“How did he die?”
“A heart attack, at his desk. He worked a lot.”
“So maybe his heart was finished. Maybe he was not lovable.”
“But I did love him once — at least I think I did. Then something happened. I stopped. Sometime, somewhere. I don’t know why. Maybe I never loved him. Maybe I don’t even know what love is.”
He licked her neck, slowly, and sucked on her ear lobe. As she held her breath, he whispered into her ear, “Do you want me to show you, cherie?”
The next morning they slept late, waking only when room overheated from the sun. The make-believe beach didn’t seem big enough for conversation. She felt raw and alive in a way she hadn’t felt for so long she wondered if she was still practical, rational Merle Bennett. She held Pascal's muscular hand across the gap that separated their chairs. She went topless again, safe in her walled beach. How many summers would it take to go comfortably topless at a real French beach — five? Ten? What would she be doing in ten years?
She shut her eyes, blotting out the future, while Pascal went to a bistro, bringing back goat cheese country salads they ate with more white wine. They did nothing. The word ‘NOTHING’ careened in her head until she understood. You could do nothing for one day. The world would not slap you down. You did not become a nothing if you did nothing for a day.
Early Tuesday morning Pascal sat in the garden, drinking his coffee, quiet. They were dressed now, back to their old selves. Was he regretting this nothing-weekend, wondering how to extricate himself? Better not to know, to accept this little gift, this sunburn on her stomach, this aliveness, mental and physical, for what it was and nothing more.
Albert came over to introduce his neice. His sister’s grand-daughter, Valerie from Paris, was dark-haired and adorable, just fifteen. Tristan arrives tonight, she told them, promising a dinner. Pascal went back to work on the ceiling, nailing up the last of the lath.
Merle walked slowly out to the winery for the afternoon tour. In the tasting room she reapplied lipstick and brushed her hair. Did she look different? A little sunburnt, that’s all. When she was young she imagined everyone could tell when she’d had sex, that she smelled different, looked different. But this was France. It was safe to assume everyone made love before breakfast. Even you, Merle Bennett.
The group bought nine jugs of wine, pleasing Odile — if that thin smile could be called pleasure. Merle didn’t mind the walk home. A group of workers in a tiny pickup truck passed her, standing in the back, chanting, fists waving. Was there going to be a farm strike? What would that mean to Château Gagillac? She walked on, finally used to French drivers who intentionally passed so close her skirt blew up. She wore scarlet underpants just for them.
The setting sun turned the sky purple, the oaks on the hillside lit through from an inner fire. In front of the house, a little blue car. Annie was here! She saw Tristan’s head over the roof and began to run.
Chapter 34
After wine from Château Gagillac, a dinner of pork roast and potatoes with Albert, Valerie, and Pascal, and a tour of the house and garden, the company went home. Annie and Tristan were tired from their travels. In the garden, under the acacia tree, the expected talk of trips around the surrounding countryside came up. Annie was excited to visit old castles, museums, wineries, and babbled about Lascaux Two, the re-creation of the stone-age cave with the incredible animal paintings.
They sat in the garden as dusk fell. Tristan claimed fatigue and went inside to listen to music. “So where have you been?” Annie said, leafing through her guidebook.
“I haven’t been anywhere,” Merle said. “Tristan didn’t tell you?”
“Tell me what?” Annie had braided her hair and wore a peasant blouse with wide, turquoise trousers and Birkenstocks, full vacation mode. “You fell off another ladder?”
Merle told her about the squatter’s death and the compromise her lawyer had made to get her the house. “I can’t leave the village without the inspector’s permission.”
“That’s bullshit. I’ll talk to him tomorrow.” Like Pascal Annie had full faith in her skills at persuasion.
“There’s another reason I can’t go. Come on, I’ll show you. We have a secret room,” she said, pulling her sister inside and getting Tristan to push the cupboard back. In the basement Merle unlocked the wine cave. Annie’s eyes were wide as she descended through the trap door. “Go on, step in,” Merle said, pointing the flashlight down at the step, then at the racks of dusty bottles.
