“There’s no permit, Alphonse. The mayor and I are as much in the dark as you.”
“Well, if that was a GMO crop and our town council knew nothing about it, there’s going to be a scandal, I promise you that. This is not just me, Bruno; the whole Green Party will kick up a stink, arson or no arson.”
“I can’t say I’m a fan of this GMO stuff,” said Bruno. “But arson is a crime. I’ll pursue that, GMO or no GMO. And I’ll expect your help, Alphonse. We can be on the same side about that, just as I think the whole council and the mayor will be on your side about permits for GMOs.”
Alphonse gave a cursory nod.
“One more thing, Alphonse. A bit of advice: There are so few leads on this case that the detectives are getting anxious. So it won’t be your old friend Bruno making inquiries but some serious cops looking for leverage. If they have to pin something unrelated on you to make you cooperate, they will. That’s how they work. And a commune like yours is just asking for a drug raid, so if there’s anything up there that shouldn’t be, you’d better get rid of it fast.”
Alphonse nodded.
“Now let’s go down and find Max,” said Bruno.
9
Max, bare-chested and tanned, his long, fair hair sun-streaked, was energetically wielding a hoe on the weeds of Cresseil’s kitchen garden when Bruno pulled up in front of the barn. Beside Max was the French-Canadian girl Bruno had met at the cave. As she stood up from the weeding she was almost as tall as Max. She wore a low-cut T-shirt that revealed the tops of her tanned breasts, and her shorts were very short indeed. No wonder Max always seemed to be wherever she was, Bruno thought.
Cresseil was sitting on an old wooden chair, resting his chin on his walking stick and watching the youngsters work. An aged Porcelaine, one of the classic French hunting dogs, lay asleep at his feet. The old man turned to see his visitors approaching and held out a gnarled right hand.
“Alphonse, Bruno,” he said. “Welcome to you both. A little apéro? Max, time to stop work. Your dad’s here.”
“Thanks. I’ll take a glass of that wine you made last year,” said Alphonse, before Bruno could say this might not be the best time to sit around drinking, at least not until Max had been told of his mother’s fate. “Give it a try, Bruno,” Alphonse went on.
Max put down his hoe and came toward them, murmuring greetings. He kissed Alphonse on both cheeks, then did the same to Bruno, whom he’d known since boyhood.
“You remember Jacqueline from the cave?” Max said as she came forward to shake Bruno’s hand and to embrace Alphonse. That was interesting, thought Bruno. The girl knew Max’s family already. Again, she held on to Bruno’s hand slightly too long, and her appraisal of him was slightly too frank, almost brazen. It was automatic, Bruno realized; she may not even have known the kind of signals she was sending.
“Bring our guests some wine, Max,” said Cresseil, and Max slipped his shirt over his broad shoulders and went into the house, followed by Jacqueline.
“You’ve got him working hard,” said Bruno.
“It does him good. The devil finds work for idle hands,” Cresseil replied, pulling a well-used pipe from the pocket of his waistcoat and striking a match. Between puffs, he squinted at Bruno. “What brings you here? Bad news?”
“Not good,” said Bruno, and the three men waited in silence until Max returned with a small table under one arm and two folding chairs swinging easily from the other. He set them down as Jacqueline came out with a tray. Max poured the drinks and the two young people sat cross-legged beside the old man. The dog stirred, rolled over and put his head on his master’s foot.
“Max, Bruno has some bad news,” Alphonse said when they were seated. Bruno took a breath to settle himself. He’d never had to deliver a death notice quite like this, to the abandoned child of a long-gone mother. Nor had he ever had to combine the matter with a police inquiry.
“I got word from Paris. I’m afraid your mother has been killed in a traffic accident. I’m sorry,” Bruno said. He paused a moment and went on. “There will probably be a bit of paperwork since she had you listed as next of kin, but I can take care of a lot of that for you and help you with the rest.”
Max stared at him blankly, pursed his lips and then looked away across the river. Jacqueline put her hand on his arm but kept silent.
