The Molly Sutton Mystery Series, books 1-3

Chapter 35

Chapter 35“Lab reports are in,” said Dufort, and Maron and Perrault left their desks to follow him into his office. “The sample from under the fingernails was good. Not degraded. They were able to get material from the flask as well, which matches the fingernail sample.”

Perrault realized she was holding her breath, even though she knew Lapin would be cleared.

“Neither matches Lapin,” said Dufort, and Perrault whooped and then tried to look serious.

“I thought Lapin was considered by pretty much every woman in the village to be a giant pain,” said Maron.

“He is,” said Perrault. “But he’s our pain, you know?”

Maron shook his head.

“If we could narrow down a suspect, we have the DNA to arrest and likely convict. But we can’t run around the village taking samples from everyone on the street. We still don’t have means, motive, and opportunity pointing at anyone.”

Dufort spread his hands on his desk and looked as though he was going to push them straight through the wood. Perrault, to her undying embarrassment, got a little teary. Maron was the only one of the three who did not look thrown by their lack of progress.

“Maron, any progress?” said Dufort.

“Yes, sir. Let me get the books.” Quickly he stepped to his desk and returned while opening up a ledger with a red leather cover. “It was pretty easy, actually,” Maron was saying, pointing to some fine print in Degas’s accounting books. “You see this list of vendors that the school paid money to every week or every other week? Cleaning services, laundry, and the like. Well, I checked out each one to make sure they were legit. All of them were—except this one….” he pointed to Acmé Food Services, which appeared to be receiving 2254 euros a week.

“It’s a dummy,” said Maron, gleefully. “There is no food service at the school. Vending machines, that’s it, and the school doesn’t pay for them.”

“So that 2254 euros is going where?” asked Perrault.

“Someone’s pocket,” said Maron. “The board of the school is more or less for show. Gallimard decides who gets hired and which students get admitted, and Draper takes care of the finances. Both of them have access to the books and to the school’s bank accounts and investments. Either of them could be siphoning off this money, or they could be working in concert.”

“That’s well over 100,000 euros in a year. Something of a dent in their operating budget, I’d imagine, in a small school like that. Nice work, Maron,” said Dufort, leaning up against a radiator and looking out the station window. “Unfortunately I will tell you that I got these books through…a not entirely legal process. So for the moment, let’s keep the thought of embezzlement under our hats, yes?”

Perrault’s eyes were wide. She would never have thought Dufort capable of skirting the law. He was the Chief!

“The important thing,” Dufort was saying, “is that even with the embezzlement, there’s no linkage to Amy Bennett. We would have to prove that Amy found out about it, that she either threatened to tell the police or they believed she would, and that the embezzler’s solution to the threat of being caught was to kill her. I’m afraid at this point that’s simply a fairy tale that we have absolutely no evidence to support.

“So even though we’ve got the body, and we’ve got DNA…we’ve got nothing,” said Perrault.

“Correct,” said Dufort, and he looked so grim that the two junior officers unconsciously took a step backward.

“I was at Degas yesterday, talking to a number of people. Students and faculty as well as administration. It’s a curious thing, but though I heard more of the wild womanizing rumors about Gallimard from several people, I could find absolutely no one who could confirm even one instance of it. I spoke to three people the rumors had linked to him and they were quite convincing in their denials.

“My conclusion is that Gallimard himself does what he can to promote the rumors, although apparently, there is not so much as a hint of evidence that they are true.” He walked from behind his desk and glanced out the window to the street. “People are strange,” he said.

Maron shrugged. “It’s not so different from guys at university, bragging about what they had done with certain women. But all of it’s just fantasies, you know?”

Dufort considered his words but did not speak. He rubbed his close-cut hair with one hand, he looked out the window, he twiddled the small glass bottle of tincture that was in his pocket.

“This crime,” he said slowly, “looks more and more as though Perrault is right. We’re dealing with a murder of a young woman likely to be the aftermath of a s*x crime. So, a sociopath. He wants to hurt, to dominate, and he cares little of what damage or pain he causes in his pursuits. Actually, it might better be said that he is unaware of others’ pain because other people are not real to him.”

Perrault was looking intent, hanging on her Chief’s every word.

Dufort spoke softly. “The way to catch a criminal is to put yourself in his shoes. Think how he thinks. And it is abundantly clear that thus far, I have been unable to do this effectively. I know he is among us, probably someone we have at least some connection to, in a village this size. Yet so far—for years—he has acted with impunity.

“Let’s get back to it,” said Dufort, with a briskness that was almost worse than his anger. “Somebody in this village knows something, and we won’t hear it hanging around the station.”

After a couple of days in near-seclusion, Molly was looking forward to dinner at Chez Papa—extra-crispy frites, perhaps a hanger steak and sautéed mushrooms—and some company. The Bennetts had finally emerged from the cottage to tell her they planned to leave the next day. They were effusive in their thanks which made Molly feel terrible.

