Burgundy

by Janet Hubbard

  Max leaned over and planted a kiss on Olivier’s cheek. She caught, out of the corner of her eye, her grandmother’s housemaid Jeannette, discreetly beckoning from the kitchen. Isabelle glided gracefully out to the kitchen, her absence barely noted. She re-entered the room and said, “Olivier, your assistant wants to see you.”

  Olivier walked out to the front hall, closing the door behind him. “It sounds ominous,” said Anne to the group. “I hope everything is alright.”

  Max wanted to say that it is rarely “alright” when the police arrive at your door, but held her tongue. Olivier returned with Abdel. “I’m sorry for interrupting,” Abdel said. “But there was some business that couldn’t wait.”

  “Oh, join us,” Isabelle said, motioning to Jeannette to bring another plate. “We’re celebrating Max and Olivier’s engagement news, which I’m certain you already know.”

  “Only for a moment,” he said.

  “Any word about Lucy?” Anne asked.

  Abdel explained that Lucy’s guardian had arrived from the U.S. and had gone directly to Beaune. The uncle had hired a private investigator in Lyon to help him find his missing niece. Of course, the man he hired was none other than Yves Laroche. The fact that the uncle had arrived in Beaune meant that Yves Laroche had informed him of his niece’s whereabouts. The uncle put out an alert to the police that Lucy was unstable, that she had escaped from a psychiatric institution.”

  Isabelle and Anne expressed outrage at this, and Abdel found himself in the middle of a flurry of questions.

  Lucy is back in the forefront, Max thought.

  Max was impressed with her grandmother, who didn’t flinch when Abdel entered, but in fact insisted that he join them. She knew this would not happen in most households in France, not in the upper-crust families, anyhow. It wasn’t considered rude or prejudiced to act biasedly toward other races, for theirs’ was a society based on class, and everyone knew his place in it. She thought of the millions of people who had come to France seeking a better life, in many cases as refugees, and the surprise of many when they realized they could only advance so far. Even middle-class French families did not hold high hopes of climbing the corporate or political ladders, as they did in the United States, because leaders were manufactured in a certain select few schools.

  After dinner they were ushered into the library. Abdel, Olivier, and Max found themselves huddled in a corner. Soon Hank joined them, and Abdel said, “It is an honor to get to know you, sir.”

  “You, too,” Hank said.

  “I’ve always wanted to meet one of New York’s famous detectives.”

  “I’m an unemployed detective,” Hank said. “And everybody in New York gets five minutes of fame. I’m interested in the P.I. who died in Lyon.”

  Abdel acted happy to oblige. “The Laroche P.I. Agency was started by Yves’ parents in 1960, a very different era, where they literally went on foot seeking evidence, rifling through trash cans, photographing unsuspecting people, and conducting their own interviews. Today the agencies are more regulated, but back then it was open season. His parents had a reputation for their doggedness, and their success, I might add. Yves took over almost a decade ago, and upgraded the agency with state-of-the-art computer technology. He focused more on corporate accounts, but he also liked to work for private customers, as his parents had done. He accumulated a large number of files on people in Lyon, and that expanded to this area when he started picking grapes twenty years ago. Those files are on his computer, but he also kept physical files, and he had a tendency to pit one person against another.”

  Hank said, “In other words, he had something on most of them.”

  “Exact.” He paused, “He became obsessed with Lucy Kendrick after meeting her in September. We found a trove of photographs of her, perhaps taken by your neighbor, Tim Lowell, who was presumed to be a friend to both of them. But her files are missing, both the computer version and the hard copy.”

  “As is she,” Olivier said.

  Abdel continued, “She is a suspect, of course, because she was at the party, but now that her uncle has arrived and notified the police of her escape from a hospital, the police are doubly focused on her.”

  “No sign of her?” Max said. “No sightings?”

  “Someone called in yesterday, who thought he saw her in the café of a train with a friend, heading to Paris mid-afternoon.”