“Oh my God,” Annie said. “Have these been here for hundreds of years?”
“Just fifty or sixty. But in wine years, that’s better than a hundred.”
“Really?” She was examining the bottles, holding them up to the flashlight.
“I searched around on the internet. There are three labels, three different years. The Pétrus could be worth a thousand dollars a bottle, maybe more. The others a little less.” The search had actually placed their value much higher but Merle didn’t want to count on that. Unlike Harry she preferred to low-ball.
They locked up the cave and pushed the cupboard back into place. Outside, they brushed the spider webs off their clothes. “What are you going to do with it?” Annie asked.
“Sell it, I hope.” Merle sat down again on the iron chair. “Someone else knows about the wine. The woman who was living here with Justine LaBelle gave me the key to that gate. She told me ‘they’ would kill for it.”
“Who’s ‘they’?”
“It could be the mayor for all I know. He hates my guts for some reason.” The mayor had been hostile from the beginning. Why didn’t he want her in the house — because he knew about the wine? Or was it because Justine LaBelle was a Redier, one of his black-sheep relatives? “Look, it’s important that nobody knows about the wine downstairs. I haven’t told anyone except Tristan. It’s like sitting on buried treasure. It makes me a little crazy.”
“Why don’t you just get it out of there?”
“How? I haven’t even told you about all the stuff that’s going on. I’m working at this winery — touring English-speakers around — and there’s something funny going on there. There might be a farm strike. And then there’s the outhouse.” Merle waved her sister over to the latrine. “We were demolishing a wall inside and guess what we found — a skeleton. Somebody had put this woman, dead or alive we don’t know — rocked her in behind this stone wall.”
“Christ. Have you got any ghosts with chains rattling in the night?”
“Just mice. But I’m on the lookout.”
Annie leaned back in her chair and let her head drop back. “I suppose we can’t drink that wine. It’s too expensive. It’d be like drinking gold.”
“We drank two of them. We had to find out if they’d gone bad. We have one more vintage to examine.”
Annie’s eyes lit up. “You know how to make a girl feel welcome.” She looked around the garden, at the crime tape on the pissoir, at the roof, and laughed. “I brought twelve books. I thought I could get all caught up on my reading.”
Merle lay awake next to her sister, listening to the village go to bed. The sweeping of steps, a rug beaten against a wall, a cat howling, a shutter latched. She made a list in her head for tomorrow. The caulking needed work. The rock pile needed to be moved. Annie might help paint the bathroom ceiling. She’d wanted excruciating detail about how her klutz of a sister had broken her wrist. The stupid thing was hot and dirty and it itched. The grate for the chimney — Pascal, perhaps.
Annie’s shoulder was silhouetted against the window. Merle hadn’t told her yet about the discoveries in the parish registry. If Merle could have avoided it now, she would. But she owed it to the woman to uncover the truth. Dominique, a blond child playing in Malcouziac’s streets, grew up to be a Bordeaux whore named Justine LaBelle.
A sad story but a familiar one. Was it because of her fourteenth year? Who had made her pregnant, debauched her, sent her on a long and winding path ending at t
he bottom of the cliffs of Lucrezia? Who could be so cruel?
The next day was sunny again; it had been weeks since rain had fallen. The stones felt warm to the touch as the sisters passed the houses. Merle opened the door to the gendarmerie where Madame Cluzet pointed them to the inspector’s hotel where he had gone for lunch.
The hotel sat on a back street, definitely the economy place. The paint was peeling on the shutters and the carpet in the lobby was worn and dirty. They walked through to a darkened bar where a small group of tables and chairs formed a smoky lounge. The inspector sat in a corner, papers spread over his table, contributing to the fog.
“Capitan Montrose, that’s his name,” Merle whispered. “We have to speak French with him.”
