Death of a Chef (Capucine Culinary Mystery) (26 page)

Jacques stood up and waved in the general direction of the bar. Minako arrived promptly with three shot glasses on a cork-covered tray.

A sense of crushing sadness descended on Capucine. The eradication of Chef Brault was far more complete than if the restaurant had been merely gutted. His oeuvre was like a delicate pencil line drawing that had been sloppily erased by a child and scribbled over with greasy crayons.

Alexandre’s and Jacques’s chuckles drew her out of her reverie.

“Lobster roll with a sauce of tobiko caviar.” Jacques smirked, reading his menu.

“Duck confit spring roll with a hoisin dipping sauce,” Alexandre countered.

“Sushi made with wild rice,” Jacques riposted.

With a giggle, Capucine added, “And don’t forget Valrhona chocolate tempura for dessert.”

It took a good number of minutes for their hilarity to subside enough for them to be able to order. But when the food came, it was surprisingly good. Capucine opted for the lobster roll, which turned out to be a complex creation wrapped in a soybean sheet, while Jacques’s Kobe beef hamburger was a very rare hamburger steak cooked in a brioche wrapper en croûte with a very gingery ketchup-like condiment made of
shouga
and
gari.
Alexandre pronounced the
confit de canard
spring rolls excellent. They were wrapped in an egg roll wrapper, gently grilled, topped with goat cheese, candied walnuts, and oven-fried pineapple chunks, and served with a glowing chrome-yellow sauce with a Sauternes base.

Just as Alexandre was rising through the clouds of a minor epiphany, Aiko left her kitchen to do a tour of the front of the house. She stopped next to Alexandre.

“What do you think?”

“Your creations are brilliant, genuinely original, inspiring.”

For a brief second Aiko’s lips turned up in a spindly smile.

“But what about the restaurant? What do you have to say about
that?
”

Alexandre said nothing and took a sip of sake that had been served in a small wooden
masu
box.

“It’s the reverse of your success at Dong. There the food was not so brilliant as what you’re doing here, but the décor was out of this world.”

Aiko’s face turned to stone. She moved her face to within ten inches of Alexandre’s. “It’s that bastard Brissac-Vanté. He’s swindled me,” she said in a viperous whisper. “I’d like to skin him alive.”

“Swindled you?”

“He sweet-talked me and took me to dinner at his other restaurants and then offered me a two-year contract with an attractive signing bonus. But when I arrived here, there was no money for redecoration. There was no money for anything. It was always going to arrive next week. With all that paneling, the place looked like a funeral home. So I did what I could and painted the walls with some pals and had an artist friend make the Kabuki masks. Since there wasn’t even enough money for half the staff I need, I’ve had to get my family to help out. The bartender is my sister’s daughter.”

Aiko looked defiantly at Capucine, who, she well knew, was a police officer.

Capucine ignored the hostility. “But you must have enough budget for quality produce,” Capucine said. “My lobster roll was out of this world.”

Aiko laughed. “You don’t need cash for that. I’ve known all my suppliers for years. I order and pay them at the end of the week from the receipts. The problem is that interior decorators don’t work that way.”

“So what are you going to do?” Alexandre asked.

“If Brissac-Vanté doesn’t cough up by the end of next month, I fully intend to walk out. He can sue me all he wants, but he’ll be in here all by himself, rolling his own goddamn sushi.” Aiko turned and stalked back to her kitchen.

“That must be why she covers her mouth when she laughs. She doesn’t want you to see her fangs,” Jacques said.

A damp pall descended on the table.

“Let’s go get a drink somewhere that’s loud and cheerful. There’s a taste I need to get out of my mouth, and it’s not from the food,” Capucine said.

Half an hour later they were standing at a small horseshoeshaped bar, sipping cognac in a tiny bistro on the rue Vieille du Temple, not far from Capucine and Alexandre’s apartment.

“That was painful,” Jacques said.

Alexandre nodded sagely, finished his cognac, tapped his miniature snifter for the barman to pour him another. “It illustrates a truism about food—the vessel often has more impact than the contents. Even the finest grand cru will taste mediocre if it’s served in a jam jar.”

“You’re so right, cousin,” Jacques said, smoothing the lapel of his cashmere blazer with gold-plated basket-weave buttons. “The wrapping always provides its own substance.”

Capucine ostentatiously examined the ceiling, eyebrows raised, shaking her head in dismay.

Alexandre leaned forward, looking intently at a bar across the narrow street. It was a popular watering hole that sold books—mainly avant-garde poetry and fiction—but also had a thriving bar business. Alexandre peered keenly.

