Bennett Sisters Mysteries Volume 5 & 6

by Lise McClendon

  He was gone.

  Thirteen

  In the Dordogne

  Louise Fayette returned to the farm in the morning, her hair sticking out in all directions and looking as frazzled as Merle felt. Irene herself had finally kicked into action to save her goats the night before, finding a neighbor willing to come over and handle the milking for one time only. Louise was a little late for the morning milking and Irene let her know how she felt about that. But at least she had arrived, and was right now in the shed with the nanny goats.

  Merle had cajoled the older woman into moving from her bed to the kitchen table, using the metal walker that she despised. It made her feel so old, she grumbled, shuffling along, leaning heavily on the arms of the contraption. Nobody wanted to use a walker, Merle explained. They did it because they had to, because getting mobile again is important. Merle had no idea where she got her little inspirational speeches. They just came out.

  And they worked, thankfully. Irene sat down with a thump on the wooden chair and raised her leg onto a nearby seat. Merle poured them both coffee and sat across from her.

  Irene had let Merle brush her long hair and wind it into a bun, poking the bobby pins in to keep it in place. Irene had washed her strong, weathered face with a warm cloth and asked for her face cream, smearing it onto her cheeks and forehead. She looked better, less like a wild woman of Borneo.

  “What shall we do about César then?” Merle asked. “What does Louise think?”

  Irene sighed. “She does not know his full name, as I suspected. She found him on the computer, you know?”

  The Internet, Merle presumed. So that was that. Money gone, thief on the run. “I’m sorry.”

  “The government needs to do something about crime. It has come from the cities into the countryside.”

  “We had some vandalism in my village as well. They spray painted my house,” Merle said, grimacing. Irene was shocked. “But nothing that can’t be cleaned,” Merle said cheerfully. No point in getting all down in the dumps about la belle France.

  Irene set down her cup. “I must call the doctor about my next appointment. It can’t be too soon that he gets me out of this brace. Bring me the telephone.”

  Merle pulled the old phone over from its place by the door. It was at least forty years old with a rotating dial. The cord didn’t quite reach to Irene. Merle dialed the number for her, an activity that brought back her grandparents’ house, pushing the heavy dial around, waiting for it to return, then repeating. She handed the receiver to Irene who had to bend forward to listen on it.

  While Irene talked to various people at the doctor’s office, Merle stepped outside. Louise was in the yard, hosing down a goat with fresh water, speaking to the animal in a low, loving voice, ruffling her coat. Merle took out her phone and snapped a photograph. Louise was somehow like Odette, an urban girl on a farm, doing her best. What was Louise studying? Something important, like medicine or astrophysics probably.

  How much the world had changed in two hundred years. Stability, more or less, between the bloody wars, a couple Napoleons and five republics, had made such a difference in the lives of people like Louise. She grew up on a goat farm like someone in the 17th Century, but went to college and had all sorts of possibilities open to her after, things that a woman like Odette could never dream of. A woman of the French Revolution could protest her lot, could march to Versailles and shake a fist at the King, but she had no voice in government. No vote, no education, no power.

  Louise looked up and smiled at Merle. She was a good daughter. She had come home when she probably had a million things going on, things more pressing than milking a goat. What would happen now? Would she find another itinerant goat farmer on French Craigslist? Who would take care of Irene?

  Merle was due to go home the day after tomorrow. Her own to-do list was waiting and she couldn’t stay here with Irene forever. Maybe it was time to get busy and help figure out the Fayette’s dilemma. For everyone’s sake.

  In the house Irene was stretching her arm out to reach the base of the telephone, grunting. Merle took the receiver and replaced it.

  “Bon. They send the nurse tomorrow to make an evaluation of my stitches, and also the aide à domicile.You can go home, Madame Bennett.” Domestic aide? Ah, someone to help around the house. Perfect. Irene smiled at her. “Finally, they do something for me for all those taxes. Maybe I get some decent meals, eh? Something I don’t have to gnaw with my teeth.”

