Death in the Vines: A Verlaque and Bonnet Provençal Mystery

by M. L. Longworth

  “Let’s face it,” Prodos told the crowd, “we’re all here because Citroën has produced a lot of groundbreaking cars over its almost ninety-year history. And yet, before a model like this one, we’re spellbound. At least I am.” Prodos approached the crowd. “Sir,” he asked an elderly fan, “if you could use just one word to sum up Citroëns, what would it be?”

  “Innovative,” the man answered.

  “And you, sir?” he asked another fan.

  “Um…fun, I would say.”

  Prodos pointed to another man, who quickly answered, “Comfort.”

  A woman offered, “Individual.”

  Verlaque sighed, rubbing his stomach. “Let’s cut this off.”

  Paulik stepped forward and said, “Hello, M. Prodos.”

  “Hey, Commissioner!” Prodos said, as if Paulik had come to the rally as a fan. “Remember this one?” he asked, grinning and pointing to the car.

  Paulik stepped up and whispered, “We need to talk.”

  “Well, folks, that’s it for now,” Prodos announced, glancing at Paulik. “I’ll see you all at the ceremony this evening!” He turned off his microphone and set it carefully on a small table. “What’s going on?” he asked. “You look angry.”

  “This is the examining magistrate of Aix,” Paulik said, introducing Verlaque.

  “I told you everything,” Prodos said, his voice rising.

  “What’s the big idea, skipping town?” Paulik asked.

  “Skipping town? I always come to these rallies. It’s how I pay the bills; I always sell a car here.”

  “You didn’t think to tell me about the rally?”

  “I didn’t think I was going to come,” Prodos said, “until after your visit. I phoned my friend Laure—she was Gisèle’s boss—and she told me it would be good for my head to come this weekend. Gisèle’s memorial service is on Monday afternoon, so I’ll be back in time. I had to clear out the garage in a jiffy.”

  Paulik looked over and saw the bust of Charles de Gaulle. “You brought him?” he asked.

  Prodos beamed. “He’s part of my shtick! I was about to tell the story of the shooting when you showed up.”

  “And your shop is cleared out of tools,” Paulik said.

  Prodos nodded. “I bring tools with me to these rallies,” he said. “We all do. You have to be ready to help out a fellow DS owner. The cars can be…delicate.”

  Paulik sighed and looked at Verlaque. “Do you have an alibi for Wednesday, September 7?” he asked, thinking of Suzanne Montmory.

  “What time?”

  “Between four and seven-thirty p.m.”

  “Wednesday evenings are my therapy sessions,” Prodos said. “Between six-thirty and seven-thirty p.m.”

  “And before that?”

  “I would have been in my garage.”

  “Talking to me,” a voice said. Verlaque and Paulik swung around. Before them was François Gros, the examining magistrate of Aix before Verlaque took over. Gros had retired at sixty-two with full benefits to spend on his great love, the Citroën DS 19.

  “François!” Verlaque said, shaking the man’s hand.

  “Sir!” Paulik said, standing straighter.

  “I called you that Wednesday afternoon, André,” Gros said, “and talked your ear off. I remember it was Wednesday because Wednesdays my wife goes to our daughter’s and babysits the grandkids, so I had the afternoon all to myself.”

  Prodos slapped his head. “I remember now. We talked about—”

  “What in heaven’s name is going on here, Verlaque?” Gros asked.

  “We’re investigating three murders, François, in case you haven’t been watching the local news.”

  “You can fill me in later,” Gros said. “But, for the record, I would trust this young man with my life. Got it?”

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Le Gargouillou

  The cars in Michel Bras’s parking lot were decidedly different from those they had just seen: no Citroëns, vintage or otherwise. Most of the cars were German made, with the exception of a bright-yellow Ferrari with Parisian plates. Verlaque walked quickly up a flagstone path into the restaurant while Paulik stayed outside, looking at the view of the scrubby Aubrac plains from the restaurant’s hilltop. “Would you have a table for two for this evening?” Verlaque asked a well-groomed young man. “And a room or two?”

  The young man grimaced. “The restaurant is fully booked, sir.”

