Dead in the Dregs

by Peter Lewis

  Pitot raced the length of the room, set the bottle of wine he’d brought in front of his mother, and hurried back outside. Everybody broke into frenzied conversation. I followed Pitot. The first thing I saw was that he’d waylaid Monique, whispering to her in suppressed fury. He reached out and grabbed her, but she tore herself away. I ran up behind them and took Pitot by the arm.

  “Hey! Let go of her!” He turned at the sound of my voice, and I thought he was going to take a swing at me. Just as suddenly, he turned again and ran toward the parking lot.

  I reached for Monique, but she jerked her arm away.

  “Are you all right?” I said. “Did he hurt you? You do know him, don’t you?”

  “Don’t touch me!” she barked. “Leave me alone.” I raised my hands and just stood there as she strode back into the tasting. I was at a loss and ran after Pitot, but he was already on his motorbike, skidding across the gravel.

  I walked back to the abbey. The scene with Pitot had effectively ended the tasting. Everybody was talking about it, and I had no doubt that Pitot’s intrusion would provide enough fodder for a week’s worth of gossip, at least. I looked around for Monique, didn’t see her at first, and walked to the lower cellar. She was standing between Rosen and Bayne.

  “Are you sure?” she was saying, her tone transformed, coy and teasing, as if the whole thing had never happened.

  “You’ve got to come,” Rosen said. “Roast chicken, some leftover wine. It’ll be perfect. We just have to wait for Kiers. He should be here any minute, though.”

  So, Lucas Kiers had finessed an invitation after all.

  “Tell me, Jack,” Monique said, turning to Goldoni. “Should I spend the evening with les boys?”

  I could see the blood rise from his neck to his cheeks.

  “Please,” Rosen was putting on the pressure. “I insist.” Then he changed tack. “Come on, help me with the wine.”

  “I can’t now. I have to go,” she said, looking at me. “But I’ll be there later. I promise.”

  “Okay, I’ll see you then,” Rosen said, kissing her on both cheeks.

  He and Bayne went over to the long table, now covered with empty bottles. Monique hurried outside, and I followed, catching up with her in the parking area.

  “What was all that about?” I said.

  “Give me a cigarette,” she said. She took one from the pack I offered, and I lit it. She repaid me by blowing smoke in my face.

  “Who are you?” she demanded. “What are you doing here? You’re fucking up everything.”

  “I’m just trying to protect you,” I said. “Not piss you off.”

  “Well, you are. You’re really pissing me off,” she said and got in the Fiat, slamming the door.

  “I think Jean is Richard’s son,” I called. “That’s why he killed him.”

  She stared at me and started the car. As she pulled out of the parking lot, I could have sworn she was looking at me in the rearview mirror.

  It was nearly four o’clock. The vignerons gathered one last time to talk about Pitot and compare their impressions of the tasting and how they thought their wines had fared. Most seemed unsure, if their shrugs were any indication, both of what had prompted Pitot’s outrageous incursion and of how Goldoni had scored them.

  Bayne and I helped Rosen marry the remnants of the wine, pouring what was left in the bottles into others of the same appellation that were half or a quarter full, and by the time we’d finished we’d put together a case of spectacular juice.

  “You should join us tonight,” Rosen said to me. “Monique’s coming, you heard. In fact, you should spend the night. There’s plenty of room. The Chemin’s too expensive, anyway. Save yourself a few bucks. And I got a ticket for you to the public tasting tomorrow.”

  “That’s awfully nice of you,” I said, “but would you mind explaining what the hell happened just now?”

  Rosen bit his lip and shrugged. “I have no idea. I’ve never seen him before. I have no idea who he is. But people get crazy around these guys,” he said, meaning the wine critics. “Crazy,” he repeated.

  He left Bayne and me standing there and walked over to chat with his growers as they packed up, trying to reassure them that their wines had shown well and that he was pleased with how it had gone. Goldoni, meanwhile, was grazing through the remains of the buffet. Madame Pitot approached him and presented him with a generous slab of pâté.

  Goldoni took a chunk in his fingers and popped it in his mouth.

  “It tastes like shit,” he pronounced, rudely spitting the pâté onto the plate as if it were wine and setting it down.

