Death of a Chef (Capucine Culinary Mystery) (9 page)

Capucine nodded.

“Well, we received a pre-auction bid for ten thousand euros for this particular piece. I was very surprised, believe me.”

“Now that
is
interesting. And who placed this bid?”

Bertignac furrowed his brow. “That’s confidential.” But as he said it, he was already pecking at the keyboard of his computer. He tilted his head back and made an exaggerated frown, peering at the screen though his half-glasses, moving his head back and forth, searching for the right focal distance. “Here are the personal details.”

Capucine walked over to the computer and took out her notebook.

“Madame Chéri Lecomte. I know her. She has a stand at the Puces. Obviously, she doesn’t buy pieces at Drouot to sell at the Puces, but she does acquire the odd item every now and then for her own collection. But never anything even as remotely expensive as what she bid.”

CHAPTER 15

A
ccording to the police database, Chéri Lecomte owned and operated stand D-44 at the Marché Cambo. Capucine decided to pay an unannounced visit.

This time around Capucine noticed that the rows and stands were labeled with little white enamel plaques high up on the walls. Row D turned out to be the location of the Vuitton stand she had visited. A sixth sense told her Chéri Lecomte would turn out to be the woman in the red dress at the communal lunch.

Her sixth sense was absolutely right, but what it didn’t prepare her for was being recognized.

“Commissaire Le Tellier, what brings you to my stand?”

Like starlets running into each other at a cocktail party, there was a three-beat pause as the two women examined each other’s outfits. Today Lecomte wore a white ruffled-front silk blouse and a pearl-gray pencil skirt that Capucine suspected was Givenchy from an antique clothing boutique. The bright red soles throbbing from the front of the heels of her black pumps shouted they were Louboutins. With ruthlessly plucked eyebrows and pearly white teeth beaconing from behind plump carmine-red lips, she had the radiantly healthy bloom of a sixties pinup. Capucine felt invulnerable in the elegance of her new pale blue silk suit by Rochas. And her dark blue Sergio Rossi slingbacks were way more attractive than those tacky Louboutins.

Capucine smiled sweetly. “How is it you know who I am?”

“The Marché Biron is a tiny village. It’s news if anyone sneezes. And when a commissaire of the Police Judiciaire turns up, well . . .”

“Then you must be aware I’m investigating the death of Jean-Louis Brault.”

“Of course. How could we not spend all day gossiping about a celebrity who turns up dead in a trunk from our neck of the Puces?” Lecomte said with a laugh.

Capucine was again struck with the difficulty of pigeon-holing Lecomte. It wasn’t just the retro look. Even though her French was faultless and perfectly idiomatic, there was something unmistakably foreign about her. Maybe it was just that she seemed so out of place at her stand. In any event, Capucine was forced to concede she was a strikingly attractive woman.

“I hope I’m not going to disappoint you, but other than gossip, I don’t know anything at all about that trunk or how Chef Brault happened to be in it.”

“Actually, I’m here about something else. I understand you placed a pre-auction bid on a Menton rafraîchissoir at Drouot. Can we talk about that?”

Lecomte was momentarily taken aback. “How did you hear about that?”

“I was alerted that the piece had been sent to Drouot by Chef Brault just before he died.”

“Oh my God!” She seemed genuinely surprised. “I had no idea. It says ‘private collection’ in the catalog.”

“So it does. The interesting thing is that it turns out that the piece is a fake.”

Lecomte’s pencil-thin eyebrows rose almost to her hairline.

“It’s been removed from the auction,” Capucine added.

“How odd. I didn’t know that. I never met Brault, but I knew of his reputation as a collector. I wouldn’t have thought he’d be easy to fool.” She paused, thinking. “When I saw the piece on display at Drouot, it was in a glass-covered case behind several other pieces, but it shouted out to me. Love at first sight. I just had to have it.”

“Wouldn’t it have made more sense to go to the auction instead of making an exorbitant preemptive bid?”

