by Ruby Loren
Luna nodded. “So am I. I thought my life was made miserable by Pascal’s pranks, but at least I never had to live with him.”
"I'm glad I never met him," Alcide said, flashing a smile all round and managing to inject his usual positivity into the conversation.
I found myself hoping that Luna had picked right this time and that Alcide was everything he appeared to be. On the surface at least, I thought they might be made for each other.
“I'm giving my presentation to Monsieur Quebec later today," I said, my heart feeling heavy all of a sudden.
“You’re leaving?” Luna said, looking suitably sorry.
I shot Alcide a shrewd look and he changed his own facial expression to match. We both knew he’d be happier when I was out of his hair. I also knew he would be unlikely to take too much of my review to heart. He was new to his job and had yet to put his own stamp on it. All the same, I hoped a few of my ideas would sneak into his subconscious.
Luna was just telling me how much everyone would miss me when I saw Alcide’s expression change again. This time it went through disbelief before settling on guilt.
I turned around.
A squirrel monkey was perched on a carved coptic cross headstone, chewing on what looked like a grape - probably stolen from the local vineyard.
I looked back at Alcide who threw me an unabashed smile.
“I guess I must have miscounted,” was all he said and then cleared his throat. “I’ll get him back with his friends, I promise.”
He moved towards the monkey, making soothing noises. I had a moment of thinking ‘rather him than me’ but I did appreciate him owning up to making the mistake. I thought there was definitely hope for Alcide.
“Do you want to come with me to Adele’s house? I’m going to check on Georgette,” Luna said, referring to her puppy.
I looked back towards the church in time to see Lowell walk out, still deep in discussion with Ms Borel.
“I’ll see you back at the house,” he called.
I watched as they walked to Ms Borel’s car and got in before driving away.
“I’d love to come see the puppies again,” I said, hoping to brush off what had just happened as nothing out of the ordinary.
Luna threw me a look laced with concern and sympathy but didn’t comment.
“Okay, let’s go then. I think Adele and Justin are probably already home by now. They didn’t want to stay out too long because of the pups and Jolie. Matti’s still in my backyard right now but we can collect him on the way. Bless him, he does mope about after a while without Jolie, Adele, and Justin. I think he thinks he’s done something wrong but can’t figure out what it is.”
I nodded sympathetically. “I’m sure it won’t be long before he can come back in and have a grand old time playing with the pups.”
“Absolutely. He’ll be a great big brother for them all… until they get bigger than him, anyway,” she added with a little laugh.
I raised an eyebrow. “You really think that will happen?” Matti was definitely not small.
“Have you seen the size of Madame Louve’s Great Dane?” She grinned. “I know they’re only half Dane, but their feet are already massive and Jolie’s quite a strapping Labrador. I reckon they’ll beat Matti for size.”
“I hope they all find loving owners,” I said, privately thinking that seven puppies would eat Adele and Justin out of their home in no time at all. It was already pretty cosy in their little house with just Matti and Jolie!
“Well, I’m taking Georgette. Madame Louve has picked herself one of the boys. The vet's decided he’d like one too but hasn’t picked yet, and the rest are being fought over by zoo staff. They’re actually having to draw lots to decide who gets a puppy.”
“That’s great!” I said, thrilled to hear that there were so many people readily able to take on a new dog - especially one as potentially large as Jolie’s pups.
“I know Adele’s booked Jolie in to be spayed, just as soon as she’s stopped nursing and the vet says it’s safe,” Luna confided.
I nodded, pleased that Adele and Justin had made that decision. If Jolie had escaped once, she’d no doubt be able to do it again and I knew that despite the puppies being welcomed into the world, Adele and Justin knew just as well as I did that there were thousands of homeless dogs all looking for homes. It wasn’t fair to take those potential homes away by unnecessary breeding.
We turned to look back at Alcide. He was on all fours in front of the coptic cross headstone. The monkey was about two metres away from him on the grass, still eating its grape. It looked for all the world as though it was ignoring him, but I knew better. So did Alcide, but he grinned at us anyway.
“You two go along. I’ll have this one back home in no time,” he promised, although I could already see beads of frustration forming on his forehead. This squirrel monkey was clearly the wiliest of the bunch.
I thought Alcide might have just hit on a reason I hadn’t even thought of for keeping the monkeys in an enclosure. They were quick learners. Left to live practically wild in the zoo, they’d learnt all of the tricks. Now Alcide was having to go up against all of that experience.
“Good luck,” I wished him.
Luna and I walked back through the graveyard. The last few dregs of people were drifting away from the church. Luna waved over at Sage and Detective Girard, who also looked to be finishing up their conversation. I even managed to nod at Detective Prideaux as he swung out of the car park in his shiny BMW - despite living only half a kilometre away, Luna confided.
The late morning sunshine somehow already appeared old. I thought it might have something to do with the rust coloured leaves that frequently spiralled down from the tree-lined avenue we were walking down. It wouldn’t be long before the winter chill moved in and the whole place battened down the hatches until the tourist season resumed once more. I didn’t know why, but there was something sad about the end of the busy time. It was like turning the lights off after a show. But then, there was also a sense of peace. The little village and its inhabitants would live a quieter life, a life more similar to the rural France of the past. I thought there was something charming about that.
