Blackbird Fly (19 page)

An odd, musty smell wafted up. Moving the spot of
light from one end of the space to the other, Tristan felt a charge
of excitement. The space wasn’t bare, nor was it just full of dirt,
rocks, and mortar dust as he guessed. No money. But there were
bones. A lot of bones. He looked up at Luc and his father in the
doorway.

“
Holy shit.” He steadied the yellow
beam of the flashlight on the empty eye sockets of a human skull.
“We’re not in Kansas anymore.”

The owners of the local winery were a middle-aged
woman and her brother. Tanned, well-muscled, in a flowered dress
washed to the point of limpness, Odile Langois had been pretty once
but years of labor in the sun had lined her face and bent her back.
She was fierce-looking, serious, but gave Merle a courteous shake
of the hand. Albert asked for a tasting demonstration for his
American friend. “She has only ten minutes,” Albert told Merle.
“But one glass?”

“
Formidable.
Merci
.”

Odile winced at Merle’s French then demonstrated how
to swirl the wine, to taste, to swish on the tongue, to hold it
there. All this had to be told to Albert and translated, but Odile
was fast. In ten minutes on the dot, they had swirled, swished, and
spit. Albert ordered two jugs of wine, Merle one, and Odile left to
find her brother to help them load.

“
What was I supposed to be
tasting?”

“
The delicate flavors of the wine,”
Albert said, pinching his fingers as if plucking flavors from the
air. “Oak, lavender, mint, lemon, blackberry. Did you taste any of
them?”

“
Is burnt leather a
flavor?”

He chuckled. “Highly prized.”

“
I’ve never been to a wine tasting.
It would be fun to help people educate their tongues.”

Albert cocked his head. “You could do it?”

“
If I knew anything about wine.
Which I don’t.”

“
Odile told me she was looking for
someone to give English tours but she can’t afford one. There is a
school for tour guides. It is
tres cher
to get graduates as
not many pass.” He looked at her, smiling in his toothy
way.

“
What?”

“
I could put in a word with
Odile.”

“
For what? A tour guide? I’m not a
graduate of tour-guide school.”

He wiggled his eyebrows. “The French enjoy bending
the rules. I will ask her.”

“
But I’m only here a week or so —
”

He slipped out the open door as she began to protest.
She didn’t know anything about the making of wine. And then there
were her personal issues, as in being under village arrest,
renovating a dilapidated house, fleeing the country as soon as
possible.

The tall silent brother they had seen earlier in the
fields picked up three jugs of wine from the storeroom next to the
tasting room. He wore khaki field clothes and a straw hat. The
backs of his hands were red and leathery. Merle followed him out to
the car where he set the jugs on the back seat. He strode off to
the stucco building, one of two large warehouse wings. It seemed
newer, with a nice clean roof. That reminded her, was the new
roofer at the house? One could wish.

The house was a perfect distraction. Thinking about
paint, flowers, even a laundry room, kept her mind occupied. It
filled her with tasks, duties, and she was a dutiful person if
anything. At night reality came crashing back on her and menace
floated in her dreams. She didn’t dream about Harry much. He seemed
to have slipped away from her, and that made her sad. She should
have fought for him. Or at least cared. Then there was guilt of
getting the house from a murdered woman. All day though, things
were good, domestic and containable, under control. With Tristan
here there was no one to worry about. The harder she worked during
the day, the easier she slept without dreams of Harry or Justine or
home.

Albert was waving at her from the line of cypress.
Odile stood on the porch of the house with him, chatting in the
shade.

“
You can lead a tour on Monday?”
Albert asked Merle. “She just had a telephone call from the
Maison du Vin
.”

Merle smiled at Odile while she whispered to Albert:
“What have you gotten me into? ”

“
It will be fine. Just once. You’ll
see.” Albert turned to Odile and spoke in soothing tones about
who-knows-what. They kissed again as they left. Albert took Merle’s
arm as they stepped onto the gravel parking lot. “You have a date
in two days to come back and tour the place with Gerard, the
brother.”