“Of course it would have, but the auction is next Monday and the Puces is open then, so I had to be here. Sadly, only bigwigs get to bid by phone. You know the song, sometimes you just have to follow your heart no matter where it takes you. Anyway, money certainly isn’t everything, and I really, really wanted that rafraîchissoir.”

“I understand your bid was for over twice the estimate of the piece.”

“I thought the estimate was way low. The decoration was very delicate. Did you see it? Delicate, long-legged herons with long, sensuously curved beaks. And the glaze was green, which is extremely rare for Menton. It’s a fab—” She realized she was babbling and cut herself off.

“We were talking about your bid on that Menton rafraîchissoir. Why did you want it so much?”

“I told you. I fell in love with it. With that green decoration, the delicacy of the brushwork, it was almost unique. We women are entitled to be a little foolish about love every once in a while. Women’s prerogative and all.”

Lecomte beamed a toothy smile that shone out like a lighthouse on a stormy night through her dark lips. She raised her arms and pivoted, indicating her wares. “And faïence is my love. I live and breathe it.”

A couple walked in, obviously American in their puffy down jackets, and smiled at Lecomte’s gesture. They looked around the stand, respectfully taking great care not to touch anything. The woman stopped, riveted in front of a large four-footed terrine decorated with very detailed flowers: pastel pink roses and bright yellow buttercups.

“Look at this, honey,” the woman said in English.

The husband went up to her, clearly already bored by the stand.

“See, the handles on the sides are leopards, and the handle on the lid is a cute little fish. And look how real the roses look.”

The man gave a cursory look.

“Oh, honey, this would be perfect as a centerpiece for our dining room table.”

Her husband did not reply.

Lecomte sidled up and said heartily in perfect, unaccented English, “It would make
anyone’s
dining room.” As if she thought she had gone overboard, she continued on more quietly. “It comes from the Fabrique de la Veuve Perrin,” she continued, rolling the
r’
s of “Perrin” with an almost caricatural French accent. It dates from seventeen sixty and is one of the earliest examples of the
petit feu
technique.”

The man looked at her with interest.

“You see, prior to the mid-eighteenth century the decoration was applied to porous clay, which soaked it right in. So it had to be simple, and the only really good color they had was blue, which is why so much older faïence is blue on white. And they needed a really hot kiln, the
grand feu.
”

The woman continued to devour the terrine with her eyes. The husband seemed fascinated by the technology.

“So what happened then?” he asked.

“They developed new glazes. A first coat was baked on so the decoration could be painted onto a nonporous surface. That’s how they got all the wonderful detail in the roses on this piece. And the glaze that went on top of that would harden at a lower heat—what they called a
petit feu
—so they could use more glazes and get a full range of colors. Look at the color nuances in the flowers.”

“Oh, honey, the seventeen hundreds!” the woman said.

“It’s an awesome piece,” Lecomte said with her broad American accent. “And I’ll give you a hella good deal.”

“Are you from California?” the man asked.

Lecomte blushed. “No, I’m French, but I went to California a lot when I was a kid.”

“It shows in some of the words you use. But your English is just about perfect. I like it when foreigners know how to speak English. Say, how much are you asking for this?”

“Oh, honey, I can so absolutely see this in our dining room.”

The man gave her a stern look. He was getting down to business.

“Because I like you guys so much and you clearly love the piece, I’ll give you my rock-bottom price, five thousand euros.”

The man’s face was so immobile, it was clear he was taken aback. Capucine, once again attentively examining a display case, guessed he would get it for thirty-five hundred.

The man said nothing for several long beats, while his wife looked at him with pleading sheep’s eyes.

“Do you take American Express?”

“Of course, monsieur.”

“Then you got yourself a deal, young lady,” he said with a broad smile, sticking out his hand to shake Lecomte’s.

This time the sale was wrapped lovingly in three layers of bubble wrap and then carefully swathed in brown paper, which was gently taped and tied with purple string.

