Dead in the Dregs

by Peter Lewis

  I walked over and looked down at Kiers, and Sackheim ordered me to step back. He was describing the angle of the pattern with his hand—a single shotgun blast from the front—which clearly revealed that Kiers had been confronted by his assailant, and the extended reach of his left arm suggested that he had pleaded for his life, attempting to fend off the imminent fact of his death.

  They cordoned off the crime scene with plastic tape. A photographer made the rounds. Sackheim instructed Ponsard to call in the Brigade de Recherche from Lyon and the K-9 unit from Dijon. Then one of the cops crouched beside the body, a look of studious and systematic detachment on his face, the way a freshman biology student would hesitate before dissecting his first splayed frog.

  “Leave him alone!” Sackheim commanded. “Wait for the team.” The man, chastened, rose and rejoined the others.

  Sackheim was talking with two of his officers. The younger of the two had closely cropped light brown hair, and he was muscularly built and handsome—until you saw the right side of his face and head. The ear was sheared off at the top, and his hair revealed a weirdly angled part that ran from the top of his head to a spot just over his right eye. Another scar traced his jaw from cheek to chin, each cicatrix livid in the morning light. You couldn’t help but wonder what had happened to him.

  On Sackheim’s instructions, his men took Carrière’s shotgun, asking him to follow them back to the station in Beaune. An ambulance arrived, and its attendants waited, smoking, letting the cops finish their work.

  When it was time for Sackheim, finally, to summon me to the car, we sat for a moment in silence before proceeding slowly back through the placid landscape of vineyards and stone walls.

  “Can you confirm the identity of the victim?” Sackheim asked.

  “Lucas Kiers. He writes for an American wine magazine, Wine Watcher’s World. He covers Burgundy.”

  “You have met him on this trip?”

  “He was staying at my hotel. I’d see him every morning. He’d jog, you know, run, for exercise. He mentioned that he’d do a circuit of the Bois. I didn’t know what that meant until we came up here.”

  “He was at the Hospices yesterday?”

  “Yes, and at Domaine Gauffroy the other day. He arrived late in the afternoon.”

  “Ah, oui, you told me. I remember now. And did he have any, how shall I say, any disagreement with the vignerons?”

  “No, not really. Just with Freddy Rosen.”

  Sackheim glanced at me. “Describe this.”

  I told him about Rosen’s argument with Kiers.

  “And Rosen, he is where?” Sackheim asked.

  “At the gîte,” I said. “Asleep.”

  “C’est très bizarre,” he muttered to himself. “I had hoped you would know more. Something that might have happened between Kiers and one of the vignerons. Now, I do not know.”

  He was silent as we descended the road that ran past the cisterns.

  “Who is the man you were speaking with? The one with the scars,” I asked.

  “A corporal. Marcellin. A good man.” Sackheim satisfied my curiosity even before I ventured to ask. An Algerian grape picker had been suspected of stealing some money. They had found him in an allée in Beaune. It seemed a routine cuff until Corporal Marcellin reached down to hoist the poor fellow to his feet. But the guy still had his pruning knife and got a few slashes in before they subdued him.

  “Not such a nice story, eh?” Sackheim asked. I shook my head.

  He dropped me at my car. “Eh bien,” he said. “Meet me at the station in Beaune at onze heures.” He spun around in the square and returned to deal with the murder of Lucas Kiers.

  I decided not to go back to the house. I didn’t need the third degree from Rosen or Bayne. I wandered the streets of Beaune, which were oblivious to tragedy and full of life on a damp Sunday morning, the air reverberant with the chiming of church bells.

  “Incroyable,” Sackheim said, sitting at a desk in the gendarmerie in Beaune. I sat in a chair and Ponsard paced the room. The walls were the color of the veins running through fine Roquefort. The tables and blackboard made me think I was back in the fifth grade. “First, Wilson in California,” Sackheim continued. “Then the disappearance of Eric Feldman. Now, Lucas Kiers. It seems impossible.”

  “That’s just what I was thinking,” I said. “It’s unreal.”

  “These guys make enemies,” Lieutenant Ponsard pointed out.

  “Bien sûr, they have enemies,” Sackheim snorted. “But who? Why?”

