Dead in the Dregs (31 page)

“Yeah, well, I thought so, too. But there’s something I have to tell you, something that happened last night.”

He walked to the table and took a seat, gesturing for me to do the same. He folded his hands and nodded for me to proceed.

I described the scene at the
gîte
the night before. I left out the part about my rolling around with Monique on the mattress and cut to the part of her confessing that Richard Wilson was her father.

“And how did you . . . ?” Sackheim’s face was knotted.

“I smelled her. Her perfume . . . I smelled the same perfume at Wilson’s apartment in San Francisco. When I told her, she went crazy. She basically admitted it was true.”

“That what was true—that she was in San Francisco? That she is Wilson’s daughter?” He hesitated before saying, “Or that she killed him?”

“Only that Wilson’s her father. But she didn’t deny that she’d been there.”

“And the murder?” he said.

“We didn’t get that far. She ran away.”

Sackheim sat there, working through everything I’d told him. He rose, walked to a corner of the room, and hit an intercom.

“Marcellin,
venez ici
,” he said.

Corporal Marcellin entered a moment later.

“
Oui, mon colonel
?” his corporal said.

“Marcellin, I want you to locate Mademoiselle Azzine.” Sackheim turned to me. “Do you have any reason to believe that she’s in Saint-Romain, at the
gîte
?”

“I doubt it. I think you should try Domaine Beauchamp. That’s where all her stuff is, where she’s been working.”

“
Bien.
Domaine Beauchamp,
à
Pommard,” Sackheim said to Marcellin.

“
Oui, Chef
,” Marcellin said and raced out of the room.

“Thank you, Babe,” Sackheim said, and rose. “I appreciate your coming here to tell me this before you left.”

“There’s something else,” I said.

“And what is this?” He looked at me warily.

“The wine,” I said.

“What wine?”

“The wine Pitot made from Eric Feldman.”

“Paris has the press,” he said. “They are analyzing it in their
laboratoire.
If he did as you suggest, they will know.”

“But we have to find it,” I said. “The wine, I mean.”

“And where do you propose . . . ?”

“Domaine Carrière,” I said. “I’ll find it, I promise,” I added, hoping this one wouldn’t be as empty as the string of broken promises I’d made my son.

“Give me just a minute,” Sackheim said.

 

We took my
car and parked outside the gates. Sackheim followed me into the courtyard. No one was around. I led the way into the
cuverie
and walked straight to the wine press. I circled it twice.

“Make sure the guys from Paris check this one out, too,” I said. He nodded.

Sackheim trailed me as I entered the first cellar, passed through the second and third, and finally arrived in the fourth and smallest room. I hadn’t really noticed on the day I’d been here to question Carrière about Eric Feldman that this
cave
had no barrels. Metal racks held tightly stacked, unlabeled bottles. Small pieces of framed slate hung on chains and were scrawled in chalk with the provenance of each wine laid to rest in its shelves: CHAMBOLLE-MUSIGNY, CHAMBOLLE 1
^ER
CRU, LES CHARMES, LES AMOUREUSES, BONNES-MARES, MUSIGNY.

I examined the last few nooks and pulled a couple of bottles to see if anything was amiss. The wine looked fine. Short of opening several hundred bottles, it would be impossible to know if Jean Pitot had hidden anything in the cellars of Jean-Luc Carrière.

“This is crazy,” I said, suddenly unsure of myself. “We’re never going to find it. Forget it.”

I could see the chagrin on Sackheim’s face. I’d let him down again. Disappointment and failure seemed to be dogging me everywhere I turned.

In the courtyard he told me to wait by the car. He crossed to the house and knocked on the front door. I peered through the wrought-iron
fence. The door opened and Sackheim stood there, speaking to whomever had answered, a moment later gesturing for me to join him. A young woman stood at the door and led us inside.

“
Après vous
,” Sackheim said. The woman disappeared through a door at the end of the hallway and emerged a minute later with an older woman. I had seen Carrière’s wife only from a distance, the day Sackheim had returned with me to ask about the incident in their
cave.
She was an attractive middle-aged woman with an open, inquisitive face.

“Yes, Colonel? May I help you?” she said.

