by Nell Goddin
THE THIRD GIRL
A Molly Sutton Mystery
NELL GODDIN
Contents
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Also by Nell Goddin
About the Author
Acknowledgments
Copyright © 2015 by Nell Goddin
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
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For my wise aunt, Claudia Teass
1
She was being ridiculous, no question about it. Yes, it had been years since she studied French, and she hadn’t exactly been a top student, but surely she could muddle along well enough to buy a pastry to have with her afternoon coffee. The shops were there to sell their wares, not judge her accent; and with that thought Molly Sutton perched a straw hat (brand new, véritable Panama the sign had promised) on her wild curls and marched down her short driveway and into the village, determined to get her first éclair, having moved to Castillac just three days before.
Three days had not been long enough to learn her way around the rabbit warren of narrow streets, but Molly had a good sense of direction and she was having one of those moments of elation that ex-pats sometimes experience—when they are not in the grip of their adopted country’s bureaucracy or finding out they have just eaten something like lark pie. The golden limestone of the buildings was warm and lovely. It was the end of summer but there was no chill in the air, and she kept up a brisk pace, peering into windows and backyards, drinking it all in. She had no idea where to find a pâtisserie but steered towards the center of the village.
Interesting how everyone seems to hang all their underwear on the line—doesn’t it dry hard as cardboard, she wondered. She stopped at the backyard of one house and looked at the clothes strung out on the line, dancing rather gaily in the breeze. She was tempted to hop over the fence and touch a pair of those expensive-looking panties to see just how soft they were, but maybe trespassing to touch the neighbor’s underthings might not make the best first impression.
She could see that the underwear was La Perla. Soft, well-cut, très cher and probably worth every penny, she mused. I think if I had underwear that nice, I wouldn’t hang it out in the baking sun. It deserves hand washing at the least and should be, I don’t know, dried by the beating of hummingbird wings or something.
Molly stood at the fence, looking at the three bikinis and a cami, neatly clipped with wooden clothes pins. The alley was so quiet. No sound but the steady hum of cicadas. She looked to see if anyone was around and slowly leaned against the fence and reached her fingers towards a pair of bikinis with a pink ribbon running around the top.
Someone shouted something she didn’t understand. Molly jerked her hand back and looked around to see who had spoken. The man next door had come into his backyard and was talking to his neighbor over the fence.
Quickly she ducked her head and trotted around the next turn. A street of shops was just ahead. A bustle of people out doing errands, having a midmorning petit café, and gossiping with neighbors. Molly wandered along looking at the unfamiliar shapes of the rooftops, at the signage in windows; listening to French but not catching a single word; smelling roasting chicken that smelled so good it brought tears to her eyes.
Everything was not what she was used to, and she loved everything if only for that.
The street curved around to the right, and then straight ahead was a large fountain. Several students from the art school were perched on the rim with drawing pads and serious expressions as they sketched. Molly walked up and sat on the rim herself, people-watching, until she remembered the éclair and went off to look for a pâtisserie in earnest. She had loads of work to do—the cottage on her property was nowhere near ready for guests and she had her first booking coming in a matter of days. She should be shopping for sheets and pillows and giving the place a good scrubbing, instead of wandering around hunting for sweets. But she was feeling indulgent: after the couple of years she had just been through, she was in France seeking pleasure and calm. And she was going to wallow in it, savoring every delicious moment.
Ahh. Yes.
She found herself in front of a small shop painted on the outside in red enamel, with gold lettering over the doorway in a flourishing script, Pâtisserie Bujold. The smell of butter and vanilla practically grabbed her by the shirt and pulled her inside.
“Bonjour, Madame,” said a small man behind the counter.
“Bonjour, Monsieur,” said Molly, her eyes wide. Under the glass, row after row of pastries so beautiful they looked like jewels. Delectable, mouth-watering jewels, arranged by a true artist, color-coordinated and symmetrical as a parterre. Should she go for the mille-feuille, with its bajillion layers of crisp pastry sandwiched with custard and a swirly icing on top? She leaned forward, nearly pressing her nose on the glass. The strawberry tarts looked amazing, but they were out of season and probably didn’t taste as good as they looked. The cream puff with whipped cream spilling out of it was calling to her. But she had so dreamed of an éclair….
“Madame?”
Molly snapped out of a sort of trance. She took a deep breath and gathered her courage. “The pastries, she pretty,” she said, wincing at her horrible French.
The man smiled and stepped out from around the counter. His eyes went straight to her chest and lingered there. Molly sighed.
Then, so quickly as to verge on rude, she made her choice, paid, and left with a small waxed bag and a silly grin on her face.
