Death in the Vines: A Verlaque and Bonnet Provençal Mystery

by M. L. Longworth

  Rémy looked at Olivier Bonnard and shrugged.

  “Come on, Rémy!” Albert said, walking around the van to the passenger side.

  Victor had laid the duffel bag on the ground and removed two bottles of wine. “Here, Grandpa,” he called. “Your boules!”

  Rémy got into the driver’s seat and rolled down the window. “We got what we could,” he whispered to Olivier, his head leaning out of the window. “But some of the guys had drunk the wine already. I didn’t, though. Don’t worry. You’ll get all mine back.”

  Olivier put his hand on Rémy’s arm. “Thank you so much, Rémy. You should keep a few bottles for yourself.”

  “Eh? No, no. I wouldn’t dream of it. Happy to be of service.”

  Olivier glanced toward the back of the van and saw that Verlaque, Hélène, Bruno, and Victor had quickly unloaded the wine while Thébaud looked on, his arms crossed. Olivier tapped the van’s door and said, “Have a great game.” As Rémy waved his cap in the air, Olivier could hear his father loudly complaining about Jean-Philippe, who he thought had cheated during their last game.

  “I’ll have him back in time for dinner!” Rémy called as they drove through Domaine Beauclaire’s gates.

  “M. Thébaud,” Olivier Bonnard said, shaking the wine expert’s hand, “I don’t know how to thank you.”

  “It was nothing.”

  “Will you stay for dinner?” Élise asked excitedly.

  “Thank you, but no, I have to catch the TGV back to Paris.” Thébaud smiled and added, “I’m having a late dinner with my editor.”

  “Are you writing a wine book?” Olivier asked.

  “I’m publishing my memoirs.”

  Verlaque looked at Thébaud and smiled.

  “Wow! We’ll be sure to buy the book when it comes out,” Élise said. “What’s the title?”

  The wine expert straightened his bow tie. “Confessions of a Wine Thief.”

  “Ha!” Verlaque laughed out loud.

  Thébaud ignored him. “The TV rights have already been sold,” he said, smiling. “It will be a series on Canal Plus.”

  Élise clapped her hands together. “That’s wonderful! Who will play you? Oh, I can just see Romain Duris, or perhaps Guillaume Canet….”

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Big Spender

  It’s strange,” Verlaque said as they walked through the vineyard back toward the house. “We have two separate cases here, but both involve elderly people who are experiencing dementia.”

  “And both remember the war,” Paulik added. “It’s like my uncle. The worse it got, the more he kept reliving the past.”

  “And what dementia and World War II have to do with the deaths of Mlles Montmory and Durand, I just don’t know,” Verlaque said.

  “Maybe they’re not connected, and that’s all there is to it.”

  The grapes hung heavy on their branches, many of the clusters hidden by fat green leaves. Paulik looked down at them, remembering harvesting for his father, and the fear that he’d snip off a finger while cutting the grapes off their branches.

  The sky was bright blue, and it was suddenly hot again. Verlaque kicked at the dusty red earth; it was as if it had never rained. “They’ll be harvesting soon,” he said.

  “Any day now,” Paulik replied. “I was surprised that Olivier was so calm back there. He’s usually uptight just before the harvest.”

  Verlaque asked, “Does it bother Hélène that she has to make someone else’s wine?”

  Paulik nodded. “It does now. I mean, recently. It never used to, but I think it’s now dawned on Hélène that she’ll never have her own vineyard. Victor will be the enthusiastic natural winemaker at Beauclaire. When Hélène first started out, she thought that perhaps she could buy some small place in the Languedoc, but even those vineyards are now out of any mortal’s price range.”

  Verlaque stopped to look at the rows of vines. “I don’t think I know of any other métier where so many exterior elements have to be dealt with while you produce a product that must be good to, well, taste. Winemakers have to deal with so much: geography, geology, soil science, history, tradition….”

  “And trends,” Paulik added.

  “Yes, you’re right, trends and fashions. Not to mention the complicated science involved: chemistry, biology, the science of taste…. I’m always very moved when I hear winemakers speak about their work.”

