very lucky none of the neighbors had heard anything.
As he drew close to Salliac, he pushed any thought of Valerie and the farm out of his mind, and focused all of his attention to finding the girl.
He knew she was there, he could feel it.
It was a beautiful day, warm with a light breeze, with more people walking around than the last time. A man bumped into him from behind and Achille startled violently, then shuddered at the thought of the stranger touching him like that without any warning.
The market felt dangerous. Any second, someone might start talking to him, and he would have no idea what to say back.
And then he saw her. It felt like a moment out of a movie, he could actually hear music playing as though someone had turned on a radio or an orchestra had risen up out of nowhere. He lifted his gaze and across the Place the girl stood with the sun illuminating her as she leaned back, one knee bent and her foot against a wall, talking with two friends.
She is the one.
Achille wanted to run to her, to take her hands in his and look into her pretty face. He wanted to start their conversation now, the conversation he expected to go on for years and years. But he held himself back.
He knew rushing was a mistake. And there were her friends to contend with. He would have to be patient.
At least that was one useful thing his father had taught him during those agonizing hunting trips. They would have to sit in the woods, not moving for hours on end, waiting for game to appear. Checking the wind direction, their clothes brown and green for camouflage, waiting and hoping. Time had felt endless.
That part wasn’t the agony—it was the killing Achille didn’t like. The hunting trips would have been wonderful if he had been allowed to bring the animals home, to keep them and care for them. His mother wouldn’t have objected, because she was gone much of the time. In a special hospital, was all his father ever said. All Achille knew was that she was there, and then she was not, and she left over and over until she finally never returned.
Always leaving. Always leaving him behind.
Achille never took his eyes off the girl. Finally one of the friends wandered off, and he saw the girl kiss the other friend, a tall girl with legs so long they reminded him of spider legs.
He had forgotten the cannelés!
Quickly he scanned the tables ringing the Place, looking for the old woman who sold cannelés. He couldn’t see her anywhere. But she was necessary; he couldn’t approach the girl empty-handed—she was depending on him to provide for her.
He felt his throat start to close up from over-excitement. His hands trembled and suddenly all the other people at the market felt threatening again. They were too close and moving too erratically. Someone might bump into him again, someone might ask him a question.
It was overwhelming.
Achille turned and walked quickly back to his tractor. The day wasn’t right. There were too many difficulties. He need to get home and calm down and think everything through.
But as he put his hands on the seat of the tractor and was about to hoist himself up, the image of the girl standing in the sunshine flashed into his head, and he paused. He dropped his hands and turned back around.
I can do it.
He looked again for the cannelé-seller and still did not see her. So instead he went into a shop that sold candies and bought a handful of caramels. He smiled at the proprietor and put the caramels in his pocket, and went to find his soulmate.
21
On Monday morning, Molly wandered around outside drinking her first cup of coffee and looking at the daffodils. “Bobo! Don’t trample the flowers!” she shouted, as Bobo flew straight into the border and began digging furiously.
Molly stepped in and dragged her back out, then bent down and inhaled the sweet scent of the flowers, closing her eyes so that all her attention was on the complicated, exhilarating smell.
“Okay, I’m doing it,” she said, standing back up with a sudden clarity of purpose. She could not have explained why sniffing the daffodil had made her decide to buy the scooter that day—maybe something about carpe diem and living for the moment—but whatever the reason, she went inside to grab her handbag and set off for Castillac and the little shop on the far edge of town that had an array of scooters outside in a rainbow of gleaming colors.
“Stay, Bobo!” she said, and Bobo ran back and curled up on the front step as though she’d intended to do that before Molly said a word.
It was around a half hour walk to the scooter dealer’s shop. Long enough for Molly to try to come up with a better plan than canvassing houses, and fail. Long enough to think about how kind Ben was, and how remarkable that he treated her as though she made meaningful contributions to their investigation, when he had years of training and experience and she had zero.
