Death in the Vines: A Verlaque and Bonnet Provençal Mystery (32 page)

Victor poured the mailman a glass, and Rémy sniffed and then tasted, swirling the wine around loudly in his mouth, like an expert. Hélène hid her smile and winked at Victor.

“Magnificent,” Rémy replied. “That's the way Rolle should taste.”

As the others stared in silence, Élise came back into the kitchen and said, “Albert will be down in a minute, Rémy. He didn't notice the time go by and is getting ready.”

“And we should go out and look at the scene of the crime once more,” Paulik said, getting up. Verlaque nodded and gulped the rest of his wine.

Rémy jumped up. “Eh? The scene of the crime?” he asked. “The wine theft?”

Hippolyte Thébaud grinned.

“No, Rémy,” Olivier said. “It has to do with that woman, you know, whose body was found in our vineyard.”

“Perhaps you should come outside before your father comes down,” Thébaud said to Olivier.

“We have to show you something!” Rémy added, his head bopping up and down.

“Rémy, what's wrong?” Olivier asked, setting down his wineglass and getting up.

“Are you all right?” Élise asked. “Would you like a glass of water?” She glared at her husband.

“Um, no, no water. But you need to come out to my van, M. Bonnard, quickly. I have to show you something.”

“All right, all right,” Olivier said. He and the rest of the group followed Rémy out to his van, a former yellow post-office van that had been painted white. They crowded around its back doors while Rémy fumbled for his keys, dropping them on the gravel.

Victor bent down and picked up the keys. “Rémy, would you like me to open the doors for you?” he asked.

Rémy quickly nodded, glancing at the kitchen door. Victor put the key in the lock and opened the van's doors wide; then he stood back and looked from his father to Rémy. “Rémy,” Victor said, “it's full of wine.”

“Y-y-yes.”

Olivier Bonnard reached in and pulled out a bottle at random. He looked at the label and sighed, handing it to Élise. “Rémy,” she said, passing the bottle on to Victor, “it's ours.”

“Did you figure this out?” Olivier asked Hippolyte Thébaud.

Thébaud replied with a bow.

“I don't believe it,” Victor said, looking at the postman. “How could you have done this?”

“It was, er, tricky,” Rémy replied. “It took us days to gather what was left.”

“What was left?” Hélène asked.

“How did you get into our
cave
?” Olivier asked. “Did you make a copy of the key that hangs in the kitchen?”

Rémy looked at Olivier Bonnard in shock, his mouth open. “Eh? What's this? I've known you all my life,” he said. “I can't believe you would accuse me of stealing your wines!
Ça alors!
”

“But, Rémy,” Élise said softly, “what are we to think? Where did you get these?”

“The Old Vines 1964,” Victor said, passing a dusty bottle to his father.

“From everyone around,” Rémy replied, looking anxiously toward the kitchen door once more. “Nobody wanted to admit that they had some of your wine. He figured it out!” the postman said, pointing at Thébaud. “He played
boules
with us and asked us if we had some of your bottles. Then Roger said that Albert had given him a magnum of 1978, and Jean-Philippe said that he had some 1970s from Albert, and we realized what was going on.”

“Dad's giving away our wine?” Olivier asked.

Thébaud nodded. “That day I came to see your cellars,” he said, “I saw your father leave for his
boules
game, carrying his leather satchel as if his life's worth was inside of it, not his
boules
. I left quickly and followed him into the village, where I saw him stop by the butcher shop and hand the butcher a bottle of wine, and then cross the street to the pharmacy and do the same thing. Disappointingly easy case to break.”

“Even your maid got some, and Patrice, who cuts Albert's hair,” Rémy excitedly added.

“I wanted to make sure that your father wasn't being forced to give the wine away, so I played
boules
with the…lads,” Thébaud said. The crowd exchanged looks, each one silently thinking,
What would he wear to play
boules
?

“As if we would ever force Albert to do that!” Rémy cried. “It was all his own doing!”

“That's right,” Albert Bonnard said. The elder Bonnard had just emerged from the house, cradling his bag of
boules
. “Better our friends than the enemy.”

“Dad?” Olivier asked, heading for his father. “The enemy?”

“
Les boches
.”

“Dad, the war has been over for more than sixty years,” Olivier said. “We have German friends, and clients.”

Albert Bonnard hugged his duffel bag.

“Grandpa,” Victor said, “can I take the bag from you? It looks heavy.” He walked slowly to his grandfather and gently lifted the bag from his arms, raising his eyebrows at his father at the same time.

“Don't give them to anyone but our friends,” Albert said. “Now Rémy and I have to go, before we are late for our match.”

Rémy looked at Olivier Bonnard and shrugged.

“Come on, Rémy!” Albert said, walking around the van to the passenger side.

Victor had laid the duffel bag on the ground and removed two bottles of wine. “Here, Grandpa,” he called. “Your
boules
!”

Rémy got into the driver's seat and rolled down the window. “We got what we could,” he whispered to Olivier, his head leaning out of the window. “But some of the guys had drunk the wine already. I didn't, though. Don't worry. You'll get all mine back.”

Olivier put his hand on Rémy's arm. “Thank you so much, Rémy. You should keep a few bottles for yourself.”

“Eh? No, no. I wouldn't dream of it. Happy to be of service.”

Olivier glanced toward the back of the van and saw that Verlaque, Hélène, Bruno, and Victor had quickly unloaded the wine while Thébaud looked on, his arms crossed. Olivier tapped the van's door and said, “Have a great game.” As Rémy waved his cap in the air, Olivier could hear his father loudly complaining about Jean-Philippe, who he thought had cheated during their last game.

“I'll have him back in time for dinner!” Rémy called as they drove through Domaine Beauclaire's gates.

