Death in the Vines: A Verlaque and Bonnet Provençal Mystery (8 page)

The square that held both the town hall and the church of Éguilles had always pleased Verlaque. From the edge of the Place Gabriel Payeur there was a magnificent vista south; cypress trees dotted vineyards as they did in Tuscany, and Verlaque thought that the square reminded him of Cortona's, especially the view. He turned around and looked at the imposing four-story golden-stone town hall, built in the Renaissance for a wealthy local family. It seemed too big to be the
mairie
for a town of only eight thousand inhabitants. The church was dwarfed by its neighbor.

The Banque Populaire was around the corner—he had passed
it on the way into the town but had parked his car in the square so he could admire the view. He walked to the bank now, head bent against the mistral wind. When he looked up, he saw Bruno Paulik locking the door of his Range Rover.

“Salut, Bruno,” Verlaque said.

“Good morning,” replied Paulik. “
Merde ce vent!
”

“You never get used to it?”

“I never have!” Paulik shouted over the wind. “And I was born here! I spoke to Olivier Bonnard last night and relayed the information your wine expert…contact…told you. He's taken the key to the cellars off the hook and now has it with him at all times, and he's doing an inventory of the wines with his son.”

“The inventory is a good idea, but the thief may have taken an imprint of the key to be copied.”

“I know; I told him the same thing.”

“Is there someone who copies keys in Puyricard, or Rognes?” asked Verlaque as they crossed the street.

“No, unfortunately,” said Paulik. “Because a key maker in a small town like Rognes might remember a face.”

“Well, there must be a dozen key makers in Aix, and with an attempted murder on our hands, there's no way we can spare the manpower to go and talk to every one of them.”

Paulik nodded. “I know.”

They arrived at the front doors of the bank, its metal shutters closed. A note had been firmly taped to them: “We regret to inform our customers that due to the attempted murder of one of our staff we will remain closed this morning and will reopen at 2 p.m.”

“Wow,” Paulik said, turning to Verlaque. “That's direct.”

“Yes, isn't it? Let's walk around to the back door, since they're expecting us.”

They moved along the side of the bank and waved to a woman through an office window; she motioned to the back. When they
arrived, she opened the door and ushered them in. “We were watching for you,” she said. “We couldn't open the front door, because then we'd get a crowd of customers wanting in. I'm Charlotte Liotta, the assistant manager. Please come in.” She held her hand out and shook the men's hands. Mme Liotta was in her mid-fifties, and she wore a crumpled pink silk blouse and a gray polyester pantsuit. Her hair needed another rinse: about a half-inch of her gray roots were showing, creeping down into her bright-red curls. Verlaque imagined her being the mother figure to the other employees, making them tea and coffee when they felt down or too harried. He realized that they didn't have anyone like that at the Palais de Justice. Mme Girard would think it below her to perform such tasks.

Mme Liotta walked quickly down a hallway, past a few offices whose doors were open and a very untidy kitchenette. She glanced at the kitchenette and said over her shoulder without slowing down, “Sorry about the mess. We're all in shock here. But I'd imagine you've seen much worse.” She stopped and turned around. “On the job, I mean, of course. Not at home.” They came into a small lobby, where the rest of the staff had gathered, some sitting and drinking their coffee, others pacing. Verlaque took a quick count; there were, including Mme Liotta, five employees.

“Okay, everyone, listen up,” she said. “The examining magistrate and commissioner are here to talk with us. We'll be interviewed until noon and then will reopen for business at two p.m. sharp.” She put her hands on her wide hips and nodded in the direction of Paulik.

“Thank you, Mme Liotta. I'm Commissioner Paulik, and this is Judge Verlaque. What happened last night was terrible, and we'll need to try to think of any connection, any reason why you think this may have happened to Mlle Montmory. We'll…”

“Is she going to be okay?” a young man broke in, his voice cracking.

“She's in critical condition,” Paulik said. “But the doctor I spoke with this morning was optimistic.”

