The Third Girl (Molly Sutton Mysteries Book 1)

by Nell Goddin

  Mark shook hands with the taxi driver and paid him. “Now give us the grand tour!” he said to Molly.

  Molly smiled and chattered away as she showed them around La Baraque and got them settled. But underneath her bright expression, she was wondering what the deal was with Lainie Lawler, who never said a single word the entire time, and whose face was apparently so Botoxed that she appeared to be frozen in a state of childish astonishment.

  Not for me to judge, thought Molly. Repeat 60,000 times. And really, this is a good way to have an income. A little chat, some handshaking—easy peasy. I just need to get enough bookings that I can hire a cleaning woman and leave the dust-busting to her.

  * * *

  A day. That could be everything. Or nothing.

  Chief Benjamin Dufort of the three-person Castillac gendarme force walked around his desk and picked up the phone, then put it down again. He looked at Perrault and pressed his lips together, his thoughts inscrutable. “Maron!” he called, to the officer in the adjoining room.

  Gilles Maron appeared in the doorway, an easy expression on his face although he did not like the way Dufort barked at him. He was in his late twenties, an experienced officer, having moved to Castillac from his first posting in the banlieue of Paris. Dufort had been pleased at his arrival and happy with his performance so far.

  “Bonjour, Maron. Perrault took a call at 3:00. Student at the art school, said her roommate was missing. Perrault judged the caller to be level-headed and not just drumming up drama the way students that age sometimes do.” Dufort paused, rubbing a hand over his brush cut. “Unfortunately, as you know, we no longer search for missing persons unless they are children.”

  “Stupid bureaucracy,” Perrault muttered under her breath.

  “I happen to agree with you,” said Dufort. “I had a case a few years ago, a woman came in to report her husband was missing. Do you remember, Perrault? It was in the papers and on local television. Turned out the poor man had been put on a new medication and the stuff was giving him delusions. Three days later we found him in a cave, up off the road that goes up by the Sallière vineyard.

  “People think if their doctor gives it to them, it’s perfectly safe whatever it is. They don’t question anything.” Dufort shook his head. “At any rate, that’s another subject. We found the man and got him home unharmed.” He pressed his palms together, then clapped his hands.

  “Bon, I don’t see why we can’t keep our eyes open in regard to this art student. Just don’t neglect your other duties.”

  He did not mention the two older cases of missing persons, the first of which occurred just after he was posted to Castillac. He had investigated both and solved neither. Doubtless Perrault and Maron knew all about them, as unfortunately, they were now part of the lore of Castillac. When he was by himself again, Dufort reached into his drawer and pulled out a small blue glass bottle and a shot glass. He uncorked the bottle, which contained a tincture of herbs prepared for him by a woman in the village, and poured himself a careful ounce. He grimaced as he tossed it back. He did not like this news of the girl. Somehow, he could sense something was wrong, even though he had not been the one to take the call and had no idea where the bad feeling was coming from.

  But it was there, no question about that. It was there. Same as the other times.

  3

  Early the next morning, Molly walked into the village to get croissants for the Lawlers’ breakfast. She could feel a nip in the air and wore a sweater for the first time, and shoved a cap over her red hair which was crazier than usual that morning. About halfway to the village, on the other side of a road, was a small cemetery. Molly hurried past its mossy wall with only a glance at the mausoleums on the other side. She took a peek at the neighbors’ gardens to see what kind of fall vegetables they had put in, and admired the cauliflower and ruffled kale. The French way of gardening was so neat, so orderly, so un-Molly. She passed one garden and stopped for a moment to appreciate its late-summer lushness, cucumber vines overrunning a trellis, zinnias in a profusion of orange and red, and the slight yellowing of leaves hinting at the end of the season.

  She had big plans for her own garden, but had been too busy with the house to do anything yet; the real work was going to have to wait until spring. A neglected potager was right off the kitchen with an ancient rosemary in the corner, and a perennial bed along the stone wall in front of the house had a few sturdy things—black-eyed susans and coneflowers mostly—in fact, maybe she could find an hour to spend in that bed this afternoon, just to get some of those nasty-looking vines out. It would be bliss to kneel in the grass and get her hands dirty.

