The Molly Sutton Mystery Series, books 1-3

Chapter 22

Chapter 22The Bennetts climbed out of Vincent’s taxi as though underwater, their limbs under pressure. They moved so slowly that Molly’s impatience surged and she wondered if they would ever get all the way out and close the door. Quickly she paid Vincent and went up the steps to the station, feeling all the anxiety the Bennetts had displaced with tranquilizers as though it had been deflected off them and leapt onto her.

Chief Dufort was just inside the door.

“Mr. and Mrs. Bennett? Chief Benjamin Dufort. I am pleased to make your acquaintance,” he said, shaking Marshall’s limp hand. He turned to Molly, “And thank you for this help taking the parents of Amy here,” he said, and then winced. Turning back to the Bennetts he gestured to his office, then back to Molly. “By any chance do you have some extra minutes? My English…” he shrugged and shook his head.

“You want me to help translate?” said Molly, stunned that anyone could think her rudimentary language skills were useful. “Chief, I’d like to help, but really, my French is absolument worse than your English, believe me.”

But he looked at her so imploringly, and he was quite good-looking, there was no dodging that. “All right,” she heard herself saying. “I’ll try.” And so Molly unexpectedly found herself in Dufort’s office for the first meeting of the Chief with the parents of the missing girl.

“Thank you for seeing us,” said Marshall. He at least seemed to be awake, if a little shaky. Sally Bennett looked as though she might doze off at any moment. Molly added concern about an overdose to her long list of worries about the Bennetts.

“Thank you very much for coming,” said Dufort. “I wish deeply that the circumstances of our meeting were easier.”

He continued with various reassuring words, and to her surprise Molly found that she understood Dufort quite well, and she managed to get what he was saying across to the Bennetts, if rather clumsily and imprecise.

There was little news. Several times Chief Dufort told them that the Castillac force was doing all it could to find their daughter, and he detailed some of the things they were doing to accomplish this—the phone calls to airports, that kind of thing—but he stayed well clear of giving them the idea that they were, at this juncture, looking for a body, even though in fact that was a critical part of the investigation. It was the job of police to cover all the bases and so that is what they were doing, with rigor and attention, no matter the anxieties it might provoke, but Dufort saw no need to alarm the Bennetts further, when their distress proved they already suspected the worst.

Once Molly got over her panic at having to translate—which made it easier than she would ever have imagined—she was excited to be there in the middle of everything, then disappointed that Dufort was either absolutely nowhere on the case or not telling any details.

Handsome men are so often slow-witted, she thought, but I don’t think that’s the case with the Chief. He has a smart look about him, but skittery. A little nervous. Is it because he knows more than he’s telling? Or because that’s simply his way?

“Yes, she has had boyfriends, but none serious,” Marshall was saying. “Art was everything to her, you understand. She wasn’t going to allow a boy to get in the way of her success.”

“That worried me,” Sally said, her voice barely above a whisper.

“How so?” asked Dufort.

“Well,” said Sally, but then paused, and the pause went on and on.

Molly stood on the balls on her feet as though she were playing tennis, waiting for Sally’s next words so she could hit them softly over the net to Dufort if he gave her the signal she needed to translate. But Sally did not continue.

“It’s that…Sally has always thought that perhaps Amy’s single-minded pursuit of a career in art might end up making her unhappy,” explained Marshall.

“Alone,” added Sally. “It’s not like a painting is going to love you back, even if it’s a masterpiece.”

Everyone in the room considered that statement. And then Sally let out a heart-rending wail, because the clear image of her daughter spending her last moments with someone who did not love her was so painful that her tenuous self-control evaporated. She wobbled, and Marshall reached his arm around her to hold her up.

“I do understand,” said Dufort, feeling the parents’ agony acutely.

Molly wondered if he was married and had children. Although it probably made no difference—it’s not like it took a huge leap of imagination for her to understand the Bennett’s pain. She guessed anyone in that room felt it deep in their bodies, as she did, fighting back tears and her legs none too steady. She glanced at Dufort and saw that his handsome face was pale and his lips were pressed tightly together.

“Molly, can you make sure the Bennetts get back to your place all right?” he asked.

She nodded, her throat still closed up.

“Please,” said Sally, reaching a hand out to Dufort.

“We’re doing everything we can,” he said, his voice cracking. “Everything.”