  The doorbell chimed and Olivier looked at his watch. The library door opened and a slight, blond man entered, obviously comfortable in the great house. “Hello, Anne,” he said, in a clipped, British accent. He went directly to her, and bestowed baisers on her cheeks. “I’m here to let you know Lucy’s okay. We returned from Paris earlier today. She’s a bit on the lam, as you surely know from television, but there is an explanation. Or explanations, as it were.” He was smiling and at ease, as though it were perfectly normal to drop in at ten at night. When the maid approached, he said, “I’d adore a cognac.”

  Tim looked around the room, realizing that it wasn’t an ordinary gathering of neighbors. “I’m sorry for imposing,” he said. His face brightened when he saw Hank. “You must be the American she bumped into in the café. She described you perfectly.” He grew serious. “I’m surprised she didn’t show up here this evening, Anne, but she’ll return tomorrow, for sure. She left because she was certain she was being followed, and that the person after her was sent by her uncle.”

  Abdel spoke, “I represent the police. She has been with you these past few days?”

  “Yes. I took her into Paris yesterday and we spent the night at a friend’s place on Place des Vosges.” He smiled, and Max could see that he wavered between anxiety and being in the throes of new love, a state of mind she was familiar with since meeting and falling in love with Olivier.

  “You didn’t take her to that party Yves gave, did you?” Anne demanded.

  “I stand accused. She was determined to go, and I saw no harm.”

  “Now it’s a scandal,” Anne said, “and Lucy’s name is mixed up in it.”

  “She’s with her friend, Roland.”

  “Him! The last person I want her to associate with!”

  “He is loyal to her, and she is a good influence on him.” He finished his cognac. “Look, I promise she will be back here tomorrow. I had work to do, and she wanted to make sure he went back to his family.”

  Abdel was firm. “She’s a suspect in Monsieur Laroche’s death. This is a serious charge.”

  “We are both innocent, and we can prove it.”

  Max introduced herself and then asked, “What kind of work did you have to do this evening?”

  He hesitated—a few seconds too long, in her estimation. “I’m developing rolls of film for a magazine shoot I did. It has to be sent tomorrow.”

  Olivier said, “Some of us have an early morning hunt. If Lucy isn’t here by noon tomorrow you will be arrested, and so will Roland Milne.”

  “I’m going, too,” Tim said. “The hunters allow me to go with my camera sometimes. Okay, she will return by noon tomorrow.”

  Max didn’t know why he didn’t just come out and say he and Lucy were staying together tonight.

  “The police will be working through the night,” Abdel said. He handed Tim his business card, and told him to call if anything came up.

  Anne said, “I didn’t know you two were a couple, as it were. Why wouldn’t she have told me?”

  For the first time, Tim blushed. “We were just hanging out until very recently. As soon as this mess blows over, I’m taking her to England to meet my family.”

  Max looked around and everyone was smiling back at him, even Hank.

  Chapter Ten

  The alarm clock went off at five and Max moaned as she reached over to shut it off. “You don’t have to come, you know,” Olivier said as he slipped into wool pants, a high-vis jacket,
and wool hat.

  Max looked at him and laughed. “Speak for yourself.” He waited while she pulled up wool pants with suspenders and slipped into a puffy down jacket.

  “I would really lose face if I bowed out,” he said, “especially with your father.”

  “No doubt about it.”

  Olivier felt absurd in the borrowed clothes, and more than that, he had never liked the idea of killing animals that were at a severe disadvantage, the way the boars were. Their natural predators, wolves, had been killed off, and now the boars were chased by men and dogs. The injuries to dogs when boars attacked them with their long tusks were gruesome, and often fatal, yet Olivier knew the hunters had the wounds dressed and took them back out to hunt. He and Max rushed to the kitchen to make coffee and were happy to see that Hank had beat them to it. He was in what had to be her grandfather’s ancient hunting clothes—a heavy wool jacket a size or two too big, and a wool fedora-style hat, with high boots worn over his pants.

  Hank grinned. “Like it?”

  There was a dusting of snow on the ground when they walked to Olivier’s car, but the day was supposed to grow warmer. Olivier felt overdressed. “It’s not far to the club,” he said. “We will be given rifles and ammunition there.”

