Murder in the Rue Dumas: A Verlaque and Bonnet Provencal Mystery (Verlaque and Bonnet Provencal Mysteries)

by Longworth, M. l.

  “The phone call we think enticed Moutte to go to his office late Friday night can’t be traced,” Paulik said, looking up from the note.

  Verlaque looked away from the window. “What do you mean?”

  “All we can determine is that it came in on a trunk line from Italy,” Paulik said. “But the caller ID was blocked.”

  Mme Girard brought in two espressos on a tray, with a bowl of sugar and two tiny silver coffee spoons. The cups and spoons Verlaque had brought from Normandy, but he suddenly remembered that they had been used at the family business. Emmeline must have taken them with her when the company was sold. He put the cup up to his mouth, glad to feel the unusual but comforting sensation of the matte, almost rough-textured porcelain against his lips.

  Verlaque swallowed and leaned back in his chair, eyes closed.

  “This wasn’t an accident, was it?” Paulik asked.

  “I doubt it,” Verlaque answered. “Mlle Zacharie was really high-strung, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Yeah. Nervous about something? Did she know who killed her boss?”

  “Let’s interview her family. Did she live with her parents?”

  “No. Flamant has written down the name of her boyfriend. They lived together on the rue…” Paulik grabbed the paper from Verlaque’s desk and read, “Bédarrides. Number 17. Her boyfriend is a waiter, Michel Gasnal.”

  “Let’s go and talk to him…at their apartment.”

  “Right. I’ll get Flamant to contact him and arrange a meeting for today.” Paulik finished the coffee and held the cup, tiny in his big, thick hands, and looked at the dancing women that surrounded the cup, their garments flowing in white porcelain relief against a cobalt-blue background. “Are these from Greek mythology?” he asked.

  Verlaque smiled. “Yes, they’re the dancing hours. It was a favorite Wedgwood pattern. The cups came from our family business; they were used when we had important guests at the Paris office. I’ve only just remembered that now.”

  Bruno Paulik smiled. He loved families and stories about families. “Does the family business still exist?” he asked, although he knew that it didn’t.

  “No, it was sold seventeen years ago, when my grandfather died.”

  Paulik took a sip of coffee and gently put the blue cup down on its saucer. “What was the family business, sir?”

  “I wish you’d call me Antoine, Bruno. Flour. We owned flour mills.”

  The commissioner looked at his boss, thinking of the importance, and money, behind a family that owned flour mills, in a nation that adored—no, worshipped—bread and pastries.

  “Oh, I see,” Paulik said. “That explains why you’re such a gourmet,” he added, smiling.

  “And gourmand,” Verlaque said, laughing. “Yes, the importance of good food, and good ingredients, was drilled into us at an early age.”

  “How big was the company, if you don’t mind me asking?”

  “Second. We were the second biggest.”

  “In France? Wow,” Paulik replied, whistling.

  “No, Bruno. The second biggest in the world.”

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Only Italian Coffee, Please

  Mme Girard knocked twice on Verlaque’s office door. “Oui,” he called out. She opened the door just wide enough to slip her elegantly coiffed head in the door. “Dr. Giuseppe Rocchia is here, Judge Verlaque.”

  “Great. Please send him in.”

  Both Verlaque and Paulik rose to their feet as Mme Girard led the theologian into the room and made introductions. “Would you like a coffee, Dottore?” she asked before closing the door.

  Giuseppe Rocchia held up his hand. “I never drink coffee outside of Italy, but thank you, chère Madame.” She smiled and quietly closed the door, and Verlaque could only imagine the grimace she was now making. He thought the Italian’s comment offensive but wise. When he drove to Italy, especially along the Ligurian coast with Marine, they would only stop the car once they had crossed over from France into Italy, celebrating by standing at the bar in a highway gas station, reveling in the good coffee.

  “Did you just arrive in Aix this morning?” Verlaque asked the dottore.

  “Sì. I left my hotel in San Remo at 7:00 a.m. in order to be here by 10:00 a.m. The hardest part was finding parking in this town.” Rocchia added to the parking drama by brushing some imaginary lint off of his blue striped woolen pants, which matched his vest and jacket. His French was very good, if heavy with a thick Italian accent, and he wore the tan and dyed-red hair of a man who was afraid of getting old. Verlaque estimated Rocchia to be in his midsixties.

