The Molly Sutton Mystery Series, books 1-3

Chapter 8

Chapter 82005The Saturday market at Castillac was typical of markets all over France, with farmers setting up stalls for their flowers, vegetables, meats, seafood, and cheese, alongside purveyors of mostly cheap clothing, used books, homemade jams, spices, and other odds and ends. At a few folding tables, collectors of mushrooms, nuts, and various wild greens sat with small bundles for sale, and occasionally salespeople of things as disparate as air conditioners, mattresses, and cookware set up shop as well. The market went from early in the morning until noon, when everything was packed up and the scene deserted because everyone in the entire village was having lunch.

It was the first Saturday market since Molly had moved to Castillac, and she was not going to miss it no matter how dreadful her hangover. Damn those Negronis! She smiled about the night before as she dug around in the kitchen trying to concoct a remedy for her slamming headache. Surely she was too old to be getting drunk with strangers, but it had sure been fun, and she only hoped that Lawrence Weebly would turn out to be as entertaining and friendly during the sober light of day as he had been last night.

Glass of tomato juice, loaded up with hot sauce? Seemed like it might help, or at least distract her mouth from the dire cottony feeling that was making her so nauseated. She chugged it, popped a few aspirin, and went out to the terrace to sit at the rusty table and think things over and drink one last cup of coffee before heading into the village.

But the sun was shining right in that very spot and her head throbbed and her eyes burned. She gave up and went inside, grabbed a hat and sunglasses, and set off down the rue des Chênes, market basket in hand, thinking that she would be looking just like a Frenchwoman, what with walking to the market with a basket, except that she suspected most Frenchwomen weren’t showing up with hangovers as prodigious as this one. Most of them seemed so controlled in their pleasures, or, “controlled” wasn’t it, maybe…moderate. So perhaps one small éclair on Sunday, instead of stuffing them in at every opportunity. Ahem. And perhaps one Negroni, not two plus that horrid Cognac and Sprite.

Well, she thought, I may live in France, but I’ll always be an American. Long live immoderation! And then she winced, as having even a thought with an exclamation point made her head hurt.

The street was crowded with market-day traffic, and cars were parked almost all the way to La Baraque. Molly held one hand on her stomach and thought about cheese and éclairs, about fresh sausages and mushrooms, and all the other gems she was sure to find. She gently rubbed back and forth, trying to soothe her unhappy belly.

Stalls were set up in the center of the Place and all around its perimeter, as well as going down some side streets. Molly walked around, gaping, letting all the chatter sweep over her, not trying to understand conversations but just looking and walking slowly so as not to upset her head any further. She was grateful that no one was putting on a hard sell, and she could walk along and check things out without having to fend off overeager vendors.

Perhaps a vegetable plate for dinner, she thought, something healthful and not taxing to the system. She spied a middle-aged woman manning a vegetable stand and went over.

“Bonjour Madame,” said Molly.

“Bonjour Madame!” said the woman, beaming at her. She was rather round, wearing a grubby apron, and her eyes twinkled with good humor.

“I think for dinner I have some vegetables only this night,” said Molly, bravely.

“Only vegetables? I love them, I grow them, as you see. But Madame, they are best cooked in meat broth, or in a nice butter sauce alongside a steak. Have you had potatoes cooked in duck fat?”

“No, Madame.” Molly grinned, because she could understand what the woman said. Though she still struggled to speak, at least understanding was coming back—an amazing feeling, like having closets inside her brain opened up and finding treasure inside.

“Well, Molly, you cannot come to live in the Dordogne and not have potatoes cooked in duck fat at least once. Of course, once you try it, you will want it every week! Or every night!” The woman gestured to a basket of gnarled potatoes flecked with dirt.

Molly felt her face flushing. It was just weird how everyone seemed to know her name, that she was the woman who had just moved to Castillac, before she had a chance to tell them.

“I need…I wonder,” she began, and then gained steam as her determination grew, “Everyone knows my name and how I am come to Castillac to live. How is this?”

The woman laughed. “We talk,” she said, shrugging. And then she leaned over a basket of peppers and took Molly by the shoulders and kissed her on each cheek. “I am Manette,” she said, “Bienvenue to Castillac! I am only sorry you have come right when we are in the grip of a crime wave.”

“Crime wave?”

“Well, my next-door neighbor had his wheelbarrow stolen right out of his front yard. Who ever heard of something like that in Castillac? And also Robert tells me that someone went into his garden and took all of his artichokes, right at the peak of ripening. This sort of thing is unheard of here! And on top of all that, there is that girl missing from the art school.”

“I heard about that,” said Molly. “Are you worried there is…bad?”

The woman rubbed her hands on her apron. “Who can say,” she said. “People say oh, young girls run off all the time and it turns out they’ve stolen their best friend’s boyfriend or something like that. But me, I think this is nothing but stories from the movies. Wishful thinking, you see? In real life, I think when girls disappear, it’s not a joke with a happy ending. It’s usually because someone made them disappear, and they don’t come back.”

Molly’s eyes widened. It was one of those bang! moments when she realized her thinking had been totally wrong, and the woman was exactly right—when she heard about the missing girl, she had supplied any number of reasons to explain her absence, and it was absolutely true that the reasons came from movies and novels more than real life.

“I see,” she said. “And…I think you are right.”

