No wonder none of the stalls had featured advertising. I’d noticed that last night but hadn’t considered its significance beyond lending an old-fashioned ambiance to the proceedings.
Philippe may have given La Maison des Petits Bonheurs a tiny leg up on the local competition with that banner, but he hadn’t deserved to die. He didn’t deserve that graffiti, either.
I stepped up to the shutters and blocked them with my body, flinging my arms wide to (paradoxically) protect the graffiti.
“You can’t wash this away,” I said. “Not yet.”
Mathieu actually laughed. Amusement lit up his stern face. His dark eyes sparkled at me. “You are a funny one, chouchou.”
His use of that nickname sidetracked me for a second.
“Yeah, about that.” I was getting less and less comfy with my unwanted pet name. “How about if you just call me Hayden?”
He took a long time to consider it. Then, “I will, if you will call me Mathieu. We protégés must stick together, non?”
“Oui, Mathieu. It’s what M. Vetault would have wanted.”
I meant it, too. So far, Mathieu seemed (mostly) like a friend in Saint-Malo. He hadn’t exactly been welcoming at first, but he’d warmed up to me. Plus, we had chocolate in common.
“I still want to know what you made last night,” I said.
“I still want to know what you can make,” he returned, “with your extra super good chocolate whisperer abilities.”
“I’ll show you mine if you’ll show me yours,” I joked.
Mathieu looked absolutely baffled. I guess not everything translated perfectly. I peeled myself from the shutter.
“I mean, I’m looking forward to getting to know you.”
“Ah. For me, too, as well.” He nodded, then reached out to help steady me against the cobblestones. Mathieu seemed strong. Really strong. But his touch was chivalrous. “I am still not going to les gendarmes.” He sighed. “It is a long walk there.”
I gawked at him. “You don’t want to report this graffiti because it’s too much of a hike to the police station?”
He shrugged again. “You can still do it, if you want to.”
Humph. He was feeling all kinds of generous, apparently.
“I will let you clean the graffiti after. It is my treat.”
Aha. Now I understood. I’d been fooled. Mathieu had just Tom Sawyer-ed me into doing the onerous work he didn’t want to do. He’d been one part informative, one part confrontational (just as Travis’s dissenter had been that morning), and one part charming—adding up to one perfectly expectable Frenchman.
I should have known better than to take sad-eyed Mathieu Camara at face value. Now I wasn’t sure what to believe about the things he’d told me. Was Mathieu a reliable source or not?
Not at all sure, I added him to my suspects list.
He’d worked closely with Monsieur, I rationalized, and he’d just proven himself to be unpredictable. Not to mention, I was far from knowing everything that had gone down in Saint-Malo. It was possible Mathieu had had reasons to want poor Philippe dead.
But uncovering them would have to wait for another time. I had the feeling I’d teased out all the information I was likely to get from Mathieu for now, and my day was just beginning.
I was off to the police station to report that graffiti.
Six
Reporting the graffiti scrawled on Monsieur’s shop turned out to be anticlimactic. I followed the signs to the town’s municipal buildings, wandering through twisty lanes and past more flower-bedecked businesses before reaching my destination. Once there, though, I learned that Mélanie Flamant was “not available.” No matter how hard I pressed, I couldn’t see her.
I half suspected the policière was dodging me. But that didn’t make sense. I’d been a valuable witness last night. I’d had useful information. I’d seen Hubert Bernard attack Monsieur.
In fact, I couldn’t un-see it. I truly wished I could. Deciding to leave the policière in Travis’s capable hands (as we’d agreed), I described the graffiti at Philippe’s shop to a uniformed gendarme. I offered the photos I’d taken, too, but the officer on duty declined. He promised either to leave a message for Madame l’agent Flamant or to visit the scene himself. (I wasn’t sure which, in my less-than-conversational French.)
Unhappy with the (seemingly) lackadaisical investigatory style of the local police, I retraced my steps to my Citroën.
Along the cobblestone streets, the businesses were starting to wake up. Shopkeepers opened their shutters and swept their stoops. A few watered pots full of flowers; others arranged storefront displays of goods in preparation for customers.
As a group, they looked harmless. Welcoming, even.
