Dead and Ganache

by Colette London

  Hélène brightened enormously. She actually squeezed my hand and smiled. It was a slightly manic smile, but still. Progress?

  “Yes, I remember! You were Monsieur Vetault’s favorite,” she told me. “He could not stop talking about you! You must stay for the funeral, Madame Mundy Moore. It will be beautiful.”

  Her moody behavior gave me chills. It was odd, I won’t lie.

  “Of course, I’ll stay. If you’re sure you want me to.”

  “That is what Monsieur Vetault would have wanted, n’est-ce pas?” Hélène assured me. She shot a grievous glance at the noisy Parisians outside, then squared her shoulders. “The police tell me it will be a few days before we can have the memorial.”

  Because they needed time to perform an autopsy, I guessed. Time to gather evidence. Time to be sure about Angry Bloody Hands Man.

  I nodded, feeling a lump rise in my throat. This was what death made us do—speak in normal tones about unthinkable things.

  At that moment, I wasn’t sure I’d make it to Philippe’s service. I needed perspective. Answers. Both were in short supply. On the other hand, I mused, merely speaking with Officer Flamant wasn’t off limits, was it? I could still ask questions.

  “Do enjoy your breakfast!” Hélène nodded at the basket of pastries I was still woodenly holding. “I must get more coffee.”

  She whirled in her pumps and left me standing there while she bustled toward what I assumed was the château’s kitchen.

  The moment she left, it was as though a spell had broken.

  Once again, I heard that rooster crow outside. I heard the Parisians laughing. I saw the yellow and orange flowers arranged on the antique sideboard near the dining room. I felt the cushy rug beneath my sneakers. Autumn air crept in from an open window someplace, raising goose bumps on my arms. The scents of coffee and perfume, floor wax and ripe apples, permeated the air.

  Travis’s voice, full and deep and authoritative, rang out.

  Huh? Sure I was losing it, I listened harder. Maybe Hélène’s temporary, grief-induced mania was catching. Or maybe—more sensibly—one of the other B&B guests who’d assembled in the dining room sounded a lot like my stateside financial advisor.

  It wasn’t unreasonable, I reminded myself. Lots of men had husky, sonorous voices. Lots of men sounded as if they could compute compound interest while simultaneously preparing their income taxes and figuring out how much to tip the delivery person who’d just arrived with their turkey-tomato sandwich on rye.

  Besides, that voice I’d heard had been speaking French.

  I shook my head to clear it, then headed into the dining room. My thoughts were on pastries and coffee—but my gaze landed on the man standing at the head of the long dining room table.

  He was still speaking French, fluently and affably, with a smile and a presence that had drawn in all the other guests. They stood assembled around him, listening as he said something about his arrival having been delayed by une grève (a strike) on the railway coming in from Paris. Everyone nodded knowingly.

  The women in the group appeared transfixed. The men stood with widened stances and lowered voices, laughing at the man’s next anecdote—even as they seemed subtly to compete at appearing taller, smarter, funnier, and more admired by everyone else.

  Only one man I knew could have engendered that response.

  Our gazes met, and I knew. Somehow, this was Travis.

  Four

  I wish I could tell you I was delighted to finally see my financial advisor in person. But I couldn’t. I mean, I was glad to see Travis, but I was also flummoxed, relieved, and hopelessly caught flat-footed. All at the same time.

  My keeper, naturally enough, was not at a similar disadvantage. Travis had known he was coming. He also knew what I looked like. He kept my passport up to date and my credit cards paid off. He maintained my business presence and administered my income. He probably had a dossier on me six inches thick, with photos and fingerprints and a personality analysis inside it.

  I had no such resources. Yet I was sure it was him.

  What was he doing there? How had he come? He’d sworn to me that he’d never board a plane voluntarily. Had he been faking his avowed aviophobia all this time? Was he not afraid of flying?

  Had Travis been fibbing to me for years?

  I stared at him, silently baffled. Travis’s supposed air-travel phobia had been the one thing definitely keeping us (at least in my mind) from being soul mates. From raising golden retrievers together. From hosting dinner parties with views of Puget Sound together and living happily ever after.