“M. Thébaud,” Olivier Bonnard said, shaking the wine expert's hand, “I don't know how to thank you.”

“It was nothing.”

“Will you stay for dinner?” Élise asked excitedly.

“Thank you, but no, I have to catch the TGV back to Paris.” Thébaud smiled and added, “I'm having a late dinner with my editor.”

“Are you writing a wine book?” Olivier asked.

“I'm publishing my memoirs.”

Verlaque looked at Thébaud and smiled.

“Wow! We'll be sure to buy the book when it comes out,” Élise said. “What's the title?”

The wine expert straightened his bow tie. “
Confessions of a Wine Thief
.”

“Ha!” Verlaque laughed out loud.

Thébaud ignored him. “The TV rights have already been sold,” he said, smiling. “It will be a series on Canal Plus.”

Élise clapped her hands together. “That's wonderful! Who will play you? Oh, I can just see Romain Duris, or perhaps Guillaume Canet….”

I
t's strange,” Verlaque said as they walked through the vineyard back toward the house. “We have two separate cases here, but both involve elderly people who are experiencing dementia.”

“And both remember the war,” Paulik added. “It's like my uncle. The worse it got, the more he kept reliving the past.”

“And what dementia and World War II have to do with the deaths of Mlles Montmory and Durand, I just don't know,” Verlaque said.

“Maybe they're not connected, and that's all there is to it.”

The grapes hung heavy on their branches, many of the clusters hidden by fat green leaves. Paulik looked down at them, remembering harvesting for his father, and the fear that he'd snip off a finger while cutting the grapes off their branches.

The sky was bright blue, and it was suddenly hot again. Verlaque kicked at the dusty red earth; it was as if it had never rained. “They'll be harvesting soon,” he said.

“Any day now,” Paulik replied. “I was surprised that Olivier was so calm back there. He's usually uptight just before the harvest.”

Verlaque asked, “Does it bother Hélène that she has to make someone else's wine?”

Paulik nodded. “It does now. I mean, recently. It never used to, but I think it's now dawned on Hélène that she'll never have her own vineyard. Victor will be the enthusiastic natural winemaker at Beauclaire. When Hélène first started out, she thought that perhaps she could buy some small place in the Languedoc, but even those vineyards are now out of any mortal's price range.”

Verlaque stopped to look at the rows of vines. “I don't think I know of any other métier where so many exterior elements have to be dealt with while you produce a product that must be good to, well, taste. Winemakers have to deal with so much: geography, geology, soil science, history, tradition….”

“And trends,” Paulik added.

“Yes, you're right, trends and fashions. Not to mention the complicated science involved: chemistry, biology, the science of taste…. I'm always very moved when I hear winemakers speak about their work.”

“And the wine often reflects the winemaker,” Paulik said. “Hélène's wines remind me of her: soft, and yet sometimes surprising and tough in character.”

Verlaque nodded. “I once saw a documentary about winemaking, and they were interviewing a father and daughter who both made their own wines in Burgundy. There was a really tearful moment when they had this heart-to-heart, and the daughter accused her father of being cold and impersonal, but she said it through his wines: that his wines were cold and hard to get to know. She was crying her eyes out.” They walked on in silence. Antoine Verlaque
was thinking about how and when he would confront his family, much as that Burgundian winemaker had confronted her father in the family's damp cellars. Bruno Paulik was thinking about Hélène, and her wines, and the day when he fell in love with her.

“One mystery solved, three to go,” Verlaque said as they passed through the gate that led from the vineyard to the Bonnards' courtyard. He brought Paulik up-to-date on Léridon's hidden mosaic floor.

“A Roman floor?” Paulik asked. “No wonder he didn't want to tell anyone. There goes his renovation down the drain.”

“Exactly,” Verlaque said. “It's like you've found this incredible work of art, and it becomes a hindrance, not a pleasure. I thought of your dad right away. Is he still on his Roman-history kick?”

“Oh yeah,” Paulik replied. “He found another Roman coin at a friend's the other day. Do you think…”

“That he could have a peek at Léridon's mosaic?”

“Yeah, before the city ropes it off.”

“I already asked Léridon and he said yes, bring your dad around anytime, but soon.”

“It's a relief that the Bonnards' wine theft was an inside job, and not even theft,” Paulik said, laughing. “And now we know that there's no relation between the murder of Mme d'Arras and the wine theft.”

“But we still need to determine if Mme d'Arras's death was related to the deaths of Mlles Montmory and Durand,” said Verlaque. He suddenly remembered that Marine hadn't heard back from her elderly neighbor, Philomène Joubert. “How did your talk go with Gisèle Durand's ex?”

“Fine,” Paulik replied. “He's a Citroën DS buff, and a bit of a poet.”

Verlaque smiled. “And his alibi sticks?”

“He doesn't have an alibi,” Paulik said, stopping when he got to his car.

Verlaque looked sideways at his commissioner. “Doesn't have an alibi?” he asked. “Shouldn't that concern us?”

“Nah,” Paulik said. “He's innocent.”

“What's his background?” Verlaque asked. He didn't understand how Paulik could be so certain of the mechanic's innocence.

“Citroën buff, as I told you,” Paulik said. “DS in particular.”

“That's the long, sleek one with the hydraulic suspension?”

“Yes. My grandfather had one. He drove it for us once with the suspension hiked all the way up. The car was a meter…” Paulik stopped talking and started running toward his car.

“Forget something?” Verlaque called after him.

“Prodos drove a car like that last week,” Paulik said over his shoulder. He reached his car and jumped in, hanging his head out of the window as he yelled to Verlaque, “I'm going back to the garage. I've been an idiot!”