  “It’s Tuesday, market day,” Verlaque said to explain the lack of parking.

  Rocchia sneered. “Yes, I saw the price of your olive oil as I walked by one of the stands. Scandalous.”

  Paulik shifted in his chair and resisted reminding the dottore of a recent scandal in Italy, not France, where cheap Spanish olive oil had been bottled and sold as Tuscan. “When was the last time you saw Dr. Georges Moutte, Dr. Rocchia?” he asked.

  “As I told your officer, it was at a theology conference in Munich last spring. I was the keynote speaker,” he added unnecessarily.

  “And you never met at the university?” Verlaque asked.

  Giuseppe Rocchia looked at Verlaque with the slightest hint of annoyance. “Yes, of course, once or twice, but I didn’t have much reason to come to Aix during the school term.” He paused and then said, “Ah. You must be wondering how my name came up in the search for the next doyen. I submitted my candidacy, quite simply, when Georges told me of his plans to retire.”

  “Why Aix? You’re right, I was wondering.”

  “Aix’s Theology Department is renowned in Europe.”

  Verlaque leaned forward. “I’m sorry to have to ask you this, Dottore, but we’ve been asking all of the faculty and staff the same question. Where were you on Friday evening between midnight and the early morning?”

  Rocchia let out a small laugh. “I was in Perugia, in bed, with my wife of forty years sleeping beside me.”

  “Thank you, Dottore. You realize that your wife will have to be prepared to confirm that fact.”

  “It would not be a problem for her, Judge.”

  “Did you hear about Dr. Moutte’s announcement that he was postponing his retirement?”

  “Yes,” Rocchia answered. “Annie Leonetti phoned me on Saturday morning to tell me—I can’t think why, as we’ve never been that friendly. Bernard Rodier informed me later that day of Georges’s murder.”

  “Thank you,” Verlaque said. “One last question, and I’m sorry if this is off topic. I’m planning on going to Umbria this Christmas…fewer tourists than in Tuscany. Can you recommend a good restaurant in Perugia?”

  “Around the corner from the Piazza IV Novembre is a good trattoria. I can write it down for you, but normally the restaurants in the countryside are better.”

  Verlaque passed the dottore a piece of paper and a pen. “A friend of mine suggested a restaurant just outside of the old town, a 1960s place that’s part of a hotel.”

  Rocchia opened his mouth as if to speak and then closed it again. “No. Doesn’t ring a bell, sorry.”

  “Ah, I must be confusing Perugia with another town. Perhaps Orvieto.” Verlaque stood up and Rocchia and Paulik followed suit. They shook hands and Verlaque asked, “You will be in Aix for the next few days?”

  “Yes, I thought I could get some research done here. You can contact me at the Villa Gallici.”

  “Thank you,” Verlaque said as he held open the door.

  Paulik waited for the judge to close the door and then said, “He’s from Perugia, so he would know about this 1960s restaurant, even if he didn’t like eating there. I mean, if you’re from a city that size, you know all the restaurants, good and bad.”

  “I agree. He knew I was quizzing him.”

  “What’s up with this restaurant? Do you really know it?”

  “Dr. Moutte talked about eatin
g there. He told a friend of Marine’s about it.” Verlaque then told the commissioner of Sylvie Grassi’s short affair with the doyen. Bruno Paulik had a reaction that at first surprised Verlaque: a blank stare, as if he had just been told the sun was shining, or the coffee was bad. Verlaque now realized that he had overreacted that night at his apartment, and felt ashamed.

  Paulik said, changing the subject, “Moutte went to Perugia? So we can assume he ate at this place with Rocchia. And as far as Rocchia wanting to teach in Aix, I think I suspect a motive other than Aix’s Theology Department being renowned.”

  “What is it?”

  “For such an important man, he didn’t complain about having to come to Aix on such short notice.”

  “You’re right,” Verlaque said. “Perhaps he has other business here? I find it hard to believe that he’ll be doing research here in Aix. Someone of his fame always has a string of research assistants.”

