Murder à la Carte (7 page)

The
château
no longer had land connected to it; all of that had long been sold off to neighboring
vignerons
. And a castle with no acreage―no obvious means of supporting itself―was a white elephant in this part of Provence. A tad too remote to attract tourists as a summer rental―and too dilapidated to do it had it been better located―the
château
had cost them less than half of what they’d expected to pay. The remodeling, on the other hand, had cost nearly ten times the purchase price. It didn’t really matter. They had the money, and little else to do but worry about plumbing and wallpaper and thirteenth century heating ducts.

Grace sat gingerly on the king size bed and began peeling off her robe and filmy nightgown. She never bothered to dress before Windsor had left in the morning with Taylor. In fact, there had been little else to do, period. Life in St-Buvard was downright dull, what with her difficult daughter in school from seven until seven at night―and many times staying in Aix in a boarding situation if weather or circumstances prevented the Van Sants from retrieving her. Windsor was usually embroiled in writing his memoirs up in his study. Even more so now that the
château
had finally snapped into shape and seemed to require little more attention than cleaning, something which Grace, of course, had never had to do.

She turned on the shower and tested the temperature of the water with her hand. Imagine, she thought as she stepped under the fountain of warm water, a waterfall faucet and a Jacuzzi tub in the garden room―in a thirteenth century French castle in the middle of the French countryside. She sudsed her entire body with a rough washcloth and enjoyed the sweet, soapy smell as the steam engulfed her in a penumbra of warmth.

The muffled sound of the phone ringing penetrated the soft drumming of the shower as she poured shampoo into her wet, shoulder-length hair. I hope it’s Maggie, she thought, as she closed her eyes and massaged her scalp and tried to remember if she’d left the answering machine on. The days could be so long, so uneventful. The reality of her life in St-Buvard just didn’t live up to the colorful letters about living in the South of France she liked to write home to her jealous friends.

She finished her shower and turned off the water, cocking an ear to try to hear if the machine was recording a voice even through she knew the bedroom was too far from Windsor’s study, where the answering machine was kept, to be able to hear. She toweled off briskly and inspected her nakedness in the large gilt-framed mirror that dominated the bathroom. Not bad for forty-one, she thought, holding her stomach in just a bit.
Still plenty of baby-making material here
. She stole a glance out the one small window in the room to the fields below. Already, the workers from the village had been picking for several hours. She shook her head and returned to the steamy mirror. She squinted into her reflection again and then quickly smoothed away the creases she had caused by squinting. Windsor had put his foot down at the idea of restoring the small moat that once ringed the
château
. She tugged gently at a gray hair sprouting from her perfect brow line and sighed heavily. Too bad. She had had some wonderful ideas for a moat.

2

Awaiting the retrieval truck of Cortier & Fils, the baskets of dark grapes lined the front driveway at Domaine St-Buvard. One hundred and fifty baskets in all, each one filled to the brim with the large, juicy grape of his own vineyard. Laurent stood next to a large, rough-hewn man named Bernard Delacort. He was one of the pickers from the village. Laurent selected a bunch of grapes and hefted them in his hand.

“And the stems?” he asked Bernard. “How do they get the stems off?”

The older man shrugged, his grimy shirt and vest jerking with his motion. He jabbed a hand downward as if a bomber airplane were diving.

“Into the crusher
, bien sûr,"
he said. “It will spit out the stems...” He demonstrated this, neatly avoiding Laurent’s shirtfront. “...and squeeze the juice from the grape.” To illustrate, he clapped his hands together to form a vice.

Laurent nodded and plopped the grapes back into their basket. It was a good haul. He’d harvested the hundred and fifty baskets for Cortier for a neat little profit, with enough grapes left over to press his own wine under his own label. He glanced out to his fields and watched the variations of blue shirts and overalls of the pickers. How much was left? Another hundred baskets? He felt very good. His own wine. He would be making his own label. After all, how difficult can it be? The hard part is done: the months of sun and rain and careful pruning. The wine he bottled would be as good as the grapes. And the grapes were good.

In the distance, Laurent could hear the slow rumbling of a large truck as it approached. He clapped Bernard on the shoulder and got an amiable grunt from the man in reply.

