An Official Killing

by Nell Goddin

  “So? How are things?” Molly asked Frances. “Feeling any better about the you-know-what?”

  “Huh? Oh, you mean the wedding. Well, yes, maybe. Hey Nico!” She stood up and waved him over. “Let’s ask Molly what she thinks about our idea.”

  Nico grinned and reached over and took Frances’s hand. They beamed at each other for a moment until Molly said, “Okay, speak up or get a room, for crying out loud.”

  “You’re very grouchy,” said Lapin.

  “I am,” agreed Molly. “That’s how it is sometimes. Frances knows not to take it personally.”

  “So listen,” said Frances, “you know I was talking about an out-of-town wedding? What would you think about coming to the Maldives with us, and our having the ceremony there? It’s seriously paradise on earth, no joke.”

  Molly’s mouth opened but nothing came out.

  “I’d love to!” said Lapin, who had been leaning over so he wouldn’t miss what Frances said.

  “I was talking to Molly. But you’re welcome to come too, Lapin.”

  Nico’s eyebrows went up but he said nothing.

  “Molls?”

  “Right, I—”

  “You don’t want to.”

  “It’s not that, it’s just…it’s hard for me to get away. I have guests pretty much every week now, and the Maldives isn’t just around the corner, you know?”

  “I suppose it’s a lot to ask,” said Frances.

  “And, well…I’m not quite as flush as I was a few months ago. The new pool turned out to be way more expensive than the estimate—my fault, because I kept making changes—anyway, if I’m going to hold on to any of my nest egg, I just can’t spare the extra dough for a resort vacation right now.”

  Frances nodded. She knew Molly was something of a spendthrift; even as children, she would be the one to blow all her allowance on candy the minute her mother gave it to her. So when her friend had come into an unexpected windfall, Frances had figured it wouldn’t last all that long.

  “Let me offer again to have the wedding at La Baraque,” said Molly. “It could be so beautiful this time of year! We can decorate any way you want, have a theme—or not—have a big seated meal, or heavy hors d’oeuvres and cocktails, whatever. How do the French handle weddings, Nico?”

  “Most of my friends aren’t married. A few have been to the mairie, and I know some with religious parents who have gotten married in the church. Usually there’s a big raucous party the night before, with costumes and drinking strange drinks, you know—silliness! But generally, it’s not like in America where people spend huge amounts of time and money on them.”

  “I hope to go to the Maldives with you someday,” Molly said to Frances. “But what do you say—will you consider letting me do the wedding here?”

  “How do you know you won’t suddenly get a big case and not have time?”

  “Franny! Once we have a plan I’m not going to bail on you if something else comes along! And plus, things are quiet now. That bad run of murders must have come to an end,” she added, not entirely happily.

  Frances looked at Nico, who grinned at her. “Whatever you want,” he said. “I just want you to be my wife.”

  The whole bar groaned and then burst out laughing. Frances went around the bar and put her arms around him, and then kissed him like she meant it.

  “Okay then!” she said brightly. “Um, can you pull it together in a few weeks? Not that I’m in a rush or anything.”

  Molly agreed and they all clinked glasses. The two men at the other end of the bar bought Frances a Negroni, Lawrence ordered his third of the evening, and the friends settled in for a long conversation that swerved occasionally into serious topics but mostly was about making each other laugh as much as possible. When Molly finally climbed back on her scooter to go home, she was smiling and full of love for her adopted village and its inhabitants, and a tiny bit tipsy, so the things that had been making her irritable had shifted into the background, enough out of sight that she slept a deep and restful sleep. Bobo crept up on the bed and the orange cat curled up on Molly’s pillow, but she did not wake.

  6

  Unbeknownst to almost everyone in Castillac, Maxime Coulon had more than one ex-wife. When he had been at the university in Rennes over twenty years earlier, he had met another young student, fallen passionately in love, and married her without telling his family or any of his friends from Castillac. Noelle, his new wife, had immediately become pregnant, but unfortunately the couple fell just as quickly and passionately out of love before the child was born. Noelle left for Laval before she was even showing, and they had had no further contact beyond the logistics necessary for completing the divorce.

  Though Noelle was so indifferent to Coulon that she never had the slightest desire to see him again, their child, now a young man, was understandably curious about his father. His mother either refused to give him any information or had none, and so Daniel spent some time online devoted to finding out about his father, and easily identified him as the mayor of Castillac, a small village in the southwest that no one had ever heard of.

  It’s hardly surprising that a son might want to track down his biological father—no reason to raise an eyebrow. And the fact that the son had also seen where Coulon lived and correctly surmised that he was comfortably well off, plus the additional fact that Daniel was in need of funds sooner rather than later—all in all, it was no mystery why Daniel Coulon was having breakfast that Friday morning at the Café de la Place in Castillac. He was dressed in worn jeans and a T-shirt that had seen better days, but at least he had managed to shave and shower at the hostel in Périgueux before making his way to his father’s village. His hair was cut with a nod toward a mohawk; no matter how little money he had, he always kept his hair neat, even if it meant offering to clean up the barbershop in trade for a cut.