“Look at that. What a godsend. That’s Aiko Kikuchi’s new book.”

Capucine could see that the left-hand window of the bar contained a cardboard poster of a waiflike Aiko in kitchen whites, wearing an endearingly timid smile, an enormous steel skillet hanging limply in her left hand.

“This is going to solve a problem for me. I’m going to read the book tonight and write a review in the morning, making all sorts of comments about her new menu. That way I’ll be spared writing a piece on how ghastly that restaurant is. The poor girl certainly doesn’t deserve that. I’ll be back in a flash.” He darted out the door.

Jacques and Capucine turned and put their elbows on the bar. He leaned up against her and bent his head to whisper seductively in her ear, for all the world a young swain courting.

“You came up again in this morning’s senior staff meeting.”

A sardonic comment formed itself in Capucine’s mouth, but she clamped her lips before it could get out.

“It would appear that the Olympian powers are impatient.”

“The poor dears,” Capucine said sweetly.

“Yes. You see, a decision was taken that the DGSE were not to stick their fingers in the cogs and gears of the Police Judiciaire apparatus.”

“And electronic eavesdropping is not the same thing as poking your fingers where they don’t belong?”

“Hardly. Not the same thing at all.”

“In other words, you’re telling me that your poor impatient powers can’t interfere with my case until they have something to interfere with. Is that it?”

“Actually, there is hope on high they won’t have to interfere at all.”

“Well, then, if it’s a nice day tomorrow, I might just get around to making an arrest or two.”

CHAPTER 42

D
avid sat in his boxy little sit-up-and-beg rental and watched the mechanics walk through the garage door at the back of the Peugeot dealership. They all had exactly the same gait: a “Fuck the world, how cool am I” saunter warring with a desperate “Please don’t let me punch in late” trot. Antonin was easy enough to spot. He was the only one who genuinely didn’t give a damn. The one who knew for sure he wouldn’t be there in a few weeks.

David came back at quitting time and waited. Antonin came out, his shoulders pushed back aggressively, looking like he had just had words, maybe even a punch or two, with someone. As he approached the car from behind, David opened the passenger door wide enough to block him.

“Get in, Anou.”

Antonin stopped. His face flattened, and his eyes became slits. David produced his police ID wallet and held it up.

“We can either have a beer at the café or do this down at the brigade. One way or the other, you’re going to get in the car.”

“How did you find me?”

David lied. “It wasn’t all that hard. Records had you working at a Mercedes dealership here in Toulon a few years ago. The dealership filed a complaint against you after you took a wrench to your foreman. I guessed you wouldn’t go far and you’d stick to German luxury cars. None of the Peugeot or BMW dealers had a Brault on the payroll, so I figured I’d hang around and see if I could spot a temp who was getting paid cash. And there you were.”

“I thought I’d disappeared for good.”

“The only way to do that nowadays is to join the Foreign Legion.”

Both men grunted a laugh.

A few blocks away David found a café with a terrace that looked out on a dusty, beaten-earth square, vaguely reminiscent of Le Marius in La Cadière. The terrace was nearly empty. A waiter arrived, flicked his side towel impatiently, nodded with indifference, and was dispatched for pastis.

“I’m having a real hard time believing you’re buying me a drink because you want to hear all about how I tapped my last foreman a good one on his sciatic with a monkey wrench.”

David took his time with the liturgical ritual of adding water to his pastis. “I want to talk to you about Jean-Louis.”

“My little brother? Yeah, I saw about that in the paper. Poor little fucker.”

“Let’s start with Fanny Folon.”

“I haven’t seen her in nearly twenty years. She lives in Bandol now.”

“I understand you had an evening’s fun with her just before she left.”

“More like she had an evening’s fun with me and my buds.”

“Now that we’ve got that settled, you can tell me all about it.”

“Not much to tell. I was out cruising with my pals. We didn’t have enough money to go to the café, so I decided we’d go check out this little stand of pines on the hill behind the village. A lot of guys would take their girls out there to give them a reaming, and I thought we might have a few laughs. Sure enough, there’s Fanny and this dork she was hanging out with, Felix Olivier, going at it. Fanny was giving him a hard time, telling him to be a man and show more enthusiasm. He was arguing back. See, there’s the two of them going at it while they’re having a fight. Funniest goddamn thing I ever saw. So we’re laughing fit to bust a gut, and Fanny hears us and starts to put on an act. She shoots her legs up in the air and starts moaning like she’s really coming. All the while she’s looking at me and smiling. You know, the big come-on.” Antonin fell silent. He had worked himself up to tell the story with all the trimmings but suddenly realized he was telling it to a police officer.

