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She’d tried, since that day, to make amends. Apologizing to Daniel. To Armand. Trying to apologize to Reine-Marie. But Daniel’s mother would not listen. Would never believe there was any genuine remorse. Or that Caron wouldn’t attack again, if need be.

So, no. Jeanne Caron was not invited to Sunday lunch. But Armand still needed to meet with her. And there was someone else he needed to contact, urgently.

“Have you told Moretti that you’re going to see Gamache?” Yvette Nichol asked, and got an angry glare from Chief Inspector Tardiff.

“Don’t tell me what to do.”

“Désolée, patronne. I’m not telling, just asking.”

“We both know it comes to the same thing,” Tardiff snapped. “I’m going home. You should too.”

Yvette Nichol knew she should, and she would. But she waited until the Chief Inspector had left, then fired off a message.

Joseph Moretti was enjoying a meal with his family in the same hole-in-the-wall diner he’d visited every Saturday since he could remember. His phone buzzed, and he read the flagged message.

Merci, he tapped out. Good to know.

Then he went back to his croque-monsieur, the thick sliced ham under melted Gruyère and béchamel, on the fresh croissant, while his daughter struggled with a large cannoli. Off to the side, the owner of the small restaurant in north end Montréal watched, wiping her moist palms on her dirty apron.

CHAPTER 7

Reine-Marie tacked the crisp new map of Vermont below Charles Langlois’s worn map.

Then they stepped back.

“What do you see?” Armand asked.

Reine-Marie was adept at reading maps, especially hand-drawn curiosities or those containing oddities. It stemmed from her time working in the archives of Québec. Old explorers’ and mariners’ maps and charts had been a large part of her job, and her interest.

Though these mass-produced maps were on the border of also becoming oddities. Still to be found in gas stations but fast disappearing, these particular maps had something else in common with their ancestors. The consequences of a misread could be disastrous.

“Charles’s dotted line would come out here. May I?” She held up the pencil she’d brought with her. He nodded and watched as she consulted the young biologist’s markings, then drew a line from Québec, across the frontier, into Vermont.

“It’s impossible to tell where it went from here,” she said, tapping the eraser head against her lips.

“And where he went,” said Armand. “I have a query in to see when and where Langlois crossed into Vermont and back into Canada. Of course he might have gone in illegally. Maybe by boat down here.”

Armand pointed to Lake Champlain, that huge expanse of water that spanned the US-Canada border and stretched from Venise-en-Québec to the city of Burlington, Vermont, and beyond.

“It would be easy enough, at night, to paddle across,” he said and got an amused look from her.

“Easy, monsieur? I dare you to try.”

He laughed. “Well, for a twenty-five-year-old, maybe.” He paused, contemplating the map. “Though the lake is heavily patrolled on both sides. It would be a risk. One I’m not sure he’d take.”

“Why not? If he was investigating something possibly criminal, wouldn’t he want to sneak across?”

“True, but if caught, he could end up in the hands of the very people he was trying to avoid.”

She nodded and went back to studying the map. The pencil was now in her mouth, being nibbled. How many bright yellow HB pencils had he found throughout their lives, throughout their homes, with teeth marks? Daniel did the same thing, though not with the same vigor and appetite as his mother.

“If we draw a line straight down, it heads off into the Green Mountains.” She looked at her husband. “What’s there?”

He frowned. “Well, there’s Jay Peak. We’ve skied there.”

“True. And the Appalachian Trail, non?”

“I’ve heard of the Green Mountain Boys,” said Armand. “It’s the nickname for the Air National Guard out of the Burlington airport. But Langlois’s line doesn’t go through the airport.”