Death in the Vines: A Verlaque and Bonnet Provençal Mystery (34 page)

“No, but I love your car,” she said, laughing. “No, Antoine, I
don't care about your money. I do like the fact that we take great vacations, I'll admit that, and I love that Venetian painting in your dining room….”

Verlaque smiled. “I do too.”

“But I'd be just as happy with framed posters from IKEA, and sleeping in a tent on vacation.”

Verlaque frowned. “Let's not get carried away. I hate camping.”

Marine laughed despite herself. “Why do you ask, anyway?”

“No reason in particular,” he answered. “I'm just thinking of what Soeur Clothilde and I talked about.” He reached down and picked up the IKEA catalog. “So let's pick out some prints,” he said.

“Stop teasing!”

I
left two messages last night,” Paulik said. “Sir.”

“I'm sorry,” Verlaque answered. “I was…still a bit queasy from my food poisoning. Was it important?”

Paulik sighed and nodded, pulling out a chair opposite Verlaque. “I think I was chatting about vintage cars with the killer for over two hours last night.”

Verlaque looked at his commissioner in amazement. Paulik recounted his visit to Prodos's Citroën garage, and that the garage was now cleaned out.

“Even the bust of de Gaulle, you say?” Verlaque said.

“Yep. Now, why would he take that if he wasn't planning on skipping town or country? You can just drive across borders in Europe now; he could be in the Italian Alps, or hidden in some remote hamlet in Andalucía.”

“But you say that you trusted him, as did Laure Matour, Mlle Durand's boss.”

“I can be wrong, and have been before,” Paulik said.

Verlaque picked up the phone. “Let's put out a nationwide search on him, then. I assume he drives a DS? That should stick out like a sore thumb. I know he was a loner, but do you have any contacts for him?”

“Yes,” Paulik answered. “One of the Pertuis policemen who drove by the garage last night said that his brother-in-law had bought a car off Prodos. I got the brother-in-law's number and left a message late last night.” Paulik pulled his cell phone out of his jacket and set it on the desk. “I wish he'd call back.” He got up and began to pace around the room. His phone rang, and he ran to the desk. “Bingo!” he said, picking the phone up. “
Oui?
”

“Commissioner? This is Benjamin Talmard. You left a message last night.”

“Yes. I met your brother-in-law last night, the policeman, and he told me that you're acquainted with André Prodos.”

“Yeah, that's right,” Talmard answered. “Is André in some kind of trouble?”

“No,” Paulik said, lying, “I just need to speak to him about a case we're working on, but I passed by the garage last night, and it looked cleared out. Do you have any ideas where he might be? He doesn't have a cell phone, I know that.”

“Ha, André with a cell phone would be hard to imagine,” Talmard answered. “Well, he only closes the garage for one reason, and that's to attend rallies.”

“Car rallies?”

“Citroën rallies.”

“Is there one on right now?” Paulik asked. He doubted that Prodos was at a car rally; more likely he was hiding somewhere.

“I remember reading about a September rally in a recent DS fan-club newsletter,” Talmard answered. “I'll try to put my hands on it.”

“Do you remember where it's being held?”

“Not near here,” Talmard said. “Otherwise I would have gone. I'm thinking it was somewhere in the middle of France.”

“That would be fantastic if you could find out where and when, M. Talmard. A million thanks.”

Paulik had just hung up when Jules Schoelcher and Roger Caromb knocked and entered.

“What have you guys come up with?” Verlaque asked. “Anything connecting the three women? Deliverymen? Artisans?”

“Nothing, Judge,” Schoelcher answered. “Grocery stores don't deliver that far out of Aix; Mlle Montmory had a La Redoute delivery in July, but Mlle Durand and Mme d'Arras have never ordered from the catalog; Mme d'Arras had a plumber fix a leaky faucet in April, but Mlle Durand has never had a workman in the house. Mlle Montmory had a plumber in, but it wasn't the same guy, and she wasn't even home when he came, she was getting her tonsils out….”

“UPS?” Paulik asked.

“Nothing,” Roger Caromb quickly replied. “We checked them, and FedEx.”

Verlaque looked at Caromb and wished he didn't chew gum, especially while working; his grandmother Emmeline had taught him that it was a disgusting habit, and he always thought of it that way.

Paulik's cell phone rang, and he lunged across the desk and grabbed it. “
Oui?
M. Talmard?”

“Yes,” Talmard answered. “And lucky for you I found the newsletter before my wife recycled it. The rally is this weekend, in the Aubrac.” He read to Paulik the rally's location and hours. “It officially opens this evening, but André probably went early to set up his stand.”

“Thank you so much,” Paulik said, hanging up. He looked at
Verlaque and said, “There's a Citroën rally that begins tonight, in the Aubrac, near Laguiole.”

Verlaque nodded and tried to think of Laguiole not as the place where Michel Bras's three-star restaurant was located, but instead where he would probably have to make an arrest. “Well, let's hope he's there.”

Officers Schoelcher and Caromb looked at each other with puzzled expressions, and Paulik explained his suspicion of André Prodos. “You guys stay here, and we'll call you from the Aubrac once we know something.”

“And if Prodos is at the car rally,” Schoelcher said, “are you assuming he's innocent?”

“Stop asking such wise questions,” Verlaque said, smiling. “Isn't it obvious we haven't thought that far ahead?”