The couple left, the woman with the beatific smile of a young girl who had received her first porcelain doll as a Christmas gift, and the husband with the tight-lipped, virtuous grin of a good soldier who has done right by his family. Capucine could easily imagine them that evening at the Tour d’Argent, eating the fabled pressed duck, watching the setting sun paint a rosy backdrop behind Notre Dame, rejoicing in the thought of finally getting back to Fort Wayne with their trophies.

CHAPTER 16

T
he brigadier at the front desk called, sounding very put out. “It’s that commissaire whatever guy again. I called him Monsieur le Commissaire, and he laughed at me.”

“
Allô,
Madame Le Tellier? I have another object I think is going to interest you,” Bertignac said.

“And you’re going to insist I come to Drouot to examine it.”

“Pas du tout. One of our porters is already on his way up to you. It’s not an antique, just an old leather jotting pad. But, given the monogram, it’s not impossible that it belonged to Chef Brault.”

“How did you come by it?”

“One of the stand holders in the Marché de la rue Jean-Henri Fabre down at the Puces—you know, where they sell the secondhand clothes and stolen car radios—found it in a Loden coat he bought with a bunch of other clothes. The pad had my card in it, so he called me. When he described the gold monogram on the back with a
B
surmounted by a crown, I was happy to give him twenty euros for it. I know I should have alerted you, but if a flic showed up, the pad would have disappeared.”

“I’m very grateful, and of course, the police will reimburse your outlay.”

“Why don’t you come to one of my auctions and buy something pricey instead?” he said with a laugh.

When Bertignac hung up, Capucine buzzed the front desk and told the brigadier to get forensics to come and pick up something for examination.

“Yes, Commissaire. And there’s a guy here in some sort of uniform with a package for you that he says he has to deliver to you in person.”

A red-collared Savoyard from Drouot handed her a thick manila envelope, bowed smartly, and left.

Inside the envelope she found an ordinary self-sealing kitchen bag with Bertignac’s elegantly engraved business card paper-clipped to the top. There was a note in green fountain-pen ink on the front of the card.

The plastic bag contained a very old, scuffed and scarred black-leather jotting pad that had long lost its original sheen. The corners were trimmed in what looked like solid gold. There was no paper on the front of the pad, but the slot on the back was overly full enough to make it look potbellied. In the exact center of the paunch was a large gold-leaf monogram that had almost worn away. The design was so convoluted, Capucine would never have recognized it as a capital
B
unless Bertignac had alerted her. A gold crown in the shape of an unadorned band with a string of pearls wrapped around it surmounted the monogram.

Capucine opened the center drawer of her desk, dug through the disorder until she found a Swiss Army knife, rooted some more, and snapped on a pair of latex gloves she drew out of a pop-up box.

She zipped open the plastic bag, dumped out the pad, and gently squeezed the ends with the middle finger and thumb of her left hand. Ten or so pieces of paper of various sizes and colors fell out on the desk. With the large blade of the pocket knife she arranged them in two neat rows. There were five business cards: Bertignac’s, that of an antique dealer who specialized in faïence in the Sixth Arrondissement, and those of three suppliers of kitchen equipment. There was no doubt in Capucine’s mind that this had belonged to Brault.

There were also six scraps of paper, some folded in half, some in four. Capucine dug through the contents of the drawer and found a letter opener. She carefully unfolded the bits of paper with her two tools. Four were ragged-edged, square-ruled pages torn from ring-bound notebooks, and the other two were scraps of what could have been copier or printer paper. All were covered with the author’s personal shorthand, written in an introvert’s left-sloping cursive. The shorthand was easy enough to decipher once one knew food would be the central topic: there were rough ideas for recipes and lists of produce that needed to be ordered. Only one defied comprehension.
Vieillard, Bordeaux, BV rafr. V 8—.
Capucine guessed it was some wine or other Brault wanted the sommelier to obtain.

Capucine picked up her phone and pressed the speed dial for Momo.

“Momo, I need you to go back to the Puces. Go see someone called Amid Al-Risha, in Marché de la rue Jean-Henri Fabre. He’s at stand BB-thirty-four. He found a jotting pad in some clothes he bought. The pad is probably Brault’s. First prize would be getting those clothes. Second prize would be finding out who sold them to Al-Risha. Oh, and don’t forget to print him.”

