Love & Death in Burgundy

by Susan C. Shea

  J.B. turned around. “Say, Kathy, any developments over there, at the castle, I mean? I’m guessing the cops must be finished by now.”

  “Still investigating, although Adele has been assured it’s really a formality.”

  “Good, good. I’m chewing on what I should do about that deal we had going. Maybe I should meet the widow.”

  “I think Sophie Bellegarde, her daughter, is pretty much running the business right now.”

  “That right? Well, we’ll see. No big rush, right, Mike? We’re good to go on our deal.” He slapped Michael’s shoulder and lifted himself into the driver’s seat, tapping his horn several times as he backed out of the driveway. She started to drag out a long hose for watering before she remembered her white lie that they were supposed to be leaving for Adele’s in a few minutes. Instead, she ducked back into the kitchen and topped off her wineglass. It was five minutes after five, so she was on solid ground with her conscience.

  As she rooted around in the refrigerator for something to go into a casserole other than celery root or cabbage for the third or fourth time this week, she wondered if she would enjoy having lots of money. On days when rainwater dripped into the corner of her studio or when she didn’t have the train fare to go to Paris to catch an exhibition, yes, she admitted to herself, she wished they had more money. But there was always enough for the small finds she uncovered at the flea markets, which were her main entertainment until the cold of autumn shut them down, and for paints and canvases, which occupied her the rest of the year.

  Michael, on the other hand, had never let go entirely of the bitterness of betrayal that began when the four musicians he had counted as his best friends went on to form the Crazy Leopards all those years ago, leaving him behind but taking with them the two songs that he had written, which would make them famous. He never talked about it now, but when the washing machine needed parts, or Jean wanted too much for repairing the low wall along the edge of their property, she knew some festering heat rose in him for what might have been. Probably it wasn’t the money, but the public insult that made him hard to live with at times. “The past is never over, is it?” she said to the cat, which had nosed open the door and was checking the dogs’ dishes for leftovers.

  “Man, he drives me crazy at times,” Michael said, shooing the cat out gently with one boot a few minutes later as he joined Katherine in the kitchen and reached around her to open the battered old refrigerator. Opening a bottle of beer, he headed out to the patio.

  “What’s the deal he’s talking about? An album with you?” she called, rinsing a knife and setting a pot of onions and beef on the stove. When they had browned a bit, she would sacrifice a half bottle of the heady Burgundy she’d picked up the other day at the little cave in Noyers, a small miracle of Pinot grapes aged and bottled thirty kilometers from her kitchen stove.

  “No, a new digital studio in Memphis, which he claims would be completely booked with big musicians for their next albums.”

  “He came to you for money? Why in the world would he think we had any to spare?”

  “No, not quite. He wants introductions.”

  “Introductions? To whom?”

  “Who do you think?”

  “Eric? The Leopards? You told him no, of course?”

  “Told him I didn’t have any pull. He mentioned the business with ‘Raging Love.’ Not sure how he heard about that.” Michael looked at his wife, who had stopped what she was doing and come to stand in the doorway.

  “I’m sure I didn’t. I mean, I don’t think I’ve ever had a conversation with him … oh, damn. Maybe I did, but it was under the influence of too much good wine the first time we had dinner at the house they rented, and I’m not even sure what I said, only that you had proven your point with Eric.”

  “I thought we agreed that’s over and done with. I got the hundred thousand in the settlement, and there’s no more to be had. Now you’ve gone and opened up a can of worms.”

  “Darling, I am sorry if I said anything I shouldn’t,” Katherine said, coming out and kissing the top of his head. “It couldn’t have been much. I was probably name-dropping. You know me, I want everyone to know how talented you are and that you were in the music business at such an interesting time.”

  “You could just as easily say I was in the construction business, since that’s what I did for ten years after the Leopards dropped me. Moved lumber and nailed studs, more the true story of my career. If I hadn’t hurt my back, that’s what I’d be doing right now.” He moved his head away, took a long drink from the bottle, and looked up at her hovering over him. “I wasn’t in the music business, not in any way that means something today.”

