Death in the Vines: A Verlaque and Bonnet Provençal Mystery

by M. L. Longworth

  Prodos smiled. “Wanna come into the garage and look at them?”

  Paulik got up and stretched his legs. “I’d love to.”

  Prodos held the garage door open for Paulik. “That one on the hoist is a DS 21, 1970.”

  “I remember when I figured out for the first time the puns Citroën was using for its car names,” Paulik said, staring up at the strange lemon-shaped car. “‘DS’ sounds like déesse. I ran and told my father.”

  “Yes, ‘goddess,’” Prodos replied. “And that’s what these cars are: goddesses. I hate long trips when I’m not in one of these.”

  “I’m with you. That hydraulic suspension—the way the car would float along, hardly even slowing down at potholes or speed bumps. The suspension had its bad side too—I used to get carsick.”

  “Ah yes,” Prodos said, resting a slender hand on the car’s rear. “That soupy-floaty motion did have its negative side effects, but I’ve never felt that way in one. It’s just ice-smooth to me.”

  “I remember my grandfather using the hydraulic suspension to change a flat tire,” Paulik said. “We used to beg him to drive the car with the suspension all the way up. He did once, but he only drove about twenty kilometers an hour. The car was sitting up about one meter off the ground. We hung our heads out the window and yelled like warriors.”

  Prodos laughed. “There were warriors in West Africa who actually did that for big-game hunting, with the suspension hiked all the way up, just like you say—except they weren’t going twenty kilometers an hour, but sixty.”

  “Really? Can the car handle that kind of speed while sitting one meter off the ground?”

  “No way,” Prodos replied. “They busted the suspensions. Citroën couldn’t figure out what was going on with all of these broken cars until it realized they were driving them with the suspension hiked up in order to chase antelopes. But ten or twenty kilometers an hour, over rough terrain, is no problem. Just the other day, before the rains…”

  “Do you sell these?” Paulik cut in as he walked around the burgundy ID.

  “All the time,” Prodos said. “There’s a waiting list. There are fan clubs all over the world.”

  “Makes you proud to be French, eh?” Paulik asked.

  “I’ve always been proud to be French,” Prodos said. “Except when Pompidou chose a Citroën SM for the presidential car.”

  Paulik groaned. “I agree! That was an eyesore compared with earlier Citroëns, even if it did have a Maserati engine.”

  “I’m thinking of selling the Range Rover,” Paulik said as he came into their kitchen. Hélène Paulik looked up at her husband, pushing aside her glass of red wine.

  “You’re so late tonight, Bruno,” she said.

  “I’m sorry,” he replied. “I must have conducted a record number of interviews today. And everyone has an alibi, or no motive.”

  “Did you listen to my messages?” she asked. “Léa even left you a message. She’s in bed, sleeping, by the way.”

  Paulik looked up at the kitchen clock; it was after 10:00 p.m. “I heard Léa’s message. I’ll write her a note and put it by her bed.”

  “A note?”

  Paulik set the bottle down; he had been about to pour himself a glass of red wine. “Hélène, I’m sorry. I know that Léa misses me, and that you’re under stress at work….”

  “Stress? That’s what you call it, Bruno?”

  Paulik shrugged. “Yes, stress. Hélène, I’m doing everything I can….”

  “It’s more than stress! Olivier is now accusing his employees of stealing wine! He’s gone through all the family members, and he’s so desperate he’s started in on us…. Cyril quit today!”

  “He quit? Well, I’m sorry about Cyril quitting, but the Bonnards’ little wine loss is nothing compared with these women being attacked and killed!”

  “I’m not saying it is!” Hélène said. “Do you think I’m thick? I’m not comparing wine theft to rape and murder, and I know that Beauclaire’s wines aren’t worth as much as famous Bordeaux and California wines, but the sentimental loss…”

  “Sentimental loss? I went to a funeral today for a twenty-eight-year-old girl!”

  Hélène put her head in her hands and then looked up at her husband. “I’m so sorry. I had no idea.”

  Paulik sat down across from his wife. “And there’ll be two more funerals this week: one for Mme d’Arras, with the church full of people who didn’t like her but pretended they did; and the other in Rognes, with maybe ten people, one of whom cared very much for the dead woman.”