  She had been up and had coffee, but never minded having another, so she took a seat at the Café de la Place in the center of the village and ordered a café crème from the very good-looking waiter whom she heard the hostess call Pascal. And well, why not just get the breakfast special, a tall glass of freshly squeezed orange juice and a croissant to go with the café crème? Why not, indeed.

  Pascal set down the oversized cup of coffee. It had a deep layer of milk froth, and Molly beamed at it and then at Pascal, who smiled back and then disappeared into the kitchen. She sprinkled a little sugar over the froth and drank deeply, in a state of ecstasy, moving from coffee to juice to croissant. Some Brits at a nearby table started talking loudly enough for her to eavesdrop, making her breakfast even more delightful.

  “I really think we ought to consider taking Lily home right now.”

  “Come on, Alice, you’re overreacting. Lily is doing well and this is her dream, remember? Her work has been quite impressive here, don’t you agree? Degas is doing an excellent job.”

  “Don’t tell me not to mind it, that girl’s been missing nearly two days.”

  “Oh, I really wouldn’t worry, my dear. Girls run off for a million reasons, don’t they. Probably nothing. A boy, I’ll wager.”

  “I heard she is a very serious student. Not flighty. And if she had gone off with a boy, she’d have contacted her mates! You know they text each other every minute. Someone would have heard from her.”

  A family with two young children sat at the table next to her and Molly had to stop herself from shushing them so she could hear the rest of what the couple were saying. But they had moved on to an aunt’s lingering illness and Molly stopped listening.

  For a moment she wondered about the missing girl, and which parent was right—nefarious abduction, or romantic getaway?

  She didn’t want the Lawlers up and about, hungry and unattended, so she washed down the last of her breakfast special, gathered her bag of croissants, and headed back down the cobblestone street to La Baraque. She was flooded with memories from twenty years ago, when she had been a young student in France. There had been that weekend with Louis, the one with green eyes and the sly sideways look, who could make her laugh like no one else….

  * * *

  The officers usually met unofficially in Dufort’s office about an hour after arriving at work. Dufort had come in early after a run even more punishing than usual, wanting to clear his desk so that he could focus on the missing art student.

  “Bonjour Perrault, Maron. I’ve just spoken to the school and listened to a list of platitudes, help any way we can, blah blah blah. I’m afraid the president over there is more concerned with the school’s reputation that with what has happened to the girl.”

  “You do think something has happened? Other than she went off on some lark?” asked Maron.

  “You know the percentages,” said Dufort quietly. “She’s too old for this to be a custody matter or something of that sort. Either she’s taken off by herself without a word, or there’s been an accident or abduction. Perrault, I want you to make some calls—airports, hospitals, car rental agencies, etc. Maron, you go around town, talk to people, look around, see what you can find out. We’ve got a description from the roommate. If it comes to that, I will call the parents and we can get a photo from them. But I don’t want to call th
em just yet. They can’t help beyond the photo and we’re not even supposed to be investigating this.” He paused. “First we need to find out something about her movements that night. Make sure you check the bars,” he said to Maron, even though from the description the roommate had given, it did not sound as though Amy Bennett would have been in any of them.

  Dufort headed to L’Institut Degas. He walked through the village, greeting old friends and acquaintances, taking his time, keeping his eyes open. Sometimes information came from unexpected sources and he wanted to make himself available to it. On one side of the main square were three places that stayed open late: a wine bar that served “small plates”; La Métairie, an expensive place that hadn’t yet earned a Michelin star but was trying hard for it; and a bistro called Chez Papa that was run by a much-loved inhabitant of Castillac, which is where Dufort turned in.

  “Alphonse!” he shouted over the din of pop music. Alphonse was mopping with his back to the door. “Bonjour, Alphonse!”

