“Before my parents were appointed deans at Saint-Ex, I had a dorm room here for a year.”

“Yeah, I remember.”

“When my folks were hired, they were offered housing on campus, and they insisted I give up the room so that another boarder could have it.”

“And you did, didn’t you?”

“Yeah, but the guy who took the room never used the locker and never asked me for the key. So I kept it—not that I had much use for it. But a couple of weeks before Vinca disappeared, she asked me for it.”

“And she didn’t tell you she was planning to stuff it full of cash?”

“Obviously not! I completely forgot about the locker. Even after Vinca disappeared, I didn’t make any connection with her asking me for the key.”

“When you think about it, it’s unbelievable that they never managed to find a trace of her.”

2.

Maxime pushed himself off the drystone wall and took a few steps to join me in the sunshine. He echoed something that I had heard several times that morning: “Thing is, we never really knew who Vinca was.”

“Of course we did. She was our friend.”

“Okay, then, we knew her without really knowing her,” he insisted.

“What do you mean?”

“Everything points to her being in love with Alexis Clément—the letters you found, the photos of them together…you remember that photo taken at the winter dance where she’s making eyes at him?”

“So what?”

“So why would she claim a couple of days later that the guy had raped her?”

“You think I lied to you?”

“No, but…”

“Spit it out, Maxime!”

“What if Vinca is still alive? What if she’s the one sending us the messages?”

“I thought about that,” I said. “But why would she?”

“Revenge. Because we killed the guy she loved.”

“For fuck’s sake!” I exploded. “She was terrified of him, Maxime, I swear. She told me. In fact, it’s the last thing she ever said to me: Alexis forced me. I didn’t want to sleep with him!”

“She could have been high. She was a bit of a druggie back then. She was dropping acid and taking any other shit she could get her hands on.”

“No.” I drew a line under the discussion. “She said it twice. The guy was a rapist.”

Maxime’s face was expressionless. For a moment, he stared at the lake, then he turned back to me. “At the time, you told me that she was pregnant.”

“Yeah, that’s what she said. She even showed me the test.”

“If that’s true, and if she gave birth, her kid would be about twenty-five now. There could be a son or a daughter out there trying to avenge the father’s death.”