  “I never said I was a good cook. Or a French one,” Merle said, smiling. A great chef she was not. But she could leave with a clear conscience. What a relief.

  “Louise will be happy,” Irene said, crossing her arms like the captain of the ship at the helm. “She is a very bad cook. And she snaps at me. Well, I am not a very good patient.”

  “It is hard to be a good patient.”

  “I am always running here and there. I hate this—“ She pointed out her bum leg. “It is not me.”

  “Your leg is better? No pills?”

  “I won’t take any more.” Irene dusted off crumbs from the table. “Now, who will do the milking? We must find someone reliable.”

  “What if I call Pascal? He might know someone around here?”

  “Pascal? He is a policier, not a farmer.” She shrugged. “But go ahead. The government should be good for something.”

  Merle went out into the yard and called Pascal. She left a long message then walked over to the milking shed. Inside Louise was still milking, down to her last two goats. Merle watched, impressed with her skill and speed.

  “You’re good at that,” Merle said as Louise untethered the goat and let it go into the pasture.

  “I should be. I’ve been doing it since I was six.”

  She sounded less than thrilled about that. Merle said, “How can we find a replacement for César? Do you have anyone else you can ask?”

  Louise just glanced at Merle, an angry glance, and went back to milking. Well, it wasn’t really her responsibility, was it? She left the shed. Pascal called back as she walked toward the house.

  “You are at Irene’s?” he asked, surprised. “Is she all right?”

  “She had knee surgery. She’s not a happy patient. And then the worker they hired to milk the goats stole their money and their van. I went into the village for an hour and he took advantage of my absence.”

  “Connard! Who is milking then?”

  Merle explained the problem finding someone to do the milking, someone more trustworthy than César. Louise must go back to school. He said he would try to find someone. And he would look up the van’s identification and submit it to Motor Vehicle Theft. Maybe they would find it somewhere. No doubt the dastardly César had sold it to the North Africans by now. But for the present, the milking was absolutely necessary. Find someone, as soon as possible, Merle stressed, so Louise could go back to college.

  “Are you working?” Merle asked.

  “Of course. Always.” He sounded tired. “I was going to come see you tonight. But you are not home.”

  “I’ll be home tomorrow. Come then.”

  “I will try, chérie.”

  That night a knock came on the door, after dark. Merle was already in bed but Louise had stayed up, winding down from the evening milking, having a glass of red wine. Merle stood in the hallway in her robe, suspicious of visits after dark.

  Two people stood on the sloping porch, a woman and a teenaged boy. The woman was explaining something to Louise who was exclaiming and shaking the boy’s hand. They left the house, all three going toward the milking shed. Merle watched them through the window. As they left there was more shaking of hands. The two strangers left in a black sedan not unlike Merle’s Peugeot and Louise returned to the house, smiling.

  “It is your Pascal to the rescue,” she said, giving Merle an unaccustomed hug. “He is amazing.”

  “Did he find someone already?”

  “That boy, Guillaume, he is sixteen, seventeen. He can only work u
ntil the school term begins but that gives me two or three weeks to find someone else. And means I can go back to the University.”

  “That’s great, Louise. Does he live around here?”

  “Some miles away. They say Pascal did them a favor. They didn’t say what it was. But I don’t care,” Louise said, sighing and staring at the ceiling. “I don’t care at all.”

  The next morning was a new day. The teenager had already come and gone by the time Merle got up, much to Louise’s joy. She had changed from a sullen, quiet girl to possibly her real self: a bubbly, smiling woman. She was going back to school, she reminded her mother again unnecessarily. Irene rolled her eyes and pouted but she was happy for her daughter, that was clear. The nurse and domestic aide arrived together from Agen mid-morning, exclaiming of their anxiety of getting lost in the hills. They were both gray-haired women and could have been sisters, especially the way they bickered about how to do things. By lunchtime Merle excused herself and went to pack her bag. She was gone by two in the afternoon, giving Louise a hug and telling her to study hard.