There was a polite knock on her office door.

“
Entrez,
” Capucine said loudly.

A very young, clean-cut man stuck his head around the partially opened door and then slipped in diffidently, carrying a large square aluminum case by its handle, obviously the forensics technician. When he saw the pile on Capucine’s desk, his eyes opened wide in horror. His thought was as clear as if he had yelled it:
A crass police officer has been pawing through evidence.
A solecism so grave, it was beyond comprehension.

Capucine smiled at him sweetly. “Please bundle all this up and take it down to your lab. Print it very carefully.”

The technician choked back a retort and extracted rubber gloves and two pairs of tweezers, flat ended as platypus bills, from his case. With great care he placed the scraps of paper and the jotting pad in separate plastic bags. With a reproachful look at Capucine, he made for the door.

“Ajudant. I need you to e-mail me photos of the pad and its contents this afternoon.”

“I doubt very much, Commissaire, we’ll be able to get to it ’til tomorrow. Maybe not even ’til Monday.”

“Five today, at the latest,” Capucine barked.

The technician recoiled, set his face, and marched out of the office.

Capucine sat for a long moment, staring out the window, unseeing. Snapping herself out of her reverie, she dialed her mother’s number.

“Allô, Maman? Do you have a minute?”

“A minute, ma chérie? I have a whole life for you. Is this more about heraldry?”

“Someone turned in one of those leather jotting pads, which I think might have belonged to Jean-Louis Brault. It has a heraldic monogram on the back, but it’s very different from the crest on the chevalière.”

“What does it look like?”

“There’s a very elaborate initial that’s hard to make out. It could be a
B,
but I’m not a hundred percent sure. And there’s a coronet on top. But this one is not at all like the one on the chevalière. Instead of having pearls stuck on top, there’s a string of pearls that has been wrapped around and around the coronet.”

“It might or might not be Brault’s. I’d have to see it.”

“I can stop by after work and show you a picture, if that’s good for you.”

 

The next morning Capucine arrived at the brigade an hour later than usual, wearing a long-sleeved silk blouse under her coat. The blouse served to cover a large, multi-hued hematoma on the underside of her left forearm.

The evening before, she had supervised the arrest of a serial rapist who had abused three women he had apparently followed from different stops on the Number 3 metro line as it passed through the Twentieth Arrondissement. The lieutenant in charge of the case was positive the perp, particularly punctilious in his tastes, rode the line each evening between nine thirty and ten thirty in search of tall, small-breasted, svelte, short-haired brunettes in their early twenties. He would follow his victims out of the station and attack as soon as they reached a dimly lit street.

The arrest plan involved over half of the brigade’s roster, with officers posted at all seven of the Line 3 stops in the Twentieth, lieutenants at the République and Gallieni stops at either end of the arrondissement, and Capucine in the exact middle, at the Père Lachaise station. As it happened, that night’s intended victim had emerged from the Père Lachaise station.

The suspect had been arrested smoothly as he closed in on the girl in a badly lit passageway between two buildings. Hands cuffed behind his back, resignedly passive, the man was held by the arms as the officers waited for the van to arrive. Slight framed and stoop shouldered, he looked for all the world like a meek low-level accountant. Capucine, who was enraged by rape far more than any other crime, had stepped up to peer into his face to see if there was any reflection of degeneracy in his eyes. With blinding speed he had aimed a savate kick at her head. Capucine’s parrying forearm had received the full force of the blow.

Her officers had insisted on taking her to an emergency room, where she had been x-rayed, given an envelope of meticulously counted-out high-powered painkillers, and sent home.

The morning drive to the brigade had started her arm throbbing, so she had taken two of the pills before walking in. She was decidedly lightheaded by the time she sat down at her desk.

