by Nell Goddin
“Salut, Constance!” she called as the front door opened, and got out another glass.
“Molls! How are you? I hear you’re working on a new case.”
“What?” said Molly, putting down the bottle of crème de cassis. “How do you know about that?”
“Couldn’t get any details though. What’s going on? Don’t tell you me discovered another body!” Constance hooted as though Molly’s propensity for stumbling across dead bodies was hilarious.
“First of all, not funny, and second of all, is there any privacy in this village at all? Does everyone have spy-cams running 24/7 or what? I don’t know whether to be delighted or disgusted.”
Well, it’s not like you don’t enjoy a little gossip, Molls. Castillaçois are the same way. While the rest of the world obsesses over Prince William and Kate Middleton or whichever celebrity is in rehab for the tenth time—we in Castillac are more interested in what’s going on with the people we know. Or if not know, then at least see on the street from time to time.”
“I just…well, to be honest? I want to know what everyone else is doing too, but that doesn’t mean I want anyone else knowing what I’m doing.”
“Absolument! “ said Constance with a laugh. “That is the way of the world, and I’m sort of shocked that for once it’s me schooling you instead of the other way around.”
Molly laughed. “All right, here’s a kir, sit and tell me the news.”
The two friends plopped down on the sofa and sipped their drinks. Constance let out a long, theatrical sigh.
Molly cocked her head. “Thomas?”
Constance nodded slowly. “I don’t even want to talk about him. I don’t want anything to do with him. But at the same time, all I can think about is him showing up at my door begging me to take him back.”
Molly thought this over. “Do you think that might happen?” she asked.
“When hell freezes over,” said Constance glumly. “I haven’t even seen Thomas in weeks and weeks. I guess he’s spending every minute with that wretched, hateful Simone Guyanet.”
“I guess it wouldn’t help to tell you I had a relationship like that once? A guy I couldn’t let go of, even though we didn’t even really have any fun together and he was right to break it off. Do you think it’s mostly hurt pride that keeps you spinning around?”
“If he did come back, I wouldn’t mind shoving it in Simone’s face,” said Constance, her eyes lighting up at the idea.
Bobo came racing in through the terrace door and flung her paws up on Constance. “Well, hello!” she said, scratching the speckled ears. “My mother always said no one will love you like a dog. I think she was right.”
Molly considered. “I think she was right too. At least…dog love is so uncomplicated. They see you, they’re happy, you’re happy, that’s all.”
“Yeah.”
They sat in silence for a long while, sipping their drinks and thinking about love and dogs. Finally Molly decided to go ahead and talk to Constance about the case; it was on her mind all the time, and since Constance and Valerie were reasonably close in age, she might have some little nugget of information no one had managed to unearth.
“So, Constance….”
Constance stopped petting Bobo and Bobo put her head on Constance’s knee, looking up at her hopefully. “What?”
“Valerie Bou—”
“Boutillier! I knew it! I’m actually a little hurt you didn’t call me up and ask to interview me. I did know her, after all.”
“I wondered about that.”
“Yeah, she was a couple years ahead of me, but I knew her all right.”
“So tell me about her. What was she like?”
“She was like a…kind of like a…I can’t think of anything to compare her to, a whirlwind or tornado or something. You never knew what was going to happen next when Valerie was around. She was super smart and full of herself—the kind of girl you sorta want to hate, but in her case? She deserved to be full of herself because she was pretty awesome. Really funny, for one thing. Always coming up with these crazy pranks that the teachers wanted to get mad about but they’d end up laughing along with everyone else.”
“Can you remember any of them?”
Constance looked up at the corner of the room, thinking. “Well, she would fill random rooms at school with balloons, so you’d go to class and open the door and balloons would be spilling out into the hallway and you couldn’t even get inside there were so many. One time she got into the computer room and put some kind of seed down in the keyboards, where you couldn’t even see them, and later on plants started sprouting up between the keys! She almost got in trouble for that one. Schools get a little protective of their computers. But it turned out not to cause any problems.
“So like, she was a prankster, but not a mean one, you know? That’s what people liked so much about her. She made everything more fun but not at anyone’s expense.”
Molly nodded. “I wonder…this quality she had that you’re describing…do you think a stranger would be able to see it? You’re talking about her as though she practically glowed just walking down the street.”
“Well, yeah, I mean—she’d be the girl in the center of a group of people, all laughing. She’d be the energy, you know?”
Molly nodded again. She was thinking that if Constance was right, a stranger could easily have been attracted to Valerie’s energy and obvious popularity. Someone local, or just someone who was in Castillac long enough to see her around the village.
“Was she beautiful?” asked Molly.
Constance screwed up her face. “Well, no, not really. Not beautiful, I wouldn’t say. But totally, totally appealing. Everyone wanted to be her friend.”
“And…I know this was a long time ago, but do you remember having any ideas at the time about what happened to her?”
“All the mothers thought she’d been snatched up by a molester. We couldn’t go anywhere alone for months. I don’t remember feeling afraid or anything myself—my friends and I were all trying to get our mothers to calm down. I wondered if something had happened to make her run away. I didn’t know her that well, didn’t know her family or anything, so I don’t think I had any guesses about why she might have run.
