The Secrets of the Bastide Blanche

by M. L. Longworth

  “There can’t be two apartments upstairs,” Jules said. “It looks too small.”

  “He has a key,” Sophie said. She tilted her head to see well. “He’s going in—”

  “Let’s wait five minutes.”

  After three, Sophie looked at her watch and said, “I’m uneasy about this.”

  “You’re right,” Jules said, opening his door. “We can’t leave that old guy up there. Let’s go.”

  “We’re from the Green Party,” Sophie whispered as they crossed the street. “I have a clipboard prepared, with fake signatures.”

  “Got ya.”

  The old man had left the street door unlocked, and the officers bounded up the stairs. Jules Schoelcher knocked on the door. They heard moaning and exchanged looks.

  “Let’s go in,” Sophie said.

  “llo!” Jules called out, opening the unlocked door as he did. “Are you all right?”

  They walked into a living room furnished with relics from the 1970s, including faded wallpaper patterned in orange and yellow plaid. “Oh mon dieu,” moaned the voice, and they continued on into the kitchen, where the old man sat at a Formica table, his head in his hands.

  “Sir,” Sophie Goulin said, approaching the man and putting her hand on his left shoulder. “Are you all right?”

  “They’ve cleared out,” he answered, looking up at her. “And they owe me three months’ back rent.”

  Sophie and Jules exchanged looks. “The Pioger cousins?” Jules asked.

  “Mais oui!” the old man answered angrily, as if Jules should have known who rented his apartment.

  “Perhaps we can help you, Monsieur . . .?”

  “Cheneau,” he replied. “Marcel Cheneau.”

  “You’re sure they’ve left?” Sophie asked, glancing around the filthy kitchen.

  “Their clothes and papers are all gone,” Cheneau replied. “And their fancy stereo.” He looked up at Sophie and asked, “And who are you, anyway?”

  “Police officers,” Sophie replied. “From Aix.”

  “Did you know the Piogers left me high and dry? How did you know that before me?”

  “We’ve been sent by the examining magistrate in Aix,” Jules replied, sitting down at the table, “on another matter. A kidnapping at the Bastide Blanche.”

  Marcel Cheneau looked at Schoelcher, wide-eyed. “You don’t say? And you think the Piogers did it?”

  “We’re not sure,” Jules replied. “When did you see them last?”

  Cheneau shrugged. “Maybe two days ago, down at the bar. I was there with my buddy, Gaston. We had a few beers and then ordered a pizza.”

  Sophie asked, “Did a Parisian come into the bar, asking for directions to the bastide?”

  “The commissioner already asked that question,” Cheneau replied. “Yesterday, in the bar. Yes was my answer. I didn’t want to make a fuss—”

  “Do you want to get your rent money?” Jules asked.

  Cheneau sighed. “Yeah, they were there. And they left pretty quickly, too, after they saw that fancy Parisian.”

  “Do you have any idea where they might have gone?” Sophie asked. “Don’t worry, M Cheneau. We’ll protect you.”

  Cheneau nodded and mumbled, “I think so. La Riviera.”

  “On the coast?” Jules asked.

  “No no,” Marcel replied, shaking his head. “A hunting lodge in the woods. It’s called the Riviera because, well, it has a view of a creek out back.”

  * * *

  It was almost noon, just before Sunday lunch, at the cave coopérative in Rians—their busiest time. They would close promptly at twelve thirty and not reopen until Tuesday. The license plates in the parking lot revealed a variety that was only found in summer: cars from the Netherlands and Germany, even a right-hand-drive English convertible, were parked beside cars and small vans from both the Bouches-du-Rhône and the Var—the two departments Rians straddled. Three other cars, Citroëns, all dark gray, were parked side by side at the far end of the lot. Bruno Paulik spread a detailed map of the area on the hood of one, flattening it out with the side of his hand.

  Paulik pointed out a thin white road and said, “The hunting shack is eight kilometers northeast of Rians, off the D70. M Cheneau said it isn’t indicated, but that exactly 2.2 kilometers north of Esparron there’s a bend in the road, and immediately after, on the right, is a dirt track and a sign marked ‘privé’ nailed to an old olive tree. The shack is about a kilometer down the track.”

