Murder on Vacation

by Nell Goddin

  They came into the living room just as Molly entered through the French doors. They made their greetings and Molly sank gratefully into an armchair, exhausted. It had been a long day.

  “All right then,” said Maron, taking charge. “I have some background information to share with you. I do get the sense, from time to time, that law enforcement in Paris might know more than they are passing on, but eh, not much I can do about that. So. Let’s focus for now on the couple, Ira and Darcy Bilson. Turns out they both have criminal records in America. Darcy has been convicted of shoplifting in several states. Never served time, but had to perform what they call ‘community service.’ Ira Bilson has gone to prison on a drug charge. Once there, he was punished multiple times for taking violent action against other inmates.”

  “Does that mean he got into fights? Or are you saying premeditated violence?” Molly asked.

  “I can check back on that.”

  “It would be worth knowing,” said Ben. “Shoplifting or drugs don’t necessarily have much bearing on murder, but if Ira plotted to hurt someone in prison, that would be more relevant.”

  “Still, their behavior and records show a disregard for the law.”

  “I don’t disagree. Though all we can do is use those facts to build a more complete picture of what kind of people they are. We can’t consider it as evidence in our case.”

  “Of course not,” snapped Maron.

  “I was hoping to have something to add to our Bilson file,” said Molly. “I’m having a pool put in, at the end of the meadow. One of the workmen saw Ira coming out the forest looking like he’d been up to something. He had a little shovel with him. So I ducked into the forest and wandered around looking to see if I could find what he had buried, since I checked the shovel and it did have fresh dirt on it.”

  Maron and Ben were leaning forward, eyebrows raised.

  “Oh, don’t look at me like that,” said Molly, waving her hand at them. “Don’t get your hopes up. I found the spot easily enough. He didn’t make much effort to hide it. Well, any effort, really. I dug down with my hands and found a heap of food wrappers.”

  “Food wrappers?”

  “Candy bars, chips, gummy worms…junk food. Seems a little bizarre, but then, we’re not married to Darcy. I’ve heard her saying some mean things to Ira about his weight. Lately, he’s been staying in when Darcy goes out, and I guess he’s gone down to the épicerie for snacks when she’s not looking. Maybe he figured if he got rid of the evidence that way, he’d avoid some of her barbs.”

  Ben just shook his head. “Some marriages are a total mystery to me.”

  “Did you look inside the wrappers?” asked Maron.

  “Yes, Gilles. I had visions of finding the garrotte tucked inside a Haribo bag. No luck. Of course, feel free to send a forensics person out if you’d like, but I combed through it all carefully. It was just trash.”

  “A shame. Well, I’m going to question Ira anyway. He’s in the cottage? I’ll stop back by if I find out anything worth sharing.”

  Maron let himself out and Ben put some water on for tea. “Well, that was interesting, if not terribly helpful. Now, back to bed with you,” he said. “I’ll bring the green tea in as soon as it’s ready. Anything else Dr. Vernay say you should be taking?”

  Molly sighed and made no move to get up. “I’m so sick of being sick,” she said.

  “Of course you are.” He paused a moment, then asked, “Do you think it’s Ira?”

  “I wish I knew. I’ll tell you though, I thought I had the Bilsons pegged. There’s a type back home, city people who decide they want to farm or lead some kind of country life, but they’ve still got a city temperament.”

  “You mean difficult?”

  “Right. ‘Testy,’ we call it in English. A little defensive, a bit aggressive maybe. Quick to take offense. But not druggie shoplifters, you know? Anyway, I admired them for having this dream of a herd of goats and making good cheese. It’s nice to have ambitions, and that seemed like a fine one to me.”

  “Doesn’t exactly match with their criminal histories, does it?”

  “No. But I guess I’m just being shallow and judgmental. People can change, right? No reason why a former shoplifter couldn’t be a perfectly good goat herd.”

  Ben shrugged.

  “You’d think I’d have learned by now that people aren’t always who they seem to be on the surface. Ryan….”

  “Pyke.”