“Alphonse and Céline and the rest of the commune and Grandpa Cresseil here are my family,” Max said after a moment. “As for my mother, I barely knew her and hardly ever heard from her, so I can’t say I feel very much. I always thought I’d meet her again, as an adult, when we each had our own lives and could talk calmly.”
“We can have her buried up at the commune,” said Alphonse.
“I never saw the point in burials,” said Max. “I’m not religious, and cremation makes more sense to me.” He turned to Bruno. “Should I come to your office and sign something?”
“Not yet. We’ll have to wait for the paperwork from Paris. You don’t have to decide anything now, but if you want we can arrange for the cremation to be done up there.”
Max nodded vaguely, then took a long sip of wine and held up his glass. “What do you think of it, Bruno? It’s last year’s, the first wine I helped Cresseil make.”
“I didn’t do much,” said Cresseil. “Just sat here and watched while you did all the work.”
Bruno twirled the glass and took a sniff, then a sip. “It’s pretty good, Max. But then the wine you made up at the commune was pretty good as well. Alphonse let me try a glass.”
“This year’s will be better. Jacqueline is going to help,” Max said, and rose to his feet in a single, supple movement, bringing the girl up with him. He looked at Alphonse, making it clear that he wanted to leave.
“Just a minute, Max,” said Bruno, shifting uneasily in his chair. It was terrible timing but he knew he had to ask Max where he had been on the night of the fire.
“I was in bed asleep,” Max replied to Bruno’s question, still standing, still poised to leave. He gave Bruno a nervous smile and then glanced at Jacqueline.
“Up at the commune?” Bruno pressed.
“No, you stayed here that night,” Cresseil said abruptly. “I don’t sleep too well these days. Max was here that night because I’d have heard if he left. Half the valley would have heard that old motorbike.”
Bruno looked at Cresseil. It seemed like an unconvincing alibi but one that would be hard to shake. Max’s response had been too glib, Cresseil’s interruption too quick. J-J had once told him that a policeman had to assume that nobody ever told the truth, but Bruno was not accustomed to being lied to. His relationship with the people of Saint-Denis was such that they almost always did tell him the truth. If Max was lying, Bruno wasn’t sure he’d be able to tell, even though he’d spent hours with Max on the rugby field and watched him grow from boyhood. Bruno scratched his head and scrutinized the young man. It was time to push Max a bit.
“Just speaking hypothetically, you wouldn’t have needed the bike. You could have walked out quietly, even walked up through the hills to the field. It’s not that far,” he said. “You’re fit enough, you could even have run …”
“I could have, but I didn’t,” Max snapped at him. He regained his composure almost instantly. “You don’t really suspect me, do you? It’s just you being a flic.”
“Have you seen my eyebrows, Max?” Bruno said. “See where they’re burned off? And I still cough occasionally from the fumes I breathed in. I’m taking this fire very personally because it could have killed me. So, yes, I’m being a flic.”
“Sorry, Bruno,” Max said, scrutinizing Bruno more closely and looking chastened.
“Whoever set that fire left a kind of bomb in there that went off just as the firemen got close. Did you know that?”
“That’s not …,” Max began, but then seemed to catch himself. Bruno wondered what he’d been about to say. “That’s not what was in the newspapers. I hadn’t heard anything about a bomb.”
Max froze for a moment at the mention of prison. Then he shook his head firmly. “I don’t know anything about it,” he said, and Jacqueline looked at him, rather anxiously, Bruno thought. There was nothing that could be called proof, but Bruno suddenly felt with dismay that he could be looking at the culprit. He pulled out his cell phone, as if checking for a message, but instead hit the speed dial to call his office voice mail, which would record the rest of this conversation as a message.
“You haven’t heard any gossip about it among the écolos?” Bruno asked, holding the phone casually in his hand. “People must be talking about it. What about your old girlfriend, Dominique? You must have talked about it with her.”
“Sure, we’re talking about it; I told you that,” Alphonse broke in. “Some of us were getting very suspicious about that place.”
“I was asking Max the question,” Bruno said abruptly, his eyes firmly on Max.