  “My grandmother told me that women have their own hunt club,” Max said.

  “Male hunt clubs have always been exclusive,” Olivier said. “I’m not sure what strings Anne pulled to get the three of us in here. Don’t be upset if we’re not well received.”

  “I’m used to it,” Max said.

  “What’s so special about the boar?” Hank asked.

  “The sanglier,” Olivier said, “or wild boar as you call it, is the bête noire that you read about in myths and fairy tales. They’re considered a pest in France these days, as they wreak a lot of damage on gardens and farms, and worse, on vineyards, as they’ve developed a taste for the ripe grape.”

  “Tell me how the hunt works.”

  “Preparations were made last night,” Olivier said. “There is a chef de battue, a chief of the hunt, who will lay out each person’s position. You and I will be among the men who stand about fifteen meters apart from each other, approximately two hundred yards from the edge of the woods. The rabatteurs will have already gone deep into the forest to rout out the sangliers, and once they are successful, they and the dogs chase them toward us.”

  They arrived at a nondescript building on the outskirts of town, and Olivier led the way inside. Approximately a dozen men were seated in front of plates of cheese, jambon persillé, and baguettes. Two bottles of the local grappa, marc de Bourgogne, were open on the table, but the hunters gravitated to the liqueur, du jaune, flavored with anise and herbs. They had no qualms about swigging down a glass or two.

  “They’re going to hunt after this?” Hank asked, looking around the large shed-like structure that was attached to Jean-Claude’s house. Jean-Claude’s face was flushed as he held court from the head of the table. Alain rushed over to Olivier, and shook hands. Yvette had driven up and there she was, bright red lips curved into a big smile. “I remember you from school days, Olivier,” she said. “You were always making the rest of us look like idiots with your smart answers.”

  “I’m sure I was trying to impress intellectually,” he said, “since I don’t recall the girls falling all over me the way they did Alain.”

  She laughed, but he noticed sadness in her eyes. “Times change,” she said.

  “I hope to meet your son.”

  She frowned. “Perhaps later. He was out partying last night. You know how that goes.” Her comment was followed by a boisterous laugh. “Alain says one of France’s most eligible bachelors is marrying an American.” Yvette was staring at Max. “After the girl we had at the vineyard picking grapes, I’m not so keen on American girls.”

  “What did you not like about her?”

  “She thought of herself as a winemaker, not just a grape picker. She refused to do domestic work. And she threatened to take Roland away if Alain and I didn’t stop arguing. Which was fine with Alain. He and Roland are oil and water.” She looked over at Max again. “Your fiancée could stay and help me here with the dishes.”

  Not on your life, Olivier wanted to say. “It’s a kind offer, but she is being allowed to observe the hunt.”

  “Who said she could do that?”

  “Jean-Claude.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “So he compromised. I wonder what Anne held over his head this time.”

  Olivier decided Yvette was a pot-stirrer. He excused himself and went to join Max and Hank, who were talking to Jean-Claude. Hank took a sip of the marc, as Jean-Claude referred to it, and was told that it was the generic term for spirits distilled from the skins, pulp, and seeds of grapes after they are pressed to make wine. “The point is,” he was told, “it warms the blood.”

  “But dulls the senses,” Hank said, putting his glass down. “The ham is great, though.”

  Tim walked up to them, a camera slung over his shoulder, and a smile on his face. “Don’t you go anywhere without that thing?” Jean-Claude asked.

  Tim held up the camera and snapped a picture of Jean-Claude in response. Olivier observed that the moment Tim swept the camera up in front of his face to take the photograph, vanity took over and Jean-Claude grinned. Olivier could barely hear over the din. Dogs barked in the distance. One of the men stepped forward, and bellowed that they would be heading out in five minutes. Max whispered to Tim, “No Lucy?”

  “Don’t worry, she’s close by. I plan to take a few photos and pick her up.”

  “She’s going to find herself in real trouble if she decides to run again. Do you know how old she is?”

  “Twenty?”

  “Seventeen.”