  “Yes, I mean Pyke. The charming serial embezzler.” Molly slowly shook her head. “Maybe I should start running record checks on my guests before taking any reservations,” she said with a laugh, but it was a laugh of disbelief more than mirth.

  Molly had forgotten that she had an appointment with Dr. Vernay until Lawrence arrived to take her.

  “Oh, gracious!” she said, when she opened the door. “Totally forgot! Can you wait two minutes for me to….” she pointed at her hair, which looked a little like Medusa’s with red curly snakes flying out from all angles.

  “I’m a smidgen early,” said Lawrence. “Do you have your notes ready?”

  “Notes?”

  “Do I not remember that Dr. Vernay asked you to keep a record of your symptoms from day to day?”

  “Oh.”

  “Molly!”

  “I know. I just…now that you mention it, I remember him saying that. But it flew right out of my head just as soon as I left his office. I didn’t even make one entry.”

  “Oh well, he won’t yell at you for too long.”

  “Lawrence!”

  “Kidding, my dear, kidding.”

  They arrived at Dr. Vernay’s office with a few minutes to spare.

  “Bonjour, Molly!” said Robinette, the doctor’s wife. “Ah, I see you’re not feeling well. I will let the doctor know you are here.”

  “Does she have to say things like that?” whispered Molly to Lawrence after she stepped into the other room. “Do I look that bad?”

  Lawrence took a moment to appraise his friend. “You are, unbelievably, paler than usual. There are dark bags under your eyes that you normally do not have. Your hair—”

  “Never mind!”

  “So tell me about the case. What progress have you made?”

  Molly shrugged. “More or less zero. I think we’re all pretty much in agreement that it was probably Ira Bilson who killed Pyke, out of jealousy. Though you would think he might be happy to think another man might take his wife away from him.”

  Lawrence chuckled. “Not a charming woman?”

  “A long way from charming. Anyway, Bilson served time and has a record of violence. But of course, none of that is proof. Without the murder weapon or some kind of forensic evidence, we’ve got no way to charge him, or even keep him here in France any longer.”

  “Is this going to be the case that finally eludes you?”

  “Oh, don’t put it like that. It’s not like I have some illustrious career. And who knows, maybe something will eventually come to light, and we can go after him then.”

  “Or maybe the killer will turn out to be someone else altogether.”

  Molly whipped her gaze toward him. “Do you know something?”

  “No, no. Simply musing, chérie.”

  The examination with Dr. Vernay went smoothly enough. He gave Molly a little notebook in which to record her symptoms and did not yell at her at all. She was also grateful to hear that he judged her recovery was coming along as he’d expected.

  “Be well! Those eye bags will disappear eventually, no doubt!” Robinette said in farewell, and Molly managed to smile and wave goodbye, and not say what she was thinking.

  34

  Ben was making omelets and a green salad for him and Molly to have for dinner. He uncorked a rather nice red wine, feeling a little guilty since Molly was abstaining from alcohol during her recovery (except for that one slip with a kir). Bobo trotted back and forth from bedroom to kitchen, disturbed that her two humans weren’t in the same roo
m.

  A quick rap on the French door, and Maron let himself in.

  “Mon Dieu,” he muttered. “I just finished with Ira Bilson. He had quite a bit more to say than I had expected.”

  “Let me see if Molly can join us,” said Ben, quickly sliding the second omelet onto a plate and hurrying into the bedroom. He returned with a disheveled but conscious Molly.

  “I was just dreaming about the case,” she said, her cheeks flushed. “It’s maybe the third dream I’ve had about this woman lying on her back, with really pale skin. No, it’s not me,” she said to Ben’s inquiring expression. “No idea why I keep dreaming about a dead woman when it’s a man who got strangled.”

  Maron was not interested in Molly’s dreams. “I put some pressure on Bilson,” he said. “Which to my surprise, he told me he was expecting. ‘You have a prison record and somebody gets murdered, you know the cops will be headed your way’ is what he told me. Figured we’d get around to suspecting him sooner or later. So, for his own defense, he’s been spending his time digging up dirt on all the other guests.”