  “There’s only one way in?” an officer asked.

  “According to M Cheneau,” Sophie replied, “yes.”

  “Let’s park our cars up and down the D70 to avoid suspicion,” Paulik continued. “We will meet at the olive tree and go up the track in pairs. Those of you in uniform can encircle the shack, and Officer Goulin and I will approach it, pretending to be lost hikers.” Sophie Goulin looked down at her shorts, glad that she had chosen them instead of pants. It was already over 30°C, and in shorts she looked more like a hiker. She looked at her boss, who wore sunglasses and a large straw hat, and tried not to smile. She hardly recognized Bruno Paulik like that, so she knew the Pioger cousins wouldn’t either.

  Ten minutes later the cars were parked, scattered along the narrow road. Jules Schoelcher was to stay at the olive tree, phone at the ready in case he had to alert the others. He sat on a rock and got out a map, pretending to read it, while the others went into the woods. If anyone stopped to speak to him, he would reply with a German accent—easy enough for someone born in Colmar and who still spoke German with his parents—and say he was looking to get to Gréoux-les-Bains by the back roads. He’d tell them he had borrowed the car from a friend in Marseille.

  Sophie’s heart was pounding as she walked up the dirt road beside her boss. She had read the files on the Pioger cousins and knew that they were violent and unpredictable. She tried not to get distracted by the woods; she grew up in the country, and knew that lizards made a surprising amount of noise as they darted back and forth between the plants.

  They had been walking for about twenty minutes when the shack came into view. “Keep going,” Paulik whispered as they continued, albeit slower now. She tried not to smile at the name La Riviera—obviously a joke—for the wooden shack had a corrugated metal roof and leaned to one side, looking as if a sneeze could knock it over. She tried her best to resemble a lost hiker—someone who had no idea what lurked within the building ahead. An innocent. She realized the commissioner must be thinking the same thing as he reached out and took her hand, holding it as if she was his lover or wife.

  The door of the shack suddenly opened and a man stepped out, clearly agitated. “What’s going on?” he yelled across the twenty or so yards that separated them. “What do you want?”

  Paulik let go of Sophie’s hand. “I’m sorry to disturb,” he replied. “We were just out walking.”

  “You get lost,” the man said. “Now. This is private property.”

  “Not thinking of selling, are you?” Paulik asked, walking slowly toward the man, whom he now recognized as Hervé Pioger. He heard a muffled sound coming from inside the shack.

  Pioger came closer. “Are you deaf?” he asked.

  “It’s just that we’ve been trying to buy property around here for months,” Paulik said. “And this place looks like it could use some TLC.” He walked closer, until he was about a meter away.

  “It’s not for sale,” Pioger said, holding up his hand. “Go now.”

  “Let’s go, sweetie,” Sophie said, walking beside Paulik and pulling on his hand. She could see the sweat gleaming on Pioger’s forehead, his mouth gaping. She could also smell the liquorice odor of pastis.

  “Honey, you know how much we love this area,” Paulik said, looking at his partner.

  “Do as your sweetie says,” Pioger said.

  Paulik s
aw from the corner of his eye that everything was in place. “All right,” he said, putting his hand up. “We’re so sorry to disturb.”

  At that cue, the other officers barged in the back door Marcel Cheneau had told Sophie and Jules about. “Mighty useful when our hunting shack used to get raided by the local gendarmes,” he had said.

  Out of instinct, Hervé Pioger swung back around toward La Riviera’s door, and Paulik lunged forward, tackling him to the ground. Sophie pulled her gun from the back of her shorts and pointed it at Pioger’s head. “Don’t move.” She could hear one of her colleagues yell, “To the ground, now!” and she breathed a sigh of relief. Sophie quickly thought about her neighbor, a hairdresser with whom she loved having a glass of wine sometimes after work, while their kids played together. What could she tell her of her workday? Nothing, only the vaguest of details, more often having to do with her fellow officers—how Jules had made her laugh while they were driving, how another officer was getting married the next weekend—than with their operations. Her neighbor had the opposite problem: her clients spilled out their most personal hopes and fears while she cut their hair. She couldn’t tell Sophie what kind of conversations went on, only the very light ones. But she could talk about her work: the haircuts, the dyes, the blow-drying.