  He laughed. “The little liar. Then her uncle may have legal control of her. I’ll marry her, if it means having him out of the picture.”

  Tim followed Max outside, but Olivier decided to have a taste of the ham and backtracked to the table. Yvette, he saw, had called Jean-Claude aside and was pointing at Max. Jean-Claude strode away from her, looking unhappy. Alain walked toward Yvette, and Olivier was surprised to see that he was weaving slightly. The couple engaged in a small verbal altercation, and Olivier noticed that Alain appeared coiled to strike. He didn’t really respect Alain now.

  Jean-Claude walked over and Olivier thanked him again for accommodating them. “You can thank Madame Bré,” he said, “and not me. I’m catching a lot of flak from the guys.” And from Yvette, Olivier thought. He suddenly wished they hadn’t come, and wondered if there was some way they could excuse themselves and leave. He had observed the men eyeing Max warily, a few of them showing unveiled hostility. Burgundy was changing on the surface, he realized, but the old ways ran deep.

  He sat with his back to the remaining people in the room. He could overhear Alain and Jean-Claude’s conversation behind him. Alain complained that Roland hadn’t shown up the night before. “He must have met a girl,” Jean-Claude said. “Mon Dieu, at that age I lived for the girls.”

  “He’s obsessed with a girl named Lucy,” Alain continued. “Yvette forbade him to see her again. You can imagine how that backfired.”

  “Who isn’t obsessed with Lucy?” said Jean-Claude. “My son Luc is crazy about her. I know from an investigator that she is being accused of killing Yves. She’s good press. Young, white American girl, maybe pleading, what? Self-defense? She doesn’t deserve this.”

  The gossip mill was alive and well. Olivier strained to listen as Alain said, “Roland had better bring his ass to this hunt, I can tell you that.”

  Jean-Claude said, “You’ve got to control your temper, Alain. What have you got against your boy?”

  “You’re telling me what to do with my own family?” Olivier felt a tense silence. Then, “Did my wife tell you that I had Yves following her? If sh
e’s messing around, she’ll be sorry.”

  The chef de battue bellowed that it was time to leave. Olivier turned and saw Jean-Claude speaking to Yvette, who appeared frightened. Surely, he thought, nothing is going on between those two. If it is, then Alain’s comment was a veiled threat.

  Outside, the hunters donned orange vests and hiked out to a field less than a kilometer away, where they were assigned positions. Max took two steps up a handmade stand and was told to stay there. She said to Hank, “You think I’m put here as a target?”

  Hank said firmly, “I’ve got you covered.”

  Alain said he had to go take a piss, but would be back. He set his Kimber rifle 308 down and took off. Jean-Claude, who was in position next to Hank, said, “If he doesn’t kill a boar with that rifle, something’s wrong with him. It’s the best. He bought one for himself, one for his son, and probably one for Yvette, too.”

  “She’s a good shot?” Max asked from her perch.

  “She’s won some women’s competitions.”

  “So she’s a good shot for a woman.”

  “Exactement.”

  Olivier, who was more or less in the center of the line, had been handed a Winchester Model 94, an old-school lever-action gun, which felt more familiar than he had thought it would. He looked over and saw that Jean-Claude had held onto his Weatherby Mark V rifle, which he claimed was his favorite. Hank had been placed at the far end of the line, and Max was a few feet from him. He stood rigid, holding the Binelli RI rifle that had belonged to Max’s grandfather. Tim moved around more than he should, Olivier thought, clicking his camera. The other hunters stood prepared.

  Forty-five minutes had passed when they heard the sound of the bells around the dogs’ necks, in the distance, which meant the boars were on their way. They all stood at attention, waiting, the dogs’ braying coming closer. Olivier felt tension in his mind and throughout his body. He heard shouts, and saw a boar run out at one end of the field. Shots were fired as another emerged from the forest at the opposite end. While his eyes were fixed on the other end of the field, he heard Max scream, and saw her leap off the stand and run toward the woods. At that moment, a boar thrust through the brush midway down the field and was shot dead before he made it fifteen feet. The chief of the hunt shot three times into the air and silence prevailed.