The Orchid Shroud (15 page)

“Baby Blue? How?”

“We’re de Bonfonds, don’t forget. And something hit a henhouse in Les Ronces last night and attacked the owner. The locals are saying Baby Blue has unleashed bad luck in the valley and we’re to blame.”

“Old crimes will out,” the bosomy brunette called out, loudly enough for all to hear.

The man in the suit said smugly, “What she means is that we’re naturally concerned—”

“Concerned!” Denise’s dark eyes sparked dangerously as she swung about on him. “Gloating becomes you, Guy. It gives you that full-up, baby-go-potty look. And it’s Christophe’s damned crime, in case you forget. Go plague him.”

“That’s no way—” The brunette pushed forward, but Guy pulled her back.

“Mariette and I have expressed our solidarity—”

“Mon cul,”
Denise said sweetly, referring to a part of the anatomy that well-brought-up French women did not mention. She turned away sharply, pulling Julian with her out of range of their hearing.

“Where is he?” she hissed.

“Who?”

“Don’t play dumb. Christophe! Thérèse says he’s gone missing.”

“Ah,” said Julian. “I don’t know.”

Denise gave him a skeptical glare. “I could kill that calf’s head for bringing this down on me.”

“Oh, be fair, Denise,” Julian defended his friend. “He hardly did it on purpose.”

“But he’s not here to take the heat, is he? Look at this shit. The press are all over it. I had a
con
of a reporter from
Sud Ouest
out first thing this morning. How do I feel about having an infanticide in the family? Do I think Baby Blue has anything to do with the thing that’s prowling the valley? Some of the local growers are saying this year’s harvest will be blighted because of us. And to top it off, that puke-making Guy Verdier and his tart of a wife are hanging around, shaking their heads, and maundering on about the good name of the family. All I need!”

At that moment, Denise’s cell phone rang. She slapped it to her ear, listened, and stalked off in another direction, waving her free hand. Guy and Mariette stood by looking huffy for a moment. Then, with a resentful glance at Julian, they left. The crowd hung around talking and gesticulating until Antoine came out again and
bellowed for them to get back to their jobs, those who worked there, or to get lost, those who did not.

E
vents had not improved Pierre’s temper.

“This fountain thing still goes,” the brother pronounced with vicious satisfaction. He was seated at his table in the pavilion, having peered at the new plan and Julian’s reduced budget. “In fact, in light of present circumstances”—he craned about to squint at the broken window—“I’m inclined to scrap this whole landscaping thing.”

“In light of present circumstances,” Denise mimicked him, punching viciously at her cell-phone keypad on her way past. “You’d do better to pull your brains up from around your ankles and realize that we have to make everything look extra good, and that includes the damned water feature. I’ve just talked with Papa, Julian. He says do it. Everything. And don’t mind old Mouth-Breather here. He’s too busy peering up his backside to see daylight.”

J
ulian’s landscaping operations consisted of a front end and a butt end. Julian did the front end—the client relations, garden design, stock purchasing, plus a fair amount of the actual digging, planting, mulching, and so on. The butt end was borne by Bernard. As needed, and when he wasn’t having a smoke or scratching his crotch, the slow, easy-going youth served as Julian’s heavy equipment. He made a good bulldozer and an equally effective power digger. Bernard was the grandson of Madame Léon, the sweet old thing whose walnut orchard adjoined Julian’s bit of land.

It was now four hours after the scene at the pavilion. Julian had made his point with Pierre, and work had finally begun. At the moment, Bernard was strolling behind a rototiller that coughed out blue fumes as it churned up the area fronting the pavilion. He
guided the machine casually, aiming it more or less at a piece of string that Julian had extended between two stakes. When he reached the string, he tipped the rototiller back, pivoted it around, and walked it in the reverse direction, trailing a pale wake of stones.

The sun overhead was hot. Bernard completed a couple more turns and throttled down. The machine shuddered to a halt. Scratching his stomach, he gazed around. Julian was now over in the car-park area, doing more things with stakes and string. Bernard walked down to Julian’s van, raising a meaty arm in passing.

