by Peter Lewis
There was still the arrow and the shattered window of the trailer to explain, but it turned out I hadn’t been the only target. There’d been a series of late-night incidents and random acts of vandalism that the cops traced to the very troubled teenage son of one of the dysfunctional Holy Roller families that scratched out a living up near Angwin. They’d confiscated his crossbow and gotten a court order that put him into counseling for the foreseeable future. An unlucky coincidence was the official conclusion.
The press that had been hanging around disappeared as suddenly as it had materialized. On to the next inflated scoop, playing to a public with the attention span of a three-year-old. I returned to work, the petty tasks and details of managing the bar drowning me with their pointlessness. I had failed to crack the case and had let Janie and our son down. Too many permutations. I’d never been good at math.
One good thing had come out of all of it, though: I started calling Danny every few days. He hated his new school. Change is always rough on kids, but I wondered whether the death of his uncle, the deteriorating condition of his grandfather, and Janie’s growing anxiety over both weren’t equally the problem. She was worried, too, I knew, about both of us.
Gio and I picked back up, but the relationship had cooled. She couldn’t understand why I’d never told her that Richard Wilson and I were related. Worse than that, she suspected I hadn’t really cut myself off from Janie and that I harbored some deep longing to put the marriage back together. She wasn’t wrong.
When I wasn’t at the bar, I was home, listening to Monk or Chet Baker or Coltrane, reading Rilke and Machado, and making my way one recipe at a time through Richard Olney’s Simple French Food. Thing was, there was nothing simple about Olney or his food, nor was there anything simple about the gnawing sensation that Richard’s death constituted unfinished business for me personally.
As I trod my well-worn routine at Pancho’s in the following weeks, I kept going back over the case. Danny was right, of course: I would have felt great had I figured out who’d killed his uncle. I was convinced that the cops had it wrong, but that’s all I was convinced of. A migrant worker, especially one with a green card, doesn’t kill a wine critic. Winemakers would love to kill wine critics—I’d heard them say so plenty of times, though their threats were all bluster and braggadocio fueled by alcohol—but winemakers are farmers, and farmers, as a rule, aren’t really lunatics, even the ones who bury cow horns stuffed with manure in their vineyards.
I knew that Biddy Teukes was a little crazy—aren’t we all?—and maybe he had fried a brain cell or two with too many hits of acid, but I was sure that, despite his perverse sense of humor, he wasn’t a murderer. A rival writer seemed a more likely possibility, but neither Eric Feldman nor Jacques Goldoni had been anywhere near Napa the night Wilson had his hand amputated, his head stomped on, and his body forklifted into a cask of Cabernet Sauvignon. Even so, it was strange that both had decamped to Europe right after the murder.
No, this had to be a wack job, and I kept returning to the figure of Jean Pitot as if he were a weevil boring into the heart of a vine. Why didn’t he figure higher on the cops’ roster of suspects?
The last week of October, on a crystal-clear morning, I lit up a Cohiba a customer had laid on me as a tip and called Brenneke.
“Well, well,” he said. “What’s up?”
“I know you’ve been up shit creek for almost two months.”
“Yeah, well, it seems to me your paddle’s missing, too,” he retorted.
“After the murder, Goldoni disappeared.”
“He’s been interviewed. We’ve got his statement.”
“What about Feldman?” I asked.
“Ditto.”
“Doesn’t he get he’s a suspect?” I said.
“He’s not a suspect if he wasn’t here, Sherlock. There’s absolutely nothing to tie him to the scene.”
“Doesn’t it strike you as a little odd that they both left the country right after Wilson’s body turned up?”
“You’re the wine pro—you tell me. I thought that’s what they did.”
Brenneke was right.
“You guys follow up with Pitot?” I asked.
“Went home right after harvest. Norton said he had to help his own family make wine.”
“He’s the key to the whole thing,” I said.
“Says who? What do you want us to do, extradite him?”
I paused a moment.
“I want to go over there,” I said. “To follow them, follow the scent.”
“You’re nuts, Stern.”
“I’d like you to talk to Ciofreddi, see if he can arrange a contact for me. A cop or something.”
“What makes you think you can figure this out?” He sounded exasperated.
“Because I’m the only one who can.”
He hung up on me, but two days later the phone rang. It was Ciofreddi.
“You know, I thought about sending someone over myself,” he said, “but there’s no budget, and I can’t spare the manpower. We’re understaffed as it is.”
“Why don’t you go yourself?” I suggested.
“Sure, take my vacation in the French wine country like I do every year.” He paused. “I contacted the embassy in Paris. They contacted the consulate in Lyon. The bureaucracy is positively . . .”
“Byzantine,” I offered.
“Exactly. Anyway, I asked if they could just keep an eye on these guys. They’re over there every fall, as I guess you know.”
“Not to mention Pitot,” I said.
“Problem is, the Frogs don’t have homicide detectives. Not in Burgundy, where Pitot lives. And no crime’s been committed on French soil, so there’s nothing they can do anyway.”
I waited.
