“Right here on the private detective’s bill—Mrs. Maria Bondino, 4249 Sunset Drive, Sausalito, California. What very long roads the Americans have. She must be Grand-mère. Look, here’s a carbon copy of a letter from Maria to Francis, dated April 4, 1958—that’s after the court verdict—asking for money ‘to ensure the education of’ his niece Sophia. So that’s the baby girl in the photo, who presumably grew up to marry a French-Canadian called Duplessis and to become Jacqueline’s mother.”
“That makes Jacqueline the great-niece of our Francis X. Bondino,” said Bruno, “the man whose wise old face beams at us from all these company brochures. And his son would be Jacqueline’s cousin, as well as her lover.”
“Her lover?” said Pamela, startled. “You didn’t tell me that. Was that while she was seeing Max or before?”
“Maybe while she was seeing Max; I’m not sure. But I think she deliberately set out to meet young Bondino. She knew exactly who he was and what he was doing in Saint-Denis. She knew that she was sleeping with her own cousin and she knew all about the family feud. But I don’t think Fernando had the slightest idea who she was or that they were related. The two branches of the family seem to have been bitterly estranged.”
“That makes it sound rather sinister.”
“Indeed it does,” said Bruno. “What’s in that next file?”
“More press clippings, new ones, all about the Bondino company, printed out from the Internet. Here’s one from BusinessWeek in March of this year about production problems in Australia because of the drought. And here’s an interview with Bondino from a wine magazine in May, with a paragraph marked in the margin. It’s about ‘exploring new opportunities in Europe, where the industry has yet to benefit from consolidation.’ He mentions France and Italy and eastern Europe. And here’s another bit she’s marked, about there being an ‘unsustainable business model in the Bordeaux region with too many small producers making too many wines of variable quality and no consistency of product.’ It says here that Fernando Bondino graduated from Stanford business school.”
“So she knew back in May that Bondino was coming to Europe,” mused Bruno aloud. “And Hubert got her letter asking to come and work for him at the end of May. She came to Saint-Denis on purpose, knowing that Bondino would also be here. But what did she have in mind?”
“This file looks interesting,” said Pamela, who had been perusing it while listening. “It’s about the history of wine making in the Dordogne and Vézère valleys by some professor at a university in California. It says he has the Bondino chair of wine studies, and she underlined the concluding paragraph that says, ‘History therefore suggests that the Dordogne and Vézère valleys represent the last unexploited opportunities for quality wine production in Europe, with excellent climate and terrain, reliable water supplies and inexpensive land prices.’ So Bondino decided to come here to Saint-Denis just after his own professor delivered this paper. It’s dated in April of this year.”
Bruno looked out when he heard the crunching of gravel in the courtyard as J-J braked his car. The detective opened the door but remained in the driver’s seat, his phone to his ear, nodding as Bruno waved a greeting and gestured for J-J to join them inside.
41
J-J burst through the door of Jacqueline’s house, beaming with pleasure. “We’ve got him. I was right all along. DNA evidence. Those hairs under Max’s nails. They definitely came from Bondino.”
“But those hairs could have come from the fight at the bar earlier that evening,” Bruno said.
“Don’t you remember? He said Max never laid a hand on him. It’s on tape from the interrogation. He says he punched Max in the nose but Max never laid a finger on him in the fight. So how can he explain away his own hair?”
“I don’t know,” said Bruno. “But the reason I called you here is that this Canadian girl is a lot more than she seems. Look at these family photos and these files—she’s Bondino’s cousin, and she knows it but he doesn’t. And it looks like she’s been stalking him. Pamela can explain it all; I’m going to look around because Jacqueline could be back within the hour.”
Bruno found the garbage can in the kitchen. It was empty, but there was a large wicker basket beside the fire that seemed full of old newspapers. He fished among the first few, using his pen to sort through them, but they just seemed to be discarded copies of Sud Ouest. He stood up, but one of the papers came with him, somehow stuck to his pen. He tried to shake it off, without success. He looked, and there were two strips of adhesive tape sticking his pen to the newsprint. Trying to peel them away he found five more small strips of the tape, each about a couple of inches long, all stuck to the paper.
