Dead in the Dregs (37 page)

“There’s more,” I said.

“Come on!” she scoffed, not believing there could be any more.

“Your father. At the end of the war. He had a one-night fling with a young French girl. She gave birth to a son.”

I watched it sink in.

“I have a brother in France?” she whispered.

“A half brother,” I said.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I’m telling you now.”

“I want to meet him.”

“You don’t. Trust me.”

I poured us both another glass of Turley Zin, and we picked at our food. Jardinière had always been one of our favorite places, but neither of us had much of an appetite, and after what I’d revealed, it was difficult even to pretend we were savoring the meal.

“It’s a terribly cruel irony,” I said at last.

“What is?”

“The bad joke life plays: the father, the son, each had a child by a French woman. The son, ignorant of his father’s sin, commits the same one.” My hand brushed against hers on the table. “I’ve been trying to figure this out, and I can’t wrap my mind around it.”

She turned her head and pulled her hand away. I knew it was a lot to assimilate and accept, and she would never be able to discuss any of it with either her father or her brother. She refused to look at me. It didn’t matter. I understood. But at least I had done what I said I would do. I’d found out what had happened to Richard; in fact, I had probably found out too much.

Our good-bye on the street felt excruciating. It was plain to me, at least, that we didn’t stand a prayer, that we were going nowhere, nowhere but home to our separate and inextricably connected lives.

One thing was certain: I was in no condition to drive, and Janie noticed.

“You’re coming with me,” she said, taking the keys to the truck out of my hand. “I’ll bring you back in the morning.”

I sobered up a bit in the passenger seat, the scent of her sitting next to me in the car focusing my mind. At her house, much to my surprise, she led me upstairs, past Danny’s room. The door was ajar. We both looked in on him, a ritual we’d performed so many
times that I choked on the emotion. Then, facing me, she led me to her bedroom.

She undressed me, sat me on the bed, and then undressed herself. There was no reason to speak, nothing to say, and as we found ourselves holding each other, all the tension, the years’ separation, the bitterness and recrimination, dissolved as if we had never been apart. The sweetness and tenderness of our lovemaking seemed the most natural thing in the world.

I kissed the tears out of her eyes, off her cheeks, and she fell asleep in my arms, and as I fell into my deepest sleep in months, I thought I might be dreaming.

Danny was flabbergasted and giddy when he found us in bed together the next morning, and though an awkward silence hovered over the breakfast table, it felt more like a silent prayer that somehow we might find our way back as a family.

 

A week or
so later, I arose early one morning. It was still dark. The moon, past full, was just setting. Roosters acknowledged an imperceptible dawn. I decided to walk. I’d seen Chateau Hauberg many times on my excursions through the hills beyond Angwin. It presided amongst sloped vineyards on the east side of Howell Mountain, a massive stone building—more European farmhouse than winery—constructed in the late 1800s and built to last for centuries, nestled into the hillside beside a small man-made lake. I’d admired it from a distance, its stolid permanence and old-world charm so different from the mock palazzi built as monuments to the egos that had invaded the valley. Daniel Hauberg had arrived in the late seventies with his wife and daughter after selling off his property in Bordeaux—an unlikely trade, it seemed to me.

As I walked along the side of the road, the sun gained in the east, casting a pink glow on the underbelly of the cloud bank lacing its way from the Pacific. Fog lay like a thin blanket in the hollows of the hills, and as I descended the road, I could make out the massive stone volume of Chateau Hauberg rising above it. The road dipped and rose to the winery. Across from it I could see its proprietor walking in a vineyard, accompanied by his dog in the early
light of dawn. I watched as he bent to examine and caress his vines. He walked slowly down a row, the ivory-colored German shepherd limping behind him. It was a touching scene, the profound paternal attention he brought to the land.

“Hello!” I called from the road. Daniel Hauberg stood and squinted at me.

“
Bonjour
,” he said, surprised to see a visitor at that hour of the morning. He walked toward me. “Ah, Monsieur Stern,” he added when he got close enough to recognize me. “I heard you were in France.”

“I got home just before the holiday. I wanted to get back in time to share Thanksgiving with my son,” I said. He nodded.

