Another thud. I heard footsteps, as if one of them was walking away.
“I can manage on my own, Enzo. I don’t need your money,” I heard from a distance, “I have plenty already.”
There were a few seconds of silence, and I wondered if the siblings had left. Enzo muttered a frustrated “damn it,” and I heard his footsteps fading down the hallway, heading in the opposite direction from where Eloïse had gone moments earlier. A door slammed shut, followed by an eerie silence.
What the hell was that? Why did Enzo think his sister needed money? The inheritance she mentioned… Of course! The investigation into her mother’s murder was still open, so she hadn’t been able to receive it yet! My boss must have known about this. There was a chance Bastian did, too. And if anyone wanted to see the investigation wrapped up, even more than Saidi’s employees, it had to be Eloïse. Catching her mother’s killer equalled getting the inheritance.
Maybe I had underestimated her. It seemed Bastian wasn’t the only one trying to take advantage of the situation.
I remained pressed against the door, making every effort to stay as silent as possible, until I was certain no one else was in the hallway. I needed to be sure that no one would see me emerge from… where was I? A chill ran from the top of my head to my toes.
I was in Laurent Dubois’s office.
If there had been any common sense left in me, I would have turned around and left. What if there were cameras? If I owned that mansion, every corner would be under surveillance. Maybe some bored security guard was watching me now, my eyes flicking around like a madwoman, searching for a red light that would reveal his presence.
But curiosity pushed me forward. I didn’t see any sign of a camera, and I had come too far to give up now. If I gave up, it wouldn’t be out of fear.
I had already taken the risk of flying to Bordeaux; I was knee-deep in this mess and covered in metaphorical mud. Laurent Dubois knew exactly what he was doing when he invited me to his home, and the consequences would be his to deal with.
I started with the desk. It seemed logical, right? If someone kept something important in an office, something recent that could be useful, it should be on their desk. There was nothing on the table that caught my eye. Laurent Dubois didn’t have a computer. I wasn’t surprised. He had the air of an old-fashioned man.
Next, I tried the drawers.
Empty, except for a collection of fountain pens and a collection of stamps with the Dubois family crest. I dug my nails into my palms and kept searching. There were a dozen bookshelves covering every inch of the walls, filled with old-looking books and statuettes of golfers with golden figures raising a club in the air. Among the bookshelves, almost camouflaged in the wood, was a door. I crossed the room and turned the handle, hoping it wouldn’t give way.
It opened with a click.
The room was much smaller than the office, almost like acloset, and smelled of mustiness and printer paper. There were no windows, so I felt along the wall for a light switch. When I turned on the light, I saw that I was in a sort of archive room. In front of me were two built-in cabinets with labels from A to Z.
Bingo.
I looked for the C and started flipping through files, searching for anything with the name Club Montari. Finding nothing, I looked in the M.
Montari appeared at the very end, a thick folder with papers sticking out, their edges worn with age. I removed the rubber band that held the folder together and began flipping through the pages, skimming. As I feared, it was a financial record of the Club, dating from 1978 to the present. I flipped to the last pages for the past year. It had been updated for the last time on June 1st, five months ago. There was no indication that money was missing or that half a million from the club’s funds had been withdrawn at any point. The other years had monthly records. Why had they stopped recording it? I closed the folder and put it back, frustrated. Why had they stopped updating the records just at that moment? Unless… the papers were somewhere else. And it was clear that this other place was not Laurent Dubois’s office.
I refused to let my small venture be in vain. Almost driven by anger, I flipped through the files until I found another that might be useful. My hands moved by instinct toward the E, and moments later, I had a folder in hand labelled Eloïse Hawtrey-Moore. The conversation I had just overheard between her and Enzo was still buzzing in my mind. The inheritance, the money…
But the folder contained nothing useful. It had medicaldocuments from years ago, university papers, invoices for an apartment… Nothing about her mother’s inheritance.
My fingers shook as they hovered near the file cabinet. Just before I closed the compartment for the E, my hands betrayed me, darting back to the end of the folder. I wanted to check one thing: if Enzo’s name appeared anywhere. Just when I thought it was foolish to look for it in the E, and not in the L for Laurent, I saw his name taped in clear tape on the edge of a thin folder: Enzo, Laurent Adrien Dubois.
I pulled it out, extracting a single file inside. It was two pages; the first, blank except for a phrase at the top, read that it was a police report. It was dated February 10th of that same year. My mind scrambled to remember the exact dates. Antonia, his mother, had died the following morning, the night between February 11th and 12th. Why would the police have needed Enzo’s cooperation before the investigation into Antonia’s murder had officially opened? My heart skipped a beat. What if they hadn’t sought his cooperation? What if this report documented some crime Enzo was involved in?
I turned the page and read as fast as I could; my eyes seemed to struggle to make sense of the words on the page, fearful of what I might find.
Enzo hadn’t committed any crime. As long as lying and deceiving me as if I were an idiot didn’t count as a crime.
Because Enzo had testified in favour of Julian Garros. My client. The person everyone knew I was defending. And he had done it months before going out with me.
Excerpt from Enzo Woods’s testimony
Taken on February 11
EW: Of course, we are friends… but I’ve said it before. I don’t know anything. Just because Julian and I are friends doesn’t mean he tells me about every aspect of his life in detail, okay?
AM: He’s never talked to you about his work?
EW: No. No!