But then she stopped in the street. “Lapin!” she said out loud, and then checked behind her to make sure no one heard. I need to talk to Lapin, she thought. His career is all about poking around in people’s houses, and right after someone dies—a moment of great vulnerability for anyone, but maybe especially for someone with a terrible secret. Wouldn’t Lapin, more than anyone, have some ideas about who might be unbalanced enough to take a hostage for seven years?
Regretfully she turned in the opposite direction from the scooter dealer and went straight to Chez Papa, where there was a decent chance she could find him.
“Sorry, you just missed him,” said Nico, who was sweeping. “He came in for a quick coffee and a croissant and then hurried off. I have to say, I’m a little curious? I thought you and Lapin weren’t exactly friends.”
“Eh,” said Molly, waving her hand. “We get along just fine.” And indeed they did get along, but that didn’t mean she was looking forward to calling him up and arranging to meet. It would have been much better just to have a few words at Chez Papa, having run into each other by chance. Or at least it would seem like chance to Lapin, which was the main thing.
“Want coffee or anything?”
“Nope!” said Molly. “I’m off to buy a scooter!” And the door shut behind her with a bang as she headed across the village once again.
* * *
The glossy emerald green scooter of her imagination was not what Molly ended up with. As often happens, her dream collided with her pocketbook, and she ended up with a ten-year-old model, battered and dented but which the dealer swore ran like a dream. It was the color of mud.
Molly loved it.
The dealer had given her a quick lesson in the parking lot and Molly had taken to it like a duck to water. She felt powerful riding around the village on it—she could get places so quickly! Take sharp corners! Feel the wind in her face!
No buyer’s remorse, not even a little, despite knowing she had spent money that should probably have been spent on a new water heater. She would probably need a car as well, eventually; it was something of a miracle she made it through the winter without one. But next winter was a long ways away, Castillac had a new taxi driver now for her guests to use, and so all was right in the world of transportation, at least for now.
Molly checked the map in her fake genealogist’s notebook. She had made considerable progress going door-to-door, covering nearly a third of the village. Now that she was mobile, she figured why not check out some of the places on the fringes of Castillac—after all, Mme Gervais had suggested she look at the farms, and now she could do so without wasting the whole day walking to get to them.
First she made sure she had plenty of gas, then chose a street at random and took off. Like so many French villages, Castillac was set in the middle of the countryside with no suburb to speak of, so she was riding by farmland within a few minutes. No one home at the first farmhouse. At the second, a nice older woman asked her inside and talked her ear off about cheesemaking. She sampled the woman’s cheese and smiled a lot and moved on.
The third farm belonged to Achille Labiche, according to the map from the mairie.
Molly came down the driveway and lovingly parked the scooter next to a tree. It was such lovely countryside, in May everything was so green it almost glowed, and she admired the herd of black and white cows out in the field. A border collie crept out from behind a tractor and watched her intently, as border collies do.
“Hey there,” said Molly, speaking French because it was, after all, a French dog. The dog did not move, did not acknowledge her greeting, but kept watching.
Molly walked up to the door and gave it a hard rap. She had been to so many houses that the routine had numbed her somewhat. She no longer felt much worry about approaching strange houses, even though she was looking for someone with a dangerous secret. Much as she tried to remain observant and stay on her toes, it was difficult for her to maintain a high level of focus when she was having the same conversation over and over, never seeing a single thing that seemed remotely suspicious.
Was anyone home? She considered looking in the kitchen window but instead called out, “Bonjour? Monsieur Labiche?”
She heard slow steps inside the house and waited.
The door opened a crack.
“Monsieur Labiche? Salut! My name is Molly Sutton. I moved to Castillac last summer, and I’m doing some genealogical research on people in the area. I was wondering if you would mind giving me five minutes of your time? Please understand—I’m not selling anything! Just want to know a little about your family names, if you don’t mind talking to me for just a few minutes.”
Achille wanted to slam the door and go back inside. His hands were trembling. But the last thing he wanted to do was attract attention by seeming rude. He didn’t want this foreigner blabbing all over town about unfriendly Labiche who had refused to talk to her.
