Dead in the Dregs (25 page)

“But I thought that . . .”

“Yes, I know, you think that Feldman had a motive for killing Wilson. And maybe he did, but he was not in Napa, either, as far as we know. As for Goldoni,
je ne sais pas.
Maybe he simply wants to, how do you say, ‘clear the field,’ eliminate the competition. First, Monsieur Wilson, and now, Monsieur Feldman.”

“But he’s an oaf.”

“An ‘oaf’?”

“
Un crétin.
”

“Hah. You should see some of the
imbéciles
who commit murder. The human heart is a dark mystery, my friend. It is our job to provide . . . illumination.” He swallowed his coffee, plunked three euros on the counter, and led me outside.

We passed through Auxey-Duresses and Pommard, but on the ring road that circled Beaune, he turned off before entering the town. He parked in the lot of the Novotel and smiled.

“But I thought we were . . .”

“Yes, very curious,
non
? Feldman and Goldoni, they are staying at the same hotel. But did Feldman know this?”

We entered the Novotel lobby, jammed with tourists in town for the Hospices. Sackheim approached the front desk and patiently waited while the same guy who’d hidden from me that first day drew an itinerary for an older British woman on a map of the town. He grew increasingly testy as she asked him to clarify his directions yet one more time.

He rolled his eyes, looking for sympathy as Sackheim approached, but didn’t acknowledge me.

“
Oui, Monsieur
,” he said, deferentially.

“
Je cherche
Monsieur Jacques Goldoni,” Sackheim said.

“
Oui, Monsieur.
I think Monsieur Goldoni is in the
salle à manger.
I saw him just a little while ago.” A bit more forthcoming this time around.

“Stay here, if you don’t mind,” Sackheim instructed me. “Hide behind a newspaper. I don’t want him to know you are here.”

I found a copy of the
Herald Tribune
on a table and positioned myself behind a column. From where I sat, I had a perfect view of Goldoni’s table in a floor-to-ceiling mirror.

The dining room stood off the main lobby. A group clustered at the buffet and turned to stare at the entrance of a
gendarme.
Goldoni was seated in the corner with a copy of
Wine Watcher’s World.
Sackheim approached him and waited a moment—Goldoni was lost in the pages of his magazine—before introducing himself. It was impossible at my distance to tell what they were saying. Sackheim appeared to ask a question, Goldoni would answer, Sackheim would pose another. None of Goldoni’s responses seemed very expansive. The interview lasted no more than ten minutes.

Exiting the lobby, Sackheim walked straight past me. I folded the
Trib
and followed him out.

We sat in the car, our eyes trained on the entrance to the hotel. Sackheim pulled out a small black book and jotted a few notes.

“He says that he had dinner Wednesday evening with Monsieur Rosen. On Thursday he dined with two British importers, and last night he met a winemaker who is trying to get his name before the American public. After dinner he returned to his room. He agreed to provide his schedule so his appointments can be verified. We shall see.”

We drove in silence. As we approached the highway, I could make out the Gothic spire of Saint-Nicolas in the distance rising from the center of Meursault. Flocks of sparrows landed and rose again in the vineyards in unpredictable and ever-changing clouds while crows picked at clusters of shriveled fruit that had been left on the ground to rot. Minivans were parked on the dirt tracks, and workers crouched in the vineyards, paring the vines down to stumps and burning the cuttings in rusted-out wheelbarrows. Fumaroles wafted from the barren rows in the morning light and settled into a low, pungent haze that hugged the hills. I lowered the window. The sweet, acrid smoke scented the air, burning my nostrils and stinging my eyes.

As we headed north from Beaune, I gazed out at the lichen green wash of the ground cover glistening between the rows of vines, the pearlescent skies of Burgundy, the neat hedgerows like sutures on the land, the white of Charolais cattle an absence of color in abstract against the sienna of pruned vines and the dazzling emerald of pastures. The last leaves of the chestnuts feathered the air. Autumn had arrived, and the sere slopes of the
côte
composed a kaleidoscope of earth tones: umber, ochre, burnt sienna, the blood red burgundy of ivy trained across the raw stone of châteaux, and the gold and carmine spangles of grape leaves, desiccated and frozen in the still light.

