He helped himself to nachos.

“How’d you know this terrasse was here?” Clara asked.

“It’s my superpower.”

“Jean-Guy Beauvoir,” said Gamache. “Boy Wonder.”

“They think we’re the sidekicks,” Beauvoir whispered to Myrna.

“Oh, how I’d love to get you on my couch,” she replied.

“Get in line, sister.”

Myrna laughed.

“I have an uncanny ability to find bathrooms,” he said.

“Seems a limited sort of superpower,” said Myrna.

“Yeah, well, if you really had to go, which power would you rather have? Flight? Invisibility? Or the ability to find a toilet?”

“Invisibility might be useful, but point taken, Kato.”

“I told you, I’m not the sidekick.” He gestured surreptitiously toward Gamache.

“Have you been here before?” Clara asked. “Is that how you knew?”

“Non.” He looked out across the ravine and seemed momentarily caught by the view. Then he returned his eyes to Clara. And in them she saw trees on the shoreline desperate for root. And an endless river.

“It’s not magic, if that’s what you’re thinking,” he said. “I could tell there was a drop-off, and when we first came here I suspected no innkeeper would have access to this view and not take advantage of it.”

“You guessed?” asked Myrna.

“Yes.”

But both women knew it wasn’t really a guess. Jean-Guy Beauvoir might behave like a boy wonder, a sidekick. But they of all people knew that was just the façade. He too had an archway, and a secret courtyard. And views he kept hidden.

They sipped their drinks and caught their breath.

“Now what?” Myrna asked.

“We’ve been to the inns and B and Bs,” said Clara, ticking off the hotels on the place mat. “We’ve shown Peter’s picture around. Now we need to take around his paintings.”

She pointed to the rolled-up canvases on the table.

“To innkeepers?” asked Jean-Guy.

“No. The galleries. Baie-Saint-Paul is thick with them.” Again she gestured toward the place mat. “If Peter is here, he probably visited one or more.”

“That’s a good idea,” said Jean-Guy, not bothering to disguise his surprise.

“You two go to the ones on this side of Baie-Saint-Paul.” She drew a circle on the place mat. “And we’ll take the other.” She looked at her watch. It was nearing five. Nearing closing time. “We need to hurry.”

She got up and they all took their place mats.

“Where should we meet?” Myrna asked.

“Here.”

Clara’s finger fell onto a brasserie in the center of town.

La Muse.

Myrna and Clara took two of Peter’s paintings, including the one with the lips. Jean-Guy picked up the one that was left and examined it, not at all sure which way was up.

He looked, briefly, from the painting to the view, and back to the painting.

And shook his head.