“We talk all the time, via e-mail and instant messaging, texting. Dominique’s always been my best friend.” He turned to Jacqueline with an encouraging smile and took her hand. “She was never my girlfriend, but we’ve known each other forever.” The girl glanced at Bruno before turning her eyes back to Max.
“So what information did you and Dominique exchange when you talked about the fire? I’m trying to find out if there are any écolo crazies around here who would do something like this. It wasn’t just me and the pompiers that were at risk. It could have burned down Dominique’s farm, for God’s sake.”
“Do you think so?” asked Max, real concern in his voice. “It was that dangerous?”
“A bit more wind, a bit of delay in the pompiers getting there, and we’d have had a real disaster,” said Bruno. “So, any ideas?”
Max shrugged.
“And why burn down the shed, rather than just the crop?” Bruno pressed.
“How should I know? Maybe whoever started the fire wanted to destroy the files, whatever it was they had in there. It said ‘office equipment’ in the paper.”
“Did Dominique tell you about the office?” Bruno could hear the harshness in his voice, and he took a breath to calm himself. Sud Ouest had indeed mentioned a destroyed typewriter, but the paper had reported nothing about files.
“She said she was keeping files up to date when she went up there. She’s furious about the fire. Dominique was starting to think that GMOs made sense. That’s mainly what we talked about.”
“You agree with her?”
Max shrugged again. “I don’t know. It’s technical, very complex. I mean, most of the vines in France are transplants of Californian rootstock. And to do that you have to graft your cutting onto the root of another kind of vine. Isn’t that genetic modification? In its own way, I mean?”
“So what do you think about the fire?” Bruno wasn’t going to let it go.
“It was a really foolish, dangerous thing to do. So if I learn anything, I’ll let you know,” said Max. He draped his arm around Jacqueline and turned to go. “If that’s all, I’ll see you at rugby practice, Bruno.”
Max put his hand on Cresseil’s shoulder in farewell and walked off with Jacqueline to the barn, where he pulled out Cresseil’s old motorbike. It looked like World War II vintage. Alphonse shrugged an apology and followed, preparing to clamber aboard the pillion seat. Bruno turned off his phone as he watched Max embrace the girl before she pulled a battered bicycle from the hedge and began pedaling away alone.
“You seem to have grown fond of Max,” Bruno said to Cresseil when the roar of the motorbike and the clouds of blue smoke had faded. He was wondering how tough it would be to break Cresseil’s alibi. Without that, Max would be the prime suspect.
“If it weren’t for him, they’d have had me in the old folks’ home by now,” said Cresseil. He rummaged in his pockets for his matches, then lit his pipe again. “He helps with my shopping and gardening, and he fixed the roof. I couldn’t do without him, to be honest. And he won’t take anything—no money, nothing. Even that old bike he fixed, he says he’s only borrowing it, that he’ll leave it for when my leg’s better.”
“How’s your leg these days?”
“I can get around, just. But it won’t get any better. The circulation is so bad they might have to amputate. I don’t think I can take another winter here. They’ll get me into that home yet.”
“It might be for the best.”
“Bruno, I may be old, but I’m not a fool. I won’t go into that place until I have no other choice because we both know that the only way I’ll leave it will be feetfirst. They won’t even let me have my dog, the best hunting dog in the valley. Mind you, he’s on his last legs, just like me.”
He reached down with his walking stick and poked the sleeping dog gently in the side. His eyes opened, and the old man and the old dog looked at each other for a long moment, exchanging some deep but unspoken communication. The dog squirmed across the grass to nestle against Cresseil’s legs, then closed his eyes again. Bruno smiled, watching them.
“Max seems to have gotten himself a girlfriend,” Bruno said. “She’s a good-looking one.”
“They work together at Hubert’s cave; she’s studying wine, like Max. He’s crazy about her, and I can’t say I blame him. He’s brought her here a few times to help with the vines.” His eyes twinkled, and he winked at Bruno. “Takes years off me, just looking at a woman like that. I don’t suppose I’ll see many more young beauties. I’ve got a feeling I haven’t much time left.”
