Blackbird Fly

by Lise McClendon

  She glanced at him, his half smile. “Yes, where have you been?”

  “You are shivers again.” Pascal pulled her close. “Go home. I have to arrest the Englishman. You have my number if you can’t sleep? ”

  After thanking Louis and Henri Merle dragged Tristan away from the excitement. She wanted to go check on the wine. The boy chattered excitedly, recounting the chase and the amazing thing about Henri being one of the guys who helped the out-of-towners at the fencing tournament and how he was all right now that he’d smashed a bottle of wine over the burglar’s head.

  She set Tristan to trying to secure the front door which had been kicked out, both the frame and the door itself were splintered. The door shutters were done for. He propped them up and brought the padlock inside. The gate was in similar shape, broken timbers and lock busted. She tried to lock it and finally gave up.

  The trapdoor was open, the cupboard pushed aside. Merle shone the flashlight down the stairs. “How many bottles did he have?”

  “Just two.”

  “There’s more on the stairs. Be careful.”

  A case or more lined the steps. He’d gone straight for the Pétrus. The door to the cave had been hatcheted, the tool lying on the dirt floor. But inside the rest of the wine was safe. “Count at that end,” she said, after they had put the bottles on the stairs back into their racks. There were only five bottles missing and they had drunk three themselves.

  Upstairs they repositioned the cupboard over the trap door then Tristan went to bed, still excited. Merle added to her list: wine truck and safe storage, flowers for Albert. Then: passport. A policeman came to the front door a half hour later. She pushed aside the broken shutters. He was to stand guard. He had a rather large gun, she noted happily. She put her head down on the table.

  The sounds woke her. She looked for her watch, still a reflex but an empty one. It was dark outside. Through the broken panes of the front door she could see the policeman, walking back and forth like he was a palace guard, probably to stay awake. Had he coughed? What had wakened her?

  She curled into the horsehair sofa, feeling the lumps poke her hips. Just jumpy, she thought, turning down the floor lamp to low. She listened again, and lay her head on a pillow.

  There! Again, a sound, definitely from the back. She lay still. Should she get the policeman or scare whoever was in her garden off herself? Policeman. For sure. She lay in the semi-dark, listening. Had she locked the back door?

  On cue, the glass shattered. She sat up to see a hand coming through the broken pane and unbolting the door.

  The hatchet lay against the fireplace where Tristan had left it. Her heart was pounding as she lunged for it, standing in the shadows under the stairs, waiting for — who? She yelled, “Police! Help! Intruder!” Where was he?

  She jumped into the light, brandishing the hatchet with both hands. In her kitchen stood Jean-Pierre Redier flanked by a shorter man. Jean-Pierre looked startled then began to laugh. “Vous êtes en état d’arrestation, madame.” You are under arrest. He pulled out his handcuffs and slapped them across his black gloved hand.

  “Oh, no, you don’t. Monsieur, policier!”

  “He has gone home. He isn’t needed, madame.” He grinned at her. “Three’s a crowd, isn’t that the expression?”

  “Mom?” Tristan stood on the stairs in sweat pants and t-shirt. “What’s going on?”

  “Come over here by me, Tristan.” She still held the hatchet in both hands, ready to chop off the hands of anyone who came too close. She felt reckless, and sleep-deprived, and generally pissed off. “Get back!” She swung the hatchet in the direction of the gendarme. Black leather pants, my ass.

  Her son vaulted the railing and landed on the floor. He slid sideways to her side. “What the heck are you doing, mom?” he whispered. “That’s the cop.”

  “Reach into my pocket,” she said softly. “Get my cell phone and call Pascal. Tell him to get here quick. I’m going to turn a little your way. Don’t let him see.”

  “Where is the policeman? What did you do to him?” she said in French to Jean-Pierre. She needed to keep talking until Tris made his call. She could feel his fingers in her pocket. “Did you kill him like you killed Justine LaBelle?”

  “Quoi?” said the other man, who was bearded and wore a knit cap. “You killed the putain?”

