Death in the Vines: A Verlaque and Bonnet Provençal Mystery (20 page)

“He's talking about the war again,” Élise replied. “He does that now and again. He was a small boy when his uncle Bertrand was killed because he was
un
résistant
. With the dementia, all that stuff is coming back to him.”

On his way back into Aix, Verlaque telephoned Marine and proposed that they have dinner at a restaurant in the perched village of Ventabren, a fifteen-minute drive west of Aix. It was a clear, warm night, and they'd be able to eat out on the restaurant's terrace, which had a view south almost to the sea. The chef had just been given his first Michelin star, and Verlaque was relieved that they were open and that he was able to reserve the last remaining table.

“It's odd, these stories,” Verlaque said, once they had been seated and were sipping Champagne, “how they're all beginning to overlap. Mme d'Arras's body found not far from Rognes, in the Bonnards' vineyard. Coincidence?”

Marine crossed her arms and stared at Verlaque. “No, I don't think so.”

“Really?” Verlaque bit into a petit four and waited for Marine to answer.

“It's
too
coincidental,” she said. “What was Pauline d'Arras doing in Rognes, and why did she meet her death there, so close to where she grew up and where there have been recent wine thefts?” Marine picked up one of the petits fours and tasted it. “Oh my,” she said, wiping her mouth with a large white linen napkin, “what's in these things?”

“Sun-dried tomatoes?” Verlaque asked. “Mme d'Arras's Filofax was still in her purse. “We'll go over it tomorrow morning; her lists of phone numbers and appointments may be useful.”

“People still use Filofaxes?”

“You do if you don't have a cell phone,” Verlaque answered. “And I may go visit Mme d'Arras's sister Clothilde, who's a nun in the southwest. Care to join me?”

Marine shook her head. “Tempting, but I have too much work, and way too many useless meetings to prepare for the new semester. I was supposed to hand in my syllabus two weeks ago. This happens every year—I think I have all summer to prepare and then, all of a sudden,
c'est la rentrée.
”
I'm still not telling him about the lump: the little pea.

“It's not like you weren't doing anything.” Verlaque leaned back so that the waitress could bring their first course, a sea bream delicately spiced with chervil and tarragon, surrounded by thinly sliced potato rounds. “How's your writing going, anyway?”

“I'm very excited about it,” Marine answered, cutting into her fish. “You gave me the strength to move on and try another discipline. I've picked my subject for the biography and started researching. It's not law-related, which somehow feels very liberating.”

“But you seemed sad the other day,” Verlaque said.

Marine set her fork down.
Perhaps it is time
. “Yes, I was. But going to church helped, and today I had a long talk with…my doctor.”

Verlaque leaned forward across the table. “Doctor? Marine, what's going on? Are you ill?”

“I found a small lump in my breast last week,” she replied. “And…”

“Why didn't you tell me?”

“Because it may be benign—we don't know yet. I'm having a bit of it taken out tomorrow morning, at the hospital.”

“You should have told me!” Verlaque said. “I'll go with you.” Just then his cell phone, which was sitting on the table, beeped.

“Shit!” Verlaque cried in English. “I'm sorry, Marine, it's Bruno. I'll have to take this.” He grabbed his telephone and left the restaurant's terrace to cross the tiny village street so that he was out of earshot of the restaurant's patrons.

Marine watched him, admiring his thick black-and-gray hair and broad shoulders, which were hunched over as he spoke. She was glad she had been honest with him; it had been her father's advice, and her doctor's. But something about Antoine's reaction bothered her. She couldn't put her finger on it.

Her doctor had felt the lump that morning and was confident. “Most of these are benign, Marine,” she had said. “Noncancerous breast lesions are very common, and they are never life-threatening. We'll take a sample of it, but don't worry. I'll set up an appointment for you. It's a fast procedure: you'll be in and out in a jiffy. Are you afraid of needles?”

Marine shook her head. “No. Worms, yes; deep seawater, yes. Needles, no.”

Her gynecologist smiled and explained the procedure that a radiologist at the clinic would perform with a thin, hollow needle.
“He or she will take some fluid from the cyst with the needle and perhaps use an ultrasound to guide positioning the needle. The fluid will then be sent off to the lab.”

Marine had walked home, not happy exactly, but calmer than she had been in days. She spent the afternoon reading a dull but thorough biography of her subject that had been written in the 1960s. She hadn't seen the time go by and was still reading when Verlaque called her, suggesting dinner out. It was a fantastic idea, and she treated herself by running across the street to agnès b. and buying a blouse that she had been eyeing. She had been waiting for the blouse to go on sale, but agnès b. rarely did sales, and when they did it was for clothes that no one wanted. It was frivolous to do this the night before a biopsy, but she wanted to think of other things. That very night she wore the blouse, which was covered in pink roses, with white jeans and flat Tropézienne leather sandals.

She sipped on some white wine but put her glass down the moment she saw Verlaque's face as he crossed the restaurant's terrace, his phone call ended.

“You don't look so good,” Marine said. “What's up?”

“Your intuition may be right,” he replied, sitting down. “A young woman's body has been found in Rognes.”

“Another one?” Marine asked. She felt sick to her stomach.

“Yes. She was raped and strangled, like Mlle Montmory, that girl from Éguilles.” He leaned back. “I'm not hungry anymore.” He realized that he would not be able to go to the doctor's with Marine in the morning, would have to go straight to the Palais de Justice.

“Nor am I,” Marine answered. “We can cancel the rest of the meal, can't we?”