The group murmured their relief, and a gray-haired North African man, who had been pacing back and forth, patted his forehead with a handkerchief.

“Wearing out the carpet won't make Suzanne better, Kamel,” Mme Liotta said to him.

“You're M. Iachella, the branch manager?” Verlaque asked.

“Yes. I beg your pardon,” he said, crossing the room to shake Verlaque's and Paulik's hands. “I'm completely distraught. Forgive me.”

“I'll get you a tea, Kamel, with lemon and honey,” Mme Liotta said. Verlaque was pleased that he had guessed correctly as to Mme Liotta's caregiving nature.

Paulik continued. “We'll speak as a group, then we'll conduct private interviews with each of you. For now, I'd like to begin by asking you if Mlle Montmory has said anything to any one of you this past week about her private life, anything at all…any worries she may have been having, any boyfriend trouble, anything.”

The group looked around at one another until a young woman wearing a short, tight skirt stepped forward. “Suzanne was super-quiet. Never spoke of her private life, and she'd never come out with us, right?” The woman looked around at her co-workers, who nodded.

“That's because you weren't nice to her, Sharon,” the young man said.

“That's so not true, Gustav!” she returned. “Sorry, Officers. I'm Sharon Pallard. Sharon, as in Sharon Stone.”

Verlaque was thankful that Paulik had stepped forward to shake the woman's hand, because Paulik's wide shoulders temporarily hid his grin. Mlle Pallard may have been wearing a short skirt, but with her black hair held up in a ponytail and her large lips painted bright pink, she had little in common, at least physically, with the actress.

“Mlle Pallard,” Paulik said, “why do you think Mlle Montmory was quiet?”

The young woman pulled at her skirt and shrugged. “Dunno. Just shy, I guess. Or maybe she thought she was better than us, eh?”

“She isn't dead, so stop referring to her in the past tense. I'm Gustav Lapierre,” the young man said to Verlaque. “Suzanne isn't at all a snob. She just doesn't mix work and her private life.”

“You found her, didn't you?” Verlaque asked the young man, who wore a pressed suit and shirt and tie. He looked young to be already working in a bank, and then Verlaque remembered that he was a recent Sciences Po graduate.

“Yes,” Lapierre said, looking down at the worn carpet. “I was at the Palais de Justice last night.”

“Fine. We'll talk about that later, in private,” Verlaque said. “Who has known Mlle Montmory the longest?”

Kamel Iachella and Charlotte Liotta raised their hands. “We—I mean, Kamel—hired Suzanne, but I was already working here,” Mme Liotta said, having just come back into the room with her boss's tea. “I've been here almost twenty years.”

“That's right,” M. Iachella said. “Suzanne started here just a few months after I did. She had just completed a B.T.S. in finance and was the first employee I hired.”

“Is she from Éguilles originally?” Paulik asked.

“She grew up in Aix,” M. Iachella answered. “So she was thrilled to find full-time work so close, here in Éguilles.”

“And does she have friends and family in Aix?”

“Oh yes—family, at least,” Mme Liotta replied, for M. Iachella had sat down and was mopping his brow again. “Her parents live north of the downtown, and she has a brother and a sister, both older and both married. No nieces and nephews yet, though!” Mme Liotta looked to the rest of the group, and Gustav Lapierre rolled his eyes.

“No boyfriend?” Paulik asked.

“No,” Mme Liotta said.

“No, that's right,” Gustav Lapierre confirmed. “She told me so.”

Sharon Pallard guffawed.

“Sharon! Hold your tongue!” Mme Liotta said.

Verlaque glanced at Paulik with an exasperated expression, and Paulik said, “It seems that private interviews may be more revealing. We'll begin now. Both of us will speak to M. Lapierre, and then we'll speak to each of you individually. Where can we hold the meetings?”

“In my office.” Mme Liotta spoke up. “I've already prepared it for you. Would you like coffees?”