“Oi! Lunch.” From the back of the van he dragged out a battered tin box the size of a small foot locker. Granny Léon made Bernard’s lunches. On mornings when Bernard worked with him, Julian first picked up the box from Madame Léon next door, after which he went to get Bernard, who lived with his girlfriend, a paramedic who did not make lunches, in a neighboring village. Every evening, Julian returned the box empty. It was a service that he was happy to provide, since Madame Léon always included enough food for five. Bernard flipped open the foot locker and poked around in its contents. Ham sandwiches. Hard-boiled eggs. Fruit. Cheese. Flan.

At this point, a dusty, yellow Twingo that Bernard recognized as the winery runabout came speeding up the dirt lane connecting the pavilion with the road below. It braked hard alongside them. The driver was the dark-haired woman Bernard had seen going in and out of the pavilion earlier in the day. Good-looking
nana
. A bit on the stringy side for his taste, though, and a mouth like a sewer, forever effing this and effing that. The workmen around the place seemed scared to death of her.

“Hello,” she called to Julian, ignoring Bernard. “Get in. I brought a picnic. Pâté de foie gras. Crab mousse. Champagne.”

At Julian’s questioning glance, Bernard grinned again and gave a thumbs-up.

“Why not?” said Julian and climbed in the car.

The Twingo swung about and shot off, racing down the lane back to the road. Bernard watched the car cut across the valley. He walked to the rear of the van and pulled the doors open. He set his lunch box on the van floor, hopped his bottom up beside it, and sat there, legs dangling out the back. So much the better, he thought, pulling out a sandwich as thick as a brick. All the more for him.

T
he road ran through the middle of the vineyard. Denise turned off it onto a dirt track that wound up the face of a hill. They parked in a grove of chestnuts at the top. From there, they had a wide-angle view of the valley: sunshine and rows of vines radiating away in all directions.

“Well, this is great,” Julian said enthusiastically. He watched in fascination as she spread a checkered tablecloth on the grass and unpacked their meal, including the pâté and the crab mousse that she had promised. Her movements were quick. Her head, as she turned this way and that, reminded him somehow of a crow, sleek, black, and acquisitive. She wore a skimpy red elasticized top that molded to her hard little breasts, a short tight black skirt, and yellow canvas shoes.

She jerked her chin at the cold chest. “You can do the champagne.”

Obediently, he applied himself to working the cork out of the bottle and tipping the foaming contents into the flutes she provided.

“
Tchin-tchin
,” he toasted her. They touched glasses. “Any idea who vandalized the pavilion?”

She took a gulp and frowned. “I’m sure Michel and his toad of a son were behind it. They generally are when there’s trouble.”

“Who are they?”

“You saw the son. Guy Verdier. My cousin. Oozy little
con
. His father, Michel, was hanging around somewhere, old guy in a black beret. He owns the vineyard next to us. Papa’s been trying to buy
him out for years because we want to expand, but he won’t sell. It’s the Verdiers’ way of getting their own back.”

“Did you report it to the police?”

“A quoi bon?
It wouldn’t discourage the next jerk with a grudge and an aerosol can.” She snapped off plastic container lids. “The Sigoulanese are long on grudges. Help yourself.”

He chewed an olive, tossed away the pit, and dug into the mousse with a spoon. It was light and creamy and flecked with pinkish shreds of crab meat.

“Against the de Bonfonds? What’s their problem?”

Denise fixed him with a long, unfathomable gaze. It was, he thought, the first time he’d seen her motionless. Her eyes were large, curiously flat, and almost lidless. Julian felt disconcertingly like a rabbit being mesmerized by a snake. Then she shrugged, drained her glass, and held it out to Julian for a refill.

“Disputes over land.” Kicking off her shoes, Denise stretched out well-muscled but shapely legs. “And our success. They take the work we offer and hate us for it. You tell me.” She tore off a piece of baguette, loaded it with a heavy daub of rich pâté that was already beginning to sweat with the warmth of the day, and fell to eating, hungrily but with no apparent enjoyment. All business, Julian summed her up. He began to wonder what this outing was about.

She waved a knife at the surrounding landscape. “The de Bonfonds have had vineyards here since the 1800s. We’ve been hit by phylloxera, frost, drought, and war. We’ve lost most of our vines at one time or other. In 1980, Papa tore everything out and replanted with imported rootstock. ‘It’s my legacy to both of you,’ he said. It took us fifteen hard years to re-establish, but we succeeded. That’s what the other growers won’t forgive.”