  “That’s terrible, honey.”

  “And so your Cyril is quitting,” Paulik said. “You’ll be overworked.”

  Hélène nodded. “He’s the best assistant I’ve ever had. A real natural.” She took a sip of wine and ate a handful of salted cashews. “I can’t stop eating these things.”

  Paulik grabbed a handful. “Yum. Dinner.” He got up and pointed to the bottle. “Do you mind if I have a glass?”

  Hélène laughed. “Go ahead. I could see that you needed one, but I kept interrupting.”

  “I was thinking today that I haven’t been doing enough on the Bonnards’ wine caper,” he said, pouring one of Hélène’s special-reserve Syrahs in a glass.

  “Caper? You make it sound like a board game.”

  “Sorry,” Paulik replied. “God, you don’t know how many times I’ve said ‘sorry’ today.”

  “Sorry,” Hélène said, and they burst out laughing. “I think we’re both exhausted,” she said.

  “I’m sure you’re right. I’m stumped on these attacks, and stumped on the Bonnards’ wine theft.” He sat back and had a sip of wine, swirling it in his glass and then sniffing it. “Wild raspberries. You make great wine, honey.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Do you really think Cyril’s leaving?” Paulik asked. “He could be bluffing.”

  “Oh yeah,” Hélène answered. “He’s already found another job, in Burgundy, for some Chinese who have just bought Château Baron Dubreuil. At double the salary.”

  “Are foreigners buying up all our wine estates?”

  “Almost! Soon we’ll have to buy our own wines back from them!” Both Pauliks laughed. “Luckily, Victor is very sharp in the cellar, and he loves it out in the field too. The two don’t always go hand in hand.”

  “Good for him, since he’ll inherit,” Paulik said, looking at his wife.

  Hélène sighed. “Pity me, not being born into a wine family.”

  Chapter Twenty-three

  A Secret in the Garden

  Verlaque parked his car in his garage and listened to his messages while walking into downtown Aix. He had turned his phone off while speaking to Soeur Clothilde and forgotten to turn it back on. He realized that he had been so mesmerized by their conversation that not only had he not switched his phone back on—something he never forgot to do—but he had also forgotten to pull off at the rest stop to look at Carcassonne. He had a text message from Marine that read “Still no word from the lab. Sylvie and Charlotte are back, so I’m at their place celebrating their return. Don’t wait up…. S. had a very exciting summer; we have much to talk about.”

  He listened to Paulik’s message about Philippe Léridon and decided to walk straight there. It sounded as if Paulik had had a busy day, while he himself had been walking in a rose garden, getting psychoanalyzed by a nun. He laughed for the first time that day, and it felt good.

  He zigzagged his way through Aix’s medieval streets until he got to the Palais de Justice. Verlaque looked up at the justice hall’s upper stories and noticed for the first time that instead of shutters on the windows there were flimsy blinds, many of them broken, flapping in the wind. “How embarrassing,” Verlaque muttered, and he turned up Rue Émeric David. He knew that wooden Provençal shutters would look out of place on a neoclassical building, but there must be a better solution than using metal blinds that were meant for interiors.

  On Émeric David he noti
ced how many storefronts had recently changed, and he was thankful that the antique dealer on the northwest corner was still in business. From across the street he looked at its interior, dimly lit, its walls painted a dark burgundy, and he remembered his grandmother Emmeline saying that antique shops were both welcoming and intimidating at the same time. He walked on, noticing that across the street from the d’Arras apartment was a tattoo-and-piercing salon. Verlaque didn’t have to guess twice about what Mme d’Arras had thought of it.

  He rang at number 16, Hôtel de Panisse-Passis, admiring its elaborate door carving as he waited. A crown was carved in huge relief in the center, and branching out from it were a variety of weapons: swords, an ax, bows and arrows, knives. Delicately carved ribbons and foliage offset the manly weapons. Scaffolding covered most of the façade, and a piece of tarp blew in the breeze, making a flapping sound against the metal poles of the scaffold. Verlaque stretched his neck and looked up between the wall and the blue tarp; much of the stonework was heavily carved into busts or foliage, and the second-story balcony was a riot of twisted wrought iron. It was all very wedding-cake-like. Someone in the seventeenth century had certainly been showing off.