“Yes, please,” Verlaque and Paulik answered in unison.

They entered Mme Liotta's office with Gustav Lapierre and closed the door. Verlaque sat in Mme Liotta's chair, and the other two men sat opposite. “I know you met Commissioner Paulik last night.”

“Yes,” Lapierre said.

“I'm sorry to have to ask you some of the same questions and go over what happened last night, which must have been traumatic, to say the least.”

Lapierre nodded, and his eyes welled up with tears. Verlaque glanced over and saw a box of tissues; he wondered whether Mme Liotta had put them there especially for today's interviews or if they were always there.

“I've never seen anything like it. ‘Traumatic' isn't a strong enough word,” Lapierre said. “‘Harrowing' might be better.”

Verlaque stared at the young man, impressed. “Is there a front-door buzzer?” he asked.

“Yes,” Lapierre said. “I rang it, but of course there was no answer. I was about to leave when a neighbor came in from work and she let me in.”

“What time was it?” Paulik asked.

“Just before seven-thirty. I left the bank around six-thirty, at the same time as M. Iachella, and then I drank a beer at the bar across the street. To get up my nerve, as it were.”

Verlaque looked at Paulik, who nodded and took notes. The murderer could have also been let in by a neighbor. It was unfortunate that none of those neighbors had heard anything.

“The attacker could have got in the same way I did, or he might have known Suzanne and she buzzed him in,” Lapierre said. “I just thought of that.”

“Right,” Verlaque answered. “Tell me about Suzanne. You seem to know her well, and respect her.”

“As I said last night,” Lapierre said, looking in Paulik's direction, “I was heading over there not so much to check on her health—it was just a sore throat—as to ask her out for dinner. It seemed impossible to do it here, at work. You've seen a bit of the atmosphere…with Mme Liotta babying us, and Sharon being the prima donna in her tacky short skirts….”

Verlaque noted Lapierre's disgust at Sharon's short skirts.

Lapierre reached across the desk, took a tissue, and blew his nose. “The more I worked with Suzanne, the more interested I became in her. She was mysterious in a way, not like other girls I've met. She was pretty and wore trendy clothes, but she talked about knitting and watching those costume dramas on television that my mom likes to watch. She was different. Do you get it?”

The two men nodded. They were both in partnerships with women whom Gustav Lapierre would have considered “different,” even “mysterious.” Verlaque thought of Marine, curled up on the sofa, drinking single-malt whiskey and reading Jean-Paul Sartre's memoirs. Paulik thought of Hélène, wearing the blue cotton overalls worn by agricultural workers around the world, kneeling on the rocky ground of Domaine Beauclaire, snipping leaf samples from the vines, then bringing them home and checking on them daily. “I'm watching them for parasites,” she told her husband. “When there are more of the black spiders, life is good. Too many red spiders, I'll have to spray.”

“Go on,” Verlaque said, leaning back on Mme Liotta's swivel chair.

“So…I walked over there to ask her out; that's all. But you may as well know now, before that policeman I spoke to last night tells you first…”

“Prosecutor Roussel?” Paulik asked.

“Yeah, that's him. He asked me how I knew where Suzanne lived. I could have looked up her address here, at the bank, but I followed her home one night last week. I was curious.”

Both men looked at each other. Verlaque raised his eyebrows; Paulik took notes.

“And when you found her last night?” Verlaque asked.

“I didn't touch anything,” Lapierre answered. “I've seen enough crime dramas to know I shouldn't, plus I could see that Suzanne was badly hurt. I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket and called an ambulance right away. She looked awful.”

Gustav Lapierre drew his arms in around his waist, leaned down, and began to sob. Paulik looked at Verlaque; the judge put his hands on his head, rubbed his thick black hair, and stayed silent.

K
amel Iachella, although not sobbing, seemed as distressed as Gustav Lapierre had been. The bank manager's eyes were puffy and watery, and he moved Mme Liotta's box of tissues closer to him as he sat down opposite Verlaque.