The Third Girl (Molly Sutton Mysteries Book 1)

by Nell Goddin

  “You do know I’m gay,” Lawrence suddenly blurted out, and Molly burst out laughing.

  “Well, I didn’t expect that to be a punchline,” he added drily.

  “No, it’s just…of course I know that,” she said. “Do you really think I’m that clueless?”

  Lawrence cocked his head and considered. “Hmm, not usually.” He sipped his Negroni. “And to go back to your original point—it’s true that I don’t go around with my sexuality announced on a sandwich board, but I don’t think that means no one knows me or I have some dark private self that’s capable of running around doing evil deeds while I pretend to be Mister Rogers.

  “And the fact that you don’t blather on about your personal regrets—that just means you’re polite, Molly. Not false. Not a potential axe murderer.”

  “Another?” Molly said to Nico, pointing at her empty glass. “But do you feel you really know the people of the village, the ones you see nearly every day? Or are you just interacting with facades?”

  “I’m willing to accept that if someone I know is indeed abducting women and murdering them, then yes, Molly dear, I have been ignorant of who they really and truly are. But for everyone else? I’m satisfied that I know enough. Not everyone needs to know everything.”

  Molly spun on her stool and looked around. Two families were eating together at a long table—four parents and a pile of children, including a baby in her mother’s lap. Three young women sat together with drinks that were an arresting color green and talking about makeup. Nico took coffee to an old lady sitting with her poodle. Vincent read the newspaper at his table by the door. Thomas, Constance’s boyfriend, walked by outside and waved at Molly through the window.

  This was her village and she realized she loved it more fiercely than she ever would have thought possible. Whatever this evil was that lurked here—she wanted it gone.

  * * *

  The next day Molly put on a heavy sweater riddled with moth holes and attacked the garden. She slammed the Dirt Devil into the soil and pried out the long roots of the vine whose name she still didn’t know. Before long she was warm enough to toss the sweater aside. She worked for several hours but the border still had a long way to go.

  Wandering around her property, checking the bark on a few fruit trees along the back for insect damage, Molly thought about where to plant the bulbs she’d ordered. In the darker corners of her mind lurked the Bennetts and Amy’s abductor, but she was reasonably successful at blocking them all out.

  By lunchtime she was starving, and sat at the kitchen table slicing bits of salami and eating hunks of bread and cheese.

  She was lonely.

  She felt like a long walk but wished for someone to take it with. Lawrence had told her he was allergic to exercise, and she didn’t have any other prospects she’d feel comfortable asking. So with a shrug, she laced up her walking boots, slipped the keyring with mace into her pocket, and set off down rue des Chênes, heading away from the village as she’d done before, confident that once she got into a walking groove and into the forest, her mood would brighten.

  Now that it was mid-October, all the houses along the way had smoke rising from their chimneys. The air smelled of cozy hearths and Molly imagined families playing board games in front of the fire, grandfathers napping, dogs stretched out in the heat. She remembered how the dog from her childhood used to sleep so close to the fireplace that his fur would be too hot to touch. With a pang she missed him, remembering how she used to call him Finkler for reasons forgotten, although his name had been Henry.

  The lush banks of ferns had died back and only a few brown skeletal fronds remained. Once past the visible houses, she found the turn-off onto the wide path and in a few minutes everything was different—the light was only the spangled light that filtered down through bare branches, the sound of her steps was muffled in the leaves, and she felt as though she were the only person for many miles around, though she knew it was not so.

  Also it felt as though her hearing became more acute somehow, that she could hear each little mouse scurrying in the leaves, each bug rubbing on its cousin.

  And then something louder. An animal. Snuffling, then whimpering.

  Molly walked faster in the direction of the sound. It sounded like a dog and she was not afraid of dogs. She had to leave the trail to see where it was, and the underbrush was thick. Briars grabbed at her pants and thin branches whipped in her face as she fought her way along, not thinking, just knowing that she had to get to the dog.

