The Molly Sutton Mystery Series, books 1-3

Chapter 31

Chapter 31Simone kept running even though she heard no footsteps behind her. She was trying to get somewhere less solitary, somewhere with so many people she would be safe, and then she could call the police. But on the night of the gala at L’Institut Degas everything was closed. Everything. She ran past Chez Papa—dark. Same with the other bars and restaurants on the Place. It was nearing midnight and she could think of absolutely no place to go except back to the gala.

She stopped abruptly and looked behind her. The street and sidewalks were empty. The street dark, the pavement damp from a brief shower. The shapes of buildings deeply familiar as she had lived in Castillac all her life.

She waited until she had caught her breath. Still no one.

And then, because she didn’t know what else to do and now going alone to her new apartment was about a hundred times less appealing than it had been ten minutes earlier, she started running down rue des Chênes, back to Degas as fast as she could go.

The gendarmes of Castillac were at the station early Wednesday morning.

“I had my eyes and ears peeled last night,” Thérèse was saying to Dufort and Maron. “I was thinking most of the village was at the gala. So the chance of our perp being there was pretty decent.” She bowed her head. “But instead he was roaming the streets and almost got Simone.”

“I should have had you patrol since you weren’t going to be at the gala,” said Dufort to Maron.

Maron shrugged. “We can’t be everywhere at once. Did your friend give a description?” he asked Perrault.

“Unfortunately not,” answered Dufort. “It was dark, he grabbed her from behind. All she could say was that she was pretty sure it was a man, and that he was somewhat hefty.”

“What does ‘somewhat hefty’ mean?”

Dufort gave a brittle smile. “I asked that very question. Ms. Guyanet said only that the person was substantial, not slight. She would not hazard a guess about weight.”

Maron nodded. The three officers were quiet, all of them trying to have the breakthrough thought, the inspiration that would finally lead to some progress.

“You could say that Gallimard is ‘somewhat hefty,’” said Perrault. “Too bad he was at the gala, surrounded by a hundred witnesses.”

“Professor Ford spoke to me about him again,” said Dufort. “Definitely has a personal grudge against Gallimard. But maybe there is something to what he says.”

“Might be, if he didn’t have an alibi,” said Perrault.

Maron glared at her. “He could have slipped out and gotten back in ten minutes. You can’t prove every single minute was accounted for.”

“I’m going to talk to Ford again,” said Dufort.

Perrault glanced at Maron, and gave him some grudging credit for keeping his gaze steadily on the floor and not shooting her a glance of victory.

The feeling in the room was not one of optimism or energy. They wanted a lead, a clue, a body. And in the absence of all three, it felt as though they were going through the motions of investigation. Plodding along a treadmill, never advancing.

Lapin had been let go, since there was no legal pretext for keeping him, and of the three gendarmes, only Maron thought there was any chance he had anything to do with Amy’s disappearance. Perrault and Dufort had tried talking to him again but neither had succeeded in getting anything new out of him. Whatever he had held back, he was still holding back.

They were at square one. Exactly two weeks since Amy went missing.

Dufort stood up and walked to the window. He pushed down a slat of the Venetian blind and looked out. “Somebody in this village knows something,” he said. He felt a hollowness growing in the pit of his stomach and knew it was time for a dose of his tincture. He closed his eyes and tried to take himself back to last night, to dancing with Marie-Claire, but stress had taken over and he got no relief from it.

“Maron, I’d like you to do some legwork on the financial picture for Degas. Find out what kind of endowment they have, if any. Find out how well tuition covers expenses. Find out—everything you can.”

Maron nodded and went to his computer. Perrault looked at Dufort expectantly.

“Thérèse,” he said quietly, “you and I will look for Amy’s body, and we will make no effort to disguise what we are doing. You take the north side of the village, I will take the south. Look in every backyard. Every shed, every barn, every garden. Start in the center of town and move farther out.”

“Yes, sir,” said Thérèse. “Too bad we don’t have a bloodhound.”

Dufort nodded. “Listen. The key to this whole thing is in the village, in our history,” he said. “I can sense that it’s right in front of us, and we just haven’t been able to see it.”

Thérèse waited to see if Dufort had more to say, but when he was quiet, she nodded and left to search, experiencing for the first time the deeply mixed emotions that come with wanting desperately to find a body so that the case could proceed, while at the same time, never wanting to give up on the hope that Amy was alive, somehow, somewhere.