Dead in the Dregs (21 page)

I passed down a short hallway. Her room was sparsely furnished: a bed, a desk, an armoire. A few books stood on a nightstand. A faded hooked rug covered most of the floor. She was showering, the door of the bathroom left slightly ajar. As she stepped out of the shower, I caught a strip of her body from behind: a shoulder, the length of her torso, one leg. She was built like an athlete. She glanced up and, realizing I was in the room, shut the door.

“I have to get ready,” she said.

“I was hoping you’d join
me
for dinner,” I said.

“I’m sorry. But it’s true that I’m meeting Freddy.”

“Where are they staying?”

“He and the lawyer have a
gîte
, a small house, that Philippe Frossard owns. Do you know him?”

“Only by reputation,” I said. Frossard owned the finest
tonnellerie
in Burgundy. His barrels cost a small fortune.

“You must meet him. He’s fantastic.”

She emerged wrapped in a towel. She really was something.

“Have you ever been to America?” I said, looking away.

“No, but I’d like to come. Someday. Freddy says he can find a job for me,” she said, crossing to the closet and closing the door behind her.

“How’d you meet Richard? You said it was in Barsac?”

“So, you were listening to me?” She craned her head out the door and smiled. Her neck was exquisite.

“It was a small restaurant.” I looked contrite, and she laughed. “You met him by accident?” I said.

“Yes. By accident,” she said, ducking back into the closet. “They came to taste.”

“‘They,’ meaning Richard and Jacques?” I said.

“Of course.”

“So, you didn’t know Richard that well?”

She was shuffling through hangers and suddenly stopped.

“No, I didn’t. Why?”

“I told you, I came here looking for some kind of solution to his murder. You seemed very upset to find Goldoni at that restaurant. I’m interested in the reason.”

She didn’t say anything. I could hear her slip on some clothes. She emerged from the closet wearing black jeans and a sweater. She held a pair of boots in her hand, dropped them in front of the bed, and walked back to the bathroom.

“Did Richard ever make a pass at you?” I asked.

“I thought we were talking about Jacques . . .”

“Did
either
of them hit on you?”

“Unh!” she grunted, exasperated by my impertinence. She turned on a hair dryer, then shut it off.

“Do you wish to find Richard’s killer, or do you just want to know about my personal life?” she said loudly. She flicked the dryer on again.

“I saw Eric Feldman this morning,” I said over the noise of the hair dryer. “He told me Richard has a child.”

She turned the dryer off again and looked at me from the mirror.

“What did you say?”

“Apparently Richard has a child.”

“A child?
Vraiment
?” she said, her voice low. She flicked the hair dryer back on and brushed her hair out roughly.

“You ever meet a guy named Jean Pitot?” I asked loudly.

She took a moment before saying, “Jean Pitot? Yes, I think so.” She turned the dryer off and emerged from the bathroom, sitting on
the edge of the bed. “But one meets lots of people,” she said, leaning down and pulling her boots on.

“I could really use your help,” I said. “You don’t seem to have much use for Goldoni, but I’d like you to try and help me find out what he knows.”

She stood. “It isn’t any of your business. Or mine. Why are you doing this?” It was more plea than question.
Please don’t force me to talk about it, to talk to him
, her expression said.

“I was asked to. By Richard’s sister.”

She searched my face, then said, “I’m late. I told Freddy that I would be there by now.”

“Is Jacques going to be there?” I asked.

“I hope not,” she said, grabbing a jacket and purse.

I followed her into the hallway. As we passed through the foyer, I looked up at the antique implements suspended on the wall above the desk.

“I guess they didn’t fuck around in the olden days, huh?” I said.

“They’ve always fucked around,” she said and walked out to the courtyard.

A slight drizzle glazed the crushed earth. The cube of wine sheathed in plastic looked as if it had been cast in polished steel.

“You haven’t answered a single question,” I said.

She stopped and faced me.

“How should I know any of it?” she said. Then, in a low voice she added, “I didn’t know Richard. He didn’t talk to me.”

She walked to her car, an old beat-up Fiat, and opened the door. The same panic I’d seen in Pitot’s face suddenly took hold of her features, a mute fear.

“I have to go,” she said.