He stood up as they approached through the tables, taking off heavy black-rimmed glasses. He wore a rumpled gray suit and white shirt, more bureaucratic than fashionable. His tie was blue, his fingers tobacco stained. Merle introduced her sister and they shook hands.
“Sit down, please.” He waited as they settled into chairs. He discreetly turned his paperwork over.
“We need to speak about the passport, and confining my sister to the village.” Annie leaned forward, engaging him with her eyes. “This can’t continue. You must return her passport to her or we will have to protest through the U.S. Embassy.”
“I am sorry, madame. Your sister is a suspect in a murder investigation.”
“And what’s happening? Is there progress?” Merle asked. “Have you found Sister Evangeline or any other witnesses to the murder?”
He stared at her silently.
“You haven’t found her dead, I hope.”
“Non.”
“Are you going to charge my sister with a crime?” Annie asked.
“We shall see,” he said.
“She has a job in New York City. You can’t keep her here indefinitely. She has a family at home.”
“I’m retaining a lawyer. Antoine Lalouche in Bordeaux,” Merle said. “Do you know him?”
“Non, madame.”
“Monsieur l’Inspecteur,” Merle began, sitting forward now, “I have some new information about Justine LaBelle. Maybe you already know it.” He nodded for her to continue. “She was born here in Malcouziac, and her real name was Dominique Redier. Did you know that? Redier. She gave birth to an infant when she was fourteen years old. My husband was that child. The couple who adopted him owned the house on rue de Poitiers.”
“What?” Annie whispered.
Merle stared at the policeman. His stony expression never changed. “That is why, as Justine LaBelle, she returned to live in the house. That was her connection.”
He smoked and thought about that. She continued. “Her name was Redier. Both the mayor and the gendarme share that name. Are they perhaps the ones that Sister Evangeline warned me about? The ones who would kill to get into the garden? Was it the bones in the latrine that they wanted to conceal?”
He tented his fingers, concentrating hard on her choppy accent. Could she trust him with the knowledge of the wine? She shivered involuntarily.
Annie said, “Have you identified the remains?”
“Without a missing person report, some idea who she might be, it is very difficult. After the war, records were lax. So many people died or disappeared, or left the country in those years.”
“My sister is making progress on this case. Not necessarily more progress than you, Monsieur l’Inspecteur.” Annie smiled and by God he smiled back. “But please let her work. Let her leave the village for day trips to gather more information. We have been very open with you, Inspector.”
“Where would you go?” he asked.
“To a convent,” Merle said. He didn’t need to know why. Annie shook his hand and turned away but Merle stayed. He asked, “When?”
“Today. Sister Evangeline wasn’t a nun. But we will find out today for sure. I think she was hired to get into that house.”
“To kill Justine LaBelle?”
“Possibly. But why would she give me the key?”
As serious and solid as he looked, he also appeared adrift, as clueless today as he’d been on day one, the stains on his shirt accumulating. “I do not think you are a murderer, madame, but I cannot afford to take chances. You will not make me sorry.”
Outside, Annie waited for her. “What is all this about Harry? He was adopted?”
Merle put her arm through her sister’s and pulled her toward the plaza. “Super-genealogy sleuth, here. His birth mother was the woman who was killed. I’m sorry to have to tell you this, Annie. It’s embarrassing. But she was a prostitute, that’s what everyone says. An ugly old whore from Bordeaux.”
“So those people in the car accident on Long Island weren’t his parents?”
“Adoptive. I don’t even think he knew he was adopted. Guess where we’re going now that you got me a day-pass?”
“Lascaux?”
“Equally as thrilling. Right after I give Tristan his duties as guardian-in-chief.”
The hills to the south of Malcouziac rose and fell with each stream and valley, turning at small towns perched on hilltops. The sky was an infallible blue. She drove Annie’s rental, a little Peugeot. Annie sat with her knees curled under her, reading her guidebook. A fundamental differences between sisters: Merle had not brought one guidebook with her; she’d had to buy one here. Annie brought three.
