Death in the Vines: A Verlaque and Bonnet Provençal Mystery (25 page)

I
nstead of thinking of what they did in common,” Paulik said as they stood in Verlaque's office Wednesday morning, “you thought of what they didn't do…drive.”

Verlaque nodded as he snipped the end off a Partagás double corona. “Neither Gisèle Durand nor Mme d'Arras drove,” he said. “When Durand's ex-boss told me that Gisèle didn't drive, I remembered M. d'Arras saying the same thing about his wife.”

“Do you think it's the same bus route?” Paulik asked. “Éguilles to Rognes, and then to Aix?”

Verlaque shrugged. “No idea. We need to send someone to the bus depot and do some interviews. But I have an appointment after lunch with a nun, Pauline d'Arras's sister. I need to hit the road soon if I want to be on time.” He checked his watch. “When is Gisèle Durand's boyfriend coming?”

“I'm meeting him early this evening,” Paulik said. “He lives and works in Pertuis, pretty close to our house. I know his garage;
they specialize in old Citroëns. And I'm meeting the other sister, Christophe Chazeau's mother, after lunch.”

“Could you go to Mlle Montmory's funeral at eleven a.m.?” Verlaque asked. He was beginning to feel like a shit again—or an ass, as Fabrice had called him. He hadn't taken Marine to the clinic, and he wasn't going to the funeral.

“I was planning on it,” Paulik replied. Verlaque nodded and thought to himself,
God bless you, Bruno Paulik.

“By the way, Didier Ruère's alibi sticks,” Paulik said. “Both his drinking buddy and the barman confirmed his claim that he was in the Bar de Zinc on Friday night.”

Verlaque's phone rang, and he ran to his desk to answer it. “
Oui
.” He nodded and whispered to Paulik, “It's the lab guys who tested the mud.” Verlaque listened and nodded a few times, thanked the technician, and set down the phone. He ran his fingers through his hair and sat down behind his desk.

Paulik took his cue and sat down opposite his boss. “What is it?”

“There are traces of vineyard on the mud,” he said. “Grapes, even. Syrah, apparently.”

“Domaine Beauclaire's bestseller. I'm sorry.”

Verlaque sighed and leaned back. “
Merde, merde, merde
.”

“I'm afraid we'll have to hold him here for questioning.”

“You're right,” Verlaque said, looking out of the window. “When it rains it pours. How are the Bonnards?”

“Morale is at an all-time low, Hélène reports.”

Verlaque tapped his desk. “Well, regardless of what it looks like for Christophe, we need to get someone down to the bus depot, as quickly as possible.”

Paulik got up. “I agree. It's the best angle we've got, and it's one that makes total sense.”

“What we should do is send one of our officers down there, in plain clothes, and ask around. Pretend he's buying a bus pass. He can even take the bus to Éguilles and Rognes if he has to.”

“You're right,” Paulik said. “Let's not let this guy know we're on to him. After we get the information we need, our guys here can tap into their computer system.”

“I love technology.”

Someone knocked on the door, and Paulik got up to answer it. Jules Schoelcher entered, reporting for his morning shift.

“Ever taken the buses in Aix, Schoelcher?” Paulik asked.

Marine watched her mother, Dr. Florence Bonnet, retired professor of theology, as she stopped, staring at the shop and its glossy window displays. After a few seconds, Dr. Bonnet seemed to remember that she was on her way to have a coffee with Marine. She mumbled something to herself and walked toward the Café Le Verdun. “Where did the bookshop go?” Dr. Bonnet asked when she saw her daughter.

“Hello, Maman,” Marine said, standing up to give her mother the
bise
.

“Hermès?” Dr. Bonnet asked no one in particular. “Who shops there?”

Marine grinned despite herself; Antoine Verlaque shopped there.

“I saw an ashtray in the window for two hundred and fifty euros,” Florence Bonnet went on. “Are you having a coffee?”

“I've just ordered one,” Marine said. “The Hermès shop has been there for over two years, Maman.” Marine loved the way that their conversations, this one in particular, were split into two parts.

“I didn't see it happen,” Dr. Bonnet replied. “I must be blind. I loved that bookstore.”

A waiter appeared with Marine's coffee, and her mother ordered a tea. “Terrible about Pauline d'Arras,” her mother said as she fastened up the buttons on her cardigan. “It's cold out all of a sudden, isn't it?”

“You knew her?” Marine asked.

Dr. Bonnet shrugged. “We weren't best friends, but I certainly knew her, yes. She didn't attend Mass at Saint-Jean de Malte. The Aubanel girls went to the Cathedral. Always.”

“The Aubanel girls? They were well known?”

“Of course! They were beauties—well, except for Natalie….”

Marine hadn't realized that her mother was almost the same age as Mme d'Arras. For Marine, Florence Bonnet always stayed in her mid-fifties; she went most places on bicycle, was never sick, and, although retired, she still went to the university most days for meetings, to advise young students, and to continue her own research. “Do you know the story of Natalie Chazeau's birth?” Marine asked, leaning in.

Mme Bonnet laughed. “Of course! Nazi father.”

Marine set her coffee cup down. “Boy, there really are no secrets in Aix.”

“It used to be like that,” her mother answered. “But now no one knows anyone here. The town has changed….”

“What do you know about Natalie, and her son, Christophe?” Marine asked.