But I knew better. I cast a chary eye on every storekeeper, even as I returned their welcoming calls of “Bonjour!” Any one of them might be the meanspirited person who’d painted that slur on La Maison des Petits Bonheurs, I knew. I imagined their so-called business “club” as a cabal of coconspirators, all of them determined to preserve the status quoi in Saint-Malo.
Maybe at any cost necessary. Maybe even murder.
I didn’t see what was so wrong with a little publicity. Philippe’s celebratory banner had been so understated that I’d mistaken it for an eight-foot-long CONGRATULATIONS! card. Despite Mathieu’s world-weary it’s obvious tone, I couldn’t understand why it was such a big deal for Monsieur to have stepped away from the pack and given his chocolaterie extra attention.
I couldn’t imagine Philippe giving his word that he wouldn’t sponsor the Fest-Noz . . . and then doing so anyway. He’d always been a man of integrity. But I’d been gone for a while now. Maybe I didn’t know Monsieur as well as I thought I did?
In an effort to dispel any youthful illusions I had about my mentor, I tried to imagine Monsieur Vetault promising to do something and then sneakily backtracking on that promise.
I couldn’t do it. Not that I was able to devote my full attention to the matter anyway, as I glimpsed two familiar-looking people sitting at a sidewalk café nearby.
Travis and Mélanie Flamant. They looked . . . intimate. Hmm.
Immediately, I veered in that direction. But my financial advisor caught my eye and gave me a subtle headshake. I ground to a stop next to a boulangerie (bakery), thrown for a loop by Travis’s behavior. Was he warning me away from him and the policière?
If he was, I deduced, it was because he really did have things well in hand with the gendarme. The two of them appeared to be hitting it off famously. As I watched from the shadow of the boulangerie’s striped awning, Mélanie Flamant laughed. She touched Travis’s suited forearm. She fluttered her eyelashes.
At least that’s the way it seemed to me. If I hadn’t known better, I’d have thought the two of them were having a rendezvous, not a fact-sharing meeting about Monsieur’s murder.
Frustrated to be kept at arm’s length, I signaled to Travis. He noticed. He shut me down with a pointed frown.
That was that, then. Maybe my keeper was having a coffee date with the police officer in charge of Philippe’s case. Typically, Danny found a way to get lucky while investigating; maybe that was Travis’s MO, too. He was undeniably appealing.
Me? I was perennially left stranded on the sideline.
Delivering Travis a “we’ll talk about this later” look, I turned and headed for my car again. Three steps away, I thought better of it and ventured inside the boulangerie instead.
Hey, I was a professional. Inside would be chaussons de pomme (literally, “slippers of apple,” but in fact delicious apple turnovers) or—better yet—rich brioche studded with chocolate. Taste-testing was an occupational duty, wasn’t it?
Ten minutes and several mercis later, I was walking toward the Porte St-Vincente with a white waxed bakery bag containing one apple turnover and one chocolate brioche bun—plus a bonus croissant—when I noticed a plump redheaded woman on a ladder. She was busy taking down Philippe’s banner. As I watched, she ripped away
the final section. The whole thing tumbled to the ground in a heap of printed canvas and ineffaceable memories.
The dress-wearing redhead scowled at it, then brushed off her hands and climbed down from her ladder. I expected her to stomp on the banner. Or for the local “business club” members to start a bonfire with it. I wondered if taking down Philippe’s sponsorship symbol was only the latest step in dismantling his memory—the last step in someone’s (murderous) plan for revenge.
I didn’t have the heart to watch anymore. Instead, I slipped through the gateway in the thick city walls and headed back to château Vetault, where I hoped to drown my sorrows in fresh French baked goods and maybe call Danny to check in, too.
If his role truly had been switched with Travis’s, I thought as I climbed into my Citroën and maneuvered the stick shift out of the parking lot, then my best buddy-turned-bodyguard wouldn’t warn me away from danger. Instead, he’d probably ask me for a car-rental receipt and a business plan.
If Danny actually discussed expenses, consultations, and overcoming procrastination with me, all bets were off. The world really would have gone topsy-turvy, and me right along with it.