  The Peugeot started right up, roaring to life with Merle’s unnecessary pumping on the gas pedal. She was eager to go but she didn’t need to be so obvious. She drove sedately down the long drive, past Pascal’s little cottage, past the goats and cows in the pastures, toward home.

  Merle was parking her car in the city lot outside Malcouziac’s comforting bastide walls when Madame Suchet from across Rue de Poitiers called. Merle had given Madame her phone number in case something happened while she was out of town.

  Merle sank a little, seeing the number pop up. What now? She felt like she’d lost her moorings and was bouncing from one crisis to another. What about a little time just sitting in her backyard, nursing a rosé and reading a novel? Or even writing a novel? She’d gotten very little done this week, and if Merle Bennett was anything, she was a personal slave-driver. She was not a slacker. She demanded results, especially of herself.

  But her neighbor didn’t have a problem. She had a solution. She knew who had vandalized Merle’s house, and she was ready to turn him in to the authorities.

  Fourteen

  Sancerre

  Pascal’s memory wasn’t as sharp as he thought. He cursed as he realized he was lost in the backroads of Sancerre, where all the vineyards look alike, row upon row of Sauvignon and Pinot grapes. Mostly Sauvignon as it made the buttery Sancerre wine, renowned around the world. From the dirt roads, all the grapevines appeared similar, their clusters nearly ripe, ready for harvest in weeks.

  Workers were already getting ready, scurrying up and down the rows, squeezing, tasting, gathering supplies. Pascal would be a wine buyer again, a task he had accomplished many times over the years while undercover. It was a small miracle that no one recognized him, but there were so many vineyards in France. The chance of running across the same person in two far-flung wineries was small. And if they did, well, he was still playing wine buyer. No harm in that.

  He reached an intersection where the crossroad was paved. Peering at the many small signs on a post he saw the winery he was searching for. Le Grand Vinon— to the left. He swung the BMW in that direction and drove slowly, looking for a hidden drive. He knew it was on the west side of the road somewhere. And then, suddenly, there it was.

  The signage was old, easily missed. The vines themselves looked well-kept. The road was not, full of pot holes and ruts. The car bottomed out twice, the undercarriage hitting dirt. The buildings of the winery came into view as he rounded the hill, a dusty assemblage of tasting room, cave, bottling facility, and mixing room. Pascal remembered the layout now and parked in front of the main mixing room. The two-story building, more like a barn than the others, had a rough wooden door, covered with dust.

  The door to the tasting room was locked. Pascal cupped his eyes to see inside but the room was dark. He wondered if they were still in business. August was a popular time for tourists to visit wineries, and locals often stopped by to fill their own jugs.

  He tried the door at the mixing room and was surprised when it swung open. Wineries kept their secrets in the mixing room, formulas for successful blends and dates of changes in oak, out of oak, and the like. But Le Grand Vinon wasn’t concerned about secrecy apparently. His footsteps echoed in the shadowed, cavernous space.

  On one wall stainless steel vats were lined up, as tall as the ceiling, like grain silos. The other side of the space was empty, a wooden walkway leading to a control room where the read-outs of gauges from the vats could be monitored.

  “Allo? Anyone here?”

  He waited for the echo to fade. Silence. A few spotlights were on but otherwise the room was dark. The light inside the control room flickered. There was no one inside and the window that faced the mixing room was smudged. Normally cleanliness is a religion in these places. Pascal looked around and saw dirt in the corners, leaves and grass here and there, tracked in from the fields.

  What was going on at Le Grand Vinon? It appeared they were still in business, but looks could be deceiving. He exited the wooden door, back into the afternoon sunshine. Turning toward the vines, he grabbed his straw hat from the back seat of his car. Full summer was upon the heartland of France, that continental heat, untempered by the breezes off the ocean. He took off his suit jacket and rolled the sleeves up on his shirt. A warm, dry wind ruffled the leaves on the vines.