Entering the village of Nuits-Saint-Georges, Sackheim parked in front of the
gendarmerie.

“
Bonjour, Colonel
,” the officer on duty greeted him as we entered.

Sackheim was on his own turf, all business. He led me through a door and down a hallway to a small office. A uniformed man sat at a desk, reading what looked like a thick ledger. Sackheim introduced us.

“Lieutenant, our American friend, Monsieur Stern. Lieutenant Georges Ponsard.”

The man nodded, unimpressed, and returned to his work.

“We are digging around, doing a little excavation among the stones of
la famille Pitot
, searching through the buried foundations.” Sackheim paused, then said, “
On y va
.”

 

“I came out
here the night before last,” I said as we crossed the highway to the east side of Nuits.

“Chez Pitot?
Vraiment
?” Sackheim said, glancing at me. “With what purpose?”

“I’m not sure. I wanted to go back after seeing it the day before. I walked around to the back of the house.”

“You trespassed?”

“Yeah, I guess I did,” I said.

Sackheim smiled. “Do not be concerned. I am not going to arrest you, but it was not wise.” He paused. “What did you learn?”

“Wait till you see the place. It’s a real dump. Anyway, Jean’s mother was in the kitchen, making dinner for her husband. She was just going off on him.”

“What does this mean, ‘going off’?”

“Screaming, shouting. She was out of control.”

“Screaming about what?”

“Sorry, my French isn’t that good. And I wasn’t that close, anyway. He just sat there, taking it.”

“It is too bad. It would be interesting to know what she said.”

“This is it,” I said as we pulled astride of the house.

Sackheim parked in front of the fence.

“In English we say, ‘Born on the wrong side of the tracks,’” I remarked.

“
Précisement
,” he said.

We crossed the near ground, and I glanced over to the carport. The diminutive work vehicle was gone.

Sackheim knocked on the door, and we stood there. A moment later Jean’s mother opened the door. When she saw me, her jaw tightened, then she looked back to the policeman, a trace of fear playing across her features.

“Madame Françoise Pitot?” Sackheim said.

“
Oui
,” she said, looking past him, her eyes fixed on mine.

“I am Émile Sackheim, colonel in the
gendarmerie
, Compagnie de Beaune. I am looking for your son, I believe: Jean Pitot.”

“He is not here.”

“Do you know where we can find him?”

“He is working. He is at the public tasting today.”

“
Ah, oui.
And where does he work,
Madame
?”

“Domaine Carrière,” she said, returning her attention to Sackheim. He and I exchanged looks.

“But he lives here?” the colonel asked.

“
Oui.
”

“May we come in?”

She opened the door.

“Jean worked at a winery in Napa Valley this last summer?” Sackheim said.

“Yes.”

“An American wine writer, Richard Wilson, was murdered while he was there,” he said.

“Yes, he told me,” she said.

“Did he tell you anything else about what happened during his stay there? Or about the crime itself?”

“Of the crime, nothing. He wasn’t there. He had gone to visit my daughter—his sister—when it happened.”

“Has Monsieur Wilson ever visited your domaine,
Madame
? Did he ever review your wines?”

She snorted, an explosion of air that dismissed the question as absurd.

“Is your husband at home?” Sackheim inquired.

“He is downstairs, I think. Would you like me to find him?”

“If you don’t mind.”

She walked slowly back to the kitchen and opened a door, calling into the depths below, “Henri!” She turned to face us. “Go on. He’s downstairs.”

We passed through the kitchen, which I had seen only from the distance of the vineyard out back. It matched the state of neglect and decrepitude prevalent throughout the house. Frayed rugs inadequately masked the cracked linoleum floor. The pots and pans hanging from iron pegs on the walls looked as if they hadn’t been scrubbed in years. A stack of dishes tipped precariously in the diminutive stone sink, the spigot marking time in a regular drip that ticked off the seconds that had added up to years of slow but ineluctable despair.

I steadied myself against the wall as I followed Sackheim down the rickety steps to the basement. The subterranean portion of the house was, if possible, even more depressing than the living quarters, which at least saw some sunlight each day. Metal racks held makeshift shelves of dusty bottles obscured by cobwebs, an off-white mold sprouting from their corks and spreading down their necks. Three rooms snaked irregularly one to another, their gloomy confines illuminated by a single bare lightbulb that dangled from an exposed wire in the central space. We picked our way, stepping precariously on raw planks that protected us from the floor, part
dirt, part rotting wood. The place stank of filth and yeast, musty wine and decay.