She was in Castillac, her new home, about to eat her first real French éclair in almost twenty years.
I’m finally here. Finally in France, for good.
* * *
“Yes, Mademoiselle, how may I help?” asked Thérèse Perrault, who had only joined the tiny Castillac force a few months ago.
“It’s, well, I’m at Degas,” the young woman said, meaning the prestigious art school in the village.
Perrault waited. She was already so weary of dealing with nothing but traffic violations and lost dogs, she hardly dared hope this call would turn into something more intriguing.
“My roommate is—she’s missing. I haven’t seen her since yesterday, I’m getting worried.”
“May I ask your name?”
“Maribeth Donnelly.”
“American?”
“Yes.”
“And your roommate’s name?”
“Her name is Amy Bennett. She’s British. And she’s the most responsible student in the whole school. That’s why I’m so worried. She just wouldn’t run off without saying anything to anyone.”
Perrault was scribbling notes, trying to get the student’s phrasing exactly. “I understand. Have you notified anyone at the school?”
“I—I mentioned it to one of the teachers this morning, Professeur Gallimard. She didn’t show up to his class.”
“Exactly how long has she been missing?”
“I had dinner with her last night. Then I went out with my boyfriend and she went back to the studio to work on a drawing that’s due. She never came back to the dorm and I haven’t seen her all day,” the young woman said, her voice catching.
“It’s not even twenty-four hours,” said Perrault, her tone not dismissive but sympathetic. “And I’m afraid the gendarmerie only actively searches for missing minors—can you tell me how old Amy is?”
“She’s nineteen. I’m sorry,” said Maribeth. “I don’t know what the missing-persons procedures here are or anything. I’m just—I don’t want to sound like a flake, Officer—but I…I have a bad feeling.”
Officer Perrault told her that almost always these situations resolve themselves happily. She asked if Amy had a boyfriend, if she had a car, if she had access to money—and she carefully wrote down Maribeth’s answers in her notebook.
Before calling her boss, Chief Dufort, on his cell, Thérèse Perrault took a moment to think through everything Maribeth Donnelly had told her, and to fix the young woman’s voice in her head. It was only an impression, and she did not have enough experience to be able to know yet whether her impressions tended to be correct—but Perrault trusted Maribeth Donnelly, and did not think she was a flake, or unstable, or anything but a concerned friend who had something legitimate to worry about. Then in quick succession she grinned and looked chastened, as she felt thrilled that something had finally happened in the village of Castillac now that she was on the force, and then felt guilty for being so excited about someone’s else’s potential tragedy.
Like everyone else in the village, Perrault knew about the two other women who had disappeared without a trace, but those cases had been several years ago. The first one, Valérie Boutillier, had actually been part of the reason Perrault had pursued a career in law enforcement. She had been eighteen when Valérie disappeared, and while she had not known her personally, in the usual way of Castillac, she had friends who had known her, and family members who knew Valérie’s family one way or another. Perrault had followed the investigation closely and tried to puzzle out what had happened—she still thought of it from time to time, and wondered whether new evidence would someday turn up that would allow the young woman’s abductor to be identified.
No body had ever been found, nor even any evidence of wrongdoing, but Thérèse had no doubt someone had killed Valérie Boutillier, no doubt at all.
Valérie had not been the only one. And now there was another.
2
It had taken a full year for Molly to find her new home, La Baraque. On the day her divorce was final, she was handed a check for her half of the proceeds from the sale of their house. The check was big enough for her to buy a house all her own, and she had had no doubt whatsoever that she wanted that house to be in France. She had been extravagantly happy there as a twenty year old student, but for one reason or another, unable to return since. In that weird, post-divorce phase, when her life was collapsing around her and she felt alternately morose and exhilarated, she spent hours every day looking at websites and reading about different regions of France, learning about notaires and contracts and cooling-off periods, and reveling in the stunning photographs of old stone houses and manors and even châteaux that were for sale. The endless pages detailed the most glorious habitations ever made, and depending on location, they were sometimes cheaper than a ranch house in the suburb where she lived. It was about the best house porn ever.
After a good friend had been held up at gunpoint and a cousin had nearly been raped in her own living room, Molly had accepted that life, where she lived—a place that until then she had not thought of as a hotbed of mayhem—had become dangerous. Part of the appeal of the French house porn was imagining living in a place where crime was lower and people weren’t getting shot every three minutes. She could retire the canister of mace she carried in her purse, and just relax. Of course France wasn’t crime-free, no place was these days, but still she felt she would feel safer there. Chill out, garden, eat some magnificent French food, and put her bad marriage and dangerous outer Boston neighborhood far behind her.