“And heck, maybe I just liked that scenario better than some of the other ones people were talking about, you know? Valerie running free, instead of Valerie dead, or being held captive somewhere, some freak’s prisoner.”
They finished their drinks and sat in silence for some minutes.
“You know a lot of villagers, right?” asked Molly.
“Sure. I mean, not everybody! But you know, I like being out and about, I like chatting…”
“So if you think over all the local people you’ve met over the years, do any of them strike you as being…is off-balance the right word? Utterly nuts? Sadistic?”
Constance scratched her head. She picked at a loose thread on her pants. She scraped her teeth over her lips a couple of times. “I don’t know, Molly,” she said finally. “People are weird, you know? A lot of people are weird, and probably Castillac is the same as anywhere else in that department. But what kind of weirdo do you have to be to do something like that? And would anyone be able to tell just by looking at you or having a conversation? Or, say, waiting on you in a café or something?”
“That’s it, that’s pretty much the question, right there.”
They both nodded. They had the question, but answers were turning out to be extremely scarce on the ground.
* * *
Léon, Dufort’s friend who worked at the Toulouse gendarmerie, had come and gone, leaving him with a burly Belgian Malinois. The big dog was named, perhaps too obviously, Boney. There hadn’t been time to give Dufort much of a training session but Léon seemed confident that the dog would know what to do.
Boney sat next to the door, watching Ben with his intelligent black eyes.
“You want to get to it, don’t you,” Ben said. He pette
d him between his ears that stood up, admiring his black muzzle. He was a serious dog, no little ball of fluff, and it was clear he wanted to work. Ben had never been allowed to have a dog; both of his parents had worked long hours out of the house and had thought a dog would get too lonely by itself all day. He felt a little awkward with Boney now that they were alone together. He imagined the dog thought he talked too much, or could see he was not used to handling dogs.
And he was right. But Boney didn’t particularly care either way, as long as he got to work. He stood by the door, looking over his muscled shoulder at Ben as he cleaned up the breakfast dishes and got ready to go out on their first search.
Boney was trained to search for dead bodies, and only dead bodies. Only human dead bodies. His training had been extensive and Léon had told Ben that Boney would not be put off course by dead rabbits or deer. He could air-scent; that is, he could pick up the smell of death as it wafted by, and follow it until he found its source, even over hills, up streams, anywhere the scent led.
Ben had dressed in long sleeves and canvas pants plus heavy shoes, expecting to have a rough day in the forest. “I’m just putting this on you for now,” he said to Boney as he attached the leash. “Don’t be insulted. But if something happened and you dashed into the street and got hit by a car, I think Léon would dismember me.”
He led the big dog to his car and the dog hopped in back as though it were a familiar place.
“Make yourself at home,” said Ben, looking at him in the rear view mirror. He wished now he’d invited Molly to come along. In fact, he wished it so much he turned around and drove out rue des Chênes to ask her if she’d like to join them, and Molly jumped at the chance since she was feeling a little crowded by Wesley Addison, who had shown no sign of leaving La Baraque that day.
“It’s not exactly a light-hearted way to spend the morning, is it,” said Molly, apprehensive as she climbed in the Renault. “I mean…I don’t want to find her body, you know?”
“Look at it this way,” said Ben. “If we search all around Castillac, and all through the forest of La Double, and Boney doesn’t find her? Then she’s not there. I admit, it’s hardly proof she’s still alive, but it’s at least something in that direction, right?”
Molly wasn’t so sure about that. “If you want to get rid of a body, there are a million ways to do it besides burying it in nearby woods. If it were me, I’d probably chop it up and drive to the ocean, rent a boat, and go way way out….”
“Really,” said Ben. “You seem to have given it quite a lot of thought.”
“I’m just saying,” said Molly. She turned in her seat so she could reach back to Boney. “He doesn’t really like petting,” said Molly. “He’s just tolerating me.”
“He wants to get started,” said Ben. “And so do I. As soon as I get a little farther up this road, I’m going to pull over and we can watch him do his thing. You ready to walk?”
“I’m ready.”
Ben stopped and backed his car into the woods far enough that another car could get by. Then he opened the door to the backseat and Boney leapt out.
Then the dog froze. He lifted his nose in the air and sniffed, and took off into the underbrush.
“If I lose that dog….” said Dufort.
“Don’t worry,” said Molly with a laugh. “But come on!” She ran through the woods trying to keep Boney in view. The dog was zigzagging, up and back, up and back, covering fifty, a hundred times the ground the humans were.
And that was how the rest of the morning went. Boney ran in patterns, often stopping to lift his noble black muzzle in the air and sniff, and then he would duck his head down and run as though being pulled along by his nose. Ben and Molly walked and often ran to keep up with him.
After three hours, Boney had found exactly nothing. Ben and Molly stopped by a stream and the dog waded in and lapped up water, then lay down and let the water come up over his back.
For a moment the humans were too tired to talk. They stood in the quiet woods, by the stream, and Ben hooked his finger in the belt loop of Molly’s jeans and gave it a playful tug.
