A Better Man (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #15) - Louise Penny Page 0,92

on it that she said anything,” Beauvoir pointed out. “I think that’s bullshit. Her father said she was desperate to get out as soon as she could, that day. Why would she provoke Tracey by saying anything?”

“What did Pauline Vachon say about the messages on the private Instagram?” Gamache asked, speaking for the first time in the meeting. “How did she explain them?”

“Said they were about clay he was buying.”

Gamache frowned. “Smart. She’s quick on her feet.”

“She is that,” agreed Lacoste. “This might not be as easy as we’d hoped.”

“But she must know no one in their right mind would believe that,” said Beauvoir. “Not after what happened.”

“Do you get the impression she cares for Tracey?” Gamache asked.

“Not especially,” said Lacoste. “I think she has sex with him for the same reason she has sex with so many other men. It’s a form of self-loathing.”

“What role do you think she has in all this?” Gamache asked.

“I don’t know, but I can tell you she’s involved. And she knows we know.”

“What do you think would happen if you told her the baby was Tracey’s?” Beauvoir asked.

Lacoste considered that.

“It’d be a surprise. A shock. Not because she loves Tracey, but it would prove to her that he lied about that. He can’t be trusted.”

“Exactly,” said Beauvoir, sitting forward. “She’s smart. She must realize that he’d blame the killing on her in a second if he was cornered.”

“So we need to press that home,” said Lacoste. “She must be thinking about it even now. This information about the fetus might be just that last shove we need.”

“Give it another go, Isabelle,” said Beauvoir. “Try to turn her. We have enough now to arrest him, but her testimony would secure a conviction.”

Lacoste gave one curt nod. “Leave it to me.”

“I’ll apply for an arrest warrant for Tracey, but we’ll wait to hear from you. Even if you can’t turn her, we’ll bring him in. He’ll crack, even if she won’t.”

“She will,” said Lacoste. “I’ll make sure of it.”

* * *

Clara Morrow dropped the printout onto the bistro table and sat down across from Dominica Oddly.

“Do you really think this?”

“I do.”

“You say here”—she tapped the paper—“that I was once promising. Exceptional, even. But then I got lazy.”

“Yes.”

“But it’s not true.”

“No?” asked Oddly. “Are you sure?”

The critic had left Clara in her studio to read in private the review that had just gone public. She’d strolled across the village green, and, brushing slush off the bench, she sat, looking at the three pine trees that clearly gave the place its name. It seemed a little “on the nose” for Oddly. Too obvious. Three pines in Three Pines.

She’d have preferred if there were two pines. It would make the place more interesting. Give it a story. What happened to that third tree? Granted, not much of a story, but better than none.

As it was, this hidden little hamlet was pretty but banal. She could almost see the stone and brick and clapboard homes, the church on the hill and the forest behind, turning into a watercolor before her eyes. Something not quite real. Not quite of this world. Certainly not of the gritty, noisy, aggressive world she’d just left.

This was like a pretty painting by some elderly, marginally gifted artist.

Nice. Sweet. Predictable. Safe.

Oddly smiled as she thought of the residents peering through their curtains at the wild black woman in dreadlocks and combat boots sitting in the middle of their peaceful village. She must, she thought, scare them to death.

She’d spotted the bistro when she’d arrived, and now she made for it. Her boots, veterans of sidewalk garbage and dog shit, squelched on grass and mud.

She opened the door and was prepared to enter a space decorated with Grand-mère in mind. All lace and gingham. Stuffed with old snowshoes and spinning wheels and dusty twig baskets filled with dried flowers hanging from the rafters. Furnished with cheap imitation pine tables and uncomfortable chairs.

If Oddly knew one thing about Québec, it was that it was a cheap imitation of the real thing. France.

Instead what she found was a place both contemporary and somehow ageless. It seemed to straddle the centuries. Comfortable armchairs upholstered in fresh linens sat around an assortment of rugged old tables. Dark oak. Maple. Pine. Tables made from the forests that surrounded the village. They were scratched and dented and worn by a century or more of meals. Of drinks. Of companionship. And hardship.

The place settings, displayed in an old Welsh dresser, were white china