Murder in the Rue Dumas: A Verlaque and Bonnet Provencal Mystery (Verlaque and Bonnet Provencal Mysteries) (35 page)

Rodier nodded quickly. “Yes, a nineteenth-century reproduction. Is it no longer in my office? I hadn’t noticed!”

“No. Claude removed it a week ago Friday when you had him clean up your room. He told me on the roof the other night that he packed up all of the books from two of your shelves and then ran out of boxes. He was late for a meeting with Dr. Moutte, and so threw the statue in his gym bag, thinking he’d ask Audrey Zacharie for a box, but then he forgot all about it. The statue isn’t a reproduction; it was carved by Andrea Pisano in the mid-fourteenth century.”

Genuine shock lit up the handsome face. “I had no idea!”

There was a touch of impatience in Verlaque’s voice. “That’s clear to me.” He thought about just how apt Marine’s description of Rodier as “naive” was.

Seeing the frustration set in on the judge, Paulik spoke. “I’m afraid it will be hours before you can talk to the boy. Why don’t you go home, and I’ll call you when you can come in.”

Rodier stood up and smoothed out the creases on his pants. “Fine, fine. I’ll do that.”

They accompanied the professor to the stairs that led up and out into the November day. Without speaking they turned around and headed toward the interrogation room where Claude was now waiting for them. Opening the door, Verlaque saw that the half-crazed wisecracker from the rooftop was now a pale, quiet young man.

“Good morning, Claude,” Verlaque said as both he and Paulik sat down. “I know that your father has arranged for you to have a lawyer, and he’s on the train with your parents right now, so it’s your legal right not to say anything to us until you see Maître Blanc.”

“I think I told you too much already,” Ossart answered. “I’ll wait for my lawyer now.”

“Your apartment was searched yesterday and we found the statue,” Verlaque said. “In your gym bag, like you told me.” Verlaque didn’t tell Ossart that there was dried blood still on the statue. He then told Ossart that the BMW that killed Audrey Zacharie had been found, and the youth put his head in his hands. Verlaque glanced at Paulik, who remained motionless, staring at Ossart. They agreed later that neither were sure if Ossart had called the young woman Monday night “just to talk,” as he had said, or to kill her.

“Would you mind just telling me why you broke into the doyen’s apartment?” Verlaque asked. “That’s the only bit I can’t work out.”

Ossart shrugged. “I wanted to throw you off of my trail; make it look like theft. I threw a big vase on the floor and was about to
wreck the place when a noise in the hallway freaked me out. I quickly left by the window and then so did the cat who had followed me in.”

“All right,” Verlaque said, and he got up to leave. “I’ll see you later.”

“Do you think if that sculpture hadn’t been in his gym bag that Georges Moutte may be alive today?” Paulik asked as they walked down the hall.

“Perhaps, and Audrey Zacharie too.”

Paulik’s cell phone rang and he answered it as they walked up the stairs together. “You’re kidding?” he asked the caller, and then grimaced. Paulik hung up and then said to Verlaque, “Well, Hervé Lémoine is feeling fine and back to his old tricks.”

“What?”

“He insulted one of the nurses. She’s filed a complaint.”

“What an ass!” Verlaque exclaimed. “I should have left him lying there!”

“But you wouldn’t have,” Bruno Paulik said. “Even if you knew what I just told you.”

T
hierry Marchive walked as quickly as he could without breaking out into a sweat. It was a difficult balance to achieve, and one he had been working on since hitting puberty, for he was often late, and he was a natural sweater. The last thing he wanted was to show up at the Bar Zola with perspiration marks under his arms. He got to the cours Mirabeau and looked at his watch…he should be at the bar now, and it was still another five minutes’ walk. Just then a Diaboline, one of Aix’s electric minibuses, pulled up behind him to let two elderly passengers out and two in. He jumped on behind them and put fifty centimes in the cashbox. He sat opposite the man and woman, both in their seventies, or even eighties, he wasn’t sure, and smiled. Normally he would have been embarrassed to be taking the Diaboline, but this evening he didn’t care. He couldn’t be late. The bus made its way, painfully slowly, but at least he could stop sweating, up the
rue Clémenceau, through the small place Saint-Honoré, and then continued up the rue Méjanes. Thierry pulled the cord to signal a stop and jumped out at the cross street of Méjanes and Fauchier, thanked the driver, and said good evening to the elderly couple, who returned greetings and waved.