“If you’re looking for Michael,” he said, sweeping his hand across the vista of vineyard and lifting it as if to suggest that Matson had disappeared only a moment before.

“I’m not sure what I’m looking for anymore,” I confessed.

Hauberg nodded, scratched his chin, and said, “Come, I’ll make us coffee.” He whistled for his dog. As we approached the house, he pointed to the pond. “I put that in around ’82, to water the vines.
Vas-y
!” he commanded the shepherd, who gazed up at him through sad, limpid, nearly human eyes. The animal flopped under a massive oak tree that towered before the château and laid his head on his outstretched forepaws.

“King Lear, he loves that tree,” Hauberg said tenderly.

We passed under an arbor and into the bottom floor of the stone winery, the barrels wrapped in the cool, damp air. He stood at a hot plate and brewed a pot of espresso. I wandered across the floor of the
cave.
The ceiling rose twenty feet above me, the stone held in place by beams milled in another century.

“We bring the grapes in up above, on the top floor. The
cuverie
is just above us on the second floor. And down here is the
cave.
The whole operation is gravity fed. I never have to pump the wine.
Doucement, doucement
,” he smiled, gesturing with his hand to show how gently he handled his fruit. “Come,” he said. “It is not too cold for you outside?”

“Not at all.
Merci
,” I said, taking the steaming cup.

“You see this,” Hauberg said as we crossed the threshold, pointing
to a brass unicorn nailed to the giant wooden door of the
chais
, a ring looped through its flared nostrils. “This is the only thing I brought from my home in France. It was used to tie up horses in the old days.”

He led us outside to a picnic table under the arbor.

“So,” he asked, “what did you learn on your trip? I heard that you solved the crime.”

I conveyed in broad strokes what had happened: the shooting of Lucas Kiers, Jean Pitot’s suicide following the murder of Eric Feldman, and the violent death of Françoise Pitot at the hands of her husband. He already knew most of it from following the story in the French press on the Internet and shook his head at the litany of disasters.

“Here’s what you probably haven’t read,” I said and told him about Robert Wilson’s fathering a child at the tail end of World War II. I described the shame and hatred that had come to afflict the Pitot family. I left out Richard Wilson’s replication of his father’s indiscretion, thinking that I would do what I could to preserve what was left of Wilson’s reputation.

He gazed out to his vineyards and took a sip of the scalding coffee.

“
Je comprends
,” he said. “You see, the only way in France is to have one child. Under the Napoleonic Code, if I die—when I die—the property must be divided between my children. It creates bitter fights. I refused to subject my family to this . . .” His voice failed, imagining the feuds that would have ensued following his death. He took another sip of coffee. “Of course, if you have only one child and he is killed in a car accident . . .
pfoof.
Your life is over. You have lost everything. At least this family has a daughter who survives and is safe.”

We sipped slowly and contemplated the cruelty of life.

“I don’t know. Maybe, either way, you lose everything,” he added. “So, now, I start over.” He smiled wistfully.

“It’s beautiful here,” I said, “a beautiful place.”

“
Oui, c’est beau ici
,” he said and disappeared into himself.

We sat for a few minutes, looking out at the land. The sun was up, and the earth was steaming.

“Well, thank you for the coffee,” I said, rising.

“Not at all. It was my pleasure.” I turned to go. “I think you did a fine thing, going to France to solve this,” Hauberg said.

“Thank you,” I said. “
Au revoir.
”

“Good-bye,” Daniel Hauberg said and stood, taking our coffee cups.

 

It was a
glorious morning for a drive. I headed north from Calistoga. Fog drifted through the breaks in the hills and crested in ragged and dissolving waves over the peak of Storybook Mountain.

I’d called Ciofreddi upon my return and given him a stripped-down account of events as they’d unfolded on the
côte
. He said that Sackheim had told him my help had been invaluable.

“Well, at least I didn’t fuck it up too badly,” I said. “The whole thing got a little out of control.” Then I asked him if he’d give me the Christensens’ address. He said Eugénie’s husband’s name was Paul and that they were listed in the phone book. I thanked him, and that was that. As Jenny, she had moved thousands of miles away—starting a new life very different from the one she’d left behind—but I knew that she’d never really escape, that the past would follow her forever.