Perhaps the mood of the day had struck Luna, too, because we walked on in silence. It was a comfortable silence between friends, but none the less, I knew we were both wandering through our own thoughts.
My thoughts turned to the recent deaths and attacks, as they tended to do. No knife had been recovered. The more I thought about it, the harder I found it to suspect anyone in particular. All I knew was that there was something off about the whole thing. There was something I wasn't seeing.
As we turned the corner onto Rue De Jean, I tried once more to piece it all together.
The first thing I realised I'd become sure of was that the deaths and the attacks were intended as offerings. The mysterious chocolates, even the heart painted on Matti - it all felt like the work of an obsessed psychopath. Who else would believe dropping the body of a rather odious man into the tiger enclosure was a good idea? Everything had been carefully planned and considered. The killer was clever but also devoted.
There was only one thing I didn’t understand.
The killer had done so much to impress and please Adele, all presumably with the rather twisted hope that she would appreciate the gestures. However, the most obvious barrier to the killer’s happiness was Justin. Adele was married to him and it was plain for everyone to see that they were in love.
The killer had attacked Justin - which fit my theory - but he hadn’t killed him. There was a chance that the killer had thought the job had been done. Perhaps if Justin had remained undiscovered until the morning, it would have been, but it still bothered me. The person responsible was a planner. They’d planned the body drop perfectly. They’d planned the anonymous chocolate delivery. Clearly, they were good at planning and execution. After all, it was a testament to their abilities that they hadn’t yet been caught. They’d also
proved they were capable of murder.
So why, when the opportunity to remove the biggest obstacle to their happiness presented itself, had they not finished the job in their usual perfectionist style?
Unless Justin wasn’t the one who was in the way of their happiness after all, the voice in my head piped up.
“Oh no,” I breathed, as several things jumped into place in my brain. It was like a sliding puzzle that finally slotted together. What had been nonsensical lines now became a fully formed picture.
I couldn’t believe I hadn't seen it before.
It was the tiger enclosure that had thrown me off. If Pascal Devereux had crash landed in the lion enclosure, it would have been a different story. But he hadn’t. The killer had their flaws after all. They’d made a mistake and it had fooled me completely.
The events of the past couple of weeks replayed in my head, changing to fit my new theory. Instead of casting Adele in the victim’s role, I placed Luna there, and everything made a horrible sort of sense.
Enzo Argent had been stabbed because he’d been trying to drag Luna into the mess that was his broken marriage. It might also have been payback for the way he’d cheated on her when they’d been together.
Constantine and Luna had argued publicly enough that gossip about it had spread all round the zoo.
The paint on Matti had been applied when he was in Luna’s yard. Perhaps the killer didn’t know he wasn’t Luna’s dog, or more likely, they’d just wanted to be in her thoughts and knew she’d see their message. After all, they’d known to bribe Matti with food to distract him.
The chocolates must have been intended for her, too.
Then there was what had happened to Pascal Devereux. I'd figured out that the killer was leaving offerings but they’d dropped him into the tiger enclosure instead of into the lions’ habitat, that Luna was in charge of. What I couldn't be sure of was whether the killer had missed their intended target when dropping the corpse, or if they’d only known that Luna was a big cat keeper and had assumed that meant all of the big cats.
If it were the latter, it would mean that I could exclude everyone who worked at the zoo as a suspect. Unfortunately, I couldn’t rule out the parachute drop simply being less accurate than planned. I remembered the uncontrollable way it had spun round on the way down. I also remembered the person in the front harness struggling to be released in time. Pascal’s final resting place could have missed the mark.
Justin’s attack was the only one I couldn’t understand. It had been an incident which had pointed to Adele being the heart of the matter. The only logical idea I could come up with was that it had simply been bad luck. Luna and Adele and Justin lived next door to each other. What if Justin’s trip outside had happened to coincide with the murderer leaving another offering for Luna? They could have panicked and attacked Justin to stop him from seeing who they were. That would also imply that Justin knew the killer, but that much was surely already obvious. It was someone in the community who'd done all of this. Someone who wanted to be close to Luna.
My walk had slowed to a crawl. Luna tilted her head at me when I finally ground to a halt on the wide stones that made up the pavement. Something was stopping me from going forwards. It was as though my body knew something my brain hadn’t yet caught up with.
Who is it? Who could have done it all? I thought desperately. My mind flashed over the many faces of the villagers, wondering who and how. I briefly toyed with it being Enzo. He had, after all, been learning to paraglide. He could have stabbed himself to allay the suspicion he might have thought was forming around him and he clearly still felt something for Luna. It wasn’t anything good, but it was something.
It just seemed too hard to believe. I’d seen Enzo in action. He wasn’t a subtle man. Turning up with that girl half his age last night was proof enough of that.
I also didn’t believe he’d ever consider stabbing himself. Plus, I was sure someone would have seen him do it. Sneaking up behind someone and stabbing them before moving away was infinitely more subtle than reaching behind your back and attempting to jab a blade in.