  “Think of all the shitty reviews,” Ponsard said. “These American bastards are arrogant sons of bitches. Imagine, telling us how to make wine!” He looked indignant.

  “Kiers was not American. Dutch,” Sackheim corrected him.

  “But he wrote for the American press. Same thing.”

  “Peut-être. Ou peut-être pas.”

  “Fine. His blood is Dutch. But the effect, pure American,” Ponsard insisted. His neatly trimmed moustache twitched. “At any rate, the murderer has to be a hunter.”

  “Ponsard, you are a fucking genius,” Sackheim said.

  Ponsard brightened for an instant, then realized his boss was being sarcastic. “I know, but . . . Maybe it was Carrière himself. He claims he found the body, but he is a hunter, too, non?”

  “Every second vigneron is a hunter,” Sackheim said dismissively. “This time of year, they go out in packs, like wolves. The woods are full of them. It’s a miracle they don’t kill each other every weekend.”

  “An accident, perhaps,” Ponsard ventured.

  “Impossible. Someone would have called for help. Anyway,” Sackheim countinued, “he was shot at close range. Face to face. No, my friends, Lucas Kiers was murdered. By a hunter, perhaps . . . or someone pretending to be a hunter.”

  Their conjectures seemed to go nowhere. I knew cops everywhere speculated much the same way, but my companions were engaged in what I thought of as a quintessentially French exercise: exhausting all possibilities until they at last arrived at the obvious.

  “Why Kiers?” I said.

  They ignored me. I wasn’t even sure I’d said it out loud.

  I gazed out the window. The beautiful tiled roofs of Beaune were nowhere to be seen, only the gray wash of clouds and the filigree of drizzle like a beaded curtain obscuring the view.

  “You cannot stay here,” Sackheim said, finally acknowledging my presence. “We must interrogate Carrière.”

  “No, of course, I understand completely.”

  He’d summoned me here, and now I was being dismissed. I had to wonder what the point had been. Sackheim appeared unsure himself. As bustling as Beaune was, especially during an event like the Hospices, the police station was a fairly provincial outpost. Whether Kiers was Dutch or, as I suspected, a naturalized American citizen, his murder would certainly draw more sophisticated authorities from Lyon, if not Paris. And if Feldman was indeed missing—Sackheim had said there were no detectives on the Côte d’Or—his disappearance would prompt attention at the highest levels. Wilson’s death had been splashed across the French press. The police would want to contain any scandal or damage, if they could.

  “What will you do?” Sackheim asked, but he said it as if he were posing the question to himself, confirming my suspicions.

  “I don’t know,” I confessed. “I’d like to stick around, but . . .”

  “No, I don’t mean in the future. I mean right now. I must deal with Kiers. First things first. And we must find Jean Pitot,” he said pointedly to his lieutenant. “You should rejoin your friends now,” he said, turning back to me. “But I will need a statement from you.”

  No one was at the house when I returned. I stretched out on the sofa, my mind awash with images and theories. I closed my eyes and saw the body of Lucas Kiers, his hand reaching out to the void. Then I opened them and stared at the ceiling, thinking about Pitot and Carrière, Jean’s parents, Marcellin with his scarred face. At some point I fell asleep. I was awakene
d with a start by Rosen and Bayne coming through the front door. They had sandwiched in one last appointment before hitting the road. I told them to take a seat.

  “Lucas Kiers is dead,” I said. “Shot.”

  “What?” Rosen exclaimed. Bayne, who hadn’t bothered to sit, turned, training his full attention on me.

  “In the Bois de Corton. It happened this morning. He was out jogging. It looks like a hunting accident, but . . .”

  “I can’t believe it,” Rosen said. “This is nuts, insane.”

  “You actually saw it?” Bayne asked.

  “Not the murder, but the crime scene, yes. I was up there with the gendarmes. That was Colonel Sackheim who was calling this morning when the phone rang.”

  “Christ,” Rosen muttered, collapsing on the sofa. Bayne walked to the French doors that led onto a terrace. The weather had broken. The sun was out, and steam rose from the fields.

  They were quiet, visibly shocked, and didn’t know what to say.