  “Finally!” a voice hollered from inside the shack.

  “You can take him off our hands!” Hervé Pioger yelled at Paulik, his head pressed sideways against the ground in front of the door.

  Sophie and Paulik exchanged looks as a man in his late thirties or early forties walked out the door, accompanied by one of the officers, who held his arm. “I’m perfectly fine!” he said, shrugging off the officer’s hand. “I’d like to press charges—”

  “Shut up!” Hervé Pioger hollered.

  “We’ll deal with that, M Le Flahec,” Paulik said. Another officer came out of the shack with Didier Pioger, handcuffed, while Sophie got Hervé upright and handcuffed him. Paulik said, “We need to take you to the hospital for a checkup—”

  “I said I was all right,” Erwan insisted.

  “A doctor will verify that,” Paulik said. “You were held against your will.” He looked at Erwan Le Flahec, trying to read his expression. Paulik still wasn’t sure if the kidnapping had been set up by Le Flahec himself.

  Sophie called Jules and told him to bring one of the cars, and two of the other officers had already left, running back to get the remaining two cars. She turned to Erwan and said, “We’ll take you to the clinic, and then you can go home and get cleaned up and sleep, before you come in for questioning tomorrow.”

  “If you say so,” Erwan slowly replied. His eyes closed and his body swayed before he slumped forward, Sophie catching him in her arms.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  New York City,

  September 22, 2010

  Much to my relief, Sandrine wasn’t at La Riviera with the Pioger cousins, and Erwan said that she had never been there,” Valère explained. “I believed him. Bruno Paulik called me right away, as soon as they found Erwan, and Erwan arrived at the house a few hours after his hospital visit. He looked exhausted, and was irritable, but that’s understandable. I felt lost without Sandrine, now that I had two guests in the house, and I was worried about her.”

  “But where was Sandrine?” Justin asked.

  “I tried to call Matton in Paris, but there was no answer, so I hung up without leaving a message. I didn’t want to worry Guillaume unnecessarily. Luckily, the village market was that morning, and Hélène and Léa offered to go shopping for me.”

  Justin shifted in his chair, frowning.

  “Do you mind not fidgeting?” Valère asked. “The details are important.”

  “Sorry. Go on.”

  * * *

  I pulled out Agathe’s dog-eared Ali-Bab cookbook and got to work making a soup; we could have it with fresh bread and goat’s cheese. When Léa returned from the market, she sat at the kitchen table, doing puzzles in some kind of activity book, while I cooked. Michèle was down by the pool, yelling into her cell phone at her Japanese publisher or a film rights lawyer in Los Angeles, and Erwan was upstairs sleeping. “I wonder what the blind lady is having for dinner,” Léa said as she watched me cutting leeks. “Maman and I saw her today, near the market, walking down the sidewalk, guided by her white cane.”

  “Blind people get used to doing all sorts of things that we can’t imagine they can do,” I replied. “I’m sure she’s cooking something healthy and good to eat.”

  “I hope Erwan is going to be all right,” she continued.

  I had forgotten how kids could change topics so easily. I said, “He just needs about fourteen hours’ sleep.”

  “My papa once slept fourteen hours,” Léa said. “He stayed up two entire nights all night because of work.”

  “llo!” came a voice from the front hall. It was Bruno Paulik, who had come to pick up Léa.

  “Come in, Bruno,” I answered. “We’re in the kitchen.”

  Paulik walked in and bent down to give Léa a kiss. “Time to come home, Léa,” he said.

  “Léa has been very good company this afternoon,” I said.

  “Glad to hear it. We like her company too,” Paulik said, winking at his daughter.

  “On your way through the garden, would you mind telling Michèle that dinner will soon be ready?” I asked.

  “No problem,” Paulik answered. “Does she always yell into the phone like that?”