There was also the conundrum of the missing knife. When Enzo was whisked off to hospital, they’d have taken his clothes and surely would have located the bloodied weapon.
Where else could it have gone? I thought, remembering the moment Luna had disappeared beneath Enzo's falling body. I tried to see the scene again, now knowing to discount Nathan and Enzo. No one else had had an opportunity to get rid of the knife. Had it simply been flung away and luck was all that had saved the perpetrator from being discovered?
I didn't believe it.
With the exception of the attack on Justin, which I now thought I understood, this person liked to plan things. Flinging a knife away left far too much to chance.
Then it hit me. There was someone else who’d had ample opportunity to conceal a knife. Someone who would have been above suspicion.
I felt as though the bucket of spiders we’d released in the Pallas’s cats’ enclosure had been dumped down my back.
I knew who the killer was… and they were about to kill again.
“We've got to go back,” I said, grabbing Luna's arm and pulling her around.
She trotted after me as I broke into a jog and then a run.
“What is it?” she asked, half torn between amusement and concern.
“It’s Alcide. I think something really bad is about to happen to him.
She stopped talking and ran in step with me.
I only hoped we weren’t already too late.
I motioned for Luna to slow down when we reached the border wall of the graveyard. I heard the loud shriek of a monkey and immediately knew that Alcide hadn’t made it out. My heart dropped as my suspicions were confirmed in the worst way possible.
Grateful for my small stature for once, I crawled around the side of the wall and peered through the opening.
Fae Girard was standing with her back towards me, facing Alcide, who looked dazed. I couldn’t hear what they were talking about but I could tell from the way Alcide was shaking and stumbling that something bad had already happened to him.
I silently cursed myself for not having figured it out sooner. Of course Fae had been the only one with any opportunity to get rid of the knife used to stab Enzo Argent. I, along with everyone else, had overlooked her.
I saw it all replayed once more and vividly remembered Detective Prideaux telling Detective Girard to go to her car and radio the station. She must have known he would ask her to go. Or if he hadn’t, I assumed she would have offered.
I wriggled a little further forwards, craning my neck to try to see what we were up against. In her left hand I could see something that sparked when she made a sudden movement. In her right, I could see a knife, still caked with blood.
My heart dropped. I’d been harbouring a slim hope that the knife had still been in Detective Girard’s car, forgotten. Luna and I could have used it to at least have a fighting chance.
“What’s happening?” Luna hissed when I pulled back from my reconnaissance. “That’s Detective Girard, isn't it?”
I nodded. “She's the one who’s been doing it all.”
Luna’s face lined with confusion.
I bit my lip, sorry to be the one to reveal the bad news. “I think she's been doing it all for you,” I said, as carefully as I could.
Luna’s expression grew mystified. “Why? Why would she do that?”
I noticed that Luna hadn’t argued with my assertion that the crimes had something to do with her. Perhaps it had been on her mind, too, but she'd dismissed it as paranoia. After all, in a village as small as L’airelle, everyone is connected to everyone.
“I think she’s developed an obsession with you,” I told her, even more reluctantly.
Luna opened her mouth again but then shut it, choosing to nod gravely instead. Her face was several shades paler than it had been a few moments earlier. “She’s going to kill him, isn’t she.
” It wasn’t a question. “What do we do?”
Her blue eyes turned on me and I found I was lost. We were hiding behind the wall of an isolated graveyard with no way of contacting anyone for help in time to make a difference. The woman we were up against was incredibly tough and had already proved she was willing to kill. There was nothing nearby that could be used as a weapon.
I opened my mouth to tell Luna that I didn’t have a clue what to do when I stopped. Even if I couldn’t see a way to successfully diffuse the situation, I still had to do something.
“Can you text the police?” I asked. It was so quiet out here that I knew a phone call would be overheard.
Luna nodded, a little doubtfully. It was good enough for me.
“Okay, I’m going to do something,” I said, patting her on the arm and starting forwards.
I only wished I knew what that something might be.
Keeping low and out of sight behind the small brick wall, I skirted the graveyard and ended up in the car park outside the little chapel. The only car left behind belonged to Detective Girard. I wasted a moment wondering about the carelessness of that before I realised that this was another crime Detective Girard hadn’t planned. Alcide had only stayed back because of the monkey, but Detective Girard had decided to take the unexpected windfall, despite the risk.
I was about to slide past her car and throw myself straight into danger when I hesitated. The knife may be gone, but what if there was something else I could use?
I gently tried the door handle, praying that I wasn't going to set off an alarm. I was not entirely surprised to find that it was unlocked. Despite the dark motives of Fae Girard, she was still just as much a part of the village as any of the residents of L’airelle, where there was no need to lock your doors against thieves and criminals. Perhaps over the past couple of weeks, some of the inhabitants had revised their opinions, but Detective Girard of all people would have been the most likely to carry on with her old habits. She’d known she had nothing to fear.
I pulled myself into the passenger seat and threw a surreptitious look in the direction of the graveyard. The passenger side was tilted away from where Detective Girard and Alcide were still engaged in their inaudible conversation.
