Murder in the Rue Dumas: A Verlaque and Bonnet Provencal Mystery (Verlaque and Bonnet Provencal Mysteries) (16 page)

Marine cut in, saying, “Too many details! Stick to the facts! So you didn’t see him after that night?”

“Saturday morning, actually…a week before he died. Charlotte was at your place, remember?”

“Oh, yes, I remember that night. You told me you had a hot date. Why didn’t you tell me who it was with?”

“Because you would have been shocked, as you are now! You haven’t even eaten!”

Marine lifted her fork to her mouth and began eating, not tasting the food.

“He told me we wouldn’t be able to see each other for a few weeks…he had a busy week ahead and some party for faculty to give this weekend.”

“Yes, that was Friday night, and he died that same night. You need to talk to Antoine, you realize.”

“No! You can do it for me!”

“No, Sylvie,” Marine said, setting down her cutlery. “Listen, you’re very good at getting me to do things you don’t want to do, but this I can’t. The man was murdered. You can help.”

Sylvie pushed her plate away. “I can’t! Antoine will judge me! I’m not hungry anymore.”

“Eat up,” Marine coaxed her friend. “And stop gulping the wine. You’ll have a headache this afternoon. How about this…I’ll talk to Antoine before you see him, and prepare him for your news.”

Sylvie nodded. “All right. What should I say?”

“Again, stick to the facts. How many times you went out with Dr. Moutte and where. Did you notice anything peculiar? Did he seem nervous or anxious? Did he mention enemies or friends angry with him? You’ll also have to tell Antoine where you were early Saturday morning.”

“An alibi? Are you serious?”

“Yes! You were sleeping with the victim!”

“I was with Charlotte Friday night, when you were in Crillon-le-Brave with rich-boy. So my alibi is my ten-year-old daughter.”

“Who was asleep the whole night,” Marine answered, shaking her head back and forth. “Did Charlotte wake up at all?”

“No, she sleeps like a rock.”

Marine smiled, picturing her goddaughter asleep. Charlotte, like Marine, barely moved while she slept. Both Sylvie and Antoine Verlaque were thrashers. “Since we’re on the subject of sleep,” Marine said, “where did you sleep with the doyen? At his place? Did you notice anything weird or unusual there?”

“Stop calling him ‘the doyen,’” Sylvie answered. “I never actually saw his apartment. And I wanted to, believe me. I’ve been walking by that place for years.”

“What? You never set foot inside his apartment? Then where did you…?”

“Ah, where did we sleep together? That’s the part that bugged me and why I was going to subtly drop him. The first hotel he took me to was that beautiful Sofitel in Marseille, right on the water. You know it?”

“With the nice restaurant on the top floor?”

“Right. Drinks, dinner, champagne, the whole thing. The second hotel was a step down. Also in Marseille, on the
vieux port
but with no view, and dinner in an unremarkable brasserie.”

“And the last time?” Marine asked, predicting the answer. “It was worse?”

“Yep. A hotel on the outskirts of Aix, really drab. Wall-to-wall brown carpet, a saggy bed, and no dinner.”

“Did you ask to visit his apartment? My mother told me that the doyen collected art glass.”

“Glass? How dull. Sure, I asked him. But he kept avoiding the subject, or he’d say that his cleaning woman hadn’t come by. So I dropped the subject. It was obvious he didn’t want me there. He
was
single, right?”

“Oh yes. Never married, don’t worry.”

“So now I have to retell all of this to Antoine?” Sylvie asked.

“Yes. But I could arrange it that you speak to Yves Roussel instead.”

“Oh God! That short prosecutor who rides up and down the cours Mirabeau on his Harley?”

“Yes.”

“I prefer Antoine Verlaque.”

“So do I.”