  I looked at Madame Pitot. It hadn’t been a very good day for her. She took her coat from the back of a chair and walked out, abandoning her terrine and her son’s bottle of wine on the table. The women watched her go, obviously glad to be rid of her.

  I calmed myself down by assisting Madame Gauffroy as she gathered up the tablecloths; then Bayne and I broke down the boards and trestles. By the time Lucas Kiers arrived, we were the only ones left.

  “Sorry I’m late,” Kiers offered as he entered the room.

  “You’re fine,” Rosen assured him.

  “You’re sure it’s okay?” he asked, directing the question at Lucien Gauffroy, who stood calmly behind Rosen.

  “Absolument,” Gauffroy reassured him. He looked as fresh and attentive as if it were his first appointment of the day. “On y va.”

  We followed him down a steep staircase I’d seen earlier. It descended from the room where the tables had been set out to a basement cellar, a narrow room that ran the length of the abbey, a single file of barrels on each side, to a small chamber at the very back that housed older, rarer bottles caked with dust and cobwebs behind a wrought-iron grate. A small table stood in the center of the tiny cell.

  Gauffroy offered us each a glass, and we started in on the least of his wines, a village Gevrey-Chambertin, proceeding to his two premiers crus and finally to a grand cru Charmes. We ended sampling his pièce de résistance, a grand cru Griottes.

  Having assumed that my attenuated palate couldn’t endure another sip, I was astonished as we ascended from one level of complexity to the next, the lush brilliance of Gauffroy’s Pinot eliciting a string of exclamations from Kiers. “Incroyable! Superbe! Magnifique!” His boyish enthusiasm bubbled over. Gauffroy stood politely, his arms folded in mute repose, a smile etched on his face. Clearly, he was not surprised. Supremely confident and completely unassuming, he awaited the verdict.

  “I’m really going to have to completely revise what I said a year ago,” Kiers finally pronounced. “I had no idea that this vintage could come around like this.”

  “That’s because of the way you write, the way you taste,” Rosen said testily. “You don’t taste wines, you taste a vintage.” Kiers looked startled, but Rosen was on a roll. “You tell people what they should drink instead of letting them discover it for themselves. ‘Drink the ’01s. Forget ’04; ’02 and ’03 look good. Mortgage your home to buy ’05.’ What kind of advice is that? Each one of Lucien’s wines is unique.” He uttered the last statement as if daring anyone to contradict him.

  “Freddy . . .” I interjected.

  Kiers, promising to recant his earlier opinion, was already clearly poised to highlight Rosen’s producer, and yet Rosen was intent on riding his hobbyhorse into the dust. I pulled him aside and led him to the rear of the cellar, suggesting a more diplomatic approach. But, fueled by five hours of tasting, the disturbance caused by Jean Pitot, and what he anticipated would be only a qualified endorsement of the wines by Goldoni, he was unable to contain his irritation, which soon erupted again.

  “You generalize every vintage!” he said, now raising his voice for emphasis. “Do you have any idea how hard someone like Lucien works to bring this in? Any of my growers, for that matter? They give all their attention to their work. Do you know how much fruit they drop in a year like this one? Thirty percent! Maybe forty!” By now he was practic
ally shouting. “And then they have to deal with the weather, the harvest . . .” He looked at Lucas Kiers, glowering.

  “Look, Freddy, we’re writing for the consumer, not the insider,” Kiers remonstrated. “The average person isn’t going to travel to France each year. He needs guidance, and we’re here to help him. It’s a public service.”

  “But what kind of service is it when you write off an entire vintage?” Rosen simply wasn’t to be appeased. Finally Gauffroy, who’d obviously been able to follow the twists in the argument, grunting so inscrutably that it was impossible to know what he was really thinking, decided to weigh in.

  “Écoutez,” he said, getting both’s attention. “If I screw up, I pay,” he said to Rosen. “But if you screw up,” he added, turning to Kiers, “I pay!” His argument seemed unassailable, yet his contribution imposed only a fragile peace.

  It was left to Kiers, his face flushed, to thank Gauffroy and excuse himself.

  “Great work,” I said to Rosen. “That ought to produce some positive press.”

  “Fuck you,” he said. “What do you know?”

