The Molly Sutton Mystery Series, books 1-3

Chapter 29

Chapter 29Rémy was dancing with his sister, and Lawrence had disappeared who knew where. Molly didn’t mind. She loved being in the swirl of the party, officially part of her village, talking to whomever she happened to be standing next to. She remembered all the big parties she had gone to when her job was fundraising, and how dreary they were because of it. She was free now, and her new life in France was rumbling along very well indeed.

Or perhaps her feelings of expansive optimism were the result of three kirs, Molly having developed a mighty thirst thanks to so much disco dancing. At any rate, she was enjoying herself, with thoughts of the Bennetts not entirely absent but in some sort of manageable perspective. Always there, but not running the show at the moment.

At her elbow a man appeared, so tall that Molly had to look up to meet his eyes. “I wanted to introduce myself, Ms. Sutton. I am another American living in Castillac.” He held out a hand with preternaturally long fingers and they shook instead of kissing cheeks. “My name is Rex Ford.”

“Hi Rex, nice to meet you,” she said, by now almost used to strangers knowing who she was. “I’ll ask you what everyone always asks me—how did you end up in Castillac?”

“Ah, yes. I teach at Degas. Painting. I’ve been there many years now.”

Molly’s brow wrinkled and she nodded. “Did you….”

Ford smiled at her but his eyes were flat. “Are you asking about Amy? Everyone’s asking about Amy. No, I haven’t taught her. You see, as I said I’ve been teaching there for many years, but my focus is on the art and on my teaching, not on playing politics, you understand? So when the other professors are fighting over the students, trying to get the best ones for themselves—I don’t allow myself to get involved with that sort of thing.

“At any rate, no, I’m afraid Gallimard was Amy’s painting teacher. Anton Gallimard. You have heard of him?”

“I’ve heard his name. He’s here, I suppose?”

Rex Ford raised his eyebrows and jutted out his chin to point him out. Gallimard was on the dance floor, his face florid and his belly shaking, doing The Bump with a pretty student, both of them laughing.

“Ah,” said Molly, nodding and looking back at Ford. She saw hatred in his eyes as he looked at Gallimard. Saw how he couldn’t take his eyes off him, in fact. “So tell me about teaching at Degas. You’ve been there a long while, so you must like it there?”

Ford nodded. “Well, I like parts of it. I like living in France.”

Molly nodded enthusiastically.

“And art…art is my life,” he continued. “When I reached the point in my own career where I could see I would progress no further, teaching was the only possibility that made sense.”

“I understand,” said Molly. “That must have been a difficult moment.”

Ford was looking over Molly’s head, not at the crowd but still at Gallimard. “Yes,” he said.

Molly started trying to think of a graceful way to get away from Ford. She moved her hips, eager to be on the dance floor, then stopped because she didn’t want to get stuck dancing with Rex.

“It is never easy to have desires that cannot be fulfilled,” Ford pronounced, and then looked down at Molly with an expression of such tangled emotion she stepped backwards. “Take Gallimard, for example. He was supposed to be the next Pollock, the next Chagall. And now he’s nothing but a fat nobody. What do you think that might drive a person to do?” Ford asked, bending his head down and breathing in Molly’s face.

“Drink too much?” she said in a small voice. “And I don’t know. Who doesn’t have to confront failure in middle age? Almost nobody ends up being what they imagined they would be.”

Rex c****d his head and swiveled his attention to her. “Perhaps. Perhaps. But you see him out there, right now—do you think it’s an accident that he’s dancing with the best-looking girl in the school? Do you understand? He’s like a parasite, wanting to suck her youth right out of her nubile body.”

Ford licked his lips. Molly saw a bead of spittle in the corner of his mouth, and decided that maybe it was Rex Ford himself who wanted to suck on nubile bodies. His intensity was making her feel more than a little uncomfortable.

“They’ve got that junk dealer in jail,” Ford leaned in close and whispered in Molly’s ear. “But it’s a mistake. They’ve got the wrong guy.”

The fact that Molly agreed with him did not make the conversation any less awkward. Where had Lawrence disappeared to?

