Death in the Vines: A Verlaque and Bonnet Provençal Mystery (5 page)

They shook hands, and Thébaud motioned Verlaque through the entryway into a salon. Coffee was offered; when Verlaque nodded and mumbled yes, the young man gracefully left the room, almost pirouetting. Verlaque heard water being poured and then the espresso machine thumping into action. As Verlaque was led into the salon, he had been vaguely aware of a riot of bright colors, but now he was able to take some time to look around. The objects that filled the stately room had obviously been bought at different times and in very different places, but their arrangement was completely harmonious. A very long carved sofa covered in a bright-red silk looked Venetian to Verlaque. Beside it was a backless green velvet sofa, also with carved wooden arms and legs, and beside that a blue easy chair whose round frame was made of thin parallel stainless-steel rods that gave the base of the chair a birdcage effect. The chair, though obviously from the 1960s and probably American, stood up proudly against the two centuries-old European sofas. The tables were mostly glass-topped, each one
with a different base; some of the table legs looked oddly like bronzed bones. Small sculptures were placed on every available surface, many of them protected—or highlighted—by glass bell jars. The rugs and wall hangings were also in bright colors, save for the curtains, which were white linen with a narrow band of black running along the edge. This was, Verlaque noted, the touch of calm that the room needed.

Hippolyte Thébaud passed Verlaque a demitasse and sat down, crossing his long, elegant legs. Verlaque thanked him for the coffee and added, “Thank you for agreeing to see me on such short notice. As I told you on the phone, Domaine Beauclaire has been robbed, and you are a noted expert on wine theft in France.” Verlaque was guessing that compliments suited the young man.

“Wine expert, period,” Thébaud replied.

Verlaque raised his eyebrows in obvious disbelief. “Are you not a bit young to be a wine expert?”

“I'm a fast learner,” Thébaud replied, smiling.

Verlaque returned the smile and said, “Yes. I read in your file that your first arrest was at age nineteen. Stealing wine from the three-star restaurant where you were a waiter.”

“I had
just
turned nineteen. At first I stole them to sell, seeing the ridiculous prices that people were willing to pay for them. I was naïve and didn't know the joy behind a great wine. That sublime feeling that when you taste a Romanée-Conti, you're tasting history and geography and geology in a bottle. That the chalkiness of the soil has as much to do with the taste of the wine as the vintner's hand and head. That an unhappy vintner will make a closed wine, a wine difficult on the palate; and a vintner in love will make an open wine, one that changes as it rolls around in your mouth and then gets better as it slides down your throat.” M. Thébaud uncrossed his long, thin legs and laid his left hand on the arm of the sofa, signaling that he was finished speaking.

Verlaque was impressed, almost unable to speak. He drew a breath and asked, “Where did you come across your appreciation for wines?” He had wanted to add “poetry” but now knew that the young man needed no extra compliments.

“Ah. That's the amazing part of the story. I learned all of this without having tasted the grand wines. In jail.”

Verlaque raised an eyebrow. “In the jail's library?” He was quite sure that wine tasting was not on the rehabilitation program, whereas creative writing and tennis perfection were.

Thébaud nodded. “I read and read and read. When I had exhausted our library, I asked for books in English, teaching myself that language through the grape. I knew everything about Hungarian Tokays and Italian Super Tuscans without ever having tasted them. I knew how they were made, who made them, and what they should taste like. It drove me to get out of prison earlier, and it gave me strength to go on, despite the filth that went on in there.” M. Thébaud made a sour face and shook his head lightly back and forth, erasing the memories of jail.

“And now you're clean,” Verlaque half stated and half asked.

The wine expert laughed. “Oh yes. No need to steal wines anymore; I can afford to buy them. When I got out of jail, I knew so much about wine that I was able to buy and sell legitimately and make profits. Because my English was so good, I advised foreign buyers, and because I learned wine before having tasted it,
really
tasted it, I had something unique to offer that no other expert had.”