“So then what?”

“So nothing. That’s all there is to tell.”

“Look, Antonin, I’m investigating your brother’s murder. I don’t give a shit who you fucked or didn’t fuck in your village twenty years ago. As I said before, I’m happy enough to hear what you have to tell sitting in the sun, sipping pastaga, but I’d be just as happy hearing it down at the brigade. Suit yourself, pal.”

“All right, all right. Fucking calm down and listen up. So, like it was just too good. Fanny had her enormous boobs hanging out of her dress and was really hotted up, but this wimp Felix just wasn’t doing it for her. So I did what a gentleman does. I got rid of pastis-dicked Felix and gave her what she wanted.”

“How’d you get rid of him?”

“Went up and whacked him one upside the ear, and he went running off home, howling. No problem there.”

“And then you got on Fanny.”

“Sure did. Made her moan like a cat in heat. She was begging for more.”

“That’s when you got your pals in on the act.”

“Right. I’d finished. She wanted more. And you have to be fair with your buds. She liked them pretty good. Not as much as me, of course, but pretty good.”

“You’re a real gentleman. Then what happened?”

“She pushed Galinette off her and said she’d had enough. So we left. That’s all there was to it. Fanny was a good old girl. She didn’t want any more, and we weren’t going to give her a hard time, now were we?”

“And Jean-Louis was with you during all this?”

“Damn straight he was. Listen, that kid had it rough. Our mom died when he was four, and good old dad, the fucking baron, wasn’t dealing out of a full deck. All he cared about were his goddamn vegetables and his crazy collection of broken faïence. Jean-Louis would suck up to him all the time. The little fucker was trying so hard to stick his nose up Dad’s ass, he was turning into a fag. So I took him with me wherever I went. I wanted to man him up.”

“Didn’t Jean-Louis have any friends?”

“Yeah. One. He was big pals with Fanny’s little brother. What a waste of flesh that little brat was. Always the snide comment. Always rolling his eyes at you. If he hadn’t been Fanny’s little brother, I’d have popped him hard enough to get some respect out of him. I don’t know what happened to that little fucker after, but he sure was a pain in the ass when he was a kid.”

“And when you’d had enough of Fanny that evening, Jean-Louis left with you?”

“No. He started to and then turned around and went back to Fanny. Did I tell you he had this puppy love thing with her? So I let him go. I figured he was just going to get his share, you know? Probably his first time. If I’d been a good big brother, I’d have gone back with him to show him the ropes. But then I figured, what the hell. He’ll sort it out all by himself, and if he can’t, Fanny will give him a hand. She never could get enough, that one. So my buds and I went off to use our last twenty francs to get some beers.”

 

The Boulangerie Barbaroux in Cassis was a far grander establishment than Fanny’s parents’ shop in La Cadière. Six tall circular tables surrounded by high swivel chairs were bolted into the floor along the long plate-glass window. A row of refrigerated display windows offered, in addition to the usual assortment of Provençal pastry, an array of sandwiches and prepared dishes, all of which could be heated in one of the three microwave ovens.

The boulangerie bustled with chatting office workers on their lunch breaks. David waited in line until one of the eight lithesome counter girls, their summer tans just beginning to fade, favored him with a smile and took his order. He chose a fougasse that was so laden with anchovies, olives, and sun-dried tomatoes, it might almost have been a Neapolitan pizza folded into thirds and slit elegantly by a calligrapher. An attractive, thirtyish, well-figured woman took his five- and ten-euro notes and returned his change. Fanny for sure. A perfect clone of her mother. A little heavier perhaps, but all the more attractive for it. He was the only one who paid in cash. All the others had paid with government-subsidized meal vouchers.

David took his fougasse and a bottle of Kronenbourg 1664 beer to his tiny rental Peugeot and waited.

By two thirty the boulangerie was deserted. Through the plate-glass window he could see the cheerful girls energetically buffing every glass surface with liquid from squeeze bottles.

He pushed the plate-glass door open and walked up to the marble pay counter. Fanny was doing something complicated with the cash register. He assumed she was getting it to tell her what the luncheon revenue had been.

“Are you Françoise Folon?”

She looked him in the eye with a coquettish smile and then let her eyes slither down his frame. “Not for eighteen years. Now it’s Barbaroux. And no one’s ever called me Françoise. It’s Fanny.” The smile was her mother’s.