  Daniel had ordered the Spécial, and was trying to formulate something to say when his father answered the door. Should he come right out with it, and identify himself as his son? Or would the door slam in his face? How best to play on the man’s guilt for never even bothering to ask after him, much less meet him?

  Difficult questions, thought Daniel, sipping his orange juice and watching a pretty young woman walk by. He felt himself go a little off-kilter, just thinking about the way his father had behaved towards him. How could he never have had a moment’s curiosity to meet his own son? That thought, which for years had repeated on an endless loop in Daniel’s mind, felt like a burning hole in the center of his chest, a wound that never healed.

  The prospect of getting rejected again was a frightening one. Maybe I should invent some other reason to run into him, and get to know him a little before introducing myself, he wondered, biting into his croissant.

  The problem with that plan was that it would take time, and time was another thing, in addition to money, that Daniel did not have nearly enough of.

  7

  When Josette returned home from work that Thursday, she changed into a pair of shorts and went outside. The thing she disliked the most about working for the mayor was that she was inside almost the whole time. She walked to the chicken coop and talked to the birds, telling them what her day had been like, and then went into the back field hoping to find that some mushrooms had spouted up after the night’s rain.

  Madame Barbeau watched her daughter through a grimy window. She did not know what went on at the mayor’s house, though she had her suspicions. Josette might be an ignorant fool but Madame Barbeau was more sophisticated, at least in the ways of men. Adolph Barbeau had been a brute and she had not shed any tears when he dropped dead while cutting down a tree next to the house, and not on the children’s account either, since they had suffered from his brutality as well.

  “Josette,” she said when her daughter came back inside. “Sit and tell me about your day. I want you to be forthcoming, chérie. Do not feel that I’ll judge you, no matter what you have to say.”

  Josette was confus
ed. “Maman? It’s not like I got this job yesterday. It’s been almost three years, can you believe it?”

  “It’s time you asked for a raise.”

  “Oh, Maman, you are always so dissatisfied!”

  “What is not satisfying is that I have the idea there is some mystery afoot. I have felt that way almost since the beginning of the arrangement. There’s something you’re not telling me.” Madame Barbeau turned away from her daughter as though the thought of this was terribly painful.

  Josette sighed. “I’ve told you about the schedule and described my duties. Honestly, Maman, I clean the house, there’s really not much more to say about it. Today I polished silver. I like polishing silver. Monsieur Coulon gave me some special tools so I can get every last bit of tarnish.”

  “How much silver is there, exactly?”

  “It takes me almost all day. The candlesticks go pretty quickly because they’re smooth without a lot of details. But the flatware!” Josette shook her head. “The forks and spoons have this really complicated decoration on the handles. Flowers and swirls and all kinds of curlicues. Tarnish gets in those tiny cracks and it takes a lot of work to get it off.”

  “You do a good job? Because if you don’t—”

  “Maman! If he were going to fire me, he’d have done it by now.”

  “You have a point,” said Maman, and Josette smiled. A rare victory.

  “If there is so much silver,” said Madame Barbeau, taking an offhand tone, “perhaps he would not notice if a piece or two went missing?”

  Josette’s eyes got wide, but in fact, she had thought the same thing more than once. The mayor’s house was filled to the brim with so much stuff—why should he not share a bit of it with her family that had so little? And certainly nothing as beautiful as silver. Josette did love her job, and silver-polishing day was her favorite. She liked the sense of accomplishment she got from making the flatware and special pieces gleam. She liked handling it, feeling its expensive weight in her hands, and pretending that she was at a glamorous dinner seated at a beautifully-set table with an embroidered lace tablecloth and an enormous bouquet from Madame Langevin’s shop, not some raggedy collection of wildflowers yanked from the fields as her mother sometimes put on the table at home.

  It would make dinners at the farm so wonderful if they could eat their stew with silver forks, Josette had thought, but pushed the thought away.

  Madame Barbeau could see from the expression on her daughter’s face that the seed had been properly planted. Now the thing to do was leave it alone, with only the sparest watering, and see whether it would sprout without any further prodding.

  It had been tricky, after Josette got to be around thirteen, to get her to do what Madame Barbeau wanted. She often found that pretending not to notice or care about something was helpful in leading her daughter where she wanted her to go. Now that Josette had finally opened up just a little, Madame Barbeau desperately wanted to continue asking questions—a full accounting of the valuables in the house, for starters—but she used all of her considerable will to change the subject, and talk instead about the hen whose favorite nesting place was on top of a pile of junk in the barn, very inconvenient for gathering eggs.

  But Josette had had enough of Maman for the moment, and went back outside, letting the door bang behind her. When she was sure her mother wasn’t following, she went to the chicken house and climbed up in the rafters to count her money. Her imagination was somewhat limited on the subject of what she would do with it, but she added to the pile every week without fail, trusting that the right path would occur to her eventually.