The Bar Zola was packed. It was a Friday night and it was too cold for most people except the most hardy—usually students from northern France—and he slipped past the crowd that always seemed to be blocking the front door. He smiled to himself as Leonard Cohen was playing, and he thought of Yann and felt the tiniest bit of guilt that he hadn’t told his friend of this evening’s meeting. Yann would have teased him, and besides, he didn’t really know himself why he had been summoned here. He would fill in Yann tomorrow, over breakfast.

Thierry looked around for the familiar wire-rimmed glasses and hunched-over shoulders, but couldn’t see anyone like that. He walked slowly through the bar, looking at each table, trying not to look too much like someone who had been called here, perhaps on a hoax. There were three small tables at the back, and at the middle table he saw a girl, alone, with red glasses and red lipstick that matched the glasses. She smiled and quickly waved, and then put her hand down and held on to her beer glass as if it would race across the table. Thierry squeezed past two students who were standing at the bar arguing about Leonard Cohen and sat down across from her. “You got new glasses,” Thierry said, immediately regretting his opening line. He should have said, “You look fantastic.” That’s what Yann would have said.

“Yes, Dr. Leonetti helped me pick them out,” Garrigue said as she unconsciously lifted her hand up to the glasses and felt them, to make sure that they were indeed her new pair. “She helped me with my hair too, and the lipstick was a present from her.”

Thierry ordered a beer from the waiter. He looked at Garrigue
and smiled. “Super. It looks super. And congratulations on the Dumas. I’m really happy for you.” He watched Garrigue as she sipped her beer and saw that the dark red glasses brought out her blue eyes, and that her hair, normally just pulled back in a ponytail, was now expertly piled on top of her head, like a crown, though slightly disheveled.

“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about,” she said, her hand grazing her beer glass and almost tipping it over. “The Dumas. I don’t want it, and Dr. Leonetti told me that you were the runner-up.”

Thierry looked at her in amazement. Tonight she really didn’t seem like the same girl, physically or intellectually. But then he didn’t really know her. “Are you nuts?” he finally asked. He was so caught up in looking at her beauty and he almost hadn’t heard the word “Dumas.”

Garrigue laughed and Thierry’s beer arrived, but he didn’t touch it.

“I’ve been offered a job instead,” she answered. “In Paris.”

Thierry stared at her and then shook his head back and forth. “Wait…Paris? I don’t get it. Explain, please, now.”

“I’m going to work in television.”

“Television?” Thierry asked, shocked.

“It’s not as bad as you think,” Garrigue said. “It’s for the station Arte. Dr. Leonetti has a cousin who works there, and she got me the interview. I’ll be a research position on a new documentary series being filmed next fall. The salary is more than generous, it will keep me busy for two years.”

Thierry whistled. “A lot of money, eh?”

“Yes, I’m embarrassed by how much. I’ll be the consultant on both Saint Augustine and Saint Ambrose. It’s the chance of a lifetime.”

Thierry lifted his glass to hers and they clinked. “What can I say? I can’t believe you’re giving me the Dumas.”

Garrigue smiled. “I’m not. You were runner-up. You deserve it.”

“What can I give you in return?” Thierry innocently asked.

Garrigue leaned forward. “You can kiss me.”

Thierry couldn’t believe it. All this time, chasing after girls in every bar in Aix, and it was one of his fellow students who seemed to be in love with him. He leaned toward Garrigue and kissed her once, and liking the taste and feel of her lips, did it again.

Thierry and Garrigue’s courting lasted seven years, never in the same city. Thierry finished his thesis, and thanks to the Dumas was offered an assistant professorship at a small university in Montana. The state was entirely different from his native Marseille, but he grew to love it, as did Garrigue. She finally left her high-paying job in London at the BBC and moved to join Thierry, they married, and she became the vice president of a local television station. Yann married Suzanne, they lived in Paris, he a banker and she a stay-at-home mother of their five children.

Every year Garrigue and Thierry sent Annie Leonetti a Christmas card to that coveted address on the place des Quatre Dauphins. Garrigue was always careful to include photos of their two children and Montana in every season. Annie put the Christmas card with the other ones on the black marble mantle in the apartment’s elegant living room, watched over by the dancing figures on the ceiling’s fresco, finally removing the cards sometime around Easter.