  “You were, and you still are. You’re writing songs and I know you’ll sell some soon.”

  “Kay, it pisses me off when you do something like this, you know that. I don’t want to talk about the Leopards, about Eric, about those songs. It’s history. Now, what if J.B. makes my begging Eric for a favor part of any deal to record new material? Your bringing the old stuff up could kill any new chance I have.”

  Ever since they settled in Reigny, Katherine had fought occasional moments of panic where she saw vividly that she would be lost without Michael. Her instinct since childhood was to run from anything even remotely uncomfortable, and, thousands of miles from their past life, he was the only one she could run to. When they argued, which they rarely did, the ground shifted ominously underneath her.

  She retreated into the house, leaned down, and petted the cat, which had taken over the chaise vacated by J.B. It jumped up at the violent nature of her strokes and stalked away. It wasn’t her fault if that annoying man had pumped her for information to the point where she couldn’t help mentioning the Crazy Leopards and Michael’s brilliant songwriting. Damn that J.B. anyway. She wanted to like him, if only for what he was doing for her husband, but he had a big mouth.

  CHAPTER 10

  Penny laughed. “You’ll be blamed for everything that goes wrong. The wine, the tablecloths, the wind, Emile’s singing. It’ll all be that American woman’s fault. That’s what I always feel when I come down here, as though everyone’s gloating over my mistakes.”

  Katherine had taken advantage of a glorious day to drag out her easel and continue working on the painting that was giving her fits. The sheets were flapping on the clothesline, the ripe cherries that hadn’t been claimed by the birds were in a bowl on the kitchen counter, and a chance meeting with a farmer’s wife at the poubelle, where big plastic recycling and garbage bins were lined up for community use, had netted her a volunteer assistant for the set-painting job at the fête. But Penny’s dire predictions about the possible outcome of her big play for becoming a successful event producer made her stomach flutter.

  There was no word yet on the cause of Albert’s death, no one was gossiping, at least not to her, about the gun, Michael was still in a touchy mood, and her work for the painting show wasn’t going well. She had almost decided to call the difficult painting Poor Little Lambs, although that might not explain the tractor. She could have done without Penny and Yves showing up for a chat.

  Penny obviously didn’t have enough to do, and Yves? He needed to feel he was being admired, and so trailed along with Penny while he enjoyed his long midday break from the shop. He had come over at Penny’s insistence to apologize for the drama he’d caused, he explained, and having said that much, said nothing more, certainly not that he was sorry. Now they were talking of happier things, like the fête.

  “Mistakes?” Katherine knew what the villagers thought of her friend but was surprised that Penny had absorbed any of the muttered insults uttered in slangy French that trailed behind her as she walked through her renovation-in-progress.

  “Oh, you know. The lap pool went over some invisible line in the creek, the sound system on the patio kept an old lady from her beauty sleep at nine P.M. Whatever I do to improve the property, it always seems to offend somebody, and people around here gossip a
ll day long.”

  “They were worried they would lose their access to the fishing spot below the mill, and this is such a quiet village, tucked into a little valley of sorts, that any amplified music can seem too loud. Henri even spoke to Michael about his guitar playing.”

  Penny rolled her eyes. “Such a dull place, not at all what I expected. If it weren’t for you and Michael, I would move in a heartbeat.”

  “But wait, not because of me, cherie? I am heartbroken.” Yves, parked in the rattan chair, placed one hand over his heart, or where it would be, Katherine thought, if he actually had one.

  Penny chose to ignore his comment, but said to him instead, “I’m not sure I’m up for a duet with you, so what will you sing? Not that ridiculous number about yourself, I hope.”

  “Why do you call it ridiculous?” Yves said, his voice rising. “It is a classic troubadour’s storytelling. I add to it for every performance so that it is the ongoing saga of my adventures. It is a song tradition. All cultures have it.”