“If you have the time, I would like to ask you a few questions,” he said.

She led us into the kitchen. “I hope you don’t mind, I was just making coffee.” She busied herself measuring out the coffee and filling the coffeemaker with water. She switched it on, pulled four cups and saucers from a cabinet, and turned to face us.

“
Asseyez-vous, s’il vous plait.
”

We arranged ourselves around the square kitchen table. It was awkward and uncomfortable, and no one knew what to say.

“Forgive me,
Mademoiselle
,” Sackheim opened, turning to the young woman, “I don’t believe we have met. I am Colonel Émile Sackheim. And you are . . . ?”

“Jenny Christensen,” she said. “That’s my California name. Here I am Eugénie Pitot, Jean’s sister. I just arrived from California to be with my family. For his funeral.”

Sackheim and I exchanged looks. She was slender and pretty, dressed in woolen slacks and a bulky sweater. Her hair was like her brother’s, fluffy brown curls. She looked at us through doelike brown eyes.

“Please accept my condolences,
Madame.
It is terrible, what happened,” Sackheim said. “Ah, forgive me, this is a neighbor of yours, my colleague from California, Monsieur Stern.”

“I’m sorry about your brother,” I said, trying to smile sympathetically. She eyed me suspiciously, said nothing, and turned to my companion.

He responded by saying, “I am pleased you are here. It will be helpful, I think. Let me start with you, then,” he began, and we all
settled uneasily into our chairs. “Do you mind if we speak English? I would like my friend to follow what we say.”

“As you wish,” she said quietly, her accent barely detectible.

“It is all right,
Madame
?” he said, looking at the woman of the house. “You understand English?”

“Yes, some. It is fine,” Madame Carrière answered him.

“Your brother,” Sackheim started in, “did you see him often when he was in California last summer?”

“Occasionally. He would come to visit. But he was very busy at the winery.”

“Your husband, he is a
vigneron
too?”

“Yes.”

“You own your vineyards?” His tone suggested astonished appreciation of the good fortune of owning land in America.

“Yes, but we lease them. Paul works at Agostino. It’s a big place. Industrial.”

“And you met him . . . ?”

“Here, in 1994.”

“You were twenty?”

“Nineteen.”

“Love at first sight, eh?” Sackheim prompted.

“You might say that.” The sun filtered through the kitchen window, washing Eugénie’s face with a fine grid of mottled light.

“Your brother, did he seem disturbed when you saw him? Was he angry or troubled by anything?”

“Oh, you know, the usual.”

“I am afraid I do not,
Madame.
What do you mean, ‘the usual’?”

“He wasn’t a very happy person. But I guess you know that.”

“Was there something in particular that made him unhappy?”

“He didn’t like American wine very much.”

“Well, in this he is joined by many of his countrymen,” Sackheim said with a shrug. He wasn’t winning her over, and her features seemed frozen. “You have children?”

“No. We’re trying, but not yet.” Her voice faded.

“Well, you will, I’m sure. You are young,” Sackheim reassured her. “If I might ask you a few questions about your family.” She waited. “Your father . . .” he started, and she looked down at her hands, then
gazed out the window. “He is an unfortunate man. I am sorry. It must have been quite painful growing up. But your uncle, Gilbert? What can you tell me about him?”

“He is going blind, drinking himself to death,” Eugénie said, her voice stony. “It is from breathing the
sulfatage.
They don’t protect themselves. You can taste it, you know. I would help my grandmother sometimes. It is sharp, metallic. It stings your tongue. My uncle, he gets cramps, diarrhea. His skin is turning yellow. Not as yellow as Grandma’s, but . . . The year I left, I saw him in the vineyard. He hid behind a row of vines so that no one would see him vomiting.”

“He has seen a doctor?” Sackheim asked.

It was an obvious question but one that, I guessed, masked his ignorance of what she was talking about. I wanted to interject that the
vignerons
used copper sulfate to prevent oidium, a fungus that appears on grape leaves, but decided to hold my tongue.