  She came through an especially dense bit of growth and the dog was not twenty feet away, a huge dog, dappled gray with large brown spots, and ears like a bassett hound. It lifted its head when it saw Molly, and barked. And kept barking, as if to say: come look, person, look what I’ve found.

  Molly stood absolutely still, her eyes wide.

  The dog was digging at a mound of earth that looked loose and freshly dug. It swung its head around and looked at Molly, its long ears flapping, then went back to frantic pawing. Clods of dirt flew past her as she stepped closer. Then she stood still, a tremble of horror going through her body.

  Molly could see a human hand sticking out of the dirt.

  34

  It had been a long three days at the Castillac gendarmerie. Dufort and Maron had brought the corpse to the morgue and sent multiple DNA samples to the lab. Dufort had called in favors to get the results as quickly as possible. The Bennetts had finally appeared and identified the body, after which, understandably, they went to the cottage and would not answer when Molly knocked.

  “The results are not in yet,” said Dufort in response to Perrault’s hopeful look as he came in the station after lunch. “But I did get a bit of preliminary information, which is that there was recoverable DNA under the fingernails. At least that will tell us if Lapin was involved, although I think we’d all be surprised if that turns out to be the case.” He looked at Maron and Perrault in turn, and they each nodded.

  “The other slight bit of good news is that the flask found near the gravesite was not, according to the Bennetts, something that Amy owned. The roommate, Maribeth Donnelly, agrees. Of course those statements aren’t definitive, but there is a decent chance the flask was dropped by the killer in his hurry to bury the body. It may produce some testable saliva.”

  Dufort lifted his arms up over his head, laced his fingers, and bent over to one side and then the other.

  “Thank God for Madame Bonnay’s dog!” blurted out Perrault.

  Dufort smiled grimly. “Yes, so far Yves has been the best detective we have. Along with Molly Sutton.”

  “So now what do we do?” asked Perrault. “We still have Gallimard to look at.”

  Maron shook his head. “The body was a couple of kilometers outside the village, way up in the woods,” he said. “Gallimard not only doesn’t have a car, he doesn’t even drive. How’s he going to get the body that far, unless he’s got an accomplice?”

  Dufort stroked his chin. Perrault stared at the wall, her mind racing. “Are we sure he didn’t have an accomplice?”

  “Almost unheard of in a case like this. A sex criminal will want his victim all to himself.”

  Perrault persisted. “Do we even know it was a sex crime? And he could have stolen a car. Even just for a few hours. And then put it back and no one would be the wiser if he didn’t get it messy. It’s not like it takes a genius to drive an automatic car a few kilometers in the middle of the night with no traffic.”

  “You have a point,” said Dufort.

  Maron scowled.

  “Most people don’t lock their car doors. And again,” said Perrault, “we don’t absolutely know it was a sex crime, not yet. Not until the coroner says so.”

  “I don’t know what’s taking them so long,” muttered Dufort. He straightened and walked towards the door. “I’m going up to Degas now. I’m going to talk to as many students as I can find—I want to see if all these rumors we keep getting wind of are true: was Gallimard ha
ving affairs with his students, or wasn’t he? If yes, does that include Amy? And one more thing. Maron, did you get anywhere with looking into the finances at Degas? I’ve gotten a tip that there’s something shady there—might be something to it. If I could get you the books, could you take a look?”

  “Right up my alley,” said Maron with a rare grin.

  “I don’t know,” said Perrault. “Excuse me, Chief. But don’t you think, especially given the pattern with the others, that this isn’t a murder about money. I know I was just saying we don’t know yet, but still, it’s most likely a sex crime, don’t you think?”

  “Make up your mind, Perrault. Maybe it’s a financial crime made to look like a sex crime,” said Maron.

  “Hold on,” said Dufort. “One step at a time. We have a body now, so we are much closer to solving this than we were before. But we have to stick to the basics and not get ahead of ourselves. Means, motive, opportunity. That’s what we apply to every suspect, you know this from your training.”