  Verlaque sighed and reached into his jacket for his badge. He showed it to the man, leaning over the desk, and said, “We’re here on official business, last-minute.”

  “I’ll see what I can do,” the young man said.

  “I’d appreciate that.”

  The man made a phone call and then put the receiver down. “We’ll set up a small table for you in the dining room,” he said. “And we have one room left, with a double bed.”

  Verlaque grimaced. “Fantastic. No twin beds, by any chance?”

  “No, sir.”

  “We’ll take it. Dinner at seven-thirty?” Verlaque knew it was a horribly unchic early dinner hour, but he wouldn’t last any later than that without eating.

  “Fine, sir,” the receptionist answered. “If you’d like to relax in the lounge before dinner, we’ll bring you your menus there.”

  “Lovely,” Verlaque said. “Thank you.”

  “I’ll call someone to show you to your room and take your bags.”

  “We don’t have any bags,” Verlaque said. He then whispered, “Remember, official last-minute business.” He walked quickly out of the restaurant and found Paulik where he had left him, looking at the view. “We have dinner booked, and a room. Slight problem with the bed, but I think we can work it out.”

  “That’s fantastic,” Paulik said. “But, honestly, sir, judging by these cars and this space-age building, I think we’re beyond our budget even as commissioner and judge.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Verlaque said, knowing that he wouldn’t bill the taxpayers of Aix for their dinner but would pay for it himself. “And if we’re going to share a bed tonight, you have to start calling me Antoine.”

  Paulik laughed uproariously. “I think they’ll bring us a folding bed if we’re really sweet.”

  “Do you snore?”

  “Yep. Do you?”

  “Yes, so I’m told.” Verlaque looked out at the sweeping valley before them, at once bright from the fading sunlight and yet dark from racing black clouds overhead. “The Massif Central is a special part of France, isn’t it?” Verlaque asked his commissioner.

  “Yes,” Paulik said. “But there really isn’t a corner of France that I don’t love, except for certain neighborhoods in Paris.”

  Verlaque laughed, not sure if Paulik was referring to the snooty sixth and seventh arrondissements, or the crowded and dirty nineteenth and twentieth. “My grandmother once told me that this whole region was entirely left out of her English guidebook on France,” he said. “My favorite painter is from this area. I have one of his paintings in my bedroom.”

  “Not Pierre Soulages?”

  “Yes,” Verlaque answered. “Do you know his art? Very black—I mean the color, not the mood.”

  “Hélène is a big fan,” Paulik replied. “She told me Soulages was from the Massif Central. In fact, I saw a village with his name on the map when we were getting close to Laguiole.” He didn’t add that Hélène had once taken the TGV to Paris to see a Soulages retrospective at the Centre Pompidou. He could only imagine what one of those paintings cost. Perhaps Verlaque’s was tiny.

  Verlaque put a hand on Paulik’s massive shoulder. “What do you say we go and have showers and pretend to put on clean shirts for dinner?”

  “I could get used to three-star restaurants,” Paulik said, sitting back in one of the white leather armchairs that were set before floor-to-ceiling plate-glass windows in the lounge, overlooking the plains and valley. “This is my first time.”

  Verlaque said, “You would
probably prefer to have a woman here with you for your first time.”

  Paulik laughed. “Yes, preferably my wife.”

  “If Hélène ever bottles her own wines, she’ll be wealthy, and perhaps a bit famous,” Verlaque said.

  “Wealthy, I don’t know,” Paulik answered. “Famous, perhaps, but only in the wine world, like Lalou Bize-Leroy up in Burgundy, and that Mondavi family in California.”

  Verlaque crossed his legs and lit a cigar, getting an angry look from a couple next to them.

  “France will be the last country left in Europe to pass a no-smoking bylaw, mark my word! And to think it’s already 2006!” the man said in English to his wife. “Come on, Margaret.” They quickly got up and went into the dining room.

  “Was he complaining about your cigar?” Paulik asked. “It’s not as if you were going to take it into the dining room.”

  “Of course not,” Verlaque said, lying.

  A waiter appeared, bringing two glasses of house Champagne. “Have you gentlemen chosen your menus? Or will you be dining à la carte?”