  “How resourceful,” Ben said.

  “Can’t wait to hear what he found. But first, Gilles, are you hungry? Want Ben to make you an omelet? He’s very good at it.”

  “I’m sure. No, thank you. I want to tell you what Ira told me, and get home. Go ahead and eat while we talk, I don’t mind.”

  Molly and Ben sat on stools at the counter and dug into their dinner. Molly looked at the wine longingly, but did not give in.

  “It’s sort of amazing what one can find online if one knows how to look,” said Maron. “Of course, we’ll need to do some verification, but on the face of it, it seems as though Bilson knows his way around a computer. He could be making it all up, but I doubt it—and he puts the ‘experts’ in the States and in Paris to shame.

  All right, for the biggest bombshell, let’s start with Ashley Gander. Apparently, she did not actually attend Auburn University. Not only does she not have a degree, she was never admitted. During my interview with her, she told me that she had met Patty McMahon while they were something called ‘sorority sisters’ at Auburn University in Alabama. You will understand this better than I, Molly—it’s an American thing, this sorority?”

  “Yes, a sorority is a club that college women join. Usually there are a number of them at a school. They might be competitive to get into or not. Lots of parties and rituals. But you have to actually be enrolled in school to join one, as far as I know. You can’t just wander in off the streets.”

  “Well, then either she and Patty are lying about how they met—which seems like a curious lie, since who would care?—or Ashley faked her way into the sorority by pretending to be a student. Ira was adamant that she has never had any actual connection to Auburn at all.”

  “So, a rather grand liar. The hallmark of a sociopath, by the way,” said Ben.

  “Oh, and that’s not all,” said Maron, allowing himself to smile broadly. “Bilson found evidence—which he showed me on his laptop—that Ashley Gander was once the girlfriend of Ryan Tuck.”

  Ben and Molly sat stunned.

  “Girlfriend?” she finally croaked. “Not of Pyke, but Tuck? But….”

  A long silence.

  “That makes no sense,” said Ben.

  Silence, as all three detectives approached the new fact from different angles, trying to fit it into a narrative, any narrative. “Well,” said Molly slowly. “Maybe she found out Ryan was coming here, somehow, and wanted to get back together with him? Or confront him?”

  “Or kill him,” muttered Maron.

  “But if she wanted to kill Ryan, she wouldn’t have gone ahead and murdered someone else traveling under Ryan’s name. And just to add another layer of weirdness: she really fell for Pyke. How likely is it that someone gets a crush on a man impersonating a former boyfriend?”

  All Maron and Ben could do was shake their heads.

  “Did Ira find out who broke up with whom?”

  “He did not say, but you are right to ask the question. I did not think of it,” said Maron sheepishly.

  “And why did Ashley not say anything when she first saw that it was not the real Ryan Tuck?”

  “Perhaps the plan to meet him was a secret, even to Patty, and so accusing Pyke of impersonating Ryan would have exposed her plan?”

  Molly nodded slowly, thinking. “Wow. I wonder…I’m thinking Patty’s going to be stunned to hear this. Is there any way she was in on it somehow? But what on earth would be her motive?”

  “I knocked on Ashley’s door before coming here, but there was no answer. Believe me, I’ll be asking some of these questions as soon as I get hold of her. Now, Patty McMahon. Yes, well. She’s got problems of her own. Patty’s mother, Rebecca McMahon, was arrested for child abuse twelve years ago. She had a good lawyer and ended up getting off on some sort of technicality. Ira says it was all over the local news at the time.”

  “Whoa. Was it Patty she was abusing?”

  “According to Bilson, it was a younger brother. He was kept in a closet for several months because he was caught looking at something called a Victoria’s Secret catalog?”

  Molly laughed. “It’s for underwear. I’m laughing because these days, an underwear catalog is pretty tame. The models have clothes on, even if skimpy ones.” She ate a mouthful of omelet. “I’m not laughing about the abuse. Poor kid. Do you know what happened to him? Or whether Patty was involved in any way?”