“Now what?” she said, her face red from exertion.
“We’re almost done with this loop. How about afterwards we go to your house and you make me lunch?”
“All I’ve got is some salami and stale bread.”
“Sounds excellent.” Ben looked at Boney. “You ready, boy? Go have a rest and come back later?”
Boney stood up and trotted out of the stream. He shook, giving Molly and Ben a more or less welcome cool spray, and the three of them headed back to the car.
No bodies. No Valerie. It was hard to feel pleased, spending all day looking for something and not finding it, but not finding Valerie in the woods was exactly what they were hoping for.
27
The next morning was Saturday. Molly lay in bed, which was unusual for her since normally the instant she awoke she zoomed straight to the kitchen to make coffee. But instead she rolled over under a light quilt thinking about yesterday in the woods with Ben, and the cozy lunch they had after. About Valerie and Oscar, about Constance and her broken heart, about the little boy whose mother was so protective…all the threads that wove together to make her recent days in Castillac.
Upstairs she could hear Wesley Addison moving around, and she knew she’d better get up if she wanted to dodge a lengthy exegesis of her Boston accent. The cottage was still empty, and the De Groots staying in the pigeonnier had rarely been seen. As far as Molly could tell, they ventured out for wine and pastries and then scurried back inside. Ah, newlyweds….
Bobo had been very interested when Molly came back after the day in the woods with Ben and Boney. And just who is the Other Dog you spent your day with? her speckled face seemed to be asking. Here it was the next day and Bobo was still a little bit stand-offish.
“I know, Bobo, I did sort of cheat on you. But it was work, not play! I was expressly told that you were not allowed to come. Boney needed to work without you distracting him. But I promise, I swear on a heap of liver treats, that I will take you to La Double for a long hike one day soon. You will adore it.”
Bobo allowed Molly to rub her chest but she did not make eye contact.
“You’re a tough nut, Bobo,” murmured Molly. “Now you stay and I’ll go to the market and get some bones for you from Raoul. How’s that?”
She heard the heavy step of Addison on the stairs, and slipped out the terrace door and walked quickly to her scooter and zoomed into the village.
The Saturday market never failed to put Molly in a good mood. Every month, she knew more people and felt more at home there. She remembered how hesitant she had been at first, how uncomfortable it made her that people knew who she was before she even met them. And oh, the state of her French! But now she could communicate, even if the subjunctive was still sometimes out of reach. Molly was part of Castillac, no longer a stranger.
Which was partly why Madame Renaud’s reaction the other day had surprised her. On her rounds doing her phony survey, almost everyone had recognized her, either as the owner of La Baraque or the person who had solved a crime or two. Had she said something to offend her? Her little boy was adorable, and Molly kept going back to him in her mind, wondering why he had been looking at her so intently.
Was his mother mistreating him in some way, and he needed Molly’s help?
She would keep an eye out for him at the market, and maybe she could have a private word with him and find out if something was wrong.
Molly and Manette had a laugh when a dignified old lady dropped her basket and muttered merde under her breath. She chatted briefly with Rémy, and they joked about Ben being the hardest-working and least talented farmer ever. She got some lardons and bones from Raoul, as promised to Bobo. And she continually scanned the crowd—a big one, now that the weather was so nice—looking both for Gilbert and anyone who seemed, well, like a crazy teenage-girl-stealer.
“La bombe!” boo
med a voice not three inches from her ear.
“Bonjour, Lapin,” said Molly, turning to see the big man standing with his arms open, a big grin on his face.
“I hardly see you anymore,” he said kissing her on both cheeks. “How did the furniture for the pigeonnier work out?”
“It’s lovely, thank you,” said Molly. “Got the place rented out as we speak, I’m happy to say. Thanks to you and Pierre.”
“I’m very glad to hear it. I don’t know if you’ve heard, but I have a commercial enterprise of my own, just getting off the ground. I’d appreciate your support.”
“Sure,” said Molly, crossing her arms over her chest as Lapin’s eyes drifted in that direction. “What kind of thing is it?”
“I’m opening a shop,” he said proudly. “Something I’ve been meaning to do for years. My garage was full to bursting with things I’d put aside over the years, with just this plan in mind. So please, do me the honor of dropping by. It’s down at the far end of rue Baudelaire. I know it’s a little bit out of the way but you know how rents are in the center of the village.”
Molly nodded. “What are your hours?”
“Mornings, 10 to noon. Closed Wednesdays. You give me a call anytime, I’ll run over and open up for you. Don’t hesitate to call, my dear!”
“I’ll definitely drop by,” she said, causing Lapin to widen his eyes in surprise. He was used to Molly keeping him at arm’s length whenever possible.
“Actually,” she said in a low voice. “Do you have a minute? I’ve been wanting to have a word with you.”
“By all means,” said Lapin, beaming. “Step into my office,” he said, with a grand gesture towards the empty alley.
Molly snickered and then looked serious. “Listen, Lapin, this is private, what I’m about to say. But I’ve been thinking maybe you could help with something. It’s important.”