  “I’d like the complete tasting menu,” Verlaque said. He winked over at Paulik and said, “You should get that too.”

  Paulik closed the menu. “Fine, I will.”

  “Would you like to finish your cigar before you dine, sir?” the waiter asked. “Normally we serve a tartelette aux cèpes with the Champagne, but since you’re smoking…”

  Verlaque set his cigar in an ashtray. “Porcini-mushroom tarte? We’ll start eating now, thank you. I’ll look at the wine menu, please.”

  Paulik sat back and soaked in the view while Verlaque pored over the wine menu that the waiter had quickly delivered. “Would you like to have a look, Bruno?” Verlaque asked.

  “No, you go ahead and choose for us. I’m just happy sitting here watching the clouds race by.”

  A sommelier appeared, and Verlaque suggested a Riesling to start with.

  “Excellent choice, monsieur,” the sommelier said in a heavy accent that neither man could place. “Rieslings go so well with M. Bras’s vegetables.”

  “Great,” Verlaque said. “And we’ll have a red to go with the meat and cheese dishes. I’m having trouble deciding between the Mas Jullien and the Amalaya.”

  “Ah. As you know, the Mas Jullien is local, so to speak, from the Languedoc,” the sommelier answered. “But the Amalaya, that’s also a very special wine, from my home country.”

  Paulik looked over and raised his eyebrows. It hadn’t occurred to him that Verlaque would order a non-French wine.

  “Argentina?” Verlaque asked.

  “Yes, and I’m happy to report that not only will it go well with the second half of your meal, but it’s also…divine.”

  Verlaque smiled and handed him back the wine menu. “The Argentinian it will be.”

  “Look at these,” Verlaque said, leaning forward, when the mise en bouche arrived. “They look like tiny delicate tartes Tatin.” The judge and commissioner tried not to eat too quickly, to savor the thin, buttery pie crust that held slices of plump porcini mushrooms arranged in layers, exactly like the apples on famed tartes Tatin.

  Ten minutes later, they were seated in the dining room, facing picture windows that overlooked the setting sun. Their Riesling was uncorked, and Verlaque let Paulik taste it first. Large white plates began arriving in slow succession, mostly vegetables; they ate in silence until a sweet onion—slow-roasted and served with what the waiter called “licorice powder” but what was in fact a sweet and savory mix of olives, sugar, and ground almonds—caused the men to begin chatting again.

  “Do you think they’ll serve the gargouillou, even if it’s autumn?” Paulik asked, swirling the golden wine around in his glass.

  “I should hope so,” Verlaque said. “What does that mean, anyway?”

  “It’s local slang. It used to be a peasant stew made from potatoes, water, and ham.”

  “But now it’s become the Bras signature dish,” Verlaque said as a waiter approached their table. “I’ve seen versions of it in almost every fine restaurant I’ve eaten at in the past ten years.”

  “Gargouillou,” the waiter announced, gently setting down two white plates covered in a riot of bright colors. Both men tilted their heads, as if to count more easily the number of vegetables, wildflowers, and herbs on their plates. “White rose petals,” Verlaque said, thinking of Clothilde, and the abbey’s rose garden.

  “And poppies,” Paulik said, lifting a delicate petal with his fork. “And those dark-purple pansies that are almost black.”

  “Turnips, and radishes,” Verlaque said, taking a forkful of razor-thin vegetables. “Fall veggies.”

  “Half these things I can’t identify,” Paulik said. “And I’m from the country.”

  “I’ve read that Bras begins his day foraging for edible flowers and wild herbs,” Verlaque said.

  “This is what I call high dining. Who needs Beluga caviar?”

  Somewhere after the sixth course, a bright-white monkfish covered in what the menu called “black olive oil,” Michel Bras appeared in the dining room. Happy applause broke out among the diners, who up to that point had been quietly talking with their dining partners.

  “I heard that he’s going to let his son run the kitchen soon,” Paulik said, setting his fork down. “He almost looks like André Prodos, doesn’t he?”

  “Yes, and my high-school chemistry teacher, right down to the little round glasses. He’s coming this way!” Verlaque and Paulik pushed their chairs out and started to get up when the chef came to their table.

