Murder on the Mediterranean (Capucine Culinary Mystery) (6 page)

O
n their way back to the boat, Capucine stopped off at the port captain’s office. At the desk, a white-uniformed ensign informed her that the port captain was indeed present but was winding up a meeting in his office. If Capucine would care to wait for a few minutes at the very most, the ensign was sure the captain would be delighted to see her. She sat for nearly forty-five minutes before the ensign took her to an office at the rear of the open-plan area. The door had been in full view the whole time, and Capucine had seen no one leave.

Inside the office a man in his early forties with two gold stripes on his epaulets, sporting an officer’s cap decorated with the badge of a fouled anchor, looked at her guardedly, ignoring her breasts.

Capucine introduced herself.

“Yes, of course,” the man said in perfect French. “The night-duty ensign left me a detailed note. I have also received a report from the helicopter service, which saw nothing, even though they patrolled the area for two hours.”

He paused, constructing a melancholy look.

“It’s a tragedy, of course, but I’m afraid nothing more can be done. These things happen at sea, I’m sad to say. It’s fortunate that none of you were close to the young woman.” He shrugged, the weight of the world on his shoulders, and raised his hands slightly, palms upward.

“That’s it?” Capucine asked, not bothering to hide her irritation. “That’s all the Italian authorities are going to do?”

“I regret the loss of your servant,” he said, intensifying his melancholy look. “But you have to understand the situation. The fact that your skipper noted the position of the boat only a good while after he was alerted tells us that we have no idea exactly where she went overboard. An extended search over a broad area would take a small fleet of aircraft, and it is almost certain that it would be fruitless. In my experience it is extremely rare that drowned bodies float.”

Capucine sat mute, radiating irritation.

“Commissario, naturally I spoke to my superiors about this regrettable incident this morning.” The melancholy look had been replaced by a shrewd, knowing one. “They are, naturally, very deferential to your rank.” He paused. “They regret the ‘loss’ of your servant girl.” The quotation marks were heavy in the air. “But a factor exacerbating the futility of the search”—he paused again to let Capucine admire his mastery of the French language—“is that, given the ambiguity of the boat’s position at the time of the incident, it is quite possible, even likely, that you were in French waters.” Delighted with himself, he smiled at Capucine, leaned over the desk, and gave her an earnest, curtain-closing look.

Capucine sat back in her chair. The penny dropped. The superiors, whoever they might be, wanted no risk of international complications, particularly if it involved a ranking French police officer. Nathalie, even dead, was an embarrassment.

“Commissario, I’m afraid the case is closed.” He smiled again, the smile of someone of who had tied up all the necessary loose ends. “Of course, you’re more than welcome to remain in Porto Cervo. But I would appreciate it if you could vacate my mooring. My launch is normally tied up there. One of my men can help you find an anchorage, but I’m afraid it may have to be on the other side of the seawall. Marina berths are booked up months in advance, as I’m sure you understand.” He favored Capucine with a grandfatherly smile.

“That’s very generous of you, Captain. But we won’t be staying. We’re on our way to Tortoli. We’d planned a dinner there.”

“
Va bene.
Have a good sail. And don’t forget to check in at the port captain’s office when you get to Tortoli.”

Despite the glory of the day, the deck of the boat was deserted. Capucine inched down the long flight of algae-slick steps.

Halfway down she stopped. The situation was intolerable. The opera buffa of the Italian authorities would have been charmingly comical if it weren’t for the context of the probable death of someone they had shared an existence with, even if only for a few days. This was her world. A world she should be in control of. Of course, she could always make calls to Paris. The most likely call would be to
Contrôleur Général
Tallon, her mentor, now a god in the stratosphere of the Police Judiciaire hierarchy. But she would sound ridiculous. What would she want him to do? Pull strings to the get the Italian authorities to do something? But what, exactly? That was the whole problem; there was nothing to be done.

She hopped on board. The rest of the party was huddled around the salon table, drinking Prosecco, serving themselves something out of a Plexiglas bowl, looking unhappy.

“We’ve been kicked out of Porto Cervo,” Capucine said.

“Good,” Alexandre said.

“Kicked out?” Florence asked.