“If you go, it’s got to be on your own dime and strictly ex officio, but I think I can set up the contact. There’s a guy I’ve been in touch with, a colonel. All I ask is that you call me if something crops up.”
“How are you on hunches?” I said.
“I get one every once in a while. Like you, I have an odd feeling about Pitot. Norton says he went home to help his family, but . . . I don’t know. I figure you can blend in,” he concluded.
“I know my way around,” I said.
“So I hear. Let me think about this a little more.” He paused, then said, “I’ll get back to you in a day or two when I have it all set up.”
I thanked him and looked at my cookie jar. I had a little over a grand saved in tips, plus Janie’s fee, which she graciously refused when I offered her a refund. I’d need to travel simply and put my ticket on a credit card, but more than the money to pay for the trip, I’d need to make sure that it went smoothly, if I went at all. I decided to make another phone call.
“Biddy, I need to ask a favor of you.”
“Oh, really? In exchange for what? Ciofreddi hauling me in for questioning?”
I ignored the gibe. “I’m going to France,” I said. “I need a contact in the wine trade, to help me move in the same circles as Eric Feldman and Jacques Goldoni.”
“And I should do this for you why?”
“Because you’re well connected, and because it’s important.”
I could feel him mulling it over.
“You had nothing to do with Wilson’s death,” I said. “We both know that. It was just Ciofreddi, dredging up—what did you call it?—‘ancient history.’”
“I don’t know. It’s not easy this time of year. There’s one possibility: Frederick Rosen, an importer. Everybody calls him Freddie. He’s in New York, but he usually goes to France after harvest to check on his growers. Occasionally he’ll take two or three people with him. Let me make a call and see what I can do.” He paused. “No promises,” he said and hung up before I could say thanks.
I put Olney, Rilke, and Machado back in the bookcase and spent the next few days reading, reviewing maps, and making notes. From my old files I pulled the notebooks I’d kept years before. I made a
list of the domaines I’d visited, their proprietors and phone numbers, and each night after I returned home from Pancho’s, I made a few calls to France. On my last trip I’d stayed at a sweet little hotel in Aloxe-Corton, Le Chemin de Vigne, owned by a winemaker I’d once entertained in Seattle. The place had changed hands, as it turned out, but the woman who answered took the reservation. Les Trois Glorieuses, a weekend of debauched wine consumption, and its main event, the Hospices de Beaune, the gala auction of new wine held each year to benefit the local hospital, were scheduled midway through my visit. In normal circumstances, all hotels would be fully booked, but the woman at Le Chemin de Vigne had had a cancellation and told me that I was lucky to get a room.
I needed to call Janie to let her know what I was up to.
“I’m going to France,” I announced. “I leave next week.”
“If you think I’m going to pay for this . . .”
“You already have,” I said. “I booked my ticket yesterday.”
“What do you know that I don’t?”
“Call it a hunch.” I decided not to reveal anything else. It was better that way.
“What are you up to? It’s over.” Underneath the flippancy, I could hear the tension in her voice.
“Call it a hunger for real information. I’m following my nose and something stinks. Anyway, you asked me to find your brother’s killer.”
“I asked you to find my brother,” she corrected me. “And you did.”
I couldn’t tell her I wanted to prove to her that she’d made a mistake ever leaving me.
“I promise to be home by Thanksgiving. Tell Danny,” I said.
“What makes you think I’m going to give him up for Thanksgiving?”
“I just thought . . .”
“Just promise me something: that you’ll be careful,” she said quietly. “I don’t think I could bear losing someone else.”
That got me.
“I didn’t know you cared,” I said.
“I do.”
It was only the second time I remembered ever hearing her utter those words.
I asked Frank if he could handle the bar for a couple of weeks, give or take a few days, and he agreed. In fact, given my recent state of distraction, he seemed relieved to get rid of me. He even offered to look in on the Chairman and make sure his bowls were filled.
I got a SIM card for international calls installed in my cell. I didn’t want to pay a hotel’s tariffs every time I needed to hear Danny’s voice. And Ciofreddi asked me to let him know if and when I came across anything interesting. When I looked at it in the cold, hard light of day, the whole thing seemed a fool’s errand, but who could say?
I wasn’t sure what was coming, but just as I knew I’d had to walk out on my life in Seattle, I knew that something had changed, that I’d reached a turning point, and that there was no going back.
As the plane banked over the bay, I was blinded momentarily by the sun, then picked out the Golden Gate Bridge as it extended from the city in a sagging blood-red arch across the water, its far span disappearing in fog.
15
I had a window seat on the plane, and as we descended into Paris, I could just make out the spire of the Eiffel Tower in the distance. It felt as if I’d traded one landmark for another, as if the arc of the case had simply been translated into another language.
I had a couple hours before I needed to catch my train to Dijon and decided to pay a visit to Jonathan Jasper, a Brit who owned a sweet little wine bar on Cherche-Midi. I’d met him years before, but he was still at it—I’d seen the shop mentioned in an issue of Wine Watcher’s World devoted to Paris—and I knew that English-speaking denizens of the wine world passed through the place.