  “We’re supposed to take off,” Rosen finally said. “I have appointments in Côte-Rôtie and Hermitage on Monday. I’m supposed to make a quick stop in Beaujolais tonight.” He paused. “Maybe we should stick around,” he said to Bayne.

  “This doesn’t concern us,” the lawyer said. “There’s nothing for us to do. What about you?” he asked me.

  “I don’t know. I’m in way over my head. I thought I was looking for Richard’s killer, but now . . .” I shook my head. “The situation’s out of control.”

  “You’re welcome to come with us,” Rosen offered.

  “Thanks. That’s generous. But I need to wrap things up here. I’m supposed to get back in time for Thanksgiving.”

  Each of us was lost in thought.

  “I’m sure your intentions were of the best,” Bayne finally said. “But if you’re willing to take my advice, I’d suggest you leave this to the authorities. You don’t want to get involved. This is gonna get very complicated. You keep sticking your nose in this shit, they may not let you go.”

  I hadn’t thought of that. It was the last thing I needed.

  “Let me call Philippe Frossard,” Rosen said, lifting himself from the sofa. “I’ll see if I can arrange for you to stay here a few more days until you decide what you want to do.” He went downstairs.

  They packed up their stuff. The silence that had descended on the house was unnerving. When they’d finished, they set their bags by the front door.

  “I spoke to Philippe,” Rosen said. “The place is yours for the moment, but you might want to call him.” He handed me a piece of paper with Frossard’s phone number.

  “I appreciate it.”

  I walked them out to the car.

  “Have you spoken to Goldoni today?” I asked.

  “We said good-bye last night at the party,” Rosen said.

  “How about Monique?”

  “I called her this morning to see if she wanted to join us on the road, but she didn’t answer. I’m not sure where she is.” He and Bayne exchanged looks, Bayne’s suggesting he thought her absence would simplify their trip considerably.

  We shook hands.

  “Thanks for everything,” I said. Rosen just shook his head.

  “Take my advice,” Bayne said, “and get your ass home just as fast as you can.”

  25

  I was sure Ponsard had it all wrong. The notion that Kiers had been murdered in a hunting accident, or that he had been shot by a winemaker he’d savaged in print, seemed too pat. My thoughts kept returning to Monique and Goldoni. They shared a secret. Something had happened in Barsac, something that involved Wilson and Monique, something that may have involved Jean Pitot. Were she and Goldoni conspiring together? Or had Goldoni threatened her?

  I spent a restless night tossing and turning, and woke up with my T-shirt soaking wet. I pulled myself out of bed and shaved and showered. I found a CD player in a cabinet in the living room and sat at the table, drinking coffee and smoking, enjoying the solitude and listening to Michel Petrucciani. Every time I listened to Petrucciani, I couldn’t help but picture his diminutive frame carried onstage and set down awkwardly on the piano stool. And then he would take off, like a figure out of a fairy tale, the tortured body with perfect hands producing lyric sweetness of virtuosic purity and power. His music nearly made the whole sordid mess fade away, but it was no use. I still wasn’t done. I drove into Beaune. Sackheim wouldn’t welcome my intrusion, but I had little choice.

  I parked on the gravel in front of the police station on rue des Blanches Fleurs. An officer directed me to an office at the rear of the second floor where Sackheim stood at a bulletin board. Just as I expected, he wasn’t pleased to see me but waved me in and gestured for me to take a seat.

  “Feldman is the key,” he was saying to Ponsard. “And, of course, there’s Wilson. But Napa has the body, so this won’t help us.”

  “Sans sa main,” Ponsard pointed out.

  “D’accord,” Sackheim admitted. “Yes, they must find the hand. But Kiers, Kiers . . . is interesting.”

  Ponsard dutifully awaited his further edification, as did I.

  “You recall what Carrière said. He called the body ‘dur,’” Sackheim continued. “But if Kiers was shot just that morning, rigor mortis had barely set in. And it was covered with leaves. Did you notice that?”

  Ponsard and I looked at each other.

  “How can the body be covered with leaves if he is shot the same morning?” Sackheim asked.

  I ventured the obvious: “Whoever killed him put leaves around the body to make it look as if he’d been there a while.”

  “Bien sûr, précisement. And who would do such a thing? Kiers was seen at the public tasting Saturday by many people. And Ponsard confirmed that he was at the fête chez Frossard that night. Only someone who hadn’t seen him would try to disguise the time of death.”