“
Does he speak English?”

Albert opened the car door for her. “Not to worry, we
will think of something.”

Merle stood on the back step overlooking the garden
now ruined by mud, boot prints, cigarette butts, and trenches. A
crowd stood huddled around the outhouse: the plumber and the water
department man, Fernand’s son, the gendarme, and the inspector. And
Tristan by the pile of rocks, waving his hands.

“
Mom! You won’t believe it!” He ran
over to her, dragged her by the hand.

Albert trotted behind her. He had come in to talk to
Tristan about the fencing tournament. Fernand spoke rapidly to the
old priest. Albert turned to her. “There is a discovery, Merle.
They called Jean-Pierre.”

Tristan was excited. “You won’t believe it. We’ve got
a skeleton in the
pissoir
.”

"What?" Merle elbowed her way into the outhouse and
demanded the flashlight.

“
Step up on the toilet, ” Tristan
called from outside. The gendarme spoke rapidly, in a commanding
tone. Too bad she didn’t understand a word.

It took a minute for her eyes to adjust. Then, there
it was. A human skull, with tufts of hair still attached. The
hands, tiny bones collapsed in piles. The ribcage, half-intact. Leg
bones, crushed by a rock. She stepped down, bowing her head over
the flashlight as she tried to slow her heartbeat.

The inspector’s face was implacable as always. He
held a stub of brown cigarette in his stained fingers. His eyes, a
curious brownish green, watched her. She stepped outside and asked,
“What will you do?”

Another investigation file would be opened, but since
the inspector was already here his superiors had ordered him to
also take this case. He had called for a forensics team to shoot
photographs and take the bones to a laboratory for analysis. The
gendarme, shunted to one side yet again, left the garden through
the back gate. The inspector took Merle to the table, with Albert
to translate, and asked her about the house and its history. She
told him that the last legal occupants had been her late husband’s
parents some fifty years before.

The house stood empty for fifty years? Except for the
occasional long-term squatter, she said, giving her best Gallic
shrug. Madame LaBelle, Albert explained. The inspector asked to
look around. He walked away. Albert sat down in the chair he
vacated, without his usual smile.

“
If I believed in curses I would say
this house has one,” he said dejectedly.

“
Maybe we could use an exorcism,”
Merle said, trying to cheer him. The skeleton was shocking, yes,
but not more so than the recent death of Justine.

Albert sighed. “Too late, I think. When did your
husband’s parents live here?”

“
Nineteen forty-eight to fifty-two,
from what I can figure. They were given this house by an aunt, then
moved back to the United States when Harry was two. They died in a
car accident when he was four.”

“
Did anyone else live with
them?”

“
We know very little of their life
here. Just the obituary, and those letters.” Merle remembered the
other things in the safe deposit box. “Wait here.”

She returned with the envelope and spread the items
out on the tablecloth. “Here is a photograph of them. Not here
though, I don’t think. See the brick wall?” The old priest picked
up the black-and-white photograph and squinted at it, pushing his
glasses onto his forehead.

“
And look at these.” She unclipped
the fragile paper labels and spread them in front of the old man.
“Do you know these wineries?”

“
All famous vintages. Rare too,
right after the war. Château Pétrus is very fine, I hear. I myself
have never tasted.”

“
This menu — it looks English.
Shepherd’s pie, spotted dick.” She looked at the front where the
tiny bird was imprinted in red on the gray boards. Round Robin Inn,
it said faintly. She’d never been able to make it out before, but
here in the afternoon sun, it was just readable.

The inspector stepped out the back door. He rounded
the outhouse several times, examining the rock work, the mortar,
the roof. He went inside again. Tristan said, “What’s he looking
for, a murder weapon? Pick a rock, Capitan, any rock.”

“
I have a feeling my laundry room is
doomed,” Merle said.