  He had a point. The only thing I knew for sure was that the Pitots had made their unsettling presence felt at the tasting and that I needed to report my impressions to a certain colonel in the gendarmerie. Given the hour, I thought I might check in with Sackheim’s California counterpart as well. I doubted that Ciofreddi was stationed by the phone, waiting to hear from me, but that hardly damped my eagerness to report in.

  Bayne and I helped Rosen haul the leftover wine to his car.

  “Look,” he now said by way of apology, “I let myself get too into trying to psych Jacques out. I don’t think he’s going to score the wines very well. But you tasted them. How did you find them?”

  “Well, it’s not the kind of tasting I prefer—a hundred wines in a single go—but I thought they were pretty impressive.”

  “Hey, I’m sorry I told you to fuck yourself. I really wanted to tell Kiers to go fuck himself.”

  “I know. Don’t worry about it. But he was on your side. I was just trying to save you from yourself.”

  Ignoring my nobler intentions, he said, “So, you’ll join us?”

  “I need to make a couple of phone calls first. Just give me the address, and I’ll find my way there. A phone number, too, if you have one. I’ll catch up with you.”

  22

  Dusk had settled, a light rain beating against the windows of my hotel room. The moon, one night from full, blinked on and off through swiftly racing clouds. I found Ciofreddi’s card. I’d try to keep it short.

  I lucked out: The good lieutenant’s day was only just starting.

  “I was wondering if I’d hear from you,” he said. “What’s going on?”

  “I just finished a five-hour tasting with Jacques Goldoni. You’d never know his boss had been murdered. ‘The king is dead; long live the king.’”

  “Meaning?”

  “The whole thing stinks. And Eric Feldman’s missing.”

  At first he didn’t respond. Then he said, “Does Sackheim know?”

  “I called him this morning.”

  “You might suggest he establish Goldoni’s whereabouts.”

  “Yeah, but the problem is, where isn’t he?”

  “What about Pitot?”

  “He lives with his mother and father. Though he claims to have left Napa to return here to help his family with the harvest, he actually doesn’t work with them but has a job at a domaine in Chambolle-Musigny, a village not far north of here. He’s a nutcase, if you ask me. In fact, the whole family seems fairly unhinged.”

  “You talk to him?”

  “I keep trying, but every time I get close, he bolts. He’s a creepy kid. And I think he tried to kill me.”

  “Let’s not start that again,” Ciofreddi said.

  “I mean it.”

  “You do, huh? And what did he try this time?”

  “Some barrels in the cellar where he works. They broke loose and nearly crushed me.”

  “Well, I guess you’d better tell Sackheim,” he offered grudgingly, though I could tell he didn’t take it seriously.

  “I already did.”

  “Good move. Anything else?”

  “I think Pitot is Wilson’s son. Feldman dropped the bombshell that there’s an illegitimate kid somewhere over here. It could explain everything. Well, nearly everything,” I amended.

  “You’re shitting me,” Ciofreddi said. He gave my news a moment to settle in, then said, “You’re almost his uncle.”

  “Jesus, I hadn’t thought of that.”

  He paused. “What next?” he asked.

  “I’m moving in with some people I’ve met. They’re staying in a house, a little rental place.”

  “But you’re still going to be keeping your eyes and ears open?”

  “I’ll call you if I see or hear anything I think you ought to know. I’ll be in an even better position.”

  “Well, I’m going to be here in the office all day. And tell Sackheim for me I think it’s time the French cops got to work.”

  “I’m pretty certain he opened the investigation in earnest today. But I’ll tell him. Eh bien, au revoir.”

  “Yeah, ciao to you, too.”

  I fished Sackheim’s card out of my wallet and dialed the number.

  “Oui, Sackheim.” Prompt as ever.

  “Bonjour, Colonel. C’est Babe.”

  “Ah, Babe. So, you have finished la grande dégustation?”

  “On all fours and somehow still kicking,” I said.

  “D’accord. But is everybody else kicking, as you say, as well?”

  “Everyone with the exception of Eric Feldman. He still seems to be missing in action.”

  “We will talk about that in a minute. What else?”

  “Jean Pitot was there at the tasting, too. He showed up with his maman.”

  “And?”

  “She doesn’t appear to be very popular. That much is clear. And her cooking wasn’t winning her any awards, either.”

