She was so lost in her own reverie that I doubt she heard what I said.
“You live chez Martin,” she said. “I’ve seen you there.”
“That is my family’s home.”
“And the old woman there?”
“She is my grandmother,” I said.
“Why won’t she speak to me?”
“She doesn’t remember your father the same way you do. What she could tell you about him she believes no child would want to hear.”
“But she remembers him?”
“As clearly as the woman who slapped your face does.”
Her gaze shifted off toward Mme Cartier’s flower stall before it came back to me. “Does she know how my father died?”
I lifted a shoulder. “Perhaps.”
“Is my father among the remains found on her farm?”
“You would need a DNA test to determine that.” I squeezed Jean-Paul’s arm. “Right now, I have other things to do. I recommend that you go away and leave these people alone before someone does something that gets them into trouble.”
She seemed to deflate. “Yes, all right. But I beg of you, please ask your grandmother to give me just a moment of her time.”
“I will,” I said, turning away. “But I’m warning you, if she agrees to talk to you, you won’t be happy with you what you hear.”
“Maybe yes, maybe no. Whether she speaks to me or not, one way or another I will learn what I have come to learn.” With that, she headed off toward the small car park behind the mairie.
11
I expected to find Guido behind bars in some dark recess of the gendarmerie playing mournful tunes on a harmonica. Instead, he was sitting at a table in the day room playing cards with his keeper, Jacqueline Cartier. I knew from experience that Jacqueline had very limited English, and that Guido’s French was nearly non-existent. Yet somehow they managed to communicate well enough to be keeping up a spirited game of blackjack. I found it ironic that Guido, the suspected sex-maniac killer, had been left in the sole custody of that lovely young woman.
“Cozy,” I said, looking around. The long room apparently was a combination meeting and break space. There were basic kitchen facilities along one side, a narrow cot at the end, walls covered with announcement boards, and rows of tables and chairs in the middle. “Not what I expected.”
Guido chuckled as he set his cards aside. “A couple of the cheese vendors got into a scrap out in the market. As I understand it, the guy from Pont l’Êvêque objected to the guy from Créances labelling his stinky cheese as a Pont l’Êvêque because Créances is outside the correct terroir. The Créances guy said he wasn’t breaking any law. Cue the stand-up slugfest, enter gendarmes stage right. Pierre hauled them in and locked them in separate cells until they cool off. Because there are only two holding cells, he put me out here to wait for you. Hey Jean-Paul, how’s things?”
“Interesting,” Jean-Paul said, offering his hand. “But when you and Maggie are around, things generally are interesting.”
To Guido I said, “I’m impressed that you managed to get all the details of that little dust-up. Have you been studying French under your covers at might?”
He laughed. “No, Renée came by to apologize and she explained it all to me.”
“Did she now?” I said, setting the shopping bags on the end of the table. “Fancy that.”
“Yeah.” He blushed a bit. “My lawyer explained to her that it wasn’t me who said I’d been with her all night, when I wasn’t. She told me she overreacted.”
Jean-Paul set the bag of toiletries and fresh clothes in front of Guido. I’d tucked in a couple of paperbacks, in English. Before Guido could touch the bag, Jacqueline took it over to the next table and gave the contents a thorough inspection. As Guido watched her, Jean-Paul and I unpacked the shopping bags. Besides the sausage sandwiches, we had bought fruit, some ripe tomatoes, cheese, Greek olives, extra bread and cold cuts for Guido’s dinner, and bottles of beer and water. By the time we had emptied our bags, there was quite a feast spread out on the table.
Jacqueline zipped Guido’s bag closed and set it on the cot. At our invitation, she helped herself to food and drink, and then excused herself. She carried her lunch to the far end of the room and sat down to eat, alone. I understood that she was giving us some privacy to talk with Guido, though the language issues alone would have kept her from following most of our conversation. Jean-Paul gathered his lunch and went to join her. He did this, I knew, not to give me and Guido privacy, but to find out anything he could from Jacqueline.