“
Just when I was starting to love
the chain gang,” Tristan said, smirking. The skeleton had if
anything made him cheerier. “Hey, did I tell you the roofer was
here? He went up on the roof with Albert’s ladder.” He turned to
priest. “He’s your friend, right?”

“
His father was in my parish once,
many years ago.”

The inspector appeared outside the outhouse and
punched a number on his cell phone. A few minutes later Jean-Pierre
returned, with a roll of crime-scene tape. The bright orange tape
had
‘Entré Interdit’
on it: Entrance Forbidden. Together
they strung it around the outhouse several times and tied the ends
together. The inspector gave Merle and Tristan instructions on not
touching the
pissoir
. The forensics team would be here in
the morning.

After midnight Merle lay on her rollaway in the
parlor, staring at the spider webs she’d missed on the ceiling. The
evening was warm, promising a hot day tomorrow. Tristan had tossed
and turned for fifteen minutes but now lay at the other end of the
room, snoring. He had a snore very like his father’s.

Albert had invited them to dinner. It seemed better
to stick together after the day's events. They discussed the
skeleton in the
pissoir
so long that there had been nothing
more to say. The old man speculated it was the Dominique of the
letters. Now, in bed, Merle had a sour taste in her mouth that had
nothing to do with the wine from Château Gagillac at dinner. It was
Weston Strachie, and his French bride, Marie-Emilie. What were they
like? Were they kind and friendly? Were they mean and unhappy? Why
had they left? Had they killed someone here? She shivered and
pulled up the sheet. She struggled to picture the house with them
in it, with Harry as a baby, squalling, toddling, laughing.

Time erased their presence. That was the quixotic
thing about old houses. Maybe the reason Harry mocked her
renovation efforts. You put so much of yourself into them, your
handiwork, your time, your tastes, as if to make time stand still.
And still everything that was you is gone in time, everything you
touched, everything you made. Like Weston and Marie-Emilie, who had
disappeared into time.

Time. She had been here for eleven days. Or was it
ten? The calendar in her head wasn’t working. She concentrated,
tried to remember what she’d done each day, what day she’d arrived,
what day Justine had died — poor thing — how many days the plumber
had been here.

Unbelievable! Calendar Girl was no more.

Chapter 21

It is not Stephan at the door. No, the door stands
open and a man occupies the parlor space, heaving breaths, a bear
panting.

Weston.

Marie-Emilie stands on the stair landing, hoping for
invisibility. Too late. He sees her, blinks, and grunts.

“
Why are you back?” she asks.
Perhaps not the friendliest tone.

“
To get what’s mine.” He stumbles
across the room, holding a chair for balance.

“
Drunk again. I see your travels
haven’t changed you.”

He glares up at her, takes a step toward her and
slaps her hard. “Shut up and get my clothes.”

In the corner, hand to her cheek, Marie-Emilie leans
against the wall. “Get them yourself.”

He wavers for a moment, unsteady on his feet. Then,
as if making a decision, he nods. “Open the door in the floor.
Light the lantern.” He walks heavily out into the garden, leaving
the door open to the night.

She wants to run, to find Stephan. But it is late,
past midnight and the village is sleeping. She stands at the back
door as Weston returns, a wooden wine case in his arms. He
struggles toward her. “Open it, you daft woman! The lantern!”

She lights the kerosene lantern and pulls up the trap
door as he sets the case of wine on the floor and returns outside.
In a moment he is back with another case.

“
Hand me that one. Put the lantern
here on the step.”

She does as she is told. The wine is his business;
she wants nothing to do with it, or him. If she doesn’t complain,
he will not hit her again and he will leave. He is down below,
opening the wooden door to the wine cave. Then she is pushing the
second case toward his waiting hands.

“
Go get another. The truck’s in the
alley. Hurry, woman.”

Despite herself, she helps him. They bring in the
wooden cases then stack the bottles carefully on the old racks. It
takes almost three hours. She is exhausted. When he tells her again
to get his clothes she hasn’t the strength to say no. She pulls
herself up the stairs, throws his clothes in an old carpet bag.