  “Please,” Bras said, “stay seated, Judge Verlaque and Commissioner Paulik. How is your meal?”

  “Wonderful…”

  “Amazing…”

  “The gargouillou was my favorite so far,” Paulik said, “and I’m not exactly vegetable-crazy.”

  “Mine was the monkfish,” Verlaque cut in.

  Bras looked down, smiling, amused by their enthusiasm.

  “It was so…black and white,” Verlaque went on, feeling foolish that he couldn’t describe the dish more accurately.

  “That’s exactly what I was trying to achieve with that dish,” Bras said. “I call it Darkness and Light. It represents the Aubrac plateau: the density of the dark clouds and dark hills, mixed with the brilliance of the bright light that we get up here because of the high altitude.”

  Verlaque smiled. “Have you been to the Yorkshire moors?” he asked. “They’re like the Aubrac.”

  “I’d love to go,” Bras answered. “Perhaps someday.”

  “And the black olive oil?” Paulik asked. “What makes it black?”

  “Black olives that we pit and then roast in the oven overnight,” Bras said. “The next day, we blend them with olive oil, and baste the monkfish continually with it as it’s gently sautéing.”

  “Low heat?”

  “Yes, or it turns bitter.”

  “It’s pitch black outside now,” Verlaque said, wanting to talk more of the landscape and less of recipes, which he knew he’d forget the next day.

  “And from November to April it will be bright white,” Bras said. “Snow and fog everywhere. Darkness and Light. Good evening, gentlemen.”

  “Good evening, and thank you,” Verlaque and Paulik replied in unison.

  “The past week has been like that,” Verlaque said. “Darkness and Light.”

  Paulik nodded as a waiter brought the next course. “I agree,” he said. “The unsolved murders, darkness; and Albert Bonnard handing out vintage magnums to barbers and pharmacists, light.”

  A second bed had been set up in a corner of the large room, the white sheets on both beds pulled down. Paulik sat on the edge of his bed and sent photographs of the meal from his cell phone to Hélène and Léa. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a dish as beautiful as that gargouillou anywhere,” he said, pressing the send button on his phone. “It looked like an Impressionist painting—a Monet. And I didn’t think I’d ever enjoy Argentinia
n wine so much, although the Malbec grape does come from Cahors….”

  Verlaque smiled to himself as he walked toward the bathroom. He showered for the third time that day, hoping that the hot water would somehow cleanse his body of all of the food he had just eaten. When he had toweled off and gone back into the bedroom, he found that Bruno Paulik was already in bed, snoring. Verlaque tiptoed to his bed, and was turning off the light switch when he saw his cell phone’s red light blinking. He had turned it to the silent mode during dinner and then forgotten to check it. Seeing that it was Marine’s number, he took the phone into the bathroom and called her.

  “Antoine?” Marine answered, her voice sounding sleepy. “Didn’t you get my message?”

  “Sorry, my phone was turned off.”

  “How was Michel Bras?”

  “Heavenly,” he answered. “And inspiring too, the way a good restaurant should be. I’ll tell you about it tomorrow, and bring you here someday.”

  “Great,” Marine said. “Listen, I have some important information for you. I finally spoke to Philomène Joubert.”

  Verlaque sat down on the edge of the bathtub. “Really? Is she still on her walk?”

  “No, she came home early to accompany a friend who twisted her ankle,” Marine said. “And the priests at Saint-Jean de Malte told her about Mme d’Arras’s death and that I needed to ask her something. That address where the woman was killed in Rognes…”

  “Six Rue de la Conception?”

  “Yes,” Marine said. “It’s Mme Joubert’s address. It’s where her childhood house was. It was torn down in the sixties.”

  “Mme d’Arras was probably there,” Verlaque said.

  “Yes,” Marine replied. “With her dementia, she was probably looking up lost friends, old houses, and neighborhoods that she remembered. My father told me that it’s common to do that. So the three murders are related.”

  “Perhaps,” Verlaque said. “But not necessarily the same killer.”

  “I think it was. Suppose Mme d’Arras saw, or heard, something? She was right there on Friday evening when that woman was…Oh God.”