“Our theory was that Olivier killed him because the horse trail was getting close to the cabin. The Hermit and his treasure were about to be found.”
Clara nodded. “Olivier didn’t want anyone else discovering and maybe stealing the treasure, so he killed the Hermit. It was a spur of the moment thing, not planned. He picked up a menorah and hit him.”
She’d heard it all at the trial and read it again last night.
She tried to imagine her friend doing that, and while her mind spun away from the image the truth was she could believe it. She didn’t think Olivier would ever plan to kill someone, but she could see him doing it in a fit of rage and greed.
Olivier had then taken the menorah. Picked the bloody thing up from beside the dead man. He said he’d taken it because his fingerprints were all over it. He was afraid. But he also admitted the menorah was priceless. Greed and fear combined to drive him into a monumentally foolish act. An act of greed, not guilt.
Neither the judge nor the jury had believed him. But now Beauvoir had to at least consider the possibility Olivier had been stupid, but truthful.
“What changed?” Beauvoir mused. “Someone else must have found the Hermit.”
“Someone who might’ve been looking for years, someone the Hermit stole from.”
“But how’d he find him?”
“He either followed Olivier or followed the new horse trail,” said Clara.
“That leads us to one of the Parras,” said Beauvoir. “Either Roar or Havoc.”
“Old Mundin could have done it. He’s a carpenter and a carver, after all. He could have followed Olivier one night after picking up the broken furniture, and he could have carved that word, Woo, into the wood.”
“But,” said Beauvoir, “Old Mundin’s a professional woodworker. I’ve seen his stuff. Woo was carved by an amateur, someone hacking away.”
Clara thought. “Maybe it was someone new to the community, maybe that’s what changed. The killer recently moved into Three Pines.”
“The Gilberts,” said Beauvoir. “They’re the only new people.”
Marc and Dominique Gilbert, Marc’s mother Carole and his estranged father, Vincent. Saint Asshole, the famous doctor who now, curiously, lived in the Hermit’s cabin. Beauvoir no longer wanted the murderer to be Dr. Vincent Gilbert but deep down he worried it might be.
“I think we need to talk to the suspects again,” said Beauvoir. “I thought I might drop by the Mundins’ place this afternoon, pretend I want to buy some furniture.”
“Great, and I’ll try to talk to some of the others.” She hesitated. “There is another way the murderer could have found the Hermit.”
“Yes?”
“Maybe he recognized the treasures when Olivier went to sell them. It says here,” she tapped the manila file folder, “that Olivier sold a lot of the stuff on eBay. Well people all over the world could have seen it, including eastern Europe. Suppose someone recognized one of the items and tracked Olivier down.”
“And followed him to the Hermit,” said Beauvoir. “I’ll look into it.”
He was beginning to appreciate why the Chief Inspector insinuated himself into the communities they investigated. It had long perplexed Beauvoir and privately he didn’t approve. It blurred the lines between investigator and investigated.
But he now wondered if that was such a bad thing.
As he stepped out of the small home the sun glared off the snow, blinding him. Beauvoir put his dark glasses on.
Ray-Ban. Old School. He liked them, made him look cool on cold days.
Getting in his car he let it warm up, feeling the heated seats grow warm under him. On a bitterly cold winter day it was almost as good as sex. Then he put the car in gear and headed up the hill and out of town.
Five minutes later he arrived at the old farm. The Sûreté team had last been there in late summer, when everything had been in bloom. Beyond bloom. It was going to seed, the leaves were turning color and the wasps fed drunkenly on over-ripe fruit.
But now it was all dead or dormant and the farm, once teeming with life, looked deserted.
But as he drove slowly up to the house the door opened and standing there was The Wife, holding little Charlie Mundin’s hand.
As he got out of the car she waved and he noticed Old Mundin approaching the open door, wiping his large, expressive hands on a towel.
“Welcome,” The Wife smiled, kissing him on both cheeks. He wasn’t often greeted like that in a case, then he remembered, he wasn’t on a case.