  The first person he encountered was hauling a cart full of assorted buckets and baskets. A young man, barely out of his teens, with black hair and a sullen expression, he stopped when he saw Pascal. He kept hold of the cart’s handle while he stared at Pascal.

  Pascal took off his hat and nodded to the boy. He asked if the owner was nearby. “Monsieur Delage. Il est près d’ici?”

  The boy flicked sweat off his thick eyebrows and continued staring. Finally, he pointed at the far end of the vineyard. Then he trundled off with his cargo, rounding a stone building and disappearing from sight.

  Pascal stuck his hat back on his head and walked in the direction the boy had pointed. The rows were endless, surrounding the winery in every direction. He wondered if the family still owned them all. The father had been a master winemaker but a terrible businessman, getting himself into so many financial jams that he went too far into the criminal realm. Was Léo Delage helping his son now? Was he here?

  The wind died down and the heat of the afternoon hit in waves. Pascal squinted into the shimmering sky, trying to locate a human in the vast sea of emerald. He picked a row at random and walked down between the wired vines, stopping to admire the clusters of grapes. The trellises were too high to see over, so he had to wait until he reached a junction, a crossing that allowed workers to move between rows, before he could jump up and look in every direction.

  In a far corner of the rows a man’s head bobbed along, small and white, possibly a hat. Pascal struck out in the direction of the head and hat, looking down each row as he got closer. Finally, on the next to last row, he spotted the man inspecting vines. Pascal turned in and walked quickly toward the vintner.

  Adrien Delage watched him approach suspiciously. Pascal raised his hat in greeting, trying to look nonthreatening. He greeted Delage with a handshake and introduced himself with his undercover name.

  “I am a buyer for Global Vendanges,” he explained, mentioning a large distributor of wines. “Exporting to the United States and Canada, also China. We heard good things about your last two vintages. Particularly last year’s.”

  Delage doffed his white cap. The sun had aged him prematurely, with lines on his cheeks. His dark hair stuck out awkwardly. His eyes were still blue and clear but tired and wary. Even the prospect of selling many cases of wine didn’t cheer him.

  “It is gone. You have made a trip for nothing,” he said gruffly. He began to turn away.

  “C’est vrai? All sold? How many cases did you produce?”

  Delage shrugged silently. Pascal continued. “It had an excellent reputation. I am not surp
rised. But disappointed of course. You have some older vintages?”

  “Non.” He turned toward the vines and went back to work, trimming excess leaves.

  “Well, the harvest is upon us, yes? When will you pick?”

  “Very soon,” Delage muttered. “I wait for laborers.”

  “Ah. Moroccans?”

  The vintner shot him a look. “If I can get them. They are hard workers.”

  “Very true. What do you think of Tunisians? I have heard many have come as refugees?”

  “If they know the trade.”

  Pascal stretched to look over the trellises at the acres of grapes. “You have many vines, monsieur. It will take a small army. Unless you have some employees here as well to help?”

  No answer.

  “Or perhaps neighbors and family? The traditional way to vendange?”

  “Bien sûr. Of course.”

  Pascal was following him down the row now, chatting amicably as if keeping him company on this hot, tedious day in the field. “This is a family winery, correct? Many generations in the business?”

  “Started by my great-grandfather after the first world war,” he said as he snipped.

  “How grand that you keep the tradition going. So important in this age of corporations, yes?” He cupped a cluster of grapes. “Beautiful, so perfect. Your children will help in the vendange then? Your cousins?”

  “My children are very small. I have very few relatives nearby. That is why I need Moroccans.”

  “Families aren’t the same. They move away. Just yesterday I was visiting a vineyard where none of the children professed an interest in wine-making. It made the vintner very sad, I could tell.”

  “I myself had no interest, I can tell you, monsieur,” Adrien said. The meditation of working the pruners on the green leaves had calmed whatever suspicions he harbored toward Pascal and he relaxed into his tale. “I inherited this vineyard by force.” He chuckled, a bit oddly.