M
arine stopped between the third and fourth floors, as she usually did, to catch her breath. She was thankful that most buildings in old Aix stopped at the fourth floor and not the sixth like in Paris. She had picked up a small roast beef at Antoine’s favorite butcher, a place so small that she usually passed it before having to double back down the narrow rue du Maréchal Foch. The butcher did not flirt with her as other
commerçants
did—he took his job seriously; he was polite, but did not chat or tell jokes. It was obvious that the meat came first, and a poster on the wall confirmed that. It depicted a stone barn with a steep slate roof and flower boxes, below that the name of the farmer and his address and phone number in the Salers region of the Auvergne, inviting the patron to visit and see his herd of strong red cows. The farmer’s invitation almost read like a poem, and Marine read it over a few times to be able to repeat it to Verlaque: “Venez-voir mes belles vaches aux poils frisés et aux cornes en lyre, et leurs robes cerise et acajou…” (Come and see my beautiful cows with their curly fur
and lyre-shaped horns; and their cherry- and mahogany-colored coats…)

Her stomach was doing flips as it sometimes did in the seconds before she saw Antoine. Sylvie had told her that this was a bad sign—that the relationship was a false one and was doomed. Marine liked to think of it as love, and that even after a year of on-and-off-again dating she was still excited to see him. It wasn’t boring or something she treated lightly, and that was the way she had always assumed great love was. Her parents used to listen to a Jean Constantin song from the 1960s, “Le Cha Cha du Coeur,” with the refrain, “C’est un bon signe quand on a un coeur qui bat…” That’s what she had, le cha-cha du coeur, and she agreed with the song: a pounding heart was a good sign. She knocked twice and then opened the door, calling out Verlaque’s name.

“I’m in the bedroom, I’ll be right out,” he answered. A fire was lit in the fireplace and a pile of wood lay neatly beside it.

“Hey, how do you lug wood up here?” she hollered.

Verlaque came out of the bedroom wearing Levi’s and a navy-blue polo shirt, his feet bare, his usual at-home look, whatever the season. “I made a deal with Arnaud, that kid downstairs on the first floor.”

“The skinny one?”

“Lanky, more like it, but yeah, that’s him. He knocked on my door one night a month or so ago, asking if I had any odd jobs that he could do. He’s saving money for a gap year before going to university…so I have him picking up my dry cleaning, buying stuff at Monoprix…Anyway, come here, you,” and he wrapped his arms around her narrow waist and kissed her until he felt her back relax and her body move toward his.

“Will you call your mother for me?” he whispered.

Marine quickly drew away and laughed. “Antoine!”

“I’m afraid of her,” he said, walking toward the fridge and taking out an open bottle of white wine.

“You’re not afraid of anyone.”

“Neither are you, Professor Bonnet.”

“I’m afraid of you,” she said, quicker than she meant to.

“I wish you weren’t.” He stopped pouring the wine and took a glass over to her. “There’s nothing to be afraid of. I’m just a guy. Why are you nervous around me?”

Marine didn’t want to tell him how much she loved him, and that’s what made her nervous.

She had no idea what he wanted from her. She had to protect herself and so she laughed. “Don’t let it go to your head.”

Verlaque smiled and kissed her again, and she could taste the crisp white wine on his lips and tongue.

“What do you want to know from my mother?” she asked.

“During the interviews, I found out that not only do many of the professors dislike each other, but Dr. Moutte was a specialist in the wealthy Cluniac order of clergy while Bernard Rodier is a Cistercian specialist. Two extremes, right? I wanted to know if your mother thought that Rodier could have detested Moutte because of their opposing studies, in addition to envying him the post of doyen.”

Marine sipped her white and leaned against the kitchen counter. “Just because the Cistercians were austere and at Cluny they drank out of gold chalices? Doesn’t that seem like a stretch?”

Verlaque shrugged. “I’m trying to think of all the possibilities. Plus, your mother seemed nervous during the interviews, especially when I asked her about the Dumas.”

Marine nodded. “She told me; she also gave me something for you, which I have in my briefcase. Can I ask her about your Cluny versus Cistercian theory tomorrow?”

Verlaque smiled. “You’re afraid of her too?”

Marine laughed and threw a kitchen towel at him. “It’s her bridge night!” Marine took another sip of wine and helped herself to a handful of peanuts. “In answer to your question, I think it’s more likely that Dr. Moutte was killed for the post and for the apartment. Everyone at the university talks about that apartment. It’s a real coup just to see inside that place, let alone live in it. What’s it like?”

