Death in the Vines: A Verlaque and Bonnet Provençal Mystery

by M. L. Longworth

  She sipped on some white wine but put her glass down the moment she saw Verlaque’s face as he crossed the restaurant’s terrace, his phone call ended.

  “You don’t look so good,” Marine said. “What’s up?”

  “Your intuition may be right,” he replied, sitting down. “A young woman’s body has been found in Rognes.”

  “Another one?” Marine asked. She felt sick to her stomach.

  “Yes. She was raped and strangled, like Mlle Montmory, that girl from Éguilles.” He leaned back. “I’m not hungry anymore.” He realized that he would not be able to go to the doctor’s with Marine in the morning, would have to go straight to the Palais de Justice.

  “Nor am I,” Marine answered. “We can cancel the rest of the meal, can’t we?”

  Verlaque nodded and went into the restaurant. “It’s not a problem, we can go,” he said when he returned. “They hadn’t started cooking our main dish yet.”

  He left a stack of one-euro coins on the table as a tip, and they walked to his car, arm in arm. “Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked.

  “I’m not sure,” Marine answered truthfully.

  Verlaque sighed. “I’ll try to go with you tomorrow morning.”

  “That’s really not necessary,” Marine answered. “With this new murder, you’ll be needed elsewhere.” She could hear Sylvie’s voice: “Martyr!” She changed the subject. “This really is a picturesque village….”

  Verlaque looked at Marine and wondered what she was really thinking. “Yes,” he replied. “And so close to Aix.”

  “The chef wasn’t upset that we had to leave?” she asked.

  “I promised him we’d come back, with friends. How about Jean-Marc and Pierre?”

  Marine stopped at Verlaque’s antique Porsche. “Perfect. And maybe we can invite José and his wife, Carmé.”

  “Good idea. You spoke with her a lot at the party,” Verlaque said. He knew that they both wanted to talk of other, lighter things, if only for a few minutes.

  “Yes, she’s funny and bright. And not as unctuous as that Philippe Léridon. Yuck.”

  “He’s Mme d’Arras’s neighbor,” Verlaque said, frowning. “I’m going to go and speak with him.”

  “When did this woman from Rognes die?” Marine asked as they got into the car.

  “Dr. Bouvet is performing an autopsy tomorrow morning,” Verlaque answered. “He said that the body had been there, in the woman’s house, at least two, maybe three days.”

  “Who found her?”

  “Her ex-boyfriend, who came by the house because she wasn’t returning his phone calls. In the meantime, we’ve got a killer who has raped twice, and definitely murdered once, if it’s the same guy.” Verlaque stayed silent as he drove the car down the twisty road from Ventabren’s old town to the flat route nationale that led back through the valley to Aix. “I’d like you to sleep at my place until we find this guy,” he finally said.

  “Okay,” Marine answered. “If you just double-park in front of my apartment, I’ll run up and get my stuff.”

  “Is Sylvie back yet from Mégève? Can she take you to the clinic tomorrow, if I can’t?”

  “Yes, but Charlotte starts school tomorrow.”

  Verlaque said, “Imagine coming from a place as mythical as Mégève.”

  “That’s why she’s such a great skier,” Marine replied.

  “That’s for sure. She can ski backward—I’ve seen her do it. She’s a much better skier than I am. But, then again, Charlotte can ski better than I can,” Verlaque said, smiling.

  Marine looked over at him and squeezed his knee. A year ago, Antoine Verlaque would never had made such a joke. She would only see glimpses of his warmth; then he would quickly clam up, as if he were stopping himself from revealing too much. Something had changed, for the better. He was now more honest and natural, but she noted that the subject of her breast lump had been dropped.

  They quickly got back to Aix, and Verlaque waited in his car, double-parked in front of agnès b., while Marine gathered her things. She was back in the car in five minutes, balancing a load of books on her knee. Verlaque pulled away from the curb and tilted his head to look at the spines. “Jean-Paul Sartre,” he said. “I should have known you’d pick him. You’re writing his biography, right?”

  Marine smiled. “Not only his.”