  Paulik continued talking as if he hadn’t heard Verlaque’s comment. “I recognized Rocchia when he walked in, and I think he recognized me. He’s at the Aix opera festival every July, front row center…I’ve sat behind him a few times. He attends all the gala parties and hangs out with the singers and musical directors. I’d say he wanted to be doyen just to have that apartment for the festival. We know that the doyen didn’t even have to teach, right? Just research, which he could have done from Perugia.” Bruno Paulik took holiday time to attend operas in France and Italy whenever he could.

  “Bruno, it doesn’t seem like—” A knock on the door interrupted their conversation and Mme Girard poked her head in the door.

  “Excuse me, gentlemen,” she said.

  “No problem,” Verlaque replied.

  “I noticed in my calendar that you both have a meeting with the mayor scheduled today.”

  Verlaque and Paulik jumped up. “Thank you, Mme Girard! What time is it for?” Verlaque asked, reaching for his coat.

  Mme Girard looked at her thin Cartier watch. “It started, oh, about ten minutes ago.”

  Chapter Twenty-two

  A Pint of Guinness

  “I feel like we wasted the afternoon,” Paulik said as they left the Palais de Justice and walked along the tiny rue Fauchier. “It’s almost 5:00 p.m.”

  Verlaque stopped to light his preferred cigar of the moment, a Bolivar Belicoso, which smelled like chocolate, making him salivate even before he tasted it. “It couldn’t be helped,” he replied. “Some days are like that, plus our meeting with the mayor had been planned for months. Did Flamant manage to find out anything?”

  “Yes. The car that hit Mlle Zacharie was painted blue, but a special-order paint job, a sparkling midnight-blue that BMW owners seem to like.”

  “Good. Do we have the list of car thefts in the region last night? A blue BMW should narrow it down.”

  “You would think. But as you know, BMWs are the thief’s favorite prize. There were five blue BMWs reported stolen last night from Marseille to Nice, and going west we checked as far as Montpellier.”

  “Montpellier? That’s two hours away.”

  “Yeah, but coming to Aix with a hot car seems to be the cherry on the cake. And the thieves around Toulon tend to show off the cars in Saint-Tropez, I’m told.”

  “So we need to hope that the killer did one, steal a car, and two, that he or she ditched the car somewhere, otherwise it’s on a boat to Africa right now.”

  “Quite honestly I don’t see any of the faculty or staff being able to steal a car.”

  Verlaque nodded. “Although two of the students managed to break into the humanities building. But you’re right, we’ll have to ask all of our suspects what kind of cars they own.”

  Paulik doubted that any of the theologians owned midnight-blue BMWs. “I’ll put Flamant on it,” he said. He stopped at the top of the rue Bédarrides to send a text message to Alain Flamant, and Verlaque leaned against a metal post that stopped cars from double-parking and smoked his cigar. It was silly to have lit it, he thought, as they would be at Mlle Zacharie’s apartment in under a minute. He stopped puffing so that the cigar could slowly burn out.

  They arrived at number 17 and Verlaque leaned back and looked up at the windows, their broken shutters giving away the poor condition of the apartments inside.

  They rang the bell and were buzzed in, for Audrey Zacharie’s boyfriend was expecting them. The building’s entry hadn’t been cleaned in weeks, the dirty white-tiled floor littered with fliers for pizza and Chinese fast-food joints. They headed up the narrow stairs single file and then knocked on the second-floor door labeled “Zacharie-Gasnal.” A shuffle was heard and the door was opened by a tall, thin young man whose red, swollen eyes revealed that he had been crying. He said nothing, and stepped aside to allow the men in. The apartment was already dark, the curtains pulled shut. The air was stale and smelled of cigarette smoke.

  “You’ll have to excuse the mess,” Michel Gasnal said in a deep voice. “Audrey did the…cleaning.” He slumped down in an armchair.

  “I’m so sorry for your loss,” Paulik said, sitting opposite Gasnal on a small sofa. “I’m Commissioner Bruno Paulik, and this is Judge Verlaque.”

  Verlaque shook hands with Gasnal and pulled out a chair from under the dining room table and sat down beside the young man. Gasnal put his head in his hands and began to quietly weep. “Do you have anyone who can be here with you?” Verlaque asked, surprising himself with his empathy.