  Alphonse startled and turned around. “Bonjour, Ben! I would offer you some lunch but the hour is all wrong, and I can see besides that something is the matter. Tell me!”

  “You tell me,” said Dufort, with a faint smile. “What about last night? Anything unusual?”

  Alphonse leaned on his mop. “A Dutch family was here with twelve children, if you can believe that. You don’t see big families like that anymore, do you?”

  “Not so much. Many students? From Degas?”

  Alphonse looked up at the ceiling and thought for a moment. “Oh, I don’t know,” he said finally. “I hate to admit it, but my memory isn’t what it used to be. The nights, they start to run together.” He shrugged.

  “I understand. I wish I could sit and have a glass with you, but I’ve got some work that can’t wait.” And with a wave, Dufort was back on the street, alert, looking around for anything out of place, anything calling out to him, no matter how subtly.

  Dufort had grown up in Castillac, and his mother and Alphonse were old friends. He could remember how Alphonse would come to dinner on Sundays, and make his parents laugh themselves sick with his imitations of other villagers. He brought homemade gooseberry jam that was Dufort’s all-time favorite. Most people in the village were known to Dufort his whole life, except of course for the tourists who passed through and the occasional new person such as the American woman who had apparently bought La Baraque and moved in recently.

  It had taken some doing, getting himself posted to his hometown; officers in the gendarmerie were routinely moved from place to place precisely so that they did not get too close to the communities they served. At first he was told it was impossible, but Dufort had a way of convincing people to do what they did not necessarily want to do, and in the end, he got sent to Castillac. Perhaps he suffered from nostalgia, or was just a man who belonged in one place, but he had been happy there for the last six years.

  When young Perrault had gone off for her training, she begged him to figure out a way for her to come back too, and he had called in some favors and pulled some strings, and Perrault was allowed to come but only for six months. They both expected to be posted to another village by the first of the year; their time in Castillac among the people and places they had grown up with was coming to an end.

  L’Institut Degas was a short ways out of the village, just a little over a kilometer, and Dufort covered the distance quickly. He was not a large man but he was fit and athletic, and he arrived at the main building where the administration offices were without breaking a sweat. He did not call ahead, and he did not expect to get much help.

  4

  The Lawlers only stayed for two nights, and then Molly was back in the cottage for another round of dusting, scrubbing, and mopping. At least they weren’t slobs. And oh look, a tip for the maid!

  Molly snatched up the five euro bill and shoved it in the pocket of her jeans. More bookings were coming in every day, but she needed to sit down and write a budget before running out to hire a cleaner. She went back to the house and got her phone and some earbuds, and listened to Otis Redding while she worked, singing along with “These Arms of Mine,” her voice cracking in a satisfying way. She hoped the neighbors couldn’t hear.

  When she turned to leave, an orange cat was standing in the doorway looking at her.

  “Hello, little puss!” Molly was happy for the company. “I’ll get you a little saucer of cream if you come with me.” The cat not only followed but wound itself in between Molly’s legs, nearly causing her to trip and split her head open on the slate walk. She put her cleaning stuff away in a closet and got together a saucer with a bit of cream and set it down. The orange cat looked at her, then walked slowly over to the saucer as if it didn’t really care one way or another, and took a lick. Then the tail went straight up but with a little kink at the end, and the cat polished off the cream in under a minute.

  “Thought so.” Molly smiled and reached out her hand. The orange cat bit her on the finger and ran into the bushes. “Fiend!” she called after it.

  The house was still unfamiliar and exciting, and she spent some time not accomplishing anything but wandering through its rooms, most of which had low ceilings with ancient beams. The original structure had been added onto several times so that the building was something of a hodgepodge, stuck together at odd angles. The staircase turned almost in a spiral, its treads worn, and Molly wondered at how many families had lived here, how many feet had trudged up to bed stepping just where she stepped.

  She thought of walking around in the meadow behind the potager, but decided she had better get some more work done, so she spent the next hour at her desk, confirming bookings and emailing friends at home, sounding a little sunnier than she actually felt.