I was sure that whoever had taken over after Sackheim’s dismissal and retirement would close out the case successfully, that Jean-Luc Carrière and Henri Pitot would go to jail, that the French would do their jobs, just as Russ Brenneke and Ciofreddi had done theirs. Spring was right around the corner. The nights would soften, the days lengthen, the eucalyptus grow fragrant. The bottle may have been empty, but I had savored it right down to the dregs.

I knew it was time, now, to end my exile. I needed to remain close to my son; he needed me, maybe as much as I needed him.

I finally felt freed from Janie, free to leave for good or free to go back. I didn’t know why she’d turned to me, whether she wanted me back herself or regretted ever having left. But she had left, and though our last meal together had made me think that we were finished, that last night had left me thinking that maybe we had a chance after all.

She had been right about one thing, though: She couldn’t have
trusted just anyone. I’d wanted to prove something, and I had. Helping in some small way to solve Richard’s murder, I had at last tumbled out from under his shadow, even if that shadow had existed only in my own mind. Perception is everything.

When I passed the Jimtown Store, I dropped down on Alexander Valley Road into Healdsburg. I drove slowly along Kinley Drive to West North Street and pulled over opposite Jenny’s home. She and her husband were working side by side in the garden, weeding and raking, bent, silent. I watched as Paul stopped suddenly and went over to his wife. He took the trowel out of her hand, set it on the ground, and lifted her. He held her at the waist and looked into her eyes. He smiled and took her face and kissed her. They embraced in a long, deep hug and released each other. He walked back and picked up the rake, and she knelt down, sticking her hand into the soil. Only then did they seem to notice the sound of the truck and turned to look at me at the same instant. I felt sure she didn’t recognize me as I drove off.

I slowly headed back to town. At a shop, I bought a postcard and wrote a brief note to Émile Sackheim to let him know that, as far as I could tell, Eugénie Pitot and Paul Christensen were in love. The only address I had for him was the
gendarmerie
on rue des Blanches Fleurs in Beaune. At the bottom of the card I would have to write PLEASE FORWARD.

Robert Kacher, Sophie Confuron-Meunier, and Christine Jacob, who opened more than doors in Burgundy; and Michel Alexandre, for clues only you will recognize;

Franck Marescal, Chef d’Escadron, Région de Gendarmerie Est, Groupement de la Côte d’Or, and Lieutenant Colonel Gilbert Frossard, Gendarmerie de Lyon; Chief Brian Banducci of the American Canyon Police Department and Jane Watahovich of the Napa County Sheriff’s Department; and Sergeant Matt Talbott and Sergeant John Wachowski of the St. Helena Police Department, for giving so generously of your time and knowledge;

Jim Fergus and Jim Harrison, without whose help I would have found neither agent nor publisher;

Eric Overmyer, Richard Rosen, James Crumley (
in memoriam
), Guy de la Valdène, Jamie Potenberg, Sue Mowrer, and Cyril Frechier, a readers’ circle of a writer’s dreams;

Lannan Foundation, for the delicious space of L3 and the profound silence of Marfa, where, in the course of a six-week writing residency, this story found its most fertile soil; and Chuck Bowden, for the coffee, the conversation, and the example you set across the backyard;

Judy Hottensen, Rick Simonson, and Patrick McNierney, for encouragement all along the way; and the gentlemen of
Invisible
Cities
who heard the first inklings of this story what now seems like so long ago;

Al Zuckerman, for your tutelage and abiding sagacity; and Michele Slung, for your insight, your expertise, and for keeping me on
le chemin de vigne
right down to the bedrock;

Ben and George Nikfard of Swifty Printing—the only two who really know how many rewrites this story has been through—for your shared faith and conviction that this novel would find its way into print;

Charlie Winton, for seeing the story-within-the-story, and for sticking with it—with me—to the end; and the marvelous women who compose the staff at Counterpoint—Julie Pinkerton, first amongst them—who served as mid-wives to this book;