Molly’s neighbor Mme. Sabourin had found her a cleaning girl, although she made no particular recommendation as to her skill. The girl was the daughter of the man who repaired furniture in a little shop on a back street of the village, and Mme. Sabourin talked at length about the armoire he had fixed up for her: he hadn’t charged too much and his workmanship had been more than adequate, especially on a tricky bit where the lacquer was worn.

So after a deeply awkward phone conversation during which Molly struggled to get out even a few words of understandable French (she found it ridiculously difficult to speak French over the phone, and all her progress seemed to evaporate on the spot), Constance agreed to come that very day. Molly wasn’t particular; all she wanted was a body. Anyone can run a vacuum cleaner, right?

With some trepidation she knocked on the door to the cottage to alert the Bennetts that the cleaner was coming that afternoon. Perhaps they wouldn’t mind sitting in the garden or going for a walk while their place was spiffed up? And would they like anything from the village? Molly was going to catch the tail end of the Saturday market.

The Bennetts were amenable, as they always were, untethered to any reality beyond their missing daughter. Molly wasn’t absolutely sure they understood about the cleaner—they appeared even more tranqued up than before, even Marshall—but she took them at their word, waved, and headed into the village with her market basket over her arm. She wished for tomatoes but the season was over, and hoped she would come home with something besides lavender soap. And croissants aux amandes.

The first person she saw when she got to the Place was Manette, reigning over her beautifully arranged harvest like a queen of légumes.

“Bonjour, Manette,” said Molly, a little shyly, unsure whether Manette would remember her.

“Hello, Molly!” Manette cried, her English accent so wrong that Molly burst out laughing. “Tell me,” she said, continuing in French, “have you figured out where Amy has gone?”

“Me?” said Molly. “Oh no. I’m not…that’s not my line, I don’t think. Because…” she c****d her head and looked up to the sky. “How can you guess what people will do, when we’re all of us capable of anything?”

Manette nodded solemnly. Molly didn’t know what it was about her that brought on these fits of philosophy.

“It is true,” said Manette, “that people lie. About anything! And to ourselves most of all. Now look,” she said, gesturing to a heap of artichokes. “They’re imported, I won’t lie to you”—she winked—“but see how beautiful they are? A bit of butter sauce, just a squeeze of lemon?”

“I’ll take five,” said Molly, and waited for Manette to weigh them. “Do you have children, Manette? I’m sorry if that is too personal a question.”

Manette waved off her apology. “No, no. Yes, I have four! I’m in the center of chaos! The eye of the hurricane!”

Molly smiled. It was so easy to picture, rosy-cheeked Manette laughing in her kitchen with children everywhere. She felt a stab of envy and forced herself to keep smiling anyway.

Then she went to find that attractive organic farmer Rémy, hoping for some tomatoes. He had none, but she talked with him for about fifteen minutes about the weather and then about Lapin Broussard. His English was extremely good and she relaxed into speaking English herself.

“I’m not sure I give intuition any weight,” she said, “but honestly, Lapin is incredibly annoying and I’ve considered moving to another village to escape him—but a killer? Or at the least, a kidnapper? I just don’t get that from him.”

“My wife slapped him once, at Chez Papa. Right across the face. He stopped bothering her after that,” Rémy laughed.

Molly took a quick breath. She had been flirting a little with Rémy—he had a sort of hippie farmer appeal, broad-shouldered and capable, with a smudge of dirt on his chin—and now felt embarrassed that he was married.

“My ex-wife, I should say,” said Rémy, with a smile, as though reading her mind.

Molly smiled back. And although all in all she was finished with that part of her life, and she was more suited to a single life, she really was…her next thought was about how lovely his smile was, and his mouth, and how if at some point in the future he wanted to kiss her, she wouldn’t say no.

And then he had been saying something and she had missed it entirely with her daydream of kissing.

What, am I fifteen?

“So sadly you must wait until next July for real tomatoes,” Rémy was saying. And then a last-minute crowd of customers surged up behind her, and it was time to go home to La Baraque.

She went straight to the cottage to see how far along Constance had gotten, sure that the Bennetts would be anxious to get back inside as soon as possible.

“Constance!” she called, seeing a bucket filled with dirty water and a mop leaning against the wall. Molly walked into the tiny kitchen and saw a pile of dustrags on the counter. “Hello? Constance?”

But Constance was gone. The cottage was not particularly clean, and the implements of cleaning were scattered upstairs and down, so that Molly spent her last ounces of energy straightening up after her cleaner so that the Bennetts could leave the garden and go back into seclusion.