“Only that Natalie has a grudge against Pauline,” Dr. Bonnet said. “She always did. It was obvious to us all that they hated each other. It reminded me of an old Bette Davis and Joan Crawford movie they used to play late at night on television.”

“I know the movie you're talking about. Joan Crawford was an invalid—”

“And that Christophe,” her mother cut in. “If it wasn't for his
mother's real-estate agency, he wouldn't have any money or a job. He's just bling. Bling bling.”

Marine tried to hide her smile at her mother's attempt to use current slang. “Do you know him?”

“Of course not! How could I know him?”

But you know him well enough to say that he couldn't find a job without his mother's help.
“Well, the same way you knew the Aubanel girls, I guess. Which is how, anyway?”

“High school, naturally,” her mother said, finishing her tea. “There wasn't a high school in Rognes back then. They came on the bus to Sacré Coeur. Pauline and Natalie I didn't care for, but Clothilde was nice. I always knew that she would become a nun. She was always following the Sisters around.”

Marine sat back, thinking that she would phone Antoine and tell him of the supposed antagonism between Pauline and Natalie Aubanel.

“Is that the time?” her mother said, jumping up from the table. “I'm late for a meeting at the church.” She fumbled with her purse; Marine had remembered her mother buying it at the insistence of her father, in Tuscany, when Marine was twelve years old.

“It's okay, Maman,” Marine said. “My treat.”

“You're an angel,” her mother said, leaning down to kiss her forehead but missing, and instead kissing the side of Marine's head. “Père Jean-Luc said how lovely it was to see you at Mass…. I'm off!
À bientôt!
”

Marine waved and watched her mother as she quickly removed her bike lock, which was wrapped around a plane tree, jumped on her bike, and rode down the Rue Thiers. Her mother hadn't asked why Marine had gone to the church, nor why Marine had suggested they have coffee together. Did her parents really communicate so little? Marine stood up, placed some coins on the table, and left the café.

Verlaque had been driving for two hours when he finally pulled over at a gas station rest stop to buy lunch. After zigzagging his way around stands full of videos and CDs he would hate to watch or listen to, then past a shelf full of the usual Provençal trinkets—ceramic cicadas of garishly bright colors, lavender sachets, soaps made from olive oil, and chewy nougat candy—he finally made it to the food area. He spent too long looking over the selection of sandwiches, and finally settled on ham and cheese, picking out a shrimp salad to go along with it. He ate his lunch standing up, trying to avoid the spilled coffee on the bar. He resisted the temptation to buy a Mars bar; however good they tasted at the moment when you ate them, he knew that afterward he would feel slightly sick to his stomach. He walked across the parking lot to his car, thankful that the summer vacation rush was over and the Parisians were all back at home.

Back on the
autoroute,
he listened to a jazz CD and strained his neck to get a glimpse, off to his right, of the medieval city of Carcassonne. He remembered that there was a hillside rest stop with a lookout that gave over the walled city, and he hoped that he would have time to pause there on the way back. He drove on until Narbonne and looked at his watch. He had promised Marine that he'd try to stop off at Narbonne's city hall and see a photography exhibition of France's best photographers that included Sylvie. He had just enough time, if he found the city hall soon. Within minutes, he had not only found the city hall but also parked his car in the shade almost in front of the building's front doors.
It was meant to be,
he mused. He opened the door and ran down the marble-floored hallway, following the posters advertising the exhibition. Once inside the exhibition room, he spotted a group of immense photographs of bathers—one of Sylvie's favorite themes—and crossed the room to look at them. They were portraits;
people of all ages were bathing in a green-blue river, each one staring directly at the camera. The water was perfectly still, and so rich in color that it looked like a sheet of glass. He put his reading glasses on and got as close as he could to inspect one of the photographs. He stood back, slipped off his glasses, and moved on to the next one. When he had looked at six or seven, he stopped. A boy of twelve or thirteen stood in chest-high water, his back to the camera but his head turned to it, as if his name had just been called.
Antoine,
she had called.
Come here and help me towel off
. He turned around and left the room quickly; the docent's “Good afternoon, sir,” followed him as he walked down the hallway.

He got into his car and sat back with his eyes closed. After a minute or two, he started the car and saw that his appointment with the nun was in under an hour. He left Narbonne and headed south on small departmental roads, marked in yellow on his Michelin map. Every so often he pulled over, next to vineyards heavy with fruit, and checked his map. He drove onto even smaller roads, and then signs began appearing for the abbey, open every morning for guided tours. It was rugged countryside, more rugged than Aix: sparsely inhabited, its hills smaller and older, and the plants that covered them even drier and more meager than in Provence. He rolled his car windows down and let the smells waft in. It was a landscape for cloistered nuns and monks, medieval hermits, and fanatical winemakers; it couldn't be any more different from his green Normandy, and he loved it.

The abbey's parking lot was bigger than he expected, but it was almost empty now that summer, and the morning tours had ended. He parked under a small tree, hoping this would give his car a little shade, and walked up to the abbey's reception area. To get to the front desk, visitors were forced to go through a gift shop, and Verlaque smiled at the nuns' business sense. Since he was ten
minutes early, he strolled around the shop, looking at their handmade soaps, honey, and liqueurs, the packaging in better taste than at the gas station. He flipped through their extensive collection of ecclesiastical-architecture books and selected one for Marine, with stunning photographs and what looked like detailed maps. It could be for weekends away—a present to her after the murderer was caught.