  “Stop talking nonsense. You killed her, madame. That’s why you are under arrest.” He took a step toward her. Tristan crouched behind his mother. She could hear the buttons beeping and coughed to cover the sound. “And you broke into my house, Monsieur le Gendarme. How will you explain getting your fingers chopped off, eh?”

  The second man’s eyes widened. He stuffed his hands in his pockets. Jean-Pierre lowered his head like a bull. He was a big man, young and strong, and she was making him mad. Some things couldn’t be helped.

  “She was your aunt, wasn’t she? You must have been proud. An aunt who ran around in revealing clothes. A famous whore, right here in town. How exciting for you. It must have been hard to explain. So you pushed her off the cliff so you didn’t have to see her parading her pathetic old self around town any more. Isn’t that right?”

  Tristan was whispering. The gendarme looked around her, craning his neck. He lunged forward and she swung the hatchet, catching him on the wrist with the blunt side of the hatchet. “Get back, you dirty flic!”

  He grabbed the handle of the hatchet. She refused to let go, skidding across the room with both hands tight on it. “Go out the front, Tristan!” He turned as the gendarme slammed her against the wall under the stair. The boy put his shoulder to the door and ran.

  “Don’t let him get away,” Jean-Pierre told his frozen cohort. He had a boot on her foot, pinching her toes in a crushing motion. Merle howled and tried to chop at him again, but he had both hands on the hatchet and wrenched it out of her hands.

  “Go after him, idiot!” The shorter man ran out the front door.

  “Quite the tom-cat, eh?” He dropped the hatchet and grabbed her hands. Slapping on the handcuffs he wrapped them around a stair baluster. She struggled to her feet as he let up on the pressure on her toes. “Okay, where is it?” He began to pace around the room.

  “Where is what? Your dick? They all say you have trouble finding it.”

  He laughed and kept pacing. “Wouldn’t you like to know? Like a little taste, would you? The door, where is it?”

  “Right behind you. Show yourself out.”

  He had spun when she said ‘behind you,’ and now grabbed her arm. He smelled of liquor and sweat. His breath reeked of cigarettes. “You are so smart. You arrogant Americans.” He brought his knee up to her back. She moaned at the pain.

  He pushed the sofa, pulled up the rug, flinging it against the wall. Through the kitchen and bath, he pounded on the stone floor with his boots, then at the kitchen door, he laughed. Quite fond of evil laughter, was he. He had found it. The scratch marks on the floor had clued him in. He pushed the heavy cupboard aside, pulled up the door, and shone a flashlight on the stairs.

  Merle tugged on the handcuffs. They cut into her wrists. The banister upright she was chained to — the word came to her: baluster — was halfway up the stairs, at shoulder level. Her hands were going numb. In the cellar she could hear the gendarme moving around, humming over the wine bottles, setting them back on the steps as Anthony had done.

  The baluster was two inches across but carved with spiral indentations. She had so enjoyed painting the stairs. But now… She gripped the baluster with both hands. It wiggled when she pulled. If she could break it without alerting him — well, that was unlikely, wasn’t it? But what else did she have?

  The hatchet lay on the floor, six feet away. She stretched her foot toward it, pulled it with her toe. But how to get it up to her hands? She put her right foot on the fourth stair tread, eased her hands to the top of the baluster, and swung her left leg over the handrail. Her newly-healed wrist screamed with pain. She wiggled her hands into a b
etter position and lifted her right leg over.

  On the steps sat Tristan’s hiking boots. She slipped her right foot into his boot. It was way too big, almost falling off. She figured she had one chance. Dangling the boot on her foot she tried to tightened the laces but it was too hard. These steel-toe wonders she didn’t want to buy him because they were too heavy for camp — well, time to pay up, dogs.

  The clink of bottles just below the trap door — he was too close. She waited until he moved away, back in the cave. She counted his steps, two, three, four, five, then drew back her foot and kicked hard. The post bent but held. She aimed again, a little higher, and swung again. This time the baluster shattered. She kicked off the boot and slipped her handcuffs down to the breach. In a leap she was on the floor. She reached the trap door as he looked up the stairs. He shouted obscenities as she flipped the trap door down on his head and jumped on it.