  Verlaque turned right and drove up the Rue Frédéric Mistral. “You’re writing two books?” He looked again at the stack of books on her lap. “Simone de Beauvoir! That’s a heavy project. They both lived, and worked, a long time. Two books is perhaps overdoing it, don’t you think?”

  “One book,” Marine answered. “I’m not writing about their philosophies or their works. I’m writing about their relationship. It’s a love story.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Malibu Boy

  Bruno Paulik leaned his thick forearms across Verlaque’s desk. “‘Gisèle Durand,’” he read aloud from a file. “‘Age forty-two. Born and raised in Rognes. Both parents deceased; an older brother who emigrated to the U.S. more than twenty years ago. She worked for thirteen years at a small clothing store in the village, but it recently closed. She’s been unemployed for six months. Body found by ex-boyfriend, André Prodos, age thirty-seven. Apparently, he had been trying to call her but kept getting the answering machine, and so yesterday evening, after work, he went by her apartment.’”

  “Where does he work?” Verlaque asked.

  Paulik looked at the file. “He’s a mechanic in Pertuis.”

  “Let’s find out everything we can about him. And the clothing-store owner? If they worked together for thirteen years, he or she would be a good source.”

  “Right,” Paulik said. He turned the page of the file and read. “The clothing-store owner is Laure Matour. It gives an address in Rognes here for her, and a cell-phone number. No cell-phone number for the ex-boyfriend, but a landline, and I think I know where the garage is.” He turned to Jules Schoelcher. “Got your little book with you?”

  Jules Schoelcher patted his right breast pocket. “I’ll start right away?”

  “Yes,” Paulik answered. “Flamant will be working with you.”

  “Look for any connections between the two women,” Verlaque said. “Dr. Bouvet told Commissioner Paulik last night that Mlle Durand was attacked in the same way that Mlle Montmory was, and that the marks on her neck were similar. Strangulation, this one successful, at the throat, with bare hands. The two women have very different profiles: one a good fifteen years older than the other; the younger one from a good family with a good steady job, the other unemployed with no family in the area. So we need to find out what they had in common—where they did their shopping, if they went to church, if they ever lived in the same building, anything. Go to their apartments and go through their desks: look at their bills, letters, receipts from purchases, phone calls in and out, everything.” Verlaque’s telephone rang; he glanced down at the caller’s number. “It’s Bouvet.

  “Oui?” Verlaque said into the phone. “You’re already finished? It’s only nine-fifteen a.m.”

  “I started at six this morning, I was so pissed off at this attack,” the coroner said. “Besides, when you get to be my age, you sleep less and less. You’ll see.”

  “Thanks for the warning.”

  “Mlle Durand was raped and strangled on Friday evening—as best I can determine, between six and eight p.m. There’s some skin under her fingernails that I’m going to send to the lab; she may have scratched her attacker. And I’ve started examining Mme Pauline d’Arras. She died around the same time, between six and eight p.m. on Friday, and she was killed right there, in the vineyard. Tell your guys to look for a bloodstained rock about the size of a baseball. I’ll be in touch.” He hung up.

  Verlaque had just repeated the gist of the conversation to Paulik and Schoelcher when there was a knock on the door. “Come in,” he said.

  Alain Flamant came in, holding a red Filofax. “Lots of goo
d stuff here,” he said.

  “Thank goodness for pen and paper,” Verlaque said. “Sit down.”

  “Mme d’Arras made a visit to her lawyer ten days ago,” Flamant said. “And her husband didn’t know about it.”

  “How do you know?” asked Paulik.

  “Because she wrote beside the appointment time, ‘Don’t tell Gilles.’”

  Verlaque laughed, despite the heaviness of the morning’s news and the stuffiness of his office. He got up and opened the window. “Who’s the lawyer?”

  “It just says Maître Bley.”

  “Éric Bley,” Verlaque said. “I’ll go and see him.” He was about to speak when another knock sounded.

  “Your office is like Charles de Gaulle airport on a long weekend,” Paulik said.

  “Hello, gentlemen,” Yves Roussel said as he entered the room.

  Flamant leaned over toward Jules Schoelcher. “Prosecutor Roussel.”

  “We’re in quite a fix,” Roussel said, pacing the room. Bruno Paulik bent down, put his elbows on his knees, and turned his head sideways to look at Roussel’s feet.