“You did well, Monsieur,” Bernard said, shifting his filthy cloth cap from his filthy head to his no less filthy hands. 

“You mean, my uncle did well. I did nothing to grow these grapes.” Laurent spread his hands in the direction of the grape baskets.

“You did well by him,” Bernard said again. Delacort wasn’t the kind of man to soften a truth by lying or restructuring it. 

Laurent moved a step toward the sound of the truck as it began its slow, lumbering assault up his winding driveway.

And next year, Laurent thought, as he gestured to the driver and began directing the truck’s approach with his hands, the credit for the wine―good or bad, drinkable or
merde,
will be mine and mine alone.

3

“She’s pregnant, you know...Babette. The girl that Lydie was going on about last night?” Grace waited for the point to register as she sipped her
café au laît
and pushed her sunglasses back onto her nose. Even in early November, the glare from the morning Provençal sun was brutal.

“The girl who works in the
boulangerie,"
Maggie said, helping herself to another croissant and then daintily wiped the buttery flakes from her fingers with her napkin.

“The one, yes.” Grace smiled. “Pretty little thing if you’ve seen her.”  

“Just a glance. Why was Lydie busting a gut over Babette being the niece of Madame and Monsieur Marceau?”

Grace laughed, her merriment like a little bell ringing pleasantly in the quiet café. It had been Maggie on the phone during her morning shower and the answering machine had been on. Arrangements for coffee that same day were as easy as pulling on respectable clothes. No need to ask where― there was only Le Canard, no need to ask how to get there ―they were both within biking distance―even walking distance, if one had to. For Grace, the sheer pleasure of having a new friend so close, so accessible, had taken the sting out of this morning’s parting with Taylor, had helped muffle the memory of the harsh words with Windsor the night before.

“Maggie,” Grace said. “Lydie doesn’t care who Babette is related to.”

“But she―”

“No, she was rubbing Connor’s nose in something.”

“Well, that Connor had slept with this Babette-person, right?”

“Bingo.”

“Are Lydie and Connor, like, a match? Engaged?”

Grace shook her head, her soft blonde curls bouncing gently. “No, no, nothing like that.” Grace grinned and stirred more sugar into her coffee, “But see, Lydie isn’t from around here. She’s from Marseille. So to have Connor take up―even briefly―with a village girl, well...it’s embarrassing, you see.”

“Oh, for crying out loud.”

Grace laughed again. “I never said she was brilliant.”

“She sounds like an idiot.”

“Ahh, but her winning personality makes up for her lack of brain cells, don’t you think?”

This time, they both laughed.

“And so, I guess, the baby’s Connor’s, right?” Maggie said, more seriously.

“That’s the general consensus,” Grace said, stirring more sugar into her coffee. “I’ve not actually approached him on the subject.”

“Do you intend to?”

Grace stopped stirring her coffee cup. “Poor little peasant girl victimized by big, bad Yank, you mean?”

“Something like that.”

Grace sipped her coffee and grimaced. “Why do they all make it industrial strength?” She smoothed out her napkin and eyed the plate of croissants. “I don’t know, Maggie. I kind of thought it was none of my business, I guess.”

Maggie thought about this for a moment and drank her own
café au laît
from a bright blue bowl. She and Grace Van Sant sat outside, their wicker-backed chairs making wonderful woven-basket designs of shadow against the flagstone terrace. A clot of dead leaves scuttled across the café
floor as a cool breeze softened the sun’s glare.

“Will she have it?” Maggie asked, pushing her unopened copy of
Nice-Matin
away from her plate. “Do you know?”

Grace shook her head and looked at Maggie.

“Look, don’t think too badly of Connor...”

“No, no, I don’t.” Maggie smiled. “I like Connor. He’s funny and I get a sense from him that he’s authentic, you know? That he’s not a fake.”

“It’s true.” Grace nodded. “He really is. This Babette thing included, you know? I mean, I can’t imagine our Connor having a go at the local talent under false pretenses, you know? I mean, why should he bother? He’s rich.”