  “Yep.”

  “We could hear her from our place.”

  “Sorry about that,” I said.

  “Any news from Sandrine?” Paulik asked, stopping at the kitchen door on his way out.

  “Nothing,” I answered. “That reminds me—I’m going to try calling her uncle in Paris again. I’ve been having trouble getting through to his cell phone.”

  “Let me know what you find out,” Paulik said. There was no antagonism in his voice, but I knew that the commissioner suspected Sandrine of setting up Erwan’s kidnapping and pushing Michèle down the stairs. I had to agree that it didn’t look good. It was a total surprise to me that Sandrine had dated, and still felt something for, Hervé P. Is that why she came to work for me? To be close to him? And now she had disappeared.

  “Is Sandrine okay?” Léa asked, looking up at her father. “I like her.”

  “She’s fine. I’m sure of it,” I too-quickly answered. Léa gave me one of those “I don’t believe you” looks that eleven-year-olds are particularly good at.

  The evening didn’t improve, with Michèle pestering me about writing the book with her. She had made one of the most miraculous recoveries I have ever seen. We went upstairs just before eleven, and I checked on Erwan, who was fast asleep. This time I left his bedroom door, and mine, open. I wasn’t taking any chances. And now for my dream, Justin. A warning here. I’ve never been one to recount my dreams. I had a friend in university who, every morning, as we groggily sat around our kitchen table, would come charging into the kitchen and tell us his dream, in every boring detail. We were sure his dreams were made up, as they miraculously always involved one or two of his favorite actors—he was their chum, and they did all kinds of fun things together—and the dream ended happily. That’s not how dreams work, at least not mine.

  As I crawled into bed, I realized that I had forgotten to call Guillaume Matton. I wrote myself a reminder on a Post-it and stuck it to the lamp beside my bed. I’d call him first thing in the morning. The wind had picked up, and I closed the windows, preferring a stuffy room to the howling and groaning wind. The shutters lightly banged against the stone walls, even though they were latched. Sleep didn’t come straightaway, as I was overexcited from the day’s events. And so I lay there, hypersensitive to the noises and my bodily sensations. At times like this I become a hypochondriac. I counted my heartbeats, partly to try to fall asleep but mostly
because I was convinced they were irregular and I was dying. My head began pounding: an aneurysm, obviously. My stomach turned, and I imagined a tumor. What I was doing was fighting sleep, because whenever I closed my eyes, I saw a sea—not the blue-green Mediterranean but a dark, gray, turbulent sea. As the hours passed, exhaustion took over, and I must have fallen asleep. And this is what I dreamed:

  I walked along an expanse of beach, not sandy, like the Atlantic beaches here, but rocky, as they are in Provence. I was barefoot, and the stones hurt my feet, but I kept walking. I looked back now and again, and the Bastide Blanche was there, on a hill overlooking the sea, its shutters closed. Lifeless. The scene before me was bleak: sea and sky the same misty gray, the waves turbulent, the wind howling. Nothing on the horizon, no sign of life, and I had stared at the sea for some time when a bobbing black image appeared; a moment more, and it was Agathe. She wasn’t swimming but trying to climb over the waves. I couldn’t see her face, but I knew it was her. And I could sense her anxiety, and fear, as she tried to jump over each wave and get closer to me. She was crying, and her sobs rang out over the beach. As she got closer I could sense her panic, as she kept looking over her shoulder. Behind her, another bobbing mass appeared, in a sort of bright-red cloak; it was chasing her. I tried to run into the water, but the waves held me back—pushed me back, even. Nor could I call out; I was suddenly mute. The howling continued, as did the crying, and then Agathe suddenly disappeared, as did her pursuer. I awoke and sat up, out of breath.

  I fell back to sleep as the sun was coming up, and must have slept for a few dreamless hours, for when I went downstairs it was already after eleven, and Michèle and Erwan were sitting at the kitchen table in silence. Erwan was holding his head in his two hands, and Michèle was looking out the window, lost in thought. When I walked in, Michèle turned her head to look at me. “Well,” she said, “glad someone could sleep.”