Chapter 9
Shona Dorion looked around the dingy room in the dingy office building, in the dingiest quartier of Montréal.
Real estate agents had rebranded it Vieux-Montréal, the more honest among them adding “adjacent,” in an effort to align the neighborhood with the charm of the cobblestoned Old Montréal next door.
And increase property values. But with a view of a cement plant on the shores of the St. Lawrence River on one side and railway tracks on the other, it was a hopeless cause.
Shona liked hopeless causes. As, clearly, did the rest of the dingy people in the room.
Now that the end-of-day briefing was over, and next-day assignments were handed out, Shona bent over her phone. Its face was cracked, but it still worked. Most of the time. She tapped out a message.
I have something. Meet me tomorrow for breakfast. The Ritz.
She hit send and waited.
“Shona, can you join me please?” The boss was hanging half out of her office.
“Oui, d’accord.” She slipped her phone into her pocket.
“I read your story on our work.”
Shona had, unusually, given it to the head of the organization to read over before posting it on her site. She was anxious to get on the woman’s good side. This sort of obsequious behavior went against the grain, unless there was a higher purpose.
Action Québec Bleu was formed to study and promote water security. Though that was not the higher purpose Shona Dorion had in mind.
“It’s wonderful, very powerful. Though there is an error in the second paragraph. Our funding was dropped by the provincial government, not the federal. We never did get money from the feds.”
“Damn, I’m sorry. A stupid mistake. I knew that. Merci. I’ll make the change, Margaux.”
Back at her desk she checked the reply.
8 a.m. The Ritz.
Outside the filthy windows she could see the streetlights had come on. Another day was ending.
Armand sat on the bench on the village green and stared at the message he’d just received and replied to.
The Ritz.
That was amusing, but what was making him smile was Shona’s profile shot. Most people had their face, or that of their child, or pet, or a pretty scene. But not this young journalist. Hers was a raised middle finger.
“You’re in my place.”
Ruth began to sit, and had Armand not moved, she and Rosa would have ended up on his lap.
Ruth pulled her moth-eaten sweater tight around her, while Rosa was magnificent in her cashmere coat, probably meant for spoiled cats or dogs. Shockingly few clothes were designed for ducks. Though ducks did end up in quite a few garments.
“I just heard that Honoré and Idola are heading back to the city after dinner. What did you do to drive them away?”
Though she was absolutely right, he had no intention of telling her about the guests coming for Sunday lunch, and the need for Annie and the children not to be there.
He’d told Reine-Marie about their guests, of course. She already knew about Evelyn Tardiff, but Evelyn was a friend. The man convicted of plotting mass murder was not.
“Are you mad?” had been her reply. “Marcus Lauzon?” she repeated, just to make sure she’d heard right. When he braced and nodded, she added, “I’ll set an extra place in case you run into Satan and invite him too.”
Though he’d pretty much already done that.
Armand had then gone over to Monsieur Béliveau’s General Store to pick up the chicken and vegetables they always ordered for Sunday lunch. On the way back he paused to sit on the bench and ponder. A few minutes later he was joined by the mad poet and her equally mad, though more stylish, duck.
Instead of answering her question about what he’d done to drive away his daughter and grandchildren, he stared at Ruth. For so long she grew uncomfortable.
“Are you having a stroke? For God’s sake, don’t fall on me.”
Still, she looked concerned, so intense were his eyes, so unyielding his stare.
“Armand?”
The phrase “drive away” had reminded him of the inconvenient fact that he was barred from driving, even short distances, until his hearing returned.
He opened his mouth, but before committing himself, he looked once more at his phone, and the text that had come in from Shona Dorion.
Not the words, but the image. The raised finger. Then he committed himself.
“I need to get into Montréal tomorrow morning, for a breakfast meeting.”
“So?”
“Will you drive me?”
Now it was her turn to stare. “Are you mad?”
It was not the first time that day he’d been asked that question. Or even the third. And perhaps not the last. And, as with the other times, it was a legitimate question. So legitimate, Armand wondered if perhaps he had lost his mind.
Maybe the cicadas had finally drilled so deep into his brain his marbles had rolled out.
“Mad?” He looked into her wizened face. “Maybe.”
“Then yes, absolutely. Sane people bore me. You normally bore me, but I find you suddenly interesting.”
For some reason, this pleased Armand.