“Why would Jacqueline have these strips of adhesive tape?” Bruno murmured, thinking aloud.
“Gift-wrapping,” Pamela said as she arrived in the kitchen. “That’s how I do it. If I’m wrapping a present, I cut off several strips of tape at a time so they’re ready when I fold the paper.”
“There’s no sign of wrapping paper,” said Bruno. “She may already have dumped stuff in the main garbage can outside. Pamela, can you have a look while I finish checking something upstairs?”
Leaving J-J looking at the files, Bruno went upstairs to find two bedrooms and a small bathroom filled with the usual feminine toiletries—soaps, shampoos, toothpaste and a hairbrush. He took a careful look but saw only the girl’s own long blond hairs. Jacqueline used one of the bedrooms to sleep in, the other as a dressing room, with her clothes and shoes in the cupboard. One item caught Bruno’s eye, an old Saint-Denis rugby shirt hanging forlornly from a nail. It must have belonged to Max. The chest of drawers was empty. The other room had a flimsy nightgown on the bed and a robe hanging on a hook on the back of the door. A small dressing table stood by the window, stacked with cosmetics. He looked in the drawers, which contained underwear and stockings. But then he saw something else, tucked away at the back, and pulled out a tightly rolled plastic bag that contained a spare hairbrush. He looked at it carefully.
“J-J, can you come up here a moment?” he called. When the big commissaire came into the room, Bruno pointed to the brush in the plastic bag.
“Look carefully and you’ll see short dark hairs on that brush. Obviously, they aren’t Jacqueline’s. My guess is they belonged to Bondino. She told me he spent one night in her old hotel room, but just before I came here I went to check with the manager’s wife, and she said it was two or three nights. Whenever Max wasn’t with her, Bondino was. He could have used her hairbrush then. Or maybe it’s his. So it’s possible that Bondino never laid a hand on Max, just as he said, whatever the DNA evidence might suggest. Somebody else put those hairs under Max’s nails to incriminate Bondino. I think you’d better get your forensics team over here.”
“That’s pretty far-fetched, Bruno. I suppose you see her motive as that family feud, and those documents you explained to me,” said J-J, looking through the items on the dressing table. “What’s that? A nail file?”
A nail file might be just the thing to put Bondino’s hair under Max’s fingernails, thought Bruno as J-J pointed at the thin plastic sleeve on the dressing table.
“Got any evidence gloves in your car?”
“In the glove compartment. Help yourself,” said J-J, thumbing a number into his phone to call his forensics team.
Out in the courtyard, Pamela was poking through a large yellow plastic bag that she had pulled from the garbage can. “No wrapping paper, but more of these strips of tape,” she called. Bruno waved an acknowledgment and grabbed two sets of gloves, then ran back up the stairs and handed a pair to J-J. He blew into them to loosen the latex, slipped his hands into them and then picked up what turned out not to be a nail file. He eased a long flexible plastic strip from the sleeve.
“A strip of thin plastic protected inside plastic. What on earth could that be?” he asked, holding it up to the window and turning it. Bruno switched on the desk lamp and they looked again.
“Wai
t a minute,” said Bruno. He darted down the stairs again and returned with some of the strips of tape that Pamela had rescued, holding them against the light.
“You always get fingerprints on sticky tape,” said J-J.
“Yes, but whose?” said Bruno. He went into the bathroom and came out with some talcum powder, then delicately tapped the bottom of the can, dusting a small amount onto one of the bottles of toilet water on the dressing table. “Let’s assume those are Jacqueline’s prints on her scent bottle,” he said, and gently blew away the talc. The ridges of a thumbprint emerged on the glass. He placed one of the adhesive strips alongside it. “That’s the same print, right?”
“Yes, it looks like it,” said J-J. “So what’s your point?”