“Lawrence!” she said, spotting her friend in his usual spot and opening her arms for a hug. He slid from his stool and wrapped her in a big hug.

“I can’t believe after all that has happened that you didn’t come tell me all the details, you minx!”

“I know,” Molly said, feeling chastened. She realized in the moment that if the positions were reversed, she’d have stayed glued to her stool at Chez Papa until Lawrence showed up and told her all about finding the body. “I’m sorry, I needed a few days to hole up and get my feet back under me,” she said.

“I understand. Sort of,” he added, giving her a sideways look. “I suppose you don’t want to hear the little tidbits I’ve gleaned in your absence?”

“Tidbits? What kind of tidbits? Does Dufort have something on somebody? Has anybody been arrested? Come on, Lawrence, don’t be horrible!”

“Bring her a kir, Nico. She’s overwrought.”

Molly gave him a sharp elbow to the ribs and Lawrence filed away a mental note not to call her overwrought ever again. “Well,” he said, after taking a fortifying sip of his Negroni, “what do you know so far?”

“I don’t know anything. I called Dufort when I found her—or Yves showed her to me, more precisely. I took the dog down to the road and waited for the cops there, which, uh, I felt a little funny about. I mean, I knew she was dead and everything, obviously. But still, it felt a little like I was abandoning her by leaving. You’re going to think I was drunk, but I whispered to her that I’d be back.”

Lawrence held his head to one side, thinking this over. “I do see why you wanted children,” he murmured, low enough that Nico wouldn’t hear. “Your instinct for…what would you call it? Anything I think of seems macabre under the circumstances. Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that I admire the depth and sensitivity of your feeling.”

Molly nearly made a joking remark but instead she thanked him. “And so, the cops came and I showed them where she was and they were doing all their forensic stuff and I just walked home. I thought maybe I was intruding and they were too polite to tell me to get lost.”

“I really don’t think you have to worry about that. I’m sure they would issue whatever instructions they needed to,” said Lawrence. “So that’s it? You’ve been holed up ever since, doing plumbing repairs and learning masonry, or whatever it is you do all day?”

“Pretty much. I saw the Bennetts leave to go to the station, or the morgue, I guess. I didn’t offer to go with them. I figured that no one tagging along was going to make that trip any less awful.”

“Unimaginably so,” said Lawrence, and the two friends shared a look of pain, thinking of what the parents must be going through. “All right, well, I’ll tell you what I’ve heard.”

Molly sipped her kir and waited anxiously.

“I happen to know someone who knows someone…and the word is that Amy Bennett was not r***d, but there was evidence of “s****l activity.” Which means the police are looking for a sociopath of the murderer-r****t variety, and not, oh I don’t know, a jealous ex-friend or something like that.”

“Not a surprise, huh? I mean when a young woman goes missing, isn’t that the conclusion everyone jumps to? r***d then murdered? Or in this case, apparently not-quite-r***d? I’m not sure it makes much difference.”

“I rather thought you would say there was relief in knowing she hadn’t been.”

Molly shrugged. “If she were alive, sure. Dead? What difference does it make?”

They drank extra-big sips of their drinks. Molly had been looking forward to dinner but found she had lost her appetite entirely.

“I also hear there’s been a date with Rémy.”

“Good Lord, who are your sources?”

“You ride through the village in his truck, people are going to see you. And then, you know, tell everybody they know. Gossip in Castillac is everyone’s favorite sport. It’s one of the reasons you fit right in.” Lawrence grinned at her and waved Nico over. “Get this woman a plate of frites, stat. Extra-crispy,” he added, just to annoy the cook.

“I know it’s selfish, but that’s a whole lot worse,” said Molly, putting her elbows on the bar and slumping.

“What’s worse than what?”

“If Amy had been killed by, say, a crazy classmate who was jealous of her success, then the rest of us would be perfectly safe. The violence would be contained, you see?”

Lawrence shrugged. “Maybe as far as that one crazy classmate goes. But if envy is the trigger, then what keeps your neighbor from doing you in because your roses look so much better than hers?”

Molly laughed at the image of Mme Sabourin sneaking over to La Baraque in her housecoat, with a garrote in her pocket.

“I’m afraid none of us are ever all the way safe, the way we might wish,” said Lawrence. “And I will admit that I moved to Castillac for reasons similar to yours. No, no divorce,” he said, waving her question away before she could ask it. “Just a lot of family unpleasantness that was better walked away from. When I came here on a vacation, I was totally smitten with the beauty of the village but also the warmth of the people living here. I thought I could leave the dysfunction and judgment of my family behind, and make real friends here. I cancelled my return ticket and settled in to embrace the tranquility of Castillac.”

He and Molly laughed. “Oh, the irony!” said Molly. And they cracked up again, arms around each other, so happy to be exactly where they were, murders and abductions notwithstanding. Sometimes the hum of fear can make people giddy, especially with Nico throwing in the odd free refill.