want to go say hello.”
A young woman was just getting out of the car.
“Why?” asked Clara, not at all liking the satisfied expression on the old woman’s face.
“All that most maddens and torments,” said Ruth. “All that stirs up the lees of things. Moby-Dick.”
“Have you stirred up the lees of things?” Myrna asked.
Ruth was so pleased with herself she was almost exploding with pleasure. It was not an attractive sight.
As they watched, the stranger knocked on Clara’s door and, getting no answer, turned to look around.
And Clara recognized her. “Oh, God, Ruth. What’ve you done?”
“Your white whale,” said Ruth, triumphant. “Thar she blows.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CarlTracey: I’ve put up more pictures of Carl’s work for you to see.
NouveauGalerie: Who’s this? I thought I was communicating with Tracey.
CarlTracey: Pauline Vachon. Carl’s partner.
NouveauGalerie: Business or life partner?
CarlTracey: Does it matter?
CarlTracey: Hello?
CarlTracey: Hello?
CarlTracey: Both.
Gamache sat on the cot across from Homer Godin while Lysette Cloutier stood by the open door to the holding cell.
Homer looked sick. Gaunt. His eyes were bloodshot and puffy, his face blotched. Bright red in places, white, almost green, in others.
“We’ve come to release you,” said Gamache. “If you promise not to do anything to Carl Tracey.”
“Or yourself,” said Cloutier.
Homer continued to stare at his large hands, hanging limp between his knees.
When he finally spoke, his voice was remote. “I can’t promise.”
“Then I can’t release you,” said Gamache. He leaned forward and dropped his voice even further, so that Homer had to also lean forward. Had to make some small effort.
Which he did.
“You can do this,” Armand said softly.
“There’s only one thing I want to do.”
That sat between them. The silence stretching on. Until Homer finally broke it himself, lifting his eyes to Armand’s.
“How’m I gonna go on?”
Armand placed his hand on Homer’s. “You’ll come stay with us. We’ll keep you safe.”
“Really?”
And for a moment, a split second, Armand saw a glimmer amid the gloom. And then it was gone.
“I can’t come to your house.”
“Why not?”
The two men were quiet for a moment before Homer spoke again.
“You’ve been kind. Your wife—” Homer lifted his hand to his own face. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to…”
“I know. She knows. Are you worried about doing it again?”
Homer shook his head. “No. Never. But if I stay with you, I’ll hurt you in other ways. When I kill Tracey, they’ll blame you.”
* * *
“And what’s this?”
Dominica Oddly went to lift the corner of the canvas, but Clara stopped her.
“Something I’m working on.”
“A portrait?”
“Sort of.”
Clara’s uninvited guest raised her brows in a way that would be comical, cartoonish, if it weren’t so terrifying.
Ruth Zardo had somehow managed to convince the art critic for the online journal Odd to come from Brooklyn to Québec. To come into the countryside, to Three Pines. To come into Clara’s home. Where Clara, against every instinct, had invited her into her studio.
Seemed courtesy beat good sense. Almost to death.
“Come,” Dominica Oddly said after an all-too-cursory glance around.
She indicated the shabby sofa against the wall of Clara’s studio. They sat side by side, the young woman turning her lithe body to Clara.
She was dressed in sort of harem pants, with combat boots and a T-shirt that read YES, HE’S A RACIST.
Clara doubted she’d passed thirty. Her hair was in long dreadlocks. Her face was unlined and unblemished. No piercings and, from what Clara could see, no tattoos. She didn’t need those to prove she was cool. She just was. So cool that Clara felt goose bumps rise on her forearms.
To say Dominica Oddly was a rainmaker was to vastly underestimate her power. Clara knew that the woman sitting next to her didn’t just make rain, she made the whole goddamned environment. She could cause the sun to shine on your career. Or a tsunami to sweep your life’s work away.
She had an eye for the avant-garde, an ear for undercurrents, and, perhaps above all else, a savant’s gift for social media.
Oddly had understood early that those platforms were the new “high ground.” The place from which attacks could be launched. Territory could be captured. Where hearts were influenced and opinions made.
Her online journal, Odd, had millions of subscribers while still managing to position itself as underground, even subversive. Dominica Oddly was like some hipster oligarch.
Clara subscribed to Odd, and every morning over coffee she read Dominica’s daily column.
Oddly’s pithy, articulate, often cruel, always elegant prose both amused and appalled Clara, as the critic stripped away the artifice in the art world. Ruthlessly.
All truth with malice in it.
But, despite Clara’s rise, Dominica