Blackbird Fly (39 page)

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 better 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 99
^th
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
babbling 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?”

“
I might have mentioned the house.
But I didn’t tell him where it was. He must have found out on his
own.” She fiddled with her spoon. “Do you think he has a legal
claim to the wine?”

“
No.” Pascal took her hand. “It is
ancient history. An old family story, that is all. He is a
swindler, a thief, a killer. I don’t believe a word he
says.”

“
You’re sure? I don’t want to take
something that isn’t mine.”

He looked at her, tipping his head. “The wine is
yours, Merle. All yours.”

As they walked out into the street she invited him
for dinner. “On one condition,” he said. “You make your
coq au
vin
again. It is just like my grandmother’s. And, yes, that’s a
good thing.”

They sat outside in the garden in the evening,
sipping pear
eau de vie
that Pascal had brought. It went
straight to her head, making her dizzy even sitting down. Tristan
was inside listening to music. The night was quiet, peaceful for
once. She listened to the birds in the trees, the frogs in the
vineyards. This was the way she imagined her French summer, not
full of injury, intrigue, violence. She shut her eyes and tried to
forget all that. The music rolled out the open door into the night,
American music in a French garden, a perfect match.

She’d thought more about Anthony, or rather Hugh
Rogers, and his connection to the wine. If he’d had a decent claim
he could have pressed it with her. Instead he chose to steal the
wine. That negated any thread of legal claim, she decided.

Pascal held out his hand. “
Vous dansez,
mademoiselle
?” The music was Annie’s album, old Beatles songs.
She swayed in his arms, as he twisted the hair on the nape of her
neck. A bittersweet moment made ludicrously romantic by the night
sky and his strong, warm hands. Even this —
especially this
— she had never imagined. And why not, her little voice asked,
having finally released her from the
what-what?
She felt
free, calm. A person who asks
why not?
A new person
altogether.