  You know, someday. Not that I was wedded to the idea of romancing Travis (not at all), but a girl liked to daydream—especially during those long gaps in travel time, when jet lag hits hardest and not even the few keepsakes from home I carried could keep the loneliness at bay. All in theory, of course.

  Only a few seconds had passed, but that was all it took. All my wildest imaginings spun around and then settled down again.

  Travis must have felt my incredulity and confusion, because he quit talking in the midst of regaling his admirers with a story about recovering long-lost art. Or maybe getting away with art forgery? I couldn’t tell.

  My financial advisor’s (surprisingly) fluent French fell away altogether, replaced by a quizzical look in my direction.

  Quizzical? He had the nerve to look quizzically at me? I was supposed to be in Brittany. He was supposed to be . . . on the phone, where he belonged. It was all too much, all of a sudden.

  I thumped down my basket of pastries and stormed out.

  * * *

  I’m not really a leave-in-a-huff kind of person. Generally, I liked to stick around and hammer things out. But it had been an upsetting trip so far. So I was pacing along the slate-tiled walkway outside the château when Travis caught up to me.

  His tall frame was instantly recognizable (by now, ha!), even from the corner of my eye. He rounded the east side of the Vetaults’ immense home-turned-B&B and came nearer, dressed in the same perfectly fitted charcoal suit and expensive shoes that I could have (and had) predicted he’d prefer. He looked . . . nice. Really nice. His hair was blond (as he’d told me once), his shoulders broad, his demeanor perspicacious. I wasn’t wild about that part.

  I didn’t want anyone to figure me out. Not even him.

  “Hayden Mundy Moore.” His throaty, soul-singer’s voice washed over me, just the way it always did. “We meet at last.”

  His smile would have melted a lesser woman. Not me.

  “I guess we have one less thing to talk about now.” I gestured at his suit, shoes, and open-collar dress shirt. I was surprised he’d omitted a tie. “Now I know exactly what you’re wearing.”

  He laughed. The sound was even better in person.

  “That won’t stop you asking me,” he said. “I know that.”

  He had me. “How do I even know you’re you?” I demanded, crankily squinting up at him. Way up. He was as tall as Danny, but his features were more chiseled. He wore glasses—professorial horn-rims. He was undeniably good-looking. You know, in a clean-cut, guy-next-door way. “Prove who you are, then we’ll talk.”

  He studied me. “You seem upset. What’s wrong?”

  “What’s wrong?” I choked out a laugh, trying not to bawl. I was feeling more on edge than usual. “How can you ask that?”

  “You’re not happy to see me,” Travis surmised. “I knew there was a risk of that. Before you get upset, let me explain.”

  “Before you explain, tell me how to feed a guppy.”

  My financial advisor frowned. Then, “With a microbalance to measure the perfect amount of freeze-dried fish meal, shrimp meal, plankton, and daphnia. Do I pass? It’s me, Hayden.”

  It was him. Travis had told me once about the guppies he’d had when he was seven—about how he’d accidentally overfed one before learning to use a sensitive scale to weigh fish food.

  Only my keeper would have devised such a precise solut
ion.

  His arrival was . . . problematic. For all kinds of reasons.

  “Come with me. Hurry up.” After a furtive look around, I grabbed him. I hustled us both to Philippe’s unused barn-turned-atelier, then shut the door behind us. In the gloom, I looked at Travis. “No one can know that we know one another. Got it?”

  My definitive tone seemed to puzzle him. Travis gazed at me with absolute concentration for a few seconds. Then he concluded, “You’re seeing someone. Someone here in Bretagne. That’s fine, Hayden. I’m not here to sweep you off your feet.”

  “Try not to seem so amused by the idea, will you?”

  “I’m here to keep you company, that’s all,” Travis forged on. “I’m tired of seeing you blunder into trouble on your own.”

  “Blunder? Wait a minute.”

