The Molly Sutton Mystery Series, books 1-3

Chapter 33

Chapter 33As far as Molly could tell, the Bennetts had disappeared. She kept reminding herself that they certainly didn’t have to keep her abreast of any plans they had, they were paid up and free to come and go as they pleased. Yet still, it felt odd. They were odd. Or no, it was only that Molly had no experience with people going through something like this. Who knows what any of us would do?

She decided to have dinner at Chez Papa, hoping for some distraction. Probably Lawrence will be there, and thank God Lapin seemed to be laying low. She was not in the mood for his drooly expression and wandering eyes, not tonight.

As she walked into the village, she had one of those moments when she wasn’t worrying about something or making plans or thinking over what happened. She was simply walking down the road, seeing what was in front of her. The air was chilly and the stones of the buildings no longer looked warm but rather forbidding. The sun had burnt off the frost but everything looked cold: the bare trees, the tiled roofs, the neat stacks of firewood in backyards.

She went down the alley and looked to see if the La Perla woman had hung out her wash, but the line had been taken down. Molly supposed she could ask around to find out who lived in the house, but she rather liked the mysteriousness of not knowing. At last night’s gala she had found herself wondering, when she met women of the village—are you the La Perla woman?

She stood by the back gate trying to understand why this stranger’s underwear was taking up more than a moment of her thoughts. It’s that…all of us have this face we show the world, but there is so much we don’t show, so much of who we are that is underneath. The La Perla woman would appear to be chaste, and sober, and moderate in her behaviors—but underneath, she is extravagant and sensuous. Perhaps she shows that side to her intimates; of course, Molly couldn’t say.

The man who took Amy is more than likely a person Castillac knows. We see his public face and don’t suspect what is underneath—his need to hurt, to control.

Molly walked faster, looking forward to the particular smell of Chez Papa, that heady mixture of coffee, tobacco, and people.

“Lawrence! I was hoping you’d be here!” she cried, seeing her friend on his usual stool, Negroni in place.

“Hello, my dear,” he said. “I hope your let-down was brief?”

Molly slid onto the stool next to him and waved at Nico at the other end of the bar. “Well, no, actually, I’m still in the grip of it. Kir, s’il te plaît,” she said to Nico.

“It’s not the party,” she continued. “I’m officially totally creeped out by the Amy situation. It’s going to be someone you all know, Lawrence, someone among us. I’ve just been thinking about how we make friends, we go to work, we socialize—but how well do we really know each other? Aren’t all of us keeping things back, maybe even the biggest things?”

Lawrence smiled. “So, you first, Mollster. What are you keeping back?”

“I’m serious, Lawrence. But all right. Here is the…the undercurrent I don’t talk about with anyone. I’m thirty-eight years old. I always thought I would have children. I don’t mean just because it’s the expected thing—I mean, I wanted children. And here I am, running out of time, well, not even that, it’s not going to happen, now that I have no one to have the children with—”

Lawrence put his hand on Molly’s shoulder. “You’re not too old,” he said.

“Maybe not right this minute. But I’m single with no prospects. So figuring that in—I’m done. And I think about it all the time, or it’s not even thoughts, really, more like the knowledge of it is woven through my consciousness 24/7, even though I’ve more or less made peace with it because what other choice do I have?

“But this thing with Amy, and having the Bennetts with me—it’s made it ten times worse. Brought back the yearning, the disappointment, and the desire to figure out a way to make it work when I know there is no way.”

Lawrence listened. He did not jump in with advice or instruction, but simply squeezed her shoulder and listened to Molly pour her heart out. She talked about the children of friends and how much she enjoyed playing with them, how annoying and demanding they could be. How deeply she wished to have that in her life, including the annoying and demanding parts.

“I don’t talk about it because I know it makes me sound so self-pitying. Maybe I’m one of those people who is never satisfied,” she said. “I mean, look, I moved to France, for crying out loud. My dream. And I love it here even more than I could have imagined. I should be happy. So why do I have to go back to this old scab of no children and keep picking at it?”

Lawrence shrugged. “It’s what we do,” he said.

They sat for a while drinking their drinks and not talking, lost in their own thoughts.

“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 c****d 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 Basset 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.