Guido and I ate while we talked. He told me that his lawyer told him that the working theory of the crime until, or unless, there was new information, was that Guido came back from his assignation with Renée sexually frustrated, a supposition apparently based on the experiences with madame le procureur of more than one man in town. Guido had then demanded sex from Solange. When she turned him down, he took that prize which she would not give him willingly. The struggle that ensued turned deadly.
When I saw Solange’s body it was fully clothed, her garments intact. I asked, “Was there evidence of a sexual assault?”
“They haven’t done an autopsy yet,” he said with a shrug, though his expression was grim. “So far, it’s all just theory. Except the part where they locked me up; that’s real enough.”
“Guido,” I said, putting my hand on his arm. “Did you ever have sex with Solange?”
“Hell no,” he said with convincing force. “Jeez, Maggie, people had it all wrong about who was the aggressor there.”
“She came on to you?”
“Yes, but not the way you’re thinking. That girl was something else. Driven, hyper-motivated I guess you’d say. She had this idea that I should follow her around with a camera so that when she made some huge archeological discovery everything would be recorded. I was then to make a commercial-quality documentary about her which she would show when she presented her doctoral dissertation, or something, and she’d become an instant superstar.”
“What did you tell her?” I asked.
“First I said no, didn’t have the time. Then I said, forget it. After that I told her to quit nagging me about it. If she wanted to be the star of her own show she could go hire her own film crew.”
“Did she stop asking after that?”
“I wish, but no. One time, she got mad enough when I told her I wouldn’t do as she wanted that she launched herself at me, fangs and claws drawn. I was fighting her off when Olivia, the old bat, walked in. She assumed that her precious student was defending herself from me, like I was some predator.”
“Did you explain to Olivia?”
“I tried.” Guido set his sandwich aside, leaned back in his chair and let out a long, pent-up sigh. “There was something weird between those two, Maggie. Sometimes I thought it was sexual. But I think it had more to do with jealousy. Solange had asked me not to mention the film thing to Olivia, or this big discovery she said she was working on. She told me that Olivia was always trying to hold her back, and that Olivia would take all the glory for whatever Solange found.”
“I know from being around my dad that the relationship between a mentor professor and protégé student can get very complex,” I said. Isabelle, my biological mother, had been one of my father’s bright graduate students. “The relationship can be sexual, competitive, possessive, loving, and full of jealousy all at the same time.”
“How is the old battle-axe?”
“Olivia?” I shrugged, trying to remember when I had seen her last. After I found Solange, Grand-mère bundled me off right away to visit Jean-Paul’s mother. Jean-Paul and I got home late last night after trying, and failing, to see Guido. That morning, because we had left by the front gate instead of using the farm road, we hadn’t seen anyone. I said, “I don’t know. But she must be very upset. I think everyone is.”
He covered my hand with his. “Finding Solange like that must have been damned awful for you, Maggie.
How are you doing?”
“I keep thinking about her parents,” I said, fighting back an unexpected rush of tears. “I can’t imagine getting that call.”
“Yeah.” His head dropped. “Damn. Solange.”
That name seemed to descend over the room like a black pall. All conversation ceased. In that gap in time and reality, fighting back one of those random bursts of panic that sometimes hit parents, I wondered where my beloved daughter might be at that moment; an active imagination can be a curse.
For something to do, I started gathering up the remains of lunch and wrapping the leftover cheese and fruit for Guido to have with his dinner later. Jean-Paul and Jacqueline were doing the same. The rustling of wrappings that filled the space where conversation had been was interrupted by voices at the reception desk out front. And then that very dear daughter, Casey, and her seemingly constant companion, David Breton, were shown in by the gendarme on desk duty.
There was a great happy exchange of les bises all around, as if these newcomers had swept something dark from the air. Jacqueline was David’s first cousin. They engaged in some good-natured teasing that ended when he took over polishing off her half-finished sandwich. Casey co-opted the remains of mine.