  “Although I’ve reviewed Saint-Malo’s crime rates and murder statistics, I was unable to assure myself that you would not have an opportunity to play detective again. So, just in case, here I am.” He spread his arms and grinned. “Tada!”

  Tada, indeed. He looked so pleased with himself. I almost didn’t have the heart to tell him what he obviously didn’t know.

  I was unable to assure myself that you would not have an opportunity to play detective again. That’s what he’d said just now. Travis didn’t know what had happened to Philippe Vetault.

  He thought he was here in prevent-trouble mode. Just in case, he’d said. He’d probably hit the road soon after we’d spoken on the phone yesterday, mere moments after he’d discerned—down to the map coordinates—exactly where I was going to be.

  Travis gave me a friendly glance. “You look . . . really awful.”

  “Gee, thanks.” Why had those B&B guests admired him, again?

  “More precisely, you look as though you haven’t slept well.” Travis took a few steps into the barn atelier, curiously glancing around himself as he did. Probably taking inventory, knowing him. “I blame Danny, of course.” My financial advisor turned around. “Let me guess—he’s still sleeping it off, right? You came down to get breakfast for you both? I know you said he wouldn’t be here, but let’s be real. Reason and history would suggest otherwise.”

  History? I was aghast. “Danny and I don’t sleep together.”

  Did Travis know we once had? Probably, he did. Gulp.

  Interestingly, though, he seemed to be unaware of at least one critical fact—my bodyguard buddy’s travel-prohibiting eyeball injury. Travis wasn’t here as an unwilling emergency backup. He wasn’t here just because Danny was (forcibly) MIA in L.A.

  “If that’s true,” Travis said, appearing wholly unconvinced that Danny and I weren’t an item, “why is Danny so competitive with me? I only have to look at him and he wants to punch me.”

  “Maybe you have that effect on people.” I knew my voice-based ardor was cooling fast. You look . . . really awful. Humph.

  “I’ve never seen any evidence to support that theory.”

  He had a point there, I grudgingly admitted to myself. I only had to remember his cadre of French admirers to believe it.

  “Although there was one Frenchman back there who wouldn’t quit arguing with me. A lot like the enforcer, in fact,” Travis admitted. “If I said there were lost Renoirs stashed in Brittany’s attics, just waiting to be rediscovered, he said they were worthless works by inferior artists.”

  Aha. The lost (or) forged art story. Score one for me.

  “If I said the striking train workers had a point,” Travis went on, looking slightly aggrieved, “he said they were lazy.”

  That made sense. As a nation, the French love to debate. About anything. They’ll take any side, just to match wits.

  “If I said that local dairy subsidies were problematic,” Travis added, “he said they were a source of national pride.”

  “Well, you can’t win ’em all.” I made a face, obviously having misunderstood the ultra-entertaining nature of his dining room chitchat. “Where did you learn to speak French so well?”

  Travis had the sense to look abashed. “Here in France. I lived in Amboise for two years during a study abroad program.”

  “You’ve already been to France?” I was purposely trying to sound outraged, but I was glad he’d brought up the subject. This way, I didn’t have to interrogate him for personal reasons and risk revealing my (rapidly cooling) feelings. Now that Travis was there in person, he was too real to be daydream material. “What about your fear of flying? You’re supposed to be phobic, remember?”

  He gave me a steady look. “I overcame it. Yesterday.”

  “Sure, just like that,” I cracked. “Easy-peasy.”

  Outside the barn, the Parisian filmmakers were still carrying away. Something buzzed nearby—probably gardening tools. I knew that maintaining a formal French garden took lots of work.

  “No,” Travis said. “Not just like that. But I did it.”

  For you, his expression said. But only for a nanosecond.

  Travis cleared his throat. I guessed that golden voice of his didn’t come without a price. He probably had shares in a throat-lozenge company as insurance. “You should know that I’m paying myself travel expenses but no salary for this excursion,” he clarified, his face impassive now. “It didn’t seem equable.”

  Well. That sucked the (potential) sentimentality out of the situation. “Happy to finance your Francophile tendencies.”

  “Don’t worry. You’ll get your money’s worth.”