  “Pardon?” I described Goldoni’s response to her pâté. “What about the boy?” Sackheim said.

  “Weirdly carrying on in the parking lot, having some sort of one-sided conversation.”

  “Did he taste wine?”

  “I don’t think so, but he brought a bottle he wanted Goldoni to sample. It didn’t happen. And he made contact with a woman there.”

  “What woman?”

  “Monique Azzine, a young winemaker. She and Pitot got into a fight.”

  “And what was it about?” He was naturally curious but couldn’t disguise his impatience.

  “I don’t know. But she knows all the players. She met them in Bordeaux last summer. I have to assume that Wilson asked Rosen to check up on her before he was killed.”

  “Intéressant.” Sackheim was silent for a moment. “Do you think this woman suspects that young Jean is someone other than he appears to be? Perhaps Wilson himself said something?”

  “Hard to tell,” I said.

  “You are now at the hotel?”

  “Yes, but I’ll be changing my base of operations. I need to get out to Saint-Romain. The house I’m moving to is owned by Frossard. In the morning we’re in Beaune for the Hospices.”

  “Ah, Frossard. The barrel maker. Very famous, very rich people. They sell their barriques all over the world. Perhaps your friends will take you.”

  “Maybe.” Barrels now, for me, had become personal. “What did you find out about Feldman?” I asked.

  “He did not return to his hotel Wednesday night. He had been scheduled to meet some colleagues for dinner. And as you said, he missed his meetings yesterday. His schedule, it was written on a notepad by the telephone.”

  “You were in his room?”

  “Bien sûr. After all, I am a colonel in the gendarmerie. On the same pad, Feldman wrote down his appointment at Domaine Carrière.”

  “But Carrière claimed he hadn’t seen Feldman, t
hat Feldman hadn’t been there.”

  “Hnh!” Sackheim snorted. “It is written down.” He paused. “Was there anyone else with you at Carrière when you had your accident?” he asked.

  “No, he and I were alone. I mean, there were other workers in the winery. And Pitot, whom I saw when I arrived. But, no, not back in the cave with us when the barrels fell. A bunch of men ran into the cellar when they heard everything crash.”

  I sensed wheels spinning on the other end of the line.

  “So, Monsieur Feldman went out two days ago and never came back,” Sackheim muttered.

  “Lieutenant Ciofreddi,” I said. “I called him.”

  “Ah, Charlie!” Sackheim exclaimed. “How is he? He does not trust us to do the job!”

  “I wouldn’t say that!”

  “Oh, come, you know it is true. Repeat to me what he said. Spare me nothing.”

  “He suggested I keep an eye on you and said it was about time you guys got to work,” I admitted.

  “Ha, you see!” he chuckled. “I told you so.”

  “I said you were doing a great job.”

  “Perhaps. It is too soon to say, non? We will see, we will see,” he said. “It is the Americans who are best at crime—both the committing of them and the solving. But it would be unwise to write off our French police too hastily.”

  “You could do another favor for me,” I now said tentatively.

  “And what is that?”

  “I’d like to see a genealogy of the Pitot family. I’m sure you have civil records—births, deaths, marriages. That’s a good place to start.” I wanted to see for myself how Pitot’s paternity was explained in their local records.

  “Hmm,” Sackheim said. “I will ask for this. Et puis, you will be moving where? You have the address and a phone number?”

  I gave him both.

  “Perhaps we have enough to warrant a real investigation by the gendarmerie. I will call you. And, Babe,” he said after a moment, “be careful now.” Then he clicked off.

  I gathered up my stuff—there wasn’t much to pack—and took stock of my situation. I had been attacked—maybe or maybe not for the second time—but still, it’d been an unsettling experience. I’d offended Rosen, had insulted Goldoni, and had upset Monique. Pitot may have fled, but I was the one who felt like a hunted animal. The odd angles of the room appeared like the fractured planes of the case: Richard’s body awash in wine, his hand missing; Eric Feldman now nowhere to be found; and Jean Pitot, who seemed to embody the awful secret at the heart of Richard’s murder. I missed Danny suddenly, wanted to hold him and read to him, and thought about calling Janie, but I had so little to tell her—a series of questions with no real answers—that I thought better of it and went downstairs.