A man straightened himself from his stooped position. He was large, ponderous, his face etched with stubble. He wore tall rubber work boots over a pair of faded, muddy blue jeans and a thick, poorly patched sweater. He peered at us from a pair of watery, bloodshot eyes.

“
Bonjour, Messieurs
,” he said in a surprisingly hearty voice, its edges scratched by years of cigarette smoke and what I suspected was a predilection for
marc de Bourgogne.
“You are here to taste?” His eyes lightened perceptibly.

“We are looking for your son,” Sackheim said.

“Ach!” he muttered, flicking his hand in disgust. “That fucking idiot. He’s useless. Works at Carrière, when he could have his own property. Kids nowadays. They don’t know what it means to work, really work, like we did in the old days. What does he think? That I’m just going to give it to him? No fucking way. He’s got to pay.”

“So, I presume that it was Monsieur Carrière who arranged his
stage
in Napa, and not you yourself?”

“Fucking Carrière,” the man cursed.

“Do you know where Jean is now?” Sackheim asked.

“I never see him. He’s out till all hours, leaves at the crack of dawn. Sometimes he sleeps till noon. I can’t keep track of him. He’s a waste. He should have taken after his sister. At least she made something of herself.”

“Domaine Carrière? Do you think he’s there now? Your wife said that he’s to be pouring wine at
la dégustation publique.
”

“How should I know?” Pitot suddenly shouted. “Go ask Carrière! Why waste your questions on me?”

“Well, thank you for your time,” Sackheim said, not rising to the bait.

Pitot calmed down. “Are you sure you don’t want to sample? I have a very fine Nuits-Saint-Georges, Les Maladières,” he said placatingly.

“No, thank you,” Sackheim said.

“How about a little sip of
marc
? I make my own. We have an old still out back, a real antique,” he entreated.

“I regret,” Sackheim apologized. “We have important business.”

“Fine, fine, as you wish,” the man muttered, waving his hands in the air. He turned back to his labors.

Sackheim and I looked at each other, shrugged, and made our way carefully back as we had come.

Upstairs, Françoise Pitot stood in the kitchen, staring into the sink.

“
Excusez-moi, Madame, mais
,” Sackheim cleared his throat, “I must ask you again: The American wine writers, Messieurs Feldman and Goldoni, have they ever been here to taste?”

“You have met my husband,
Monsieur
? You have been downstairs, to the
cave
?” She enunciated the word as if it had an acrid taste. “And you ask if Americans come here to taste our wine?” She gazed out the kitchen window to the field where I had crouched two nights before, its furrows converging at the train tracks just visible in the distance.

“
Pardonnez-moi, Madame.
Thank you for your time.”

 

In the car
I asked, “Where to now?”

“Domaine Carrière, of course.”

It was a drive of no more than ten minutes. Sackheim pulled into the gates and parked in the courtyard.

“Stay here,” he ordered in a voice I hadn’t heard before.

He approached one of the men in the first building, who directed him to the residential wing of the property. A woman answered the door, and they stood conversing for two or three minutes. When he returned to the car, he sat in the driver’s seat, his hands on the steering wheel, staring straight ahead, as if he couldn’t decide which way to turn.

“Do you ever get the feeling that you are chasing your own tail?” he asked the rearview mirror.

“Often,” I said.

He turned the key and pulled out into the street.

“You want to tell me what’s going on?” I asked.

“Not yet,” he replied. “So. We will move on now to the public tasting.”

We drove most of the way in silence, until he said, “
Alors
, I found
Madame Carrière in the house and told her that I was investigating the incident that occurred in their
cave.
I made reference to your ‘accident,’ without implying that any complaint had been filed. She said it was unfortunate, a coincidence. Her husband couldn’t explain it. I asked her about Jean Pitot, and she said that he works at the domaine but that she would not see him today because he is pouring wine at the tasting, that he is unreliable, and that his situation at home is ‘
compliqué.
’ Then I asked about Feldman. She, of course, has not seen Feldman and knows nothing about this.”