Page 183

“But she needs to be told,” said Jean-Guy, watching the old poet swig scotch and talk with the critic, who seemed fascinated by her.

“Told what?”

“That the video she posted has hurt people. You. The families.” He paused. “Me. That she had no business doing that.”

“She did it out of kindness. She thought she was protecting me.”

“That doesn’t change anything. She should never have done it.”

“I agree. But it’s done now. Let it go, Jean-Guy.”

Still, as Jean-Guy passed Ruth, he whispered, “Dumb-ass.”

“Numbnuts,” she replied with a laugh. Clearly not understanding his message.

Armand was tired and wouldn’t normally have accepted Clara’s invitation. But he knew that Homer didn’t want to see him. Didn’t even want to know he was in the same house. And he’d promised the man time alone. This was one promise he could keep.

So they’d come here and left Homer and Lysette to have dinner by themselves.

Everyone at Clara’s had heard what had happened in court that day, though only Ruth had asked about it. If asking how they’d managed to make a clown-car disaster out of a sure thing was a sincere query.

Beauvoir seethed. Gamache remained quiet. Only Isabelle responded. She reached out and held the old woman’s veined hand and whispered, “Shut the fuck up.”

It delighted Ruth, who laughed. And, for once, did as she was told.

After dinner, while Armand and Reine-Marie cleared the table and Gabri made coffee, Jean-Guy took Dominica aside for a quiet word.

“Pottery?” Dominica asked when she and Beauvoir were far enough away from the others. She was clearly surprised this cop wanted to talk about ceramics of all things.

She launched into a discourse on the history of ceramic artworks, some of which survived beyond the peoples and cultures that made them. Some of which he even found interesting.

“What about in modern art?” asked Jean-Guy.

“What about it?”

“Can a person make a living from doing pottery stuff?”

She studied the man in front of her. Having grown up in the Bronx to an activist mother, Dominica found that she was wary, even privately afraid, of cops. She’d seen her brothers, her friends, her lovers harassed too often to see cops as anything other than threats.

She’d had very little respect for them and almost no contact with them socially. They lived on different continents and came from different tribes.

Gabri had told her about the murder of the young woman and what had happened in court that morning.

This officer had been involved. In charge. And now they were making small talk about pottery, over after-dinner drinks.

Though watching this cop, his intensity, Dominica Oddly began to suspect this was not actually small talk.

“Are you thinking of making a career change?” she asked, and was relieved to see him smile.

“Not to the art world. Way too dangerous.”

“Yes. I’ve heard the critics can be brutal.”

“It’s the artists who scare me.” Then his smile faded. “Ceramics,” he reminded her. “Pottery. Much of a market?”

“For art pottery? Not the kind we eat off of?”

“Oui.”