“Watch.” Bruno carefully unwrapped a little of the plastic bag and dusted some talcum power onto the handle of the hairbrush and then blew it away. “That print there will belong to Bondino, and I know why she wanted his prints. His laptop computer has a security device, some kind of sensor that required his fingerprint to unlock it. That’s why she needed him in her bed and asleep in her room. She wanted to get into his computer. Some of the documents in those files of hers downstairs are confidential business plans and company accounts. Maybe that’s what she was after. But if she could fake his prints to get into his computer, what else could she do with them?”
“You think she could have transferred them onto that glass we found at Cresseil’s place?” asked J-J.
“That’s what the adhesive tape strips were for. I think she lifted the fingerprints from her hairbrush and then put them on the glass. That’s one for your forensics team to check when they get here. If that’s what she did, there’ll be traces of the adhesive on the glass.”
“Hello,” called Pamela from downstairs, above the sound of another car arriving. “Fabiola’s here. There’s nothing more in the garbage can, no wrapping paper. Are you two both upstairs?” Bruno shouted, “Yes,” and heard her footsteps coming up the stairs.
“Those bits of tape,” he said when she came into the bedroom. “I think they were used to lift fingerprints from one thing and transfer them to something else.”
“Oh yes?” she said, not the least bit surprised. “I think I remember something like that from one of the IRA bomb trials in Britain. You remember, the Northern Ireland troubles. So whose fingerprints do you have?”
“We aren’t sure yet,” said Bruno as J-J began working his phone again. “Let’s go down and say hello to Fabiola. I need to find out what happened with the pathologist’s report.”
Fabiola’s car was packed. There was a suitcase on the floor of the passenger’s side, and a cardboard box on the seat with a large stuffed plastic bag atop it that tumbled into the driver’s seat as soon as Fabiola emerged. The rear seats were down and the cargo space stuffed to the brim with suitcases, shopping bags and cardboard boxes.
“That’s my life,” she said. “Everything I own is in that car.”
“I’ll help you unload,” said Bruno, hearing J-J’s heavy tread coming down the wooden stairs. “But first we need to know about the pathologist’s report. J-J, you should listen to this.”
“The attestation has been filed,” Fabiola said as J-J joined them. “Accidental death by asphyxiation, but with a cautious appendix saying the blow to the head was inflicted after death. So you have no murder.”
J-J let out a vast explosion of breath, and his shoulders sagged. “Putain, putain, putain …”
“It looks like we may have another crime: planting false evidence,” said Bruno.
“Not to mention wasting police time and dropping me in the merde,” added J-J. “But how did she come to be at the death scene to plant those fake hairs?”
“You mean the ones I found under Max’s nails? I don’t think there was anything fake about them,” said Fabiola. “They were real hairs, with follicles on the end. It’s not like someone got them from a barber’s clippings. Remember, Bruno? I looked at them with a magnifying glass.”
“Like these?” asked J-J, holding up a plastic evidence bag that contained the hairbrush.
Fabiola looked carefully, and then asked for a magnifying glass. J-J got one from his car, and she looked again, then pulled out her phone. “I’m calling my colleague in Bergerac. There’s something we can check.”
She dialed quickly.
“Jean-Claude? Listen, it’s me. That autopsy we did with the asphyxiation, the one with the long delay over the head wound, can you check something for me? Yes? It’s the fingernails. You remember we found hairs in them and follicles. Was there any other alien flesh under the nails or just the hairs? There seems to be a possibility that the hairs were planted on the corpse. Okay, I’ll wait for your call. Thanks.”
Fabiola turned back to them. “He’ll let me know, but I can’t say I remember anything except the hairs. None of those traces of flesh you usually find if the hairs have been snatched in a struggle.” She looked forlorn. “I’m sorry; it’s my fault,” she went on. “I wasn’t thinking about planted evidence, so I didn’t look for anything else. I won’t make that mistake again.”
“Would that be definitive proof that the hair was planted, if there’s no flesh in the nails?” Bruno asked her.