The two women stood looking into each other’s eyes for a long moment, sharing sympathy for the missing girl, and also a flash of fear for themselves and the other women in the village, for if the art student had been taken by someone, and if she was still missing and maybe not coming back, and no one had been caught, then weren’t all the rest of them in some danger as well?

All of that was in the look the women exchanged. Then Manette brightened, gestured to the peppers and said, “They are at their peak right now, Molly. Just the right amount of rain, so the flavor is exquisite, if I do say so.”

“I’ll take three,” said Molly, thinking with relief of dinner instead of violence. “And can you show me a person for sausages?”

Manette smiled. “That will make a nice supper,” she said. “Go to Raoul over on the far side of the Place. Politically he is crazy as a loon, but he has great talent for raising pigs and making sausage. They are treated like princes, those pigs, which is funny because Raoul is so far to the left he makes Mitterand look like a royalist.”

Molly bought her sausages and headed home without making a detour to Pâtisserie Bujold. Her head was pounding and she felt like she needed to lie down. Manette’s words were disturbing. Had she really left the high crime of her native country only to find herself in the middle of a village crime wave, complete with abduction and murder? She really believed she had not.

But she knew even as she was putting some effort into hoping, that hope, in circumstances like this, did not count for much.

Benjamin Dufort left the tiny office on a backstreet of the herbalist he frequented, a new blue glass bottle of a stress-relieving tincture in his pocket. He made his way through the market, chatting with old friends and neighbors, always with an ear out for the thing out of place, the chance bit of information that would help him with his new case. So far, not a single bit had crossed his path, or at least, he had not recognized it as such. It was always possible that he had come across it but did not grasp what it was, no matter how attentive he was trying to be.

He was headed to L’Institut Degas again, hoping to catch one of Amy’s teachers for an informal interview. A chat, nothing more, just for background—that’s what he would say to Professor Gallimard, who was not on the list of suspects, which unfortunately at this juncture, was entirely blank. By all accounts he was a serious man who was entirely wrapped up in his art and his teaching, and Dufort had not heard a single word to suggest there was anything untoward in his relationship with Amy Bennett. A serious, dedicated student and a serious, talented teacher—that can make quite a profitable pairing, thought Dufort, and he hoped that Gallimard was going to have something helpful to say, though he did not try to guess what it might be.

In the meantime, Dufort enjoyed the beautiful Saturday morning. The weather was absolute perfection, clear and sunny but not hot, with occasional cumulus clouds puffing by with a light breeze. He smelled a strong scent of lavender and saw that he was passing a vendor from Provence who had sacks of the flowers open, with small signs stuck in each sack giving the price. Farther along he saw Rémy, an organic farmer, who had a mountain of beautiful tomatoes for sale. They kissed cheeks, one peck to each side, friends since childhood.

“Mon Dieu, Rémy! How many varieties are you growing now?”

“Bonjour Benjamin! I’ve lost count. They are all heirloom, bien sûr, you should see my seed saving files! It’s complicated keeping track of it all and takes up a lot of time, but when I come to market with a haul like this, it’s worth it. Come on, even a crusty old bachelor like yourself needs some tomatoes on your kitchen counter—look, try one.” Rémy took a serrated knife and sliced through a round yellow tomato with green stripes, then held out a slice.

Dufort shook his head but took the slice and ate it. Quickly he nodded and said, “All right, I won’t argue! Give me a few kilos, something I can finish up in a few day’s time.”

Rémy smiled and started putting tomatoes on his scale. Dufort turned and surveyed the market, watching.

“So what’s the story with the missing girl?” asked Rémy.

“Nothing’s secret here, is it?”

“Of course not. Everyone’s talking about it, got their pet theories, you know how it is.”

Dufort absently reached for another slice of the yellow tomato and ate it. “I have nothing to tell you. Not holding anything back for official reasons—I’m saying I have nothing. No idea where she is, whether she’s been abducted or went somewhere on her own by choice. Nothing.”

Rémy put his hands on his hips and looked at his old friend. He wished Benjamin had something in his life besides work, but somehow now, in his mid-thirties, that is what Benjamin had. Work, and working out. Rémy shook his head.

“And I have to ask…” Rémy lowered his voice and leaned close to his friend, “…do you think there is any connection…with the others?”

Dufort’s face looked stony. “I don’t know,” he said simply. The men made eye contact then, all their emotion in the looks they gave each other.

“So, good to see you as always,” said Dufort, feeling his anxiety ramp up. “I should be off, got much to do as you might guess.”

Rémy nodded. “Here,” he said, holding out the bag of tomatoes. “But be gentle with them, they don’t like being knocked about.”

Dufort dug in his pocket for some money but Rémy waved him off. “Just take them,” he said. “And invite me over for an apéro someday, huh?” He grinned and looked behind Dufort at a woman waiting her turn.

Dufort moved out of the way and walked out of the Place, down the road that led to L’Institut. He was thinking about questions he could ask Gallimard, wondering what unexpected route he could take with the conversation that might produce something helpful, and on the outskirts of his thoughts was Valérie Boutillier and the tiny handful of details he had gathered on her case. She too had no apparent reason for disappearing—in fact, she had been celebrating her acceptance to a prestigious university program the night before she went missing.

As he walked, he took a tomato out of the paper bag and bit into it absently, but the flavor was so intense he stopped in his tracks, giving it his full attention, making sure not to drip juice all over his shirt, amused at how horrified his mother would be to see him eating by the side of the road like a barbarian.