  “And the wine often reflects the winemaker,” Paulik said. “Hélène’s wines remind me of her: soft, and yet sometimes surprising and tough in character.”

  Verlaque nodded. “I once saw a documentary about winemaking, and they were interviewing a father and daughter who both made their own wines in Burgundy. There was a really tearful moment when they had this heart-to-heart, and the daughter accused her father of being cold and impersonal, but she said it through his wines: that his wines were cold and hard to get to know. She was crying her eyes out.” They walked on in silence. Antoine Verlaque was thinking about how and when he would confront his family, much as that Burgundian winemaker had confronted her father in the family’s damp cellars. Bruno Paulik was thinking about Hélène, and her wines, and the day when he fell in love with her.

  “One mystery solved, three to go,” Verlaque said as they passed through the gate that led from the vineyard to the Bonnards’ courtyard. He brought Paulik up-to-date on Léridon’s hidden mosaic floor.

  “A Roman floor?” Paulik asked. “No wonder he didn’t want to tell anyone. There goes his renovation down the drain.”

  “Exactly,” Verlaque said. “It’s like you’ve found this incredible work of art, and it becomes a hindrance, not a pleasure. I thought of your dad right away. Is he still on his Roman-history kick?”

  “Oh yeah,” Paulik replied. “He found another Roman coin at a friend’s the other day. Do you think…”

  “That he could have a peek at Léridon’s mosaic?”

  “Yeah, before the city ropes it off.”

  “I already asked Léridon and he said yes, bring your dad around anytime, but soon.”

  “It’s a relief that the Bonnards’ wine theft was an inside job, and not even theft,” Paulik said, laughing. “And now we know that there’s no relation between the murder of Mme d’Arras and the wine theft.”

  “But we still need to determine if Mme d’Arras’s death was related to the deaths of Mlles Montmory and Durand,” said Verlaque. He suddenly remembered that Marine hadn’t heard back from her elderly neighbor, Philomène Joubert. “How did your talk go with Gisèle Durand’s ex?”

  “Fine,” Paulik replied. “He’s a Citroën DS buff, and a bit of a poet.”

  Verlaque smiled. “And his alibi sticks?”

  “He doesn’t have an alibi,” Paulik said, stopping when he got to his car.

  Verlaque looked sideways at his commissioner. “Doesn’t have an alibi?” he asked. “Shouldn’t that concern us?”

  “Nah,” Paulik said. “He’s innocent.”

  “What’s his background?” Verlaque asked. He didn’t understand how Paulik could be so certain of the mechanic’s innocence.

  “Citroën buff, as I told you,” Paulik said. “DS in particular.”

  “That’s the long, sleek one with the hydraulic suspension?”

  “Yes. My grandfather had one. He drove it for us once with the suspension hiked all the way up. The car was a meter…” Paulik stopped talking and started running toward his car.

  “Forget something?” Verlaque called after him.

  “Prodos drove a car like that last week,” Paulik said over his shoulder. He reached his car and jumped in, hanging his head out of the window as he yelled to Verlaque, “I’m going back to the garage. I’ve been an idiot!”

  Verlaque got into his car and cut the end off a Cuban cigar handmade by a young Cuban, purchased on the sly by Fabrice on his last trip to Havana. He smiled, thinking of Fabrice’s story about tracking down the mythical young cigar roller and, after several failed
attempts because of Fabrice’s faulty Spanish, finally locating his apartment. “I’ll call him Miguel,” Fabrice had whispered to Verlaque when he gave the judge the cigar, “but of course that’s not his real name.”

  His cell phone rang and he answered it, tilting his car seat back and looking at the plane trees that lined Domaine Beauclaire’s drive. “Oui?”

  “Antoine, it’s Marine.”

  He sat up. “Yes. Have you heard?”

  “Positive.”

  “What?”

  “I mean yes, I’ve heard, and everything’s okay!”

  He sat back and closed his eyes. “The tests were negative, then.”

  “Yes, sorry to confuse you,” she answered. “Everything’s a hundred percent fine.”

  “I’m so happy. We’ll have some Champagne tonight.”

  “Sounds lovely. See you later.”

  “Ciao.”