  “The arrest took place after Patty had left for college. Though it would be unexpected, wouldn’t you say, for the mother to have been fine before that one incident? Who knows what she might have been up to before that she wasn’t caught doing. She may also have abused Patty, for all we know.”

  “Okay, we’ve got one seriously dysfunctional family, a shoplifter, a felon, and a major league liar. How about Nathaniel? What horrors is he keeping under wraps?” said Molly, not quite joking, and fearing what Maron might say.

  “Bilson said he hit a brick wall with Monsieur Beech. Could find almost no proof of his existence at all—only his name as an employee of the hospital where he told me he works, so at least that checks out. Bilson did say that it is not unusual for a person who works in IT to have a strict policy about privacy. It’s the rest of us who blithely leave our online doors and windows open for all the world to see, so to speak.”

  Ben left early the next morning, taking the TGV up to Paris to meet with his contacts, though they did not promise to have any earth-shattering developments to relate. Molly made herself breakfast, and then snuggled under a throw by the woodstove. She sat for a few hours, thinking about Jim Pyke, and about the secrets everyone keeps. It was deeply dispiriting for a murder to have taken place practically in her backyard, yet so far, have been incapable of solving it. For the first time, she was on the verge of calling it a loss and moving on. One thing was certain: she was not enjoying this first taste of failure.

  All the guests were preparing to head back to the States in the next few days. Maron had hoped that one of them would try to bolt early out of fear of being caught, but that had not happened, and as far as holding them any longer, he was powerless in the absence of any hard evidence. In a way, they were as tight a group now as they had been in those first, innocent days. That night they were all going to a fancy restaurant in Bergerac to celebrate the end of their time in France. Perhaps one of them was also celebrating getting away with murder.

  Molly wondered if any of them would ever come back. And of course, she wondered if it was really true that one of the five had committed the murder after all. It was painful to think that she might never know, that someone might be getting away with killing Ryan. Well, Jim. Her brain still violently resisted accepting that the man she had gotten to know—or thought she knew—was an imposter.

  Okay, he was an embezzler, and probably a cad. But Pyke had thrown sticks for Bobo, and Molly had not forgotten that. Or his passion for gougères. He might have been general
ly no good, but even so, he hadn’t been all bad. At the very least, he deserved the justice of his killer being caught and imprisoned. And what a motley gang the rest of the guests had turned out to be! Had it simply been a crazy bit of bad luck to get so many visitors with dark histories, all the same week? From the outside, they seemed like any group of somewhat befuddled tourists. A blue-ribbon group for February 2007, that’s for sure.

  But maybe, she thought a little more generously, maybe that’s just humanity for you. All of us with warts of some kind or other, all of us with chapters in our lives we’d rather no one read.

  A light tap on the French door and Molly saw Nathaniel waving to her. She gestured for him to come inside. “Hey Molly,” he said. “I’ve decided to stay here instead of going out with everyone tonight, so I wanted to ask—”

  “Natha—”

  “I know, you’ll tell me to go with them! But look, you’re not well, and I just wouldn’t feel right leaving you here by yourself. Ben is away, right?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “And it’s not just that. I’m feeling sort of worn down by this whole vacation. It hasn’t done much to help me get over Miranda after all. Maybe you don’t just ‘get over’ the death of a fiancée. So, you know, I’m not really in the mood to go out anyway. I’ll just kill two birds with one stone by being available to give you help if you need it. You could use a man around the house, feeling as poorly as you do.”

  “Honestly, I’m not that bad off. Go, have fun! Who knows when you’ll come back to France, Nathaniel.”

  “You’re not going to talk me into it, Molly,” he said, his eyes bright. “Anything you need now?” He came closer, taking her hands and looking at her with intensity.

  She caught a faint whiff of something and her head jerked. What was that? A faint scent of…?

  “No, please, don’t worry about me.”

  “All right then, I’ll be reading in my room. Just text me, I’m two steps away if you need me.”

  Molly sighed, having nowhere near enough energy to argue. “All right. I hope you enjoy your quiet evening. I don’t expect to need anything. I’m fine, really.”