The light that was draining from the sky seemed to be absorbed into the homes and businesses around the village green. Amber light appeared in windows, spilling onto lawns and gardens. It was twilight. A near-magical time in Three Pines, the transition from day to night. As the torch was passed.
Myrna waved to them as she made her way over to Clara’s. She was carrying a book and a bottle.
The bistro was lit up and filling up.
Ruth and Rosa sat on this bench every day, at dawn and dusk, as though the very day depended on them seeing it safely in and out.
“What time do you need to be there?”
“Eight o’clock.” He paused, waiting for the protest, though he knew that Ruth, and therefore Rosa, rose early. With the light. But Ruth just waited, while Rosa nodded. Though ducks often did.
“Breakfast is at the Ritz,” he added. “Please, join us.”
That was a vital part of his half-baked plan.
“Too fucking right I will. Can Rosa come?”
He looked at the soignée duck. Why not. “Of course.”
He got up, and they followed him into the home, into the kitchen. Into the liquor cabinet.
Armand watched Ruth pour a vat of “scotch” from a bottle they kept specially for her. One that contained only tea. Which he suspected she knew.
Getting her to drive was a good idea, he repeated as he poured himself a stiff drink. This was the right decision. This was not crazy at all.
The elderly poet joining their breakfast would serve many purposes, including convincing anyone watching that this could not possibly be a serious meeting. Not with a duck in attendance.
It was social. Nothing more. And barely that …
Yes, he thought as he put an ice cube into his drink, it was the right decision.
Ruth tipped her glass, which they both knew was a vase, toward him and winked. Narrowing his eyes, Armand walked over to the sideboard and sniffed the bottle he and Reine-Marie had rigged. Then he gave a single snort of laughter.
There was indeed scotch in it. Ruth had switched it back.
He sniffed his drink. It was tea.
She caught his eye and raised her brows. She would have raised a finger, but she needed both hands to grip the vat.
Eight a.m. The Ritz. When he produced for the young journalist the older version of herself, he might even go up in Shona’s eyes.
God knew it was impossible to get lower.
“What else have you got in there, Ms. Poppins?” Isabelle asked.
After many years conducting investigations in the most remote parts of Québec, the senior S?reté officer considered herself mighty adept at camping. But now Isabelle realized she was a rank amateur next to the biologist.
“A lamppost, of course,” said Vivienne, smiling. “And a golden retriever. A flat-screen TV and this.” She pulled out a collapsible pot and opened it with the same flick and flare Fred Astaire had used to open countless top hats.
Isabelle heard a “ta-da,” though no one spoke. Then, looking closer, she gasped and thought maybe she had a small crush on Vivienne LaPierre, who was now holding up a grill in one hand and a cold pack with a large filet of marinating salmon in the other.
This beat her dehydrated beef stew, which, by her own admission, looked like something the golden retriever might throw up.
A few minutes later the two women were sitting by the campfire, drinking fine red wine and eating grilled Atlantic salmon and tiny baby potatoes.
And studying the map on her laptop, annotated by a murder victim.
“So what did Charles mean by these?” Isabelle asked.
She used her fork, speared with a potato dripping butter, to indicate the series of numbers and symbols the dead biologist had written on only this lake.
Vivienne shook her head. They’d both hoped that, once there, the sequence might make more sense. Some sense. But still they were baffled.
The fire was crackling and throwing nice heat, warming their fronts, though their backs, like the dark side of the moon, were chilled. Isabelle ran over to the tent and brought back their sleeping bags, handing one to Vivienne.
“Merci.”
Now wrapped up warmly, Isabelle poured them each another tumbler of wine while Vivienne placed another piece of driftwood on the fire and looked out across the still lake. Above them the sky was strewn with stars. Great swaths of them, their light millions of years old.
Both women were solemn now. Isabelle had never actually met Charles. Had only seen him across the crowded café when he’d had the rendezvous with Gamache at Open Da Night.
And she’d seen, a few minutes later, Armand’s torn and bloody jacket placed over the young man’s broken body as he lay in the middle of the road.
Vivienne knew even less about Charles Langlois.
Had never seen him, not even a photo. All she knew was what she’d been told.
He’d been a drug addict in recovery, a biologist, who’d stumbled onto a conspiracy and been murdered.
But over the course of the day, she’d begun to feel a closeness to him. He could have been one of her students.