“Yes, of course,” Eugénie went on. “But he only accused him of drinking too much, warned him that if he kept it up, he would develop cirrhosis. Well, maybe he will now. He’s so depressed. But he never drank more than a glass or two at dinner. Holidays, maybe, but no, he is not like most Frenchmen. My grandmother, though, my grandmother’s condition is worse.”

“We saw her at your home, I think. She was watching TV.”

“Hnh!” she snorted dismissively, a little explosion of air through her nose. “She always mixed the
sulfate de cuivre.
In the kitchen, like she was baking. At first she thought it was conjunctivitis. Her eyes would get irritated, the lids all swollen by harvest. By the time she was sixty, the tissue in her cornea was so ulcerous, it started to break down, like rotting grape skin. Now she sits there all day on the sofa staring at the television set. Did you see her eyes? No, of course not. They’re like . . . they’re like clouds. She sees nothing.”

Neither Sackheim nor I said anything.

“My mother has anemia,” Eugénie continued. “She took over when my grandmother couldn’t see. She’s wasting away. She eats like a sparrow. For a long time I thought it was from despair: a bad marriage, no grandchildren, no money. But I think it’s probably from the
sulfatage
, too.”

The coffeemaker made a gurgling sound as it sucked the last of the water.

“
Mon Dieu
, it’s a calamity.” Sackheim looked at me, raising an eyebrow.

“Yes, my father is miserable, he’s crazy. He suffers from delusions. You know, he used to threaten to kill these wine critics. No, really, he did. His life was a mess. He had no one to blame but himself, but, of course, he couldn’t accept it. So he blamed the American wine writers. He would sit at the dinner table like a madman. ‘They infect each other, these Americans! They are like a blight, a scab on my
feuilles de vigne, mon bon fruit
!’ He saw what was happening to his mother and his brother, and he wanted to take revenge, but it was all in his mind. He was never capable of doing anything about it. He would talk about inviting one of them to the house to taste wine. As if anybody would ever come to Domaine Pitot! What a joke. He said he’d fix something with a strong flavor—a
terrine de foies de volailles
or
pâté de campagne
—that would hide the taste of copper sulfate. And then he’d offer the man a plate,
une petite tranche
, that the unsuspecting idiot would welcome after a long day of tasting, and . . .” Her voice trailed off.

I saw again, in my mind’s eye, Françoise Pitot appearing at Domaine Gauffroy with her terrine. Goldoni had spat it out. Had she wanted to poison him? Had she wanted to poison me?

“Ah. I am sorry to bring these memories back. Please forgive me,” Sackheim said. Eugénie placed her chin on her hand and seemed to carry the whole weight of the world there. “And you wished to escape this,” he said. “Is that why you left? Why you married an American?”

“Would you have stayed?” Eugénie asked. “To listen to my father, drunk, complaining, blaming everybody but himself? To hear my mother screaming at him, angry that he had lost everything? Do you know what it was like? Night after night?” She was trembling.

“No, my dear, I do not censure you. You have no fault. I understand completely.” His tone was patient. “And you met your husband?” he asked, to change the subject.

“Yes.”

“How?”

“I was working at the public tasting in Beaune, pouring wine. He came to the table. And then he came back. And then . . .”

“
Vraiment. La famille en France
, it is impossible to escape.”

“Everyone knows everything about you. My father, my uncle, my grandfather.” She and Madame Carrière looked at each other, then she turned back to Sackheim. “Who was going to marry me in France? What kind of future do you think I had?”

“No, you are right. You were right to leave. In America, anything is possible. And, of course, the taxes are less punishing,” he smiled, attempting a note of levity, but no one laughed. “I have one more question. I know this is difficult, but I am trying to understand. I want to understand your brother. May I continue?” She nodded, but her face was haggard, and suddenly I could see her mother in her exhausted features. “I am trying to understand Jean’s relationship with your husband,
Madame
,” he said, acknowledging Carrière’s wife, who stiffened visibly.

Eugénie now seemed to take on her mother’s expression the day we had come to her door, suspicion and hostility twisting her eyes and mouth. I could see her tense in anticipation of Sackheim’s next barrage of questions.

“I do not understand why Jean would choose to work here, rather than for his own father,” Sackheim said, looking from one woman to the other.