  Back in Massachusetts, after the divorce, she usually ate lunch at the sink, or even just crammed in any old thing while standing in front of the refrigerator with the door open. But in her new French life, she was trying to change her habits, and pay more attention to the small ceremonies of the day. She took a butter lettuce out and washed a number of leaves, broke up some goat cheese she had gotten at the market that morning along with the lettuce, sliced some carrots, opened a can of sardines and crumbled those in along with a few little potatoes from last night’s dinner. For a dressing she chopped up plenty of garlic and whisked it together with lemon juice, an egg yolk, more mustard than seemed right, and lots of salt and pepper and olive oil.

  She stepped out the kitchen door to the garden, searching for herbs, but there was nothing besides rosemary. How can a French garden have no tarragon? What sort of infidels used to live here, anyway?

  After tossing the salad and pouring herself a glass of rosé, she went out to a terrace off the living room, pulled a rusty chair up to a rusty table, and had a long, luxurious, lonely lunch.

  Jet lag had finished having its way with her, so she didn’t feel like a nap after eating. Instead she put her dishes in the old porcelain sink and went out to the garden. Just inside the garage was the crate she had sent from home, minus the kitchen equipment which was unpacked and put away. She selected a tool whose name escaped her. It had a sort of fork on one end and a pick on the other—great for weeding out the nastiest garden invaders. Molly knelt in the grass and got to work on a patch on the side of the house, more Otis Redding coming out through the window, the sun on her back. That sort of weeding can be a kind of meditation, and as the pile of ripped-out vines and grass grew, her thoughts quieted down until she wasn’t having any at all, nothing but the sound of Otis and the smell of plants and the feel of dirt on her hands.

  “Bonjour Madame!”

  Startled, Molly sprang to her feet and turned around. Standing at the stone wall that separated her property from the neighbor’s was, well, the neighbor. A small bird-like woman dressed in a housecoat, her white hair flying out from a bun.

  “Bonjour Madame,” Molly answered, her hands becoming clammy at the prospect of a conversation in French. It had been
too long since college, when she’d studied it last.

  “I would like to say hello and welcome you to Castillac,” the neighbor said.

  Okay, I actually understood that, Molly thought, feeling a little surge of optimism.“Thank you very much,” said Molly. “She pretty.”

  The neighbor nodded vigorously and then spoke so quickly, and with a stutter, that Molly was hopelessly lost. “S’il vous plaît,” she said, “Speak slow?”

  The two women worked hard for the next ten minutes, both of their brows beginning to glisten from the effort of communicating the simplest things, and by the time they said à tout à l’heure they at least had each other’s names, although Molly forgot the neighbor’s more or less instantly. What did stick in her mind was the mention for the second time that day of the girl, the art student, who was missing. The neighbor had looked solemn, and said it might be a good idea to lock her doors, living alone and all.

  Molly was quite happy to be living alone, thank you very much, and she was not going to get frightened just because some young girl ran off with somebody else’s boyfriend. She stayed firm in her belief that her new country was much safer than her former one. Spitefully—although whom she was spiting was a little unclear—she left the French doors to the terrace not only unlocked but cracked open that night. The orange cat came in for a look around, but no other uninvited visitors crossed the threshold that night, unless you counted the spider and a couple of flies.

  * * *

  L’Institut Degas had either a sterling or an unsavory reputation, depending on whom you talked to. The school had been founded in the 1950s by an artist who had tried to ride the wave of Abstract Expressionism but found himself beached with not enough income to get by, and so turned to teaching. He was a much more gifted teacher than artist, and soon had more students than he had time for himself, so he brought on other teachers and L’Institut Degas was born. Over the years other talented teachers had come to the school, and some of their students had gone on to illustrious and sometimes very lucrative careers. This track record meant that applications were almost always steady, which meant the school could be choosy about the students it admitted and the tuition fees stayed hefty.