  He pushed up, bouncing her. The cupboard was three feet away. His shoulder heaved up under her. He outweighed her by fifty pounds or more. She couldn’t hold him down much longer. She dove around the cupboard as he blasted up out the trap door. With a shove, it toppled, crashing, splitting in two with the top section snapping off and landing with all the dishes and glass and shelves on the gendarme’s head. She heard him moan and didn’t hang around for the crying.

  She ran through the garden, out the gate, and into the alley, her socks slipping on the moss. Albert’s gate was closed and locked. She ran down the alley. Where the hell did Pascal live? Who could she trust? Running hard, she passed rue de Poitiers and ran all the way to the inspector’s back-alley hotel. The windows were dark, door locked.

  “Open up!” She rattled the knob, pounding. “Capitan Montrose!”

  “Madame?” He stood behind her, materialized in the night air in his sensible gray suit. “Qu’est-ce que tu fait?”

  “Allons-y! Vite, vite!”

  She dragged him through the streets. He didn’t complain or ask questions. He tripped a few times, but then so did she, in her handcuffs and socks. “Ma maison, monsieur,” she said at one corner. “C’est urgent!”

  Rue de Poitiers was lit up like Albert’s street had been hours earlier. Every neighbor was on their stoop or at their window, at least those who hadn’t fled to Paris. Madame Suchet stood in a velvet housecoat, arms crossed, chatting. Great entertainment, better than television, these Americans.

  Merle dropped her grip on the Inspector’s sleeve and burst in the door.

  “Mom!” Tristan ran to her and threw his arms around her. Behind him stood Pascal.

  “Did you get him?” she asked. “Where is he? I’m okay, honey,” she told her son in a rush.

  “In the garden. A special spot.” Pascal tipped his head to the back yard. She followed him out the door, through the dark to the pissoir. The crime scene tape was torn. He pushed open the door. Handcuffed around the ancient stone stool, his bloody head resting on the porcelain ring, sitting on the dirt in his leather pants, was Jean-Pierre.

  “You bastard!” She spun to Pascal. “Get the key for these off him. Is the wine all right? Did you check it? What happened to that other guy? Did he catch you, Tristan? Are you all right? Did he hurt you?”

  The policeman watching Jean-Pierre was the one who had been posted outside her house. He looked at her guiltily. “Where the hell was he while I was being forcibly detained? And where were you, Pascal? What took you so long? Were you sleeping? Are all the dishes broken? How many bottles did we lose?”

  Pascal took her handcuffed hands and put them over his head, around the back of his neck. He clamped his hand over her mouth as she talked, adrenaline surging through her. “Get the key! Don’t fool around, my wrists are killing me! My feet are bruised, my ankle is twisted —”

  “I can’t hear you, blackbird,” he said. “What is that you say? The only way to stop your mouth is another mouth?”

  Tristan laughed.

  Pascal winked at the boy. “Okay, if I must.”

  Chapter 38

  The next two days were full of repair, human and maison, and storytelling. Merle recounted her adventure with the thieving gendarme to numerous officials, from Capitan Montrose and again to his superior from Bergerac, then to a high-ranking Policier Nationale officer in a very strange uniform. Most humiliating that one of their own was so bad, caught in the act. She felt a lot better than they did.

  Merle, Pascal, and Tristan dropped all their repairs and drove to the hospital in Bergerac to see Albert. They were not allowed in his room so they left flowers and a note for him with the nurses. His sister’s daughter, Valerie’s mother, was to travel down from Paris to take him home with her for recuperation.

  The doors to the house were a total loss — front, back, and shutters. Andre Saintson, the locksmith, conjured up substitutes, probably from the ruins on his street, and planed and sanded until they fit. He put on new locks, with deadbolts. Madame Suchet dragged a pair of door shutters out of her basement that would serve, a flaky red paint on their boards. They didn’t have the pretty round top of the broken ones but they would do.