“Well, not exactly. But we’ve been occupying the mooring of the port captain’s launch. He wants it back. There aren’t any berths available in the cove. We were graciously invited to drop our anchor outside the seawall.”

“That’s safe enough,” Florence said. “It’s a good, shallow, sandy bottom out there. Fine for one or two nights with the fair weather that’s coming up.”

“So what do we do now?” Serge asked nervously, poking at the food on his plate.

Capucine squeezed into the banquette. Alexandre handed her a plate scintillating with bright summer colors. He must have found a market and gone foraging. He’d whipped up a salad of Barilla three-cheese tortellini, zucchini, green peppers, cherry tomatoes, and scallions, seasoned it with a delicate lemony vinaigrette, and topped the whole affair off with thinly shaved slices of Parmesan cheese. One of the things Capucine loved most about Alexandre was that, no matter how severe the crisis, his priorities remained inviolate. The salad was delicious.

Capucine refocused on Serge. “Descartes would have been eloquent in explaining we have only two choices, go on or go home.”

“Ah, the quaint notion of free will. It’s the sort of concept that you could conjure up only if you lived in an oven,” Jacques murmured, sipping Prosecco. Capucine half thought Aude smiled at him.

“I don’t care what we do as long as we get out of this godforsaken Costa Smeralda,” Angélique said. “I’d just as soon move to Hollywood as stay here.”

Through the salon ports Capucine could see portly owners of mega yachts on their decks, with bare-breasted trophy spouses being served flutes of vintage champagne by fawning tanned, athletic young things in uniforms of brief shorts and tight T-shirts.

There was a universal murmur of agreement.

“Serge, how far away are we from Tortoli?” Dominique asked. “I know the whole episode has been a shock. But I really don’t want to go back to France just yet. I think it would be kind of fun to meet your friend and see the way real people live in Sardinia.” Angélique slid her hand into his and smiled lovingly at him. Mentally, Capucine shook her head at Angélique’s protean mood shifts toward her husband.

“The timing is bad,” Serge said. “It’s a ten-hour sail. If we leave now, we won’t get there till midnight.”

Jacques purred. One of his knacks was attracting the attention of a crowd with a mere murmur. “In that case, my vote would be to stay here and sample the nightlife of this delicious den of iniquity. Nothing is more enticing than the musk of barely teen starlets in rut. Then we can perform our usual trick of stealing off like thieves in the night.”

There was a moment of silence as the group chewed over this alternative.

“Could be fun, when you think about it,” Angélique said. “I’d like to see the stars at play. Don’t you think, darling?” She slid her arm through Dominique’s.

“It’s what Nathalie would have wanted,” Jacques said, cackling his braying laugh. Aude shot him a dirty look, one that Capucine was almost sure she saw.

Half an hour later they were beyond the breakwater. It was hardly the open sea, just a protected cove with no dock. Florence contemplated Serge as he maneuvered the boat, attempting to drop the anchor. He cruised around, found a spot, went too far, turned, came back over it, overshot, went around again. Florence came up beside him at the wheel. She did not even have to ease him aside. He moved away gratefully.

“This is too close to the other boats,” Florence said. “We might hit one of them in the night if we drop the hook here. Why don’t you go forward and get ready with the anchor while I find us a spot?”

Serge went to the forecastle and opened a little hatch. He extracted a three-foot anchor, a length of chain, and an electronic device that looked exactly like a TV remote control. Régis snapped pictures with the zeal of a paparazzo.

“When are you going to post all these pictures?” Capucine asked.

“Oh, I’ve already started. Porto Cervo has great free Wi-Fi. I can’t wait to post some shots of the anchor dropping into the water. That’ll give the blog real local color.”

Florence motored the boat over to an area on the other side of the cove, turned it into the wind, held it in position with the motor ticking over, and told Serge to drop the anchor.

He squeezed a button on his TV remote and the anchor chain clanked through the fairlead. After a few seconds the chain turned into ordinary braided rope. Serge leaned far over the bow pulpit, engrossed. “Bottom,” he announced to Florence.

Florence put the motor in neutral and let the wind push the boat away from the anchor, drawing out line. After about half a minute, Florence ordered, “Make fast” in a conversational tone. Serge squeezed a button on his remote. Very gently the boat came to a halt.