  He put the car into first gear and drove away, listening to Cuban salsa music and blowing cigar smoke out of the open window. Verlaque knew he would have to call Christophe and Fabrice and apologize to them both. However much he liked Christophe Chazeau, his story of getting mud on his tires at another winery had rung as entirely invented. But the wine seller had remembered Christophe’s visit on Friday evening, and even the wines he had purchased: a white and a red both from Château Simone. “Big spender,” Verlaque mumbled. They were Aix’s most expensive wines, and his least favorites.

  Paulik parked his car in front of the garage door, about as close as Rémy had parked his van in front of the Bonnards’ kitchen. He quickly ran up to the door that led to the office and pulled it; it was locked. “Merde!” he said aloud. He banged on the door and called out, “André! I need to speak to you!” and tried the door again, but it was definitely locked. He cupped his hands around his eyes and peeked through the window into the garage’s office; the desktop was still covered with invoices and coffee cups. He quickly moved to the front of the garage and looked into the garage’s working station; the DS 19 and 21 were gone.

  “Merde, merde, merde!” he said aloud. “Why was I so stupid?”

  A car pulled into the parking lot, and Paulik swung around, hoping to see Prodos, but it was a police cruiser. Paulik walked over to the car as the officers got out.

  “Looking for something?” the taller one asked.

  “I was,” Paulik said, “but he’s already flown the coop. I’m Commissioner Paulik from Aix-en-Provence, but I live here.” Paulik took out his badge and showed it to the two policemen.

  “Do you mean André Prodos?” the taller one asked. “He’s had two break-ins within the last six months, so we promised we’d keep a lookout on the garage.”

  “Yeah, André,” Paulik replied. “You know him?”

  “Sure,” he answered. “Those weird old cars. My brother-in-law knows him; he bought a DS 21 off André a while ago. The thing sucks gas like you wouldn’t believe. Is André in trouble?”

  Before Paulik could answer, they received another call on their radio and took off, responding to a domestic-violence call in Lourmarin.

  Paulik went back to the window and looked into the office again. Bits of the conversation with Prodos came back to him: “We’re both loners”…“I needed to protect myself”…“Just the other day, before the rains.” Paulik wiped the dirty glass with the edge of his sleeve and toured the office’s interior with his eyes. It seemed to him that the office was emptier than it had been last night; on the walls there were fewer tools—in fact, almost no tools at all. As his eyes scanned the room, he saw the cheap column that had held the bust of Charles de Gaulle, in the corner of the room, beside the coffee machine. But the bust of the illustrious president was gone. “Merde!” Paulik yelled, banging the wall with his fist. “Merde! Merde! Merde!”

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Two Glasses of Lagavulin

  You’re home a bit earlier than usual,” Marine said, kissing Verlaque. She stood back and looked at the judge; she loved his shaggy black hair streaked with gray, his broken nose, his dark-brown eyes and full lips.

  “You can’t imagine how happy your phone call made me today,” he said, kissing her.

  “I was so happy I almost cried,” Marine said. “In fact, I think I did.”

  “Did you tell your folks?”

  “Yes, I called my father at his office right away, and he’ll tell Maman.”

  Marine took Verlaque in her arms and ruffled his hair and tightly hugged him. “There was a time I was afraid to hug you,” she said, pulling away so that she could look at him. “I mean really hug you, like a best friend does, or a cousin.”

  “Let’s hope we’re not related,” he said, smiling. “My family is messed up, and cousins marrying are never a good idea.”

  Marine looked at him in shock, surprised that he would mention marriage, even in an abstract way.

  “Let’s have another hug,” he said, wrapping his arms around her. “I know that for a long time I was distant, and I’m sorry.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” she said, rubbing the back of his head. “Hey, how was your day?”

  Verlaque laughed. “That’s a conversation changer. Actually, I’d like to tell you about my day yesterday.”

  Marine looked at him; his smile had disappeared. “Okay,” she replied. “Does this need wine? Oh! I forgot to buy Champagne!”

  “That’s okay. I’ll take something a tad stronger. Would you join me?”

  “All right,” she answered. “But put some water in mine.”