A fresh start in a place she adored. What could go wrong?
It never occurred to Molly to see if she could find actual crime statistics for the places she was considering moving to. It was grotesquely naive, she realized later, but she had simply assumed that a village with a pretty historic church, a Saturday market where old people sat in folding chairs selling mushrooms, where fêtes were organized several times a year in which the whole village sat down to eat together—she had assumed that all of that charm and community spirit translated to almost complete safety. And how, she wondered later, when it was too late, how can you correct a faulty assumption if you don’t even realize you’re making it?
She spent months considering the vast array of house choices and locations. Her check would cover a house a shade better than modest (for which she was extremely grateful), but one big house would take it all. In her new life as a thirty-eight year old divorcée, Molly needed an income, and so she looked for places that had at least one separate building that she could rent out. If that went well, and she could find a place with enough old barns and stables to convert, she could expand and run her own vacationer’s empire, with a whole flock of gîtes (France’s closest equivalent to a B & B) just waiting to be filled by joyous travelers.
Well, empire might be overdoing it just a little. But she hoped before too long to at least be able to cover her bills. The trick was finding a house that wasn’t already renovated (too expensive), restored (way too expensive), or in such a ruinous state that it would take more money than she had to put it in working order.
While the glossy websites had incredible pictures, she suspected she might find something more affordable if she looked deeper into the less shiny corners of the internet, and in fact one day she saw an interesting listing on a stray ex-pat blog. The blog itself was sort of sketchy and she wondered whether the writer even lived in France: the grammar was iffy, the design poor, and the posts about French life had a strangely wooden quality about them, as though they were fifth hand or possibly fictional. The photographs of La Baraque were blurry, but she could make out the golden limestone the Dordogne is famous for. She could see outbuildings galore, even though some, like the ancient pigeon-house, appeared to be crumbling. She could imagine herself there, in the garden, drinking kirs and eating pastries.
Molly fell in love, hard.
Six months later she was bumping down the driveway of La Baraque in a taxi, having sold almost everything from her old life except a small crate of her most treasured gardening tools and kitchen equipment. The sale had gone through without a hitch, and although what was left of her family and most of her friends thought she was insane, she shipped the crate over and booked a one-way ticket to Bordeaux without looking back.
Castillac was a large village with a weekly market and a lively square. It had the orange-tiled rooftops, narrow streets, and ancient stone buildings she loved so, but no particular attraction like a château or cathedral, so while a few tourists were drawn to its quiet charm, the streets were not deluged with visitors, which Molly thought might get tiresome if you lived there full-time. Southwest France was known for its caves, its duck and mushrooms, its truffles; the weather was temperate and the pâtisseries plentiful. The perfect place to recover from a marriage turned bad.
; She’d had two and a half days to get things ready for her first guests which was not remotely long enough (time management not being one of Molly’s particular talents). Those two and half days had gone by in a flurry of sweeping and painting and scrubbing, when she received a text saying the guests were forty-five minutes away.
Molly managed to get the cottage looking spiffy in time, but barely. The old stones were beautiful, but they seemed to exude dust so quickly that everything was covered again before she had even put away the vacuum cleaner. The windows were small and she rubbed them violently with newspaper and a vinegar solution so that they let in all the light they could. When she was done, she tried to stand back and look at the place critically.
Well, she thought, I hope nobody sues me after smacking his head on that beam. But it is charming, in its way. I think. Maybe.
She staggered out with a mop and pail, sweaty and grubby and looking forward to having a shower and a drink before doing any greeting.
She was just pouring the white wine into some crème de cassis and admiring how the dense purple color swirled up when she heard a car honking.
Not much of a praying woman, nevertheless she looked heavenward and said to herself: Please don’t be loud people. Or pushy. Or too chatty or quiet. Or scary. And, um, please don’t let this entire idea have been a huge mistake.
“Bonjour!” Molly said as the couple climbed out of a grimy-looking taxi. The taxi driver pulled himself out of the car and nodded and smiled. “I am Vincent,” he said, grinning. “I know English, Molly Sutton!”
Molly was taken aback by this stranger knowing her name, but she managed to say “Enchantée,” and then “Welcome, Mr. and Mrs. Lawler!” She was glad they were American, so at least on the first time she didn’t have to struggle to communicate. Plus they’d be as jet-lagged as she still was.
Mr. Lawler strode up and shook Molly’s hand vigorously. “So happy to be here,” he said. “And please, call us Mark and Lainie.”