“I need to talk to you,” David said quietly.

“Police?”

David nodded his head a fraction of an inch.

“Come in back.”

The room behind the shop was the boulanger’s kitchen, with a long wooden table in the middle and two gigantic stoves along one wall. Fanny pushed two upright oak chairs to the corner of the table. They sat facing each other, the triangle of wood only half a barrier between them.

David studied her, pushing her back into her teens, seeing a full-breasted, lush-lipped, lusty adolescent, impatient with her too-small village, thirsty for the full measure of life’s sensuality. It was a common enough story, but the level of piquant in this one was far more intense than the average.

“I’m investigating the death of Jean-Louis Brault.”

Her eyes softened. “Poor Jean-Lu, just as he was finally unfolding his wings, they brought him down.”

“You were close to him when you were children?”

“I was the closest thing he had to a mother. He was my little baby. He had a terrible home. He lost his mother when he was little, and his father wasn’t really right in the head. He and my little brother, Lucien, were best friends, and he was always over at my parents’ boulangerie. My parents adored him, particularly my father, who loved to show him how to bake things. And, of course, Jean-Lu was best friends with Lucien, my little brother. The only child in the village that could get along with the little brat.” She laughed and shook her head. “He was a real problem, that kid. He mocked everyone. Never happy about anything. And jealous! Let me tell you.

“I’ll tell you a story. One morning my father and Jean-Lu were making
pissaladière.
My father would make this special dough for it that he would let rise and punch down four times. Then he handed it over to Jean-Lu, who must have been nine or ten, no more than that. Jean-Lu caramelized some very sweet Italian red onions he’d brought from his father’s garden. Then he made a perfect square out of the dough and laid the onions down as a bed. On top of that he made this complicated pattern with anchovies and Niçoise olives. In those days schoolchildren wore these smocks with big pockets, and Jean-Lu’s were always filled with all sorts of herbs and wildflowers he’d gather in the hills. He finished off his pattern with all kinds of colored wildflowers and then sprinkled some herbs on top. I tell you, when it came out of the oven, it looked just like a painting. It wasn’t just that it was the most beautiful pissaladière we had ever seen. It tasted absolutely unbelievable, too.

“Lucien took one bite out of his piece and threw it on the floor, saying Jean-Lu had put on too many anchovies and it was too salty.” Fanny laughed. “My mother was so mad, she slapped Lucien and sent him to his room without lunch.”

“Did Anou come to your house, as well?”

“Not really. He was the village hooligan. A tough guy. Sometimes he’d come to pick up his little brother and flex his muscles at me, but he’d never stay.”

David fell silent, searching for the words for his next question.

“In the village . . .” He paused. This was not quite right. “I understand that Anou assaulted you,” he blurted out, annoyed at his amateurism.

Fanny exploded in laughter. “Assaulted! As if any of those village children could assault anyone. But I know what you’re talking about, though. Let me tell you what really happened. I had a boyfriend. A nice, gentle little boy, the son of the village butcher. He would write me poems, bring me flowers. He was desperately in love with me. Girls at that age like that. Now I realize he must have been a
pédé
—a queer—and didn’t really like girls. He would kiss here and lick there, but he didn’t really like to get down to it.” She gave David a shrewd look, focusing on his long locks, having a hard time deciding which category to put him in.

“So, one evening we were in this little pine copse, and Olivier was getting me really worked up with his tongue but not doing much of anything else. I was starving. I’d had enough of the canapés. I wanted a good, thick, juicy red steak. Can you understand that?”

David nodded sagely, trying hard not to grin at the metaphor.

“And then I heard Anou and his little gang snickering. It was just too much for me. I know I shouldn’t have, but my blood was up. So I made a gesture for Anou to come over. I guess you know what happened next.”

David said nothing.

“It wasn’t as good as I expected it would be. Anou was strong and rough, but he had no sense of rhythm. He was doing it all for himself. One of his friends, Escartefigue, was much better. He really had the knack for it.”

“But you stopped them.”

“Of course I did. I saw Jean-Lu standing there, crying his eyes out, looking miserable. All of a sudden I realized what a torment it must have been for him. So I shooed the boys away—they left, clucking like chickens—and I took Jean-Lu into my arms. He cried for a long time. He was such a sweet child. When I looked up, there was my stupid little brother, wide-eyed, jealous that I was comforting his best friend and lusting after me at the same time. He didn’t give a shit that his best friend was upset. All he cared about was himself and what he wanted. What a jerk that little kid was.”