“It’s a good one,” Florence said and switched the ignition off.

There was no denying the cove had scenic appeal. They were surrounded by boats their size or a little smaller. The prosperous middle class cut off from the mega rich by the breakwater.

The sun was still high in the sky. The group broke up, some going below to nap, others finding secluded corners of the deck to read or chat. Capucine went up to the bow and let her legs dangle over the side. She was unable to shake her frustration at the administrative indifference to Nathalie’s death. No one should be allowed to be erased from the face of the earth so completely, so unnoticed, so unmourned.

“Serge,” she called out. “Do you have Nathalie’s passport?”

Serge handed it to her. “What are you going to do with it?”

“See if I can find some next of kin to notify.”

“Of course. I hadn’t thought of that.”

Capucine clicked her iPhone on and pressed the speed-dial button for
Brigadier-Chef
Lemercier, the most proficient of her team with the police database.

“
Salut,
Commissaire. Already bored hanging out on a yacht with the idle rich?”

“Salut, Isabelle. Not quite, but getting there. Can you do something for me? We had a tragic accident. One of the crew went overboard. I need you to run her down and see if you can find any next of kin.”

“What’s the name?”

“Martin, Nathalie,” Capucine said and read off the passport number.

“I’ll have it for you in a few minutes. Call you back?”

Capucine draped her arms over the top lifeline, holding the iPhone limply, rubbing her big toes together, emptying her mind. The phone vibrated in her hand.

“Commissaire, there’s not much. She was born in nineteen seventy-eight in the Bagneux projects. Her mother deceased in two thousand one, and there’s no listing for a father. There’s a brother, Martin, Emile. He was convicted twice for auto theft but seems to have left the country. Last seen boarding a flight to Melbourne in nineteen ninety-eight. Want me to run him down?”

“No. That one’s gone for good. And there’s nothing else on Nathalie Martin?”

“Absolutely nothing. No marriages, no leases on apartments, no bank accounts, no credit cards. But I can dig deeper if you want.”

“No thanks. She’s not a suspect, just a kid who fell off a boat. Thanks, Isabelle. I’ll see you in a week.”

That was that. Capucine felt depression descend on her like a damp yellow fog. Behind her the group bustled. After a good bit of chatter, soundless in Capucine’s brume, the distaff side of the crew moved below to primp for dinner. The males remained in the cockpit, drinking beer, discussing the evening’s venues.

Capucine dropped into the cockpit next to Alexandre. He handed her a bottle of Peroni beer, the sweat of condensation running down its sides. She put the bottle to her forehead and let the conversation wash over her, willing her brain to remain empty. There was already a consensus about the nightspots. The Billionaire was to be the first stop. It was world famous for its views from the tops of the cliffs of Porto Cervo and its wall-to-wall crush of stars, starlets, and the superrich. Even the parking lot packed with Ferraris was supposed to be worth the detour. There was some debate about the second stop, but the vox populi settled on the Ritual, housed in an ancient stone building made to look like a Stone Age ruin. The glitterati who weren’t at Billionaire were bound to be there.

That was the easy part. Dinner was trickier. One choice was Porto Cervo’s most expensive spot, Ristorante Gianni Pedrinelli. Another was Cipriani, the restaurant in Billionaire.

“We’d save on cab fare, and Lord knows that’s important in these troubled times,” Jacques said.

Alexandre put the kibosh on both by pronouncing that he had it on excellent authority that the food was execrable at both establishments. Even though no one would think of questioning even his most casual statement about a restaurant, Alexandre hammered home his veto by explaining that restaurants that catered to the fast set were invariably indifferent to restaurant critics since their clientele came to be seen, not to eat. He was certain he wouldn’t have the clout to obtain a same-day reservation for a ten-top.

As an alternative, Alexandre suggested a restaurant high in the hills just out of town named Tamarind after the owner, an English chef who had left her London starred kitchen to bask in the Costa Smeralda sun. Apparently, the food was “adequate,” which in Alexander’s lexicon was high praise indeed.

Alexandre made a call to Paris. In a few minutes his cell phone buzzed. He cooed in French gallantly into the device, chortled, rang off.