Murder in Lascaux by Betsy Draine Page A

Marc had access to the cave, he’s a serious suspect.”
    â€œI know. Still feeling all chummy toward the inspector?”
    â€œNot so much,” Toby retorted, taking a curve in the road a tad too fast.
    When we reached Cazelle, Madame Martin was waiting in the hall with a message. We would be leaving for the restaurant in La Roque-Gageac earlier than planned because Marianne had arranged for our group to be given a tour of the kitchen before dinner. Madame Martin explained that the hotel-restaurant Le Beau Soleil was run by an old family of the region and kept hours that suited the locals. Only in the high season of July 15 to August 15 did it permit fashionable diners who arrived as late as nine. At all other times of the year, the desk accepted reservations at seven—period. Marianne wanted us to see the kitchen before the staff was in full frenzy, preparing hors d’oeuvres for as many as twenty tables. If we arrived by six thirty, we could get a good look at the kitchen and talk to the chef before he and his staff were under stress.
    The plan put me under stress, though, since I needed to call my sister before we went out, and we both needed to get cleaned up. Being cooperative guests, we went into overdrive for our hostess. I tried to put the inspector out of my mind and called Angie while Toby showered. Then while I bathed and dressed, we discussed the call.
    Now, you have to understand about Angie. She’s my little sister and she’s absolutely adorable. At least to me. Toby sees her from another angle. According to Toby, she’s a bombshell, and as he reminds me, bombshells tend to explode. I’ll admit Angie is lovely, and there has been a little trouble associated with that. At fifteen, she almost flew off to London with a photographer who claimed he could get her signed up with an international modeling agency. (I came back from grad school to help Mom and Dad talk her out of that.) At her junior college she became the object of her math teacher’s obsession, and though she claims nothing ever came of it, the professor’s pregnant wife smelled lust in the air and denounced the non-couple to the dean. The randy teacher kept his job, but Angie was so embarrassed that she left school. And then there was the yoga master who wanted both her fortune and her flesh.
    Angie emerged from all these entanglements with her optimism intact, and that is just the trouble. She never sees the caution light when it comes to men.
    So it was no surprise when I learned that Angie’s plan for Grandpa’s trust fund involved her latest boyfriend, who roasted coffee at the café down the street from the beauty shop where she works. Hank made her coffee, and she cut Hank’s hair. But he had higher sights for them both. His idea was to start a business that would truck your motorcycle from your home in icy Boston to your warm-weather destination—Miami, say, or San Diego. All he needed to make it happen was $30,000. With that sum, he’d buy a used Winnebago, and he and Angie would fix it up to serve both as their home-on-the-road and as a motorcycle-transport truck. Of course he’d pay her back when the business was up and running. It sounded fishy to me.
    Toby snorted. “I’ll say. Something’s wrong with his business plan. Guys with motorcycles like to ride them. They don’t hire a service to get the bike from one place to the next. How long has she known this Hank?”
    â€œOnly a couple of months. Do you think it’s just a coincidence that he needs exactly the amount of money that’s in Angie’s education account? It makes you wonder whether there’s any plan at all, other than to get Angie’s money and run.”
    â€œSo how did you leave it with her?”
    â€œWell, I told her what I was worried about. She was pretty ticked with me for interfering, but she said she’d think it over.”
    â€œIn this case, I think