Verlaque tilted his head. “You had no biases?”

“Exactly, my dear judge. You're one of the few people ever to have understood that. I didn't have a great love for one region over another. For me it was a numbers game, and one I was good at. Since then I've changed, naturally, and now have preferences. But back then I didn't.”

“Fascinating,” Verlaque said with complete sincerity. He loved
stories like this one—where against all odds someone makes something out of his or her life—a story that he thought very un-French, given the French preferences for the right schools, the right accent, the good families. Hippolyte Thébaud was a wine expert who didn't grow up in a Bordeaux wine family, didn't attend the right schools, and certainly had no connections, having begun his career as a waiter. “You could write your memoirs,” Verlaque said.

“Oh, but I have already!” Thébaud mused. “We're just hunting around for a good title.”

Verlaque wasted no time in answering: “
Confessions of a Wine Thief
.”

Thébaud beamed. “Wonderful! That's exactly why, when you walked through the door, I knew I had to tell you my story,” he said, drawing his legs up under him.

Verlaque paused, unsure how to respond to the exaggerated compliment. Thébaud was a salesman, first and foremost, and wine expert and consultant to the police second. He decided to say nothing, and instead he plunged straight into Olivier Bonnard's wine theft. He gave Thébaud the details and ended the story by saying, “We believe that the thief is someone who knows the family and the winery.”

Thébaud sat back and put his hands behind his head. “Why so?”

“Because the lock hadn't been tampered with, and the key was found in its usual spot, beside the kitchen door.”

“Classic!” Hippolyte Thébaud cried out. “Vintners are
so
imaginative! They hide the keys to their cellars—whether in Argentina, Alsace, or Adelaide—all in the same idiotic place. Any fool could have slipped in and made a copy. I've done it before, while pretending to check the electricity meter. Next!”

“Okay. The thief didn't take all of the premier crus; he or she
took different wines, here and there, regardless of their age or quality.”

Thébaud threw his hands in the air. “They're stealing my moves! I did that once or twice, to make it look like an in-house job. The second time, I went back for more while the Bordeaux police were on the premises, busy interviewing family and staff. Ha!” He had such a look of divine pleasure on his face that Verlaque thought, very briefly, that the handsome young man might be stealing again. Seeing the judge's look, Thébaud said, “Don't worry. I was telling the truth when I said that I don't need to steal anymore.”

“So what's your opinion?” Verlaque asked.

“They'll be back for more,” Thébaud answered. “Would you like another coffee?”

Verlaque, uncharacteristically, had decided to take the metro to the train station, knowing that over the lunch hour taxis would be few and far between. After sitting on a bench in the Tuileries for a few minutes, admiring the top-heavy, rounded women sculpted by Maillol, he got on the number-1 metro line. At the next stop, Musée du Louvre, the train sat in the station for four minutes before the doors finally closed and the train lurched forward. Verlaque breathed a sigh of relief, glancing at his watch, realizing that he had underestimated the time it took the number 1 to snake along downtown Paris, parallel to the Seine. At the next stop the train had been in the station for more than seven minutes when, finally, an announcement came over the PA that a passenger had met with “an accident” farther up the line and it would be some time before the train could leave. Passengers began mumbling about a suicide and then, slowly, began filing out of the carriage. Verlaque followed the crowd out of the station and up to the Rue
de Rivoli, where he battled with others for a taxi, all of which were already occupied. Lunchtime in Paris…Verlaque cursed under his breath. He walked up to the next street—Rue Saint-Honoré—where traffic flowed in the direction of the Gare de Lyon, moving as quickly as he could, at the same time checking over his shoulder for a vacant cab. All were full. By the time he got to the next metro entrance, at the busy Châtelet, he looked at his watch, seeing that he had missed the twelve-forty-nine to Aix. He could risk taking the line 14 from Châtelet, which was automated, or keep walking. He kept walking, trying to admire Paris and be philosophical about the missed train. It had been a profitable day. He had gone over the family's finances with his parents—a twice-yearly obligation—and obtained good information from Hippolyte Thébaud. Thébaud was the quintessential
dandy
—a word that had no translation into French, so the French had taken it on as one of their own. Verlaque couldn't wait to tell Marine about the wine thief.

