Dead in the Dregs

by Peter Lewis

  “Well, thank you for your time,” Sackheim said, not rising to the bait.

  Pitot calmed down. “Are you sure you don’t want to sample? I have a very fine Nuits-Saint-Georges, Les Maladières,” he said placatingly.

  “No, thank you,” Sackheim said.

  “How about a little sip of marc? I make my own. We have an old still out back, a real antique,” he entreated.

  “I regret,” Sackheim apologized. “We have important business.”

  “Fine, fine, as you wish,” the man muttered, waving his hands in the air. He turned back to his labors.

  Sackheim and I looked at each other, shrugged, and made our way carefully back as we had come.

  Upstairs, Françoise Pitot stood in the kitchen, staring into the sink.

  “Excusez-moi, Madame, mais,” Sackheim cleared his throat, “I must ask you again: The American wine writers, Messieurs Feldman and Goldoni, have they ever been here to taste?”

  “You have met my husband, Monsieur? You have been downstairs, to the cave?” She enunciated the word as if it had an acrid taste. “And you ask if Americans come here to taste our wine?” She gazed out the kitchen window to the field where I had crouched two nights before, its furrows converging at the train tracks just visible in the distance.

  “Pardonnez-moi, Madame. Thank you for your time.”

  In the car I asked, “Where to now?”

  “Domaine Carrière, of course.”

  It was a drive of no more than ten minutes. Sackheim pulled into the gates and parked in the courtyard.

  “Stay here,” he ordered in a voice I hadn’t heard before.

  He approached one of the men in the first building, who directed him to the residential wing of the property. A woman answered the door, and they stood conversing for two or three minutes. When he returned to the car, he sat in the driver’s seat, his hands on the steering wheel, staring straight ahead, as if he couldn’t decide which way to turn.

  “Do you ever get the feeling that you are chasing your own tail?” he asked the rearview mirror.

  “Often,” I said.

  He turned the key and pulled out into the street.

  “You want to tell me what’s going on?” I asked.

  “Not yet,” he replied. “So. We will move on now to the public tasting.”

  We drove most of the way in silence, until he said, “Alors, I found Madame Carrière in the house and told her that I was investigating the incident that occurred in their cave. I made reference to your ‘accident,’ without implying that any complaint had been filed. She said it was unfortunate, a coincidence. Her husband couldn’t explain it. I asked her about Jean Pitot, and she said that he works at the domaine but that she would not see him today because he is pouring wine at the tasting, that he is unreliable, and that his situation at home is ‘compliqué.’ Then I asked about Feldman. She, of course, has not seen Feldman and knows nothing about this.”

  He paused. “Her husband said that he failed to arrive for an appointment that they had, but ‘these wine writers, they run from meeting to meeting, tasting to tasting, what can one do? They arrive late, they cancel.’ She is not wrong, you know.” He looked at me pointedly. “You Americans are fou, non? You work incessantly. You don’t know how to rest, how to enjoy life. Have dinner, have a glass of wine, relax a little.” It was a lecture, and he glanced at me to see how I was taking it. “Now you are making us in Europe live the same way. It is a slow death, mon cher. A slow death from too much speed.” He made a little explosion of air through his lips.

  I didn’t mind. I understood his frustration, and, frankly, I agreed with him.

  We entered the walls of Beaune and were immediately stuck in traffic.

  “Okay,” he said, “You will be better walking. You have your ticket, yes? And your tastevin? Bon.” He gave me directions to the Hôtel-Dieu and rolled the window down as I got out of the car. “Remember to spit.”

  24

  An endless sea of people milled through the streets. As I entered the plaza in front of the magnificent edifice of the Hôtel-Dieu, I confronted an unbelievable scene. It was as if the entire town had shown up for the grand event: old and young, couples and families, mothers and fathers and children—a public infatuated with wine. The mood was festive, the air electric.

  There was no way I was going to find Rosen. People were pushing and shoving, trying to make their way through the doors into the tasting. I stepped into the crowd, clutching my ticket and program.