“Is he?” Maggie noticed a couple of the village workmen in their dark blue caps, shirts and baggy trousers, settling down at one of the other tables. The café had belonged only to the American women up until now. Each of the men had a large meat pie―their morning
casse-croûte
―and a small jar of
pastis
. “He mentioned he had a trust...” Maggie said absently.

“Yeah, no kidding. He not only has a trust, he has access to heap-biggum investment funds for just about whatever kind of project he’d like to involve himself with. Millions at his disposal, I take it.”

“Is he into that sort of thing? Investing and commerce and stuff?

Grace made a face, as if the thought of Connor and business intertwined was too ludicrous to imagine. “Right now he’s into being the biggest, most charming goof-off in the northern hemisphere, you know?”

They both laughed.

“He’s eating and screwing and laughing his way through the latter part of his thirties.”

“So, he’s not really an artist.”

“Oh, he is! He is!” Grace said quickly. “He’s very talented. You’ll have to see his studio. He’s done lots of really neat pieces. It’s mostly found art, you know.”

“‘Found art.’ You mean, like, garbage?”

“Yes, that’s it exactly. Garbage.” Grace laughed. “And he’s really good at it. I tell him all the time.”

“But...” Maggie began.

“But, no, he’s not going to make a living at it. It’s a hobby.” Grace shrugged. “You know, like having a thing you do to help you think you do something that matters in the world?”

Maggie winced inwardly, thinking of her own current career confusion. “You mean a project to do in between all the eating and screwing?” she said lightly.

“Exactly!”

They both burst out laughing again. Grace placed her cool, perfectly manicured hand on top of Maggie’s smaller one. “God, I’m glad you’re here! I’ve been desperate for a real, honest to God girlfriend. You know?”

As Maggie smiled back at Grace, it occurred to her that she’d been a little desperate for the same thing.

4

Connor eyed the gaggle of nuns and their giggling herd of schoolchildren from the corner of the taxi cab. His driver had just slammed to a stop to avoid broadsiding the little picture postcard scene of post-war France, and the position of Connor’s internal organs was returning to their original places. To top it off, the man was drenched in aftershave and smelled like a bowl of gardenias flung into a sewer.

A
French
sewer.

Arles was an unpleasant place, Connor decided, as he dragged his eyes from the back of his driver’s large greasy head.
Surely there’s a sanitarium somewhere that has a missing persons bulletin out on this lunatic
.  He stared out the window at the now-stationary road-side setting of ugly, rust-brown patio furniture that called itself a café, abutting a nasty stoma of a store front, its awning stretched out like green-vined tendrils, the fringe fluttering like so many languid, dirty fingers wagging at him. He sat in the back of the taxi as the merry little group passed, the skipping children dressed identically in dark blue capes and stockings and caps, herded by the smiling nuns in their stark black headdresses and sweeping gowns.
None of this calf-length stuff for French nuns,
Connor noted, as the group disappeared down an alleyway.

He braced his arms against the back of the front seat in anticipation of his driver’s urgency to hurry to the next near-miss. 
Nuns that smile
, he thought, as he shook his head. The ancient façade of the Roman amphitheater rushed by.
And French cab drivers that actually attempt to avoid hitting them. Quel pays mysterieux!

He hated Arles. It was ugly, mired in dog shit and choked with tourists. Its good restaurants were few and too expensive (thanks to the tourists). But Marseille was even worst―riddled with crime, grime and too many false
bouillabaisse
. But he loved Marseille. He loved its dangers, its tackiness, its ignobility and shame. He’d found the sweet, demented Lydie there, hadn’t he? The taxi took another sharp swerve and Connor groped for a handle to secure himself. He needn’t have bothered. Within a microsecond of the two-wheeled turn, the driver had slammed to a stop and was now twisted around to face his passenger. “
Deux cent francs,”
the driver said, his throat rattling with the phlegm caused by too many Gauloises.

Connor peeled off the franc notes and handed them over. These French are clever, he decided, as he slammed the taxi door and glanced up at the gaily welcoming restaurant façade of
Le Vacarres
. They know you wouldn’t pay two hundred francs for a measly taxi ride...but for your life? For the chance to cheat death and live to enjoy another meal? Perhaps father children? Plant a vegetable garden? Write a book? Ahh!
This
was worth two hundred francs.