I didn’t know
what to make of Monique Azzine. On the one hand, she was like many young professionals I’d met in wine circles, moving from job to job, working her way up the ladder, seeking the next opportunity wherever it presented itself. On the other, given her looks and the powerful attraction she exerted over men, she might sleep her way to the top. I hadn’t seen enough of her to pass judgment on her competence as a winemaker.

But I was convinced something had occurred in Barsac, between her and Wilson or between her and Goldoni, something she wasn’t letting on about. Like everyone I’d come across so far, she was keeping what she knew to herself. She’d definitely reacted when I mentioned Eric Feldman and his stupefying revelation, not to mention her awkward response to my question about Jean Pitot.

Could Pitot possibly be Richard’s illegitimate son? Was the phone call Feldman had made to Wilson in San Francisco the favor he’d been asked to do? Maybe that was the reason Pitot had gone to Napa.

More than ever, I needed to talk to Feldman.

As I passed through Beaune, I decided to drop by the Novotel to see if I could find him. A different and more congenial attendant stood behind the reception desk. She tried Feldman’s room, but
there was no answer. Several messages were folded in his mailbox, and she seemed surprised he hadn’t gotten them.

“I am sorry. I think he must be at dinner. Would you like to leave him a message?” she said.

“
Non
,” I said. “
Merci.
”

As I drove north toward Aloxe, I realized I was famished. Passing a little roadside bistrot that seemed charming enough, I pulled over.

Its walls were artlessly painted with cartoons of the Folies Bergère, preposterous and misshapen figures that resembled toreadors and señoritas enthralled by the tangos of courtship, seduction, and submission, and I pictured the scene unfolding now at Rosen’s farmhouse, with the importer and his sidekick posturing for Monique’s benefit.

A plump and jovial woman came out of the kitchen to seat me and handed me a menu. There was only one other party in the place, a couple of impossibly large Brits, and, as I examined the menu, I was subjected to their rambling, pompous rehashing of what they’d tasted that day. A carrying case lay at the foot of their table, and as the
patronne
left me, one of the men asked her to bring a dozen wineglasses so that they could continue to range through the samples they’d been given. I caught her attention and asked her to bring a bottle of Chambolle-Musigny made by Jean-Luc Carrière that was on the list.

I took my time over the wine. It was supple, luscious, the fruit opulent and fragrant. Black fruits and bacon fat, as muscular as the man who made it.

The meal was simple but sumptuous: a platter of sautéed frog’s legs and
côte de boeuf
, cooked
à point
with a cream sauce that floated a small forest of morels. I concentrated on my food and wine, intent on ignoring the two men, but they were too loud and offensive, so I ate quickly.

I wasn’t ready to head back to my hotel. Staying on the
nationale
, I drove instead to Nuits, took the turnoff to the east, and found rue Cussigny, where the Pitots lived. I killed my headlights just before I reached the house, and parked at the dead end by the railroad tracks.

The night air gripped me. A slight wind rustled the crown of a line of poplars. The street felt abandoned. The lights of a TV flickered through the Pitots’ lace curtains. I moved as quietly as I could, tiptoeing to the back of the house. Jean’s motorbike was still gone. I walked into a field that bordered the property and crouched in a furrow between two rows of vines.

I could see into the kitchen. A man was sitting with his back to me, his shoulders hunched, as Madame Pitot moved around the kitchen, preparing dinner. From my vantage point, I could hear her screaming at him, and he seemed to be cowering under the onslaught. Finally, she set a plate down and stood there, glowering. He ate his dinner in silence, shoveling the food. I watched him refill his wineglass three or four times. And then a sudden beam of light arced across the front of the house and cast a yellow glow through the cluttered confines of the carport into the field, just missing me. An engine died, and a minute later Jean entered the kitchen. The woman exploded again.

I could hear nothing of what she was saying, but the rage that impelled it was clear enough. Her anger seemed uncontrollable, and after venting at her son for several minutes without pausing for breath, she stormed out of the kitchen. Jean sat down at the table to join his father, and at last the two men were able to eat in peace.