“Hey, Jean-Paul,” she said, positioning the sandwich for a first bite. There was a shopping bag hanging from her arm. “When did you get here?”
“Last night,” he said. “How’s the cheese business?”
“It’s interesting,” she said.
He nodded toward her bag. “Did you bring us some?”
“Oh!” She held the bag out to Guido. “I baked you a cake.”
“With a file in it?” Guido asked.
“Of course.” She finally took a bite of the sandwich.
Guido opened the bag and took out a small bakery box. Jacqueline took the box from him, opened the lid, carefully looked over the contents, and then, with a shrug, put the box back on the table in front of Guido. David explained to her the joke about the prisoner, the cake, and the file. She shrugged again and said, “But it’s a fruit tart.” Jokes don’t always translate.
“Casey,” I said, “have you seen Olivia?”
She nodded, swallowed. “She took her students back out to the dig by that old stone wall in the pasture that Grand-mère showed her. The students were hoping for a day off, but she insisted. In fact, she was pretty intense about it. Antoine said she needs the distraction. Frankly, she’s a mess about Solange.”
“How are the other kids taking it?”
Casey shrugged and raised her palms in a perfect French expression meaning, who can say? “Everyone’s upset by what happened to her, of course. I mean, she’s dead. So I hate to say this, but Solange wasn’t very popular. Full of herself, you know. A diva. Everyone in the student camp was assigned cleanup duties. But she somehow managed to disappear whenever it was her turn to scrub johns or take out the trash or whatever. Pissed everybody off. I hear it was even worse out in the field with the other archeologists.”
“How so?”
“You know who Raffi is?”
I shook my head.
“The cute one. Black curly hair, long eyelashes.”
“Hey!” David interjected, pointing at his own chest.
She glanced at him. “You’re cute, David. But you have to admit, Raffi is damn cute, too.”
“Pffh,” he said and took another bite of Jacqueline’s sandwich.
“So,” she said, turning back to me. “Raffi said that the other day, out at the wall dig, he had something in his sieve that looked like a bit of a stone tool, and Solange came right over and took it from him. And then she commandeered his dig site.”
“What did he do?”
“What could he do? He said it was pointless to say anything to Olivia because she would only say, as she always did, that archeology is a collaborative undertaking. He said that from then on he just made sure that Solange didn’t get anywhere near where he was working.”
“I’d noticed that she tended to sit alone at lunch,” I said.
“Yes, and not by her own choice,” David said.
“Other than this Raffi,” Jean-Paul said in French for, I thought, the benefit of Jacqueline, “was anyone especially angry with Solange?”
Casey and David exchanged glances and shrugs. Referring to the two of them, David said, “We hang out with the students sometimes, but because we live with our families and not in the camp we aren’t involved in their housekeeping issues. And we don’t work with them, either. All that Casey and I know is what the others tell us. I never saw anything between Solange and the rest except some sniping. Did you, Casey?”
She shook her head. “You should ask Antoine. The agriculture students tell him everything.”
I made a mental note to speak with my cousin Antoine, and my film interns. None of them had mentioned issues with the other students they were bivouacked with. Certainly I couldn’t remember any of them mentioning Solange. But we did not sit around and gossip.
Pierre Dauvin walked in during the ensuing lull in the conversation. Looking at the remains of our lunch, he said, “Quite a picnic here.”
“We were just leaving,” Casey said. She kissed Guido’s cheek and warned him to be careful when he bit into his cake. When she leaned in to kiss me, she whispered, “We’ll wait for you outside. I want to talk to you.” The two young people swept out as suddenly as they had swept in.
Pierre asked Jacqueline about the state of the scrappy cheese vendors who were cooling off in the lockup. She pointed to her ear: We could hear snores coming from the back somewhere. Pierre nodded and went off down a hallway toward the noise. He was back a few minutes later, guiding one of the two cheesemongers by the arm as he gave him instructions to immediately clear out his stall and go straight home. Next week, the man was told, he should park his stand on the far side of the square. And for the sake of peace he should refrain from labelling his cheese something it was not by custom entitled to be called.