  “Or someone who’d been there but wanted to hide the fact,” I said.

  “D’ac,” Sackheim nodded appreciatively. “Tell us, my friend, you are experienced, a sommelier, someone who’s been around these writers, and now you have met some of the vignerons. You have read the journalism of Wilson and Kiers. Is there anyone who seems to have a motive for wishing these men dead?”

  They trained their eyes on me. I took a moment to reflect.

  “Wilson certainly made a lot of enemies, but not in Burgundy. Not in a long time, anyway. He gave it up several years ago. It’s too complicated to explain, but that’s why he hired Jacques Goldoni to cover this area.”

  “But if that’s the case—and you are here to find Wilson’s murderer—why come to Burgundy at all?” Sackheim expected an answer.

  “Because I wanted to talk to Feldman and Goldoni, and I knew they’d be here. And because Jean Pitot was at Norton when Wilson was killed.”

  He thought about this for a moment, then said, “And Kiers?”

  “Kiers specialized in Burgundy. I haven’t read all that much, but he certainly might have written some reviews that could have angered a vigneron or two. He also wrote human interest stories—you know, about families, conflicts, that sort of thing.”

  Even I realized how little help that was. But, then, Kiers hadn’t really been on my radar. How was I to know that he’d get himself killed?

  “This Jean-Luc Carrière, I don’t trust him,” Ponsard interjected.

  “Oui, there are inconsistencies,” Sackheim said. “We have to continue our interrogation of him, and we must locate Jean Pitot. He is Carrière’s protégé. He was in Napa when Wilson was murdered, as you say. We must unravel the mystery of le jeune Pitot and find him before another wine writer turns up dead.”

  “Are there any left?” I asked. “Other than Goldoni?”

  Sackheim smiled ruefully, then nodded, a signal that sent Ponsard to the blackboard on the wall.

  “La généalogie, as you requested,” Sackheim said.

  There Ponsard copied a simple diagram from a page he held in his hand.
r />   “Alors,” he began, “you have Henri Pitot.” He wrote the name in the uniform longhand French schoolchildren learn and never seem to lose. Next to the name he wrote 1945. “His brother, Gilbert,” and wrote the second name out beside the first, “born 1949.” He drew a little looping line. “Henri marries Françoise Ginestet and,” he paused to draw a descending line, “in 1975 they give birth to a daughter, Eugénie.”

  “A disastrous vintage,” Sackheim remarked.

  “And, in 1978, Jean is born,” Ponsard continued, writing his name and connecting it to Eugénie with a horizontal line. Ponsard returned to the top of his chart. “The father, Etienne, is born in 1919 and is killed in an automobile accident in 1974.” He paused, then said softly, “Une famille qui est dans le malheur.”

  “The family has such bad luck,” Sackheim translated for me. He needn’t have. “You see, Babe,” he went on, “we have the birth records. Your theory about Jean’s paternity, I think it is mistaken.”

  I gazed at the diagram.

  “Anything else?” Sackheim said.

  “Oui. I inquired of some men in the village,” Ponsard said. “For reasons that we cannot understand, Etienne favored his younger son, Gilbert.”

  “Nonsense,” Sackheim interrupted. “It is perfectly clear: ’49 is a legendary vintage, while 1945 was a disaster. Although tradition would favor the older son, the father associates his offspring with the material conditions of the year in which he was born. It is guilt by association. Henri can never escape the stigma that attaches to him from the quality of the wine made in the year of his birth.”

  “An interesting theory,” I interjected, “but you’re off by a year. It was ’46 that was the disaster; ’45 was spectacular.”

  “Ah,” Sackheim sighed, crestfallen. “Too bad. Forgive my interruption, Ponsard. Go on.”

  “De toute façon,” the lieutenant said, “the management of the domaine goes to the older son as his patrimony. But he is no good at it. Etienne gives all his instruction, pays all the attention, to Gilbert. All the men said the same thing last night. ‘The old man loved Gilbert and despised Henri.’ The rivalry between the brothers is bitter. The domaine falls into ruin, and after the father’s death the family must sell off some property to pay the estate taxes.”