“This is about jealousy?”

“Why not? All of them still work the land like they did in the Middle Ages. None of them, including Michel, has ever gone beyond
producing for the local market and their own consumption, while we’ve turned Coteaux de Bonfond into a prestige winery with its own
appellation
. We’re the sole producers of Domaine de la Source. Our 2000
grande cuvée
won a
médaille d’or
in Paris. Most of the people in the valley, the Verdiers more than any, would love to see us cut down to size. Michel’s usually behind most of the labor problems we routinely have. Steals our workers, says we treat them badly. Of course, that didn’t stop him, when he heard we were expanding our facilities, from organizing the other growers in the valley to propose that we build on enough capacity to handle their production as well. We have our own
chai
, you see, but they don’t. They have to take their grapes to Bergerac for processing. They said they’d pay us for our services but we
—we
, mind you—were supposed to lay out the capital cost. Papa told them to get lost. And now Christophe’s damned bastard is giving them their chance to do their worst.”

She stretched out full-length on her side, facing him, leaning on her elbow. Her dark hair fell seductively over her cheek. Julian found himself concentrating on her right breast, pushed up against her arm into an appealing mound of flesh.

“Look, Julian, we all know he’s done a bunk because he’s terrified of the media. Come on. I really need to know where he’s hiding.”

So this was what the charade with food and drink was all about. She hadn’t believed him when he told her he didn’t know, and she thought she could worm the information out of him with a
déjeuner sur l’herbe
. Julian felt slightly irritated and not a little let down. Figuratively he kicked himself for wanting to believe that the picnic, this tête-à-tête, was somehow about him. He held up both hands. “Sorry. I told you. I haven’t a clue. Anyway, why are you so keen to have him back?”

“You can ask?” Denise left off being seductive and sat bolt upright, stiff with anger. “The media are all over
me
like flies on meat
because they can’t stick into
him
. I want him back to deal with it. After all, it’s his house, his baby, his problem.”

“Then leave it to him.”

“Leave it to him!” She fairly spat the words out. “In case you didn’t know, Christophe is a genius at ducking trouble. He plays the charming old-world
aristo
when really he’s a spoiled, crazy old
con
who dabbles in publishing, who’s never had to do a real day’s work in his sod-all lazy life, and whose only reason for existence is to spend the fortune his parents left him. You think he’s going to come out of hiding voluntarily to deal with Baby Blue?”

Julian was a little shaken by her vehemence. He had never thought of his friend in this light. He supposed in some respects she might be right.

“Okay.” He tried to shrug it off. “You got a stone through a window and some spray paint because the villagers don’t like you. But Baby Blue is hardly going to affect your sale of wine.”

She flashed him a poisonous smile. “That’s where you’re wrong, sweetums. The media adore the idea that someone in the family was a child-killer. They love the broken glass, the graffiti, the animosity between honest villagers and nasty
seigneurs
. Worst of all, they’re repeating the predictions of a poor harvest, linking it to the feral-dog attacks and some kind of curse Baby Blue is supposed to have unleashed in the valley. All this at a time when I’m trying to profile our label.”

Julian rallied. “It’s even worse for Christophe. He’s somehow got to account for a murdered child in his glorious history of the de Bonfonds.”

She gave a shout of scornful laughter. “If anybody even reads the dead-in-the-water drivel Cousin Christophe publishes.”

Julian took great personal exception to her “dead-in-the-water drivel.”

“You’re overreacting,” he replied coldly. “After all, it’s people
like Perry Pufnel, not Baby Blue, you’ve got to worry about. Pufnel’s ratings are what sell your wine, and he goes by what he tastes, not what he hears.”

“Des conneries!”
She fairly crackled. “Bergerac sits in the shadow of Bordeaux, not because our wines aren’t
grand cru
, but because Bordeaux is what people recognize, and that includes
monstres sacrés
like Pufnel. We’re new kids on the block, as far as he’s concerned. Eighty-four lousy points he gave us this year, and this year’s vintage is as good as or better than our gold-medalist!” She stabbed a knife into a slab of pâté with a viciousness that made him blink. Even Julian, who had only a vague understanding of the point ratings of wines, supposed that this was less than Coteaux de Bonfond Domaine de la Source deserved. Perhaps Denise’s concerns were justified after all.