  Tables lined the perimeter of the stone-walled, low-ceilinged room, and the crush before the tables was frenzied, people hoisting their tastevins and calling out for a sip of wine. I was sandwiched on all sides, pushed to and fro by the mass of humanity. I tried to scan the room for Rosen, but it was hopeless. I spotted Jean Pitot, who averted his eyes when he caught sight of me, and just caught a glimpse of Monique before the crowd blocked my view.

  By the time I reached her table, she was gone. André Guignard had taken over. He was laughing, rosy cheeked and jolly, but he dropped the façade when he recognized me. He dutifully poured a dram of raspberry-hued Pinot Noir in my tastevin and diverted his attention to the next customer.

  I decided to approach Carrière’s table. Lucas Kiers was standing there next to a short, humorous-looking fellow dressed nattily in an unseasonal seersucker suit and bow tie, his small, birdlike eyes peering out through perfectly round, clear-rimmed glasses.

  “Stern!” Kiers greeted me. “Do you know Tad Peck? The most influential barrel broker in Burgundy.”

  “I’ve not had the pleasure.”

  Peck and I shook hands. Carrière reluctantly poured me a little wine. When I looked up, Jean Pitot had reappeared behind the table.

  “My assistant, Jean Pitot,” Carrière said to Peck.

  “So, this is the young man I arranged the stage for at Norton?” Peck said. “Nice to meet you, finally. Sorry I missed you in Napa. How’d everything work out? I can’t believe you were there when Richard Wilson was murdered. I’d love to hear about it.”

  Pitot didn’t respond. Peck hardly seemed to notice and turned to me without losing a beat.

  “Who are you with?” he inquired. “Do you purchase barrels from Frossard? I don’t think I’ve ever heard your name.”

  “I’m here with Freddy Rosen. I own a bar in Calistoga.”

  “He’s being modest,” Kiers said. “Babe was considered one of the finest sommeliers in America before he dropped out. But he’s not here for the Hospices. He’s investigating Wilson’s murder.”

  Peck pushed his way forward to get closer to me. I was incensed that Kiers had revealed the purpose of my trip so casually, and I turned my back on both of them.

  “I’d love to have a chat,” I said to Jean. “If you can take a break.”

  He looked at Carrière, who wasn’t about to agree to anything, least of all a conversation with me. It was obvious that Carrière, not Pitot’s father, had arranged the gig at Norton through Peck.

  “Pardon, Monsieur Carrière,” I said, “I just wanted to make sure that everything was fine at your cave. I’m sorry for what happened. That was terrible.”

  “What happened?” Peck asked, insinuating himself into the conversation.

  “We had an accident in the cave. Some barrels fell. He was almost injured,” Carrière said, never taking his eyes off mine, his voice all but lost in the din.

  Unsure what Carrière had just said, Peck suggested that we have a drink after the tasting. “You’ve got to tell me all about this.” Then he picked up where he’d left off with Kiers.

  Carrière leaned across the table. “You should be more careful,” he said.

  I could tell from where I was standing that Kiers and Peck, were, in fact, following my exchange with Carrière, who looked as if he wanted to murder me on the spot. I could see him working his clenched jaw. An artery was throbbing on the side of his neck.

  “What did you say? The barrels just came loose?” Peck suddenl
y said, turning to face us. Carrière grunted, then shrugged.

  “Were you hurt?” Kiers asked.

  “My knee’s a little sore, but nothing serious,” I said. Peck and Kiers resumed their conversation, but I could see Kiers glancing at me out of the corner of his eye.

  “You will feel worse if you don’t stop,” Carrière whispered, leaning across the table again.

  “Stop what?” I asked.

  “You know what I am saying,” he said. He stood up and, putting on a smile, poured an old woman a taste of his wine.

  Kiers watched me as I turned to go, and called, “I’ll see you later at the hotel.”

  “I moved,” I said. “I’m staying with Freddy Rosen in Saint-Romain,” but I wasn’t sure if he could hear me in the crush of people clamoring for wine.

  I wandered aimlessly through the tasting. It was an exercise in futility. No matter how much I might once have enjoyed it, sampling another thirty or forty wines now held no interest. I searched the crowd for the unmistakable figure of Smithson Bayne, but if he and Rosen had made it to the event, they were long gone. Probably on to another appointment. Jean Pitot refused to leave Carrière’s side and seemed to be hiding behind his threatening presence. And Monique hadn’t returned by the time I made my way back to Domaine Beauchamp’s table. There was no reason to stick around.