  “My parents are on their way down from Rennes,” Gasnal replied. “Audrey’s parents live here in Aix.”

  “Good. I’m glad you’ll have company,” Verlaque replied. Even had they left Rennes in the morning, M. and Mme Gasnal still wouldn’t be in Aix until well after midnight. He pictured the Gasnals, driving through rain across France, but he couldn’t bear to think of M. and Mme Zacharie.

  “Michel,” Verlaque said, leaning forward. “Your girlfriend was hit by a car that didn’t stop, which is a crime. We have reason to suspect that her death may not have been an accident.”

  Michel Gasnal looked up at the judge in wonderment. “What are you saying, that she was murdered?” he asked, choking on his words.

  “We have to consider it, since her boss was murdered this weekend.”

  “And now you’re going to ask me if she had any enemies, like they do in the movies?” Gasnal asked. “Well, the answer is no.”

  Verlaque nodded and Paulik stayed silent, and so Gasnal continued. “Audrey wasn’t the easiest person to get along with…she was bossy and people thought she was arrogant. But she never hurt anyone, and no one would ever hurt her. It was a hit-and-run, non? The driver panicked, non?”

  “Perhaps,” Paulik answered. “Do you know where she was going last night?”

  “No. She was high-strung and so liked to go out walking when she was upset or needed to think,” Gasnal answered.

  “Upset?” Paulik asked. “Did you have an argument?”

  “No. We were watching television together and then she just announced that she wanted to go out for a walk. But like I said, she often did that.”

  “Did she receive any phone calls last night?” Verlaque asked.

  Michel Gasnal looked worried. “No.”

  “And the night of Dr. Moutte’s death, you were both at the Bar Zola?” Paulik asked.

  “Yeah. I was in the bar from around 10:00 p.m. on and Audrey met me there after Moutte’s fancy party. We left around 2:00 a.m.”

  “And last night?” Verlaque asked as softly as he could.

  Gasnal again buried his head in his hands. “I thought you would ask me that. I was here alone, watching television, like I said. No one called, so I have no one to back me up on that.”

  “And you didn’t call the police when your girlfriend didn’t come back after her walk?” Paulik asked.

  “I fell asleep on the sofa,” Gasnal answered. “If you must know, I smoked some pot. It helps me to fall asleep, and I sleep very soundly when I take it. I was woken up by the p
olice at the door this morning.” He began sobbing again and Verlaque and Paulik got up.

  “Thank you, Michel,” Verlaque said. “We’ll let ourselves out.”

  Verlaque and Paulik stayed silent as they walked down the stairs. Once out on the street, where it was getting dark, Paulik said, “Did you see the stereo on the way out?”

  Verlaque shook his head back and forth. “No, I didn’t.”

  “It was a newer-model Bang and Olufsen,” Paulik replied.

  “You’re kidding? On a waiter and secretary’s salary?” Verlaque relit his cigar and asked, “Care for a pint at the Bar Zola?”

  “You’re on. My girls aren’t at home tonight. Hélène has been working really long hours at the vineyard so she took the day off, took Léa out of school, and they’ve driven up to her sister’s place in the Drôme.”

  “Well, Guinness doesn’t exactly count as dinner, but come on,” Verlaque said.

  “It’s dinner for the Irish, isn’t it?”

  They retraced their steps up the rue Bédarrides, turning right on the rue Fauchier, until they could hear the bar, noisier than it had been when they passed it earlier. They walked in and squeezed their way to the bar, and the barman, one of the rare Aixois who wore a beard and long hair, recognized the judge.

  “A pint of Guinness?” he asked.

  “Two,” Verlaque answered.

  Verlaque watched the barman slowly pour the beers. Tattooed on his arm was a verse from Rimbaud. It made Verlaque smile and almost forget why he had come. He leaned over the bar and asked, “You have a client who comes in here regularly with his girlfriend, Michel Gasnal.”

  “What if I do,” the barman replied, not looking up.

  “His girlfriend’s boss at the university was murdered late Friday night, and they claim they were here.”

  “They were. He came around 10:00 p.m. and she came later, toward midnight. But I told that to the cop that came in here yesterday.”