My heart sank when I spotted the FERMÉ sign on the door. I peered through the window. It was tiny, with a classic zinc-topped bar at one end and wine stacked neatly in crates from floor to ceiling. The hours posted said the shop was about to open, and as I turned, wondering if I should wait, I saw a man roughly my age bounding across the street. He dodged a motorbike and leapt to the curb, out of breath.
“Veuillez excuser mon retard, Monsieur,” he panted, as he unlocked the door.
“No problem,” I said. “I’m glad I caught you.”
“Pain de mie from Poilâne. Can’t make a sandwich without it. Come in, please. I’ll just be a minute.”
A brass bell tinkled as he pushed his way in. He stepped behind a curtain and emerged wiping flour all over his jeans.
“May I help you find something?” he asked, his British accent pure and high-pitched.
“Babe Stern,” I said, extending my hand.
“Babe! Of course. I thought I recognized you. So sorry. What are you doing in Paris?”
“On my way down to Burgundy,” I said.
“For the Hospices? Lovely!”
“No, I’m here to track down Eric Feldman and Jacques Goldoni.” Jasper lifted his head and examined me with an air of trepidation. “I’m working for Richard Wilson’s sister.” I figured I’d skip the association with the Napa sheriff’s department.
“Dreadful business,” Jasper said. “Positively awful.”
“You ever see Feldman or Goldoni in the store?”
“Oh, absolutely. They both passed through just last week.”
“Together?”
“No, never. Impossible,” he laughed.
“How’d they seem to you?”
“Well, Feldman was a bit dour. Rather standoffish, if you know what I mean.”
“The subject of Wilson’s murder didn’t come up, by any chance?”
“Unavoidable,” he said. “I couldn’t help but get the impression that Eric thought Wilson had gotten his just deserts, but he seemed reluctant to discuss it.”
“What about Goldoni?”
“He was different, more as if he needed to talk about it with someone.”
“What did he say?”
“He appeared genuinely distraught. He’s not convinced that he can pull it off, taking on the newsletter, I mean. He knows full well that Richard’s was the reputation. Nor is he sure he can cover the ground. It’s a grueling schedule.”
“He say anything about the murder itself?”
“Only that it’s left him in a state of shock and disbelief.”
“Wilson’s sister suggested he’s actually pretty competitive. You ever get the feeling he resented working in Wilson’s shadow?”
“Not really. But he’s certainly aware of the power accruing to him now.”
“He didn’t trot out any theories as to who he thinks killed his boss, did he?”
“I suppose I should confess that I asked. He seemed quite keen on the state of the investigation. He mentioned somebody named Matson, whose wines he acknowledged they’d thoroughly trounced. And a vineyard manager, a Mexican chap. I don’t remember his name.”
It was obvious Jasper had learned less than I had hoped. We shook hands.
“Take care,” I said.
“You, too. Bonne chance. And drop by on your way home. I’d love to hear how it comes out. Cheers.”
I grabbed a taxi and made my jet-lagged way to the Gare de Lyon, where the great board of arrivals and departures clicked and clicked and clicked, the syncopated codes charting the grand metamorphoses of track and gate and train. I bought my ticket, hurried to find my place in a second-class car, and slumped between the window and a businessman working furiously on a spreadsheet on his laptop.
Lulled by the track rattle as the train picked up speed, I dozed, every now and then opening my eyes to the evanescent landscape—the outskirts of the city, the terra-cotta-tiled suburbs, the telephone poles and water towers—and finally slept. When at last I opened my eyes, I took in the rolling hills, the windbreaks, the houses of once-upon-a-time burghers lodged beneath giant oak trees. I closed my eyes again, and when they reopened, I was in the midst of vineyards.
I’d spent my last days in Napa poring over Feldman’s newsletters, correlat
ing the names of winemakers with places on the map, and tried to imagine how he might set his itinerary. I’d done the same with Goldoni. It seemed that the writers could do the Côte d’Or in four or five days, tasting intensively in three or four daily appointments, with another two spent working south from Beaune, the first devoted to the Chalonnaise and the second in Beaujolais. I knew these guys were brisk. I’d organized the domaines by village, but it was obvious that the writers’ affections, and thus their schedules, favored the north.
I stood at the curb of the train station in Dijon, searching for a police car. Ciofreddi had arranged for his contact to meet me, a man named Sackheim who was a gendarme in Beaune, but all I saw were ordinary Renaults, Peugeots, and Fords as people bustled in and out of the station. Across the street a bum swayed, his bottle hoisted in a mad toast, but it was empty, and he smashed it against the pavement. He turned to the shopping cart that held all his worldly possessions, digging furiously through plastic bags, cursing existence. Whatever it was he was looking for, he couldn’t find it.
I hoped this wasn’t a portent. At the same moment, a dark brown Citroën pulled up in front of me, the window slid down, and a man stuck his head, silver haired and flat cut like a marine’s, out the window.
“Stern?” He pronounced it Shtayrn. He was older than I’d expected, sixtyish, and elegantly if simply dressed in a dark gray wool suit, matching V-neck sweater, pale blue shirt, and burgundy-colored tie.