“It says here that the Carmelites came to France after the death of St. Teresa. She was that super-nun in the Holy Land who reformed the order. They were wild and she made them all calm down and look inward. Made it contemplative and cloistered.”
“I’ve heard of her,” Merle said. “Teresa of Avila.”
“Right. That was in the 1500s. The first Carmelite convent was founded in 1604. Now there are almost a hundred in France. No wonder Frenchmen are such horny bastards. Present boyfriends included.”
“You have a French boyfriend?”
Annie smirked. “The Carmelites were suppressed during the French Revolution. Oh, this is good. Right before the revolution was King Louis the fifteenth. His daughter Louise became a famous nun. He — au contraire — was famous for his godless debauchery. You remember Madame de Pompadour? And Madame du Barry. His lady friends.”
“So Louise — his namesake — was the shining example of virtue? Princess and nun?”
“Something like that. This convent we’re going to was founded in the twelfth century. That was men — monks. They died out, or something, about the fourteenth century. There were soldiers occupying the place during the revolution and most of the good stuff was stripped out of it.”
“So when did the nuns come?”
“After the revolution. They went off to England, most of them, to save their necks — although some of them went to the guillotine to save France — then they came back to France around the 1850s.” Annie looked up. “Turn here, left, left. It’s only a mile.”
A small sign on the lane read: Monastère du Carmel. The buildings looked like a well-kept farmhouse, two stories high and large, with numerous stone outbuildings and an ornate iron gate where Merle stopped the car. “Is there a bell or something?”
Annie looked through the windshield. “They might not even talk. You know, vow of silence.”
Merle shut off the car. “We’ve come this far.”
A shield with crosses decorated each side of the tall, padlocked gate. “Should we shout?” Annie whispered. A nun stepped out of a building, her long habit, white wimple, and black veil recognizable from the distance. They waited, neither Catholic but sharing a glance of anxiety as the nun approached. This was another world, inside these gates, where virtue and purity ruled.
The nun was young, and surprisingly, wearing sandals. Her scrubbed face was dusted with freckles under the tight wimple. Merle asked her in French if it was possible to research birth records here. That she believed a relative may have spent time here. Not a nun, a lay person.
“Birth records?�
� The young nun, her hands hidden inside her sleeves, frowned.
“Nineteen-fifty.”
“We moved to this location in 1962,” she said. “There have been no births here.”
“Can we speak to Mother Superior?”
The nun frowned and walked back to the house. The sun was hot, and they had only brought water and fruit and a little bread for lunch. Across the fields they could see women working in the rows, hoeing, harvesting, watering. They wore blue shifts and straw hats. Merle and Annie drank the rest of the water, sitting in the car with the doors open, taking advantage of the shade the vehicle gave them.
A half-hour later two nuns came out of the main house. A tall, older nun unlocked the gate and waved them inside. They passed several buildings then, moving through a large, hand-carved door into a dark interior of a tile-roofed, windowless building. Merle blinked in the dim light. The air was cool, heavy with candle wax and incense. A barn-like space with a soaring roof of rough wooden beams, stone walls, and wooden pews, in the front sat a small altar with a white statue of a woman on it.
The tall sister, a wrinkled, haggard woman, pointed to the back pew. “You may pray.” Their light footsteps faded, the door closed. The only light in the chapel was from two small round windows, one at each end in the upper point of the wall, under the roof.
What did a cloistered nun pray for day in and day out — world peace, a calm heart, rain? “I am not going to be a nun,” Annie whispered. “Just so you know. And I’ll hold you back.”
“You could be a Buddhist, wear pink and shave your head.”
“Not going to happen. If you become a nun Pascal can’t give you hickies anymore.”
Merle snorted as the big door opened with a loud crack. They jumped to their feet. The silhouette of a nun, short and wide, her girth accentuated by voluminous garments, blinded them for a second.
Blackbird Fly Page 24