  “I think we spent maybe an hour on this at the academy,” said Perrault under her breath.

  “Perrault!” said Dufort, rather harshly. “We are going to get to the bottom of this murder. We are going to find him, and arrest him, and gather the evidence to convict him.”

  “Yes sir,” said Perrault.

  “Right now, we have nothing,” said Maron. “We’ve got only the old circumstantial evidence pointing to Lapin we had last week, but nothing further. With Gallimard, all we have is a bunch of gossip. No evidence at all that he’s done anything besides be a failure as an artist and a blowhard. We have nothing.”

  “Correct,” answered Dufort. “But we are only getting started. We await the test results, we comb through the financial papers of the school, we keep talking to Amy’s friends and teachers. We persevere, Maron. We persevere.”

  And then Dufort bowed his head. The emotional struggle of staying in a place of such uncertainty, with the threat of another defeat hanging so heavily over him—it was almost too much to bear.

  Maybe I’m in the wrong job, he thought. Maybe I’m too soft to succeed at this.

  He shoved a notebook into his pocket and nodded to Perrault and Maron and left the building. He was out of his herbal tincture but did not want to take the time to visit the herbalist. He made sure his cell was charged up and jogged through the village towards Degas, and this time he was so focused on the case that Marie-Claire did not enter his thoughts even once.

  * * *

  Molly had become a village celebrity after finding Amy Bennett’s body up in the woods. It was not exactly what she would have chosen to be known for, but she was glad to have helped the Bennetts find what the talk shows called closure: a horrible word that attempted to make complicated, ugly feelings tamer, as though one could simply shut a door on the chaotic storm of loss.

  But surely it was better to face the pain of knowing than the relentless dread of not knowing.

  Despite everything, the Bennetts had lovely manners, and they knocked on Molly’s door after hearing from Dufort, wanting to thank her. They explained that they had been traveling around to all the churches and cathedrals within a hundred miles, lighting candles for their daughter. Hearing this, and enduring their thanks, was probably the most awkward five minutes of her entire life, not to make it all about her.

  The other result of finding the body, also all about her, was that her phone went from always silent to ringing quite often. Her neighbor, Mme Sabourin, called to see if she would like to come over for tea the next day. Constance called wanting to know if her services were needed. And Rémy called to ask her on a date.

  Well, he didn’t call it a date. But what else is an invitation to dinner? Molly suspected all of them wanted a first-hand account of her discovery, but she didn’t really mind; in fact, she was the sort of person who works things out by talking about them, and she didn’t mind rehashing the story over and over, and remembering new details as she went along.

  She was sorry that the dog had turned out to belong to someone else, a Mme Bonnay—she would have taken him in on the spot.

  What does one wear on a date to a farm?

  This was such a knotty question that Molly emailed several friends back in America. While waiting for them to answer, she tried on a few semi-nice things, then put on old ratty clothes and went wandering in the garden, an eye out for the Bennetts. A hard frost the night before, and all the plants in the front border were brown and sagging. This was one of her favorite times in the garden, when the only job was clearing out the dead plant matter and making room for the new.

  Hearing the crunch of gravel on her driveway, she turned around to see a truck pulling in, Rémy at the wheel.

  “Bonjour Molly!” he called out. “I had to make a trip to the feed supply store and I figured I’d swing by and pick you up since you’re right on the way. I hope you don’t mind my being so early!”

  Well, no, she didn’t. He was grinning at her and he looked so boyish and enthusiastic and, well, hearty—that she grinned back and hopped in his truck. “No problem!” she said. And even though she did wish she wasn’t wearing that sweater with all the moth holes in it, and maybe could have used a shower, she had the feeling that Rémy wouldn’t care.

  And it was true that she was very glad to be leaving La Baraque for the evening, and the somber murk that emanated from the cottage.

  Rémy’s farm was up in the hills above Castillac, on a rolling piece of land he told her had belonged to his great-grandfather.