  “Maybe.” Penny shrugged. “But it’s usually not about the singer.” She made a small shape of irritation with her mouth. “I mean, how egotistical is that?”

  “I won’t let you criticize my project,” Yves said, pointing a long finger at her. “I said something insignificant about…” His voice trailed off and his finger moved hesitantly toward the treetops.

  “Precisely,” Penny snapped. “Insignificant. A casual insult shared with the whole world, and through a microphone, no less.”

  Yves shrugged. “You take things too personally. It was not the whole world but a little party, and it was not about you, it was about life in general. All I said—”

  “—was that you were not interested in old women.”

  “Non, non, my dear Penny. I have explained to you that I was talking about—how do you say it, Katherine—the girls from one’s past, les vieilles copines?”

  “Bad enough either way, but don’t let’s quarrel,” Katherine said, her face close to the canvas as she frowned at her version of a tractor, which seemed more baroque on the canvas than when she had sketched it in the pasture. She guessed that her friends were in the prickly stage of making up from a quarrel in which Penny had undoubtedly told Yves they were finished, and Yves had agreed and now they were faced with finding a way to justify getting together again before Penny left her Americanized French house in October for her French-themed apartment in Chicago. It was their way, Katherine thought with an inward sigh. With few suitably aged, unattached people in the neighborhood and no desire to expend the effort of finding a mate farther abroad, Penny and Yves would keep circling each other, at least until their physical passion was consummated. She wondered if they were having an affair. They behaved more like people in the flirtation stage of a relationship. In her and Michael’s day, no one questioned the idea that sex was as much a part of beginning a relationship as was sharing one’s drugs or food. It led to problems, that free-for-all approach, but on balance she thought it was preferable to this pouting. As it was, Katherine understood her role was to be the audience for their posturing. Right now, she was impatient.

  “Penny, what do you think? Does this look like the mayor’s tractor from where you sit?”

  “It’s lovely, Katherine. Don’t worry,” said Penny, who hadn’t bothered to glance at the painting. “You worry far too much about these things. It’s a new gallery and they’re not particular at all. Oh, I didn’t mean that the way it came out,” she said as Katherine straightened up and turned toward her.

  Katherine felt a flush of something like anger warm her face, and forced herself to take a deep, slow breath. Children, she reminded herself. Penny and Yves were emotionally the equivalent of ten-year-olds, charming but thoughtless, likable but unable to see that the world didn’t absolutely revolve around themselves. She needed to be patient. She was, after all, a professional artist with an advanced degree, preparing for a solo show in a good gallery in a region of la belle France that prized art, for heaven’s sake.

  “Voilà. You see?” Yves said, his voice rising. “These little meanings, they are not what they seem. So, darling Penny, you must remember that and make up.” He jumped up, pinned Penny in her chair, kissed her noisily on the lips, and stood straight, brushing his fallen locks off his face. She glared at him for an instant, then softened.

  “I’m sorry, cherie,” she said to Katherine, who was standing still, a brush suspended in her hand. “I meant to be encouraging, but obviously went quite wrong. It’s a lovely sky, the painting is sweet and quite pastoral in its theme, and we are going to drown you in compliments and Crémant de Bourgogne at the opening. And now, if there is no more news about the Bellegarde scandal, I must go.”

  “Scandal? Don’t be ridiculous, Penny. You sound like Pippa Hathaway, trolling for mystery and mayhem in all of this.”

  “What does she know about it?” Penny said.

  “Nothing. She is apparently interested in finding something that might make a good story, and stopped me, practically drooling with curiosity.”

  “Did she run you down with her little car?” Yves said. “She drives through town like the demon, you know?”

  “No, she said she was out for a walk, but I think she was really looking for news. She’d seen the police cars.”

  “I hadn’t met her before your party. Does she live here all year?” Penny said.

  “I’m not sure. She says her father lives in London.”