The evening before, the forensics technician had sent an e-mail with two attachments. The first was a preliminary report on the jotting pad. They had found multiple prints from Jean-Louis Brault, Amid Al-Risha, and Bertrand de Bertignac, but no others. Capucine assumed that Bertignac’s prints were in the police system because they had been taken when he had applied for his commissaire-priseur license. Forensics had also concluded that the handwriting was Brault’s. The second attachment was a series of five extremely detailed pictures of the jotting pad.

That was that. The jotting pad was Brault’s, but it didn’t tell her anything. The only possible lead could come from what Momo had discovered. And that was—

The phone rang. Capucine’s mother was on the line. The receptionist had put her straight through.

“
Alors,
” said Capucine’s mother, “has my daughter become too busy or too forgetful to remember her promises to her mother?”

“Oh, pardon, Maman. It got so hectic last evening, I completely forgot. Anyway, forensics has identified the jotting pad as definitely having been Brault’s.” As Capucine spoke, she had the delicious sensation of floating out of her body and looking down at herself.

“I could have spared them the effort. I did some research last night and—”

“Maman, if it would interest you, I could send you some pictures.”

Capucine was vaguely aware she had made a tactical error.

“Send them to me? You know La Poste isn’t as reliable as it used to be. I wouldn’t get them until tomorrow at the earliest, maybe not even until next week. You need to be more diligent in your work. You have a position of responsibility now—”

Capucine felt delightfully pleased with herself. No wonder people became addicted to painkillers. Oblivious to her own wants, she blundered on. “Maman, what if you came down here for lunch? I could show you around the brigade, you could have a look at the pictures, and then we could have a quick bite.” The altruistic words were delectable in Capucine’s mouth. Anyway, she was certain her mother would refuse.

“
Parfait
. I’ll be there at twelve.”

 

Momo was halfway through his report; Isabelle made notes in a spiral notebook; David played with his hair; Capucine sat back in her chair with her legs on the table, nodding at Momo’s points. The painkillers had metabolized, her arm was throbbing, and she was developing a ferocious headache.

“Those guys don’t have stands. They just have a folding table and a wire cage behind. They buy junk. Old radios and TVs. Rags that used to be clothes. The gelt comes from the hot stuff, boosted car radios and crap that ‘fell off a truck.’ Our boy Amid tried to get me to believe an old woman whose husband had just died brought in a pile of old clothes, and when he went through the pockets—”

“Brave man,” interjected David.

“He found the notepad. Since a jotting pad with gold corners is not what you usually find in a bunch of rags, I had to, uh, challenge him a little.”

“Was he cooperative?” Capucine asked.

“Commissaire, if you mean did I have to rough him up, the answer is no. But I did tell him that I was very busy, and if he didn’t tell me something useful pretty quick, I was going to stick him in the brigade lockup, and it might take me a day or two to find the time to listen to what he had to say. He got the message. Some homeless guy came up to him with a whole outfit, shoes and all. Says the bum found them in a dumpster out behind the Marché Biron. That sounds reasonable enough to me. He said there was no wallet, just the notepad, a few coins, and two plastic ballpoint pens. He put the clothes on his table, and they were sold five minutes after he opened up. I believe that, too. And, of course, he has no idea who this bum is. I also believe that.”

“What happened to the pens?” Isabelle asked.

Before Momo could answer, the office door opened and a uniformed officer stuck his head in.

“Madame Le Tellier is here to see you, Commissaire. She says she has an appointment.”

Before Capucine could take her legs off the table and sit up, her mother pushed past the officer into the room. The four detectives stood up. For a split second the three brigadiers—who had never met Capucine’s mother—thought that some terrible tragedy must have occurred. They eased toward the door.

Capucine stopped them and introduced her mother ceremoniously. David—with his love of histrionics—played a role that more than made up for Isabelle’s and Momo’s reticence. He executed a perfect
baisemain
—a hand kiss performed with bent waist, lips stopping an inch before contact with skin was made. Capucine’s mother was charmed.

“I had no idea such elegant people were in the police. Let’s bring them along to lunch. I’d love to get to know your coworkers.”