I inched my way back along the edge of the vineyard. There was now a worker’s vehicle—a three-wheeled scooter with a little pickup bed—in the carport. It was too dark, and I was too anxious to get out of there to be able to see very clearly. The only other thing I could make out was a wheelbarrow, like the ones workers used to burn vine cuttings, that stood propped against the tailgate.

As I drove past the house, I saw Pitot and his father enter the carport. Henri held a flashlight as his son opened the back of the diminutive vehicle. Hearing my car, the elder Pitot fanned the flashlight across the street. I hit the accelerator, the crisp, bright odors of earth and rotting fruit still clinging to my nostrils.

 

I was somber
the next morning at breakfast and decided to limit myself to a café au lait. If Jean Pitot was Richard Wilson’s child and
Wilson had rejected him, mightn’t Pitot have wanted him dead? It seemed a perfectly serviceable motive to me.

I played back the scene at the Pitots’ in my mind. The mother had been ferocious, a tyrant. The men were terrified of her, husband and son both. Jean had left that morning on a motorbike and returned in a work vehicle—not all that strange, since everyone, with the harvest completed, had begun to cut and burn. But the vineyard I’d knelt in was so ill tended that it seemed impossible Jean and his father would have set to pruning it so promptly. Perhaps he’d been pruning Carrière’s vineyards. But if that were the case, why had they needed to go out to the truck right after dinner?

My musings were interrupted by two nearly simultaneous events: First, a telephone was placed before me on the table, and, a few seconds later, Lucas Kiers, back from his morning jog, made his puffing entrance into the dining room.

The call was from Rosen. “Where’d you disappear to yesterday? You should meet us this morning,” he said. “I have a big tasting at Domaine Gauffroy in Gevrey at ten. Jacques will be with us. Smithson thinks you ought to give it another crack after your performance the other day. Anyway, it will be interesting. All my growers will be there.”

Since I was getting nowhere on my own, the invitation was hard to refuse.

“Sure,” I told him. “
À tout à l’heure.
”

“So, where are you off to?” Kiers asked as I set the phone down.

“Domaine Gauffroy. Freddy Rosen has some major tasting he’s put together. He said that all of his guys would be there.”

“Gauffroy? Jesus, I wish I could go. I’ve been wanting to revisit them. I didn’t treat them very well when they were first released. You think you could get me in?” he said.

“I don’t know. Jacques Goldoni’s going to be there. If you know him, you could give him a call.”

“Goldoni? Well, that settles it. Can’t do it. And I wouldn’t want to, even if I could.”

“Tough luck,” I said.

“Well,
bonne dégustation
!”

He left me to the last swallow of my coffee. Returning to my room, I called Colonel Sackheim. He picked up on the first ring.

“
Oui
, Sackheim.”

“Colonel, this is Babe Stern.”

“
Ah, Monsieur.
How goes the investigation?”

“I can’t seem to find Eric Feldman. Not since Freddy Rosen, an American importer, and I met him Wednesday morning at a domaine in Nuits-Saint-Georges. I swung by his hotel last night—the Novotel, just outside the walls of Beaune—but he hadn’t picked up his messages. I have no idea where he is.”

“Well, he is a busy person. He races from one domaine to another.”

“That’s true, but I saw a couple
vignerons
yesterday who seemed pretty upset that he hadn’t arrived for appointments he had scheduled with them.”

“Curious,” Sackheim said.

“Yes, but there’s more. After a tasting with Rosen the day before yesterday, I went to find Jean Pitot. I had two addresses, one for an Henri and a second for Gilbert Pitot. But Henri is Jean’s father. They live on the edge of Nuits-Saint-Georges. Rue Cussigny, by the railroad tracks.”

“Yes, I know where this is,” Sackheim said.

“Pitot was there, still asleep. I met his mother.”

“And? What did you learn from him?”

“Not much. He said he had to come back home to help with the harvest.”

“Naturally,” Sackheim said with a certain impatience.

“But he doesn’t work with his father. After lunch Wednesday, I picked up where I’d last seen Feldman, at Collet-Favreau, and then went on to Domaine Trenet, where he’d said he was going next. But he was long gone, and I couldn’t get a thing out of Trenet, so I went back to question Claudine Collet-Joubert. She suggested that I drop by Domaine Carrière, in Chambolle. It was just a hunch she had, knowing Feldman.”