He took a deep breath and held it for a moment.
“All right,” he said, coming out into the sunshine and closing the door behind him. “I don’t know anything about my family history. My last name is Labiche. My mother’s last name was Maillard. That’s all I really know.”
Molly smiled. “What I usually find is that people know more than they think,” she said. “Are your parents still alive?”
Achille nodded. “They’re out in the back pasture, taking care of some fencing,” he said, and the instant the words left his mouth, a voice inside his head shouted: Fool! She will find you out with your stupid lies!
He put his trembling hands in his pockets. He saw the scooter and wondered if Valerie had heard it come down the driveway. Would she start yelling?
“All right. Maybe it would make sense for me to come back later, when I can speak to them?”
“They’re very busy,” said Achille, over the loud voice and roiling darkness in his brain. “I can probably tell you anything they can.”
“Excellent,” said Molly, tucking a handful of curls behind one ear. “Are they both from Castillac?”
“Yes.”
Not a talker, she thought. Oh, I enjoy a tough nut every so often. Reaching down to her shoe as though to adjust it, she stepped back a step or two to give the man some space. She did not make eye contact but looked across the green fields with a smile—but not too big a smile. She was trying not to overwhelm the skittish man, thinking how oddly fitting it was that his name was la biche, which meant deer.
“Your pasture looks like it’s in great shape,” she said, pointing. “Have you always raised Holsteins?”
“Yes,” said Achille. Couldn’t she take a hint? Just go away. Please. I’m begging you. But he could not find any words to make her go, so he just stood there with his hands in his pockets, feeling trapped.
“Is it just you and your parents here?”
“Yes.”
“Any other relatives nearby? Did your parents have any brothers or sisters?”
“I don’t know.”
“Really? That’s unusual,” Molly said, in a friendly sort of way, not in a your-family-is-a-bunch-of-weirdos kind of way. “I got dragged to so many family things when I was a kid. My aunt Bethany? Oh my Lord, she could talk the bark off a tree. Not what a kid wants to do on a Saturday afternoon, you know?”
Labiche took a step backwards, bumping up against the door.
Molly opened her notebook and pretended to glance over her notes. Then she looked around the farm, trying to find something that would get Labiche talking. She saw the milking barn and the hog pen. She saw a door set into a little hill, probably a place to overwinter potatoes or something like that. She saw the border collie working, circling around the tractor, watching them.
“Your dog looks very i
ntense,” Molly said lightly. “Does she herd the cows?”
“Oh yes,” said Achille, smiling in spite of himself. “I never trained her. She just knows what’s to be done. Drives the girls crazy the way she harasses them.”
Molly laughed. “I’ve got a dog, I think she’s got some shepherd in her, maybe some kind of hunting dog too? She’s a little crazy but she’s good company. I live alone,” she added with a shrug, hoping that a bit of sharing might help him loosen up.
But the momentary smile when he talked about Bourbon flickered and disappeared, and Achille said nothing else. Molly figured she was never going to get invited inside the farmhouse, so she shrugged and thanked him for his time.
As she started up the scooter for the ride back to La Baraque, there was no nagging feeling about Labiche, no alarm bells, no intuition. Instead, the most famous detective in all of Castillac—according to nine year old Gilbert—was only thinking about how glorious it was to ride fast on a narrow road, and about what to have for lunch.
22
Achille went back inside the house and paced around the kitchen. He made a fist and put it to his mouth, chewing on a knuckle.
This is bad, he kept thinking, over and over. Bad.
That redheaded woman was a chatterbox, anyone could see that. She was going to go into the village and say things about him. She probably hadn’t wasted a minute, was talking about him right now! Sitting at a bar in a crowd of people, going on and on about his farm and everything she had seen and heard.
She would tell people something was wrong with him. He knew how it went. He saw how she looked, how she stared.
Achille paced and paced. He thought about her standing there, looking at him, holding that notebook. That was where she wrote everything down. All of her judgments, her diagnoses, everything that was going to get him into trouble. And if they took him away, what would happen to his girls?
