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Gabri looked at his guest. Young, under thirty, with a close-trimmed beard and a slender, enervated body. Gaston Comeau was standing in the living room staring out of the large mullioned window to the village green and the shops and homes that surrounded it. And the three immense pines that seemed to stand sentinel and that gave the village its name.

Comeau held his hands loosely behind his back in a manner that struck Gabri as familiar.

“Should we be worried? Is he in danger? More to the point, are we?” He looked over the laptop screen at Jean-Guy. “Should I call Ruth?”

“Put her on the porch?” Jean-Guy asked. “In the rocking chair.”

“With her shotgun across her knees.”

“And bottle of bathtub gin by her feet.”

“By her cloven hooves,” Gabri corrected. “And the spittoon. Remember what happened last time when we forgot it. Took us a week to clean up the chewing tobacco.”

“Tobacky,” said Jean-Guy.

Despite their smiles, Gabri was only partly kidding.

If Jean-Guy had brought this young man to Three Pines, there could be only one reason. It was to hide him. Protect him.

From what? From whom? Not the tooth fairy, Gabri was pretty sure.

“I’ll stay here with him,” said Jean-Guy.

“That bad?”

Gabri knew, as did everyone else, that Jean-Guy and his wife, Annie, always stayed next door, in the Gamaches’ home. Gabri and Olivier, sitting on their porch with an after-dinner drink, would often see Annie and Jean-Guy on the wide veranda of the home next door. The married couple would be holding hands and rocking back and forth, back and forth, on the double swing.

This was their quiet time, while Armand and Reine-Marie bathed the grandchildren and read them a bedtime story.

Once Honoré and Idola were asleep, the grandparents would join their daughter and son-in-law, collapsing into rocking chairs with their mugs of tea. They’d chat over the day, their voices a soft murmur that drifted across to the B&B.

Mostly, though, by that time in the evening, they all sat quietly. Rocking back and forth. Back and forth.

To love and be silent, Reine-Marie once quoted to Gabri. Who understood.

For Jean-Guy to forgo his own bed and instead stay in the B&B with a man he clearly despised meant this visit and visitor should not be taken lightly.

“Does this have something to do with the body in Lost Nation?” Gabri asked.

“Yes.” No use hiding the fact. “He was the one who called the Chief.”

“Using Clara’s phone?”

“Well, one registered to her, oui.”

“And told Armand about the body? Shit.”

He again looked through to the living room and the man still staring out at the village.

And Gabri smiled. He knew why those hands clasped behind his guest’s back was familiar. It was how Armand stood, when contemplating.

“How did he know about the body?” Gabri asked, still staring at Monsieur Doesn’t Matter. Then he dropped his voice. “Did he kill the man?”

“If he did, I doubt he’d have called the Chief.”

“Good point. Still, I think we’ll increase security.”

“You don’t mean—?”