“What about this place?” Bruno asked. “Do you have family to leave it to?”
“There’s always family somewhere, cousins or some such, but none that I can say I’m close to, none that I’d especially want to have the place. I was born in this house, Bruno, and lived here all my life, over eighty years on this farm, and I’m very particular about what I want to happen to it. I’ve been thinking about it, and I know what I want. I just don’t know how to go about it. I was going to ask your advice.”
“Ask away. If I don’t have an answer I’ll find someone who does.”
“Well, I was thinking about Max, whether I could leave it to him when the time comes.”
Bruno whistled softly. That would be quite an inheritance for a young man. It could also mean a lot of legal complications. Under French law it was almost impossible to exclude a family member from right of inheritance. It also meant, Bruno thought, that he could neither refute nor rely on the old man’s alibi for Max on the night of the fire.
“You know the inheritance laws,” Bruno said. “Family comes first, however distant.”
“I know, and I’ve thought about that. But what if I were to adopt the boy? He’d be family then, wouldn’t he?”
“I suppose he would. I don’t even know if you can adopt somebody over the age of eighteen. In any event, he’d have to agree, and he’s an independent young man. Ambitious, too. He might not want to get locked into the land.”
“We’ve discussed it. Max likes this terrain, likes the house. He says this whole stretch down to the river can produce good wine. He wants to try planting some new vines, different varieties, when he comes back at Christmas. Just to see how they take in the soil. I haven’t had the heart to tell him I don’t think I’ll be here at Christmas.”
“Well, keep it to yourself for a bit, until I can research the law about the adoption and get back to you. And the boy won’t want any more shocks for a while. I know he wasn’t close to his mother, but her death will still take some getting used to.”
Cresseil nodded. “His new girlfriend will help with that. She’s a pretty thing, that Jacqueline, but she’s got a sharp mind. Wise beyond her years.”
“Maybe a bit too sharp for Max, you mean?” Certainly too sharp for me, Bruno thought. And too flirtatious. “Do you want a hand up?” Bruno asked.
“No, I can totter off on my own. But I’d be glad if you could take the table and chairs back to the porch. And the glasses. You can have that wine, if you like. It’s not bad, is it?”
“Not bad at all, but it tastes pretty much like your wine always did.”
The old man grinned. “You ought to hear young Max talk about the way we make the wine around here,” he said. “He’s read all the books, and goes on about cold fermentation and stainless-steel vats and malolactic something-or-other that I never heard of. I tell him that old wooden wine vat was good enough for my father and for his father before that and it’s good enough for me.”
“I suppose all that new equipment would cost quite a lot.”
“It’s not so much that. I’m not a winemaker; I always just made enough for myself and the family, with a bit left over for friends. That was how everybody around here did it in the old days. We all got together and helped each other pick the grapes, and we’d all tread them together, all the young people, and then we’d all come together again for the bottling. Those were happy times, Bruno. That’s how I fell in love with my Annette, treading the grapes together. That’s why most of the babies used to be born in May, nine months after the vendanges. Did you know that?”
Smiling, Bruno shook his head. He hadn’t known that, but he could understand how it must have been.
“It was the harvest of the Liberation, September of ’44. The Germans had been kicked out and De Gaulle was back in Paris. It was a great time, and a great harvest that year.”
The old man paused, his eyes looking across the valley into a distant past, a smile playing gently among his wrinkles.
“Of course I’d known Annette before when she was a schoolgirl; she lived just up the valley,” he went on. “But treading the grapes that September, seeing her blond hair tumbling down around her shoulders and her lovely white legs with the grape juice running down them … I could have licked it all off, I tell you. Ah, Bruno, she was a real beauty, so delicate, and you could tell from the way she liked treading the grapes that she was a lively one. I was young and strong and proud of myself after being in the Maquis, and all the girls looked up to those of us who had fought the Germans. Well, you can imagine. We got married in November, and the baby came along in May. I was in the army by then, in Germany.”
Bruno 02 - The Dark Vineyard Page 6