  “She plans to go to London for one month every year,” Yves said, and the women turned to him, the same question in their eyes. “She paid Mme Robilier to feed the cats and hold her mail in April. Madame says the cats are too shy to be petted and only peek from under the lilac hedge when she puts their food out.”

  Penny shrugged impatiently, and kissed Katherine and Yves. “Unless Adele was having an affair with my plumber and pushed her bossy husband down the stairs to get rid of him, I really don’t think Albert’s death qualifies as a mystery. Although,” she added as she started down the flagstone steps, “I can see why someone might be tempted to give the old man a shove.”

  “Quit it, Penny,” Katherine said in protest, but there was no answer, and in a second, the iron gate screeched in a protest of its own as Penny closed it.

  CHAPTER 11

  The rain that flattened her hollyhocks during the night drifted off with the sunrise. Steam rose from the garden and snails glided across the stone steps in glistening lines. Katherine’s shoes were wet from an hour spent tying up the tall flower stalks before breakfast. “I don’t know why I bother,” she said to Michael. “I suppose one might say it was vanity. Everyone else’s hollyhocks will be a mess.”

  “Do we have to go to Serein today?” Michael said, putting his treasured Gibson acoustic guitar back on its stand. “We got enough cheese to last a week at the market yesterday and I know you’ll want me to drive you over to some other flea market next weekend. I want to work on a new song.”

  “Between the lunch guests and the dogs, the cheese is pretty well gone, which is a tragedy given that it was so expensive. Anyway. L’Isle-sur-Serein’s vide-grenier is huge, one of the biggest flea markets all summer, and I read that they’re having a carnival ‘avec géants du Nord.’ You know, giant puppets? I told your friends we would show them a bit of the local color.”

  “They’re not friends, Kay, so much as they’re possible business partners. And they haven’t shown any interest in rustic ceremonies as far as I can tell.”

  “Well, yes, but that’s the point, darling. They should be interested. Ancient village customs and all that. We agreed we’d meet at the river, near the statue of Saint Somebody-or-Other at noon.”

  “I could live without the parade. Last year’s was more than enough.”

  Katherine laughed as she pulled on dry shoes, stood up, and executed a quick tap step. “I know, really silly. Reigny’s fête will be more sophisticated and we won’t have a parade, thank heavens.”

  Mi
chael grunted. “You’d have to dig bodies up from the graveyard to get enough people for a parade here.”

  “Don’t be ghoulish, darling. It makes my skin crawl. After all the recent drama here, I don’t have the appetite for anything other than some mindless fun.”

  * * *

  Two hours later, Katherine had walked purposefully, if slowly, down one long street in the medieval town that backed up to a river shallow in the summer. Along the way, she had accumulated a black-fringed shawl warm enough for the coming winter days, two old books with illustrations worth studying, and a pincushion studded with round-headed pins. “Perfect,” she said, holding it up in triumph. “Only one euro.”

  Michael wandered over to a table piled with what looked to Katherine like rusty junk, but which turned out to be the hiding place of a small table vise and a hammer. “But Michael, you have at least four hammers in the shed already,” Katherine said, puzzled.

  “You can never have too many hammers.”

  “Well, it looks as though this man did,” she said, waving her arm toward the piles on the table. She reminded herself that she already had several black shawls and that perhaps it would be best not to make an issue about hammers. It’s the fun of finding treasures, after all, she thought as she hurried to keep up with his long strides.

  At noon, they were sitting under chestnut trees on the stone wall overlooking the river, looking for the Hollidays. At twelve fifteen, Michael got up. “Can we go now? If they’re here, we’ll bump into them, but I’m hungry.”

  The little café across from the river was busy, but they squeezed into a corner table under the awning and had the plat du jour, nine euros’ worth of salad and a bit of chicken under sauce, decorated by a small boiled potato. Still no sign of the Americans, and the sound of a loudspeaker and raucous singing was coming closer. Katherine gathered up her purchases and they picked their way down the steps and into a large crowd moving sluggishly along the street next to the river.