  The way he said it made me believe him. I was still amazed that he’d actually gotten on a plane. On purpose. “I’d better.”

  “I don’t have the enforcer’s skill set, but I get by.”

  “You’re going to have to.” I didn’t want to spoil Travis’s dreams of an idyllic French holiday, but the time had arrived. “Because my mentor, Philippe Vetault, was murdered last night.”

  “Oh, Hayden.” He stepped nearer, eyes full of commiseration.

  I held up my palm, keeping Travis and his nice-guy shtick at bay. His sympathy only hardened my resolve. Because if Travis was here with me, he was also—inevitably—at risk. Right alongside me. That was the way, I’d learned, amateur sleuthing tended to work.

  At any time, I—or the people I cared about—could be hurt.

  That meant that my internal debate was over. There was only one thing to do. “And I’ve just decided to find out whodunit.”

  It was better to be proactive than to be caught off guard, I reasoned. If (somehow) Angry Bloody Hands Man wasn’t the guilty party, then the killer would still be out there ready to attack his (or her) next victim. I couldn’t let that happen, could I?

  Travis nodded. “All right. I’m in.” He rubbed his hands together, then regarded me with certainty. “First up, a plan.”

  I admired his go-get-’em spirit, but... “You’re not helping with this. Trust me. This is why I hurried us both in here before anyone saw us together. It’s not because I’m dating a Breton.”

  If possible, I knew it would be better for Travis and I not to be linked in the killer’s mind. My sleuthing sometimes ruffled feathers. “More important, you don’t know all the facts.”

  “Then tell me the facts.” If he had a Moleskine, I was sunk.

  “It’s not as easy as that,” I protested. “You’ve never done this before. I have. I know how it works—how it always works. I never want to get involved, but I always do. You don’t have to.”

  “Actually, we both have a choice. We could leave right now.”

  “Together? No way.” I strove to sound breezy yet sure. “You can get back on a plane if you want to, but not with me. I’m a seasoned world traveler. I like to stay light on my feet. I don’t need your aviophobic panic attacks slowing me down.”

  I was joking, but Travis seemed undaunted.

  “No problem,” he said. “Because I’m not leaving.”

  “You’re way too aboveboard for sneaking around,” I tried.

  “There’s a lot you don’t know
about me.”

  He had a point. Still.... “I don’t want you to get hurt.”

  “I don’t want you to get hurt,” my keeper countered. “If you think I’m leaving you here alone, you’re crazy.” His gaze burned into mine, suddenly intense. “Do you think I liked helping long distance while you muddled around chasing killers? Do you think I liked knowing I’d vetted those consultations where you got into trouble? Do you think I liked endangering you?” With calm vehemence, Travis shook his head. “Not again. Not this time.”

  I’d never thought of it that way. That explained a lot about what my financial advisor was doing there, seemingly on the spur of the moment. He must have been planning this since London.

  “I never blamed you for any of that,” I assured him. “No one could have known what would happen. You were very helpful.”

  Evidently, it occurred to me, Travis had been trying to manage my (unusual) situation for a while now. He’d been trying to mitigate my exposure to danger . . . with very limited success.

  Now, apparently, it was time for the next step: him.

  I knew he’d purposely chosen London for my last assignment because it was supposed to be ultra safe—especially murder-wise.

  “It has to rankle, I guess, when your calculations are so off,” I commiserated, watching Travis pace around the barn.

  “You have no idea.” He sounded serious. Super serious.

  “Sure, I do. I was always terrible at math,” I quipped, thinking of my vagabond upbringing while traveling the world with my parents. My school days had been interestingly varied, to say the least. “Except when it came to chocolate-making, of course. Accuracy is essential. Monsieur always said, ‘Measuring once? Good. Measuring Twice? Better. Measuring three times? Find work you like well enough to give your full attention to or throw out your horrible scale.’ Naturally, he said it all in French, so it took me a while to work out the gist of it.”

  “Sounds like a guy I would have liked.” Travis’s sober gaze flicked to mine again. “Philippe deserves justice. I’m helping.”