* * *
“He’s taking advantage of you,” Danny told me. “You can’t just let Harvard enjoy a paid vacation at your expense.”
We’d been talking for ten minutes. Nine and a half of them had involved Travis, my best pal’s arch nemesis. I’d tried to bring Danny up to speed on the morning’s progress (such as it was), but he’d answered the phone with twelve hours’ worth of pent-up grievances and opinions. Given his doctor-ordered retina-injury recuperation, Danny had nothing but time on his hands and he wanted to spend several minutes of it with me.
I couldn’t take it. “A vacation is not what this is about, and you know it,” I argued, pacing across my sunlit room at the château in exasperation. I figured Danny was probably irked at taking a backseat to Travis. Neither of us had expected my keeper to show up. “Anyway, I don’t care about the money.”
“You never do.” I could practically feel Danny glowering over the phone. My inheritance—even with its strict condition that I travel six months out of every year to continue receiving stipends—was a sore spot with him. “That’s why you’re at risk.”
He went on to outline several ways Travis could cheat me out of my trust fund. In detail. It was very well thought out.
But that’s what you get when you pal around with a (former) expert thief. Danny knew all there was to know about picking locks, stealing intelligently, and doing what you had to do to survive. His jail time had come early and infrequently. Once he’d matured as a man, he’d learned to avoid being caught.
Then he’d gone on to university, met one Hayden Mundy Moore, and the rest was history. Our history. A part of my life I treasured. Danny kept me grounded. He kept me appreciative and aware. As long as he was around, I never took the easy way out.
But I sometimes took a detour to enjoy some chocolate.
I swallowed a nibble of the chocolate-covered caramel I’d found on my pillow (thanks, housekeeping!), then breathed in.
“Thanks for the heads-up, Danny, but I’ve got this.”
I glanced at the note beside my pillow, written in elegant French cursive. BONNE JOURNÉE! JEANNETTE FARGES, MÉNAGÈRE (Have a nice day! Housekeeping.) Jeannette was probably the woman I’d seen with the stack of fluffy towels in the corridor last night.
So far, château Vetault had provided exemplary service. Jeannette—or her staff—had anticipated every luxurious need.
“Anyway, there are more important things than Travis to talk about,” I reminded my bodyguard buddy. “For instance . . .”
I described my encounter with Hélène that morning and recounted her oddly high-spirited behavior. I broke down having glimpsed Hélène and Hubert in the château’s formal garden. Then I told Danny about my arrival at La Maison des Petits Bonheurs, my awful graffiti sighting, and my mixed impressions of Mathieu.
“No, you can’t trust him,” Danny said in reply to my wondering aloud if Mathieu was as unreliable as he seemed. “You can’t trust anyone. Not even Spreadsheet Superman himself.”
He meant Travis, naturally. “I can trust some people.”
Like him. I imagined Danny shaking his head. Given his newly reattached retina, that was probably verboten, though.
“You don’t get it. You can’t trust anyone. Ever. Especially not now, while you’re sneaking around poking into murders.”
Trust no one was his unofficial motto. Yet, “You trust me.”
Silence. “You’re different. Anyway, keep your guard up,” Danny rushed to caution me. “It sounds as though this Mathieu guy is jealous of you. That makes him unpredictable.”
Jealous? I laughed. Something had obviously been lost in translation. “Jealous? Of me? Come on, I don’t think so.”
“Mathieu probably sees you as a rival. Or did.”
Before Philippe Vetault was killed. We both thought it.
“No.” I dismissed the idea. “Mathieu is an accomplished chocolatier himself. The only trouble he’s having now is trying to break out of the small-town chocolate-making mold. In France, that’s not so tough. All kinds of small businesses thrive here.”
“The tax situation is probably favorable,” Danny said.
Huh? I frowned and cocked my head. “Did you just say . . .”
“Just watch your back,” my security expert said. “Promise.”
“I promise!” I always did. “But if you’d been there, you would have seen—Mathieu couldn’t have been more complimentary of me and my chocolate expertise. It was kind of embarrassing.”
“Yet you believed him. That was step one.”
“Danny! He was nice. He was sad. I felt sorry for him.”
“Step two.”