Verlaque nodded and went into the restaurant. “It's not a problem,
we can go,” he said when he returned. “They hadn't started cooking our main dish yet.”

He left a stack of one-euro coins on the table as a tip, and they walked to his car, arm in arm. “Why didn't you tell me?” he asked.

“I'm not sure,” Marine answered truthfully.

Verlaque sighed. “I'll try to go with you tomorrow morning.”

“That's really not necessary,” Marine answered. “With this new murder, you'll be needed elsewhere.” She could hear Sylvie's voice: “Martyr!” She changed the subject. “This really is a picturesque village….”

Verlaque looked at Marine and wondered what she was
really
thinking. “Yes,” he replied. “And so close to Aix.”

“The chef wasn't upset that we had to leave?” she asked.

“I promised him we'd come back, with friends. How about Jean-Marc and Pierre?”

Marine stopped at Verlaque's antique Porsche. “Perfect. And maybe we can invite José and his wife, Carmé.”

“Good idea. You spoke with her a lot at the party,” Verlaque said. He knew that they both wanted to talk of other, lighter things, if only for a few minutes.

“Yes, she's funny and bright. And not as unctuous as that Philippe Léridon. Yuck.”

“He's Mme d'Arras's neighbor,” Verlaque said, frowning. “I'm going to go and speak with him.”

“When did this woman from Rognes die?” Marine asked as they got into the car.

“Dr. Bouvet is performing an autopsy tomorrow morning,” Verlaque answered. “He said that the body had been there, in the woman's house, at least two, maybe three days.”

“Who found her?”

“Her ex-boyfriend, who came by the house because she wasn't
returning his phone calls. In the meantime, we've got a killer who has raped twice, and definitely murdered once, if it's the same guy.” Verlaque stayed silent as he drove the car down the twisty road from Ventabren's old town to the flat
route nationale
that led back through the valley to Aix. “I'd like you to sleep at my place until we find this guy,” he finally said.

“Okay,” Marine answered. “If you just double-park in front of my apartment, I'll run up and get my stuff.”

“Is Sylvie back yet from Mégève? Can she take you to the clinic tomorrow, if I can't?”

“Yes, but Charlotte starts school tomorrow.”

Verlaque said, “Imagine coming from a place as mythical as Mégève.”

“That's why she's such a great skier,” Marine replied.

“That's for sure. She can ski backward—I've seen her do it. She's a much better skier than I am. But, then again, Charlotte can ski better than I can,” Verlaque said, smiling.

Marine looked over at him and squeezed his knee. A year ago, Antoine Verlaque would never had made such a joke. She would only see glimpses of his warmth; then he would quickly clam up, as if he were stopping himself from revealing too much. Something had changed, for the better. He was now more honest and natural, but she noted that the subject of her breast lump had been dropped.

They quickly got back to Aix, and Verlaque waited in his car, double-parked in front of agnès b., while Marine gathered her things. She was back in the car in five minutes, balancing a load of books on her knee. Verlaque pulled away from the curb and tilted his head to look at the spines. “Jean-Paul Sartre,” he said. “I should have known you'd pick him. You're writing his biography, right?”

Marine smiled. “Not only his.”

Verlaque turned right and drove up the Rue Frédéric Mistral. “You're writing two books?” He looked again at the stack of books on her lap. “Simone de Beauvoir! That's a heavy project. They both lived, and worked, a long time. Two books is perhaps overdoing it, don't you think?”

“One book,” Marine answered. “I'm not writing about their philosophies or their works. I'm writing about their relationship. It's a love story.”

B
runo Paulik leaned his thick forearms across Verlaque's desk. “‘Gisèle Durand,'” he read aloud from a file. “‘Age forty-two. Born and raised in Rognes. Both parents deceased; an older brother who emigrated to the U.S. more than twenty years ago. She worked for thirteen years at a small clothing store in the village, but it recently closed. She's been unemployed for six months. Body found by ex-boyfriend, André Prodos, age thirty-seven. Apparently, he had been trying to call her but kept getting the answering machine, and so yesterday evening, after work, he went by her apartment.'”

“Where does he work?” Verlaque asked.

Paulik looked at the file. “He's a mechanic in Pertuis.”

“Let's find out everything we can about him. And the clothing-store owner? If they worked together for thirteen years, he or she would be a good source.”

“Right,” Paulik said. He turned the page of the file and read. “The clothing-store owner is Laure Matour. It gives an address in
Rognes here for her, and a cell-phone number. No cell-phone number for the ex-boyfriend, but a landline, and I think I know where the garage is.” He turned to Jules Schoelcher. “Got your little book with you?”

Jules Schoelcher patted his right breast pocket. “I'll start right away?”

“Yes,” Paulik answered. “Flamant will be working with you.”

“Look for any connections between the two women,” Verlaque said. “Dr. Bouvet told Commissioner Paulik last night that Mlle Durand was attacked in the same way that Mlle Montmory was, and that the marks on her neck were similar. Strangulation, this one successful, at the throat, with bare hands. The two women have very different profiles: one a good fifteen years older than the other; the younger one from a good family with a good steady job, the other unemployed with no family in the area. So we need to find out what they had in common—where they did their shopping, if they went to church, if they ever lived in the same building, anything. Go to their apartments and go through their desks: look at their bills, letters, receipts from purchases, phone calls in and out, everything.” Verlaque's telephone rang; he glanced down at the caller's number. “It's Bouvet.