Capestan and Buron were standing side by side, propping up the buffet.
“So was it you who swiped Valincourt’s file?” Capestan roared over the music.
“Yes,” Buron said. “That failure was a stain on his career. I couldn’t figure it out for the life of me.”
“And how did you make the link with Guénan? Valincourt wasn’t on that case.”
“No, but he had just arrived at number 36 and he spent a lot of time hanging around there. A few years later, when he joined my team, his HR file came my way. I saw that he’d been living in Key West the same year as the accident. It was a coincidence, and a completely innocent soul would have mentioned it. On top of that, a few items from the case notes had gone missing . . .”
“Hold on, you suspected him of murder and then covered for him for twenty years?”
“No, not at all,” Buron said, his tone more obsequious than necessary. “But I did think he’d been negligent. I took the creation of this squad as my chance to clear up the matter. Anyhow, Capestan, you suspected me at one point in this case . . .”
“No, not once,” the commissaire retorted.
The force of her denial bordered on ridicule, and a broad smile played across the chief’s lips. But another question was still nagging at her:
“Why didn’t you bust him yourself?”
“I didn’t want to bring down a fellow officer. I have a reputation to uphold.”
“And you had no problem with me damaging mine?”
“Not really, no,” he said, not ashamed in the least. “Tell me, Capestan. I received a speeding ticket for Brigadier Lewitz. Sixty miles per hour in a built-up area . . .”
“Yes, I’d be grateful if you could waive that for him—he doesn’t have many points left.”
“. . . speeding on a Motocrotte?”
“No, those don’t exist anymore—it was a street sweeper.”
Rosière and Merlot’s chatter reached them in dribs and drabs over the notes of Mika’s “Relax”:
“. . . when it comes to the planet, animals, anything, I only buy organic, top-of-the-range . . .”
“All that’s mighty costly, though . . .”
“As it should be! If rich people buy crappy stuff, too, you can’t complain when that’s the only thing available!”
“Indeed! But . . .”
“In our society, you vote every time you get your wallet out. Fuck the ballot box, it’s the shopping cart that counts! Speaking of which,” she said, holding out her glass.
As Merlot tipped a quarter of the bottle into her glass and a tenth onto the carpet, Lebreton chimed in:
“Take a trip around a couple of dictatorships and you’ll see that the ballot box doesn’t count for much there, either . . .”
“Still,” Rosière said, with a nod to her vermilion Gigondas, “every time you drink, every time you eat, you vote!”
“Well, that makes you an exemplary citizen,” Lebreton said, turning his shoulder on her.
“As for me, I . . . ,” Merlot started, but he was interrupted by Lewitz, who was running all over the place yelling:
“I won, I won, I won! Three in a minute!”
With each syllable, a spray of cookie crumbs came spewing from his mouth. Rosière, incredulous, grabbed Évrard’s arm as she walked past.
“He ate three petits-beurres?”
“No, they were sponge fingers, but he’s so happy I can’t face disqualifying him.”
Capestan scooped up a cream cheese sandwich from the buffet, and Buron followed suit. She had to move aside to dodge a yellow balloon that was dropping to the ground from the ceiling.
“So,” she said. “If I understand right, our squad was set up expressly to settle your personal scores.”
The chief’s basset hound eyes were heavy with sadness.
“No, this wasn’t about ‘scores.’ Alexandre was my friend, you know. It was my duty to investigate him, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Your squad is my halfway house, Capestan. A temporary solution. It’s not as if I’ve created the ‘Super Justice’ league—you’re just a third team, on the sidelines where you’re beyond suspicion. Well put together, mind you,” he added with a smile.
“You could have told it to me straight.”
“Until now, I wasn’t sure it would even work.”
The balloon had found its way onto the dance floor, where it was bouncing merrily from officer to officer, each of them doing their best to spare it. Dax, stomping along to the beat, was digging into a bowl of candy. His jaw clenched as he bit into them, and he’d wince before going in again, intrigued. He offered one to Lewitz, with a shrug that suggested he found them weird but nice.
“It works, all right,” Capestan confirmed. “And to keep the momentum going, I’m requesting at least one functioning car, as well as some respect and consideration.”
“I’ll see about the car.”
“That’s the most important thing,” Capestan said, munching a goat cheese cracker.
Buron finished off his and wiped his hands on a paper napkin with little red hearts on it.
“I know you deserve better,” he said. “But after all your misdemeanors, I had no choice. It was the only way out—”
“I couldn’t be happier here, Buron,” the commissaire said, looking at her squad.
Évrard, Dax, and Lewitz were tormenting the downstairs neighbors with their dance moves. Torrez was limping around, his arm still in its sling. Rosière was trying, in vain, to get Orsini drunk. And Merlot’s snoring was competing with the music.
Lebreton met Capestan’s eye and raised his glass toward her. She clinked him in return.
“This place suits me just fine,” she said.
Lying at Rosière’s feet, the edge of his lip flopped over her Louboutin, Pilou was stealthily keeping an eye on things, scoping out the surroundings with a keen muzzle. Wafts of charcuterie; tottering, happy humans . . . it was all very promising. A few scratches behind the ear and some saucisson were definitely in the cards.
Pilote stretched out a paw to embark on his hunt, but he felt his mistress’s hand curtail his rump’s upward trajectory. He sat back down, and with a flash of canine inspiration, looked up at the corpulent fellow next to Rosière on the sofa. The man grinned and handed him a canapé laden with