  Verlaque was about to ring again when a male voice answered, “Oui?” A camera and speakerphone had already been installed at the front doors, even though the building was still being renovated.

  “Philippe? It’s Antoine Verlaque. We met at Jacob Lévy’s house last Friday night.”

  “Ah oui! Come in.” The door clicked, and Verlaque pushed it open and stepped inside—not into a hallway, as he had expected, but into a paved inner courtyard, open to the sky. Léridon walked across the courtyard and shook Verlaque’s hand. “Bon soir,” he said, smiling.

  “Bon soir,” Verlaque said. “I’m afraid this isn’t a social call.”

  Léridon’s smile faded. “In that case, let’s go inside to talk.” He gestured with his hand to the far side of the courtyard. They were walking across the cobblestones when Léridon stopped and said, “Is it about Mme d’Arras? Her husband’s on my case now too.”

  Verlaque nodded.

  “Follow me,” Léridon said, and they walked through a second set of doors—not wood, as they once would have been, but clear glass edged in matte-black aluminum frames. The contrast was striking between the old and the new. Inside the hall, the floors were laid in worn black-and-white-checkered marble, common in Aix’s hôtels. They turned left and walked into a living room whose central focus was a huge flat-screen TV. Verlaque winced. “This room’s finished,” Léridon said, his hands on his hips. “Can I get you anything? Coffee? Whiskey?”

  Verlaque chose a seat with his back to the television and wanted to say, “I’d love a whiskey. I’ve had a hell of a day.” Instead, he answered, “A coffee, if it’s no trouble.”

  “I have an espresso machine; it’ll take two seconds,” Léridon said. “I’ll be right back; the machine is in the temporary kitchen. Sugar?”

  “One lump. Thanks.” While Léridon was gone, Verlaque mused on his day; he had wanted to describe it as “hellish,” but it hadn’t been hellish at all. Reliving his past had been hellish, yes, but it had been eased by the company of the nun, especially in that environment. He sat back and looked around Léridon’s living room. The abstract paintings on the walls were probably expensive, but not to his taste: the colors were too garish. The white leather sofas were probably Italian, and expensive as well, but cold both to the touch and on the eyes. The color scheme seemed to be white, with highlights of red in the light fixtures, vases, and carpets, a color Verlaque didn’t like in decoration. The dark, almost brown red of Burgundy wine, perhaps, but not this bright red.

  Léridon came back balancing two espresso cups on a small tray and held the tray in front of Verlaque. “The blue cup is the one with sugar,” he said. “I always take it black.”

  “Thanks,” Verlaque said, stirring his coffee with a tiny silver spoon.

  Léridon sat down and drank his coffee. “So what’s d’Arras complaining about now?” he asked. “The noise? I told my workmen to knock off early, around six p.m., because I know how much it’s been bothering the d’Arrases.”

  “Him now, not them,” Verlaque answered. He brought his demitasse to his mouth, but the smell of the coffee turned his stomach. He forced himself to have a tiny sip, to be polite.

  Léridon finished his coffee in two sips and set the cup on a glass coffee table. “She wasn’t my favorite person in the world, but I’m sorry she died.”

  “She was murdered,” Verlaque said, leaning forward. “And, unfortunately, you were overheard threatening her. Multiple times.”

  Léridon laughed uneasily. “I have a hot temper,” he said. “Ask anyone who’s ever worked for me.”

  “I will.” Verlaque forced himself to finish his coffee and set his cup beside Léridon’s. “I’ll have to ask you if you have an alibi for Friday evening—”

  Léridon cut in. “I was at that cigar party.”

  “Between six and eight p.m.,” Verlaque said, “before the party.”

  “I was here.”

  “Were there any workmen still around? Or family members?” Verlaque watched as Léridon lowered his eyes and then rubbed them.

  “My wife’s in Paris….” he mumbled. “But the electrician was still here. I’ll get you his phone number.” Léridon went into another room and came back with a business card. “I don’t recommend him,” he said. “Every time I put the microwave on, the power downstairs cuts off. But here’s his phone number. I made him stay late Friday night to fix his mess.”