  “You’re not wearing your turquoise cowboy boots,” Paulik said.

  “They’re getting resoled,” Roussel said, glancing down at his feet. “While you guys were in here chatting and drinking coffee, I just had to make my way through a crowd of reporters who are standing outside the front doors. Even the national stations are out there; TF1 and M6! The attacker of the girl in Éguilles, and now this woman in Rognes, are one and the same, I take it?”

  “Yes,” Verlaque replied. “Bouvet just confirmed that likelihood.”

  “And the old lady?”

  “Mme d’Arras,” Verlaque said curtly. “I think it was a coincidence that she was attacked in Rognes, but her murder and Mlle Durand’s were both committed between six and eight p.m. on Friday night. Her killing was very different, and her wallet was gone, although the wallet could have been taken to throw us off.”

  “Well, get me someone to arrest, and quickly!” Roussel said.

  Verlaque ate a sandwich at his desk and called Marine’s cell phone. “Marine, how are you?” he asked when she answered on the second ring.

  “Fine,” she answered.

  “And your father was able to take you to the appointment?”

  “Yes. He wanted to come into the room, where they did the puncture, but I wouldn’t let him.”

  “And how are you feeling now?”

  “I feel good; I’m trying to read, but I’m having trouble concentrating. Send me on an errand if you can.”

  Verlaque pushed his half-eaten sandwich aside. “Do you really want something to do?”

  “Yes, I said so.”

  “Two things, then, if you really want to,” Verlaque said. “Your friend Philomène. Could you pay her a visit and ask her if this address—6 Rue de la Conception, in Rognes—means anything to her?”

  “Fine,” Marine said, writing the address down on the back of an envelope. “Is that where the Durand woman lived, and was murdered on Friday night?”

  “Yes. And I was hoping to ask Éric Bley some questions, but we have an appointment any minute with an ex-thief who attacked an old woman a few years ago, and then I’d like to go to Rognes. Would you be able to go over to Bley’s office as you’ve known him for ages?”

  “Yes,” Marine answered slowly. “Why?”

  “Bley is the d’Arras family lawyer, and Mme d’Arras had an appointment with him last week that she was keeping from her husband. His office is on the Rue Thiers.”

  “I know it,” Marine said. “I’ll go.” She sat back in her chair and rested the phone on her chest for a second. Éric Bley had asked her out twice in the past year, and both times she had turned him down. “I’ll call you as soon as I have any answers,” she said.

  “Thanks.”

  “You guys work quickly,” Didier Ruère said, twisting in his seat and crossing his legs. “My parole officer called me and here I am, right on time, at twelve-thirty p.m.”

  “Then I’ll get to the point quickly, so you can go to lunch,” Verlaque said. “Where were you on Friday evening between six and eight o’clock?”

  “Wait a minute!” Ruère replied. “I saw the news this morning! I wasn’t anywhere near Rognes!”

  “Good. Where were you?”

  Ruère paused. “I was…Let’s see, Friday evening…Oh yeah! I remember! I was here in Aix, at the Bar de Zinc, on the Rue Espariat. You can ask anyone.”

  “We will,” Paulik replied. “Who else was there?”

  “My buddy Louis,” Ruère said. “We watched the Marseille soccer game on the bar’s television. The waiter and barman know us and will be able to vouch for us. We left around nine p.m., ’cause we were hungry and all the bar has to eat are peanuts.”

  Verlaque watched beads of perspiration form on Ruère’s forehead. “You’ll leave us Louis’s phone number, please,” he said.

  “Of course.”

  Verlaque slipped Ruère a piece of paper, and the thief wrote down a cell-phone number, his hand shaking.

  “Saved by the beautiful game,” Paulik said.

  Ruère smiled weakly. “I just wish Marseille would win once in a while.”