  Verlaque took the whiskey out of the cupboard high above the refrigerator and poured two glasses. He carried them into the living room, where Marine was sitting on the sofa, flipping through an IKEA catalog. “Thank you,” she said, putting the catalog down and reaching for her glass. Verlaque smiled when he saw that the catalog was marked with dozens of Post-its.

  “I almost called you to have you meet me at those stone picnic tables we like up at Mont Sainte-Victoire,” Verlaque said.

  Marine shifted, holding her glass and staring at Verlaque. “What is it, Antoine? Those tables we usually reserve for big events—like our birthdays, or when I get a paper published.”

  “I met with a nun yesterday,” he answered. “At the abbey in Jonquières.”

  “I know of that place,” she said. “My mother loves their rose garden. Is the nun Mme d’Arras’s sister? Mme Joubert told me about her.”

  “Yes,” Verlaque said. “We talked for over three hours.”

  “Oh my! She must have given you the whole Aubanel family story.”

  “Not really. She told me what you had already told me: that Natalie Aubanel’s father had been an SS officer. It shed no light on Mme d’Arras’s murder, I’m afraid. But it shed a lot of light on me. So did Sylvie’s photograph.”

  “Antoine,” Marine said, “I’m sorry, but you’re confusing me. Did you have time to go to Sylvie’s exhibition?”

  “Yes, and I must say that your friend is talented beyond words. You can tell her that for me.”

  “She’d love to hear it from you.”

  “She hates me,” Verlaque said, pouting and taking a sip of Lagavulin.

  “No, she doesn’t!” Marine answered. “Well, she didn’t like you for a long time….”

  They laughed and Marine put her hand on Verlaque’s. “What did the photograph tell you?”

  “To let go,” Verlaque said. “And then the nun told me to forgive.”

  Marine tilted her head toward his. “Go on,” she said. “Forgive whom?”

  “Monique, my mother, my father for not doing anything, and even in some weird way my grandmother Emmeline.”

  “Emmeline?” Marine asked. “But you adored her.”

  “Exactly,” he answered. “But she knew what had happened, so I have to forgive her for knowing. That’s what the nun said, anyway.” He lifted his glass. “Cheers.”

  “What did Emmeline know?” Marine asked, a bit exasperated that Verlaque would try to make a j
oke of things.

  “Well, about me and Monique.”

  “Antoine, who was Monique?” Marine asked. “You’ve called out her name in your sleep once or twice.”

  “I guess you could say she was my girlfriend.”

  “Why does she haunt you?”

  “She was my mother’s best friend,” Verlaque continued. “My mother introduced us, and knew that we were…sleeping together…but didn’t do anything about it, nor did my father.”

  “Antoine, how old was Monique? This is sounding very weird.”

  Verlaque laughed. “It was weird, believe me, but I had no idea at the time, until Emmeline took me away to Normandy with her. Monique was thirty-six.”

  Marine put her untouched glass down on the coffee table. “You lived with your grandparents in Normandy when you were really young, didn’t you? Did you move back there when you were in your twenties? After your affair with Monique?”

  “No, I never lived there in my twenties. I went there when I was fifteen.”

  Marine reached across the coffee table and picked up her glass. “I need a drink,” she said, sipping the whiskey.

  “You should just hold on to the glass,” Verlaque said.

  Marine ignored him. “So…are you telling me that when you were a boy, a boy, of fifteen, you had an affair with a thirty-six-year-old friend of your mother’s?”

  “It started when I was thirteen,” he said. “So Monique must have been thirty-four.”

  “Oh my God!” Marine whispered, setting down her glass again and putting her head in her hands.

  “Hey, it’s okay,” Verlaque said. “I knew you’d have this kind of reaction.” He threw his hands up in mock surprise.

  “Antoine!” Marine cried. “Don’t make a joke of this!” She got up to pace the room and then sat back down. “This is awful! You were a child! I could wring her neck!”

  “She’s dead,” Verlaque said. “She died of cancer years ago.”

  “Then I’ll go and spit on her grave!”

  “I’ll join you,” he said.

  Marine jumped up again. “You’re hopping around like a rabbit,” Verlaque said, watching her. “But she’s not entirely to blame.”