  The cheap dishes and glassware were not mourned, having performed their civic duty on the hard head of Jean-Pierre. He in turn broke a Malcouziac rule and ratted out his uncle, the mayor, the original schemer with Anthony Simms. Pascal was very happy even if the Inspector broke out in a sweat, smoked endless Gauloises, and was generally theatrical.

  The wine had mostly been saved. Two bottles of Château L'Église-Clinet had broken when the trap door landed on Jean-Pierre. A bottle of Cheval-Blanc had cracked. But the remainder, miraculously, was intact. Pascal arranged for it to be stored at a government facility but Merle felt uneasy and made him take her with him. It was inside a prison yard in Toulouse. Better than any other alternative, she thought, re-reading the detailed receipt for the 99th time.

  The next morning Tristan was clumping down the patched up stairs in the famous hiking boots as she walked in the house. She handed him a pastry.

  “Pascal was here. He wants you to meet him. There’s a note. He said I was too sleepy to remember.” He pointed out the slip of paper on the table. They bit into their pains au chocolat. “Mom? Are you going to marry Pascal?”

  She choked. “What?”

  “He likes you. And you like him, don’t you?”

  Her boy, almost a man, wore his youth fresh on his early-morning face. His hair stood out in all directions and he gave her that half-smile, just like Harry’s. “We live on different continents. But we’ll come back here, don’t you think?”

  “Not if we sell it.” He flopped in a chair and inhaled another pastry.

  “Would you like to keep the house, come back here in the summers?”

  “Would Valerie come back too?”

  “Maybe.” She read the note: ‘Meet me for lunch at Cafe Eloise, one o’clock.’

  “I might, like, get a summer job or something.”

  She ruffled his hair. “Keep your options open. Like Dad always said.”

  Pascal leaned against the building, smoking, as they rounded the corner. He stamped out his cigarette, kissing them on both cheeks, then led them into the bistro with an old checkerboard tile floor and red tablecloths. For some reason she’d never found this restaurant. But she’d be back. If they needed money for college she would sell the house then.

  After lunch Tristan left to buy ice cream on the square. Merle and Pascal had peach sorbet and coffee. He reached into his pocket and slid her passport across the table.

  She set down her spoon and stared at it, fingering the inside, her old picture with her stringy, gray hair. She leaned over and kissed him. “Thank you.”

  “I am just the messenger. Montrose has charged Anthony Simms in the murder of Justine LaBelle.”

  She frowned. “Did he confess?”

  “I don’t think so. But the intent was there. The wine was a powerful motive.” He sipped his coffee. “What?”

  “It’s just — remember when I was b
abbling that night? I know you do. When I was facing off Jean-Pierre I blurted out, did you kill your aunt the whore. I don’t know why I said it, but it makes perfect sense. She embarrassed them. They'd been shunnng her fifty years. Plus they wanted her out of the house so they could get to the wine.”

  “Perhaps. Maybe they did it together. We know Simms was at the shrine that morning.”

  She would go home, and forget about Anthony Simms. But would she forget Justine LaBelle? Not likely. She probably never knew about the treasure in her cellar. What a life she had.

  Pascal leaned forward. “About the wine. It’s safe now but we should not tempt fate. You know how to call the auction houses?” She nodded. “Did you hear Simms say something about ‘my father’s wine’?”

  She frowned. “Do you think he actually owned the wine? There were invoices in an old file left by Harry’s father. One of them was from a British company, in London.”

  “An invoice for these wines, these vintages?”

  “No. Other wines.”

  “Then I doubt it. Hugh Rogers — his real name — he has a pretty good rap sheet in England. His father tells a tale, he says, of being swindled.”

  “Out of this wine, my wine?”

  “It’s just another of his cons.”

  “How did he know it was in the house? I didn’t tell anyone, not even you.”

  He smiled. “But you did let me drink some, cherie. It’s my belief that he came here knowing that the wine might be here, even though he had this other business, the wine scam. Probably picked this area for his scam because the house was here.”

  “Wait. What did you say his name is?”

  “Hugh Rogers.”

  “He called the house. Back home. He was trying to get Harry to invest in Bordeaux futures. So he must have known about the connection with Harry’s father — and the house.”

  “Did you tell him about Malcouziac?”