  * * *

  The very next day, Josette was anxious for the mayor to leave in the morning so she could begin the day’s work with a somewhat different perspective, that of thief instead of loyal house-maid. But Monsieur Coulon dilly-dallied, as he often did, chatting to her about the people he had seen the day before on his rounds through the village—Castillaçois being famous for loving gossip in all its variety—and as she washed the mayor’s dishes from the night before, he stayed seated at the kitchen table drinking another cup of coffee, his eyes lingering on her backside since she was turned the other way and could not see him, so he thought.

  But she could see him, since the sink was in front of a window and the light at that moment caused his reflection to be nearly as clear as if it were in a mirror. Over the years Josette had gotten used to the mayor’s glances, especially since he never said anything improper or made any sort of advances. She very much enjoyed the new finery that he bought every so often for her to wear. Every single piece was high-class, in her opinion, and not the least bit slutty. Even the balcony bra that lifted up her breasts and had a thin edging of delicate lace was, to Josette’s mind, an article of underwear fit for a countess, and nothing to be ashamed to wear as she went through the day’s chores.

  Of course, the mayor was no aristocrat—only the beneficiary of a grandfather in trade who had worked very hard and been lucky enough to make the money to buy the house and the silver, and the further luck (more unusual) to have had a father who had not squandered the inheritance, even though, to Maxime’s regret, he had not added to the fortune either.

  “Maybe you would like to sit and have a coffee with me this morning, for a change?” the mayor said, cringing a little because he could hear in his tone how desperate he was for her to say yes.

  Josette smiled before turning around. She wriggled a little in a way that she had found the mayor liked, and said, “Oh no, Monsieur, I couldn’t. Here it is Friday, and so much left to do! I want your house to be perfect for the weekend.” She saw his eyes fall on her on her chest and she leaned towards him, bending forward and picking up the jam from the table and then moving away to put in back in the refrigerator.

  Maxime gasped slightly at the sight of her. It was torture, having her prancing about in La Perla day in and day out, but it had been his own idea, so how could he change his mind? And the truth was, of course, he didn’t want to change his mind. Yet this pretty young woman, so delectable and just out of reach, was a daily torment of his own making.

  “All right then, the duties of the village call,” he said, standing up and then moving close to her as he put his coffeecup in the sink. He heaved an enormous sigh, said goodbye, and was out the door.

  Josette washed his cup and dried it. She always felt, when Monsieur Coulon left in the morning, that he might turn around and come back at any minute. Even though that had not happened even once, she never felt assured of her privacy until at least an hour had passed after his departure.

  On Fridays she vacuumed the second floor where his bedroom was, and cleaned the bathrooms, one on each floor. The bathrooms on the third and fourth floors were never used since no one ever went up there, but Josette cleaned them all the same. That day she moved about the mayor’s house with less daydreaming than usual. Instead of imagining herself dressed in beautiful clothes (which in her mind almost always had voluminous underskirts of tulle as though she were living in 1870), she studied the mayor’s things, trying to decide what he might not miss.

  If I take something special to him, she thought, he’ll notice, and of course I’d be the obvious suspect. Well, the only suspect, since I’m the only person with access to the house. Monsieur Coulon did not entertain at home and there had been no workers or repairmen at the house, except for an electrician who came over a year ago when the washing machine was shorting out the lights upstairs.

  But how can I know which things he cares about? He never talks about any of it. He doesn’t even seem to notice that any of it is there. One more reason why just a few of these beautiful things would be better off at the farm, where we’ll pay attention to them.

  In Coulon’s bedroom, Josette stood in front of the mirror and looked at herself. She was not a vain woman, or concerned very much with her appearance, but she would have had to be unconscious not to have noticed the effect she had on her boss.

  Maybe I could
just ask him for something, she thought. Maybe he would give me some silver, if I just asked him for it.

  All during the rest of the day she thought this idea over, imagining Coulon smiling broadly and opening the drawer of the sideboard and telling her to take whatever she wanted, and how happy he was that she had asked. She finished the vacuuming and was just fluffing up the comforter on his bed when she saw it was almost time for Julien to show up for her ride home. She took off the La Perla balcony bra and lacy bikini she was wearing that day and put on her jeans and T-shirt.

  On the way to the front door, she passed through the dining room. And as quickly and easily as though she did it every day, she opened the drawer of the sideboard, took out a soup spoon, and slipped it into her bag.

  8

  Molly was on her knees in the front flower border when a battered Renault swung into the driveway.

  “Ben!” she cried, jumping up and running over.

  He got out quickly, opened his arms with a grin, and Molly nearly bowled him over as she went to hug him. Laughing, they went inside, Bobo jauntily following behind.

  “I didn’t expect you!” she said. “There’s nothing in the house to eat. I was trying…” she looked away, uncharacteristically embarrassed.

  “Trying what?” asked Ben. He looked healthy and tan for someone who had been working at a desk for two weeks. His brown eyes were full of affection for Molly as she mumbled something about trying to lose a few pounds.

  “Oh, chérie,” he said, wrapping his arms around her. “Don’t do anything drastic, please, especially not on my account.” He leaned down to kiss her on the mouth and she hugged him more tightly.

  When they came up for air, Ben said, “Speaking of food, I’m starving. Didn’t want to stop for anything on the road. Have you eaten? Can we have lunch together?”