  I caught a taxi back to the house in Saint-Romain. I was exhausted, but it was impossible to sleep. I walked down the street, past an old house framed by walls that lay in ruins, to the parc Sackheim had mentioned. The sun lay obscured by the lacy branches of a willow. Vineyards stretched below me, glazed with ice, the fields silvered by mist. On the drive to Nuits, Sackheim had said that the villagers deconstructed an old Roman town to build their own. As I descended a narrow path through the broken walls, a mourning dove cooed from an elder, “Who, who, who?” and I remembered the owl I’d heard that evening on Howell Mountain. It seemed so long ago now, but I seemed no closer to being able to answer the question.

  Off the path I read a sign that had been mounted for tourists, explaining that in ancient times, wolves came down from the hills to hunt men. The villagers had to fight them off, but the wolves always took a few people each winter. The path bottomed out at a well.

  LEGEND HAS IT THAT IF YOU THROW A STONE DOWN THE WELL AND WAIT FOR IT TO HIT THE POOLS OF THE UNDERWORLD, YOU’LL HEAR THE VOICES OF THE DEAD, another sign read.

  I picked up a pebble and tossed it into the gaping blackness. I put my ear to the lip of rock. The stone seemed to descend forever.

  Not a ricochet, not a plop. Either the dead hadn’t yet made it to Hades, or they were tongue-tied.

  I walked back to the gîte. Rosen and Bayne hadn’t returned. I built a fire, found some pâté in the refrigerator, pulled a hunk from a stale baguette, and ate a simple dinner by myself in front of the fireplace.

  I felt as though the trip to France had been a great and expensive mistake. I was barking up the wrong tree. Maybe Pitot wasn’t a murderer, just a troubled young man whose family was a disaster. No wonder he’d gone to work somewhere else. Who would have wanted to slave away in that dungeon I’d seen chez Pitot? Feldman might not have been missing at all. He was, as Rosen said, too busy to spend time with the likes of me. He had two dozen growers to see in Burgundy alone, wines to review, and a newsletter to get out. And being in Beaune during the Hospices, he probably had receptions and events he was obligated to attend as well. Just because he’d missed an appointment at Domaine Carrière or hadn’t picked up messages at his hotel didn’t mean he’d disappeared. I didn’t much care for Jacques Goldoni, but that was neither here nor there. He’d have to figure out how to manage without Richard. I gave him a year, at most. I felt terrible for imposing on Sackheim, who had more important things to do.

  I thought I’d call Gio. I needed to hear a tender voice. It was nine o’clock in the morning in Napa, and November. No problem, I said to myself, and it wasn’t.

  “How are you?” she asked sweetly.

  “Fine, I suppose. I had an accident in a cellar, but other than that, it’s been a nonevent. I should probably never have left. It’s a waste of time. I think I’ll call it quits and come home.”

  “Babe, there’s something I need to tell you. I almost called you yesterday, but the time difference . . .”

  “Is something wrong?” I said.

  “No, nothing’s wrong. In fact, it’s great. My father’s opening a new winery with an old friend of his. He wants me to run it, or at least be his representative.”

  “That’s fantastic, Gio. Is it anybody I know?”

  “You’ve never met him. It’s not here.”

  “Where is it? Down south? Paso Robles? Santa Ynez? I’ve always wanted to see it down there.”

  “Much farther south.” She paused. “It’s in Chile.”

  “Chile?”

  “The Colchagua Valley. It’s gorgeous. The operation’s incredible. I don’t think I can afford to pass it up.”

  “No, of course not. You should do it,” I said, my heart sinking. “When do you start?”

  “That’s the thing. My father wants me to leave right away. He wants me to see the entire growing cycle. I already missed bud-break.” She hesitated. “I’m leaving the day after tomorrow.”

  “I don’t think I can get home that fast,” I said, but my attempt at irony fell flat.

  “I’m sorry, Babe. I really wanted to see you before I left.”

  “When do you think you’ll be back?”

