Murder in the Rue Dumas: A Verlaque and Bonnet Provencal Mystery (Verlaque and Bonnet Provencal Mysteries)
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Thierry looked around for the familiar wire-rimmed glasses and hunched-over shoulders, but couldn’t see anyone like that. He walked slowly through the bar, looking at each table, trying not to look too much like someone who had been called here, perhaps on a hoax. There were three small tables at the back, and at the middle table he saw a girl, alone, with red glasses and red lipstick that matched the glasses. She smiled and quickly waved, and then put her hand down and held on to her beer glass as if it would race across the table. Thierry squeezed past two students who were standing at the bar arguing about Leonard Cohen and sat down across from her. “You got new glasses,” Thierry said, immediately regretting his opening line. He should have said, “You look fantastic.” That’s what Yann would have said.
“Yes, Dr. Leonetti helped me pick them out,” Garrigue said as she unconsciously lifted her hand up to the glasses and felt them, to make sure that they were indeed her new pair. “She helped me with my hair too, and the lipstick was a present from her.”
Thierry ordered a beer from the waiter. He looked at Garrigue and smiled. “Super. It looks super. And congratulations on the Dumas. I’m really happy for you.” He watched Garrigue as she sipped her beer and saw that the dark red glasses brought out her blue eyes, and that her hair, normally just pulled back in a ponytail, was now expertly piled on top of her head, like a crown, though slightly disheveled.
“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about,” she said, her hand grazing her beer glass and almost tipping it over. “The Dumas. I don’t want it, and Dr. Leonetti told me that you were the runner-up.”
Thierry looked at her in amazement. Tonight she really didn’t seem like the same girl, physically or intellectually. But then he didn’t really know her. “Are you nuts?” he finally asked. He was so caught up in looking at her beauty and he almost hadn’t heard the word “Dumas.”
Garrigue laughed and Thierry’s beer arrived, but he didn’t touch it.
“I’ve been offered a job instead,” she answered. “In Paris.”
Thierry stared at her and then shook his head back and forth. “Wait…Paris? I don’t get it. Explain, please, now.”
“I’m going to work in television.”
“Television?” Thierry asked, shocked.
“It’s not as bad as you think,” Garrigue said. “It’s for the station Arte. Dr. Leonetti has a cousin who works there, and she got me the interview. I’ll be a research position on a new documentary series being filmed next fall. The salary is more than generous, it will keep me busy for two years.”
Thierry whistled. “A lot of money, eh?”
“Yes, I’m embarrassed by how much. I’ll be the consultant on both Saint Augustine and Saint Ambrose. It’s the chance of a lifetime.”
Thierry lifted his glass to hers and they clinked. “What can I say? I can’t believe you’re giving me the Dumas.”
Garrigue smiled. “I’m not. You were runner-up. You deserve it.”
“What can I give you in return?” Thierry innocently asked.
Garrigue leaned forward. “You can kiss me.”
Thierry couldn’t believe it. All this time, chasing after girls in every bar in Aix, and it was one of his fellow students who seemed to be in love with him. He leaned toward Garrigue and kissed her once, and liking the taste and feel of her lips, did it again.
Thierry and Garrigue’s courting lasted seven years, never in the same city. Thierry finished his thesis, and thanks to the Dumas was offered an assistant professorship at a small university in Montana. The state was entirely different from his native Marseille, but he grew to love it, as did Garrigue. She finally left her high-paying job in London at the BBC and moved to join Thierry, they married, and she became the vice president of a local television station. Yann married Suzanne, they lived in Paris, he a banker and she a stay-at-home mother of their five children.
Every year Garrigue and Thierry sent Annie Leonetti a Christmas card to that coveted address on the place des Quatre Dauphins. Garrigue was always careful to include photos of their two children and Montana in every season. Annie put the Christmas card with the other ones on the black marble mantle in the apartment’s elegant living room, watched over by the dancing figures on the ceiling’s fresco, finally removing the cards sometime around Easter.