TWENTY
A note on the kitchen table greeted Gamache when he arrived back at Emilie’s home.
Drinks at the bistro. Join us.
Even Henri was gone. Saturday night. Date night.
Gamache showered, changed into corduroys and a turtleneck, then walked over to join them. Thérèse stood as he entered and waved him over.
She was sitting with Jér?me, Myrna, Clara, and Gabri. Henri had been dozing by the fire, but sat up, tail wagging. Olivier brought over a licorice pipe.
“If any man looked like he could use a good pipe,” said Olivier.
“Merci, patron.” Gamache dropped onto the sofa with a groan and raised the candy to his companions. “à votre santé.”
“You look like you had a long day,” said Clara.
“A good day, I think,” said the Chief. Then he turned to Jér?me. “You too?”
Dr. Brunel nodded. “It’s restful here.”
But he didn’t look very rested.
“Scotch?” Olivier offered, but Gamache shook his head, not really sure what he felt like. Then he noticed a boy and girl with bowls of hot chocolate.
“I’d love one of those, patron,” said the Chief, and Olivier smiled and left.
“What news from the city?” Myrna asked. “Any progress on Constance’s murder?”
“Some,” said Gamache. “I have to say that in most investigations progress isn’t exactly linear.”
“True,” said Superintendent Brunel. And she told some humorous stories about art thefts and forgeries and confused identities, while Gamache sat back, half listening. Grateful that the Superintendent had leapt in, deflecting the conversation. So he needn’t admit that he’d spent most of the day on something else.
His hot chocolate arrived and he raised it to his lips, and noticed that Myrna was watching him. Not examining, but simply looking at him, with interest.
She took a handful of mixed nuts.
“Ah, here’s Gilles,” said Clara, getting up and waving a large, red-bearded man over. He was in his late forties and dressed casually. “I’ve invited him and Odile for dinner,” she said to the Chief Inspector. “You’re coming too.”
“Merci,” he said, shoving himself off the sofa to greet the newcomer.
“Been a while,” said Gilles, shaking Gamache’s hand, then taking a seat. “I was sorry to hear about the Quint.”
Gamache noticed that it wasn’t even necessary to say Ouellet Quints. The five girls had lost their privacy, their parents, and their names. They were just the Quints.
“We’re trying to keep that quiet for now,” said the Chief.
“Well, Odile’s writing a poem about them,” Gilles confided. “She’s hoping to get it into the Hog Breeder’s Gazette.”
“I think that’ll be all right,” said Gamache, and wondered if that was further up the food chain from her previous publishers. Her anthology, he knew, had been published, almost without edits, by the Root Vegetable Board of Québec.
“She’s calling it ‘Five Peas in a Gilded Pod,’” said Gilles.
Gamache was grateful Ruth wasn’t there. “She knows her market. Where is Odile, by the way?”
“At the shop. She’ll try to make it later.”
Gilles made exquisite furniture from fallen trees and Odile sold it from the front of their shop. And wrote poetry that, Gamache had to admit, was barely fit for human consumption, despite the opinion of the Root Vegetable Board.
“Now”—Gilles whacked a huge hand onto Gamache’s knee—“I hear you want me to install a satellite dish? You know they don’t work here, right?”
The Chief stared at him, then over at the Brunels, who were also slightly perplexed.
“You asked me to get in touch with the guy who puts up satellite dishes in the area,” said Clara. “That’s Gilles.”
“Since when?” asked Gamache.
“Since the recession,” said the large, burly man. “The market for handmade furniture tanked, but the market for five hundred television channels has skyrocketed. So I make extra bucks putting up the dishes. It helps that I have a head for heights.”
“To put it mildly,” said Gamache. He turned to Thérèse and Jér?me. “He used to be a lumberjack.”
“Long time ago,” said Gilles, looking into his drink.
“I have to put the casserole in the oven.” Clara rose to her feet.
Gamache got up and they all followed.
“Maybe we can continue this discussion over at Clara’s,” said the Chief, and Gilles rocked himself out of the sofa. “Where it’s a little more private.”
“So,” said Gilles as they walked the short distance to Clara’s home, their feet crunching on the snow. “Where’s your little buddy?”
A few kids were skating on the frozen pond. Gabri scooped up some snow, made it into a ball and tossed it for Henri, who sailed over the snow bank after it.
“Gilligan?” asked Gamache, keeping his voice light. In the darkness he heard Gilles guffaw.
“That’s right, Skipper,” said Gilles.
“He’s on another assignment.”
“So he finally made it off the island,” said Gilles, and Gamache could hear the smile in his deep voice. But the words came as a bit of a shock.
Had he inadvertently made the famed homicide department of the S?reté an island? Far from saving the careers of promising agents, had he in fact imprisoned them, kept them from the mainland of their peers?
The kids on the pond saw Gabri’s snowball and stopped to make some of their own, throwing them at Gabri, who ducked but too late. Snowballs rained down on all of them and Henri was almost hysterical with excitement.
“You gol’darned kids,” said Gabri. “Dagnabbit.” He shook his fist at them in such a parody of anger that the kids almost peed themselves with laughter.