  Marine walked to the top of her street and down the Rue d’Italie a block, then turned right on Rue Cardinale. She walked down the right side of the street and rang the doorbell at number 18, at the buzzer marked “Joubert.” There was no answer; she waited and rang again. She looked up the street and heard the organ playing in Saint-Jean de Malte, so she walked up toward the church. Perhaps Philomène was at choir practice. A crowd of locals and tourists were on the cobbled square in front of the church, coming and going from the Musée Granet, which was showing a colossal Cézanne exhibit. She and Verlaque had been invited to a special showing before the exhibit had officially opened and had come away with admiration for Cézanne that bordered on fanaticism on Verlaque’s part. She walked into the church and stood for a few minutes at the back, listening to the music. She saw Frère Benoît, a monk, coming down the aisle and approached him, introducing herself as the daughter of the Drs. Bonnet.

  “Pleased to meet you,” Frère Benoît said. “Are you looking for Père Jean-Luc? He’s over at the Cézanne exhibit, for the third time.”

  Marine laughed. “It is a great show,” she said. “I’m actually looking for Philomène Joubert. I’m her neighbor.”

  “Ah, Mme Joubert isn’t here, as you can see. She’s with some of the other parishioners on a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela. They should be somewhere around Conques by now.”

  Marine’s heart sank. “They’re doing the whole thing? That would take months!”

  “Oh no,” Frère Benoît replied. “Only two weeks at a time; they’re doing another stretch in the winter. She even convinced M. Joubert to go along.”

  “And can she be contacted?” Marine asked.

  “With much difficulty,” the brother replied. “They have no cell phones and are sleeping in hospices that I would describe as extremely rustic. Is it an emergency?”

  “No,” Marine replied. “Thank you.”

  She walked away and out into the bright sunshine. Was it an emergency? She wasn’t sure. What if Philomène did know the address? What if there was a connection? She turned around and ran back into the church, hurrying up the aisle to catch Frère Benoît before he entered the sacristy. “I think it might be an emergency,” she said.

  Frère Benoît turned around and nodded. “Very well.”

  “It concerns the…violent death…of Pauline d’Arras. She and Mme Joubert grew up together.”

  “I see. Why don’t you call me this evening, after Vespers, around eight-thirty p.m.? I’ll try to find a phone number for one of the hospices along the route.”

  “Merci, mon frère,” Marine said. She walked up the Rue Cardinale and then north along the Rue d’Italie, which at the top of the street would turn into the Rue Thiers. Once on the Rue Thiers, she stopped
and looked in the windows of Cinderella, a shoe store that had been there since she was a little girl, and where her mother had bought shoes when she herself was small, in the 1950s. Most of the shoes were old-fashioned and sensible, with low heels and good-quality leather, although they did have some multicolored Repetto ballerina flats. The shop was still closed for lunch, and Marine walked on, knowing that she was procrastinating. She wondered if Éric Bley would also still be out, but it was almost 2:30 p.m. When she rang at his office, she was buzzed in, and walked up the elegant stone staircase to the Bley brothers’ law offices on the second floor.

  “Hello,” Marine said to the well-dressed secretary, “I’m an old friend of Maître Bley’s, and was wondering if he is in.”

  “I’ll ring his office,” the woman said. “What is your name?”

  “Marine Bonnet. Dr. Bonnet.” She rarely used her doctoral title, except on occasions when she thought it might help her get more efficient service.

  The secretary called Éric Bley, spoke for a few seconds, and then told Marine that she could go on in, the second door on the left.

  As Marine gently opened the door, Éric Bley was already halfway across the room to meet her. They stood awkwardly facing each other, not sure if they should shake hands or exchange la bise. Marine broke the silence by laughing. “Quand même,” she said, “we should do the bise. We’ve known each other long enough.”

  Bley laughed. “You’re right. I joined the choir just because you were in it.” He put a hand gently on her waist and they kissed each other’s cheeks.

  Marine’s face flushed, and she stepped back. “You really joined the choir for me?”

  “No, my mother forced us to join. But you were an added bonus for us Bley brothers.”

  Marine laughed.

  “How are you?” Bley asked, stepping back to look at her.

  “Fine,” she answered. “Thanks for letting me visit.” She quickly took in Bley’s delicate features: his long aquiline nose, thin lips, and pale-blue eyes. His hair was receding, which only showed off his fine tanned forehead, his eyes, and his high cheekbones. As teenagers, Marine and her girlfriends had nicknamed him “Malibu Boy.”