He whistled as he walked, and arrived at the train station in time for the one-fifty-three train, showing his ticket to the controller and explaining the delayed metro.

“You'll still have to buy a new seat.”

“What?” Verlaque exclaimed. “It wasn't my fault. There was a suicide at one of the metro stations.”

“That's what they all say. You have to allow yourself extra time for things like this. That will be ninety-five euros for a new ticket, in second class.”

Verlaque handed him his credit card and cringed at the thought of sitting on one of the narrow seats in second class. “There will be plenty of empty seats, don't worry,” the controller said. “You can pick any one.”

The controller was right: the train was only half full, and Verlaque
was able to have to himself four seats facing each other, spreading out his books and papers. He looked around for an outlet to plug in his laptop, but this car didn't have one. He hoped he had enough battery power. The countryside whizzed by, in the full, glorious sun of an Indian summer day, and Verlaque felt as happy as he had ever been. He had begun to draft some e-mails that he had been avoiding when a terrible noise, as if some teenagers had pelted the train with rocks, or the train had run over some fencing, was heard. His fellow passengers stopped what they were doing, setting down books and magazines and removing headsets. The noise continued for a few awful seconds. The train slowed down and finally came to a full stop, while the passengers let out a communal moan. “We've hit something,” the man across the aisle said to himself.

“No,” an elderly woman said, “it was more like the sound of something being thrown at the train. Like rocks.”

The car had remained silent for a few seconds when two young girls came running through, looking for the controllers. “There's a broken window in our car.”

The passengers again moaned, not knowing how the window came to be broken, but knowing that this would mean a delay, possibly for hours. Verlaque was about to text Marine and tell her to eat without him when one of the TGV's staff—a short, thick woman with spiked white hair—came through the car, her face as pale as her hair. “We hit someone,” she said, resting her hand on the back of Verlaque's seat. “Suicide. Three hours' delay, at least.” Verlaque texted Bruno Paulik about the delay, since the commissioner had offered to pick the judge up at Aix's TGV station. He would be getting in too late for that now, and would take a taxi or the shuttle bus into Aix. He leaned back and closed his eyes. A few of the passengers got back to work, unperturbed by the delay: they
had work to do, and there was nothing anyone could do. Others pressed their faces against the glass, trying to see a bit of blood or scoping out the possibilities of slipping out for a quick cigarette. A woman behind Verlaque called home, instructing whoever it was who answered about which leftovers to heat up for the children and not to forget that
petit Charles
did not like zucchini but was to eat it anyway.

Verlaque looked out at the sunny day, feeling the warmth of the late-afternoon sun on his forearms. He suddenly missed Marine, terribly. He felt saddened, not by the delays and the fate that seemed to rule this day, but by the desperation that led people to take their own lives. It was a threat that Monique had used to use on the young Verlaque: “If you don't come, I'll do something drastic.” Verlaque closed his eyes, angry at himself for allowing the ghost of Monique to reappear. He hadn't thought about her in months.

The emergency teams arrived, and passengers began talking among themselves and inviting each other to the bar car for coffee or beer. Two hours later, they were still there, in the middle of a flat but pretty countryside, and a farmer drove by on a parallel farm track. Verlaque looked up and watched the farmer as he drove, dust flying up behind the tractor, and noted that he did not turn his head to see why police and firemen were gathered around a stopped TGV. Work to be done. Or perhaps the farmer had seen this sort of thing before? The fields on either side of the train tracks were planted with some kind of fruit trees, Verlaque now noticed, and the yellow wildflowers that lined the tracks began waving in the breeze.