“Grand, as that kind of bourgeois apartment in the Mazarin usually is. The pool and garden are huge; I don’t know how many mature chestnut trees there are…five, maybe six,” Verlaque said, smiling, knowing what a fan Marine was of gardens and swimming pools.

“You’re killing me!”

Verlaque salted and peppered the roast and began inserting slivers of garlic into it with the tip of a sharp knife. He continued, “The apartment was broken into last night, from the roof.”

“Do you think the break-in was related to the murder?” Marine asked.

“I’m not sure. A Gallé vase was broken but nothing seems to have been taken.”

Marine finished the last peanut and Verlaque watched her, amused. “Tell me more about the interviews,” she said.

“Well, there seems to be a fair amount of bickering among the faculty, and the grad students were terrified. We interviewed the staff too, but have pretty much ruled out all of them…no motives and they all had alibis that stick. The doyen had a telephone call late at night after his party, so we’re having that traced to see where it came from. Everyone denies having made it. What are people saying over in the Law Department?”

“Most of us are avoiding the subject, oddly enough. We’re all
a bit freaked out, I think. Robbery has been mentioned, but that seems unlikely, doesn’t it?”

“Yes, nothing was taken. Just like the apartment break-in.”

Marine walked over toward the front door and bent down to get her briefcase. “My mother just found out some news about the Dumas. I have the paperwork here in my briefcase.”

The intercom buzzed and Verlaque looked at Marine, surprised.

“I forgot to warn you!” she quickly said, grabbing his sleeve. “I invited Sylvie over!”

“What?”

“Sylvie has something important to tell you…about the doyen.”

Verlaque walked over and pressed the buzzer to open the front door, saying, “Come on up, Sylvie.” He turned to Marine and took a sip of wine. “What’s going on? Did she know him?”

“She was his lover,” Marine quickly said, pacing back and forth in front of the apartment door.

Verlaque laughed out loud. “Are you serious?”

“Don’t laugh! Be nice to her!”

“
Salut
, Sylvie,” Verlaque said as he opened the door to his apartment.

“
Salut
, Antoine,” Sylvie said, leaning forward so that he could give her a
bise.

“Coucou,” Marine said as she embraced her friend. “Come in! Antoine has a roast beef in the oven.”

“Good! I’m starving! Listen, Antoine, judging from your laughter that, by the way, I could hear all the way down the stairs, I’m guessing Marine has just told you that I was sleeping with Georges Moutte. Let me clarify that it was only three times,” Sylvie said, holding up three fingers in his face. “And, I was going
to break it off. And before you ask, no, I didn’t see inside of his apartment or his office.”

Verlaque poured Sylvie a glass of wine and handed it to her. “What did you talk about? Did he talk about retiring, or not retiring? Of his glass collection?”

“He tried to tell me about his collection, but when he said that it was turn-of-the-century decorative arts I cut him off. Had he collected Robert Mapplethorpe photos, that would have got my attention.”

Marine winced and Verlaque raised his eyes to the ceiling, smiling despite himself.

“He didn’t mention retiring or not retiring, as you put it,” Sylvie continued.

“So what did you…?”

“Talk about? Wines…he had some impressive knowledge, and we both really enjoyed drinking them. Italy too, we talked about Italy.”

“Ah. Did he mention Giuseppe Rocchia?” Verlaque asked.

“Rocchia? No. Who’s he?”

“One of the possible successors. He lives in Perugia,” Marine offered.

“Perugia? That he mentioned. He loved Perugia and seemed to know it really well.”

Verlaque looked at Marine and raised his eyebrows. “What did he say about Perugia, Sylvie?”

Sylvie finished her white wine and Verlaque quickly poured her some more. “Let me think…I seem to remember it was food related. Yeah, that’s it. Do you remember when we went to Perugia, Marine? And we had a so-so lunch on the main square?”

“Yes. It was overpriced, but we chose poorly. The main square was our first mistake.”

“So, I asked him where to eat in Perugia. He told me that his favorite restaurant is in town, but not in the old center—in a 1960s-era hotel. It sounds cool, Marine. Sixties decor and art, with a killer wine list.”