And Rémy? Not that she cared.

Really.

It was disgusting, thought Maribeth Donnelly. The way everyone just goes on as though nothing has happened. Amy disappears and it’s like she’s been dropped into the sea, without a single ripple. Maribeth had a quick image of a painting—the ocean, abstract and dark, a small figure lost—and then felt a little sick at having turned Amy into art, just like that, without meaning to.

Maribeth did not fault the police, who at least seemed to be making some effort to find her. At least they had somebody in custody, from what she’d heard. But L’Insitut Degas, that was another thing altogether. Bunch of old white men looking to line their pockets and their beds, was her assessment. She had already made arrangements with her family to go home after the semester was over, which was no small thing since she had begged to come to the school, and had had to admit she had been wrong about her choice.

But at the same time, confusingly, her work was better. Deeper, more accomplished technically. She had learned much from Gallimard and from the other students as well. But this…this gala, not two weeks after Amy was taken…it was more than she could stomach. She looked around hoping to see Officer Perrault, so she could thank her. But if she saw that Maron guy, she would avoid him. She did not like his vibe. Not one bit.

She felt so good in his arms, and it made Dufort happy the way he could feel her laughter ripple through her body as he held her. He wanted to pay attention to Marie-Claire, and only Marie-Claire, and leave all of the mess of L’Institut Degas and Amy Bennett behind. If only for a few hours.

But after one dance, Marie-Claire gave him a serious look and pulled him towards the door. “Something I need to tell you,” she said mysteriously in his ear. They threaded through the crowd, Ben nodding at various people along the way, until they got to a side door of the big room and let themselves out.

The night was cold and their breath made twin plumes, illuminated by the light of the party. Dufort stood up straight and breathed deeply, the air tickling the inside of his nose and smelling of pine. “Why are you intent on freezing me to death?” he asked Marie-Claire, smiling.

Neither wore a coat and they shivered in the cold. “I have to make sure no one hears what I’m about to say,” she said. She was not smiling. Ben looked at the way some of her hair had escaped her chignon and wreathed her head like a halo. “It’s about the school. Something I’ve found out. It’s probably nothing to do with your case, and I would be fired if Draper knew I was telling you this—”

Ben took her hands. He waited.

“—the thing is, I was poking around where I didn’t belong. I handle much of the school’s correspondence, emails to parents and that sort of thing, but a couple of things had happened that got me curious…anyway, to get to the nut of it: Degas is in serious financial trouble. I’m pretty sure Draper has been siphoning funds away for his own personal use. Maybe Gallimard as well.”

Ben looked into her face and thought how serious and lovely she was. He put the back of his hand on her cheek and she startled, his fingers were like ice. “And what do you think this might have to do with Amy?”

“I don’t know. Like I said, probably nothing. But I suppose I thought, well, here are some people pretending to be one thing—upstanding citizens, leaders of a prestigious school—when in actuality, they are nothing more than hustlers. Nothing more than thieves. And isn’t that true of whoever took Amy? If it’s someone we know, someone in the village? He’s a liar? A faker?”

“How did you find this out?”

Marie-Claire did not answer. She had managed to guess Draper’s password (people are so much more predictable than they think they are) and read his private emails. But what had seemed like a good idea at the time, in retrospect was a clear violation; she had even, she somehow did not realize until that moment, broken the law herself.

“Now that I’ve said it out loud, I can see I was being ridiculous,” she said, looking down at her feet in her favorite black ballerina flats. “Just because someone’s a thief doesn’t make him a killer.”

“It doesn’t,” said Dufort. “But you’ve done the right thing to tell me. We still don’t know if what happened to Amy has anything to do with the school. We don’t know if it was random or had something to do with who she was, her relationships and so forth. But without as much information as we can get, what hope do we have of finding out?”

When Marie-Claire realized he was not going to press her for how she found Draper out, she relaxed a little. “Smells like winter,” she said, lifting her face to the moon.

Dufort leaned in and kissed her on the neck, then on the lips. He wanted to be simply standing outside in the dark with Marie-Claire, kissing her. That was all.

All the rest of it could wait, at least for now.