Page 196 of A Better Man

“She might’ve changed her mind,” said Isabelle. “Tracey also said she told him she was going to ‘the’ father, not ‘her’ father.”

“But how would the lover know she’d be there?” asked Jean-Guy. “Vivienne only called those two numbers. And one of them was a wrong number.”

“It might’ve been prearranged,” said Isabelle. “Every Saturday night. Tracey would either be in the local bar or passed out drunk at home. They’d meet on the bridge. Maybe that’s why she told her father not to meet her. Her plan was to talk to her lover, tell him about the baby, and with luck he’d take her away. She’d call her father later and change the plans.”

“So she goes there,” said Jean-Guy, “meets her lover at their normal place, takes the bag from her car to put in his, and he kills her. Why?”

“The baby,” said Isabelle. “Vivienne might’ve really believed it was his. He didn’t want the complication in his life, the burden. He might’ve pushed her away, too hard, and she fell through the railing.”

It fit. Some loose ends still. Like Fred. But the rest fit.

“Shouldn’t Cloutier and Cameron be here by now?” asked Beauvoir, looking at the clock. “You called them more than an hour ago. Cameron for sure should’ve arrived.”

“I didn’t call them,” said Gamache.

“Why not?”

Gamache paused to corral his thoughts. This was delicate but needed to be said.

“We talked about jealousy. Agent Cloutier said it turned Vivienne’s mother against her own daughter. That bond between Homer and Vivienne was so strong, no one else could get in. The only way to break it was to get rid of Vivienne.”

“But Mom’s dead,” said Jean-Guy. “She didn’t kill her daughter out of jealousy.”

“Non, I don’t mean her. I mean someone else who wanted a relationship with Homer. But who might’ve also run up against that unbreakable bond. Someone who might also need to get rid of Vivienne.”

“Lysette Cloutier?” asked Isabelle. “You think she killed Vivienne?”

Clearly, Isabelle did not.

“I don’t know,” said Gamache. “I doubt it, but since we’re looking at other possibilities, that one comes to mind. How many murders have we investigated where a relationship was at the center? Where jealousy had turned to hatred. To murder.”

“We need to speak with her,” said Jean-Guy.

“Let me do it,” said Isabelle.

“There’s something else.” Gamache handed Jean-Guy his notebook.

As Jean-Guy read, his eyes opened and his brows shot up. Then he handed it over to Isabelle, who looked at it, then over to Gamache.

They knew then why Chief Inspector Gamache had seemed distracted. And why he’d been so insistent they consider other options.

“I think we should call them now,” said Jean-Guy. “Don’t you?”

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

While they waited for the two Sûreté agents to arrive, Lacoste went back over the forensic evidence. Beauvoir read the reports on Vivienne’s finances.

And Gamache went for a walk. To think.

He strolled once around the village green. His hands clasped behind his back, he watched Henri and Gracie playing in the mud.

Reine-Marie might not thank him for this, he thought.

“Come along,” he called to them, and together they walked up the road out of town. Stopping on the crest of the hill, he turned to admire the view, which stretched past Québec and well into the Green Mountains of Vermont.

The snow was heading off somewhere else but had left a centimeter behind. It was, he knew, almost certainly the last snowfall. The end of a season. And the beginning of another.

He brushed off the bench that he and Reine-Marie had placed there for all to rest on.