“No, but it’s very suggestive,” she replied.
“I think we need a drink,” said Pamela. “You help Fabiola unload the car and I’ll bring the glasses. Ricard for everybody?” They nodded. “The door to Fabiola’s gîte is open. I put a new gas canister in the kitchen and some milk and eggs in the refrigerator. The eggs are from Bruno’s hens, by the way. Just go straight in and put your stuff wherever you want.”
Two trips back and forth were all it took for the three of them. Fabiola’s suitcases were parked upstairs, the boxes of books placed beside the shelves in the sitting room, the plastic bags put on the kitchen counter and the medical bag by the door.
“Look,” said Fabiola when they were done, pointing at a vase filled with flowers on the table. “Pamela is so kind, welcoming me with flowers.” She went across to the refrigerator and opened the door. “And look at this, orange juice and butter, and coffee and fruit here on the counter. I must go thank her.”
Bruno and J-J strolled back to the courtyard with Fabiola, and the four of them gathered around Pamela’s table, where she had been waiting with a tray of drinks. They clinked their glasses in formal welcome to Fabiola, and J-J stole a glance at his watch.
“She’ll be here any moment,” said Bruno.
“So will my men,” J-J said. “You realize I’m probably going to have to go back to your Captain Duroc and ask to use his jail again.”
“You’re not taking her directly to Périgueux for questioning?” Bruno asked.
“No murder, so no juge d’instruction, and we’ll need the forensics report on the hair and fingerprints before we can file any charges. So no, I’m not taking her to Périgueux until I have all my ducks in a row. I’ve already got the American ambassador filing complaints in Paris. I don’t want the Canadian one joining in.”
Fabiola’s phone trilled. “Yes? Jean-Claude? Nothing but the hair and some splinters of wood. No flesh. Okay, thanks. Can you make sure the report gets amended to say that? Send me the paperwork to sign. Right. See you, and thanks again.” She looked up at them. “You heard that.”
“I heard,” said J-J, looking at Bruno. “Pretty cunning. But why would she want Bondino charged with murder? Is there money in it for her?”
“It’s the old family feud. But I don’t think there’s money involved. Greed’s not the motive. It’s vengeance.”
“So she slept with Bondino just to destroy him?” asked Pamela.
“Let’s ask her,” said Bruno, looking out through the courtyard.
At the end of the lane, a figure appeared on a bicycle, pedaling briskly, her blond hair streaming behind her. Pamela rose, put all the glasses on a tray and took them into the kitchen. “Come along, Fabiola. I don’t think we ought to be here fo
r this, so I’ll help you unpack.”
When they had gone, J-J went across to his car, opened the passenger door and took a pair of handcuffs from the glove compartment and then returned to join Bruno. The two men stood and waited until Jacqueline pulled up in front of them. She stepped off her bike and lifted her cheek to Bruno as if to be kissed. Bruno ignored this and took the handlebars in one hand.
“Bonsoir, Jacqueline. Commissaire Jalipeau here has some questions for you, and I need to see your passport again, please.”
Suddenly wary, her eyes darting from Bruno to J-J’s grim face, Jacqueline pulled her shoulder bag from the wicker basket above the bicycle’s rear wheel and fished inside, pulling out her dark blue passport and handing it over. Bruno quickly checked the photo, and then with his eyes fixed on hers, put the passport into the chest pocket of his shirt and fastened the button.
“We now know exactly what happened,” J-J said. “We know how you put Bondino’s fingerprints on the glass you left at the farmhouse. We know where you got those bits of his hair that you put under Max’s fingernails. We know how you broke into Bondino’s computer and downloaded his files. We know how you tried to plant the evidence so that Bondino would be convicted of murder. We know all this, and we can prove it. My forensics team will be here shortly and will go over every inch of your house, every item of your clothing, and when you are arrested and in jail a policewoman will be conducting a full body search.”
Bruno 02 - The Dark Vineyard Page 26