  “They usually harvest in March. I should be home by Easter.”

  We told each other how much we missed each other. She asked again how it was going, and I repeated that it was going nowhere. Our good-byes were stilted.

  Rosen and Bayne got back late. They’d visited a couple more domaines after zipping through the public tasting and had attended a party that Frossard had thrown at his tonnellerie. I asked Rosen why they hadn’t waited for me before going on to the party, but he chided me for taking off without saying anything and didn’t seem to care when I explained I’d searched for them at the tasting. I decided not to make any wisecracks about his having slept with Monique and left the two of them sitting in front of the fireplace, discussing where they were going to go once they left Burgundy.

  It was barely light out when the phone exploded through my dreams. I hoped that Rosen would pick it up, but no one answered, and it kept ringing. I pulled myself out of bed and staggered downstairs.

  “Oui?” I said, yawning.

  “Babe, c’est toi?”

  “Yes. Colonel?”

  “Get up!” Sackheim ordered. “Get dressed! Hurry! Meet me in the little square of Aloxe, just before you get to Le Chemin de Vigne. Vite!”

  The roads had iced over. I drove slowly, slower than I wanted. The fields looked as if they’d been carved out of crystal, and the sky glowed in the morning light, a dome of polished mother-of-pearl.

  Sackheim was waiting impatiently in the car, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel, the motor idling.

  “What took you so long?” he asked irritably as he turned out of the tiny square.

  “I drove as fast as I could. What’s going on?”

  He didn’t answer me.

  The road ran up through vineyards and paralleled a paved irrigation ditch and past a cistern set into the earth that looked like a subterranean bomb shelter, a series of narrow chimneys giving vent to the gray, fog-laden atmosphere. Low walls, constructed of tightly set, perfectly cut stone, girdled the terraced vineyards.

  “His dog found the body. Carrière. He was hunting” was all he finally said. Then, after a moment’s silence: “He called the station on son portable, and Ponsard called me.”

  “Who?” I asked, unsure what had happened, who had found what body.

  “Kiers.”

  I turned in the seat to stare at him. “What? What are you talking about? Lucas Kiers is dead?”

  He looked at me for an instant and kept drivin
g.

  The road turned over a culvert and switchbacked past a cabotte, a hut built into the slope where workers would huddle for warmth in the old days. The vineyards, stepped into the hillside, curved gracefully, rising progressively to the edge of a forest, all but the tips of its woods sheathed in fog.

  “Le Bois de Corton,” Sackheim announced.

  The paving ended abruptly, the track continuing on, deeply scarred, its ruts puddled with muddy water. The car bumped and scraped as Sackheim hopelessly swerved to dodge the potholes. He came to a stop as we reached the border of the wood. Two police cars had pulled in at the end of the track, parked beside a dark blue Mercedes-Benz. I did a double take. It looked like the same car that had chased me down the nationale after my first visit to Domaine Carrière. Sackheim flung his door open and hurried up the path. The air was fragrant with the perfume of rot.

  In the middle distance Carrière stood surrounded by policemen, a dog standing at his side, alert. I followed Sackheim up the path.

  The leaves had turned, dirty spangles cut loose in the morning breeze, fluttering to earth. Carrière would have been walking slowly, his shotgun cradled in the crook of his arm. I could almost hear the quick whistle he would have used to roust his Brittany spaniel, who wouldn’t have budged, her tail extended and her nose turned to the wind. She would have known something was terribly wrong.

  As we approached the scene, I could see Ponsard taking a statement from the vigneron. Kiers’s body lay face up in his jogging suit, one arm extended, reaching and catching nothing at all. A film of dead leaves exposed portions of his torso. The blast had gone completely through him.

  Carrière explained that he’d poked the body with the barrel of his gun. He’d knelt down and peeled a layer of leaves from the face, stood, and set the muzzle where the man’s cheek met the ground to wedge it up. He had recognized Kiers immediately and promptly summoned the gendarmes, who had arrived within minutes.

  Sackheim instructed his men to comb the brake, though it would be a hopeless undertaking. Hunters walked these tracks every weekend. The leaf rot had been tamped down and glistened, a mirror without reflection.