“Let's go,” Paulik said. “It's about a six-hour drive, I'm guessing.
Merde
.”

“We're lucky it isn't in Brittany,” Verlaque said, grabbing his jacket. “That's a twelve-hour drive.”

The drive on the Autoroute du Soleil was a pleasant one; the vacationers had gone home, and both men were able to enjoy the views of olive orchards framed by a bright-blue sky. At Montpellier they exited and got onto a highway heading north, toward Millau, and its famous viaduct that spans the Tarn River. “Have you seen the bridge yet?” Paulik asked his boss, who was driving.

“No, I'm embarrassed to say I haven't,” Verlaque replied, turning down the jazz CD so that they could talk. “We keep meaning to go.” Verlaque smiled as he realized that he had changed his “I” to “we.” He hoped it would be like that from now on—he and Marine.
We
.

“So do we,” Paulik said. “Léa would really like to see it too; one of her classmates did a school project about it.” He added, “Some
Englishman designed it,” rolling his eyes in mock disgust; he knew little of Verlaque's family, but he did know that his grandmother had been English, and that the Verlaque wealth came from the family's flour mills, sold years ago to a multinational food group.

“Norman Foster,” Verlaque answered.

“Funny sending an English architect to build a French bridge.”

“No more funny than the French sending their math scholars to work in London's banks,” Verlaque said. “But if it makes you feel better, I think that the engineer was French. In any case, we're one big planet now.”

Paulik sighed. “I was just talking with Hélène about that,” he said. “The globalization of vineyards. The wealthy Bordelais vineyard owners buying vineyards in Argentina, pricing out the local vintners, and the Chinese and Americans buying ours.”

Verlaque slowed down to pass through the tollbooth, and they stopped talking as the viaduct came into view. “
Oh mon dieu,
” Paulik finally said. “God save the queen.”

Verlaque pulled over at a lookout point, and they both jumped out of the car. The wind howled around them, and streaks of flat clouds raced by in the blue sky. The white bridge was majestic. “It looks like a series of sailboats,” Verlaque said, “floating across the valley.” He took photos with his cell phone as Paulik stood, hands on his hips, staring.

Paulik counted the tall, slender piers holding up the bridge. “Seven columns,” he said, pointing. “Look at that great detail: there's a narrow opening in the column that splits it in two but then closes up again above the road deck.”

“I had no idea it would be this breathtaking,” Verlaque said. “It's so elegant—a perfect union of engineering and design.”

“And French and English,” Paulik added, smiling.

They stood on the viewers' platform for ten minutes, saying nothing. Both were oblivious to cars coming and going out of the
parking lot, to the chatter of tourists and the clicking of cameras. Verlaque looked at the bridge, a lightweight masterpiece of construction, floating between two limestone plateaus that were covered in green scrubland. The Tarn River flowed far below, and a smaller, earlier bridge crossed the river just above its banks. Compared with the viaduct, it looked like a toy bridge. “When I see something this beautiful,” Verlaque said, “made by man, I feel that all is well with the world.”

Paulik nodded. “I know what you mean,” he said, watching the clouds race by, not far above the bridge's tallest mast. “Especially given our work.”

Verlaque looked sideways at his commissioner and thought of Soeur Clothilde's words: “We must all do something to make the world more beautiful.” “I think I could stay here all day,” he said. “But we'd better hit the road.”

“Yeah, I know,” Paulik said. “I'm definitely bringing the girls here.”

Verlaque smiled at his expression “the girls.” “You're lucky, Bruno.”

Paulik pretended he hadn't heard, and used getting back into Verlaque's minuscule Porsche as an excuse not to answer. What could he say?

As Verlaque pulled back onto the road, Paulik looked at the Michelin map. “We get off this road at exit number forty-two,” he said, “then head east on the N88 for about twenty-four kilometers, then head north on the D28 toward Laguiole. Talmard told me that the rally should be well marked, and he said if we don't see any signs toward it we should just follow the Citroëns.” He set the map on his knees, ready to take in the view from the bridge. “Spectacular,” he said, leaning his head against the window and looking at the valley below.

“Look at that,” Verlaque said, pointing ahead of him. “Two cars up, there's an old Citroën.”

Paulik looked ahead and then over his shoulder. “There's a whole slew behind us, sir.”

“We won't need to watch for signs.”

The closer they got to Laguiole, the more Citroëns they saw. From the license plates they could tell where the owners of all the cars lived; since they were coming from the south, most were French, but both men were surprised at the number of Italian, Spanish, and even Portuguese fans on their way to the rally. Just before Laguiole, the Citroëns began turning left, onto a small road that led to Montpeyroux, and Verlaque followed suit. “Judging from the number of cars, they must have rented a huge farm field,” he said. A teenager wearing a red Citroën jacket waved them into a parking lot, and Verlaque parked the car amid thousands of Citroëns of every color, model, and year imaginable. When they got out of the car, a gray-haired man, also wearing a red Citroën jacket, with a matching baseball cap, got out of his DS 19 convertible and said in English, “Wrong rally, mate.”

Verlaque locked his car door and gave the man a forced smile. “Isn't this the antique Porsche rally?” he asked in English. “Oh dear.”

“Just joking with you,” the man went on. “You'll become a convert, you'll see. Have a good day!”

Verlaque lifted his hand in a vague salute.

“Was he teasing us?” Paulik said.