  “Thank you,” Verlaque said. “I’m sorry to have bothered you.” He went to get up and fell back down on the white sofa.

  “Are you all right?” Léridon asked, hovering over him.

  Verlaque looked at Philippe Léridon and saw two men standing before him. He rubbed his eyes and said, “Could I have a tall glass of water?”

  “Done,” Léridon said, quickly leaving the living room. Verlaque closed his eyes; when he opened them, Léridon was standing over him, holding a glass of water.

  “Thanks,” Verlaque said. “My mouth is incredibly dry.” He drank half of it and rested the glass on his knee. “M. and Mme d’Arras complained that you have something in your garden that you’re hiding. My commissioner reminded me of it earlier this evening.” Verlaque realized he had almost left Léridon’s without asking about it. Something was not right with him this evening, and he tried to ignore the churning noises his stomach was making.

  Léridon laughed uneasily. “Are they worried I’m building a swimming pool without a permit?”

  “No, they seem to think that it’s something more sinister,” Verlaque replied.

  Léridon sneered. “It’s none of their business, as I told both of them.”

  Verlaque finished his water and set the glass down. “It’s my business now, since Mme d’Arras was murdered. What’s out there, Philippe?”

  Léridon said nothing. He crossed the living room and looked at the front courtyard through the tall living-room windows.

  “You can show me tonight,” Verlaque said, rubbing his stomach, “or I can have four guys and a van in your courtyard tomorrow at eight a.m.”

  Still Léridon said nothing and continued looking out the window.

  “I can also tap your phones, have you followed, and go over your business and private bank accounts with a team of accountants from Paris who get their kicks finding holes in accounts….”

  Léridon turned toward Verlaque and held up his hand, the palm facing the judge. “All right, all right,” he said, “I get the point! But you’ll see; I haven’t done anything wrong.”

  “So let’s go and see it,” Verlaque asked.

  Léridon sighed. “I knew I couldn’t keep it a secret forever.” He looked at Verlaque, who was half slumped over on his sofa. “Let’s go outside, then.” Léridon went to the door, and Verlaque got up, trying not to groan. They walked through what Lérido
n referred to as a temporary kitchen, which looked to Verlaque like an already decent one, and exited through a set of French doors into a garden that was in total darkness. Léridon led, with a flashlight in his hand, toward a lean-to set against the rear stone wall. Once there, he motioned for Verlaque to squat down at the edge of the lean-to. Verlaque almost fell down onto the lush lawn.

  “You have to stick the upper half of your body over the hole to see it,” Léridon said, pointing his flashlight to where a blue tarp was laid. “Way over.”

  Verlaque did as he was told, awkwardly poising his body over the tarp, which made the same eerie flapping noise as the one by the front door. Verlaque’s forearms shivered, and he could feel sweat dripping down his back. Léridon stood behind him, shining the light on the blue tarp. “Are you ready?” he said. “Lean out a little more.”

  Verlaque set his aching stomach on the grass and craned his neck. He felt woozy; it must have been the long drive…or had Léridon put something in the coffee? His dry mouth…If Léridon had murdered Mme d’Arras, would he be stupid enough to kill an examining magistrate? But, buried in this hole, Verlaque’s body might never be discovered. The voice of Soeur Clothilde rang in his head, and her words: “It’s not your fault; you did nothing wrong.”

  He was struggling to get on his knees when he felt a hand on his shoulder. He imagined that it was Soeur Clothilde’s, forgiving him. Léridon said, “Lean over more or you won’t see it,” and Verlaque groggily obeyed. Léridon reached over and lifted the blue tarp off with a fast, practiced gesture; he shone his flashlight twelve feet below. “Do you see it?”

  Verlaque blinked and waited until his eyes had adjusted to the light. He gasped. Léridon was now lying on the grass beside him, looking down, his chin resting on the end of the flashlight. “Isn’t it amazing?” he asked.

  Below was a large mosaic floor, laid in small black and white stone. “It’s Roman, isn’t it?” Verlaque asked, not able to take his eyes off it. He blinked and looked down again, scanning the squares, diamonds, and circles that created a vivid geometric pattern. He couldn’t see any missing tiles—it was in perfect condition.