“Come on. You’re too suspicious. He wasn’t conning me.”
Except he had, I remembered ruefully. About the long walk to the police station and the work involved in cleaning the graffiti. I still intended to go back and finish that.
“That’s what all the best conmen make you think,” Danny reminded me in a gruff voice. “Trust me. I’d know.”
I was just glad he wasn’t part of that life anymore. I knew that Danny—ever loyal—was still in touch with certain friends from the bad old days, though. Sometimes, that worried me.
“Anyway, Travis has my back.” Time to change the subject.
“Sure, he does,” Danny groused. “You’re his meal ticket.”
“What?” I stopped pacing. “That’s cynical, even for you.”
“Truth hurts.” My buddy sounded unrepentant. “How do you think Harvard gets paid? If something happens to you, his firm loses. Your big-bucks account goes bye-bye. He needs you.”
I didn’t like thinking of my financial advisor this way.
“All the more reason for Travis to protect me, right?”
Danny scoffed. “More like, the only reason. Why do you think he’s there? He’s watching out for his golden goose.”
No. There was more than that between us. “He overcame his fear of flying to be here, remember? He volunteered to help me investigate Monsieur’s death. He’s put himself at risk.”
“He was probably never afraid to fly. That’s got to be a sympathy play,” Danny argued. “And he’s helping you investigate because that’s what you want. You can bet it wasn’t his idea.”
I honestly couldn’t remember which one of us had brought it up. But I was sure of one thing. “He was very insistent. Just like I was, back in San Francisco. Remember? I wouldn’t take no for an answer when Adrienne died. Travis is the same way now.”
“Then you have that in common,” Danny observed.
“Yes.” I smiled, feeling triumphant
“That’s what Captain PowerPoint wants you to think. Oldest trick in the book: forge a bond, even if it’s fake.”
“Travis is not conning me, Danny.” I wandered to the window and looked outside. The
Parisian film crew had moved indoors, but one of the blonde’s cohorts was standing near the fountain, looking glum. He was dark-haired. Good-looking. Charismatic. I’d have bet fifty euros that he was the French pop star. “You only think he is because that’s what you would have done. Once.”
“Just watch yourself,” my buddy urged, unapologetic. “To me, you’re more than a paycheck. But to Smarty-Pants, you’re—”
“Could we just agree to call him Travis?” I stifled a sigh of frustration. “I realize it’s hard for you to be out of commission, but try to find some perspective, okay? Mathieu Camara is not jealous of me, and Travis isn’t a cold-hearted opportunist who’s only here to maximize profits. He likes me!”
Danny offered a skeptical harrumph. “So do I.”
That’s what I thought all this was about. Privately, at least. It was the same old rivalry at work between Danny and Travis, being played out in a slightly different way. I knew Danny was unhappy being unable to help me this time, so he was nit-picking at Travis, who could. I figured he couldn’t help assigning his own jealous feelings about my keeper to Mathieu Camara and his interactions with me, since we’d shared the same mentor—just the same way, coincidentally, that Danny and Travis shared me. Danny probably didn’t even realize he was doing it.
Then, too, my friend never felt far from his criminal past. Maybe he never would. Naturally he assigned his own earlier motivations to others. Wasn’t that the way everyone behaved?
For instance, I liked chocolate. I assumed everyone else did (of course). But my bodyguard buddy was the oddball exception to the rule—Danny didn’t have a sweet tooth at all.
That didn’t make me wrong about chocolate. Or Danny. It only made us different—just like Mathieu Camara and Travis were.
“You can’t rule out motivated self-interest,” Danny said.
“Is that like compound interest? You’re really taking this role reversal between you and Travis seriously,” I joked.
“Har har. Just remember who your friends are.”
That was easy. “You,” I said fondly. And Travis, I added.
Seemingly satisfied with that outcome, Danny quit badgering me. He asked for copies of the photos I’d taken so far, including the few I’d snapped at the last minute of that redhead pulling down Monsieur’s banner, then we talked awhile about Philippe, infidelity, and Saint-Malo. The town had a history of being the most rebellious and hard to control in all of France. It had been so bold that it had even defied Breton authority. I figured those details—and the local pirates—would appeal to Danny.
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