“And who would that be?” Gamache asked. It was unusual for him to interrupt this part of the process. He preferred to listen and absorb.
This showed he thought they just might be onto something.
“The broker doing the trades for him,” suggested Beauvoir. “I’m having him brought in for questioning.”
“And?”
“The obvious,” said Jean-Guy. “Bernice Ogilvy.”
“What did you make of her?” Gamache asked.
“She’s young, bright. Got there because of her family, of course, but she has the skills and temperament to keep the job. She’s smart. Ambitious. Adaptable.”
“Greedy?” asked Gamache.
Beauvoir thought about that. “Entitled, maybe. I think she’d do just about anything to protect what’s hers.”
“Would she steal from clients and blame her former mentor?” asked Gamache.
Jean-Guy Beauvoir found himself coloring slightly at the mention of betraying a former mentor. And he wondered, fleetingly, whether Gamache could possibly know about the meeting that morning. And the paper he’d signed.
“She understood very quickly how it could be done,” said Beauvoir. “Maybe too quickly. And she strikes me as the sort who thinks she’s smarter than those around her.”
“Probably … because she is,” said Lacoste. “Besides, who really believes they’re going to get caught? Madame Ogilvy knows the … business and knows how to get around any scrutiny.”
“Just set up fake accounts,” said Gamache. “It’s so simple. No one at Taylor and Ogilvy would see them. And the clients would have no idea. They’d continue to get what looked like real statements, with real transactions. They’d have dividends and profits deposited in their accounts. All would look perfectly normal.”
“Except she’d be putting the capital, their initial investment, into her own account,” said Beauvoir. “And paying out generous so-called dividends to keep clients from asking any questions.”
“Could they have been in it together?” Lacoste asked. “Ogilvy and Baumgartner?”
“Agent Cloutier suspects there’d have been two of them,” said Beauvoir. “And don’t forget, Baumgartner himself wasn’t exactly splashing money around. He lived in the same house. Drove a decent but sensible car. Why would he steal and not spend the money?”
“Retirement,” said Lacoste. “Squirreling it away in some offshore account. Then one day he disappears.”
As Gamache listened, a series of photos in Baumgartner’s home came to mind. Of Baumgartner and his children. Happy. Radiant, in fact. Was this the face of a man willing to turn his back and never see them again? Disappear to some Caribbean refuge? For what? A power boat and marble bathrooms?
“Désolé,” said Gamache. “I’ve taken you off course. Back to the arguments. You were making the case for Anthony Baumgartner’s finding out about the embezzlement and confronting whoever was doing it.”
“Right,” said Beauvoir, refocusing. “So he stumbles on what’s happening. Maybe one of the so-called clients calls him or he runs into them at a party, and they ask about their account. An account he knows nothing about. Baumgartner does some digging, finds the fake statements, and brings the evidence home. He pores over them, then arranges to meet the person he suspects was—”
“Why?” Lacoste interrupted.
“Why what?”
“Why not just go to his manager?”
“Maybe the manager’s the one who’s doing it?” said Beauvoir.
“Then why not go to the industry regulator?” asked Lacoste.
“Because he’s not sure,” said Beauvoir, feeling his way along more slowly now. “Or he is sure and doesn’t want to believe it. He wants to give this person a chance to explain or clear themselves. Or maybe he doesn’t realize he’s talking to the guilty party.”
Gamache shifted in his chair and tilted his head.
This was interesting.
“Maybe he asked to meet someone he thinks will be an ally,” said Beauvoir, gaining more confidence in this unexpected theory. “To show them the evidence and ask what they think.”
“And the person kills him?” asked Lacoste. “Bit of an … overreaction. Can’t the person just muddy the waters or send B- … Baumgartner off in the wrong direction? They must know that if they kill Baumgartner then the cops, aka us, will definitely be involved, and asking questions.”
“Why?” asked Beauvoir, turning the tables on her.
“Why ask questions? It’s kinda how we … solve murders, isn’t it?” asked Lacoste.
Armand Gamache was watching this. Two smart young investigators, hashing out the most vile of crimes. His investigators. His protégés. Now more than capable of running whole departments on their own.
He missed this. Not simply sitting around kitchen tables trying to solve a murder. But doing it with these two. With Jean-Guy and Isabelle. Going at it like siblings.
“I know you prefer to just arrest the first person you meet in an … investigation,” said Isabelle. “But the rest of us actually investigate.”
“Merci,” said Beauvoir, smiling thinly and recognizing the patronizing tone as a ruse, an attempt by Isabelle to get under his skin. It worked more often than he was willing to show.
“But I meant why would we ask about an embezzlement?”
“Because”—now she sounded patient in the extreme—“the investigation would uncover it.”
“But would it? I hope so, but it’s far from a given, especially if Baumgartner had nothing to do with it,” said Beauvoir. “Look, suppose Baumgartner was inadvertently meeting with the person who was actually responsible for the embezzlement—wouldn’t he take along his evidence? Even if he was meeting with someone he suspected, he’d take it along. As proof.”
“Right,” said Lacoste, her voice guarded. Trying to see where this was going. “So?”
But Gamache could see and was smiling slightly.
“So that person would know two things,” said Jean-Guy. “That there was nothing linking Baumgartner to the thefts. On his computer or files or anywhere. So any investigation into his death would reveal exactly nothing. And the killer would reasonably expect that whatever papers Baumgartner had with him were probably his only copies. Might even have asked, to make sure they were.”
“So he’d kill Baumgartner and destroy the evidence,” said Lacoste, forgetting to argue.
“Exactly.”
Gamache waited to see if either of them would spot the flaw in that argument. He waited.
And waited.
“If those were his only proof,” said Jean-Guy, “why were the statements found in his study?”
And there it was, thought Gamache. The problem.
If Baumgartner was meeting someone to either confide suspicions or confront them about the embezzlement, he’d take proof. And the person, after killing Baumgartner, would take that proof and burn it.
So why were there copies of the incriminating statements next to his computer?
And there was another problem with this theory.
“Why the farmhouse?” asked Lacoste.
Yes, thought Gamache. Why meet at the farmhouse?
“Familiar ground,” suggested Beauvoir. “Maybe he was going to be there anyway, a final look around before it was torn down. Maybe the reading of the will brought up childhood memories and he wanted to visit. Convenience, coupled with the need to be in what he, even unconsciously, considered a safe place.”
“At night? Without electricity or heat?” asked Lacoste.
Beauvoir nodded. Hugo had said they’d had dinner together. He’d left early, but still, it would have been dark.
“And why was he upstairs?” asked Lacoste.
“Looking around,” said Beauvoir. “In his childhood bedroom.”
It was credible, though hanging on to believability by a thread.
“Don’t forget,” said Beauvoir, “Baumgartner didn’t expect to be killed. Either he thought he was meeting a friend, someone who’d help him, or he thought he’d be confronting someone. That it would be a shitty conversation. But he clearly didn’t see this person as any physical threat. Or he’d never have agreed to meet him—”