  “We’re all a bunch of dirt farmers,” he said, and when she looked puzzled, thinking she didn’t understand his French, he took off on a long and mostly interesting explanation of how his efforts were always directed at improving the soil of his farm, and the livestock and produce that grew there were actually a second priority.

  Molly liked listening to him talk about his land. And she liked meeting the goats, dogs, and cats that followed him as he led her on a tour. If a goat approves of a man, she thought, he must be a decent guy, right?

  He poured them a glass of red wine from a big plastic jug, and they sat outside on a little terrace where they could see the rooftops of Castillac in the distance and a flock of ducks in the front field. “All right,” said Rémy. “You know I’m going to ask, but just tell me if you don’t want to talk about it. You found the body?”

  Molly nodded. She’d told the story enough times that it was almost starting to feel made up, or at least the distance between her and the event was beginning to feel quite wide. “I did find her,” she said quietly. “I had been thinking about Amy almost non-stop, since they—her parents—have been staying in my cottage for over a week. But I wasn’t out looking for her or anything like that, just going on a walk. I heard Yves barking, went to see what was the matter, and that was that.”

  “Is it giving you nightmares?”

  Molly laughed a grim laugh. “No, no nightmares. But the sight of that hand sticking up out of the dirt is something I won’t ever forget.”

  “I’m sure,” said Rémy. He leaned back in his chair and stuck his rangy legs out in front of him, and turned his face up to the sky. “Gonna rain tomorrow,” he said.

  And with that little comment, Molly realized she had pinned an awful lot of unspoken hopes and dreams onto this date with Rémy, and they had absolutely nothing to do with the man himself, whom she hardly knew. But in that moment she knew this: she was not going to be marrying and having the children of Rémy, no matter how neat the solution would be to the sorrow she couldn’t seem to let go of.

  It wasn’t that he spoke of the weather, or that he was a farmer, not at all. It was that a kind of connection she wanted, even needed, was not happening between them. For whatever reason. And in Molly’s experience, despite what those same talk shows that went on and on about closure led people to think—if that spark isn’t there, it’s not going to appear sometime later.

  She ate a lovely dinner of steak and vegetables that
he had raised himself, and enjoyed talking to him about soil pH and nematodes and other gardening matters. And then she called Vincent for a ride home, and said goodnight.

  When she climbed in Vincent’s car she kicked the food wrappers under the seat, feeling irritated by the mess.

  “C’est un bordel ici!” she groused.

  “Oui, a thousand pardons,” said Vincent, smiling at her in the rear-view mirror.

  Molly felt sad on the drive home. Of course it was totally ridiculous that she had been starting to think of Rémy as her next boyfriend, before they had spent more than ten minutes alone together. She was too old for this nonsense.

  The date forgotten, by the time she was home Molly was making a list of who she needed to call to get the pigeonnier project started. It wasn’t love or a new family, but it was making something that would hopefully be both beautiful and lucrative, and there was no small comfort in that.

  35

  “Lab reports are in,” said Dufort, and Maron and Perrault left their desks to follow him into his office. “The sample from under the fingernails was good. Not degraded. They were able to get material from the flask as well, which matches the fingernail sample.”

  Perrault realized she was holding her breath, even though she knew Lapin would be cleared.

  “Neither matches Lapin,” said Dufort, and Perrault whooped and then tried to look serious.

  “I thought Lapin was considered by pretty much every woman in the village to be a giant pain,” said Maron.

  “He is,” said Perrault. “But he’s our pain, you know?”

  Maron shook his head.

  “If we could narrow down a suspect, we have the DNA to arrest and likely convict. But we can’t run around the village taking samples from everyone on the street. We still don’t have means, motive, and opportunity pointing at anyone.”

  Dufort spread his hands on his desk and looked as though he was going to push them straight through the wood. Perrault, to her undying embarrassment, got a little teary. Maron was the only one of the three who did not look thrown by their lack of progress.