“Bon? D’accord?”
“Oui, bon.” Sure, fine. The dejected man slouched out with his hands thrust deep into his pockets. The snoring in the back continued. I wondered how many times that morning before the cheese dust-up, the man remaining in the lockup had rested his elbow on the copper-topped bar at the café tabac and knocked back quick petits blancs until he had summoned sufficient liquid courage to accost his competitor.
Pierre went over to the cot at the end of the room, picked up Guido’s duffel, took a quick look inside, and announced that picnic time was over and it was time for Guido to reclaim his cell. Jacqueline stowed the food for Guido’s dinner in the refrigerator, ran a quick sponge over the tables, and then quickly left through the front.
“Don’t worry, my friend,” Jean-Paul told Guido as he shook his hand. “This will be straightened out soon enough.”
I gave my old partner a hug and told him that Lana, our executive producer at the network, sent her best wishes. He said, “I doubt that’s what she said, Mag. But thanks for coming and cheering me up.”
“I put a French phrase book in your duffel,” I said. “Might come in handy.”
He laughed. As he turned away to follow Pierre, he said, “You know where to find me.”
Pierre handed me my mobile phone. “Your mother called,” he said.
As Jean-Paul and I walked out, I scrolled through a day’s worth of accumulated messages in my phone. Only one number, one with a French exchange, was unfamiliar. I showed it to Jean-Paul. He didn’t recognize it either. I hit Connect and waited for someone to pick up on the other end. I got a message: “It’s Vincent. Try me later.” I left my name and put the phone away.
“It was the war salvage dealer I told you about,” I told Jean-Paul. “Love to know what he has to say.”
When we emerged back out into the bright sunshine of early afternoon, Casey and David rose from their seats on the shaded front steps of the mairie across the square, brushed off the bottoms of their shorts an
d walked toward us. The market vendors were closing up their stalls and preparing to leave. A few straggling shoppers lingered to chat or to bargain for any leftovers.
At old Mme Cartier’s flower stall, Jacqueline Cartier and the young nun we had seen in Ma Mère’s office that morning were putting all of the unsold blooms into a single bucket. Later, those flowers would be arranged and placed on the church altar for Sunday services. Armand the meat vendor collected the rest of the buckets and poured their water over the smoldering coals in his brazier. Then he wiped the buckets dry, stacked them, and put them into the back of his truck. He locked the brazier onto the side of the trailer on which he displayed his cheese, and then connected the trailer to the truck. When this was finished, he walked over to Mme Cartier and helped her from her chair. With Jacqueline following them, carrying her great-grandmother’s folded chair, Armand boosted the lady into his front seat. While he finished cleaning up his stall site, Jacqueline leaned against the truck’s passenger door and chatted with the woman resting inside.
“That is so sweet,” Casey said, a dreamy look in her eyes as Armand drove off with elderly Mme Cartier. “I love these people.”
“Was there something you wanted to talk to us about?” I asked her, interrupting her reverie.
“Yeah.” Again she exchanged pointed glances with David before she spoke. “Mom, all of Solange’s things are still in her tent. It’s kind of creeping everyone out, if you know what I mean.”
“Have the gendarmes looked through her tent?”
“Yes. Pierre told us he’s finished with it.”
“Her parents will pack it up when they get here.”
“That’s the thing,” she said. “They aren’t coming. I don’t know where they are, but wherever it is they can’t just rush over. They told Olivia that they have arranged for Solange to be cremated and for the ashes to be sent to them. They gave her an address to send personal effects. Olivia went into the tent to start packing it, and fainted dead away. The pompiers had to come and revive her. She can’t do it.”
I looked from Casey to David, and then at Jean-Paul. Jean-Paul smiled his upside-down smile and shrugged. He said, “A task for Maman, I believe.”
Disturbing the Dark Page 12